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Post by cecile on Aug 30, 2009 22:48:11 GMT
I my old french mountains we believe that a good soup, bread, the rest and one Pater Noster quietly said once a day is more powerful.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 3, 2009 15:02:18 GMT
That is an outrageous comment if it is meant to refer to genuine demonic possession - if it refers to excitable people who think themselves possessed when they are not that's another matter. Cecile should clarify her meaning immediately.
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Post by cecile on Sept 5, 2009 14:14:46 GMT
In both cases, what prayer above the Pater Noster ?
Is not "libera nos a malo" a good enough prayer for exorcism ?
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 7, 2009 15:33:44 GMT
With all due respect: The Pater Noster is indeed a powerful prayer, and may be useful to reassure people who are nervous or overimaginative, but if Cecile is talking about real demonic possession it is certainly not sufficient on its own. That's why the Church has professional exorcists (who require rigorous spiritual discipline) and a special ritual for exorcism. If Cecile is simply referring to ordinary daily devotions as a means of preserving spiritual health, it would be better to discuss this on another thread since bringing it up in a discussion of exorcism leads to confusion.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 23, 2009 16:29:45 GMT
Link to Pertinacious Papist summarising a recent journalistic account of exorcist training. pblosser.blogspot.com/2009/10/rite.html As a cautionary tale I would suggest THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN by Aldous Huxley. This describes an outbreak of hysteria among seventeenth-century French nuns in a provincial town, which was manipulated by the political and personal enemies of a local priest to have him tortured and put to death. A Jesuit subsequently (as he thought) exorcised the Abbess of the nuns at the cost of voluntarily accepting possession himself - Huxley's book may be the source of William Peter Blatty and Malachi Martin's highly dubious statements on this last point. An useful reminder of the consequences of credulity and the ways in which morbid curiosity about such things can be manipulated by earthly evildoers.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Feb 23, 2010 19:50:32 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 4, 2010 13:42:21 GMT
Fr. Amorth announces high-ranking members of the Vatican civil service are members of satanist groups and gets rapped over the knuckles by another exorcist, who says Amorth is basing himself on alleged private revelations and interrogating the alleged devil during exorcisms. (The latter being a particularly reliable source, no?) Fr. Zuhlsdorf reports and opens his combox to debate. Note the Malachi Martin fans. wdtprs.com/blog/2010/03/roman-exorcist-says-there-are-satanic-groups-in-vatican/#commentsPersonally, Fr. Amorth strikes me as inclined to see possession everywhere (going by his memoirs). There are people in the Vatican Administration whose lives give cause for scandal, all right.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 4, 2010 13:48:06 GMT
Meanwhile, in an online book review John Zmirak provides an useful warning for traditionalists against where the self-image of ourselves as a select band possessing hidden knowledge in a corrupt world can lead -
insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7724&Itemid=121&ed=1EXTRACT Avoiding sensationalism, Klimczuk and Warner tap into a deep-seated human drive: to dig up secrets, to unseal ancient scrolls in search of forgotten lore; to paw at the locked gates of haughty, exclusive places; to puzzle over codes; to decipher moldy gravestones and ferret out "the inside story" behind historical persons or events. Closely related to this impulse is the drive we feel to join exclusive groups, to seclude ourselves from the mass of men and form little coteries, to dress up our social impulses in rituals and costumes -- sometimes to the point of elaborate initiation rituals or, sadly, dangerous hazing. As the authors make sternly clear -- for instance, in their chapter on the morbid anti-sacraments crafted by the Nazi SS -- there is a dark side to our attraction to the shadows: Mix it (in a glass beaker, in the laboratory of Drs. Faustus or Frankenstein) with the fallen human appetite for power, and the chemical reaction emits a wide variety of toxins:... •Occultism, which clouds the skeptical intellect with vaporous claims, appealing to the ego with promises of power over the uninitiated. I know of one former Latin Mass seminarian who kept dabbling in dark conspiracy theories and lurid accounts of "spiritualism" until he abandoned his dusty theology books for the squalid rituals of the Satanist Aleister Crowley. [Interesting point; just as I have heard of anti-communists who became communists, or vice versa, because they grew so fascinated with what they set out to oppose - HIB] More "progressive" religious types are likelier to stumble into the pathless meanderings of the spiritualist Carl Jung. •Pseudo-elitism, which poisons the wholesome human hankering to form small groups of people you've learned to respect and trust, and exclude all others -- and turns that impulse to something sinister and cruel. C. S. Lewis's analysis of this phenomenon can't be bettered, but the tendency reasserts itself everywhere: from the cliquishness of teenagers to the snobbery that infects even pious circles: "I don't date girls who go to the Novus Ordo." "Those aren't real homeschoolers." "Those people with too many/not enough kids are crackpots/contraceptors." As Lewis sums up this temptation, the "Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There'd be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence." Of course, if there's one thing worse than an elitist who forms such clubs, it's an Envious outsider who tries to outlaw them, but that's for another day. END OF EXTRACT
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 15, 2010 13:46:17 GMT
Fr. Zuhlsdorf dissects an article by Fr. Richard McBrien which sneers at those American priests and bishops who take an interest in exorcism. McBrien makes it clear he thinks exorcism should only take place at baptism (and in the milder version found in the OF rite as distinct from the more robust EF version). Much discussion in the combox about whether Fr. McBrien believes in the existence of the Devil, and if so how does he explain Jesus' performing exorcisms. wdtprs.com/blog/2010/07/does-mcbrien-believe-in-the-devil-and-in-the-reality-of-possession/
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Nov 24, 2010 11:06:33 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 30, 2010 12:42:06 GMT
I think what we have here is an exaggeration of a real risk, which is more prominent in the TWILIGHT books than in HARRY POTTER (because TWILIGHT'S advocacy of chastity involves a perverse fascination with its opposite - for discussion see . www.decentfilms.com/articles/twilight.html HARRY POTTER could certainly fuel a fascination with the occult but so could many things - so could the Bible, for example (there is a longstanding tradition of perverse misreadings in which Satan, Cain, Esau etc are seen as Byronic heroes defying an arbitrary tyrant). The physical and mental development of adolescents naturally attracts them to stories of hidden secrets and concealed powers, and this can be harnessed for evil as well as good, but treating it as necessarily evil is one way of surrendering the imagination to the powers of darkness. General Booth was right; why should all the best tunes be left to the Devil? I notice Fr Eutener acknowledges that no-one can be possessed by the Devil without their own consent - a point on which Fr Amorth's writings are quite alarmingly shaky.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 31, 2011 12:52:55 GMT
Stephen Greydanus assesses the new exorcism movie, THE RITE. Sounds like it might be worth a visit. www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/reviews/2011/rite.htmlEXTRACTS This is not a world in which demons manifest openly or in which sacred objects like crosses or holy water are omnipotent over the forces of darkness. Exorcism in The Rite is a long, drawn-out process that can last for weeks, months or even longer. In that way, among others, The Rite is probably the most sober, realistic treatment of exorcism in Hollywood history. It's also a pretty thoughtful depiction of doubt and faith—one of a tiny number of exorcism films, along with the original Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, that offers a spiritual, even theological take on what most films in the genre treat as mere horror-movie trappings... Catholic imagery abounds: crucifixes, images of St. Therese of Lisieux and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and so on. All in all, it's the most positive depiction of the Church and of Christian faith I can think of in any recent Hollywood film. Hostile critics may even dismiss it as religious propaganda, but it deserves more credit than that... The film is loosely inspired by journalist Matt Baglio's nonfiction book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, which documents the training of a real-life exorcist, Fr. Gary Thomas of San Jose, California, who went to Rome in 2005 to apprentice with an experienced exorcist. If there's one aspect of Fr. Gary's experiences, or the experiences of any good exorcist, that I wish had gotten justice in the film, it's the reality that psychological problems rather than demonic influences are at the root of most troubled people's problems. Throughout the film, Michael tells Fr. Lucas that the people he's seeing need a psychiatrist, not an exorcist. In a movie that strives for realism in many respects, I would have liked to see Fr. Lucas run across a case that led him to the same conclusion. END EXTRACT A reader comments: Katy B January 28, 2011 12:45pm"At times I've experienced total loss of faith—day, months when I don't know what the hell I believe in—God or the devil, Santa Claus or Tinker Bell. Yet there's something that keeps digging and scraping away inside of me. Seems like God's fingernail. And finally, I can take no more of the pain and I get shoved out from the darkness into the light." That quote you mention: Hopkins was on Charlie Rose the other night and pointed out that he specifically wrote to the screenplay writer and asked if he could put that in. Turns out that's a direct quote from a Jesuit priest in England who made a big impression on Hopkins (who fought his way out of the abyss he got into via booze. He says he used to call himself an athiest, then an agnostice and now a believer - with doubt, but a believer.)
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 1, 2011 15:34:24 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 1, 2011 16:55:33 GMT
Lifesite News has a statement by Fr Euteneur admitting sins against chastity with one woman in connection with the rite of exorcism, expressing contrition and stating that the reports linked above are gross exaggerations. Have problems getting a direct link to the statement.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Feb 18, 2011 12:15:08 GMT
Exorcism is getting another on-screen outing in the film 'Rite'.
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