Civil Commotion

If you’re like me, you’ve probably known somebody who caused you to wonder, “Whoa! Is (Insert name here) some kind of screwed-up human being, or … possessed by a DEMON!?”

That can be a really hard call to make sometimes, so y’all will be comforted to know that the Vatican has issued a handy set of guidelines that you may consult when you’re trying to decide whether to call a cop or a priest.

Father Cipriano de Meo, who has been an exorcist since 1952, told CNA’s Italian agency ACI Stampa that typically, a person is not possessed but is struggling with some other illness.

The key to telling the difference, he said, is through discernment in prayer on the part of the exorcist and the possessed – and in the potentially possessed person’s reaction to the exorcist himself and the prayers being said.

The exorcist will typically say “(a) prolonged prayer to the point where if the Adversary is present, there’s a reaction,” he said.

[ … ]

“There’s no lack of frightening facial expressions, threatening words or gestures and other things,” he said, “but especially blasphemies against God and Our Lady.”

Follow the link; this is not an Onion story, but bona fide stuff you’ve got to know next time Sweetie starts swinging a frying pan.

A Texas man has found a snail fossil in his aunt’s front yard, and the proprietor of a local fossil “museum” has assured the man, without ever actually laying eyes on the fossil, that it pretty much proves the truth of the Genesis tale of Noah’s flood.

Now, the man marvels that he has some of “Noah’s dirt” right there in the front yard, where he can go look at it — Pick it up, even! Noah’s dirt! — any time he wants.

This happened right here in the Good Ol’ U.S. of A., where everybody is guaranteed a free high school education.

The New York Times has an interesting piece today about the decline of seminaries.

According to a study released this week by the Association of Theological Schools, 55 percent of its member schools have declining enrollments. The students are aging, too — by 2020, “there may be more 50+ students than 20-somethings.”

In response, seminaries and divinity schools are in a period of unprecedented experimentation. Schools are merging; or joining together, across religious lines, in interfaith consortiums; or moving online.

You can see the problem. The Christian narrative is incontestably false, and the younger generation has left it behind. That doesn’t mean they don’t think about ethical, how-shall-we-live? type questions; it means they don’t frame them according to some made-up bedtime-story from 2000-years ago. It means, too, that matters once considered settled — homosexual relationships, for instance — are being considered anew and that, in some cases, non-traditional answers are reached.

Undoubtedly, we shall see a great many seminaries disappear over the next few decades; in view of the miseries caused by the ignorance they cultivate, nobody should regret that.

I pointed a couple of weeks ago toward a GoFundMe account set-up by The Wartburg Watch to benefit a single-mother whose middle-school son was raped by a high-school boy at the church they both attended.

The documentation is now online, including copies of bills, the plea deal reached by the older boy, and a self-pitying request for prayer by the congregation on behalf of the church staff.

Be praying that our Pastor and Elders will be filled with grace and truth as they seek to shepherd God’s flock through the recent factious, malicious, and slanderous accusations sent by email about our Pastor and our church.

I know it is difficult to accept; I had a difficult time accepting it — but this is the almost unvarying pattern: Churches rally to defense of the guilty, punish the blameless, and feel sorry for themselves when people like me — and a steadily-growing number of others — publicly criticize them and wonder what character deformity has overtaken them.

And I say again: Religion does not make people moral, church is the wrong place to seek moral guidance, and church is not a safe place for children or insecure women.