Demon Days - Exorcism is experiencing a renaissance in American Catholicism

For more than a decade, Frank, a software consultant who lives near Silicon Valley, California, has been haunted by depression and rage. Searching for remedies to lift his dark mood, Frank, 52, tried pills, therapy, even channeling spirits. Nothing worked.

Three years ago, his wife handed him a book about demonic possession. Written by a former priest active in charismatic Catholic circles, the book presented scriptural arguments for the existence of demons and offered advice to questions such as “How do we know if an evil spirit is really present?” and “How do I pray for deliverance?” Desperate for relief, Frank decided, while he was jogging one night, to pray for deliverance.

“If I had known what was going to happen, I would have picked a more private place,” Frank says. After reciting the recommended prayer, he doubled over, dry heaving, by the side of the road. His lungs felt like they were leaping out of his chest.

With a doctorate in astrophysics, Frank (not his real name) considers himself a man of science who relies on research and analysis to make sense of the world. Despite the occult overtones, his body’s violent reaction to the deliverance prayer struck him as an obvious case of cause and effect. He became convinced that he—like the poor souls he’d just read about—was infested with evil spirits.

Read more: http://www.utne.com/Mind-Body/Demon-Days-Exorcism-Renaissance-American-Catholocism.aspx#ixzz1b8QrFp2W

In true pre-Renaissance tradition, a supposedly educated individual discounts entirely the possibility that dry heaves & unusual sensations in the chest are remotely related to his jogging :eyes:

Demonic possession! Yeah, that's the ticket! If I'd spent who-knows-how-many years pursuing a doctorate in astrophysics - and then become a software consultant - I might be a little depressed as well.

As good an explanation as any. :)

and shackles of Mammon worship!

It's a golden opportunity wasted, and scarfed up by the right wing.

What he experienced is exactly as real as "antidepressants" curing depression. His INTERPRETATION of it is under question.

But many DUers, when they talk about spiritual experience, sound like the blind in H.G. Wells' "The Country of the Blind".

...as having nothing to do with objective reality, take it that descriptions of anything classified as a "spiritual experience" are granted broad poetic license to express how a thing is experienced, not how it really is, and consider discussion of objective reality unworthy of mention, all because doing so is somehow the more enlightened way to discuss such matters, and because avoiding laughing at demonic possession will help liberals win over a few wingnuts?

because they don't see demons and gods in ordinary physical phenomena.

we're not retreating from social/societal progress, we're just advancing backwards.

some sort of crisis after reading a book by former priest MacNutt

Francis MacNutt is a strange fellow -- Wikipedia says he was excommunicated for marrying someone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_MacNutt

I tried to find out more about MacNutt and encountered this from 1990:

Deliverance
An Account of a Social Exorcism
by Francis MacNutt
Recently a friend shared with me the exciting account of a social exorcism – the first description of such an event that I have ever read! It comes from a rather unlikely source: the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Its director, Rev. George McClain had been continually frustrated by the refusal of the national Methodist pension board to get rid of its investments in South Africa, even though the United Methodist Church had called for divestment, to protest apartheid. In fact, George had been arrested, with 36 of his colleagues, for blockading the pension board’s offices in Evanston ... George sat in on several exorcisms that his wife, Tilda, conducted ... George found all his rationalistic ideas about evil (“the absence of good”) were “Blown to pieces” as he came to realize that exorcism was a real need ... http://www.christianhealingmin.org/newsletter/archives/deliverance/Account_Social_Exorcism.php

Being favorably impressed with the idea of priests marrying, I started to read the anti-apartheid tale with a sympathetic eye -- and rather rapidly learned that, in some ways, MacNutt's worldview may not intersect much with my own

Similarly, I do not think I have much sympathy for the views of the "exorcist" helping "Frank," as described in the Utne article

That said, people can experience various forms of crisis, and it is not at all clear to me that every crisis can be resolved by tinkering with brain chemistry or by searching for brain tumors or by using standard psychiatric tools such as psychoanalysis. Some forms of crisis may, for example, have a moral/spiritual dimension and may present challenges to the sufferer to grow or to change priorities, in some important way, in order to obtain relief. For all I know, there may be cases in which a person, without any obvious organic disease or biochemical imbalance, suffers a moral/spiritual crisis that can be well-handled only by someone who sincerely and seriously hears their claims of demonic possession -- and I might think that without actually believing in demons at all

I will add that the Utne article completely misses the point of the story of the Gerasene demonic