The way to determine whether someone is mentally ill or possessed by an evil entity according to the church.
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Fascinating.
What percentage of Catholic priests would you say perform exorcisms? Not a job I want.
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There are 2 or 3 hundred allowed to do so the the Catholic church in the United States. There will be thousands in the world officially allowed to perform them…many non Catholic churches have exorcists too. The Catholics (I’m not) have to go on a special training course with pass and fail. …
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Is there a non-video version of this?
If you baptize a cat, it may well turn into an exorcism.
FIFY
Any religion or cult or folk religion or whatever that believes in demons will have different ways to determine if demons are present, some just say that we know it when we now it.
Then you might find this article interesting.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-origins-of-catholic-exorcism
If you think you are demon-possessed and see a therapist, you might be mentally ill.
If you think you are demon-possessed and see an exorcist, you are definitely mentally ill.
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Interesting. Not sure if the first or third ones are foolproof, but the second one sounds solid. And this guy doesn’t come across as a nutter himself.
My dad worked with psychiatric patients and he was completely convinced that some of them were possessed (although he’s from a culture that takes such things as ‘normal’). Also met a girl once who believed she had accidentally sold her soul to Satan and she was beyond distressed by it. Hard to tell if that sort of thing is one of those ‘not mutually exclusive’ cases he mentions. The thing is, if you actually were possessed (assuming such a thing is possible), you’d be pretty much guaranteed to go nuts as a result, if you weren’t already. Hard to imagine someone being possessed and being totally OK about that - turning up to work and birthday parties and whatnot having normal conversations in his Zuul voice.
Source? Do you have a paper for this?
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Yes, I very much like his statement that mental illness and possession are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It is my belief that to be healthy then that includes the health of body , mind and spirit. As Jesus said “Man cannot live on bread and water alone.”
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