(12-09-2025, 02:37 PM)FlyersFan Wrote: You are free to read an exorcists diary and books of what he has encountered if you like.
But likely you won't. Whatever.
MSGR Rossetti's Diary of an Exorcist and His Books Here
Instead of the expected website, a
YouTube video opened when I clicked on the link. Glory be, a miracle!
Eager not to miss a drop of the holy juice, I watched to the end. As an ex-adman, I clearly recognised the format of what is called an infomercial, with a huckster in a soutane earnestly hawking snake-oil to troubled souls. I heard exactly two references to matters Satanic: the phrase ‘dabbling in witchcraft’ in his opening pitch, and later on the following: ‘For example, when someone is fully possessed, it can take years of praying over that person.’
Hmm, I thought. Rather shy about it, are they? So I went to the Wikipedia article on the huckster, and guess what, there wasn’t a word on it about possession or exorcism.
Not a word. But quite a lot about his qualifications as a psychiatrist. So – one face for the scam victims and another for the more sophisticated public? Oh, be charitable, my good angel urged from my right shoulder (I’m slightly deaf in that ear). Like all good salesmen, he tailors his pitch to his customers. He knows that the foolish and superstitious have no truck with psychology or science, so he draws them in with all this talk of devils; but under the biretta and black fancy-dress he’s a decent, humanitarian psychiatrist who will do anything to help as many mentally troubled people as he can, even sell them a line of bunkum if he has to do that to pull them in.
But in the meantime the video had collapsed into a thumbnail and I was looking – finally – at the catholicexorcism.com website. St Michael and all angels protect us, what a bazaar! I was reminded of the Temple forecourt before Jesus kicked the moneylenders out. There were the good monsignor’s books:
Confessions of an American Exorcist, yours for a mere $21.95 plus $5 shipping within the US! Another,
newer book for $23.95 with free shipping! Next, ‘online deliverance sessions’ (exorcism by internet! who knew?), seemingly free but with a ‘click to register’ button right at the top of a page stuffed with hundreds of testimonials from previous attendees – all unsolicited, I’m sure – and then, miles down the page, right the bottom, an almost illegible bit of fine print saying, ‘If you just opted in, you’re consenting to receive marketing emails from: St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal, PO Box 83014, Gaithersburg, MD 20883.’ No opt-out button to be seen on
the page, though.
Still, who would ever want to opt out, eh?
The
Resources menu on the site doesn’t even open to a page. I guess they don’t want to give the impression that all they do is sell stuff by putting the entire inventory on one page. Instead, the link drops down a sub-menu, and you have to click on the items individually to see and buy them. ‘Pray with me’ videos, ‘SMC deliverance cards’, ‘praying rosary & divine mercy chaplet’, ‘videos for exorcists,’ and so on. There’s free stuff too though, I must admit: prayers for the faithful to recite, mostly. And sermons. Speech, as people like to say, is free.
By this time there was no pretending I was looking at anything but a gang of vampires gorging on the distress and despair of mentally troubled, poorly educated, helpless people. I was about to click off with a cleansing
After-Exorcism Scrub, but that turned out to be just another prayer, not a real scrub. Disappointing!
Just then I finally noticed, buried deep in the bowels of the homepage, a link to ‘
Monsignor Rossetti’s Exorcism Blog’. At last, the true, the blushful Hippocrene! I clicked through eagerly, and read two posts: ‘Six of the Most Dangerous Practices,’ the one featured in
this thread, and another, ‘A Good Day,’ about some poor childhood abuse victim whose ‘demon’, clearly, was drug and sex addiction. No diabolical manifestations, no emerald-green puke, no heads swivelling on unforgiving necks and, most disappointing of all,
no levitation!! Just some troubled people in urgent need of rescue and comfort.
Well, if Msgr Rossetti can provide it, more power to him; and the poor people who finance him think, no doubt, that the money he extracts from them is a fair price to pay for their deliverance. What did he deliver
you from,
FlyersFan, and how much did it cost you in all?
Oh, never mind; what do I care. What I
would like to know, though, is exactly which part of that website, or the infomercial it opens, is supposed to provide the evidence for real demons and the phenomenon of possession that
you are trying to sell us?
I ask you this in all seriousness, because nothing I read or saw on that website was unfamiliar to the lexicon of abnormal psychology; only conventionally identifiable mental illnesses and a heap of superstitious bunkum (‘during this reading, holy water is sprinkled on all those present if possible’, etc). If there is any particular page or excerpt you find especially convincing, please link or quote just that, and nothing else.
Failing such evidence, all you have convinced me of is that devils do exist, but they are human devils, who call themselves exorcists.
