matching tracksuits

There’s a revival of the practice of exorcism in Poland.

One of the recruits is the Rev. Wieslaw Jankowski, a priest with the Institute for Studies on the Family, a counseling center outside Warsaw. He said priests at the institute realized they needed an exorcist on staff after encountering an increase in people plagued by evil.

Typical cases, he said, include people who turn away from the church and embrace New Age therapies, alternative religions or the occult. Internet addicts and yoga devotees are also at risk, he said.

“This is a service which is sorely needed,” said Jankowski, who holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. “The number of people who need help is intensifying right now.”

Jankowski cited the case of a woman who asked for a divorce days after renewing her wedding vows as part of a marriage counseling program. What was suspicious, he said, was how the wife suddenly developed a passionate hatred for her husband.

“According to what I could perceive, the devil was present and acting in an obvious way,” he said. “How else can you explain how a wife, in the space of a couple of weeks, could come to hate her own husband, a man who is a good person?”

I guess gone are the days, by and large, of attributing demon possession only to cases of people with spinning heads who spew pea soup, or at the very least, speak in tongues unknown to the victim new a husky, gravely voice. But there are still cases of Regan-esque possession:

Exorcists said the people they help can be in the grip of evil to varying degrees. Only a small fraction, they said, are completely possessed by demons — which can cause them to display inhuman strength, speak in exotic tongues, recoil in the presence of sacred objects or overpower others with a stench.

In those cases, the exorcists must confront the devil directly, using the power of the church to order it to abandon its host. More often, however, priests perform what some of them refer to as “soft exorcisms,” using prayer to rid people of evil influences that control their lives. (Washington Post)

Prayer is so much less dramatic than burning holy water, though.

What’s troubling about the article is that there is no representation of the opposing viewpoint. Not all Catholics believe that internet addiction can be cured with holy water and prayer. Not all Catholics attribute mental illness to Satan. Not all Poles think that Yoga leads to possession.

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Interesting article on Romney’s Mormonism at “Get Religion”:

If you�ve not followed the decades-long theological debate between apologists for evangelical Protestantism and apologists for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, brace yourself. You�re probably in for an extended mass media discourse on those differences, at least until the primaries settle who will be the Republican nominee for president. Don�t call him Brother Romney just yet � GetReligion

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In Poland, the Catholic Church is very much against Harry Potter — sort of like religious conservatives here.

Why?

We all know the standard reasons: wizards and sorcery are simply forbidden in the Bible. It’s that simple.

Yet K pointed out the “real” reason Potter worries the Polish church. I read the BBC News article opening to her:

The seventh and final Harry Potter book has broken sales records on both sides of the Atlantic, selling 11 million copies in its first 24 hours.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 2.7 million copies in the UK and 8.3 million in the US. (BBC)

She responded, “See, that’s why the Polish church is so scared of Harry Potter. That’s real power.”

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It seems that Europe is now importing what it exported, namely Christianity. But this is often a different kind of Christianity:

The “Amens!” flew like popcorn in hot oil as 120 Christian worshipers clapped and danced and praised Jesus as if He’d just walked into the room. In a country where about 2 percent of the population attend church regularly and many churches draw barely enough worshipers to fill a single pew, the Sunday morning service at this old mission hall was one rocking celebration.

In the middle of all the keyboards, drums and hallelujahs, Stendor Johansen, a blond Danish sea captain built like a 180-pound ice cube, sang along and danced, as he said, like a Dane — without moving. (washingtonpost.com)

A more emotional religion than the methodical Lutheranism Denmark would have exported, to be sure.

Yet what’s most interesting about the article is not the fact that missionaries are going to Europe. That’s old news — I often saw Evangelical missionaries in Poland trying to convert Poles from Catholicism to Christianity. (Yes, I know — but that’s how they see it.) The interesting thing is where the missionaries are coming from.

The International Christian Community (ICC) is one of about 150 churches in Denmark that are run by foreigners, many from Africa, Asia and Latin America, part of a growing trend of preachers from developing nations coming to Western Europe to set up new churches or to try to reinvigorate old ones.

World Christianity today is in an odd stage of development. Evangelicalism, that distinctly American version of Christianity, has been on fire throughout the world. America has been sending out Evangelical missionaries, especially to countries that have large Catholic populations, and now, it seems, these missionaries are going to Europe — full circle.

I wonder if they’re bringing disease back with them, though…

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Poland produces a revolution every five hundred years, and it’s always the same revolution: a man comes along and challenges the way we all look at the universe, challenges us to stop thinking we’re the center of the universe and that all things circle around us.

Copernicus was the first, at least in the western world, to suggest that the Earth was not the center of the universe. He dethroned the heady notion that literally everything revolved around us, and modern science has pushed us to the point of virtual cosmic insignificance.

Karol Wojtyla, with his famous words, “Do not be afraid,”� challenged us to stop thinking of ourselves as the center of our own worlds. Love is the greatest of all these, said Saint Paul, and John Paul, in his insistence on the universal recognition of human dignity and freedom, showed how to put that into practice.

“Nie lekajcie sie!”�

Don’t be afraid.

Fear not.

How can we not fear? Look at the world, and the injustice that hounds it, and it seems the only thing we can do is be afraid. How can that possibly work? Perhaps when we start following John Paul’s example and love others more than ourselves, we will stop fear. After all, what is fear? It’s fear of what will happen to me. When I start loving others more, I stop thinking of my self so much, and I stop fearing.

John Paul in that sense was a Copernicus for the soul.

Smoke and Mozart

We were in Adam’s bar with Johnny, Kucek, and Marta. I was playing chess with Rafał, and I heard Mozart’s Requiem and though I didn’t consciously think it, I knew what had happened. After a few moments, Kinga called my name (they were sitting behind me) and told me. I turned to Rafal� and told him, then suggested we put the chess away.

I went back to the table where everyone else was sitting, and we just sat there quietly for about ten minutes. No one was saying a word. I can’t remember who initiated it, but someone said, “Idziemy?”� and we all got up and left the table covered with full beer glasses and extinguished, half-smoked cigarettes.

Without saying, we all began walking up to the church. No one said, “Let’s go to the church,”� we all just headed there. As we were walking, the fire station’s siren began wailing. It was strangely and peacefully quiet other than that.

We got to the church and it was locked. It had been open all day, and the night before, for prayers, but it was closed. “They’ll come open it,”� I told everyone confidently.

“There’ll be a mass going within half an hour,”� I said. But we stood waiting, and nothing.

After some time a nun walked into the church, and the bells began ringing, but the front door never opened. We walked around to the door to the sacristy to ask the nun if they were going to open the church. We stood there waiting, and just as she was coming out, another group of three young people � two girls and a young man of about nineteen � came up.

“Is the church going to be opened?”� he asked.

The nun’s reply was somewhat surprising, and completely disappointing: “It was open all day. It was open all night last night. It was open until nine this evening, and no one was here,”� she said in the tone of voice that’s so known to me know � it was the tone of a bureaucrat annoyed that you’ve come to require services of him. It was the tone of voice I encountered every time I went to the regional court offices while getting the official permission to marry a Pole. It was the tone of voice that I’ve heard in post offices, shops, busses � everywhere.

The young man would not be put off, though. “I know, I know. But not to open the church now?! At this moment?!”�

The nun again: “The proboszcz said to ring the bells. He didn’t say anything about opening the church,”� she said, locking the lower of three locks on the sacristy door.

“Let’s go,”� said Johnny, starting to walk away.

“No, no! Don’t go!”� said the young man. And he just repeated to the nun again, and again, “Not to open the church?! At this moment? At this moment?”�

Reluctantly, she opened up the sacristy and we filed into the church quietly.

We knelt in the first row, with our three companions simply falling on their knees once they were in front of the tabernacle. All heads bowed, not a sound � I even prayed. “If you’re up there, God, I sure hope you’re welcoming such a great man into your presence now, because if a man like that isn’t with you now, no one else has a chance.”�

The five of us had just come from a bar, so we reeked of cigarettes, and probably the smell of alcohol was noticeable, but none of us were even buzzed (we’d drunk perhaps two beers each), but Kinga felt very awkward about it the more she considered it. We left after only about ten minutes.

Kinga and I went back home and made some tea and listened to the radio.

They’ve been playing nothing but classical music on several of the stations. Last night they played Gorecki’s “Amen,”� interspersed with quotes from the pope.

A Country of Orphans

“Poor country,”� Kinga said. We sat up late talking about John Paul’s life, and his philosophy, and his love of fellow humans.

“If Poles lived by his words, I’d never want to leave this place,”� I said. “It would be a paradise.”�

Poor Poland � wracked now with increasing corruption in every part of the government. A country with more than 18% unemployment, a country that must be the richest country in the world, as my father-in-law says, because everyone steals and there still remains something for others to pilfer.

And now, broken-hearted Poland. Kinga’s grandmother spent Sunday crying. Masses are pouring into churches and staying. It is a country of orphans.

Lech Walesa said that it was like losing a mother, “for the pope looked after Poland like a mother over her children.”�

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Last night I began reading Oskar i Pani R�za, which is originally Oscar et la dame rose (Amazon.com) and in English would be Oscar and Ms. Rose. It�s about a ten-year-old dying of cancer and a volunteer he makes friends with, named Ms. Rose. When Ms. Rose suggests that Oskar write to God, he replies that he doesn�t believe in God. She suggests that perhaps he should write anyway:

�Maybe you would feel less lonely?�
�Less lonely with someone who doesn�t exist?�
�Why not check if he exists?�
She bent down close to me and said, �Every time you believe in him, he�ll exist a little more� (15, my translation).

Believing in something makes it more real? Is that what she�s saying? Of course it is, and of course it�s true. Does that mean that God exists only in our heads, that we create him by believing in him? Not quite, I think, but strangely enough, taking a leap of faith and just believing seems to make it more believable.

Czeslaw Milosz wrote in The Captive Mind (Amazon.com),

The Catholic Church wisely recognized that faith is more a matter of collective suggestion than of individual conviction. Collective religious ceremonies induce a state of belief. Folding one�s hands in prayer, kneeling, singing hymns precede faith, for faith is a psycho-physical and not simply a psychological phenomenon.

Doing leads to believing. Believing is, in a sense, encapsulated in this �doing,� and so paradoxically, as Ms. Rose seems to be saying, believing leads to believing.

This is also the question in Life of Pi, though much more directly than in Oskar. I remember the quote, something like �If you stumble at believability, what is there left to live for?� Or something like that.

I was making a sandwich or something last night � perhaps pouring a brandy, I can�t remember � and I thought, �It would indeed be nice to believe in something out there, something bigger than us that we can count on to help us when we need it.�

The trouble with that is simply that I don�t see help where help is most needed � in the suffering of a child. If there�s a heaven, or an afterlife, then the death of a child, course though this may sound, is not that big of a deal.

What is a big deal is the painful and incomprehensible suffering that child might have to endure before dying, and that�s the �problem of evil� as I frame it. Not just any evil � incomprehensible evil.

All evil can be understood on some level by adults.

Incomprehensible evil is that which attacks children, like children in Rwanda who were hacked to death with a machete because of their ethnicity when the notion of �ethnicity� is so foreign to them that it would be difficult to explain it to them.

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