Old Scratch

For the record and this just in: Monsignor John Esseff, retired exorcist for the Diocese of Scranton, says Old Scratch is afraid of you (or, Jesus within you).

Stuff and nonsense? We threw all that tripe and piffle out the window with Catholic reductionist thinking years ago? Hmm..

Mgr Esseff said that each baptised person was united to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. He read passages from the Gospels in which Jesus exorcised demons and then sent his disciples to do the same.

He said that Jesus ultimately defeated Satan through his death and Resurrection and then sent the power of the Holy Spirit to his Apostles at Pentecost.

"When God looks down, he sees Jesus in you," Mgr Esseff said. "You have that power as baptised, confirmed Christians. And so when he [Satan] sees you, he hates what you would discover about that power that is within you."

He suggested that each audience member had been tempted that day because temptation was the ordinary activity of the devil.

"Your soul is a battlefield because there is also someone who hates you," he said. "That one is the devil. The devil knows who you are and what you have. God passed him by. God did not choose to become one of the angels. God chose to be one like us."

But just as each person was tempted, Mgr Esseff said, another spirit also was at work.

"In your life today, this very day, has been the Holy Spirit," he said. "God is in you. God the Holy Spirit is operative in you. God the Holy Spirit wants to bring into your heart love. God wants to bring you peace."

Mgr Esseff also told students of the power of angels and encouraged them to renew their devotions to their guardian angels.

For my part, I will own both what the Magisterium of the Church teaches and the anthropological insights of Girard's mimetic theory. If Satan's great tricks are (1) convincing people he doesn't exist, and (2) convincing people that he does if the form of the one I may scapegoat, forget at your peril the converse of (1).

Thank You, WHO

Holy guacamole. Karen Hall has posted a video that a brave African American woman made here. Must see!

Officer Class Übermensch

Jeff Miller @ Curt Jester gives sobering evidence of the culture of death agenda being promulgated at Justice here.

Talk about a female Übermensch. I thought I nailed it in Frederika Chamas, but Johnson takes the cake.

The Dark Backward

InsideCatholic.com's Tom Hoopes writes on the ooky-spooky topic of demons, exorcisms, and things that go bump in the night.

When I agreed to do a story about demonic activity, possession, and exorcism for Crisis, I thought it would be fun -- a spooky thrill. I'd write the article, warn about being too preoccupied with the subject matter, and be done. Instead, I got sleepless nights, horrifying conversations with those who have been involved in exorcisms, and a new point of view on the demonic world.

Skeptics have fought a losing battle against belief in the devil for years. "What are the Church's greatest needs at the present time?" Pope Paul VI asked in November 1972. "Don't be surprised at Our answer and don't write it off as simplistic or even superstitious: One of the Church's greatest needs is to be defended against the evil we call the Devil."

There's an age-old battle between philosophers and poets about the nature of evil. The pope sided with the poets. "Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living, spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others. It is a terrible reality, mysterious and frightening."

[ ... ]

So why dwell on the diabolical world at all? Paul VI explained, "This matter of the Devil and of the influence he can exert on individuals as well as on communities, entire societies or events, is a very important chapter of Catholic doctrine which should be studied again, although it is given little attention today."

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It also reminds us with whom we are truly at war.