Exorcisms on Skype?

October 14, 2014 • 12:09 pm

If you click the screenshot below, you’ll go to a segment of the Daily Show showing a priest who does exorcisms via Skype.  The whole bit looks like a comedy spoof, but I’m almost certain it’s for real, even though the interviewer clearly thinks the whole thing is ludicrous. (Thanks to several readers for the link.) The priests are remarkably forthcoming.

We should ponder that, in this day and age, the Catholic Church still believes in demonic possession.

Screen Shot 2014-10-14 at 10.40.05 AM

And a Skype exorcism costs a “donation” of $295. After all, render unto God what is God’s.

And if this is a spoof, somebody tell me!

 

71 thoughts on “Exorcisms on Skype?”

  1. This isn’t a joke. Bob Larson is a globe-trotting self-proclaimed exorcist who is sometimes assisted by his daughters and a team of teenage exorcists. I’ve been to one of is talks and exorcisms in Times Square, NYC! He’s also a prolific author. His books are pretty interesting. I just produced a new occult series that delves into this very business of spiritual deliverance.

  3. I was hoping it was a spoof but it’s for real. And I love the look of the priest right at the end after Jessica Williams mentioned the $295. A kind of guilty “you got me” look, but not quite.

    1. So that’s the price of brand-new shiny soul (plus labour, parts and tax), assuming the victim doesn’t get tortured to death by overenthusiastic local helpers while the instigator is safely in another jurisdiction.
      It seems pretty cheap, are you sure those are union rates?

  4. Serious question … if you really believed that exorcisms were real … what possible objection could you have to exorcisms over Skype?

    1. If physical presence isn’t required, then this guy could just do one exorcism per week and get rid of all the current demons, worldwide. Technically, universe-wide. So why does he need to treat clients individually?

      1. Agreed. In the absence of a scriptural prohibition on VoIP, I don’t see how any devout Catholic could object to this craziness. As far as I’m aware, the Catechism does not dispute the efficacy of Skype.

      3. If physical presence isn’t required then shouldn’t a recording do just as well? Or perhaps a few jpgs and an audio recording?

        We can whip one together, sell them for $10 a pop and donate the fee’s to Planned Parenthood. Or just give them away so this guy doesn’t get a single dime, ever.

        The power of Christ compels me.

      4. Does the power of exorcism obey the Speed Limit (you know – the one concerning light and a vacuum), or does it travel faster as, errr, “spooky action at a distance” ?

      2. Got my cats herded!
        😸 GRINNING CAT FACE WITH SMILING EYES ;
        😹 CAT FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY ;
        😺 SMILING CAT FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH ;
        😻 SMILING CAT FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES ;
        😼 CAT FACE WITH WRY SMILE ;
        😽 KISSING CAT FACE WITH CLOSED EYES ;
        😾 POUTING CAT FACE ;
        😿 CRYING CAT FACE ;
        🙀 WEARY CAT FACE ;

          1. They’re unicode characters ; on a windoze machine I think you press Alt+(type out the code on the number pad) ; there’s something similar on Macs I guess.
            On my Linux box, I use a firefox plug-in called BBCodeXtra, which will paste in things according to a configuration file, and in that made a custom code called “Cats”, containing the following :

            & #x1F638; U+1F638 ; GRINNING CAT FACE WITH SMILING EYES ;
            & #x1F639; U+1F639 ; CAT FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY ;
            & #x1F63A; U+1F63A ; SMILING CAT FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH ;
            & #x1F63B; U+1F63B ; SMILING CAT FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES ;
            & #x1F63c; U+1F63c ; CAT FACE WITH WRY SMILE ;
            & #x1F63d; U+1F63d ; KISSING CAT FACE WITH CLOSED EYES ;
            & #x1F63e; U+1F63e ; POUTING CAT FACE ;
            & #x1F63f; U+1F63f ; CRYING CAT FACE ;
            & #x1F640; U+1F640 ; WEARY CAT FACE ;
            (I’ve broken the HTML entities by putting a space after each ampersand, for it to work you need to remove each of those spaces. Or even “s/& /&/” if you want it in … is that an AWK-ism, or a SED-ism? I can’t remember. SED-ism, I think.) Each line contains the HTML entity, it’s expression in text as a unicode reference (“U+blah”), and the unicode name.
            If all else fails, put it in a text file and copy & paste.

          2. Yeah, I’ve done it on my old Windoze, but must fiddle w my Mac. Thanks.

            Typo ergo sum Merilee

            >

  7. I knew this had to be Bob Larson. Isn’t he the father of the teen exorcists? He has been trying to market them for some time, without much success I may add. At least, they haven’t been on my radar lately.

    1. $295/hour would work out to about $600,000/year if it was a full time gig. Obviously it’s not, but my point is that with this price, they can do only a few exorcisms per week, stay under the media spotlight, and still be “successful.” I think the average US income is something like 50k/year; that’s a mere 3 exorcisms/week.

    2. Teenage daughters being touted out for $300 sessions on Skype? What could I possibly be thinking of?

      1. I think I know exactly what you’re thinking of. And it does you no credit. Nor me, of course.

        It’d probably be quite biblical, though.

        🙂

          1. I grant you that most religionists fail to read the bobble. It’s long, after all.

            But surely some of them who started to read it got as far as Lot offering up his daughters to be raped by a mob, a story so appalling and repulsive that one should abandon that faith in a heartbeat. Lot was the most moral dude in town, the only one worthy of being saved?

            It’s a puzzlement.

  8. I’ve heard of online and phone confession, so why not. If the Pope can send twits and go on Farcebook, why not exorcise online too? In fact, the more the Church goes online, the less direct contact there’ll be with altar boys. Sounds like a win-win.

  9. My only experience with exorcism is through having watched The Exorcist in college. But I can see the advantages of the Skype approach:

    1-No pea soup in the eyes.
    2-you can always mute when the demon starts talking about your mom.
    3-You won’t be tempted to invite said demon into you, at which time you’d feel the need to jump out the window.

    1. I’d worry the demon would travel through the Internet infrasrtucture and possess my computer. Or seriously mess up a backbone somewhere and screw with out bank accounts.

      1. You can configure your firewall to handle this – or is it just daemons it handles. I can’t ever remember.

        1. Yes daemons – I will need to set up a daemon to watch for the demon, a daemon to send me a message about the incoming demon & a daemon to exorcise the demon then tell me the demon is gone.

          Indeed, perhaps daemons could take on exorcisms of demons over the internet!

          2. I was waiting for that opening to be taken. It has a certain inevitability about it.

    1. Exorcism over IPoAC? there’ an RFC for that (#1149, and derivatives #2549 and #6214). Well, the adaptation is pretty trivial.

  11. Well I once had an offer from a new age guy who tried to sell me his course on how to astral travel and have a spiritual out-of-body experience via Skype. I must say though, the most ridiculous stunt I’ve heard, is a friend of mine told me once a televangelist offers online healing prayers. What you apparently do is, after you “give your love gift”, you then get prayed for, and, while you’re getting prayed for, to receive your healing you must put your hand on the computer screen to receive the healing energy from the prayer. I sometimes think, I know there are good arguments against it, but maybe most of the world still really holds onto religion because of the fear of Pascal’s wager. Maybe they reason that its better to believe in some god instead of no god at all.

    2. Well I once had an offer from a new age guy who tried to sell me his course on how to astral travel and have a spiritual out-of-body experience via Skype.

      That seems trivially easy to test. “Okay, you astral travel to me and tell me what’s behind my monitor. Then I’ll buy your course.”

    1. Great, that means he’ll do it wrong and some demon will get loose and haunt my computer. No wonder my automated back ups have been failing. I thought it was a bad FireWire cable but now I know the truth. I should sue that guy!

  13. Could people sue him if they’re not in a safe area when doing their Skype session and they start falling over, foaming etc? And what does he do when that happens so they can’t talk back to him, does he start screaming louder, or hang up thinking he’s now got them in the state (and they’ve paid of course?) I think you guys in America, for your talk radio, you have such weird shows, how about a radio show with live exorcisms starring him-) Love listening to those medium show podcasts where callers call in and they think the medium has something so profound even though the medium just says stupid generalities “Even though you might have had difficult times with your mother, know that now she really, really loves you and is really, really happy.”

  14. Absolutely not a spoof. The Daily Show might call themselves “fake news show”, but they don’t do spoofs. Their interviewees are almost always genuine, this case included. The interviewers are often making fun of them, but the people they interview are not in on the joke.

  15. “And a Skype exorcism costs a “donation” of $295. After all, render unto God what is God’s.”

    And of course the good priest pays no taxes on that “donation.”

    I spent a summer working on a roofing crew. Me and 2 other guys in the Florida summer heat 5 days a week.
    This charlatan pays no taxes on his $300, while I paid taxes and took home less than $100 per job for literally putting a roof over someone’s head.
    That’s just BS.

  16. Justice Scalia believes in the devil, so presumably he believes that one can be possessed. It would be interesting if this exorcist were sued for, say, failure to cast out a demon (perhaps he offers a money-back guarantee?), and it went all the way to the supreme court.

  17. Does the uniform pricing mean all possessions are equal? That there’s a cookie-cutter demonic manifestation? Very disappointing.

    Demons should be more industrious. Try harder. Possess more fiercely.

    We could earn higher margins with that approach. Bronze (age), Silver and Gold level services, with volume discounts for choirs and/or Jesuit universities.Two for the price of one. Coupons!

  18. I don’t think this is the Catholic Church. According to The Week:

    http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/269841/speedreads-the-daily-show-discovers-exorcism-by-skype

    “On Monday night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart applauded Pope Francis and the bishops of the Catholic Church for their “surprisingly conciliatory language toward same-sex partnerships.” But then he handed the show to correspondent Jessica Williams for a look at religion, technology, and exorcisms. Yes, exorcism — and she found a “man of the cloth,” Rev. Bob Larson, who performs exorcisms over Skype.

    Oddly, Williams makes it sound like Larson is a Catholic priest, rather than an Evangelical televangelist with his own Spiritual Freedom Church, and Larson plays along, wearing a Roman clerical collar. But she also speaks with a real Catholic exorcist, Fr. Gary Thomas, who thinks doing an exorcism over the internet is kooky and dangerous.</b? Williams is skeptical of the whole exorcism thing — Larson is pretty fringy, and Thomas has some interesting theories about Beyoncé — but if you get past the snark, there's a pretty substantive debate about the limits of technology in faith."

    You might want to remove the Catholics Behaving Badly tag from the post, in that case. Different group altogether, it seems.

    Also, that last sentence:

    “…but if you get past the snark, there’s a pretty substantive debate about the limits of technology in faith.”

    I think they mistyped the “insubstantial” in front of the debate and accidentally placed its antonym there as a result.

    1. Oh no. The Catholics Behaving Badly tag is perfectly appropriate. The RCC Fr figured just as prominently in the piece as the other wacko. Granted, though, that Jerry’s brief post is more about the Skype exorciser wacko.

      For a good laugh, several actually, it really is worth the time to watch the clip when you have a chance. In my opinion the Catholic Fr was very much more wacko than the Skype guy. The Skype guy seemed to me to be more like a carny scalping marks, i.e. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t believe the shit he is selling, and is in it purely for the easy money. The look he gave Williams at the end when she made a smart ass comment about the money looked to me something like “if you screw up my scam I am going to fit you with some concrete boots and dump you in the river”. Though I suppose it could have been something more like, “How dare you scorn my god, in better times I would have had you burned at the stake.”

    1. the power of McAfee compels you…..’

      What happened? Did your computer crash? That’ll be the power of McAfee for you.

    1. Well Linux is the one with all the daemons.

      OTOH, Windoze comes to you straight from the Evil Empire…

  21. After all, render unto God what is God’s.

    So that’s why people were so eager to put “In God We Trust” on our currency! Makes perfectly perverted sense….

    b&

  23. Is it only me or does this whole scene strike anyone else as incredibly rich in irony?

    Here we have a guy sitting in front of a machine that is an application of some of the finest technologies and techniques that the various branches of science have to offer: From electrical engineering and chemistry over mathematics to quantum physics.

    A machine that demonstrates the power of science and critical thinking and he is using it to perform magical rituals.

    1. But it’s – quantum!

      (Deepak appears in a puff of smoke)

      D’you suppose this guy could exorcise Deepak?

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