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Post by hibernicus on May 28, 2013 19:27:46 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jul 8, 2013 8:55:30 GMT
I watched "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and "Requiem" back to back this weekend - I recommend both, but I personally preferred the German film. It recreates the small town atmosphere of Germany very well and though both made efforts to stay close to the Anneliese Michel case, the German had an obvious advantage. The US version was a little more melodramatic as the story was told through a courtroom drama and relied a lot on special effects; the German version was played by stage actors, so there was a lot of psychological intensity in the film. I thought the US version more pro-possession than the German, which was ambiguous (first time I viewed I thought it more towards a pychiatric condition, but on a second viewing, I am not so sure.
One thing I'll mark the US version for was the scene where Emily Rose speaks in different languages, identifying the demons. The prosecutor gives what could be a plausible explanation: Emily had studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew and possibly could have studied Aramaic in the catechetical programme the family enrolled in and she studied German in school. This is possible. But the original Anneliese Michel spoke in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic as well as German under exorcism. She would have done English and Latin in school and possibly Greek (though I don't think so); she certainly never would have studied either Hebrew or Aramaic.
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Post by gavingaz on Aug 9, 2013 18:30:40 GMT
Im a demonologist and. In a paranormal team.. havent had a demonic case ..just people miss understanding spirits and thinking everything is demonic and its not..
Sent from my GT-I9100 using proboards
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 12, 2013 18:59:23 GMT
This is a Catholic site and we are not here to provide an advertising service for "demonologists". Please bear that in mind
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Post by gavingaz on Aug 13, 2013 8:10:54 GMT
Im Not advertising just saying there is a difference between demonic and spirits thats all ..... I sorry if u got the wrong idea and maybe I worded it wrong ...Thank you
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Aug 27, 2013 15:31:16 GMT
Not sure what the last poster here is at, but though there certainly are spirits which are not demonic (God; the spirits of people living and dead; and angels), the non-demonic spirits are non-problematic.
I have heard stories of human-demons - a damned soul of a person that does demonic work. Anyone know anything about this?
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 31, 2013 22:44:16 GMT
Rod Dreher has a piece about the EXORCIST film, and about some of his contacts with people who have been involved in occultism and been hurt by it. Just a reminder that wearing devil horns on Halloween is a much worse idea than the thoughtless party-goers realise... www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-unexorcisable-exorcist/
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 4, 2013 12:13:06 GMT
Pope Francis' emphasis on the devil is continuing and it is being resolutely ignored by those who want to claim him as a liberal.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 4, 2013 21:12:12 GMT
I remember how some of the same people who are lauding Pope Francis used to jeer at Cardinal Connell for expressing belief in angels and devotion to his guardian angel.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 5, 2013 10:05:55 GMT
Yes. And Cardinal Connell rarely spoke about angels; Pope Francis speaks constantly about the devil.
It defies reason in another respect - the core of liberalism de-emphasises the supernatural in general. But by-and-large, they have nothing against angels. They have quite a lot against Satan, demons and the possibility of hell/final damnation. Now JPII and BXVI rarely spoke about all this. Francis I probably spoke more about the devil since March than his predecessors did in thirty years and more space has been given to idle speculation that women might be given the red hat than on the Pope and the Devil.
I suspect if there are more moves along the lines of the Greg Reynolds excommunication or a couple of pronouncements which ignite the liberals, we'll see them see them focus on Francis' Marian devotion and interest in demonology, in scathing terms.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 27, 2013 1:31:50 GMT
A piece on the Mexican Church's increasing resort to exorcism in response to the use of occultism by the drugs cartels there. The terrible experience of misery and suffering in Latin America and the temptation it poses for some people to resort to the occult may be related to Pope Francis' repeated references to the Devil. (NB I am quite aware that Mexico and Argentina are different, and this sort of occultism is not confined to Latin America. There is a strain of pop culture here - and not just pop culture, I remember reading a piece recently in which an art critic praised Francis Bacon for presenting humanity as pieces of meat suffering meaninglessly in a godless universe - which exalts darkness, chaos and the search for power out of chaos. Perhaps some of our local drugs barons could do with exorcism.) www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25032305
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 1, 2014 15:04:35 GMT
Stephen Greydanus offers an overview of cinematic depictions of exorcism (including the interesting 1962 film THE RELUCTANT SAINT, about St Joseph of Cupertino, which includes a lengthy depiction of an attempt to exorcise the saint in the belief that his miraculous powers are of demonic origin): www.decentfilms.com/articles/exorcism
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 24, 2014 23:24:25 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 3, 2014 19:57:24 GMT
This is an interesting reading of THE EXORCIST which argues that its central message is THIS: EXTRACT For Blatty, we encounter monsters because of our horror of the material world, which is related to our lack of charity. The characters in The Exorcist all seem possessed by a fear of the flesh. Karras is losing his faith because he despairs over material corruption. When he visits his ailing mother in New York, the neighborhoods are crumbling. On a dilapidated subway platform he is panhandled by a vagrant, described in Blatty’s novel as “a gray-stubbled derelict, numb on the ground in a pool of his own urine.” Karras draws back: “He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be.” Though never searching, Karras is forever encountering this “Christ of pus and bleeding excrement”—crucially, in scenes associated with his working-class origins. We’re not in Georgetown anymore. END The author of the article also suggests that the possession of the child in the film should be seen as a critique/reflection of American/Western culture's growing fear of children as troublesome, messy and uncontrollable (the film came out the same year as the Roe v. Wade decision which legalised abortion throughout the US). An odd little detail - the novel gives an excerpt from what is supposed to be the writings of the senior exorcist Fr Merrin, which expounds on the material world as means to salvation by loving one's neighbour. This extract is actually from one of Cardinal Newman's sermons - an interesting choice given that Newman's image is somewhat otherworldly and that Fr MErrin is widely believed to be based on Teilhard. (Maybe it was just that Teilhard was still in copyright...) www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/10/fear-of-children
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 3, 2014 20:11:08 GMT
To me the fascinating thing about the Exorcist (the film, rather than the novel, which I haven't read) is that the horror was based on its literal subject matter-- it wasn't primarily a metaphor-- as far as I can tell, people who went to see it were actually frightened at the prospect that such things might happen rather than seeing it as a spooky fiction.
I saw an interview with an actual exorcist who acted as advisor to the movie. Apparently his conditions for going alone with it were, first, that it take exorcism seriously, second, that it was made by an atheist or agnostic director.
I think it's rather overrated as a movie.
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