Spielberg to Streep: My land is haunted, I think. Have you got an exorcist? Streep, a veteran of devil movies, did.

One person who wouldn’t be surprised to find even Spielberg and Co. consulting the Church on matters undreamt of in their special effects is Father Jeffrey Grob, vicar for canonical affairs and judicial vicar for the Archdiocese of Chicago. An expert in the Rite of Exorcism, Father Grob received a doctoral degree in 2007 after writing a thesis on the revision of the Rite of Exorcism.

Ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1992, Father Grob was born in Cross Plains, WI. He studied for the priesthood at the Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus, OH, and University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein Seminary, Mundelein, IL. Today, in his capacity as vicar for canonical affairs and judicial vicar of the archdiocese, Father Grob has plenty of first-hand knowledge of the Rite of Exorcism and the ministry which serves those suffering spiritual affliction.

Fr. Grob is one of three new bishop-appointees for Chicago, by the way. No cracks, please, about how desperately the archdiocese can use a specialist in exorcism.

He hops on the evil act.

Trump, who was speaking at a roundtable campaign event in Las Vegas, used Saturday’s gruesome shooting to highlight his campaign’s “law and order” message, while also calling out Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as weak on crime.

“He’s not strong for law and order and everybody knows that,” Trump said of Biden during at a “Latinos for Trump” event. “When you see a scene like happened just last night in California with the two police people – a woman, a man – shot at stone cold short range.”

The president added: “We’re looking for him…and when we find that person, we’ve got to get much faster with our courts and we’ve got to get much tougher with our sentencing.”

He’s right about Biden, recently seen and heard telling his handlers to turn up his teleprompter so he could answer a question.

Viral.

No one other than the shooter is responsible for the gunfire ambush Saturday of two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies as they sat in their patrol car. But the same can’t be said for the protesters who blocked the entrance to the hospital where the two are being treated, and chanted “we hope they die.” The latter is a cultural poison nurtured by the left-wing anti-police movement sweeping the country.

The two deputies were “ambushed by a gunman in a cowardly fashion” in the Compton neighborhood, said Sheriff Alex Villaneuva at a press conference. The deputies hadn’t been identified by name as we write this, but press reports say one is a 31-year-old mother and the other a 24-year-old man. Both have been with the department a little more than a year.

Reform?

Policing reform is impossible amid a war on police. Mr. Garcetti and other mayors should abandon their cuts to law-enforcement budgets and express regular solidarity for cops on the beat. Without such a signal, police will continue to retreat from enforcing the law in crime-ridden neighborhoods, and those who suffer most will be the law-abiding in the likes of Compton and Flatbush.

Including Chicago’s.

Ten days ago from the horse’s mouth:

Should people who aren’t sick be tested for Covid-19? In August the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention revised its guidance to suggest focusing on the elderly and patients with symptoms. One may be excused for thinking that more testing is always better, but that isn’t true. Anyone can be infected with the virus, but there is a thousandfold difference in the risk of death between the young and the old. Testing strategy should reflect that.

A diller and dollar, if not every day then rather often, Science changes her mind, or at least her “settled” focus. Ain’t she grand?

A word for our time, when the spectre fear stalks the land.

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

Jack Mack done nicely in S-T.

I popped into his Lawndale quarters in the summer of ’68, found him and Rollie Smith, another SJ scholastic, showing signs of being beaten up. One of the locals, whom they had befriended, had done it.

An older man, an ally, said he’d go home and get his “piece,” but Jack had said no. They had to stick by the assailant, a young man whom they had staying with them, Jack explained with a smile.

The assailant got over his outburst later. Jack and the others stayed with the work, needless to say.

I think we have here what a literary agent would call “an important book.”

David Pierre of Media Report has published an illuminating new book, The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church. Pierre and his work are often ignored because he is unjustly accused of dismissing accusations of clergy sex abuse, en masse. That charge is not true. Instead, Pierre stresses an often-forgotten truth: “a false accusation is truly an affront to those who genuinely suffered as the result of their horrendous abuse.”

When the first hints of clergy sexual abuse began to surface in the late-80s, I served as an advisor to many of the good, new bishops being appointed. On this topic, I counseled the bishops:

• First, do not call this pedophilia – because, for the most part, it is same-sex activity between a cleric and a post-pubescent young man; that’s the truth and, the truth always sets us free. “Pedophilia” conjures up images of five- and six-year-old boys. Further, if the sinful activity had been properly labeled, ironically, the secular media wouldn’t have given it much coverage, since they always promote same-sex relations.

• Second, never settle any case out of court for a variety of reasons, not least that while a pastoral plea demands a pastoral response, a legal challenge demands a legal response. Moreover, when a financial settlement is made, that more than suggests guilt, thus damaging irreparably an innocent priest’s reputation. Regrettably, most bishops listened, instead, to diocesan attorneys and insurance companies.

Instead they listened to lawyers . . .

Peace prize or not, the orange man has pulled off a real-life prize of no mean proportions.

President Trump’s announcement today that Bahrain will be the latest Arab country to recognize Israel starts to make it look like we could be on the way to a Mideast Peace. It would be unwise to get ahead of events, but it would also be unwise not to recognize at least the possibility that is coming into view. Predicting this development Thursday, Mr. Trump declared, “You could have peace in the Middle East.”

The announcement by the White House today comes in advance of what was already shaping up as a remarkable event for Tuesday, when Mr. Trump is due to host at the White House the signing of the entente between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Prime Minister Netanyahu will be there, as will U.A.E.’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Now, the White House says, Bahrain will be there, as well.

Under the mainstream radar, I’d say.

She had a vision.

“Mother Earth is angry,” Pelosi said. “She’s telling us — whether she’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, whatever it is — that the climate crisis is real and has an impact.”

Time for some human sacrifice:

H/T Hannibal Lecture.

As you sow, so shall ye reep.

A new poll from Gallup and the Knight Foundation has found that the vast majority of Americans believe the media is biased.

What, pray tell, did those editors, reporters etc. expect?