Catholic Europe is seeing a Vatican-backed resurgence in exorcisms. The brothers and father of the church, with their good book, believe that demons or the Devil are possessing people. Literally. A few bits from the Washington Post article:

"…people who turn away from the church and embrace New Age therapies, alternative religions or the occult…internet addicts and yoga devotees are also at risk [for possession by the devil]."

Oh no, anything except Christianity will make you evil!

"According to what I could perceive, the devil was present and acting in an obvious way," he said. "How else can you explain how a wife, in the space of a couple of weeks, could come to hate her own husband, a man who is a good person?"

You, sir, have never been married.

"More recent horror stories have also taken their toll. In Germany, memories are still fresh of a 23-year-old Bavarian woman who died of starvation in 1976 after two priests — thinking she was possessed — subjected her to more than 60 exorcisms."

Well, I’m sure she’s in a better place now.

This is the 21st century, right? Didn’t we all get tired long ago of the church’s glory days of burnings at the stake? Didn’t we have these centuries in which things like science, reason, and common sense show us that burning people at the stake was rather silly and cruel? But I know, I know — science, reason, and common sense don’t put a dollar in the collection plate on Sunday.

In another related story:  

"The Saudi government is set to execute an illiterate woman for the crime of "witchcraft." She "confessed" to the crime after being beaten by the religious police and then fingerprinting a confession she could not read…Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent."

I guess Western Christianity and Eastern Islam aren’t so far apart after all. When weak, corrupt, mortal men take the power of God into their hands, the innocent everywhere suffer.

Jennifer Leblanc