✣ Highlights from the week online
Are Britain-Holy See relations in jeopardy? The relationship between Britain and the Holy See has flourished in recent decades, said Catherine Pepinster at the Guardian website. “And yet that newfound understanding may be in jeopardy.” Pepinster, a former editor of The Tablet and author of the new book The Keys and the Kingdom: the British and the Papacy from John Paul II to Francis, said that “Talking to Vatican diplomats, it is apparent that they think Britain... has regrettably turned inward: not so sure of itself on the world stage, its priorities increasingly domestic. And Rome is deeply alarmed by any assault on the EU – given the European project, thanks to its founders Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, was shaped by the Catholic theologies of solidarity and subsidiarity.” Terrifying warnings from a London exorcist In an article for Catholic World Report KV Turley visited veteran London exorcist Fr Jeremy Davies. The priest, who possessed an “air of peace” and “imperturbable calm”, was “the type of Englishman for whom the word ‘phlegmatic’ seems to have been made”, Turley said. Their conversation, he said, forced him to consider not the “Hollywood fantasy of spinning heads” but the “real evil lurking in people’s lives” – when people “make a decision, or accept an argument, that moves them away from Christ”. For Fr Davies, Turley said, the work of an exorcist was not an “isolated practice reserved for exceptional cases”, but “part of an ongoing struggle in which every soul is engaged”. Liberating someone through exorism is “just the beginning of a soul’s re-entry into this spiritual combat, in which any future lethargy will continue to be fatal”, Turley wrote. And all of us have to fight. Fr Davies told him: “With our propensity to sin, we need to be more aware that no one is truly free from demonic influence.” The brawny superhero based on Jesus Christ Millions of people are excited by the arrival of the latest film in the Thor superhero franchise – Thor: Ragnarok – but how many of them realise that the character of Thor is based on Christ, asked Scott Smith on his eponymous blog. “There are some striking parallels between the Norse myth of Thor at Ragnarok and the biblical prophesies of the Messiah,” he wrote. “Is it possible, since Christ preceded the Norse myths, that Norse myths were actually informed by the Gospel?” Outlining some of the most striking parallels, he noted that “1) Thor is the son of the father-god, Odin. Similarly, Jesus is the Son of God, the Father. 2) The final battle between good and evil in Norse myth is at Ragnarök and between Thor and the serpent, Jörmungandr. The final battle between good and evil in Christianity is at the Cross between Jesus and the serpent, Satan.”
