A couple of religious zealots in Texas felt the Holy Spirit within them, and with God on their side they took to an Odessa pond and attempted to free a woman from the demons that possessed her. Thankfully, no one was injured during the exorcism — well, except maybe Pazuzu.
An Odessa resident happened by the spiritual battlefield. Instead of dropping to her knees in an attempt to offer her Christian warrior spirit to the struggle, the resident called the police. She would say of the incident:
“They start getting louder and louder and louder, she was on the ground and they were standing over her with hands on her and screaming ‘Satan I demand that you depart’ and it went on and on and on, but it was very bizarre!”
Odessa PD arrived on the scene and told witnesses that there was nothing they could do. Of course, this is not because they wished to see the woman injured or killed as a result of the rabid religious maniacs’ attempts at dispelling the demons inhabiting her body, but because there is no law preventing insane religious nutcases from exorcising demons next to a duck pond.
In fact, according to the Texas Supreme Court, exorcisms are legally protected.
The fact this woman was not injured, or worse, speaks volumes to her luck. Plenty of exorcisms throughout history — both Vatican-sanctioned and otherwise — have seen those being exorcised significantly injured, disfigured, or even killed during the process.
Exorcism appears to be on the rise as of late. Pope Francis, apparently, makes consistent mention of Satan and the enduring struggle between the fallen and those devoted to God. Last year, the Vatican hosted a rather large conference on exorcism, even allowing the media to take part.
Recently, exorcisms have been performed by both clergy and devout believers.
I guess the Devil has been busy as of late.
I was always taught that exorcisms weren’t rituals that the everyday believer can effectively perform. The risks were great — you could be injured, killed, or even possessed yourself. There’s a reason why, in Catholicism, there exists a bureaucratic system to determine the necessity and efficacy of an exorcism.
Dave Hoxley, a local clergyman, stated that the person receiving the pond-side exorcism was “getting the care they need.” His “overriding thought in that is [he hopes] the people doing it had some level of training.”
I’m sorry, Hoxley, I fail to see where a woman being verbally and physically assaulted by religious fanatics during a ritual that could leave her injured or dead is “getting the care they need.”
I can’t say definitively if the “exorcists” were trained or not, but from my observations of religious fervor in the Lone Star State, they probably are not. For all I know, they’re merely senior members of a revivalist church headed by a Jimmy Swaggert type of minister, selling miracles and scripture to a congregation plunging every extra dollar into a collection plate for Rolex watches blessed by Jesus.
Or alternatively, they are trained exorcists, which isn’t likely, considering it’s absolutely asinine for an exorcism to be performed in a public place in broad daylight and because it’s goddamn Odessa. That doesn’t seem like a place I would likely find a legitimate exorcist.
Whatever the case, the woman who was exorcised is fine. She survived the spiritual war being waged for her soul, relatively unscathed, and is presumably living her life demon-free.
