{"id":2001,"date":"2005-09-24T16:19:12","date_gmt":"2005-09-24T16:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/remember-the-exorcists.html"},"modified":"2005-09-24T16:19:12","modified_gmt":"2005-09-24T16:19:12","slug":"remember-the-exorcists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/remember-the-exorcists.html","title":{"rendered":"Remember the exorcists?"},"content":{"rendered":"

That Exorcists’ convention that was the butt of jokey commentary? Here’s some reporting from the meeting.<\/a><\/p>\n

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In statements to the Italian newspaper Avvenire, Father Giancarlo Gramolazzo, president of the International Association of Exorcists, said: "There is much disinformation today on the role of the exorcist; sadly, the media shows this figure as something other than what he really is." <\/p>\n

"With his apostolate," he said, the exorcist "leads to the faith, persons who are possessed, vexed or obsessed by the devil."<\/em> <\/p>\n

"Essentially," said Father Gramolazzo, "the exorcist is a catechist who undertakes a journey of faith with a person, also involving the family. The Gospel also teaches this — Mark 9:14-29 — when we read, for example, the case of the possessed child whom Jesus heals by helping the father to have faith." <\/p>\n

Father Gramolazzo also warned of the danger of a superstitious faith which "attributes all physical and spiritual troubles to the devil’s action." <\/p>\n

However, he said, "an aversion to the sacred," or affliction by "unknown illnesses or even symptoms that are difficult to identify," could be possible signs of possession. "Demonic presence must be diagnosed case by case," he said. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I was quite struck by that italicized (by me) paragraph. Thought-provoking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That Exorcists’ convention that was the butt of jokey commentary? Here’s some reporting from the meeting. In statements to the Italian newspaper Avvenire, Father Giancarlo Gramolazzo, president of the International Association of Exorcists, said: "There is much disinformation today on the role of the exorcist; sadly, the media shows this figure as something other than…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRemember the exorcists? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/remember-the-exorcists.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remember the exorcists? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That Exorcists’ convention that was the butt of jokey commentary? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}