Do demons uses "rights talk"?
The Yale educated psychiatric exorcist's consultant Dr. Richard Gallagher's book, Demonic Foes, speaks of demons demanding their "rights." Dr. Gallagher, who is a scientific adviser to the International Association of Exorcists, wrote:
"Some demons exhibit a strong strong sense of entitlement, maybe the chief personality feature held in common by demons... demons have been known to claim outright "legal' rights over the possessed" (Page 143)
Of world leaders, apparently the person who uses "rights talk" the most is Francis as he showed again yesterday. [https://aleteia.org/2021/04/06/popes-april-prayer-intention-basic-human-rights-for-all/]
Is "rights talk" incompatible with Christian doctrine?
Liberal democracy scholar Walter Berns states that "rights discovered by Hobbes and Locke... presuppose the state of nature, the state of nature is incompatible with Christian doctrine... 'the first commandment and great commandment' is love of God... In the state of nature, however, man is not obliged to love anyone, but merely to preserve himself." ("Liberty: The God that Failed," Page 66)
Is "rights talk" some "kind of deformed variety of Christian thought"?
Peter Toon said "rights talk" may be "deformed" Catholic thinking and Protestant "individualist[ic] reading and interpreting [of] the Bible":
French scholar, Michel Villey, who studied the origins of “rights talk” in the late medieval period, held that while rights theories are derived from Christian morality, they are an aberration, a kind of deformed variety of Christian thought.
A careful student of modern Catholic “rights” language and claims is left wondering whether anything of lasting value has been achieved by the adoption and use of them. This is because it seems to be nearly impossible to use consistently a Christian “rights” language that has a totally different foundation from the “rights talk” in normal use in the political and social spheres. It is to be noted that the Catholic Church can and does already make the same points concerning the dignity and worth of man through and in Jesus Christ, the new Adam, without using “rights talk.” However, the “rights” language is now incorporated in The Catechism of the Catholic Church as official teaching and thus seems to be here to stay. Time will tell whether it is a huge mistake or a winning number.
Popes before this century refused to use “rights talk,” seeing it as an aberration of the Enlightenment. And of course those influenced by Leo Strauss (e.g., Walter Berns in his In Defense of Liberal Democracy, 1984) have maintained that the very idea of natural rights is incompatible with Christian doctrine.
Turning to conservative Protestants and biblically-minded Evangelicals, it seems that they have absorbed much from the “rights talk” of Western culture. This can be seen via a careful analysis of some of their modern biblical paraphrases where “rights talk” comes into the translation, of their claims concerning individualist reading and interpreting the Bible, of their ways of speaking of their “relationship” with God in “my quiet time,” of their developing teaching and practice of divorce and second marriages (serial monogamy). [https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=11-06-031-f]
Brian Tierney holds that there are three views of "rights talk" among academics on the subject:
- Doctor
of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt
the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church
in such a situation:
"[T]he Pope... WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said "the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church."
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
- "If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
- "Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
- LifeSiteNews, "Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial
weight behind communion for adulterers," December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows "sexually active adulterous couples
facing 'complex circumstances' to 'access the sacraments of
Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'"
- On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
"The AAS statement... establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia
has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense."
- On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
"Francis' heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the
Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters
magisterial documents."
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
- Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: "212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted...Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
- Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times "Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003": http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]