Friday, February 22, 2019

#2148: Ruth Reddens & Earl Fernandes

More anti-abortion activists. Ruth Reddens and Earl Fernandes are some of the local activists of Dayton, Ohio, involved for instance in the 2012 40 Days for Life prayer vigil in front of the Kettering abortion clinic (Reddens was the organizer). Now, anti-abortion activists have held prayer vigils outside the clinic for decades, but Reddens and Fernandes took it one step further, arranging an “exorcism of locality” with exorcism prayers, which are designed to drive evil out of a place, rather than out of a person. “Hopefully, the spiritual battle will be won,” said Reddens. It doesn’t work that way. She did, however, obtain permission to perform the exorcism from Rev. Steve J. Angi, chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Participants to the event would be reading Pope Leo XIII’s Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel (“[s]eize the dragon, the ancient serpent, which is the devil and Satan, bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit, that he may no longer seduce the nations”), a prayer, said Rev. Fernandes, dean of the Athenaeum of Ohio seminary in Cincinnati, that “is said over a place that’s infested with the evil spirit, to remove any evil that might happen to be there.”

Diagnosis: There are legitimate discussions to be had over moral and political issus related to abortion, but your opponents do not have the views they do because of demon possession. Some people ought really not to watch old horror movies.

1 comment:

  1. Would you consider writing "anti-choice" instead of "anti-abortion?" I've never met anyone who is actually pro-abortion.

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