Posted on 02/19/2005 6:55:54 PM PST by Coleus
Priests get lesson in exorcism
Lack of qualified clergy prompts Vatican class
ROME – The Roman Catholic Church is facing a shortage that you might not have heard about: qualified exorcists.
Thursday, about 100 priests rose in prayer, asked St. Mary for protection, then sat down to an eight-week study of exorcism and how to distinguish and fight true demonic possession.
The course at Rome’s Regina Apostolorum, a prestigious pontifical university, represents the first time a Vatican-sanctioned study at this level has been dedicated to exorcism.
In Italy, the number of official exorcists has soared in the past 20 years to between 300 and 400, church officials say. But they aren’t enough to handle the avalanche of requests for help from hundreds of tormented people who believe they are possessed. In the United States, the shortage is even more acute.
Only a small percentage of the afflicted are judged to be in need of exorcism, and learning how to tell the difference between demonic infiltration and other psychological or physical traumas is the main goal of the priestly students taking the course at the Regina Apostolorum.
“When you’re dealing with a reality like the devil,” said the Rev. Clement Machado, 39, of Canada, “you can’t just learn the theoretical. You need the pragmatic experience. ... It’s such uncharted territory.”
Italy’s most famous exorcist, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth, is not participating in the program but was full of praise for it.
“It’s very positive,” said Amorth, 79. “I hope it will increase the number of exorcists.” Without a doubt, he said, it will increase interest in the ancient and oft-maligned ritual.
Exorcism – the use of prayer to rid a person or place of the devil or demonic spirits – has its roots in early Christianity. It fell out of a favor about the 18th century, after the Enlightenment and advances in science and modern philosophy, but has experienced something of a revival in the past couple of decades.
The re-emergence is due in part to the current pope’s belief that Satan is a real presence in daily life that must be battled.
Many exorcists avoid publicity, sensitive to the sensationalist portrayal of their practice as seen in Hollywood movies and pulp novels. That made the insights offered in the pontifical course, opened to the media for its inaugural session only, all the more unusual.
“The biggest obstacle has been the lack of training of priests and bishops, who haven’t felt sufficiently equipped to confront” what the church believes is a rising obsession with satanic cults, witchcraft and the occult, said Giuseppe Ferrari, an academic specializing in social-religious phenomena who lectured by videophone from Bologna.
“Satanism is very much in fashion now,” said the Rev. Paulo Scarafoni, rector of the Regina Apostolorum, which is run by the conservative Legionaries of Christ.
The Rev. Gabriele Nanni, an exorcist from the Italian town of Modena, told the priest-students that medical doctors can be consulted to eliminate physical or psychological causes behind a patient’s distress. The symptoms of authentic demonic possession, he said, include utter revulsion to holy symbols such as a crucifix or baptismal oils. Sometimes, he said, the patients enter a deep trance.
The cleansing ritual, he told students, must be kept simple, with much prayer and without pride in one’s accomplishments.
“An exorcism is tantamount to a miracle – an extraordinary intervention of God,” Nanni said. “It’s not that we poor men are so powerful to be able to banish the devil. It’s that God gives us the power.”
The Rev. Francesco Bamonte, another of the new generation of exorcists, has served as an exorcist based in Rome since 2000. Only by virtue of a team that screens potential patients does he avoid being inundated by requests, he said.
The course will not necessarily produce new exorcists, organizers said, but it will teach priests how to discern the maladies and give them the expertise and confidence to send only the most egregious cases on to their local exorcist.
Nowhere is the shortage of exorcists seen as more serious than in the United States, where skepticism about the practice abounds. There are fewer than a dozen official exorcists at U.S. dioceses, and it is a topic that most American priests seem to avoid.
The Rev. Christopher Barak traveled from his headquarters in Lincoln, Neb., to Rome to attend the course.
Priests in Nebraska recently have faced troubling cases from parishioners, including unexplained noises in homes and sightings of ghostlike figures, he said.
“There is a growing awareness in our dioceses” of the need for exorcists, Barak said.
“There are a lot more behaviors and lifestyles that are not of God,” he said. “There’s a lot of relativism. Whatever goes, goes. There’s a big surge in New Age, pantheism, young people playing with Satanism, a lot of drug use, black magic, psychics are so big, pornography, MTV. ... People are not searching for holiness.”
Planning to stay for the entire course which ends in mid-April, Barak said he hoped to take a new understanding and a new battle plan back home to Nebraska.
Ignorant priests.
I was raised as a Catholic. I just don't like fanatics of any stripe.
Please don't take this in the wrong light.
They're starting to figure out the problem with the Catholic Church.
The mind parasites took it over long ago.
Will they ever get it back?
I could have told them that.
Exorcist was one of the four Minor Orders (Porter, Lector, Exorcist, Acolyte) conveyed prior to ordination to subdeacon, deacon, then priest (Major Orders) prior to 1975. The Rite of Ordination was revised in the mid-70s, and Porter and Exorcist were dropped, along with subdeacon. I have received the Order of Exorcist, but, since I am not a priest, I would never be called on to administer the Rite.
"I don't want anything to do with it." >>
It must be very taxing on the individual.
Just like any little leaguer can play baseball. But, in this case you have to consider the opposition.
I'd defer to the pro's.
Maybe you'd like to explain your comment rather than just taking a cheap shot.
Yes, and we should shut down every department of every local, state and federal government and pull out of Iraq until we've eradicated every form of political corruption in America.
The Church stopped doing that long before they even began legalized slave trading in America.
They being whom?
Besides, I think you missed my point in all of this.
I believe such priests to be idolaters, opting for other than the One True God, and instead chasing after phantoms which are likely various forms of mental illness or brain irregularties or abnormalities of their unfortunate victims, best represented in movies or by such ignorance only such "exorcists" can alleviate.
Admittedly my opinion, but I'll stand by it, as it seems to make more sense than such priestly self-serving mumbo-jumbo.
If necessary, I'll be more specific. - The Church stopped doing that long before Americans began legalized slave trading.
Besides, I think you missed my point in all of this.
That's quite possible. Just what was the point of your original post?
Slave trading to The Americas was started by European countries long before 1776. And if you study history religeous persecution was widespread at the time.
"26They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes,[b] which is across the lake from Galilee. 27When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demonpossessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. 28When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don't torture me!” 29For Jesus had commanded the evil[c] spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.
30Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. 31And they begged him repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.
32A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into them, and he gave them permission. 33When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
34When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, 35and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. 36Those who had seen it told the people how the demonpossessed man had been cured. 37Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and left.
38The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39“Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him."
The difference between you and me may be that I am a Christian. I believe this story and others like it. I believe in Jesus and that he gave these powers of exorcism to the apostles and their modern day decedents.
I've known people who've been exposed to the very real evil that satan exerts in our world today... stories that would make your hair stand on end. Get ready to hear a few for yourself as the occult continues to become mainstream in our culture.
And in 1856 the US Supreme Court ruled that people of African decent were not people.
By your rationale, that means Americans are bad.
I guess we need to bring back the rack and burning at the stake to rid the world of people who don't agree with certain religious beliefs.
I thought that was my point.
Think so?
Most of the wonderfull Cristians I have known in my life are happy in their belief in a good God.
Few understood and truly believed in a force for evil just as real as the God of good they claimed to worship.
Lots of people believe in Heaven but not Hell.
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