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One of the most frightening books I’ve ever read was Possessed, the real-life account of an exorcism in 1949, in St. Louis, Mo. It served as the basis of the popular novel and film “The Exorcist.” Performed by some no-nonsense Jesuits, the exorcism, unlike the film, reached its conclusion when the possessed boy (not girl, as in the book and film) was wheeled in a gurney past a statue of St. Michael the Archangel in a local hospital, and a disembodied voice shouted out, “Leave him!” I don’t have the book on hand, and this is not an exact quote, but that’s not the sort of thing that you forget. A few years later on an A&E special, William Halloran, S.J., a Jesuit priest who as a young Jesuit scholastic assisted in the exorcism, broke his silence and spoke openly about what had happened. In 2013, St. Louis University held an event to mark the 40th anniversary of the movie. ...
So when I read this morning that a Satanic group had erected in Detroit a statue of “Baphomet,” a goat-headed god that has become a kind of stand-in for Satan, I thought of all of what I had read and heard about exorcisms. And I thought: They are playing with fire.
Indeed this is so unclean... Their ploy to get to pray to their devil was cast down this past week or so in some legislature or city council meeting. Sadly they have cancelled all prayer in future to be "fair to everyone of all faiths".
