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Vatican Revamps Satan

To: nagasiva@luckymojo.com
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Vatican Revamps Satan
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 12:30:56 -0800

Have you seen this? Don't know anything more about it.... 

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From:  Discovery Channel Online
http://www.discovery.com/news/news.html

Vatican Revamps Satan

This week the Vatican will try to revamp the image of Satan, arguing
that it needs a "more subtle and sophisticated" definition of evil for
the millennium, the London Times reports.

A new formula, formed by a Vatican panel of experts, substitutes
"psychological disturbance" for references to the Devil as the
embodiment of evil.

"In revising the form of words for exorcism, we have re-thought the
nature of the evil we are trying to root out," one
member of the commission tells the Times.

Officials say the Church isn't revising "scriptural references" to the
Devil or suggesting that people should cease believing in "the Evil
One."

But priests conducting exorcisms should deal with evil as a force
"lurking within all individuals" instead of one that
threatens people from without.

Definitions of "demonic possession" and the rituals for dealing with it
have remained little changed since Pope Paul V issued the Rituale
Romanum in 1614.

Monsignor Corrado Balducci, the Vatican's chief exorcist, says the
Church has to adapt to modern thinking and "be more careful in
distinguishing between possession by evil spirits and what are more
commonly called psychiatric disturbances."

According to Vatican officials, priests will be encouraged not to refer
any longer to the Prince of Darkness, the Accursed Dragon, the Foul
Spirit, the Satanic Power or the Master of Deceit. Instead the formulas
refer to "the cause of evil."

Both Old and New Testaments refer to Beelzebub, the Evil One, or Satan,
with the Devil often depicted as Lucifer, a rebel angel expelled from
Heaven. The Revelation of St. John (xii.7) describes "war in Heaven
between the angels," and "the Dragon, that ancient serpent who led the
whole world astray whose name is the Devil, or Satan."

Jesus cast out demons in several famous New Testament passages; St. Mark
and St. Matthew both record that Jesus was "tempted by Satan" during his
40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.

But some modern theologians regard the depiction of Satan as a reptilian
beast with cloven hooves, wings and a tail, as a medieval invention, and
prefer St. Augustine's definition of evil as "the absence of good."

-- EOF --

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