Mysterious Universe

Fr. Gabriele has two books that detail his (some) of his exorcisms. Fascinating stuff but not for the squeemish.

Wouldn't that be the same as the local church being haunted with a spirit/ghost/entity? Couldn't he get some of his Father buddies and hold a prayer vigil and cast him out? Is he sure it's the big guy and not one of his minions? It just doesn't make sense to me.

I've grown up in church and have admittedly never encountered a haunted or possessed church. There have been cases of demon possession where the minister along with deacons/others prayed over the person. I can only assume it was a real possession as that is what the minister said was causing all the odd growling noises.

What's scary isn't the demons, it's that this man is being taken seriously. Amorth is being trotted out to deal with the church sex scandals; he claimed Satan was behind this as well. He also bemoaned the “good old days” when women stayed home rather than working. “…given in to the Evil One. You see it in the lack of faith, the empty churches, the collapse of the family. Compare the world of today to when I was a boy in Modena: families and parish communities were strong, women did not go out to work.” Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams incredulously asked in her recent column if a priest abusing a child in Rio was due to her having a job.

Needless to say, there's no confirmation for Amorth's claims, and if there were, the more likely explanation would be poor mentally ill people engaging in self-mutilation by swallowing sharp objects – of which the literature is rife without need to appeal to Satan (quite often it's nails or pins these people swallow – http://radiographics.rsna.org/content/23/3/731…. ).

Even the most cursory bit of thought would show that Amorth should not be given credence. Let's assume he's been conducting exorcisms since the age of 20. Given his age of 85 and discounting leap years, thats 365 days a year * 65 years = 23,725 days. For his wild-eyed claim of 70,000 exorcisms to be true, he'd have had to have performed just shy of 3 (2.95) exorcisms a day, every day from then until now. Given that even one a day for sixty-five years would be hard to swallow (harder than pins and needles even), and the idea of bulk exorcisms to make up the difference just as unlikely, and his claim can't possibly be true. The man is obviously filled with self-worth and living in his own fantasy world. “The exorcist has one principal duty… to free human beings from the fear of the Devil.” It would seem he's doing just the opposite… trying to scare people to make himself seem more powerful and important and get newspaper interviews and book deals, and is tolerated because this media blitz comes on the heels of more Church sex scandal revelations, including a videotape in Rio.

Ms. Williams put it best when she wrote in Salon, “At least Amorth didn't completely insult the planet by suggesting that pedophila can be waved away with a little holy water and some incantations, any more than it can by transferring the offender to another parish…. Until the Vatican gets it through its thick skull that sexual abuse isn't a sin but a crime, isn't a moral weakness but a dangerous pathology, it's going to continue putting up with predators within its ranks, thinking they can say they're sorry and make it all go away. It will go on holding the devil responsible for its own worst acts. And it will continue condemning its youngest and most vulnerable members to hell on earth.”