My 17 year old asked me about the fall of satan

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MarthaSo

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I wish I could say I very clearly explained the fall, God bless her confidence in her parents knowledge as she looked up at my husband and I with such wide eyed interest. My husband and I explained as best we could …but is there a website apart from this one (a book recommendation is great too but i will wait a few days in the mail) that she and I can brush up on that is an easy(ish) read for me and a teenager to learn “basics” of our faith? I forgot the other question she asked but it was different and I’d love a book and internet source if possible.

I need an easy read at this stage in my life as I used to try to read some theology books that were too heavy for me to grasp but i forced myself to and now I admit I need easier for my own level of understanding for the benefit of growing in faith.

Thank you all for any recommendations.
 
In my experience, it is pretty common for teens and pre-teens to have a theological interest in Satan, the “war” of the angels, and stuff related to it because of the mystery and the heroic aspect of it. It’s a good icebreaker to get them interested in other aspects of the faith as well.

This website, Catholic Answers, is a good place to plug in to all sorts of topics. Just go to the homepage and use the search button to type in whatever you want to know more about.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict XVI) “Introduction to Christianity” is a very good book to read.
 
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St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that Satan sinned by desiring to be “as God”, according to the passage in the prophet (Isaiah 14).
 
Honestly there’s not much that’s taught about the fall of some angels. There’s a lot of popular notions and fiction.

The angels were created good. Some chose to reject God. Their choice is irrevocable, not because God refuses to forgive them but because that’s just how angels work (it’s a mistake to think of them as disembodied human minds). If there was a war amongst angels I don’t think there’s much more to say than that. They are not human warriors fighting with weapons over land like we would imagine. Neither are they sorcerers casting fireballs at each other.

St. Thomas Aquinas put a lot of thought into angelology. To St. Thomas, goodness and the being of a thing are very close to the same thing. The better one is actually has the perfections belonging to what one is, the more good it is. Moral goodness is related to the deliberate choices we make in that regard. Anyway, the angels were created. They reflected on the knowledge they had, which was a good act and a proper action for an intellectual being. It is how they decided to act following their reflection that was good or bad.

Angels do not have bodies and so do not have senses like we do. They exist as intellects with infused knowledge. They do not think discursively (meaning it is not a piecemeal process or step by step over time like in us). They do not get hungry or sleepy. What they decide to do based on this knowledge, since they don’t flit about from thought to thought, is permanent. There is no “train of thought” in the knowing of angels.

The Catechism has a little in the following sections.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p5.htm

Catechism of the Catholic Church - IntraText (start with 391)

I don’t know how familiar you are with St. Thomas’ Summa Theologica. It can take some time to get used to. But it’s free, and in the first book of it he writes about angels.

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm
 
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I would recommand the Cathechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium (the shorter version). there is a long chapter where the fall of the angels are explained.

It is the basic of the faith, and should be completed with Bible investigation and others book if it become really a topic of interest.
 
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