Word: sermone
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...Gospel text for the day was familiar enough: Matthew 4, depicting the devil's threefold temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. But the Sunday sermon, delivered last week by New York's John Cardinal O'Connor, quickly became a headline grabber. To illustrate the reality of evil and give the biblical theme a contemporary twist, O'Connor recited what he termed "gruesomely realistic" portions of The Exorcist, the 1971 novel (and later film) that drew upon accounts of hundreds of exorcisms. Moreover, after Mass the Cardinal revealed to reporters that priests had been authorized to perform two exorcisms...
That might have been enough for many preachers, but O'Connor wanted to give the devil his full due. He warned in his sermon that "diabolically instigated violence is on the rise" and asserted that heavy-metal rock music can "help trap people, especially teenagers," into dabbling in disgraceful Satanist practices. In particular, the Cardinal denounced rocker Ozzy Osbourne's tune Suicide Solution ("Wine is fine but whiskey's quicker/ Suicide is slow with liquor . . . Suicide is the only way out./ Don't you know what it's really about...
Satanism? Exorcism? Was O'Connor seriously suggesting that demons were loose in the land? To be sure, the Cardinal did say in his sermon that demonic possession is "very rare," and that exorcisms are not conducted unless psychological or medical possibilities are first ruled out as explanations for extreme behavior. Still, the fact that they are performed at all seemed remarkable in an age when literal belief in demons is widely viewed by Roman Catholic theologians as a naive medieval holdover. (Among Protestants, exorcism is confined mostly to missionaries in areas where spirit-possession cults are common, and to Pentecostalists...
...minute sermon, the Rev. Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naude said that although he was brought up to believe in apartheid, he gradually decided that the system conflicted fundamentally with Christian values...
...with? Answer: sloppy theology. That is precisely the theme of a new anthology, The Agony of Deceit, published by Chicago's fundamentalistic Moody Bible Institute (284 pages; $12.95). The book's twelve contributors (including former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who criticizes faith healing) have scoured books and sermon tapes and found the TV preachers guilty of egregious doctrinal heresy...