The news was that students in a public high school in Asturias, Cebu, boycotted their classes last week for fear of “something” which had victimized some of their classmates. According to the principal a number of female students suddenly experienced what looked like epileptic seizures, squirming and shouting obscenities as they rolled and raged beast-like on the floor, their eyes ablaze, their voice drawling and sounding like that of an old man.
The reactions of the town folks tended towards the supernatural. Somebody had just cut a big tree near the school compound and this had angered, they said, the “occupant” of the tree. Other interpretations, also paranormal in nature, pointed to a sort of demonic possession. It’s the devils themselves that got into the system of those girls, they opined.
Demonic possession. Is this possible? The devil is an accepted being in the landscape of Christian theology. Satan and his minions are believed to be the “fallen angels” and their mandate is to turn people away from God. In the Scripture, Jesus himself was tempted by the devil. And how many incidents in the Lord’s ministry in which the devil’s existence was mentioned?
One such incident is narrated by Luke thus: “As Jesus stepped ashore, a man from the town approached him. This man was possessed by demons and for a long time was without clothes. He would not live in a house but stayed among tombstones. When he came nearer to Jesus, he yelled and threw himself on the ground before him, and then shouted. . . . ‘I beg you, do not torment me,’ for Jesus had ordered the evil spirit to leave the man. . .”
In fact, when Jesus named twelve of his followers to be his disciples he tasked them to preach the Good News and “gave them authority to drive out demons.” The devil is therefore a real entity. The role he plays in a person’s choice between good and evil cannot be under-estimated.
The curious thing is that, despite the real and palpable presence of these angels of darkness, most priests and bishops have been inclined to downplay such presence, or worse, deny it altogether. Here is a statement from Rev. Fr. Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist of Rome, in his book, An Exorcist, More Stories: “Catholic bishops almost without exception, have never performed or witnessed an exorcism. How then can they be expected to believe in phenomena that are hard to accept even for those of us, who as exorcists, experienced them first hand?”
Fr. Amorth attributes this lack of belief on diabolic beings to the non-emphasis of this subject in theology schools. This, plus the fact that certain theologians and biblical scholars have disseminated erroneous information concerning the devil, has contributed much to the prevailing ignorance on this subject. These errors, he says, include “serious doubts about the very existence of demons, and even more so, about the reality of demonic activity.”
Years ago dozens students in a public high school in Labangon, this city, also succumbed to the same afflictions suffered by the students in Asturias. Every day for two weeks a number of students would suddenly twist and roll on the ground appearing as though they had lost their senses. When this happened, we would load them to a vehicle and rush them to the Santo Rosario church where Monsignor Fred Kreikenbeck would perform exorcism on them. But there were times when the Monsignor was not available, so we would appeal to some other priests to do the ritual. But they refused. We cannot do it, they said.
The tragic thing is that the failure of these ministers of God to recognize the reality of the devil and warn their believers of it exposes the latter to the danger of diabolic influence. The ever spreading culture of death – is this not proof of the devil’s work among us?