Episode Details

• Indeed, “enchantment” is something that we have special trouble understanding. Latin Christendom has tended more and more to privilege belief, as against unthinking practice. And “secular” people have inherited this emphasis, and often propound an “ethics of belief,” where it can be seen as a sin against science or epistemic decency to believe in God. So we tend to think of our differences from our remote forbears in terms of different beliefs, whereas there is something much more puzzling involved here. It is clear that for our forbears, and many people in the world today who live in a similar religious world, the presence of spirits, and of different forms of possession, is no more a matter of (optional, voluntarily embraced) belief than is for me the presence of this computer and its keyboard at the tips of my fingers.

AUDIO/VIDEO: In 1977, media prophet Marshall McLuhan – discussed CIA and FBI surveillance, and then spun it into one of the most mind-bending comments on identity in the digital age I’ve ever heard.

• Why did that woman go and seek out a Franciscan Friar?
• Do we in today’s time think to call a Priest to bring any of our loved ones back to life?
• Do we believe that God could grant us a miracle?