When Religion Collides with Reason

Yes, this is true:

POCZERNIN, Poland - This wind-swept village is bracing for an invasion of demons, thanks to a priest who believes he can defeat Satan.

The Rev. Andrzej Trojanowski, a soft-spoken Pole, plans to build a "spiritual oasis" that will serve as Europe's only center dedicated to performing exorcisms. With the blessing of the local Catholic archbishop and theological support from the Vatican, the center will aid a growing number of Poles possessed by evil forces or the devil himself, he said.

"This is my task, this is my purpose -- I want to help these people," said Trojanowski, who has worked as an exorcist for four years. "There is a group of people who cannot get relief through any other practices and who need peace."

About 70 priests serve as trained exorcists in Poland, about double the number of five years ago. An estimated 300 exorcists are active in Italy. Foremost among them: the Rev. Gabriele Amorth, 82, who performs exorcisms daily in Rome and is dean of Europe's corps of demon-battling priests.

"People don't pray anymore, they don't go to church, they don't go to confession. The devil has an easy time of it," Amorth said in an interview. "There's a lot more devil worship, people interested in satanic things and seances, and less in Jesus."

Amorth and other priests said the resurgence in exorcisms has been encouraged by the Vatican, which in 1999 formally revised and upheld the rite for the first time in almost 400 years.

Although a Vatican official denied reports in December of a campaign to train more exorcists, supporters said informal efforts began under Pope John Paul II -- himself an occasional demon chaser -- and have accelerated under Pope Benedict XVI. A Catholic university in Rome began offering courses in exorcism in 2005 and has drawn students from around the globe.

One of the recruits is the Rev. Wieslaw Jankowski, a priest with the Institute for Studies on the Family, a counseling center outside Warsaw. He said priests at the institute realized they needed an exorcist on staff after encountering an increase in people plagued by evil.

Typical cases, he said, include people who turn away from the church and embrace New Age therapies, alternative religions or the occult. Internet addicts and yoga devotees are also at risk, he said.

"This is a service which is sorely needed," said Jankowski, who holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. "The number of people who need help is intensifying right now."

Honestly, it's hard to figure out where the Catholicism stops and the Scientology starts when you read things like this. Essentially, there is now no difference between one wacky cult and the other wacky cult, since they're both exempt from taxes and have millions of followers. How can you sneer at one when the other sneers back at you? But if you're going to tolerate religion, you have to tolerate what goes along with it. I don't pretend to be smart enough to understand it, I just help out when I can and pass along my own experiences with...the Devil.

To date, I have none.

Has anyone considered that, perhaps--just perhaps--the Devil has better things to do?

Go. Read. Glenn Greenwald. Now.

Wow.

This is one of the most fearless and scathing indictments of the village mentality in Washington DC that most of us will ever read.

I mean, holy shit. This will blow you away.

A Master of Understatement

Three weeks ago, Little Mikey O’Hanlon and his traveling companion Little Kenny Pollack published a feel-good, happy-talk piece of puffery on the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

O’Hanlon and Pollack are useful idiots to the war machine and the brass. Period. They can be reliably counted on to ask no probing questions and to see what they are shown and nothing more. Anyone who actually puts any stock in anything those two slavering shills have to say is a danger to themselves and others. They came back and did what they were supposed to do in advance of the so-called September report – they parroted the party line after being taken on a perfunctory eight-day fact-finding fact free trip that was more tightly controlled and scripted than a senior-citizens super-saver package tour of Rome.

On Sunday, a group of NCO’s from the 82^nd Airborne pushed back with an op-ed of their own. Needless to say, those charged with fighting it see it different than the boys from Brookings. That would be the same Brookings Institute that put the lie to the little weasels yesterday with the publication of their Iraq Index (.pdf alert) – (Summary coming – you all know my predilection for white papers by now.)

O’Hanlon was still spinning like the proverbial top this morning on The Diane Rehm Show, where he was inexplicably booked to discuss the situation in Iraq. When he was asked about the soldiers op-ed, he said “They may have even been taking a slight poke at us as we used a similar term in an op-ed three weeks earlier.”

A “slight poke”? Mwahahahahahaha, Mikey! They bloodied your nose, kicked you in the balls and took your lunch money. They left you whimpering on the sidewalk in a fetal position crying for your mommy.

Meanwhile, the rest of us know that NCO's are exactly who we should be listening to right now, not agenda whores from belief tanks. And we also know that we are dealing with a delusional halfwit when he tries to spin his own ass kicking.