A bad use of religion

This story is an exotic one. And it doesn't directly relate to the Christian Right. But it does give a vivid and current example of how even well-meaning religious people can go really wrong and hurt people unnecessarily when they get too deep into superstition and too far removed from the "reality-based" world: Priest held over 'torture killing' by Roger Boyes Times of London 06/20/05.

A PRIEST and four nuns each face up to 20 years in jail after performing an extraordinary exorcism on a 23-year-old woman who was chained to a cross, gagged and starved in the cellar of a Romanian convent.

The woman died, apparently of suffocation, because a towel had been stuffed into her mouth to muzzle her screams.

Maricica Irina Cornici, who was brought up in an orphanage before becoming a nun, was crucified for three days while Father Daniel Petru Corogeanu, a Romanian Orthodox priest, recited prayers to banish evil spirits. According to the Mediafax news agency in Romania, she was a schizophrenic, given to rapid mood shifts, and this had persuaded nuns in the convent that she was possessed by the Devil.

The priest showed no remorse when he was arrested. "God has performed a miracle for her," he said. "At last Irina has been delivered from evil."

You have to wonder how good a cure it is when the patient winds up dead.

It worth noting that this apparently was not an isolated cult of some kind. And Boyes' report leads one to think that the exorcism rite may not have been considered particularly unusual in itself among religious people in that particular region.

In other words, this sounds like a case of the local mainstream religion taking a dark and fatal turn.

Tags: christianity, exorcism