Recognising the good and the bad spirit
In this second part of her interview with American Jesuit theologian Bart Geger, Pat Coyle explores with him the ‘discernment of spirits’. St Ignatius talks of the good spirit and the bad spirit, and learning to recognise which is which. Bart Geger explains what Ignatius (and indeed the much earlier Church Fathers) has to say on the topic.
Professor Geger explores how God might be communicating with someone throughout this particular discernment process. And he answers some complex questions: Is the bad spirit an entity or just a psychological state exhibiting in a disturbed or traumatised human being? Can the bad spirit appear as good? And if so, how do we distinguish when this happens, and how should we deal with it? What did Pope Francis, who often referred to the ‘bad spirit’, actually mean by it? How does being able to discern between the different types of ‘spirit’ at work in our lives help us to figure out correctly what God’s will for us is?
These questions, and the questions they give rise to, are all addressed by Professor Geger in the interview above with Pat Coyle of Irish Jesuit Communications.
