The Exorcist Files

Damn! I thought the Catholic Church was going all reality TV, teaming up with the Discovery Channel to fight and cast out demons where ever they may be found.

According to the original reports in Entertainment Weekly, The Vatican signed off on a show with the church's real exorcists to tell stories of their battles with the dark side. While it seems like the show would be recreations of "actual" exorcisms, rather than watching Fathers Merrin and Karras wage war against Linda Blair on live TV, it still seemed a bit of bizarre programming for the church to be involved in.

Now the Los Angeles Times is reporting The Vatican isn't actually an active participant in the show -- the Pope hasn't given it his blessing so to speak -- but they haven't disavowed it either. It is a far cry however from the imprimatur Discovery initially said the church had given the program. The TV executives now say they only met in an unofficial capacity with Vatican staff and never intended to imply it was "sanctioned" by the church.

I'm not much into dramatizations of real events as it is, much preferring the real thing itself, so I doubt I would have watched it anyway. Now there's even less reason to do so. Besides, I thought we just had The Last Exorcism in the movies?