Faith, Fayth, and Fireflies

I saw two articles in the Charleston paper today that seemed at odds with each other. Even more oddly, they seemed kinda like- don't laugh- the videogame I've been playing of late. I won't bore you with the details (ask QJ about the details in Final Fantasy X storyline, if you want), suffice it to say, the heroine, rejected by her religious institution, continues on a journey she knows to be terminal to save the faithful. The Church, essentially, may be corrupt, but the people who believe in it are still worth saving. Against that background, I saw an article about a man who is suing the diocese of a Charleston church who diagnosed one of its members as being possessed by a demon, but refused to perform the "exorcism" unless the dude permitted the Rite to be videoed, and unless he signed away any ownership in the video. I love lawyer's rationale in trying to invalidate the consent form to give up ownership of the video: if the dude's possessed, he probably isn't competent to waive consent. Essentially, it was the devil who signed the consent form. Are there demons to expel? If there aren't, the the whole thing is a scam. If there are, than it is shameful that the Church would parcel out salvation like rationed gas.

But just when I was ready to join Voltaire in demanding that we "crush the accursed thing" (the Church), along comes a story in the same paper about a forensic psychologist, of whom I have long known. "Bart_Saylor" has testified a bunch of times in various courts in SC. I haven't had any cases in which he testified, but I've reviewed some of his reports for cases that ultimately settled. He's about as well-adjusted a person as you'll find (well, for a psychologist, anyway), and the dude says he SAW prayers when he was on the operating table. Saw them in the form of fireflies above him, protecting him. Surely this is either traumatic manifestation of the pain he was feeling, or an effect of his surgically necessitated drugs. But this is someone who is already familiar with the medical and psychological factors that go into such a diagnosis. He knows about the side-effects of drugs, of hallucinations and paranoid schizophrenia. He must know that his peers would probably ask him to, you know, just stop by so that they could, you know, just sorta talk about the stress in his life. But this is not some crackpot, and he doesn't act like someone who is cracking up. Maybe, just maybe, prayers are real. Maybe they mean something. So, maybe, we all need to continue our pilgrimages. Even with theives in the temple.