Yahoo recently posted a Reuter's article titled, "Exorcists wanted: apply to Catholic Church," which began with the lead, "Overwhelmed with requests for exorcists, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops are holding a special training workshop in Baltimore this weekend to teach clerics the esoteric rite, the Catholic News Service reported."
Exorcisms? An overwhelming demand? What's next, overwhelming requests for clerics to cast out evil politicians? Well, no, the Catholic Church believes that casting out evil politicians is and always will be the prerogative of voters, at least in America. Elsewhere, it may be the prerogative of the politicians who manipulate elections.
Point is, exorcisms, the ritualistic process of "a exorkismos-binding by oath, the practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed," is alive and well, if not a favorite belief of most people, Catholics and otherwise, today.
The whole idea of exorisms and exorists is just, well, not popular.
Americans are woefully lacking in such exorcist-qualified men and "each diocese deserves its own," according to Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, IL: http://tiny.cc/ty1we.
I have no quarrel with that especially in view of substantial evidence that devils seem rampant today, even more rampant than they were when 12 year old Regan McNeill was peeing in her living room, swivelling her head, barfing green vomit, and voicing guttural, gutter responses to the aged Father Karras.
Moviefone.com posted "20 Things You Didn't Know about 'The Exorcist,' " the movie, many of which things should give pause to those who deem Catholics who believe in devils and the necessity for exorcisms nutcases in need of immediate psychiatric attention.
Among Moviefone's "20 Things" are the mysterious burning of the movie set, a blaze that left Regan's bedroom untouched, evangelist Billy Graham's unproven claim "that an actual demon lived inside the celluloid reels of the film," Linda Blair receiving death threats for "glorifying" Satan, and the coincidental deaths before the film's release of two actors whose characters had also died in the movie: http://tiny.cc/3g4rf
I don't know if all, or any, of that is true and verifiable. I do know that Linda Blair's film career began and ended with Regan McNeill and that this world of ours, this world which we are forced to share with slews of demonic people-Barack Obama comes to mind- is in a sorry state. Whether that sorriness is attributable to the nature of mankind or to some devil making us do it, as Flip Wilson used to claim, the result is much the same.
