Possession and excorcism is the official position of the Catholic Church, and heavily pushed by the pope.

The apologists will just blame it on mental illness.

The fact that her religion encourages this behavior is verboden?

You made appointment of saying before anyone shifts blame and my point is to say that the blame is on her.

Of course they don't want people killing over possession, but it happens.

I will wait!

In this case, the murderer took liberty license with 'driven out' but when you foment the problem (that isn't real) and a solution (that also isn't real), you're still at least partly responsible when people fail to 'properly' apply the non-existent solution to the non-existent problem.

When a quack doctor advocates giving children turpentine for colic or other 'ailments', and a parent poisons their child and the child dies, you don't defend the fucking quack by saying 'well, they used too much fucking turpentine, duh'.

No, you blame the quack too because it's NOT A MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE, IT'S A FUCKING SOLVENT. 800ppm can kill you. A tablespoon can kill a child.

But the woman is the one to blame.

I think we're all on the same page suggesting she had baggage. The conditions were fomented.

Cause that's what happened here. Maybe it went wrong. Maybe. Or maybe the girl was possessed, that's their beliefs, so who are you to deny them that?

I don't agree with it but it is what they teach.

and that those need to be exorcised. It is *actually believed* by hundreds of millions.

why youse athiests is always being literalists?

That doesn't change the fact that it was her faith that inspired her to do it.

Her religion taught her that demons and possession are real things.

I think if faith is to be given credit for inspiring people to do good things, it should equally be given credit when it inspires people to do evil things.

Last edited Fri Jan 12, 2018, 02:35 AM - Edit history (1)

...killing other for the most part. Yes there are always these incidents it they are mental health issue.

She had a mental issue in all likelihood. Her faith did not teach her to kill her kid.

She was only attempting to get rid of the demon she believed was possessing her daughter.

Again without that belief, she would have had no reason to do that.

None at all?

If it was a mental health issue the mother would have done something similar if there was no religion. But I also don't believe there is demons taking over people's bodies, and I think they church should move past that teaching.

But the fault is with the woman who did it.

We can't say what she might have done if she had never been taught that demons are real and evil and possess people, and those possessed people are to be feared. Maybe she still would have hurt someone, maybe not. I agree with others on this thread that the mother probably didn't intend to kill her daughter, she probably only meant to exorcise the demon.

Suppose she had been taught, instead, that Mark Twain's story Baker's Bluejay Yarn was true and really happened, that bluejays really do talk to each other, and that some special people can understand them. She might have decided the bluejays in her yard were making fun of her and taken a slingshot to them, which isn't nice but it's not anything like harming a person.

Churches shouldn't teach fear. I understand not every church likes to keep the congregants fearful, but many do, and they'll continue to do so as long as the collection plates keep filling up.

This horror story is a good example of that, I think. Some individuals treat religion very differently than most people. In this case a seriously ill person took something to a deadly end. That's very sad, indeed.

and there is nothing I like better than a good beat down of such inane foolishness as exorcism, but attempting to use this case as the club is disingenuous, at best.

The woman was convicted of first degree murder. This means the jury who heard all the evidence (and not just whatever story was told in whatever media source any of us are reading) found that this woman specifically intended to kill her daughter and NOT that she intended to "exorcize a demon." In other words, the jury found that the she was lying when she claimed a religious motivation for her actions.

To claim she had a religious motivation as support for the argument that Catholicism was in any way to blame for this crime when the jury found she didn't appears to be ignoring the facts in order to score a rhetorical victory.

Even if she really believed it, it is not excuse for murder, unless she was insane. Legal insanity means you don't know right from wrong, not that you have no mental health issues or believe stupid things.

In order to convict for first degree murder they had to find that she had the specific intent to kill, not merely to do an act which caused her death.