Thursday, March 04, 2010

Fr Z's interesting but somewhat scary post on exorcisms etc.

Fr John Zuhlsdorf is always interesting, sometimes quirky but has a deeply serious spiritual side to his blogging. It seems to me that he is a priest-blogger for whom the first part of that description is deteminative over the latter. In his latest post, he tackles some of the stranger allegations about demon-worship in high places in the Church. Fr Gabriele Amorth seems to have published another volume of memoirs, or more probably another book of interviews, which gave rise to the latest speculation. As you'll see from the link above, as sensible and scholarly a critic as Dr Ed Peters is very wary of taking Amorth seriously.

Fr Z fisks the CNA article which covers the whole business; also mentioned is Fr Jose Fortea whose book on the subject I mentioned here. Also in that post is a run down of the readily available literature in English on exorcism. Having covered it then, I have no inclination to revisit it now. So for what its worth, I'll refer those interested to last year's post.

1 comment:

Nancy Reyes said...

I read Amroth's book and don't trust him. Lots of the problems he claimed to exorcize seem psychiatric, not diabolic.

Ironically,Malachy Martin's book (and his Art Bell interviews, which are on Youtube) seem more genuine to me, even though his later interviews elsewhere which spout traditionalism and paranoia.

For what it's worth, I've "felt" diabolic influence when I counseled women on not aborting, but I've only met one man who I felt might have been possessed...he was an African politician, and exuded evil when we were discussing his wife's health problem...