Apparently, this is the “Angel” season of the Calendar of Saints, et al. Today is for honoring, reverencing, contemplating on, and appreciating guardian angels. This past September 29, the focus was on the highest echelon of the angelic hierarchy (in particular, archangels Michael, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael). Today, in Butler’s 18-century parlance, it’s about a lower rank of the holy host, Angel-Guardians.

The idea that we have an angel watching over us is a very sweet and lovely thought. Some wear angel pins and others send and receive greeting cards that invoke these unseen protective forces. And there are songs ranging from spirituals to Amy Grant (pre-Vince Gill) songs that celebrate the non-stop, all night/all day presence of these personal protectors.

So what is there to be bothered about (beyond, perhaps the treacly nature of how guardian angels are marketed)? To respond, I turn to Butler’s words:

That particular angels are appointed and commanded by God to guard and watch over each particular person among his servants, that is, all the just, or such as are in a state of grace, is an article of the Catholic faith, of which no ecclesiastical writer within the pale of the Church, in any age, ever entertained the least doubt. (emphasis added)

Note the catch: the faithful, those in a state of grace, those who do right by God–these are the ones that get guardian angels! And of course this sets up the obvious corollary: if you’ve not been protected in your life, it must be because you simply weren’t one of the faithful, you were not in a state of grace, you were unworthy in God’s eyes! (Because, of course, one cannot accuse guardian angels of ever screwing up, Clarence of It’s a Wonderful Life notwithstanding…and even there, Clarence comes through at the end and gets his wings.)

So then does this mean that all of those thousands of Puerto Ricans who died as a result of Hurricane Maria were not God’s servants? Or those in the Carolinas more recently? Or those in the concentration camps of World War II? Were they not in a state of grace? Were they unworthy of being angelic guardianship?

The only way to make this doctrinal view “work” is to create a loophole for God and God’s angels so big that one could drive a Mack Truck through: that somehow the deaths, for example, of these Puerto Ricans did not mean that the guardian angels were not present or were ineffective or that all those who died were outside God’s grace, but simply that God has some sort of greater plan in mind, that the angels stayed with these faithful people and guarded their souls, and that these servants of God somehow served God by perishing (aided in their service-by-death by these guardian angels who guarded the circumstances to ensure that God’s will transpired).

Really???

Or perhaps guardian angels serve primarily to keep the emotions of the faithful buoyant when in distress–more like cheerleader angels? I certainly don’t underestimate the value of having those in our lives that keep our spirits up and help us hang in there when things are awful. But why in the world would God offer this only to the faithful (who, presumably, would be so much less in need) rather than to all and most especially to those who had never embraced or felt embraced by God’s grace?!

At best, this whole idea of guardian angels that are assigned only to the faithful is a sweet thought for some people. I don’t at all begrudge those who find comfort in the idea and find that the idea of a guardian angel sustains them in their worries or travails. But, at worst, the idea is monstrous in its backhanded suggestion that some human beings are without such divine protection (even if it’s only interior) because they haven’t behaved correctly.

Religion as a palliative is something that Karl Marx warned against. Blaming the victim is a wretched, unworthy activity that–if any people are going to be set outside the will of God–should cause a loss of one’s guardian angel. And the belief that God is personally controlling the disposition of each and every human being, creature, river, rock, storm, and genocide is, to understate the case, problematic.

If nothing else, the Calendar and Butler have provided us much to think about.