Those Wacky Catholics!

The da Vinci Code!

Stigmata!

Fasting!

Exorcism!

I took note of a link that a Facebook friend had put up to a site called The Daily Beast. The piece is entitled "Bobby Jindal's Secret Past" and sure enough, the salacious opening proved more of what was to come:

Did you know about the exorcism? The name that came from The Brady Bunch? Those and other surprising facts about one of America’s fastest rising young politicians.

It seems that in 1994, Governor Jindal wrote a piece for New Oxford Review entitled "Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare." The entire article can be read for the price of the subscription to the NOR but my point is with the first article at TDB.

During his years at Brown University, Jindal pursued his Catholic faith with unbridled zeal. Jindal became emotionally involved with a classmate named Susan who had overcome skin cancer and struggled to cope with the suicide of a close friend. Jindal reflected in an article for a Catholic magazine (called “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare”) that “sulfuric” scents hovered over Susan everywhere she went. In the middle of a prayer meeting, Jindal claimed that Susan collapsed and began convulsing on the floor. His prayer partners gathered together on the floor, holding hands and shouting, “Satan, I command you to leave this woman!”

Ah, yes - nothing like a little drama to try to suggest that Bobby Jindal is a little . . . well, you know . . . off for pursuing his Catholic faith. And, of course, thanks to Hiollywood and writers like Dan Brown, we all know how "off-center" Catholics are, what with their belief in miracles and hovering saints and - oh my God! - they actually believe there is a Devil, can you imagine?

Yes, I can. Now, this story about Jindal is not new. It was first brought up by Blanco when he ran against her for governor of Louisiana. He called her on it as anti-Catholic bias and rightly so. And it did not bother the nice folks in Louisiana who voted him in ('course, maybe that had more to do with her piss-poor handling of Hurrican Katrina). But expect to see it raised by the left as 2012 approaches. Catholicism has long been a target of mockery.

Read also this article by Dan Brody for more excerpts:

If the Louisiana Governor runs for President in 2012, he’ll have a lot going for him. Fiscal conservatives love him, social conservatives love him and he would literally be a fresh face for the GOP. Not your typical GOP politician if you know what I mean. Plus, he has the intellectual heft to go up against President Obama. But there’s one incident from his past that may scare some folks.

That's right - everything else about Jindal is negated over something "that may scare some folks." Oooh, oooh, what can it be?

I left that classroom with a powerful belief in Mary's intercessions and with many questions about spiritual warfare; I also learned a lasting lesson in hu­mility and the limits of human understanding. Was the purpose of that night served when so many indi­viduals were inducted into the Church? Did I witness spiritual warfare? I do not have the answers, but I do believe in the reality of spirits, angels, and other re­lated phenomena that I can neither touch nor see.