Black Cats?

These books by exorcists don’t, I am afraid, fill me with confidence that popularizing this lurid stuff is really helpful to the Faith.

This stuff gets gobbled up by Spirit Daily readers, but I’m afraid it strikes me as dodgy. No, I don’t reject the reality of the demonic. I merely don’t instantly credit every story I read on the web. Again, I say, “Black cats?”

Jimmy Akin asked some rather probing questions about the rather wild claims made by Fr. Gabriele Amorth. For his troubles, he got a number of “How dare yous?” but not a lot of substantive rebuttals of the substantive critical skepticism he directed at, for instance, Fr. Amorth’s claim to have performed nine exorcisms PER DAY for nine years–Sundays included! Yet there are those Catholics who are prepared to believe every word he says on any question.

The faith does not demand uncritical credulity or the suspension of questions when out-sized claims are being made by a man in collar. It may well be that there have been real cases of demonic possession with which Fr. Euteneuer has been involved. But the rather outlandish claims he’s making don’t seem to me to demand unquestioning faith.