Page 4, CROSSROADS, May 74 |
DEMONOLOGY LECTURES
From Page 1
Although the need for exor
cism is very rare. Solari said,
Christ gave his apostles the
power to cast out evil spirits as
He had done.
He concluded by saying that
Christians should not live in fear
of the devil, but should never
theless have a “healthy respect
for his power.”
Fr. Lawrence Willis, O.S.B.,
lectured on the history of Satan
worship, beginning with crude
cave drawings in the Stone Age.
Primitive gods of the Stone Age,
he said, often manifested in a
mother goddess of fertility and a
horned god, survived through the
ages as races were ccwquered
and civilization developed.
Tne conquering race could
never quite eradicate the
religion of the people it had
conquered, Willis said, and
strains of the “horned God”
religion continued to survive,
though often driven un
derground.
Because most of the men of
each conquered civilization were
killed or deported, Willis ex
plained, it was the women who
kept alive the “old gods.” Thus
the belief in witches began, he
said. The broom, associated
with woman’s work, became a
witch symbol.
As civilization advanced, the
“old gods” were identified more
with evil. When Christianity
developed and especially when
the Reformation began, Willis
said, fear and hatred of Satan
and those who were thought to
worship him led to the
Inquisition and other per
secutions.
This culminated in the witch
hunts of England during the
reign of James I and the Salem,
Mass., witch trials of 1962, when
accusations by children led to
the hanging of more than two
dozen women.
Satan worship has existed
throughout history, Willis said,
evidenced in fashion as well as
religious practice. In the later
Middle Ages, he said, cloven
toed shoes were in style among
the upper classes.
Willis then described the
religious ritual of Satan worship,
emphasizing its parody of
Christianity.
“Satan worship has always
been an escape for neurotic or
maladjusted people whose
physical or emotional needs
weren’t being satisfied by their
religion,” he concluded.
The concluding lectures of the
series were presented by Fr.
Jerome Dollard, O.S.B., a
teacher of theology, and Dr. Paul
Bumgardner, an English
Father Lawrence Willis
professor who has taught at
Notre Dame University and
State University of New York.
Fr. Jerome repeated what the
previous lecturers had em
phasized, that demonic
possession is extremely un
common. Only two exorcisms,
he reported, have been per
formed in this country in the 20th
century.
He remarked that in the book
and film, “The Exorcist,” the
descriptions are not entirely
College Graduate’s Lifetime Income
Said To Be $758,000
Men with college degrees, on
the average, can expect to
receive $758,000 in their
lifetimes, according to a report
issued recently by the Bureau of
the Census. The bureau said the
estimated income, as of 1972,
was for men between the ages of
18 and death who completed four
or more years of collie. The
bureau said this was $279,000
higher than those who were high
school graduates. Men who
finished high school only can
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(C.P.A., M.D., etc) specify
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expect lifetime earnings of about
$479,000 or $135,000 more than
men who only finished
elementary school.
Between 1967 and 1972, the
bureau said, the estimated
lifetime income in terms of
constant 1972 dollars of all men
from age 25 to death increased
from $385,000 to $448,000 , a 16
percent gain. For male year-
round full-time workers, the
estimated lifetime income was
$542,000 in 1972, or a 19 percent
increase over the five-year
period.
The estimates are included in
the report, Annual Mean In
come, Lifetime Income and
Educational Attainment of Men
in the United States, for Selected
Years, 1956 to 1972, P-60, No. 92,
$2.10 from Superintendent of
Documents, U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington,
D.C. 20402.
Credit: Higher Education and
Natiwial Affairs, VXXIII, No. 15,
April 12. 1974.
based on fact. “Regan (the
possessed girl) is a character of
Blatty’s (the author’s)
imagination,” he said, although
he conceded that many of the
tortures the girl endures are
symptomatic of actual
possession.
“The reality of demonic
possession is possible,” Dollard
said, but one must first “look at
all other explanations.” He
discussed at length the
•> jdienomena of parapsychology,
including mental telepathy,
clairvoyance and precognition,
which might be examined as
possible causes of “possession”
before an exorcism is warran
ted.
Satan is no “equal force” at
war with God, Dollard stressed.
“There is no spiritual arms-
building race between them.”
Rather than fearing the devil,
Dollard said, people should “be
concerned with the capacity for
evil that is within us, both as
individuals and as societies.
“Evil is linked to the reality of
sin,” he said. “It is a persMial,
moral decision that breaks the
relationship between God and
man.”
Dr. Bumgardner followed Fr.
Jerome and presented a lecture
on the demonic in literature. He
proceeded to open and shut
literary doors quickly, revealing
the devil in many different ap
pearances and degrees of
strength as seen by the world’s
great writers.
From Dante’s devil, upside
down in rock and ice at the
hollow center of the earth,
eternally munching on the
remains of Brutus, Cassius and
Judas, to the great white whale
Moby Dick, to Baudelaire’s
“Fleures du Mai,” through
miracle plays and the works of
Lord Byron, Milton, Mark Twain
and Balzac, Bumgardner ex
plained the different treatments
the devil has gotten in literature
through the ages.
“The devil can be whatever
evil the writer thinks is most
important,” Bumgardner said.
He added that the writer must
“know absolute evil” to write
about it. “The artist, poet, and
writer, in short, is a devil,” he
said.
Credit: Bill Henry,
Gastonia Gazette
Staff Reporter