I've been hearing a lot about kooks who think a loved one is possessed by Moloch and decide to physically clobber said loved one to death. This is not about debating whenever exorcism & possession is real or not, this is about methods used.
Take a gander at this Listverse article:
http://listverse.com/2014/02/04/10-deadly-exorcisms/Now, what the heck is wrong with these people? Why PHYSICAL violence & TORTURE? What's wrong with the old standbys of prayer, chanting, laying on of hands, rebuking the entity, etc.
Some of the above-mentioned brutality-fests were committed by Christian pastors. You'd think Christian pastors would stick with the non-violent methods I mentioned (I mean, Jesus just rebuked the spooks and they left the person) but noooooo,
these pastors committed
hardcore torture-murder.I used to be a Roman Catholic who attended Catholic Mass, I also used to be a frumie who went to "charis-maniac holy-roller"- type churches (Don't worry, I've since eschewed conservative/frumie-thinking and is now a ShaktaPagan who's as progressive as they come).
I've never seen a Catholic exorcism (though I'd imagine it might be like in
The Exorcist.).
The holy-roller "deliverance rituals" I saw in both Mega Churches & Non-Denominational storefronts consisted of "Lay on hands, rebuke demon & pray a lot (but
humanely restrain the person if they go nuts)".
All in all, ANY FORM of physical violence was NEVER considered.
But there's all these cases involving some serious hardcore beatings, torture, mutilations, drowning, crushing, suffocating, biting, and even sexual assault. WHY?!! Even if these nuts are amateurs, they should at least have some vague pop-culture understanding of what an exorcism is....usually intense but nonviolent with prayer, chanting & stuff.
I have yet to find an explanation for this phenomenon. Anybody have any theories as to why. "They be crazy", while obvious, is not enough.