The exorcist

There is this Anthony Hopkins movie coming up in January called "The Rite." Anybody else want to see it? I want to see it.

Well, I kind of want to see it and I kind of do not.

It is about exorcism!

I watched the trailer just now and I was impressed by the beginning, when the screen is covered with Latin. I heard on Catholic Radio that the rite of exorcism has never been translated into English. Do not crack any jokes about Latin being the devil's language. It is the language the devil is afraid of, is more like it.

If you talked to the devil in English the devil would just snicker at you.

This movie is based on a book written by a journalist from San Diego which, I do not know if he was there when I was there with Leonard Pennario, but it was just as well I did not know him. I would have wasted a lot of time. It is not as if I am obsessed with the dark side but I am interested in the situation, in the power we hold against the devil.

I read an interview with this author, whose name is Matt Baglio. He was saying that he followed a priest around who went to exorcism school in Rome. He talked about cases he had learned about, exorcism cases.

He also said that to avoid the devil getting his hooks into you what you should do is stay close to God, go to Mass, go to Confession. One thing he said gave me pause. He said that Confession is an exorcism. I am thinking, remember when I wrote that??? I had that feeling, that something was being pulled out of me. It was not my imagination. I was right!!

But there was something that really gave me the creeps.

The author was telling this story of this one woman who had a problem with some, ahem, sinister being and had contacted a priest, an exorcist, and had made an appointment. And one day she got a phone call. The phone call was from someone who told her the priest she was going to see was going out of town, that he would not be able to see her. "You do not have to come in," the caller told her.

Something gave this woman a funny feeling and she called the priest.

He said, "No, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. No, I want you to come in.Who called you and told you I was going away?"

That is a very good question.

Who or what made that phone call??

Brrrrrr!!

It is funny, here I am reading stuff about people screaming out in guttural devil voices and their skin turning green and whatever and what really gives me the creeps? The idea that the devil can make an ordinary phone call. It sounds ridiculous, I know.

But just imagine this thing, whatever it is, calling on the phone.

Thinking in its diabolical way, "This is how we can work this out. Fix it so she does not go in to see the priest."

Then the physics gets to me. How exactly does this happen, that the phone rings and there is someone on the other end of the phone? Where is the voice coming from?

Perhaps the movie will tell us.

Anyone want to see it?