Catholic Church Declares War on Sanity

SATAN, I mean War on Satan. My bad. Anyhow, "Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan," reads Saturday's headline in the Daily Mail. I just don't know what to even say about this one, other than that it has truly been a red letter year for Pope Benedict XVI. First, he reinstates the Latin Mass. Then, he declares that the Catholic Church is the only TRUE Church. Now he's ordering Catholic bishops worldwide to line up "exorcist squads" because, according to head Vatican exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, "Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist." This need to "hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist" is apparently tagged to a supposed increase in worldwide occult activity, which in turn has been blamed by the Vatican on those who have lost faith in the Church. In its efforts to continue obliterating the legacy of Pope John XXIII, the father of the Modern Church and leader of the Second Vatican Council, the Church is reinstating a particular prayer that had been discontinued as a result of the Vatican II liturgical reforms:


St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

I guess just mark me down under Skeptical on this one. For one thing, the actual need for an exorcist to actually expel a demonic presence is a rare thing indeed. The majority of cases that diocesan exorcists are asked to investigate are ruled to be something other than demonic possession of a human being (and are typically mental-health related behavioral issues). For another thing, unless the Church can put up some hard numeric evidence to prove it, I highly doubt that people are leaving the Church in droves and fleeing into the waiting arms of Satanic occultism. Now, don't get me wrong, people are leaving the Church, but for reasons such as the clergy sex abuse scandal, and for its increasingly conservative positions on social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and female clergy.

Yes, we make house calls.

At any rate, if the pope wants to initiate his own surge against the forces of evil, that's certainly his prerogative. In the meantime, while he is busy making important decisions about Latin liturgy, who is and isn't a Church, and deputizing a whole slew of Catholic GhostBusters, social issues that the Church used to confront head-on continue to plague people and societies across the world. Poverty, the expenditure of tax dollars on exorbitant defense budgets, and the stagnation of wages for working people are but a few of the issues with a direct impact on peace and prosperity that were once of great concern to the Church.

So, the list of Church priorities continues to expand in favor of a narrowing scope of beneficiaries (e.g., liturgical fetishists and the demonically possessed). In the meantime, the peace and justice issues of our times, and those that Jesus spoke most often and most passionately about, are left to others to sort out. Perhaps Jesus' condemnation of his Pharisaic contemporaries applies to today's Church leaders as well:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. (But) these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of filth. Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.

- Doug L.

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE (UPDATED, January 1, 2008):

Pope calls gays a threat to world peace (365Gay.com, January 1, 2008)

A Return to Tradition (U.S. News and World Report, December 13, 2007)

How Exorcism Works (HowStuffWorks.com)

NETWORK: National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

Voice of the Faithful: Keep the Faith, Change the Church

SocialAction.com: An Online Jewish Resource for Repairing the World

Rerum Novarum: The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor (Pope Leo XIII, May 15, 1891)

The Exorcist (WarnerBros.com)

Ghostbusters (Sony Pictures.com)