Po-faced? "You must be joking" (vintage John McEnroe).
Posted on 11/22/2010 10:08:57 AM PST by mlizzy
At the final count we estimated that there were several hundred distinct demons that exited her [middle-aged exorcee] body through the four sessions of prayer and deliverance we conducted with her. Because these were not deeply-rooted demons, the process to expel them was very simple: silent prayer before the exposed Ecuharist and then a command to each unclean spirit to leave her one after another. Each was commanded to tell its name as it came to the Light and say, "Hail Mary, full of grace," as its sign of departure. The list of names was unbelievable: Abortion, Anti-Christ, Belial, Betrayal, Birth Control, Black Cats (this one hissed and put up its claws), Blasphemy, Fortune Telling, Horoscope, "Innocence" (this one spoke with a deceptively sweet, innocent voice), Illness, Pride (this one sat upright as if indignant and said, "I don't have to leave..."), Racism, Rape, Slave, Snake, Suicide and many, many others ...Fr. Euteneuer has said that those who do not listen to the warnings regarding the Harry Potter series (and others) do so at their own peril. More from Fr. Euteneuer:
The Alien movies featured a vicious, rapacious little creature that emerges out of the stomachs of people looking like a fetus transformed into a fang-toothed ravaging demon. Some believe that this movie represents the epitome of demonic glorification of abortion. Be that as it may, the devil's spawn are not hand to recognize. It's just too bad that most of our faith-deprived society thinks that they are only harmless "entertainment."
How did our Lord put it? "In the world ye will have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world." Eternal vigilance is to be applauded but sucking on lemons for the sake of seeing defeat round every corner, is a bit tragic. It's called the Good News, for a reason, you know... Have faith.
Then why do Wiccans rejoice over the books?
Not that you'd know it from Hollywood or the history books, but the most fundamental principle in Wicca is that whatever you dish out, you get back threefold - i.e. if you're evil then you will be punished by your own actions, if you're virtuous then you will be rewarded by your own actions.
Since Harry and Voldemort are both doomed by the consequences of their own decisions rebounding on them time after time, maybe the Wiccans regard it as a truer representation of what they believe in, than anything that portrays Wicca simply as an occult religion.
But even if that's the case, they're still missing the point: despite some apparent commonalities, the confrontations between Harry and Voldemort follow the Christian theme not a Wiccan one.
If you repent, and if you resist, and if you love others as yourself, as Harry does, then salvation is possible; Voldemort is already lost to revenge and hunger for power so his damnation at his own hand is assured.
I'm going to go out on a limb here. True Wiccans don't go around casting spells against people, force-converting them, strapping bombs to each other, proclaiming death to everyone who doesn't embrace their creed, and so on. Many people were condemned for witchcraft for simply knowing about medicinal herbs, or knowing how to deliver babies.
The Devil is a devious soul and a favorite technique of his, is to fool the righteous man into laying false accusations against the innocent.
Wicca is a distraction from the true path even at its most benign but Islam declares itself by word and deed to stand in opposition to the values our Saviour taught us. Beware the straw man.
Eternal vigilance is to be applauded but sucking on lemons for the sake of seeing defeat round every corner, is a bit tragic. It's called the Good News, for a reason, you know... Have faith.Preparing yourself (and your children) so you/they will not be defeated by Satan IS the Good News.
If you think it’s so important to be earnest and po-faced about the Good News, I’d hate to see what you’re like with bad news.
Po-faced? "You must be joking" (vintage John McEnroe).
Joking? Moi?! Yes, I’m just messing with you.
Seriously, though:
There are two aspects of walking the path: one is making sure you stay on it, the other is remembering the path is supposed to be taking you on a journey through this life to the next.
I remember what my journey used to feel like... a lot of staring at the cracks in the pavement in the journey of life, and wondering if something bad would happen if I stood on them. For a very long time I felt like I was going nowhere.
Now, I walk the path with purpose and confidence, and the journey’s a lot more fulfilling. And I thank Jesus for showing me how to do that.
A little bit of looking at the scenery on the way won’t hurt, but we have to remember that Satan doesn’t want us to complete the journey. His goal is to make us stray from the path, but it serves the Devil just as well for people to stand still while everyone else moves on.
With the best will in the world, I see the whole Harry Potter debate - along with a fair few other ecumenical arguments - as distractions. Satan probably loves those distractions, because the longer people spend debating such trivia, the more likely it is that they’ll lose focus on where they should be going.
With the best will in the world, I see the whole Harry Potter debate - along with a fair few other ecumenical arguments - as distractions. Satan probably loves those distractions, because the longer people spend debating such trivia, the more likely it is that they’ll lose focus on where they should be going.I understand what you are saying here, and I really don't like to debate HP either. But I *do* wish folks would read the words of the "expert exorcists," and Michael D. O'Brien, because they are the very people that have signed on to do battle with Satan (yes, O'Brien did some too).
Trouble is, you could say the same thing about any literature, even great literary works of morality.
Doctor Faustus tells the story of a learned man who is tempted by the arcane. You could walk out of that play halfway in, thinking it’s been a good advert for selling your soul to the devil. If you did that, you’d miss the entire point of the play.
People wouldn’t be tempted at all, if temptation wasn’t inherently alluring. Morality stories must illustrate one of two things: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” and/or “There but for the grace of God go you or I”. If they didn’t show either, they would be worthless.
Harry Potter is in that tradition. The Star Wars Vader-origin story, by way of contrast, is not.
Anakin’s offered a very vague promise of being able to save his wife from death, and five minutes later he’s signed up to the Sith, has murdered one of his mentors, and is leering at the prospect of slaughtering kindergarteners. At the point where he is wrecked and realises he’s the architect of his own misfortune and has killed his pregnant wife, he trashes the room and decides, “in for a penny, in for a pound” and goes on a twenty year genocidal rampage.
It definitely looks interesting based on the preview on Amazon.
For instance, it looks like he’s going to compare Frodo Baggins to Harry Potter, which strikes me as a pretty good one to make in the context of this debate.
Both Frodo and Harry Potter are reluctant heroes who’re dragged into wars not of their own making, by accidents of fate.
The empathy Frodo has for Smeagol’s corruption because he fears ending turning into another Gollum, is strikingly similar to the way Harry sees a lot of Tom Riddle in himself, and fears that he will end up as corrupted as Voldemort.
Harry has his kinship with the Weasleys, Hermione, the Order of the Phoenix and Neville to counterbalance his self-doubt, but ultimately he still feels the weight of destiny is all on his shoulders and he tries to carry the burden alone... just like Frodo doubts he can complete the quest to destroy the Ring and feels the pressure and loneliness of his burden.
Both characters depend on the consistent efforts of two authority figures: a wizard (Gandalf and Dumbledore), and a man who proves his worth despite early prejudices (Aragorn and Sirius).
Certainly after reading the last Harry Potter books, I wonder if O’Brien has read it yet and if so has it changed his perspective at all.
After all, if I’d stopped reading Lord of the Rings at the end of Part One of “Fellowship of the Ring” I’d probably think it was all a bit laugh-a-minute and would be peppered with hobbits stealing vegetables, getting drunk, smoking pipes, and of course there’s that very dodgy bit with them all cavorting naked with a carefree Old Man of the Woods who’s rather reminiscent of a Pagan mythological character I could mention...
I've just looked at the preview (thanks for the tip-off) and straight away, I've spotted some eyebrow-raising statements.
European children's literature, 101: Pull No Punches with Punishments. A rule as old as the publishing industry, if not older. If you're writing a fantasy story and you're going to punish an errant sinner in it, then you have to make the punishment inventive, punitive, and memorable. Especially if it's a story for kids.
Roald Dahl's inventive punishments are tame compared to some of what the Brothers Grimm came up with. Think about it: how many under-5s don't know the story where the kids throw the wicked old witch into her own oven and roast her alive?! Even Enid Blyton wasn't averse to the odd display of glee at a bad 'un's come-uppance. Heaven forfend he should read anything by Robert Swindells, that's all I can say.
Making an issue out of "Eat dung, Potter"... deary me, I can only assume either he was home schooled or he's never, ever stepped foot in an English schoolyard. Even the girls' skipping rhymes when I was at junior school (ages 5-8, a couple of decades ago when swearing in public would've got you a clout around the mouth) were worse than that. I don't dispute the fact that moral standards in the playground are lamentable, but the worst profanities I ever heard uttered out loud at school, came from the mouths of parents picking their kids up. J K Rowling sidestepped that reality, by setting the kids' interactions in a closed school environment.
O'Brien seems to think she should've been tamer with her schoolyard vernacular... I think she went as far as was practical given the reading age of her intended readership.
The every-flavored beans thing O'Brien highlights as another example of inappropriate gross-out, is actually inspired by the wry (but perennial) observation that a selection box of chocolates or candy, invariably has at least one flavored confection in it, that nobody seems to like. Even our confectionery industry thinks it's funny (and probably true!) - which explains this recent TV advert for Revels.
So, the worst you can really say of J K Rowling here, is that she was telling a gag as old as the hills.
"While sexuality is not really an overt part of the novels, romance surely is." Got to say, this one's got me scratching my head. He's talking about things like hand holding, carrying books, kissing under the mistletoe (I can almost hear him screaming PAGAN RITE!!!), teens stammering in the presence of people of the opposite sex (who didn't?!) and the occasional innuendo. He also seems to be indicating that all this sort of rites-of-passage stuff would be fine in any context other than in a fantasy tale that has magic and violence in it. Sorry, I don't buy it.
But after all that, there's one thing that O'Brien says that I really, really cannot make any sense of. He picks on Moaning Myrtle.
Now, that might sound like a stupid thing to highlight, but come on. It's so bleeding obvious what she represents, and it's so bleeding obvious why nobody feels comfortable when Moaning Myrtle is around... Anyone who's grown up in a large family, or with a dodgy lock on the bathroom door, can see it. Anyone who's had that horrible sense of being spied on in the locker room, will get it.
Myrtle is the personification of the unwelcome hanger-on. The person who won't leave you alone. The person who follows you into the bogs to talk to you (Guys know there's something terribly wrong with that when it happens. Girls might go to the bathroom in pairs but at least it's usually by mutual consent). The person who thinks it's fine to use the loo while you're in the shower.
Are they really trying to be friendly? Are they trying to eye up your junk? Or are they just so self-absorbed that they don't realise that they're weirding you out? Or are they just winding you up? Why can't they just get a life?! Myrtle is a work of genius - because she's all of the above. She's every rest room nutjob in the world, and your annoying brother/sister invading your privacy while you're in the bath, all rolled into one. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but from what I've read so far, I feel drained. I'm not angry or upset, just astonished at how badly misinformed Mr O'Brien seems to be. At times it almost looks as if he's saying that even morality plays are evil if they've got magic or humour in them.
That said, I am stuck in a hotel room at the moment and maybe when I get a chance to read the whole thing, I'll see what it is that you're seeing.
Oh, dear, I think I might be coming off your Christmas card list. I've just looked at the preview (thanks for the tip-off) and straight away, I've spotted some eyebrow-raising statements.Ha, ha! No, that's fine. I was looking for what you honestly thought of his work in this regard.
I don’t doubt that I’ll like it too! I’m a bit odd that way; I will always prefer to read something that I don’t get, over something that’s saying something I already approve of.
The first two HP films, I’d agree with you; they do emphasise the novelty of the magical world. But the shine is knocked off of it in the third film and certainly when I went to see Order of the Phoenix and The Half Blood Prince, the films were all about the characters and the magic was definitely not “fun”, unless you count the throwaway scene with the Weasleys quitting school.
JK Rowling did say in an interview once that she felt the first two films were a bit too Disney for her liking, and I get that. The same can be said of the books, though. Like I said, I’d be more interested in what O’Brien has to say about the books now that the entire story is complete, than what he said several years ago - especially if his opinions have changed.
They certainly have for many religious commentators who initially expressed deep misgivings over Harry Potter, but since the later books came on the scene have toned down their opposition considerably.
Like I said, I’d be more interested in what O’Brien has to say about the books now that the entire story is complete, than what he said several years ago - especially if his opinions have changed.Since his book was published in 2010, much of the content is fairly recent, although some of it has been pulled from his previous writings. Here's his site btw. Link.
wow. I never thought about that but it fits. The Aliens movie probably was used to impression people against infants in a subtle way. Not sure the writers or producers looked at it that way but the enemy uses anything and everything he can. Excellent post, thanks! (I love this board, lot of things to think about)
Yep, it’s all subtle. That’s the key word in a nutshell. The devil doesn’t care if it takes a decade (or whatever) to scratch at the surface leaving his poison. He’s licking his chops right now over all the subtleties he’s gotten past parents so he can go on to bigger and better things and destroy some of their children.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.