Pope Francis and Beelzebub

El Diablo.

Many people thought Pope Francis would bring progressive change to his church. Alas, it seems the pope believes in all sorts of fairytale creatures, including evil ones. In the year 2014, this pope still believes the devil is real. Srsly. And now he's lifting the devil's profile big-time.

The Vatican has formally recognized the International Association of Exorcists, a group of 250 priests in 30 countries who liberate the faithful from demons.

More than his predecessors, Pope Francis speaks frequently about the devil, and last year was seen placing his hands on the head of a man purportedly possessed by four demons in what exorcists said was a prayer of liberation from Satan.

All hope is lost, kids. The devil is coming for you -- well, unless you send 20 Cheerios box-tops to the Int'l Association of Exorcists. (Whatever you do, don't fold them!) If you get those holy box-tops to the IAE in time, your eternal soul will be saved. Hallelujah!

It's hard for me to understand how anyone can believe in gods, but it's even harder to grasp people's belief in demons and devils and witches and warlocks and spells and incantations and other completely imaginary dreck.

The pope's a nut. That's the bottom line. Catholics should run for the hills.

The tornado cometh

Oh, the weather outside is frightful -- stiff wind, pouring rain and the threat of tornadoes. Meh, tornadoes. (That word looks weird, doesn't it? You can spell it tornados or tornadoes. Spell-check likes tornadoes better.)

The thing is, we in the northeast don't believe in tornadoes. We just don't. Until we see one wreck nearby homes, they're just a fanciful notion. Of course, climate change will alter tornado patterns and we may see these devils in the future. But today I'm not worried. I think they call this complacency.

As long as I'm here and talking about devils, did you read about Scalia's belief in the devil? When the interviewer expressed shock, he said:

“You’re looking at me as though I’m weird,” he continued. “My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.”

Yes, Antonin, we're looking at you as if you're weird. It's you who "travels in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America." But it goes further than you being weird. You're a true caveman, club and all.

Speaking of the devil, I have some young atheist friends (even though I'm really, really old). One recently told me he was shocked to realize that there are adults -- adults! -- who believe in the devil. I understand his consternation. The devil is as false as angels and gods. But in the US we have a nitwit religious culture that believes in almost anything: ghosts, black magic, witches, demons, whatever. They believe in it all. And why? Because they handed in their brains at church when they were children, and never looked back.

Well, these folks are ready for Halloween, anyway. I always enjoy hearing wingnuts say that Halloween is the devil's holiday and children shouldn't be allowed to trick or treat. Talk about out of touch with America. Twits -- they're everywhere.

Devil image by Conor Cunningham. Ain't it cute?

Does Pope Francis believe in Beelzebub?

Pope Francis appears to have been captured on video performing an exorcism in St Peter’s Square.

I love hearing that any priest believes Satan is real. It's such an ignorant-git thing to believe. So you'd think I'd be happy when yesterday's low-hanging fruit about the Pope being an exorcist came along. 

But meh. I couldn't even blog about it. "After all," I thought, "everything the pope believes is a lie. So why get excited if he involves himself in an exorcism?"

But the more I thought about it, the more wonderful it seemed. I hope the pope does believe in the devil. It's such a colossally stupid thing to believe. In fact, I hope the pope thinks of Satan as his rival, his arch-enemy, a creature that haunts his days. Hoo boy. If that's the case, fun times lie ahead.

Exorcists happy with this pope

From HuffPo's ridiculous religion page:

"Benedict held an audience with exorcists from all over the world and welcomed us with words of great, great encouragement," Gabriel Amorth, devil fighter for the diocese of Rome for 27 years, said late Friday in an interview with Italian religious channel TV2000.

"He has continued to encourage us. The pope has done a lot to revise procedures... and given us powerful prayers that serve to exorcise," said Amorth.

Powerful prayers, eh? I'd like to hear these powerful prayers, wouldn't you? It's a wonder that certain words are more effective against the devil, and that it took over 2,000 years to locate these words. I wonder if the phrase "intrinsically disordered" made its way into the prayers.

He [Amorth] said that cases of full possession by the devil are very rare, but that he has seen victims "walk on walls, slither across the floor like a snake."

Disturbances caused by the devil, however, "have become extremely common."

And what are these disturbances, pray tell? He doesn't say. I wonder if "angry New Atheists" are among the unspecified disturbances.

The Association of Exorcists also has its work cut out because "the act of exorcism had been suspended for centuries, and while there is a huge request for exorcists, there are priests and bishops who do not believe in it."

Imagine that. Some priests are sensible.

More fun stuff from the Vatican

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's number 2 accused the media on Monday of trying "to imitate Dan Brown" in their coverage of the VatiLeaks scandal and said the Roman Catholic Church's latest travails were part of the Devil's attempt to destabilize it. 

I love the Vatican. It's an endless source of mirth. And of course this brand of talk can come from only one source, the completely deranged "Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who ranks second only to Pope Benedict in the Vatican's hierarchy". Indeed. This guy is a major rightwing control freak, spewing ugly rhetoric wherever he goes -- and always with that Satan-lurking-in-the-shadows language. This guy lives in an alternate reality where the church never does anything wrong. It's Satan, don't you see?

"They (the journalists) continue to invent fairytales and repeat legends," he said.

Bertone branded as false the image of the Vatican as a place of intrigue and power struggles, saying: "The truth is that there is an attempt to sow division that comes from the Devil".

Even as he mouthed these complaints, a pesky secular reporter noted an inconvenient truth: the devil had nothing to do with it:

[A]n Italian reporter contested Bertone's portrayal of the media, telling him that the leaks scandal started with a letter in which an archbishop complained to the pope about corruption in the Vatican.

That's quite a church they've got there.

Wondering about Mephisto

Last week, scientists announced that a nematode has been found living almost two miles below the surface of the Earth. Before this discovery, nothing living had been found deeper than 1.2 miles below the surface. The name they gave this creature is Halicephalobus mephisto. This made me wonder about the term "mephisto".

Wikipedia tells me that Mephisto and Mephistopheles are one and the same. Both refer to the demon whose picture is at left. Sometimes Mephisto is seen as the devil himself. The term comes from German folklore and was first seen in print as the demon in the Faust legend. The name is familiar to me in part from Faust but more because of the movie, "The Mephisto Waltz (which I wrote about in this post).

So: a devil, a demon. But why name the worm after this creature? I wondered if it was because the mythical hell lies deep beneath the Earth so I googled my way to this reference:

". . . Halicephalobus mephisto, an entirely new species, with the mephisto portion given in reference to its residence in the underworld" 

Mystery solved and the meme of mephisto is passed on to another generation . . . well, to science and work geeks, anyway. Oh, and you.