Tag: exorcism

Return of the Exorcist

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Writes Daniel Burke about the increase of exorcists in the U.S. Catholic Church at U.S. Catholic, “there are more exorcists in the United States now than at any other time in modern history, according to experts. More than 100 bishops and priests met in Baltimore last November to recruit dozens more.”  He continues:

As interest in exorcism rises, the church faces a host of tricky questions. Is the rite an outdated remedy best left to history? Or can it be effective alongside modern medical and psychological treatment? And why are bishops—who are leading a church plagued by emptying schools, vanishing vocations, and a sex abuse scandal that won’t go away—investing their limited time and resources to train exorcists?

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Our Sense of Knowing Better

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From Genevieve Yue’s “That Old Time Religion” at Reverse Shot:

In 1799, Étienne-Gaspard Robertson premiered the phantasmagoria, a moving magic lantern projection hidden behind a screen, to a crowded audience gathered at a Parisian convent. Though he tried to present himself as a scientist exposing the tricks of the trade (of both magicians and the Church) to foster superstitious belief, the wildly spectacular nature of his performance, with its ghoulishly materializing and receding figures, only confirmed his status as supernatural conjurer. Robertson’s entertainment was like all horror stories that begin in skepticism: thrill and fright trump our sense of knowing better. Time and again we see teenagers challenging each other to spend a night in a haunted house, sociologists investigating urban legends, or film students setting out into the forest to prove there isn’t anything out there. In these narratives of dare and debunking, science always loses, its certainty shaken in the presence of the unknown.

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