EXORCISTS AND THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN THEM ARE PSYCHOLOGICALLY UNWELL

Roman Catholicism is a dangerous fanatical religion for encouraging the notion that there is such a thing as demonic possession. What if a new Hitler came and nations listened to the Church and refused to wage war on him because the church starts to say, "He needs a good exorcism. It is wrong to fight him for he is possessed"? The faith is intrinsically fanatical. The responsibility for this is down to Jesus.

The doctrine that a huge leader will come one day and who is the antichrist suggests he will be possessed.  The New Testament calls him the man of sin and says Jesus will return and slay him.  And as Jesus said we are to live as if he can return any minute it has led to endless people being accused of being antichrist.  Much war has happened.  Much blood has been spilt.  Many have nearly died with fear.

Conspiracy theories wreak havoc today. Belief in a Devil and demons who intervene in world affairs only leads to a nasty new batch of conspiracy theories. Eg, maybe Barack Obama is dead and a clone controlled by demons is now the President of the United States? And there is no hope of answering that. With conspiracy theories, there may be some hope of making the believer see sense but only as long as the believer makes no supernatural assumptions. There should be ways of showing that it is implausible that the Freemasons control all the world's finances. But if they have magical powers you cannot know that it is implausible. See the point? Belief in demons and the devil and exorcisms is essentially evil.

The Catholic Church claims to have the authority to cast out demons from people who are tormented by them. It has a rite of exorcism for that purpose. We read of how Jesus supposedly cast out demons in the gospels. Unlike the Catholic Church, the gospels say Jesus got instant results and just ordered the demon out instead of needing ceremonies and prayers. The differences are striking and you get the impression that the Devil is only making it look like the Catholic Church can move demons out of a person.

The gospels indicate that the demons are so desperate to be in bodies that they would happily inhabit pigs even for a few minutes. Jesus put demons out of a man and they pleaded to be sent into pigs which then went mad and drowned themselves. The Catholic Church claims that it can cast out demons with prayer through priests conducting exorcisms. Demons would act as if the exorcism worked so that they could stay in the person. We have the gospels as our authority for being suspicious. And especially when Catholicism does not really do exorcisms. It only imagines it does. The priests keep praying until the person seems to have recovered and that takes ages - decades at times. That is like praying for a sick person until they feel better and thinking you can cast out sickness. Jesus's exorcisms were allegedly instant. He would say that the Church is counterfeiting the power to cast out demons - and he would see it as a demonic faith and/or a delusional one.
 
If the demon is gone, it is possible that the Church has made the person think he or she is still possessed!  The best person to judge if an exorcism worked or not is not the exorcist or anybody else. It is the victim. And yet the one person who should know may not know. How can they when the demon is so much smarter than they? Why do those who want us to believe in exorcism and have high regard for it neglect to provide us with the victim's witness? Why do they not even seek such witness?
 
Some people are believed to be possessed by evil spirits or demons. Some people fake their possession to gain attention. Some manifestations mistaken for diabolic possession are actually psychological or physiological conditions. Some possible causes for these pseudo-possessions are: migraines, bipolar disorder, Tourette's syndrome, somatization disorder, multiple personality disorder. If possession is not genuine, then it is the acceptance by the Christians of the myth of possession that produces the suffering of those who think they are possessed.
 
The Chief Exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, Father Gabriele Amorth, claims to have performed in excess of 70,000 exorcisms. Yet he says he surmises that less than 100 of these were cases of real demonic possession. This is a man who misled thousands of people. He treated them as if they had demons when they had not. What would we think of a doctor who let people think they had cancer when they had not?
 
People might say that as long as the exorcism helps the people it doesn't matter if there were really demons there or not. That is saying that human happiness matters more than truth. Should we start then pretending and saying that nuclear weapons are a myth for that helps people to feel happier. Those people are still getting the wrong treatment. They would be better off with the right treatment no matter what they think or feel. They are still being cheated.
 
Exorcism may seem to help a few. But most people have to endure it time and time again. Is the torture worth the release? They have to decide. Exorcists claim that it sometimes takes decades to get a demon out of a person. That to me shows the rite of exorcism is not very effective. The victim is tormented for years by false hope and a scary ritual that reinforces their belief in the power of the demons. The exorcists care more about expressing and promoting Catholic doctrine by their practices than the victim.

Exorcists are warned to test a demon by asking questions they already know the answer to. What kind of questions then? General knowledge? Asking them things they know the answer to but not you is forbidden. People worry that this would be a form of divination, getting forbidden knowledge and therefore a sin.  How can you be sure it is the demon then talking not the person?  This is just an excuse for diagnosing demonic possession.

You are told not to give the demons information that could be useful to them. As if a demon needs an exorcist to tell it things! It is a spirit and can learn of happenings beyond what we are capable of even hearing about. Also, now surely a demon could read your mind? Surely it can know things you cannot?  And why stop there?  Why not forbid the victim to read books or get an education?  Why let them empower demons?

Fr Amorth is performing exorcisms which can encourage people who are suffering mentally to suffer far more because they have started to think they are possessed because of the wonder tales of crazy charlatans like him. The shocking figure of 70,000 + certainly implies that this is what is happening.

Why would there be so many demons possessing people in Christ's day when Amorth only has met 100? Why didn't the demons keep out of Jesus' way? There is something contrived about it all. They either were on the same side as him meaning he was evil or the gospels were lying. He put the demons in them perhaps to get attention by pretending to cast them out when they merely intended to leave anyway. Or the demons only wanted to possess people in order to promote Christ.

The whole ethos around demons, possession and exorcism is so alarming and so insane that exorcists are either con-artists or mentally disturbed or both.