As you might have noticed, St Michaels Journal publishes excerpts of articles we find on the Internet that are relative to the subject of Exorcism, we do as this as the mission of this journal is to re-educate people that evil does exist in this world, outside of the evil intentions that lurks in the hearts of some humans. I concur with those much more learned than I who have observed that the greatest accomplishment of Satan is to convince the world that he does not exist. Therefore my associates and I seek to provide you with educational material in the form of news releases in the hopes of convincing you that Exorcism is–on rare occasions–a viable solution to certain problems one might have.
We utilize certain tools Google and other search engines make available, and those tools routinely send us emails notifying us that some news media has published an article containing the key words we are scanning for, such as the word Exorcism. We obviously do not share with you all articles the search engines send us; many use the word Exorcism in the context of advertising a horror movie and even some sports writers often observe that a certain teams loosing streak needs to be exorcised. These we spare you from. We also try to make an effort to vet the stories we find; it would conflict with our goals to publish excerpts of articles that make false statements. Not every story about exorcism makes it into the journal.
Another aspect of todays world, community, is something we never planned the journal to be. As such we do not approve all comments and do not plan on allowing readers to build a community on this journal. I do not remember ever commenting on a comment until today.
WordPress sent me a notice asking me to moderate a comment on the article:
3 Exorcists Share Insights on Sin, the Occult, and the Might of Jesus Christ
This was a piece we found on the National Catholic Register by Patti Armstrong who wrote;
In my recent article on the demolished house believed to be a site of demonic activity, Zak Bagans, host and executive producer of the TV show Ghost Adventures, admitted during an email interview, that he may be suffering lingering effects of the evil he set out to capture on video.
I must state that we mean no disrespect nor do we stand in judgment of Mr. Bagans, but I did approve the following comment; I will offer an explanation afterward
Zak ain’t Catholic! If he was, he’d know that there are no “spirits” lingering around. Every Catholic, or at least educated ones, knows that once our bodies die, we immediately are judged and go to the place we belong…heaven, purgatory, or hell. What people call “spirits” or “ghosts” are really demons. They’re not entities that were once human. Besides this, he also should know that Catholics aren’t supposed to try and contact or summon anything that has died.
In defense of Zak Bagans I want to point out that many Christian ministers, Protestant and Catholic, have made the observation that we as clergy have failed miserably in the education of our flocks; we simply have not spent enough time on core doctrine and traditions of the Christian faith. As such many of the faithful make mistakes simply because they were not properly instructed.
To the credit of the young lady that made the comment above, she is correct in her observation that Christian teaching maintains that human spirits do not linger in this realm of existence, traditionalists hold that as she pointed out upon death we go to heaven or hell, other denominations have various beliefs; but few credible Christian paths allow for anything other than what the commenter outlined, that on death we go elsewhere and do not remain here.
I have spent the last several years writing and lecturing on this subject, illustrating the core Christian teaching that ghosts, spirits and similar paranormal activity is not human essence that has failed to pass to the other side, but rather paranormal entities appearing in the form of humans, for many different purposes. Most usually we encounter lesser demons that thrive on terror and fear and manifest themselves in what Hollywood and Gothic novels describe as the classic haunting. Other demons can be more problematic; I highly recommend you obtain a copy of Malichi Martin’s book; Hostage to the Devil, The possession and Exorcism of five contemporary Americans in which Fr. Martin illustrates how demons can take possession of a unwary human. Also worth mentioning is that just as Zak Bagans reports that he believes he suffering the effects of being too close to evil in his work, Fr. Martin reports in his book how the Exorcists suffered from the same, some suffering immensely for the remainder of their lives; perhaps Zak is correct in his belief.
In conclusion, please open you mind to the possibility that popular culture has put a face on this subject that is misleading. Far too many become infatuated with the paranormal and go out in search of that which goes bump in the night; some come away from the experience with more than they bargained for.
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