As you may already be aware, I am somebody who a) takes the reality of the demonic seriously (since Jesus and the apostles do), b) thinks exorcists are a legit ministry in the Church and c) thinks celebrity exorcists are a huge bane and plague on the Church who need to be silenced by their superiors as the quacks and grifters they are.
Case in point:
This is the latest tattoo I am planning to not get.
This stupid AI art accompanied an even stupider article over on the Book of Face appealing to the biggest humbug in the exorcist grift of my lifetime, Fr. Gabriele Amorth. He was the archetypal grifting celebrity exorcist, claiming to have performed 60,000 exorcisms. If you believe that, you are a living laboratory demonstration of why celebrity exorcists are a plague on the Church and should never be trusted. Jimmy Akin, back when the number was only 30,000, calculated that this came to nine exorcisms every single day for nine solid years. Fr. Amorth died a few years back, but I am highly skeptical he doubled his already preposterous claim in the few years he had after Jimmy wrote.
Anyway, the article claimed that tattoos are “portals to the demonic”, etc. Evidence for this?
“Shut up,” he explained. – Ring Lardner, Jr.
Meanwhile, there is a genuine (and minor) office of exorcist in the Church, Every diocese is supposed to have one. But the thing about real exorcists is that you’ve never heard of them because they are guys doing their jobs quietly and humbly. When Jesus performed exorcisms he tended to keep it on the downlow. Celebrity exorcists are a bane on the witness of the Church.
A reader, still a bit nervous what with the invocation of priestly authority, on this matter, asked in response:
What is your educated and informed take on tattoos, in line with Church teaching? In particular are religious tattoos (eg St Michael, Sacred Heart) done with the right reason ok/not an occasion of sin or a portal opening hell?
Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about tattoos:
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In short, it is a trivial matter and not to be bothered about.
To be sure, Mosaic law has some prohibitions of tattoos much as it has prohibitions against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. But these appear to be cultural restrictions aiming at telling Israel, “Don’t imitate your pagan neighbors, who do these things.” With the coming of the gospel, such ceremonial and culture distinctives are set aside and such trivial Gentile practices, like so much else from sacred trees to haloes to wedding rings are baptized and become small ways of honoring God.
People get tattoos for all sorts of reasons and many of them are honorable and motivated by love of God and neighbor. What opens portals to hell are sins, not tattoos. Indeed, if Reactionary Catholics damning tattoos as intrinsically “demonic” were not so incredibly ignorant of their own history, they would know that the Crusaders they revere often got tattoos to mark their visit to Jerusalem. Something to pay very close attention to with Reactionary Catholic fears of the demonic is how closely they are associated, not with sin, but with what is seen by white conservatives as brown and foreign. Tattoos are among these in the current hour here in America: very Latino and therefore “demonic” for a religious culture that cannot tell the difference between the Faith and the white supremacy of the MAGA cult. Don’t get snookered by it.
Me: I won’t get a tattoo, not for any spiritual, moral, or aesthetic reason, but because I intensely dislike being stabbed for any reason not to do with crucial medical necessity.
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9 Responses
The Devil is real and dangerous. That said, I get annoyed with people who commit serious sin and then excuse themselves with the statement “the Devil made me do it.” They act like they had no free will and the Devil forced them to commit adultery, steal, etc. They are excusing themselves and blaming the Devil for sinful choices that they themselves made.
We need to take responsibility for our own actions. How can you have sincere repentance if your sin is blamed on others?
I had a Moral Theology professor in the early 80’s who said smoking was immoral because it violated the body, which is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. I feel the same thing is true with tattoos. I’m sure anyone can dispute that or make a theological argument to the contrary. Obviously, even the Catechism has little problem with it.
However, I am the furthest thing from a “Reactionary” Catholic. This is just my feeling about the matter and I do not pretend to tell anyone that their tattoo is not a good thing, but if nothing else, I think it is disgusting to see a woman or a man with an arm or a leg covered with ink.
Leviticus 19:28 is very clear about this: Do not lacerate your bodies for the dead, and do not tattoo yourselves. I am the LORD.
The proscription is very clear, that’s for sure. And it’s from a wider passage about idolatry, so it’s really serious.
But let’s look around, shall we? One verse earlier, Lev 19:27, says: Do not clip your hair at the temples, nor spoil the edges of your beard.
Oh. Frankly, if somebody says that tattoos are forbidden by the Bible and they are clean shaved or have a nicely groomed beard and if they don’t have long hair (or at the very least sidelocks or payot), then they can’t be serious.
But other than the hair (since the person may be bald), there’s also one other verse in Lev 19 that is very useful in such a discussion:
Lev 19:19: …do not put on a garment woven with two different kinds of thread.
The original verse doesn’t mention weaving, it only mentions mixing wool and linen, but the meaning is clear, do not mix things that God intended to be separate.
A lot of modern fabrics are woven with multiple kinds of thread. Cotton in everything except t-shirts has elastane added to make it stretchy. And even t-shirts are not sewn together with cotton thread but use various synthetic threads.
Leviticus 19 is a treasure trove for communal solidarity with the worse off. Funny how people who admonish tattoos have no problem with barriers to the deaf and the blind (Lev 19:14) and find handicapped parking spots or accessible architecture as wasteful and wrong.
As Paul said: If you intend to follow the Mosaic Law, follow *all* of it, do not cherrypick verses that you can weaponize.
I read one of Fr. Amorth’s books a million years ago, and can’t remember anything about it other than it gave me the creeps.
So, here’s the thing: The guy is Italian. He’s a Latin. My Mother-in-Law is Latin and she exaggerates constantly, but it’s part of the charm. They are effusive to make a point. Can’t you just see him gesturing with his hands to punctuate that number? Latins are drama queens. Our problem here is that we are too German/Anglo Saxon.
I peeked at his Wikipedia and he says that ONE person could have thousands of demons (*for we are Legion). How do you quantify an infestation?
I’m not ready to debunk him for his firing-from-the-hip comments about Harry Potter, yoga, or –yes, tattoos, because I think there’s a bit of truth there; magic IS a BAD idea, yoga is very carnal, and people who get ink have been on the fringes of society. Did he encounter some weird recurring patterns? I bet he did. Maybe the religion-themed tattoos stemmed from the possessed person seeking help via art before going in for the big guns.
I say all of this knowing that Harry Potter is good for most, yoga is good for people who don’t have certain problems, and tattoos? Well, four of my sons have them–and my eldest has the most epic Seraphim on his thigh, based upon a Chumash depiction of what a Seraphim looks like, on the ceiling of the Santa Barbara Mission.
Anyway, I’m not losing any sleep about this one.
What’s been bugging me is the final paragraph in your post yesterday about the Republican party being the party of sex predators. It’s not that I’m not disagreeing, it’s that I have a really hard time believing that the Dem party doesn’t have the same stats.
None of my children have tattoos. I consider this an accomplishment.
Oh good. I’m not a fan, not at all. But when I consider all of the ridiculous things about fashion that people have gotten excited/hot and bothered about I say “don’t get too upset.” Upon cross examination, my Portlandian eldest declared “millennials are so poor they can’t even take their art with them, unless it’s upon their own skin.”
I kind of get that. 🔥
Fr. Mike Schmitz got a tattoo. I’m not a fan for aesthetic reasons (sometimes cute on young firm skin, not so cute on old wrinkly skin, some full sleeve tattoos render the person grotesque to my eye, and some of the ones up the neck and on the face make me cringe as I think it must have really hurt to have it done and it takes attention away from the person themselves, much like heavy makeup detracts from the beautiful person underneath it all) and I figure the next generation might not want them if their parents and grandparents had them, because who wants to look like their parents and/or grandparents?!? I found Fr. Vincent Lampert to be a reasonable exorcist – he seems humble – there are YouTube interviews of him online. He definitely does not brag about the numbers of exorcisms he has participated in.
There are legitimate Exorcists authorized by the Bishop of a Diocese, who perform legitimate exorcisms. These are usually few and far between. “celebrity exorcists” claiming to perform thousands of exorcisms are baloney.
They are not legitimate exorcists, they are entertainers.
If you’ve ever been into a jail (which I have, as a visitor), most hardened criminals have bodies covered in tattoos. On rare occasions, when they find Jesus, they often want to remove them. I agree that sin is the problem, and tattoos themselves don’t make someone sinful. However, it seems that when the devil gets a grip, people do tend to mark themselves. Furthermore, and more controversially, I find that those who have drifted away from the faith often move toward tattoos. It may be the cultural milieu, it may be correlation ≠ causation, but rarely is it the Spirit of God working in their lives.