Second Sunday of March 2011:
First Sunday of Lent
Behind the flippant air of this title lurk rather sinister things worth our attention. Between known rock stars giving themselves to the devil and Harry Potter producing “white magic”, our children are getting “witchcraft friendly”.
On another note, some of our readers may have seen the movie The Rite, based on a nonfiction book by Matt Baglio, The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist. The central character is Michael Kovak, a seminarian who questions his faith. But before he leaves the seminary, he attends an exorcism course in Rome, where he meets Fr. Luca, an experienced exorcist. While working with Fr. Luca, Michael participates in several exorcisms and comes face to face with the devil. Michael is ultimately required to perform an exorcism on a most unexpected person and realizes that believing in God and His power over evil is necessary to overcome evil.
This movie prompted some reactions from the U.S. bishop’s conference (Nov. 2010) on the “liturgical and pastoral practice of exorcism,” especially since the number of exorcists in the US is minimal. Fifty-six bishops and even more priests have registered to hear about the shortage of trained exorcists and the growing interest in the mysterious rite. May God instill in them the power to fight against the invisible but real “power which infests the air.”
On this matter, it is well worth considering what Fr. Gabriele Amorth, 85, has to say. The Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years, he studied 70,000 cases of demonic possession. He has written the famous book, An Exorcist Tells His Story. He also objected to the introduction of a new version of the exorcism rite, complaining that it dropped centuries-old prayers and was “a blunt sword” about which exorcists themselves had not been consulted. Here are some of his thoughts:
Full Text Here:
Should Exorcisms and Exorcists be sent to Hell?
By Fr. Gabriele Amorth
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