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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 26, 2009 11:12:58 GMT
There are much more important matters under discussion than this thread, but as I have had quite a lot to say on the topic, I feel a sort of responsibility for it.
First of all, though I would prefer if Guillaume hadn't posted the video, I will not ask him to withdraw it. It is freely available on the internet and posting a link here will not make any difference. You can download a 90 minute video of the purported exorcism of Anneliese Michel if you want. Hemmingway has a more than valid point about the authenticity of the footage - but even if the footage is definitely that of Anneliese Michel under exorcism, it doesn't prove anything. For the record, I think the footage is authentic - the point is that it doesn't establish that Anneliese Michel was possessed, which is a point, which if I haven't made clear above, I will state it plainly now - on the balance of evidence, it is not proven (to use a term from Scots Law) that Anneliese Michel was possessed. I have no doubt that the girl's parents and the exorcists had their reasons for believing she was, and that this was presented to Mgr Stangl to get his permission. The point is that I, or no one else watching the footage, can make up their minds that the subject is possessed. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I understand German (I know Hazel does, but he hasn't commented so far). I heard nothing in the footage that I could not expect from somebody who was severely mentally disturbed. I am not saying that the subject was not possessed, only that I cannot decide from what I have seen that she is.
As for the theory of the 'guardian demon'. I have heard that before, but I think this is something which comes from private revelation rather than the Magesterium. I am open to correction on that. 'Private revelation' can often amount to no more than theological hearsay. This is a point where I am sorry that this list doesn't appear to have a priest contributor (I suspect Molagga was a priest, but he was only interested in the St Colman's Liturgy Association, funny recipes and lengthy excerpts in Latin and he is gone now) to deal with niceties like this.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 26, 2009 11:41:22 GMT
Harris'es story of his local priest in the boy scout troop is far from isolated. There are many clergy who treat the Gospel stories on possession as cases of epilepsy and mental illnesses. The story of the Gadarene swine is a bit more dramatic. However, Christ appears to be known as an exorcist at the time as the Gospels record the Pharisees' allegations that He cast out devils by the power of Beelzebub and also Christ's response to the allegation - again this is a matter for a priest's clarification.
There is skepticism among the clergy about the demonic. I don't think this begins in the 1960s - I think it goes back to at least the Enlightenment. In the 18th Century, Mgr Prosper Lambertini held the office popularly known as 'devil's advocate' in the then office responsible for canonisations. He wrote a handbook at the time setting down guidelines for judging miracles, mystical phenomena, visions and possessions. A lot of it was common sense, but one of the key principles was if there was any plausible natural explanation at all, this was to be accepted. This was basically Occam's razor, taking things like the writings of SsJohn of God and Ignatius Loyola into account. I suppose the Victorian agnositic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (a lapsed Catholic) put the principle into the mouth of Sherlock Holmes 'When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the answer. Prosper Lambertini later became Pope Benedict XIV.
Another matter from Guillaume's post - the Gospel of St Luke does say that St Mary Magdalene had seven devils cast from her, but nowhere does it say that she was a prostitute. Tradition conflates her with the woman taken in adultery in St John. Another tradition suggests she is St Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus and Martha. I think the tradition that she was a prostitute surfaces in the middle ages when devotion to St Mary of Egypt was popular. St Mary of Egypt overcame a condition now known as nymphomania, and I think her story fell into people's consciousness when they though of Mary Magdalene. I don't believe it is clear, whatever Franco Zeferrelli may have implied in 'Jesus of Nazareth'.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 26, 2009 11:46:25 GMT
The link between Dracula and the Exorcist that Hibernicus makes is interesting for another reason related to the topic.
Given widespread folk belief in vampires in Eastern Europe, it is probably not altogether surprising that some Orthodox churches have rituals against vampires. I once asked a specialist in Orthodox liturgy about this and he put it down to efforts to prevent grave robbing. I didn't find this satisfactory.
It is strange though that the Western Church sees an incorrupt body as evidence of sanctity and God's favour; but the Eastern Churches see it as a sign of demonic activity. And one manifestation of this is vampirism.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 26, 2009 14:36:08 GMT
For my last comment on exorcism for the moment, it might encourage idle curiosity to open the section of the archives in Maynooth relating to the ghost room to the public, but it should be available on request to scholars - historians, scientists, medical/psychiatric specialists and lawyers to mention a few. Not forgetting theologians.
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Post by hibernicus on May 26, 2009 14:59:30 GMT
A couple of points in relation to Alisdair's posts: (1) The Orthodox attitude to incorruption seems to be different from the Catholic one in other ways to those mentioned. My understanding is that they often see incorruption as a necessary sign of sanctity. I remember hearing this after I was puzzled by the response to the decay of Fr. Zossima's body in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV - the characters respond as if this was positive proof that he was NOT a saint, which would certainly not be the Western response. (2) Olson and Miesel in their book on the frauds of the DA VINCI COD state that it was Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-604) who first stated that Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany and the repentant prostitute who washed Jesus' feet were the same person.
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Post by hibernicus on May 26, 2009 16:23:18 GMT
To complete my posting on THE EXORCIST, Blatty does provide an explicit theological rationale for the horrors in the novel - how far the film makes this clear is another matter. The devil is tempting Fr. Karras (and by extension the others who come into contact with the possession) by showing him the most squalid, tortured and disturbed aspects of human life (e.g. the homeless wino in the subway who asks him to "spare a little for a good Cath'lic... I was an altar boy once") in order to play up his feelings of guilt over his mother's descent into senility and her death in a public hospital (during the climactic exorcism the devil taunts him by suggesting his mother is damned, using language I will not repeat here, then assumes the voice and likeness of his mother and repeats her final plea to him "Don't leave me in this terrible place"). The devil's aim (it is stated explicitly in the novel) is to overwhelm Karras with revulsion, to blind him to the fact that the Incarnation sanctified the human condition, and to make him fall into despair. In this reading the devil's defeat comes through the willingness of Merrin and ultimately Karras to endure the devil's assaults and imitate Christ's sacrifice to rescue the little girl at the costs of their lives. The scene of Karras allowing the devil to enter into him would then be a final confrontation with and triumph over this revulsion. This is quite a subtle point and I can think of real-life equivalents (Fr Aidan Nichols, the English Dominican theologian, has written about how working in a homeless person's shelter as a young Dominican, where he had to perform the most menial services for winos, brought home to him the full meaning of the Incarnation). Blatty received theological advice from some of his old Jesuit teachers (one of them appears in the film as the Jesuit priest who is Karras's closest friend) and I suspect its best features owe much to their advice. The trouble, I think, is that ,first it owes something to idle curiosity - Blatty has described its theme as "if the devil exists, then God exists" and second, following on from this, that the film can be read by unwary viewers as replicating the temptation which it ostensibly works through and triumphs over - that of overwhelming the viewer with horrors so that the existence of meaning and grace is overshadowed. One of the central literary objections to obscene representations (and there are aspects of THE EXORCIST which are in my opinion obscene - I will not describe them here but those who have seen the film will know the ones I mean) is that obscenity possesses such power that it "burns through" the story and takes on life in its own right, escaping from the context in which the artist tries to place it. Overall I think the film tries to be honest and it can be an instrument of grace - more so I would say than the more expressly pious EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, which by treating possession as martyrdom flinches away from its full horror - but it should be treated with caution. I intend to explore some of these issues further in posting discussions of horror fiction as a genre on the Halloween thread in the general forum, but for now this is all I have to say on this thread.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on May 27, 2009 9:55:24 GMT
With reference to the posting of the alleged exorcism of Anneliese Michel, I have a question. My German is limited, but the exorcists as far as I understand were giving the blessings in German. I am not sure and open to correction, but isn't the exorcism ritual in Latin? Or at least wasn't it in the 1970s? I know the vernacular liturgy was in place by then, but I always understood that the rite of exorcism only changed in very recent years.
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Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2009 11:00:49 GMT
I haven't listened to the video, but remember the revision of the rite and vernacularisation are not the same thing. (When the rite was revised Fr. Amorth and other exorcists complained that the removal of many prayers, and a general tendency to hedge its bets on whether there was a real demon, made the new Rite less effective than the old, and they got permission for the old rite to be retained as an alternative to the new.) Alternatively, they may have been improvising in line with the general post-Vatican II tendency to try to re-invent everything from scratch. I am not going to listen to the video to find out, however, for the reasons which I gave above.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 28, 2009 8:01:46 GMT
If more Catholic priests believed and used their 'power' there would be less problems. The devil exists and each priest should know how to perform an exorcism. Priests have been given more grace than mere lay men. We will all be judged but a priest will have a tougher judgement. A protestant man once rebuked a Catholic priest for not using his power. He has that power to expel the devil. Yes, the devil exists but Catholics are not using the weapons. Catholics should pray to St Michael daily and invoke their Guardian Angel. God never took away the Devils intelligence. I found this on the Hallowe'en thread. I think it is an example of superstition creeping into Catholic doctrine. There are very limited circumstances in which exorcism can or should be used.
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Post by hibernicus on May 28, 2009 9:54:28 GMT
Yes, it is reminiscent of the once widespread folk-belief that all priests have the power tio carry out miraculous cures but most wilfully choose not to exercise this power because they know the diseases they cure will be inflicted on them. The point about priests facing a stricter judgement is quite orthodox, though, and is a comfort in relation to recent revelations. Faithful seems to think that priests should routinely perform exorcisms on their own initiative, whereas exorcism is only supposed to be done with episcopal authority. I wonder if he is a sedevacantist, as they often have this mindset.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 28, 2009 13:22:46 GMT
While Faithful was active on the list, I thought him very pro-SSPX. But he appears like some people who convert from Protestantism to Catholicism - that they can be much stronger on many points of the faith than cradle Catholics, but that they miss huge gaps. In this case, the ecclesiology evident is not very Catholic - that priests should routinely carry out exorcisms on their own initiative.
Can you imagine it? "I haven't got my quota of exorcisms in yet; I better do a few before advent". Exorcism follows from a perceived need which must satisfy rigid criteria. You don't just make it standard practice, unless you are in the habit of seeing devils everywhere. Like Father Ferapont in the Brothers Karamazov; not to mention Ivan.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 3, 2009 16:00:22 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 15, 2009 20:44:44 GMT
I looked at the Irish pilgrim blog - a very succinct analysis.
I liked the comparison of Malachi Martin to Stephen King.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 17, 2009 12:33:37 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 17, 2009 12:45:32 GMT
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