Exorcism is back in the news this week. No, not the new attempt to bring William Peter Blatty's book/movie to Broadway. (How would you like to be in a play where you get a kisser full of projectile vomit six days a week? Twice on Weds and Sats.) No, not the faux attempt to rid the church of pedophile priests. That effort would take the combined skills of Max Von Sydow and David Copperfield. No, this story involves an adventurous priest named Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer.
Father Euteneuer is in the news for attempting an exorcism on a woman in Arlington, VA. The good reverend ran into trouble because the spiritual technique he employed involved the use of his trouser snake. It seemed that the only way Father Euteneuer could exorcise the demon was to push him out with his johnson. These exorcism sessions went on for two years (some demons are craftier than others. Apparently this one was hiding in the lady's who-ha.)
Even the dumbest of believers gets the message eventually and the woman in question (her name has not been released) finally determined that sexual contact might be helping Father Euteneuer with his demon, but it wasn't doing her much good. Adding insult to injury, when the possessed woman had had enough, she took her complaint to, wait for it, the archdiocese of Palm Beach, Fl where Father Euteneuer makes his home. In a parallel universe, the archbishop would immediately call the PBPD and the Rev. gets hauled off in irons to receive a just prison sentence. Ah, but this is our Catholic Church and it appears the only time the clergy call the police is when someone tries to force them to dispense condoms. The woman was "counseled" and provided "spiritual assistance" (you might have thought she'd had enough of that) but the only action taken against Father Euteneuer was suspension of his rights and duties as a priest.
You see, Father Euteneuer has a high profile in the RCC. He was the the leader of Human Life International. This organization is one of the Church's vanguard groups fighting the good fight against abortion and all forms of family planning. (No one asked if intercourse by exorcism was part of the group's code of conduct.) Anxious to keep Father Euteneuer's rather exotic brand of exorcism on the down-low, the archdiocese of Palm Beach did nothing. I know, shocking, right? Anyway, the filing of a $5.3 million lawsuit naming the archbishop of Arlington, VA, where the Exorcist Motel is located, pretty much ended the Church's hopes for containment. (Father Euteneuer was not named in the suit. He had already settled with the woman out of court. It wasn't clear who got custody of the demon.) The archdiocese of Arlington denies that it gave Father Euteneuer permission to perform an exorcism. They didn't mention if they gave him permission to sthupp any member of the congregation.
The details of the seduction/exorcism are as distasteful as they are predictable. Reverend Euteneuer began with the usual laying on of hands and incantations. When that didn't work he tried whispering in the possessed woman's ear. Something like "come out come out wherever you are". When the demon refused to appear, the good father went in after him using his flashlight...again and again for two years. Points for stick-toitive-ness. He even bought the lady a house near his office and gave her a job at the HLI. All Linda Blair ever got was a face full of holy water. Hilariously, a spokesperson for HLI, one Stephen Phelan, swears that boinking and exorcising the membership was never within the scope of Reverend Euteneuer's employment. The fact that the HLI even needed to say it speaks volumes about the state of the RCC in the U.S.
So chalk up another solid gold scandal for our friends in Rome. The church that couldn't shoot straight will need all their fingers to point at the Health and Human Services Administration and the manufactured War on Religion. Anything to avoid dealing with the issue of who is really possessed and where the demons really live.
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