Modern Practice, Archaic Ritual: Catholic Exorcism in America
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Methodologies
3. Background
This exorcist shortage seems to have been addressed around the fall of 1996 as “ten Catholic priests in the United States were appointed to the office of exorcist”—coinciding with Cuneo’s eighteen-month research project (Cuneo 2001, p. 258). “Ten exorcists might not seem like many, especially in a country with a Catholic population of sixty million”, Cuneo notes. “[B]ut American Catholicism probably has more bona fide exorcists at its disposal today than at any given time since the invention of color TV”.Despite the excitement generated by William Peter Blatty and Malachi Martin, no more than one or two American Catholic dioceses at any given time since the mid-seventies had seen fit to have an officially appointed exorcist on call, and the vast majority of requests for exorcism-related help had simply gone unattended.2
The various versions and translations of this Catholic rite are a major point of concern within the next section, given that the latest version is not the only one in use. The second significant event came in 2004 when Pope John Paul II sent a letter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (at that time headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger), “mandating” every bishop to select and train an exorcist for their diocese (Josh at St. John XXIII 2016). Two further letters (c. 2010, 2018) would be sent in the years following, reiterating John Paul II’s mandate. The latter of these, according to one of my collaborators, was sent by Cardinal Robert Sarah, former prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS), and stated “Every diocese must not only have one but you are to supply me the name of that priest”. The third significant event, also in 2004, was that the school of theology at Regina Apostolorum, one of Rome’s most prestigious pontifical universities, devised a special program to not just educate its students on Satanism but also to train a new class of exorcists (Day 2005).3 This event is perhaps the most crucial to the current study. Issues of standardizing practice and discernment, religious declension, media sensationalism, and degrees of esotericism all contribute to the significance of this Roman Catholic course.The exorcisms I attended for this research were among the last in the United States conducted according to the older rite, which had stood substantially unchanged since its publication by Pope Paul V in 1614. The new rite dispenses with most of the baroque epithets (Prince of Darkness, Accursed Dragon, and so forth) that figured prominently in the older one, and it underlines the importance of subjecting all cases of suspected demonization to intensive psychiatric examination.
Shortly after the conference, one exorcist, Fr. Gary Thomas, estimated that there were approximately two dozen trained specialists among the 185 Catholic dioceses in the country (Otis 2010). In my 2018 interview with Fr. Thomas, he estimated that the number is now closer to 150.6 Fr. Vince Lampert, exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and of the same exorcist cohort as Thomas, said in 2019: “I’d say there are at least 175—and more each year” (Hopfensperger 2019).7It was kind of a pre-conference workshop, for tribunal folks, just in processing and handling their cases. More a very preliminary series of talks, just to help tribunal staffs. Just to establish protocols. How do you process questions? All of those things.5
4. American Exorcism Revisited
4.1. Exorcist 1: Fr. Gary Thomas (White Male, Boomer, California)
- Chavez:
- How does Mundelein compare to the training you went through in Rome?
- Thomas:
- There’re strengths and weaknesses in both. In Rome, it’s all taught in Italian. […] I had a translator…and in those days, it was taught every four months on Thursdays. Now they got a clue that, hey, if you want people to come on this thing, you’ve got to be able to teach it in a week. So it’s eight hours a day for a week as opposed to four hours a day taught over four months.
- Chavez:
- What’s the Pope Leo XIII structure?
- Thomas:
- Well, the Pope Leo XIII is taught for 10-day periods, twice a year, for two years. [U]sually you have 50 priests in the class. [One] 10-day session in February. [Another] 10-day session in November. Twice. Then you get a certificate. The weakness of that program or that training [is that] there’s no practicum. In Rome, well, when I went there, there wasn’t. I had to go find it. I had to go find Carmine. And that was not easy to do. [But] I worked it out. [I worked] for three-and-a-half months, three days a week, for three-and-a-half hours at a shot. I saw a lot of exorcisms. And honestly, that’s kind of how I learned to do…
- Chavez:
- …the practicum?
- Thomas:
- Oh, yeah! That’s how I learned to recognize the signs (no. 1) and how to do the rite (no. 2). And, you know, to realize that there are these manifestations [that] can be ferocious. Now, in Italy, they don’t do anything like what we do. They’re all a bunch of lone rangers. Here, like, I have a team. I worked hard to have a team. [Or rather] I have two teams. I have a medical doctor. I have a clinical psychologist/psychiatrist. Actually, I have two psychiatrists. One’s bilingual. And then I have a prayer team and the prayer team was with me at every exorcism and every deliverance. The professionals are not but they’re part of the discernment. Because when people come in…the team now usually handles the interviews. I don’t really. I’m not involved with the interviews like I once was because I got too much going on. And we can have anywhere from five to a dozen people [that] we’re praying over every single month. It takes a hell of a lot of time. Their time too, you know? I get lots of calls and they start off with, “I need an exorcism”. And my pet answer back is, “I don’t do them on demand”. And that may not be what they need or what they wanna hear. Sometimes they’re pleased and sometimes they’re not. But like I say, “I don’t do them on demand”. It doesn’t work that way. And this [exorcism] may not be what you need. We’ll have them evaluated. Usually we use a clinical psychologist rather than a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist comes into play if they’ve been under the care of a psychiatrist and they’re on their meds. Only reason to send for the psychiatrist is to say, “Okay, are they on the right meds and are they on the right dosage?” And, you know, “Is what they’re describing [legitimate]?” “What do you think in light of what they’re sharing with us?” And [we say], “Go have the interview. See what you think”. And then we go from there.
4.2. Exorcist 2: “Fr. Barron” (White Male, Boomer, Southwest)
What I’m talking about is not the use of psychology within the context of sacramental worldview but the abandonment of the world of the spiritual. And the replacing of it with psychology. I think it starts early in the 1960s. When I was in grade school, everything was talked about from a spiritual aspect. When I went into high school in ’65, they had begun to let go of that idea. And they began to talk about the psychological. So instead of holiness, it was healthiness. We want people who are healthy. Now what determines health in this world? Your ability to relate to people, your flexibility, politeness. And sin was soon replaced by illness. Now, that continues from the time I entered high school [and into] my studies at the university and later seminary. In my priest group, you lived with eight or nine guys and then you prayed with them and you talk to them. But it was always about the psychological. The focus was always on “How well integrated are you in here?” “Is there something in you which keeps you from integration?” “Is there something in you that will prevent you from being a leader in the community?” “Is there something in you, something missing, something lacking, something skewed, that would not allow you to deal well with people once you’re ordained?” Those are all the questions they asked. Never said, “Is he praying?” “Going to church?”10
- Chavez:
- Are there ever questions of conversion?
- “Barron”:
- Never, never. The reason I don’t bring it up is because that’s not the issue. The issue is the question of their spiritual health. If they’re Baptist and not practicing then I will give them hell for not being a practicing Baptist. But my answer is “You need to practice your faith”. Whether it is Baptist or Methodist or Lutheran or Assembly of God. […] We often get people who say that they have a spiritual issue and they go to their minister and their minister says, “No, this doesn’t happen”, or “This ended in the Apostolic Age”. Some ministers will go even further. They’ll say: “No, no. The problem is you don’t have a deep enough faith”. And some ministers say, in an a really venal sense, “If you contributed more, this would not happen”. So then they will bounce around going from minister to minister and generally somebody who is in connection with them who is Catholic will say, “You need to see a priest. They know how to deal with this”. So then they’ll come to me and say, “Can I talk to you about this? And I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t know what to say but I got a problem”. And that’s the point at which I talk to them. But no, it’s never dealt with the question of conversion.11
- Chavez:
- What counts as the occult? Is it items or symbols of other religions that are non-Catholic or non-Christian? A Hindu om or a Muslim insignia? What about non-Catholic practices like yoga and meditation?
- “Barron”:
- Somebody who’s a Muslim, with the elements of their faith, somebody who is Buddhist or Daoist with the symbols of their faith, those are not demonic. Yoga was originally conceived as a way of entering into communion with a particular god. So different positions and different mantras were about raising your level of consciousness into a field of divinity in which case, by assuming a posture, repeating or breathing a certain way, you would achieve union with a particular god. […] For most Americans, it’s a way of stretching and limbering and even those people who are very strong devotees of yoga are not going to be aware of the spiritual element to it. Is that occult? No, I don’t believe so.13
4.3. Exorcist 3: Fr. Michael Maginot (White Male, Boomer, Indiana)
- Chavez:
- What are the common reasons for how people become supernaturally afflicted? Is it a crisis of faith? A haunted house? A rough time?
- Maginot:
- Some could be the place, the location, that they are in a house that had some things. That’s kind of a common thing. The second thing, they could have been delving or playing with the occult. […] Did they have their palm read, or tarot cards, or played a Ouija board as a kid? If they say “No, never did anything like that”, then the next thing is, did they ever have a relationship with someone who was kind of into those things? Trying to get them into it? Did they ever give you something or did you ever give them something? If so, [then] they got a cursed object – which happens a lot. That’s a good thing, actually; you don’t need an exorcism, just getting rid of the cursed object is fine. […]
- Chavez:
- What constitutes a cursed object?
- Maginot:
- I would say it has to be something where a demon would want to be attached to it to get at a person. Something that won’t be thrown away. […] It’s usually something like jewelry, or a necklace, or something that’s kind of valuable that, you know, seems precious and not necessarily has demonic signs or anything. It may just be some sort of gem type of thing, you know? […] A lot of it could also be they went to an antique shop, saw this thing at a garage sale. A lot of times they don’t remember that. So I have to say, “Did you ever go to antique shop?” And so it is: “There was this cute little thing”. It’s usually something that just catches their eyes, and then they kind of get enamored and drawn to, you know, but then it’s hard again to get rid of these attachments.15
As it turns out, despite the moral panic, media hysteria, and criminal accusations, there was never any evidence to suggest the existence of a systematic underworld of Satanic ritual abusers (though many exorcism ministries and practices emerged during this time to confront them).18 That said, I do not mean to imply that my collaborators and others are obsessing over some purely imaginary set of villainous pagans.19 In 2018, for instance, many Catholics voiced collective outrage upon learning that a coven of witches in Brooklyn, New York had organized an event that would hex and curse “all rapists and the patriarchy which emboldens, rewards, and protects them”—the most notable offender being Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a pro-life Catholic. $10 tickets were sold to the event, with half the proceeds going to women’s and LGBT charities, as the same group held similar ceremonies in the past to hex Donald Trump and others (Wolfson 2018). Fr. Gary Thomas condemned the group and event in several statements made to a Catholic periodical, saying:Overzealous intervenors must accept the fact that some of their well-intentioned activity is contaminating and damaging the prosecutive potential of the cases where criminal acts did occur. We must all (i.e., the media, churches, therapists, victim advocates, law enforcement, and the general public) ask ourselves if we have created an environment where victims are rewarded, listened to, comforted, and forgiven in direct proportion to the severity of their abuse. Are we encouraging needy or traumatized individuals to tell more and more outrageous tales of their victimization? Are we making up for centuries of denial by now blindly accepting any allegation of child abuse no matter how absurd or unlikely? Are we increasing the likelihood that rebellious, antisocial, or attention-seeking individuals will gravitate toward “satanism” by publicizing it and overreacting to it? The overreaction to the problem can be worse than the problem.
Thomas also offered two Masses for Kavanaugh, one of which was on the same day the coven planned their hex ceremony. The Diocese of San Jose would later release a statement on their website clarifying Thomas’ comments and actions:I’m appalled. I sent this to a load of exorcists yesterday and their reaction was similar to mine. That shows this is not something that is make believe. […] Conjuring up personified evil does not fall under free speech. Satanic cults often commit crimes; they murder and sexually abuse everyone in their cult (Armstrong 2018).
Father Thomas said that he would offer the regularly scheduled Mass on both dates for the Justice and that he would pray for the safety of the Justice during each Mass’s Prayer of the Faithful. In addition, Father Thomas never said that the gathering was being led by a Satanic cult. He made comments about Satanic cults, but those comments don’t apply to the group placing the hex on Justice Kavanaugh because this group refers to themselves as a coven, not a cult (Gafni 2018).
Is everything demonic? No, but Satan is a real, is an intelligent being. The scriptures? That is not metaphorical. It’s not. And I’ll tell you, there’s plenty of Satanic cults around the country. They get a big kick out of this, when people think it’s all made up because it just continues to let them flourish. I mean, Satanic cults are criminal. They perform crimes against humanity. They murder. They’re secret and there’s loads of people. And it doesn’t just run in cultures per se. There are lots of lots of people. I get interviewed and asked, “Why is the church making so much more out of this now?” I says, “Because our country’s becoming pagan”. And it is! Benedict XVI said, “As faith diminishes, superstition increases”. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing, as attendance in all churches, but certainly in Christianity, declines. We are in a major, major slide. Catholic worship in the United States is about 22 percent. And honestly, I don’t know where we’re going to be in 10 years because the Millennials, only 10 percent even consider themselves connected to any church. So what’s going to happen to all of our churches and our houses of worship in the next 10 years? It’s going to be very different.21
- Chavez:
- Do you enjoy the movies like The Rite and The Conjuring?
- Maginot:
- I do like, actually. The real stories! You know, the ghost things, I think if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. But I always seem to get into the demonic ones.
- Chavez:
- Are you familiar with Ed and Lorraine Warren and The Amityville Horror?
- Maginot:
- The Demonologist, right? Was that their book? I think that was around the time of The Exorcist too. I kinda like the Warrens, but it seemed like they were out on an island at the time. They were like Lewis and Clarke. It seems like they were always trying to get priests to help with their calls.
- Chavez:
- They actually sold the rights to their cases and characters; now they have actors playing “Ed and Lorraine Warren” in the movies. And now that Lorraine is dead, Tony Spera, her son-in-law, runs their paranormal team and he’s been rather outspoken at how Hollywood the stories have now become, like the Annabelle movies and La Llorona.
- Maginot:
- You know, it was kind of a battle because of Tony DeRosa-Grund. He’s an executive producer and he had the rights to the Warrens, but he would always get in conflict and you know, battle everyone on that. And I think he was gonna do the same to me. […] I know because I also worked out with Zak Bagans, because I was going to do the Demon House documentary. And I was kind of playing both against each other. I was giving one rights to do the real story, with the real people, the real place, the documentary, and then [DeRosa-Grund] could do the movie thing, and you know, have actors and soundstages and all that. But I wanted kind of both to be real. And so that was kind of his work to tell the real story in the movie, because I don’t want a priest being thrown around like, all over, you know? Dramatic things that didn’t happen! So that was what kind of sold me on the project. But then he got into all kinds of lawsuits and everything, and now Hollywood never wanted to deal with him, and he is suing everyone and Warner Brothers. He thinks, you know, that if he pays you a dollar that he has you for life and it doesn’t quite work like that. So I think he was doing the same thing with the Warrens; he was kind of doing that with me. […] Sony-Colombia was also very much interested, but they wanted to do it with Latoya was well—which was good.
- Chavez:
- For her to sell her rights and use her name? Because she doesn’t show up in the Zak Bagans’ documentary.
- Maginot:
- No, she refused. There is a boyfriend she’s involved with now, that’s like her agent. And he makes it like, you know, he’s going to tell his story. He wasn’t even in the picture at that time! He got Relativity involved. They took her story and Hollywoodized it, and they went bankrupt over all that. So we’ve never been able to get together to tell the true story.22
- Thomas:
- When I was first exorcist, I was using this English translation that wasn’t approved. But I did not know that, and because [the former exorcist of Chicago] said you could use it when in fact you absolutely could not. So then I started using the Latin. And fortunately, I really only had one or two cases where I used this bogus English translation on people when I shouldn’t have.
- Chavez:
- So when you were at the pontifical university…
- Thomas:
- …at the [Pontifical Athenaeum] Regina Apostolorum…
- Chavez:
- …they gave you a Latin or Italian version? Not the English one?
- Thomas:
- It wasn’t approved then. The approved English is only a year old [c. 2017]. I know one of the priests who worked on the translation into English. He’s a friend of mine. But I had the whole rite translated into English by somebody who was at the referendum college—just for my personal use. I never used it! But I had four years of Latin in high school. I studied the Aeneid and Cicero but, you know… I know some words in Latin but not enough in order to really understand what are these prayers really saying in English. So I had this guy translate the whole thing for me. I paid him. But I never used it. I just used it for my personal reflection per se and then it sat on the desk of the Prefect for like four or five years before it was actually approved after the bishops had voted on it.23
- Chavez:
- So even though there is now an approved English version, the Latin is what you use?
- “Barron”:
- That is what many exorcists use, only the Latin of the old rite.
- Chavez:
- Is there a reason why you don’t use the revised version?
- “Barron”:
- Yes. The revised version has reworked the exorcism into a liturgical ceremony. And, as a liturgical ceremony, it doesn’t quite work because you’re dealing with a demon that despises anything liturgical. As soon as you start praying, the demon becomes generally infuriated, and the idea that you would have someone in the family start doing the first reading and the second reading, it’s assuming that the demon is going to sit there like a Presbyterian old lady and it’s just not going to do that. That’s my difficulty with it. The other thing, I think, is that when you become used to the old ritual, it has a certain advantage. It starts with the litany of the saints which is particularly helpful in that it allows you to recognize how the demon is reacting, what’s going on, how easily provoked it will be.
- Chavez:
- Do you believe it was a misstep by the church to revise the rite as a liturgical ceremony?
- “Barron”:
- I’m not sure that I’d say it was a mistake. I’d probably be more likely to say that it wasn’t thought-out well enough. I mean, [the revision] was certainly done by liturgists and not by exorcists.
- Chavez:
- Was that part of the Church’s goal? To clean up the ritual? Take out the diatribes so that it’s more about praising God than about damning Satan?
- “Barron”:
- I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it put that way. There certainly is that; they certainly wanted to clean it up, yeah, and put it in a way that was more contemporary. But I’ve never heard somebody say that their intention was to take out those deprecations. They certainly modified all of that, but they eventually put some of them back in as the appendix. Still, I don’t think that the ritual is as strong as it needs to be.
- Chavez:
- Do you find that those diatribes in Latin are useful?
- “Barron”:
- Oh, yes. It’s always useful.24
- Maginot:
- I have done 15 sanctioned [exorcisms]. Just always got permission, and just kind of learned by experience. But I did talk to [fellow priests about] the ritual. But at that time, the new ritual was in the process of being revised, and I’d heard a lot of complaints about it, so I went with the old. I guess they had permission to do the new ritual in English and Latin. But since there was so much complaints about the new, I said, “oh, I’ll go with the old”.
- Chavez:
- What version or translation? Do you use it when it’s in English?
- Maginot:
- It was the one that was available on the Internet. They told me to go on the Internet and I got the English and later got the Latin too. […]
- Chavez:
- About how long does it take either per session or for a sequence of sessions for a person?
- Maginot:
- You know, when I had the strength, I could go probably four hours. And that’s going through the rite three to four times. I always like to start out in English. I find Latin more powerful but you don’t want to get it out of control, you know? So I kind of see where you’re at baseline, with English. And if you’re getting a lot of manifestation, I’ll stay with the English. And if you get hardly anything with the English, then I go to the Latin. […] I do talk it over with the person, how they feel and everything, and if it’s been like two hours, you know, I would probably continue if they still feel they have something. In the early years, I would try to go, you know, another two at most. You know, but I don’t think I ever go beyond four hours now. […] I also want to make sure I could complete [the rite]. I don’t want to stop, you know, in the middle. So I’ll have to see how much energy I have [before starting another recitation].25
4.4. Exorcist 4: “Fr. Drexel” (White Male, Boomer, Midwest)
- Chavez:
- I hear a lot about exorcists being the trained skeptics. Do you think it was that way with your predecessor? Or do you find it’s the same in, say, Italy or Europe? Because when you read Gabriele Amorth, he’s on a different side of the skeptic spectrum.
- “Drexel”:
- Very much. And maybe it’s part of our American culture in a sense because we are so medically based—if you will. In a sense of diagnosing and discerning. But, I guess for me, I’d rather err on the side of…
- Chavez:
- …caution?
- “Drexel”:
- Well, that as well. But I mean to treat the whole person. I think the Church has always exercised caution. You go back and read the praenotanda, the guidelines to the 1614 rite. In the sense of ruling out [alternatives], they talk about an equivalent to what would be a type of depression. They use the word “melancholy”. And so even then, long before medicine was so formalized, for the Church to say “Well, test the waters” is significant. I think what governs all of this is the Holy Spirit, is a matter of discernment. What is going on in this person’s life? Have they become disoriented from God? Have they opened themselves up to other things? But are there other things that are going on that are coupled together? You know, if the person comes in good faith to the Church, I think we have a responsibility to try and help them. In a sense, it’s a matter of referring, too. Is it a mental health issue? A physical issue? You know, we’re not trained as clinicians. We get them to the help they need.28
Which saint do I invoke most often? I have a special love for Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, who often makes himself present during exorcisms. The possessed person becomes afraid. He’ll say, “The one with the beard is here!” And I reply, “By any chance, is he named Saint Pio of Pietrelcina?” The demon will respond, “No, his name is Francesco Forgione”. The devil fears even to name him (Del Guercio 2018).
It is likely this quality in Rome’s most famous exorcist that garnered the admiration of Bob Larson, an American Evangelical exorcist known for his combative persona displayed whenever confronting a demon(iac) (see Larson (2016)). It is easy to make the joke that the spiritual landscape of Italy is treated like that of a Spaghetti Western. As Amorth said in 2004, “I’ve never been afraid of the devil. In fact, I can say he is often scared of me” (Wilkinson 2004).Amorth is famously quoted as saying, “the best way you know somebody is possessed is when there’s a manifestation as you pray over them”. That’s the Italian model. And another part of that is a willingness to go well beyond the prayers of the ritual. The American experience is very different. When somebody comes to me, I will spend as long as it takes. It might be six months, maybe a year prior to doing any exorcism. And during that time, I will speak to them at length. I will have them visit a medical doctor to do a complete check on them. I’ll ask them to see a psychologist, to do a mental evaluation. I will work with that person and these reports to see what in their experience is answered by what the doctors found.29
- Chavez:
- Did you ever encounter either your predecessor or other exorcists using the ritual as a diagnostic? To see if the demoniac manifests?
- “Drexel”:
- Certainly. My sense is that it was more readily possible to do that with the ancient rite. But it’s restricted from doing that in the revised rite.
- Chavez:
- So by restricted, do you mean the instructions?
- “Drexel”:
- As far as being able to use parts of it.
- Chavez:
- Because of the change in language? They took out “you dirty serpent!” or whatever type of diatribes are in there?
- “Drexel”:
- Correct. So it seems like there was more freedom, shall I say, to do that using the ancient rite as compared to the revised rite. And, you know, I think there is a wisdom to being able to [provoke]. Again, it’s used in a controlled situation. If you’re like, “Okay, what’s going on there?” in the sense that the demonic presence is elusive and is not revealing itself, you have a gut feeling it’s there, but it’s not going to show its head, then you use the ancient rite as a type of diagnostic tool. I think, certainly, it is done. Because what’s key and different between the ancient and the revised rite is the whole notion of moral certitude. See, that’s specifically mentioned in the revised rite, that before proceeding with the rite of exorcism, I think it’s like paragraph number sixteen in the praenotanda, is that you have to have moral certitude. Where here [in the 1614 rite], there is not that clear distinction. And so, to be able to use it as a diagnostic tool, you have that freedom.30
- “Drexel”:
- I use the rite I am most familiar with, which would be this one [from 1614], because that’s what I learned. When I started in the ministry from my predecessor, there was no revised rite at that time. And working with the exorcist that was before me, [the old rite] was all he knew. Because the revision, you know, took place in ‘98. And then there were subsequent editions with amendments or emendations. So, I have used both.
- Chavez:
- Do you have a preference?
- “Drexel”:
- I mean, I look at it as a sense of, you have a toolbox. And so, it depends on what the needs are. I think, in some ways, we kind of back ourselves into a corner and say, “Well, this is the official [rite], this is the one”. But the thing is the circumstances are always different. Each person, each situation, how the demonic engaged someone. You know? What were the doorways? What rights it’s claimed—a whole host of other things. I’m a firm believer that you don’t take a bazooka to a stick fight.31
- Chavez:
- Fr. Mike let me go and observe his team during an early diagnostic test where they played an audio recording of the Book of Job and read the Apostles’ Creed and the Our Father in Latin to see if either would provoke a demonic manifestation. Aside from the ritual as a diagnostic tool, have you also found certain things helpful? Either certain prayers, certain pieces of scripture, or Latin phrases, that help draw out the demons?
- “Drexel”:
- Yeah, certainly, I mean, all of those things would be true. I mean, using sacramentals themselves, blessed objects, holy water, blessed salts…
- Chavez:
- Or performing in a church?
- “Drexel”:
- Sacred places! Prayers, litanies. The prologue of John’s Gospel is the most ancient text used in these rites. It’s been consistently used from the beginning.
- Chavez:
- Really, more than Psalms?
- “Drexel”:
- Certainly, the Psalms, but as far as New Testament scripture, consistently it’s the first chapter of John’s Gospel. But, you know, all of those things, sometimes it’s relics of the Saints, blessed candles. It can be a whole host of things. You never know what’s gonna be the trigger.
- Chavez:
- This toolbox often reminds me of a Van Helsing vampire hunting toolkit. The garlic and stuff. And a lot of those actually have Christian symbolism too: the hawthorn bush, the cross, holy water.
- “Drexel”:
- Absolutely, and it’s kind of all part of that. You know, Lankester Merrin [from The Exorcist] walks in with the satchel. But also, too, it does help us by way of reflection in another direction, of the things we’ve lost or forgotten about, in a sense of the sanctity, the value, the role that all of these things play as part of the rich treasure we have.32
- Chavez:
- What freedom do you have as an exorcist to navigate the Roman Ritual?
- Thomas:
- There really is no orthodox solemn rite. The rite can be subdivided into the litany of saints, the baptismal promises, the scripture reading, the psalms, the deprecatory prayers (prayers addressed to God), the imperative prayers (prayers addressed to Satan), then there’s a closing prayer. That’s sort of the truncated version of the rite. And that doesn’t include all the preparation and stuff we do beforehand that’s not part of the rite. Sometimes, the person can start manifesting at the name of a certain saint. For some reason, certain demons have a weakness toward certain saints. […] For instance, there is such a thing as an incubus spirit and a succubus spirit. Well, when you pray the title “Mary Magdalene” (“Santa Maria Magdalena”), you might get a huge reaction. You might not get any reaction to anything else, but you’ll get a huge reaction to her.
- Chavez:
- Let’s say this happens in the middle of reading the rite. Do you have the ability to stay and keep reading those sections, again and again, before moving to the next bit?
- Thomas:
- Yes, no one has ever told me I don’t. So it wouldn’t be anything to say “Santa Maria Magdalena” ten times and then move on. It’s the same thing with Padre Pio, John Paul II, John Vianney, or Blessed Bartolo Longo (who was a Satanist, then had a huge conversion experience). Any of them can trigger a manifestation. We try to pray the whole rite at once but, sometimes, we’ll have to stop because the person is on the floor or they’re throwing up. […] But you always finish the rite then the session ends.
- Chavez:
- And you can linger or hang around the parts that trigger most?
- Thomas:
- You can deviate a bit. When you’ve completed the rite, you don’t have to pray the whole thing all over again. You could go back and pray just the deprecatory and imperative prayers again—which I’ve done many times. […] In both our deliverance and exorcism sessions, we also invite Christ and the Blessed Mother in. And I have people on my team who can discern if there’s demons, or human spirits, or other kinds of entities, and then we have Mary and Jesus cast them. I cast them too, and they take them to the cross. Or if it’s in the case of a disembodied soul who hasn’t gone for judgment, Mary will take them to Jesus for judgment.
- Chavez:
- So another form of ritual improv on the part of the priest is who to invite in the room and also what sort of Church icons are used to trigger the person.
- Thomas:
- Yes. Normally, I wear my blacks with the purple stole, which is the liturgical sign of my priesthood. I have a crucifix. I have holy water. I have a few relics, the team has a few relics. And we’ll place them, sometimes, on the person’s head.33
- Chavez:
- There’s no consensus yet of whether there are ghosts or demons posing as ghosts.
- “Drexel”:
- Correct. […]
- Chavez:
- So where are you on the ghost issue?
- “Drexel”:
- What I think is our theology… It’s not well programmed out—if you will. Our theology is lacking in some ways, because we certainly have experiences. I believe that the ghost is, in a sense, the soul of a person who has died, who is no longer bound by physicality, who is stuck, is not moving forward into eternity, remains attached to a place. I believe that can happen. Separately, a demon, masquerading as [a ghost]. I think that can happen as well. I mean, fundamentally, you are always dealing with a liar when it comes to the demonic. But, because we’ve got a long history with the tradition of the Church, where you have these manifestations people encounter, even classic stories of, you know, a priest who has died who didn’t properly care for mass intentions and things like that. I heard one priest, a very credible exorcist, talking at length about, you know, walking in and having to pray while he was training as an exorcist. This was, I believe, in the New York area or out east, anyway. And, you know, this odd thing is happening in this rectory after this elderly priest died, and the whole situation, the long and short of it, is that he had a whole drawer full of mass intentions, that weren’t celebrated, and that had been sitting there, and he could not rest, and, you know, for whatever reason, God permitted him to make things right or allow that process to take place. And it clearly wasn’t demonic. I think, you know, the problem is, we don’t have neat categories to fit all these concepts.34
- “Barron”:
- I don’t know if you come across this but there is no one that I know of in the Church who’s doing a theology or a theological investigation of all of this stuff. […] For example, magic. You know, does magic work?
- Chavez:
- I always found that curious. If you’re afraid of somebody picking up the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or something akin, and using it for magic, you’re giving credence to its power and to its possibility—which seems odd to me.
- “Barron”:
- I don’t know. That’s a question that I would be willing to investigate. My sense is that those things happen and have an effectiveness.
- Chavez:
- Even though they don’t come from God?
- “Barron”:
- Yeah, they come from the Enemy. But I would say, and I’m not going to argue this or put my life on it, but you have in the world the supernatural and the natural. But then I think you also have the preternatural. And at the level of the preternatural, you have many gifts and gray areas.
- Chavez:
- And that part isn’t really being worked out right now?
- “Barron”:
- Exactly. If you have, for example, a grandmother who wakes up one morning and says, “My grandson was killed in a crash last night. I saw it happen. And I know he’s dead” and then, 10 minutes later, the doorbell rings and police are at the door and, sure enough, he got killed. How does that happen? Well, to my mind, there is a preternatural area that is not supernatural and not natural; it is in between. And it is at that level, I think, that magic can be located. Now, magic, it’s not a trick but something that can be manipulated, the desire to use the preternatural for my benefit. But I also think that the preternatural can be used not just for people to know things. I mean, I bet you everybody alive knows somebody who says, “Oh, go answer the phone. It’s about to ring. It’s Aunt Jan”. And you say, “huh?” and then the phone rings. “Oh, it’s Aunt Jan”. That happens so often that people can’t deny that.35
- Chavez:
- Do you consider yourself a Charismatic?
- “Barron”:
- No, I don’t think it has anything to do with charisms or Charismatics. I think this is simply, you know, that there are people who have a giftedness, some call it “second sight”, where they simply know things. They’re sensitive. […] We don’t know how that works. And that needs to be explored because it is the realm where the natural and what we would call “the higher faculties” [intersect]. Do you know what bilocation is? Padre Pio is often talked about as being in two places at once. How does that happen? Well, we Catholics, and the tradition, just say, “That’s a miracle!” But how is it a miracle? And if we believe that Padre Pio can be in two places at once, why would we not believe that somebody’s personality could be split off and part of it travel? We don’t have a theological explanation for [“bilocation”, “dissociation”, or “astral projection”].
- Chavez:
- There’s a lot of miracles attributed to saints that would tap into this preternatural realm you speak of.
- “Barron”:
- Yeah. The fact that our Lord allows it to happen is the miracle. [But there’s more to it than that]. There’s a priest in Mexico, Father Rogelio Alcantara. He lives in Mexico City and he, my bishop, and I sat for a week a year ago and went over these questions. And said, for example, “How is it possible that I curse something and you are affected by the curse?” “How is it possible that I curse this and give it to you and you take it and you receive a curse?” So we sat there and talked for days and days about… “What is involved?” “What is a curse?” And it always involves this preternatural level and he’s the only guy I know who’s developing or working on this and he’s only doing it because I keep pestering him with these issues.
In my 2020 follow-up interview with Gary Thomas, he also mentioned the use of the Pope Leo XIII Prayer when exorcising a house—which he prays in English. Interestingly, in the excerpt below, Thomas also shares further accounts of ritual improvisation due to the 2020 social distancing protocols.First of all, there is in the Roman Ritual a prayer specifically for the exorcism of a place. The prayers are relatively late, dating only from the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII, but is now very widely used by exorcists. It is also sometimes used as a diagnostic tool. Secondly, this blessing/exorcism (Exorcismus domus a dæmonio vexate) is well known to me and to other exorcists as well. However, in my experience, there is one significant difference. This extract calls for three trips all through the house, each time blessing the house with holy water. In my experience, the house is blessed three separate times, but the first time with water, the second time with incense, and the third time with sacred oil, which is used to trace the cross upon the walls and doors of the house. Windows and mirrors are always anointed in this same way. Also, there are specific prayers that close each of the perambulations and the recitation of each of the three sets of Gradual Psalms.36
- Thomas:
- I go to a lot of houses. Since COVID, I’ve gone to a lot of houses. And the ritual takes about maybe 15 minutes to pray. What I’ve done with COVID is a little different than pre-COVID. In the past, I would do most of the rite at the main doorway then I would sprinkle every door in the house. I’d pray the Hail Mary in every room with the family. And then we would go into the backyard and the front yard where I would use exorcise water with exorcise salt then pray the prayer throughout the whole property that’s claimed by that family. What I do now is I pray most of the ritual outside at the front door and then I go in with a mask and go to all the rooms and do exactly what I just told you before. But it’s much quicker.
- Chavez:
- The latter minimizes the time that you’re spending in the house.37
We’ve…had a few encounters with paranormal entities. Aliens? We’ve had a few. Now, the reason that we’ve come to that conclusion is because (no. 1) they don’t know who Jesus Christ is. But when you ask them “Do you know Yahweh?”, there’s a huge reaction! Now John Paul II, when he was still pope, was asked at least once if he believed in the existence of life on other planets. And he said, “If there is life on other planets, God is still sovereign over all”. So when we were getting this person in a trance and getting no kind of reaction from the names of Jesus Christ or the Blessed Mother, somebody on my team said, “Maybe this is an entity from somewhere else”. We would say an “entity of the cosmos”, because there are entities that are related to the elements (fire, water, wind, and earth). They may not be demons, but they are spirits, separate from the demons attached to many of the false gods in Buddhism and Hinduism—because we’ve dealt with that too. But the aliens (no. 2) are also not in league with Satan. Some are. And, I mean, just in the last two months there’s been stuff now that’s finally come out from the Department of Defense, reports of, you know, “unidentified flying objects”. I think the government has concealed this for a long time. And I do believe that there is life on other planets. I also think there is life in other dimensions. I know because I’ve had several people come to me who have used drugs (like ayahuasca) to interact with these entities.38
Consider…the diverse collection of topics and subjects that appear in the paranormal section of bookstores. Scattered among the UFO books, astrology training manuals, and collections of ghost tales you are likely to find books that discuss sightings of the Virgin Mary, stories of demons, possessions, and exorcism, as well as collected tales of claimed miraculous healings and rescues by guardian angels. […] Books on the same topics will also be found in most Christian bookstores and in the Christian section of general bookstores. An exorcism tale can carry different meanings depending upon the type of book in which it appears. A book targeted at Christian audiences is likely to frame exorcisms as proof of the reality of Satan and a warning to Christians to get right with God and avoid the “occult”. A book meant for general audiences will treat exorcisms as a fascinating and frightening mystery but will avoid explicit religious overtones or suggestions that a conversion to Christianity is a means of avoiding possession. A Christian author may write of the power of Ouija boards, but rather than focus upon it as a potential means to contact a dead relative, the object is feared as an instrument through which demons may attack the unwary. Exorcisms, Virgin Mary sightings, guardian angel tales, and the like serve as a potential bridging area between religion and the paranormal. Perhaps an interest in such topics will lead conservative Christians to develop an interest in paranormal subjects, such as UFOs and ESP, or maybe an interest in guardian angels could draw an otherwise nonreligious person into a faith (p. 194).
5. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
1 | Giordan (2020) examines a contemporary Italian exorcist “protocol” for discerning “true” cases of demonic possession. Similar to Suhr (2019), which documents a Palestinian refugee’s experience of jinn possession in Denmark and his dual forms of treatment, “both exorcist and psychiatrist”, Giordan argues, ultimately “go through procedures which legitimize and reinforce each other” (p. 95). Sax (2020) demonstrates the same. |
2 | “The Roman Catholic rite of exorcism, so effectively dramatized in Blatty’s movie, was first formally laid down in the Rituale Romanum of 1614, and the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which was in effect until 1983, mandated that every bishop officially appoint an exorcist for his diocese. (As we’ve seen, however, this wasn’t always followed through in places such as the United States.)” (Cuneo 2001, p. 130). |
3 | |
4 | This overview of “the church’s expanding corps of exorcists”, as mobilized by a developing “discourse of evil”, is similarly covered in Csordas (2017, p. 294). “The trajectory of this development…suggests that exorcism be understood not only as a thriving form of religious practice but also as a dynamic social phenomenon”. |
5 | Interview with “Fr. Drexel” (in-person), 9 December 2019. |
6 | Interview with Fr. Gary Thomas in Saratoga, CA, 8 June 2018. |
7 | To be clear, this does not translate to 150 or 175 dioceses with appointed exorcists. |
8 | See Cuneo (2001, p. 5) for the scholar’s contextualization of Catholic priesthood amidst the recent controversies and scandals: It is the area of exorcism where “the priest-as-exorcist…has somehow managed, in defiance of all odds, to retain a heroic grip on the popular American imagination”. |
9 | |
10 | Interview with “Fr. Barron” (in-person), 13 December 2019. |
11 | Interview with “Fr. Barron” (in-person), 13 December 2019. |
12 | Interview with “Fr. Barron” (email), 9 October 2019. |
13 | Interview with “Fr. Barron” (in-person), 13 December 2019. |
14 | |
15 | Interview with Fr. Michael Maginot in Merrillville, IN, 6 December 2019. |
16 | |
17 | |
18 | See Frankfurter (2006), pp. 68–69 and McCloud (2015), pp. 6–10, 21 for a discussion of the influx of practitioners following the moral panic of the 1980s. Following his interviews with local Vatican priests, Csordas (2017, p. 294) cites a more recent Italian moral panic as the impetus for the Catholic Church’s renewed interest in Satanism and subsequent recruitment and training of more exorcists. “In the wake of a satanism scare in Italy following a series of murders in 1998 and 2004 involving the heavy metal rock band Beasts of Satan, word spread that the Vatican wanted every diocese to appoint an exorcist, and a training course for exorcists launched at a pontifical university in Rome has been conducted annually since 2005”. |
19 | These evil conspirators are said to gravitate towards ritual perversion and sexual deviation, i.e., blood-sacrifice, cannibalism, infant-murder, orgies, and child pornography. See Frankfurter (2006) and Lanning (1992, p. 22). |
20 | Cf. Table 3.4 (“Reasons for the Visit”) in Giordan and Possamai (2018, p. 55). |
21 | Interview with Fr. Gary Thomas in Saratoga, CA, 8 June 2018. |
22 | Interview with Fr. Michael Maginot in Merrillville, IN, 6 December 2019. |
23 | Interview with Fr. Gary Thomas in Saratoga, CA, 8 June 2018. |
24 | Interview with “Fr. Barron” (phone), 4 September 2020. |
25 | Interview with Fr. Michael Maginot in Merrillville, IN, 6 December 2019. |
26 | Interview with Fr. Gary Thomas (Zoom), 27 September 2020. |
27 | Interview with Fr. Gary Thomas in Saratoga, CA, 8 June 2018. |
28 | Interview with “Fr. Drexel” (in-person), 9 December 2019. |
29 | Interview with “Fr. Barron” (in-person), 13 December 2019. |
30 | Interview with “Fr. Drexel” (in-person), 9 December 2019. |
31 | Interview with “Fr. Drexel” (in-person), 9 December 2019. |
32 | Interview with “Fr. Drexel” (in-person), 9 December 2019. |
33 | Interview with Fr. Gary Thomas (Zoom), 27 September 2020. |
34 | Interview with “Fr. Drexel” (in-person), 9 December 2019. |
35 | Interview with “Fr. Barron” (in-person), 13 December 2019. |
36 | Interview with “Fr. Barron” (email), 16 October 2019. |
37 | Interview with Fr. Gary Thomas (Zoom), 27 September 2020. |
38 | Interview with Fr. Gary Thomas (Zoom), 27 September 2020. |
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Chavez, W.S. Modern Practice, Archaic Ritual: Catholic Exorcism in America. Religions 2021, 12, 811. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100811
Chavez WS. Modern Practice, Archaic Ritual: Catholic Exorcism in America. Religions. 2021; 12(10):811. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100811
Chicago/Turabian StyleChavez, William S. 2021. "Modern Practice, Archaic Ritual: Catholic Exorcism in America" Religions 12, no. 10: 811. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100811