If you are just dropping in at this hour, turn on Fox News if you have access. I happen to go to Foxnews.com to see if there was any coverage of the March for Life in DC, when I stumbled across an advertisement for Bill O'Reilly's topic tonight: The Vatican and stepped up exorcisms.
EDIT 8:37pm.
What a joke of an interview! I use to watch O'Reilly before I got serious about my faith and even back then, I got tired of the "non-interview" interviews. I wish I had gotten the professor's name (poor guy), whose specialty is in demonology. I got the impression he thought he was going to talk about one thing, then was made to look like a fool. He was blindsided.
I think the so-called "interview" lasted all of 5 minutes and it was like his whole aim was to make a mockery of Catholic belief in demons. Since it was about Vatican and Exorcisms, I thought it would be informative about Catholic understanding of demonology, but it was more like an attack on Catholic belief by badgering a theologian.
That any Christian, especially a Catholic, would doubt the existence of demons (not necessarily O'Reilly, but in general), in light of the many accounts we have in scripture, is itself baffling. Unless, that is, you are of the mindset that scripture is just a set of "stories". There are probably still professors errantly teaching, in Catholic universities and seminaries, that Adam and Eve didn't really exist, but were figurative. That in itself, puts the whole notion of Original Sin into question because how can we have Original Sin on our souls if there were no Adam and Eve? If there is no Original Sin, then there is no concupiscence, or an inclination towards the bad. Of course, everyone is without sin these days, which explains the empty confessionals and long Communion lines. Is it any wonder? It must be all those other people.
Adam and Eve did exist; Original Sin is real, and it is visible in secular culture today where people cater to concupiscence lest it hurt their precious feelings if they don't.
In fact, Bill, since you were looking for proof of demons in society, get out from behind the desk and watch the news and you will have ample evidence. If you ask me, there are far more reasons today to believe in the presence of demons active in our culture, than not. They just don't puke up green gunk or spin their heads. They simply influence editors to produce sleazy covers for their magazines, and they influence store owners to stock the checkout shelves, and they influence people going through checkout to buy them and......use your own imagination from there.
How many of the unborn will pay the price of people just glancing at a magazine cover?
A list of some possessions in the New Testament(1):
MK 1, 23-27
MK 5, 1-20
MK 7, 25-30
MK 9, 14-29
Mt 12, 22
Mt 17, 15.18
Lk 6, 18; 7,21
Mk 1, 34-39
Mk 1, 23; 5,6
(1) Leon-Dufour. (1988). Dictionary of biblical theology. Ijamsville, Maryland: The Word Among us Press.
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