The horror of Connecticut shows us that gruesome human behavior is also a sign of the time, that it is equal to a storm, that it rattles us like a quake, that it scorches like a volcano and often seems to come from nowhere (like asteroids). We are in an era whereby there are series of serial killers, so many that often they do not make national news. And then there are the massive killings as in Newtown where twenty little kindergarteners and six courageous adults were mowed down by a twenty-year-old man the details of whom are sketchy but who is part of another aspect of the violent trend that we have seen in other schools, on college campuses, in shopping malls, in churches, in cults, and in movie theatres the darkness purveyed in movies now materializes in full form. Also Friday, in China, twenty-two children were slashed to death by a "psycho." Last summer, there was the "zombie" outbreak. Immediately after the Friday shooting a trauma psychologist came on TV to explain that this type of mental "illness" commonly "presents" itself in men when they reach their twenties but she had it wrong as psychology too often does because while we can tag names on it like psychosis and schizophrenia or multiple personality or "autism" or blame it on loneliness and dejection the real cause hides behind and below the modern labels and is called the devil or Satan -- yes, playing on those who are misguided, playing on the lonely, playing on mental disturbances, on "personality disorders," finding access through drugs, through alcohol, through the occult, arriving where there is anger -- where there is family dysfunction and break-up (there is mental illness) -- but the devil, Satan, nonetheless. He is what Pope Paul VI said: "perverted and perverting." It was the governor who diagnosed it properly when he told reporters that "evil has visited our town" and later spoke at Saint Rose of Lima Church, which could not accommodate all who flocked there, as churches will not be able to accommodate all who flock there in years to come. The patina of evil, the darkness that shines, is clearly seen in too many mug shots, in the glazed eyes of perpetrators, in the dark clothes they wear, the skull tattoos, the cutting music in their ears, the body mutilation, the nihilistic approach to life because they are disoriented by the evil of society as a whole. In mowing down the young, perhaps this twisted mentality thought he wasn't doing much more than an abortion doctor. Reportedly, the young shooter was a loner in the "goth" subculture (as were the shooters at Columbine), which has all appearances of witchery (dark clothes, darker music, vampiric makeup on women). Examples of "goth" magazines: "Morbid Outlook," "Deathrock," "Asleep By Dawn." He needs our prayers also. They all do. It is not until we uncover the true reason for mayhem that we will begin to solve it, to purge it, to cast it out; it also will not be solved until we call evil what it is (once more, the word "live" spelled backwards) and stop it from infiltrating to begin with.
--Michael H. Brown
