2023-07-26 21:50:33 ¶ ●

MAG 19-20 (the statement of Father Edwin Burroughs) is so interesting to me because it highlights the desire to profane that which you love.

the inability to pray, forced bible verses, and botched confession are all perversions of his vocation; Bethany O’Connor tells him that whatever had possessed her wanted his ‘faith’. Father Burroughs states both that he’d been driven to despair and that he still believes in God. even in the ‘depths of [his] mania’, the lights of the Oratory on Woodstock were comforting to him, and he looked for comfort again in the liturgies of the final mass. in the end, it is unclear if he still can’t pray or if he doesn’t try anymore. but there is never any real fear of his faith, and he doesn’t lose it entirely, so I can only assume that the entity possessing him simply wanted to violate/mar his faith.

and this violation, like others in the podcast, happens by choice. even when he knew something was wrong, that he could have left, Father Burroughs proceeded with the mass. he says it ‘felt like the direst of blasphemies. I didn’t stop, though.’