Posted on 01/21/2014 3:40:48 PM PST by nickcarraway
Father Jose Antonio Fortea, author of a famous treaty on demonology, spent about an hour with the press at Miami's Archdiocese on Friday. He framed the conversation around the idea that people are turning toward secular solutions or other faiths to overcome spiritual obstacles. Fortea, who is from Spain, said that although exorcisms are uncommon last-ditch resorts, the Vatican has emphasized the rite in recent years out of necessity. The Catholic Church does not advertise the number of exorcisms it approves annually, but some statistics do exist: Between 1991 and 2001, the number of Catholic demon-expellers in the United States almost doubled. Fortea claimed that modern culture has weakened the soul and made it more susceptible to possession.
"In a Christian society where everybody prays to the Lord, the room for the activity of demons is very weak," he said. "In a society where you look toward sex, power and ambition, you have no room for God."
It is also the belief of the Catholic Church that there's no remedy for possession other than prayer. Although exorcisms are performed in Judaism, Islam and Hinduism, Fortea chose to focus on Afro-Cuban belief systems for his Miami talk. "What I emphasize is that people should not resort to methods such as dark witchcraft, Santeria or similar things," he said.
According to Ernesto Pichardo, the local babalawo who fought the Supreme Court for the right to practice animal sacrifice, Fortea is making the media rounds to actively combat other faiths, which have taken converts from Catholics in the past two decades. While Evangelical denominations of Christianity have weakened Catholicism's grip on the European faithful, many Cuban Miamians turn to Santeras or Santeros for guidance. The priest, Pichardo says, was employing scare tactics to win people back to the Church and shoehorning the concept of Satan -- a Catholic invention -- into a conversation about the separate kinds of exorcisms that he and other Santeros perform every week.
"This is the return of the Spanish church Inquisition mentality," Pichardo says. "He's here to cause panic and confusion among Miami-Dade's residents, to create intolerance, and to sell his book."
Did the Father Fortea write a TREATY or did he write a TREATSIE? Big difference. A treatise is an extensive writing about a particular topic. a treaty is a negotiated agreement between two or more parties.
Obviously, it was not a treaty...but neither was it a treatise. I’d blame journalistic malpractice for this one.
That said, this is a very important work. The church has allowed all of these voodoo movements to flourish way too long. They are destructive, evil and destroy people’s lives. I read that there are priests in the cartel areas doing exorcisms of gang members devoted to la Santa Muerte. That’s the only thing that will stop this evil.
That is a lie.
I don't recall anything about Eastern Orthodoxy and demonism although I think Rasputin was possessed, probably many others.
It's a subject that can make you sick to your stomach. What is so frustrating is that it takes so much power and sometimes many months to get the demons out. From my impression of scripture, Jesus cast them out easily, even the one the disciples couldn't. He did say that kind did not come out except by prayer and fasting.
In the latter case, I believe it was a child or young person who fell on the ground in convulsions which sounds like epilepsy now. Who is to say seizures, at least some, can't be caused by demons?
Heck, the Jews had a concept of Satan. What ignorant people write for the press nowadays.
They are too busy formulating platitudes of the Great Deceiver in the white hut to worry about context in other journalistic pieces. The media needs an exorcism.
*** “In a society where you look toward sex, power and ambition, you have no room for God.” ***
Gives new meaning to these verses. you are filled with either the Spirit of God, or the spirit of the Devil.
Mat 12:43
¶ When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.
Mat 12:44
Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.
Mat 12:45
Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
I don’t think the ignoramus who wrote that (the substance of the rest of it right on and I liked your comment, agreed) would dare say the Jews invented Satan!
I should have said the general substance. Comparing it to the Spanish Inquisition (which was real but had more to do with heresy I think and I don’t want to go back there) was not valid, won’t peruse the article for more ignorant ranting.
I’ve gotten so tired of ignorant journalists that I barely even blink anymore when I read some of their nonsense. It’s so predictable now!
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