A couple of years ago, I wrote about how Florida was becoming America's center of spiritual warfare. I think we're seeing that proved out by the month and sometimes, it seems, by the hour.

There is the crime: every week, a new child is sensationally abducted in Florida. There is the obsession with amusement: it's rampant from Orlando to the Super Bowl to "biker's weekend" (500,000 motorcycles in Daytona!). There are the drugs in South Florida, the theft, and the consumerism (America's wealth is shifting here). And of course there was the case of Terri Schiavo -- which stands now as the greatest atrocity in America's judicial history.

At the same time, there has been the warning going back now years that the future would see more and larger storms. We've seen that too.

Does this mean that Florida is the center of evil (the new avant-garde state), or simply that it is where the battle is being waged most fiercely and openly?

In Florida, there is a spiritual vibrance that is felt in few other places (its original name was "Easter Flower"), with ministries flocking there -- especially healing ministries (see Briege MacKenna) and ones that deal with spiritual warfare. This is true of Catholics, evangelicals, and other Christian denominations. There is a new Catholic university (see Ave Maria).

It is a state of bible warehouses. It is a state with numerous religious publishers. It is a state that has some of the most active Catholic parishes in the United States, and a strong, growing Catholic population.

Moreover, the legislators of Florida allow one to have a pro-life license plate ("Choose Life") and the governor, however short he may have fallen in the Terri Schiavo case, led the U.S. delegation to the papal installation last week and has consecrated the state to both the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In St. Augustine, site of the first authenticated Mass, there is the oldest parish and the oldest Marian shrine (left) in all of North America. It is not odd to see a business named something like "By Faith Alone" (near us, that's a beauty salon).

But with the active Christianity has come equally active perturbations of evil.

"The more one understands the holiness of God," said Pope Benedict back when he was a cardinal, "the more one understands the opposite of what is holy, namely, the deceptive masks of the devil. Jesus Christ Himself is the greatest example of this: before Him, the Holy One, Satan could not keep hidden and was constantly compelled to show himself."

Indeed: Florida is also home to the headquarters for Scientology and to New Age-style gurus who overlook gorgeous state parks and to a spiritualist camp where they hold seances -- in an area that is mysteriously "bedeviled" by strange accidents and crimes (near a place called Deland). There is a darkness over parts of Miami (santeria) and in the spirit-plagued Tampa-St. Petersburg area. Florida will soon pass New York in population and is expected to gain 11 million residents in the next three decades -- many of them northern Catholics. That will only intensify the activity.

Is Florida really so unusual? In some ways it is and in others it is not. Undeniable is the fact that the media is now focusing on every abduction case that occurs in the state. When I was in Albany, New York, a horrible case occurred in a town not so far away called Herkimer, a case that barely made regional headlines, let alone national ones. Everyday in the United States, 3,000 children are reported missing. On one national list of abductees, 159 are listed for Florida versus 188 in Texas, 262 in California, and 130 in NY.  Overall crime has been dropping.

But it is still a criminal hotspot (by one index, second in the country), and there is a tremendous gyration between good and evil -- spiritual lows and highs that symbolize, in extreme ways, what is occurring in the rest of the country.

We recall that it was in that Tampa-St. Petersburg corridor that the Blessed Mother appeared on a glass office building. It is increasingly clear why that was so: the image was in Clearwater, right where Terri Schiavo resided for a long while, where her husband still does reside, not far from Pinellas Park, and in a part of the state that seems to be getting a disproportionate amount of national attention when it comes to crimes against children.

In the back and forth of spiritual extremes, there are the endless amusement parks in Orlando at the same time that one finds a huge new shrine (Our Lady of the Universe) dedicated to the Blessed Mother.

On one side of the state is an extremely conservative bishop while on the other is a liberal one who has been at the center of controversy (especially for restricting Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament).

How it will all play out will be a bellwether for the rest of the country. What does it mean that the image in Clearwater was damaged by a young vandal? What does that portend? And those hurricanes: how will they play out?

We have not seen the end of the storms; there will be more of them; there will be special devastation in one area. There will be a "hyper-hurricane." But situations will occur in every other major part of the U.S. as well, and with a new Pope named Benedict, we can also expect to see the shameful face of Satan more openly show itself everywhere.

But watch Florida. Watch for clouds in the Sunshine State. How it goes there -- how the spiritual war evolves, from Miami to Tampa -- will be an indication to the rest of America.

4/28/05