Religion: This Week in Evil

A Romanian priest is unrepentant for the crucifixion death of a nun, insisting that "exorcism is a common practise in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests."

That's right. She was crucified and gagged both as punishment and as an exorcism rite, as the priest and convent considered her apparent schizophrenia to be the work of demons.

The devil is very busy these days, it would seem.

GetReligion offers some commentary and informs us that "Father Daniel faces both criminal and ecclesial sanction for his action." I doubt the latter, as he was somehow allowed to celebrate the woman's funeral mass. I also find it very odd that she got a mass, but her body could not actually enter the church: “She can’t be laid in the church because she was possessed.”

Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark, makes some short and insightful comments about the problem of witchcraft, or rather the fear of it, in the BBC's Thought for the Day:

And so, there's no point in seeking better health care, better farming methods, better education, because everything can be ruined by the belief that someone has put a powerful spell upon you or your family. No, what you must do is, through the agency of an even more powerful wizard, find the culprit and turn aside the spell. And so a net of suspicion and terror is woven which fragments the community and immobilises its members.

I don't have much commentary on this. It's obviously evil. Bishop Tom makes a good point about evil being found in the ones obsessed with snuffing out the devil, rather than those thought to be possessed by him.

What I find really interesting (to say nothing of sad) about these things is that in my study of the Christian scriptures and the birth of that movement, the basic Kingdom message of Jesus was that God's reign, and with it a fresh act of love and power was being brought to bear on the world, and he was going to recreate it. (It is a matter of some debate whether he was mistaken, of course.) The apostles who followed after proclaimed Christus Victor: that Jesus himself was the renewal, and that his death and vindication by God was the defeat of the forces of evil.

In short, both theology and practice are far removed from ancient Christianity, monotheism, or even Israelite henotheism: their "god" is just one more demon in a world swimming with them, which they must cajole and puff up to so he can be more powerful than the others. There is no biblical source for such belief and practice.

Of course, I could would put the same conclusion in a piece about American politics, but that is an essay for another time...