By Debra Heine, PJ Media, Sept. 7, 2018
In a recent interview, a world-renowned exorcist said the sex abuse scandal currently rocking the Catholic Church is demonic in nature and likely to get worse before it gets better. “We are in for a long storm,” said Father Gary Thomas, the exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, California.
Fr. Thomas’ training in Rome was the subject of the 2010 book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist by Matt Baglio. The book was made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins in 2011.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Father Gary Thomas told the National Catholic Register’s Patti Armstrong. “But as bad as it is, it has to come out. It is unacceptable.”
According to Fr. Thomas, the age-old taunt — “who’s going to believe you?” — is a Satanic message that is meant to silence sexual abuse victims.
“Convincing people that no one will believe them is what Satan says when something is so outside the bounds of what is reasonable as to be unbelievable,” Father Thomas said. “Reading the accounts of what those children in Pennsylvania went through [as detailed in the Grand Jury Report] we wonder, how could this happen?” he continued. “It’s other-worldly—outside what people thought was possible — that’s what makes it demonic.”
For far too long, Catholics have seen this real-life horror story play out over and over again in their churches.
In an article about becoming the solution, Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., founder and president of the Ruth Institute, pointed out that if abusers thought people would speak up and be listened to, they would not have gotten away with so much for so long. If people had listened to poor “James,” when he was abused at 11-years-old, the now 60-year-old man abused by Father Theodore McCarrick, would not have had to suffer in silence for decades. “James tried to tell his parents,” Morse wrote. “They did not believe him, against the word of a respected priest. James began getting into trouble, doing alcohol and drugs. The family thought Father McCarrick could straighten him out. They encouraged him to spend more time with their son.”