The limits of freedom of speech in Europe

Christians are used to flagrantly blasphemous depictions of sacred figures. Occasionally, some group will call for a boycott of this or that, but that's about it.

I, however, find this editorial from the Wall St. Journal chilling.

Child porn arrest in Pennsylvania

While innocent people may have suffered from bogus charges of satanic ritual abuse during a wave of hysteria in the 80s and early 90s, children are at risk for abuse. But the culprit is child pornography, and not devil worship.

Take a look at what this man is charged with after a raid on his home.

A Sugarcreek Borough man was arrested early Sunday on child pornography, drug and firearms charges after a search of his home.

The 1 a.m. search of the home of Robert Gardinier Jr., 37, of 819 Route 427, yielded child pornography, drug paraphernalia, narcotics, a handgun and a long gun, said Sugarcreek Borough police.

Gardinier was charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, two counts of sexual abuse of children, sexual assault, two counts of corruption of minors, possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, endangering the welfare of children, and persons not to possess firearms, police said.

A case of false satanic ritual abuse on Oprah?

The recent flurry of controversy over James Frey's falsified memoir A Million Little Pieces that Oprah nominated for her book club has prompted The American Thinker to investigate a time when the talk show host featured women who claimed to suffer from satanic ritual abuse (SRA).

Interesting story with great links here.

Author Lona Manning, a Canadian expert on false claims of SRA, provides a link to the transcript of the Oprah appearance. Here it is.

OPRAH: As a child, my next guest was used also in worshipping the devil, participated in human sacrifice rituals and cannibalism. She says her family has been involved in rituals for generations. She is currently in extensive therapy, suffers from multiple personality disorder, meaning she's blocked out many of the terrifying and painful memories of her childhood. Meet "Rachel," who is also in disguise to protect her identity. You come from generations of ritualistic abuse?

"RACHEL", Was Used In Satan Worship Rituals: Yes, my family has an extensive family tree, and they keep track of who's been involved and who hasn't been involved, and it’s gone back to like 1700.

OPRAH: And so you were ritually abused.

"RACHEL": Right. I was born into a family that believes in this.

OPRAH: Does everyone else think it's a nice Jewish family? From the outside, you appear to be a nice Jewish girl?

"RACHEL": Definitely.

OPRAH: And you all are worshipping the devil inside the home?

Mental illness vs. demonic possession

When is mental illness a purely biological, biochemical effect, and when is there possible demonic involvement. This subject fascinates me, and to an extent, I explore the difficulty in discerning the difference in The Defilers.

Here's a link to a review about a new book that explores the subject.

Joan Naugle of the Post and Courier writes:

Throughout history, the people who founded hospitals, homes and assistance were all church-related. However, churches throughout time have not all been supportive. Many churches viewed mental illness as demonic possession, and some fundamentalists still believe so today.

Sigmund Freud called religion an obsessional neurosis. After his studies became well-known, religion was removed from hospitals. During the 1980s, there were few religious psychiatrists. However, the numbers have increased as research has placed more value on faith and mental health. All faiths, including Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, strongly support the care of the mentally ill.

Part II of the book details research on religion and mental health. Studies show that when mental and physical health problems occur, most people turn to religion. Anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol abuse and anti-social behavior are also less frequent among religious people. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies show that religion helps patients deal with stress, trauma and other mental health problems.

About 80 percent of people with severe, persistent mental health disorders (schizophrenia, mania and psychosis) turn to religion and prayer to cope with their problems. Those who are religious have fewer re-hospitalizations and less health deterioration.

An exorcist fights off demonic attack

An exorcist relates the story of a demonic attack he believes was retaliation for conducting an exorcism.

But just then, as I was at my lowest point and literally on the point of fainting, something took hold of me and lifted me up and said, "We're not taking this!" or words to that effect. Then somehow, from a sitting position on the floor, I reached up and grabbed the sink with a power I didn’t know I had and yanked myself to a standing position saying to myself, "No! Shake it off—I'm not taking this."

Well, bam, it was over. Immediately the nausea dissipated—I mean completely. It did not linger or take its time getting out of my system. It disappeared as quickly as it had come. My color came back in a few minutes, the sweats stopped instantly and I felt not the slightest bit of sickness at any time after that the whole day, night or week. What a miraculous resurrection! I was dumbfounded. At one moment I felt like I was sinking into the pit of hell and the next moment I was placed on the pinnacle of the Temple!

Thanks to LifeSiteNews.com for the link.

Demonic spirits bothering school kids

Here's a report from Africa on demonic spirits troubling school children.

Villagers in the north and nearby schools have of late reported various incidents related to the unwanted spirits harassing people.

In response to the parents' plea, Pastor Isaskar Arachab of the Hope Restoration Centre at Tsumeb said villagers haunted by demons should consult their spiritual leaders and make confessions about their unexposed past evil deeds that might be the direct cause of innocent children being terrorised by the demons.

Arachab said yesterday that demons might be internal and generated in people's own minds.

Some parents, he stated, indulge themselves in "witchcraft" in search of fortunes, luck and success and in return pledge to sacrifice their "beloved" children to the demons.

Barna study says many teens exploring the occult

There's a new Barna survey about teens and the supernatural. Read about it here.

Teenagers relish experiences and the supernatural world provides fertile ground for their explorations. In fact, three-quarters of America’s youth (73%) have engaged in at least one type of psychic or witchcraft-related activity, beyond mere media exposure or horoscope usage.

The most common types of witchcraft behaviors were using a Ouija board and reading a book about witchcraft or Wicca, each of which had been done by more than one-third of teenagers. More than one-quarter of teens have played a game featuring sorcery or witchcraft elements. One-tenth of teens had participated in a séance and 1 out of 12 had tried to cast a spell or mix a magic potion.

As for psychic activities, more than one-fourth of teens have had their palm read (30%) or their fortune told (27%). Other psychic deeds included being physically present when someone else used psychic powers (14%), visiting a medium or spiritual guide (9%), and consulting a psychic (9%).

Cardinal Cottier on exorcisms

The Zenit News Agency from Rome has translated the following article on exorcism by Cardinal Cottier.

Code: ZE06012224

Date: 2006-01-22

Cardinal Cottier on Exorcisms

"The Church Must Speak About the Devil"

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 22, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Georges Cottier, while he was still the theologian to the Pontifical Household, wrote an introduction to the book "Presidente degli Esorcisti -- Esperienze e Delucidazioni di Don Gabriele Amorth" (President of the Exorcists -- Experiences and Clarifications of Father Gabriel Amorth).

Father Amorth is an exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, and founder and honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists.

The book has been recently published by Edizioni Carismatici Francescani. Here is a translation of Cardinal Cottier's introduction.

* * *

The Church must speak about the devil. Though he sinned, the fallen angel has not lost all the power he had, according to God's plan, in the governance of the world. Now he uses this power for evil. John's Gospel calls him "the prince of this world" (John 12:31) and also in the First Letter of John one reads: "the whole world is in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19). Paul speaks of our battle against spiritual powers (cf. Ephesians 6:10-17). We can also refer to Revelation.

We must fight not only against the human but the superhuman forces of evil in their origin and inspiration: Suffice it to think of Auschwitz, of the massacres of entire peoples, of all the horrendous crimes that are committed, of the scandals of which little ones and the innocent are victims, of the success of the ideologies of death, etc.

It is appropriate to recall some principles. The evil of sin is done by a free will. Only God can penetrate the depth of a person's heart; the devil does not have the power to enter that sanctuary. He acts only on the exterior, on the imagination and on feelings of a sentient origin. Moreover his action is limited by the permission of Almighty God.

The devil generally acts through temptation and deceit; he is a liar (cf. John 8,44). He can deceive, induce to error, cause illusion and, probably more than arouse vices, he can support the vices and the origins of the vices that are in us.

In the Synoptic Gospels, the first apparition of the devil is the temptation in the desert, when he subjects Jesus to several incursions (cf. Matthew 4:11 and Luke 4:1-13). This event is of great importance.

Jesus cured sicknesses and pathologies. Altogether, they refer to the devil, because all disorders afflicting humanity are reducible to sin, of which the devil is instigator. Among Jesus' miracles are liberation of diabolical possessions, in the precise sense.

We see in particular in Saint Luke that Jesus orders the devils who recognize him as Messiah.

The devil is much more dangerous as tempter than through extraordinary signs or astonishing external manifestations, because the gravest evil is sin. It is no accident that we ask in the Lord's prayer: Lead us not into temptation. Against sin the Christian can fight victoriously with prayer, prudence, in humility knowing the fragility of human freedom, with recourse to the sacraments, above all Reconciliation and the Eucharist. He must also ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of discernment, knowing that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are received with the grace of Baptism.

Saint Thomas and Saint John of the Cross affirm that we have three tempters: the devil, the world (we certainly recognize this in our society) and ourselves, that is, self-love. Saint John of the Cross maintains that the most dangerous tempter is we ourselves because we alone deceive ourselves.

In the face of deceit, it is desirable that Catholic faithful have an ever more profound knowledge of Christian doctrine. The apostolate must be promoted for the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, of extraordinary usefulness to combat ignorance. The devil perhaps is instigator of this ignorance: He distracts man from God, and it is a great loss that can be contained by promoting an adequate apostolate in the media, in particular television, considering the amount of time that many people spend watching television programs, often with contents that are culturally inconsistent and immoral.

The action of the devil is also unleashed against the men of the Church: in 1972 the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI spoke of the "smoke of Satan that has entered the temple of God," alluding to the sins of Christians, to the devaluation of the morality of customs and to decadences (let us consider the history of the religious Orders and Congregations, in which the need has always been noted of reforms to react to the decadence), to yielding to the temptations in the pursuit of a career, of money and of wealth in which the members of the clergy themselves can incur, committing sins that cause scandal.

The exorcist can be a Good Samaritan -- but he is not the Good Samaritan -- as sin is a graver reality. A sinner who remains set in his sin is more wretched that one who is possessed. The conversion of heart is the most beautiful victory over the influence of Satan, against which the Sacrament of Reconciliation has an absolutely central importance, because in the mystery of the Redemption God has liberated us from sin, and gives us, when we have fallen, the restoration of his friendship.

The Sacraments have in truth a priority over the sacramentals, a category in which exorcisms are included, which are requested by the Church but not as a priority. If this approach is not considered, the risk exists of disturbing the faithful. Exorcism cannot be considered as the only defense against the action of the devil, but as a necessary spiritual means where the existence of specific cases of diabolic possession have been confirmed.

It seems that the possessed are more numerous in pagan countries, where the Gospel has not been disseminated and where magic practices are more widespread. In other places a cultural element endures where Christians conserve an indulgent tendency in regard to ancient forms of superstition. Moreover it must be considered that alleged cases of possession can be explained by present-day medicine and psychiatry, and that the solution to certain phenomena may consist in good psychiatric treatment. When a difficult case is manifested in practice it is necessary to get in contact with a psychologist and an exorcist; it is advisable to make use of psychiatrists of Catholic formation.

A course on these topics has recently been instituted in the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum. It also seems opportune to include such formation in seminaries, in a balanced and wise dimension, avoiding excesses and constrictions.

Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P., Pro-theologian of the Pontifical Household

[Translation by ZENIT]

Coverage of Vote Marriage Canada's endorsements

Here's the Globe and Mail's coverage of Vote Marriage Canada's endorsements of pro-marriage candidates.

The effect of false satanic ritual abuse charges years later

Here's a story from the Middletown Guardian on the after-effects, 15 years later, of false charges of satanic ritual abuse.

This week the parents of the family that sparked off the "witch-hunt" told the Guardian there was still no closure for them. They would be fighting on to get the council to publicly admit their mistakes.

And a former Langley councillor has revealed that he warned the chairman of the Social Services Committee at the time, that the social workers were fundamentalist Christians on a mission, lacked objectivity and should be replaced.

He said the families should receive "serious compensation".

Andrew, the father of Daniel, who inadvertently sparked off the ritual abuse alert, and Julie, said that he had been gratified by the reaction of local people who had expressed their support since the programme was transmitted.

He said: "People have stopped me in the street and in the shops to say how shocked they were at the injustice we have suffered and the ordeal our family has been put through. They have seen for themselves how the social workers conducted those terrible interviews with the children.

"But there has been no complete closure for us and there will not be until the council honestly admits fully and publicly its mistakes. In the meantime we will continue our campaign for full disclosure."

Last night the family was travelling to London to appear on today’s (Thursday) "This Morning" programme on ITV.

This week a former Langley councillor, Robin Parker, told the Guardian that he tried to alert the then chairman of the Social services Committee, Councillor the Rev Paul Flowers, a clergyman, that something was going wrong.

Parker – a former Manchester City Council social services official - said: "I was a very new councillor in Rochdale at the time. I was approached by Langley councillors Kevin Hunt and Tony Heaford.

"They said that something was going very badly wrong and they were on the wrong track."

He said it was apparent that the two social workers involved were fundamentalist Christians and that could be affecting their judgement.

"I went to the chairman of Social Services and said the two social workers were on a mission and could not be objective when they believed Satan was at work, but he rejected this."

Interesting. Tragic. My novel The Defilers touches on the whole controversy about satanic ritual abuse, that's why I'm linking to these stories.

Bishop says sexual abuse didn't define his life

Here's a Detroit News interview with Detroit Bishop Gumbleton where he says the recently admitted sexual abuse he suffered as a seminarian did not define his life.

B ishop Thomas Gumbleton, who stepped forward last week to describe being molested by a priest when he was a teenager, was shaped by the passions and shames of a long-ago era.

But not as you might expect.

When the Detroit auxiliary bishop testified in support of Ohio legislation that would allow abuse victims a longer statute of limitations, he revealed a secret he had held for decades, even while the issue of pedophilia in the church raged. The story -- of a young seminary student preyed upon by a priest and teacher -- might seem to explain, at least in part, Gumbleton's compassion for the downtrodden over the course of his adult life.

Spain makes major child porn arrest

Here's a story on CCN about a child porn bust in Spain.

The suspects allegedly used credit cards to acquire and view "horrifying" child pornography -- including "real life scenes of minors being raped" -- from Web pages controlled by companies in Belarus and the U.S. state of Florida, a national police statement said.

The suspects could be charged with prostitution, corruption of minors and promoting the distribution of child pornography on the Internet, the statement said.

Police made the arrests across Spain last week but only made them public Wednesday because they did not want to tip off other potential suspects, a police spokesman told CNN on condition of anonymity.

Those arrested include teachers, business executives, bankers, sports monitors of children, a doctor and someone described as a priest, although authorities were unsure from what religion, police said.

Frank Peretti's film deals with spiritual warfare

Frank Peretti's novels on spiritual warfare created a genre. Now there's a film based on his novel The Visitation. Read more about the film here.

Sheriff refuses to allow BTK killer to get an exorcism

A demonic force influenced BTK killer Dennis Rader says his pastor. Read more here.

Child porn a lucrative business

The Internet has transformed child pornography from a "cottage industry" to a multinational "sophisticated" business, says this article from the Wall Street Journal.

On a Saturday morning in October 2003, federal agents raided the apartment of Chicago pediatrician Howard Marc Watzman. They found two computers with more than 3,000 images of boys and girls as young as 4 years old being sexually exploited. Watzman was later sentenced to five years in prison for possessing child pornography.

The case is one of more than a thousand stemming from a broad international probe into a company called Regpay Co. in the former Soviet republic of Belarus. Regpay gathered lurid images and sold them to pedophiles around the world with the help of U.S. companies that collected credit-card payments.

Regpay offers a window into how the Internet has transformed what was once a cottage industry into a sophisticated business. The company is at the center of what U.S. law-enforcement officials call the largest Internet child-pornography investigation to date and the first to follow the international financial trail of child-porn sales. The probe has discovered the names of some 40,000 Americans who downloaded child porn and led to more than 1,400 arrests world-wide including about 330 in the U.S. At least three users arrested in the U.S. have committed suicide.

Self-proclaimed vampire runs for office

Is it a publicity stunt? Or more. A man who claims to be a vampire is running for governor of Minnesota. Read more here.

The real story behind a case of satanic ritual abuse

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were a number of reported cases of satanic ritual abuse, some in daycare centres. Then it came to light that many innocent people had been charged, and children wrongly taken from their homes.


A documentary has just aired in Britian on one case. Here's a story with links to several others here.

The Defilers touches on a purported case of satanic ritual abuse, so from time to time, when I see interesting stories about it, I will post them here.