Below is a message from Fr. Jarrod Waugh, CSC, Pastor

Oct. 18, 2026

Knowledge of Good and Evil

There is a common critique of the Fall of Adam and Eve narrative that you encounter from non-believers that begins with a misunderstanding of what is represented by the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. First of all, it isn’t just the “Tree of Knowledge,” it’s the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” The attempt is made to frame God’s prohibition of Adam and Eve’s eating from the “Tree of Knowledge,” as God prohibiting them from attaining knowledge; in other words, God wanted to keep Adam and Eve ignorant. I think it’s fascinating that this is sort of the same gambit made by the Serpent himself, but we can save that line of thought for another time…

God did not want to keep Adam and Eve “in the dark,” He actually wanted to protect them from moral darkness. We speak of a moment that a person can experience a “loss of innocence,” and there is both a sense in which that is a regrettable experience and yet, don’t we all need to learn “the way the world works?” I often refer to an essay an acquaintance of mine once wrote about taking her young daughter to the playground. I think her daughter had had some health concerns in her early months and so they hadn’t taken her out to “socialize” very much even though she was probably three or four at the time. Their daughter hadn’t really interacted with anyone besides her parents and extended family up to this point, and she certainly had not had much experience playing with other children. My friend watched from the edge of the playground while her daughter approached an older boy, of maybe five or just under, when the boy—completely unprovoked—took upon himself to shove the girl down before running off. Her daughter ran to her arms in tears, and she writes (I’m paraphrasing) that, “my heart was breaking not so much for the pain of that one fall, but more for the pain of my daughter learning for the first time that people can be cruel, and for no other reason than that they are capable of doing so.” There was a loss of innocence here, for sure a learning “how the world works,” but, is this the sort of “knowledge” that makes us wise? Is it not a pity that we need to be “street smart” which is a snappy way of saying “know that other people might want to hurt or use you.”

If you have known in your life—and I pray that you haven’t, but odds are that life experience will spare few of us—if you have known real and deep betrayal and viciousness either personally or in the lives of people you love, then you know what it is like to have an entirely new reality of pain and probably hatred fill your heart and mind in ways that can feel nearly impossible to set to the side. It feels consuming, and can cast a dark shadow over nearly everything else in your life. This isn’t just “knowledge.” It’s something you come to know, sure, but it’s not “information.” If you have gone through something like that, you can gain wisdom by growing through it, but it’s never something you are glad to have learned. This is the sort of “knowledge” that our Heavenly Father wanted to spare us from—not hoping we never learn astronomy, but that we never would have had to suffer experiencing the heartbreak of human cruelty.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in a homily that I have recently been having concerns about a couple of hobbies that are pretty popular and which I have found myself indulging in personally, namely the popularity of firstly, “true crime” stories/podcasts/YouTube videos, and secondly, similar content related to demonic possession and related phenomena. I don’t think I would say that knowing about or learning about true things that have happened to someone, somewhere, is intrinsically bad. God is the author and Lord of Truth, knowing the truth cannot be bad in and of itself. However, I do not think that it is true that every kind of knowledge is always healthy for us to pursue all of the time. Some kinds of knowledge aren’t just more “information,” but carry a weight or even a darkness to them that might be damaging to our minds and souls if we pour more of that darkness into our minds than we (or maybe anyone) can really digest. I am not sure how convinced I am by the argument that it’s “good” to know loads of details about multiple different demonic occurrences because “it proves that if the devil exists, then so does God.” Maybe one story would suffice for such an apologetic. But becoming an avid reader or listener of hellish goings-on? I don’t know who that would be good for except maybe for priests actually training to be exorcists. Maybe not even them. I have similar feelings about those of us who can become “fans” of content that explores in (way too much) detail the heinous crimes of serial killers or mass murderers, etc. Those may be things that really happened to actual people. They are “true” information. But what good is it really doing my mind or heart to fill them with knowledge of that kind of darkness? I struggle to see how that ultimately is a good and prudent use of my time.

Friends, all this is to say that I, as your Pastor, have become concerned recently after hearing the news that our federal government is planning to broadcast the public execution of a man who has been legally condemned to death, in accord with our nation’s laws of justice. You are likely already aware that there has been no small amount of debate in recent years in the Catholic Church about the relative justice or injustice inherent in the idea of state capital punishment continuing to be exercised in modern times. Pope Francis (and Pope Saint John Paul II, before him, in very similar terms) advanced the teaching (and edited the Catechism of the Catholic Church to reflect) that, in a day where life-long, secure imprisonment is possible, the “need” to execute criminals has for the most part ceased to serve a necessary purpose. Theologians and regular believers in the pews will continue to discuss and argue about the possibilities available to states and about how we will continue to wrestle with a Tradition that has canonized both pacifists and soldiers, and a Sacred Writ that states both that “whoever sheds the blood of his fellow man, by man shall his blood be shed,” [Gen. 9:6] and “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that he turn from his ways and live.” [Ezekiel 33:11]

I don’t know that I am qualified to say whether the execution of the man in question—who has done terrible things that doubtlessly deserve punishment—is just. But I do know that watching him be put to death is not going to teach me anything that I need to or want to know. It’s not going to nourish the parts of my heart and mind that I believe Christ wants me to grow and nourish. I hope that you will consider whether you will learn anything worthwhile by viewing the livestream, or if your time might be better spent praying for the man’s final conversion, for his victims, and for their families who wade in the darkness he poured out into their lives.