The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist (12 page)

Afterward, Father Carmine blessed a six-pack of bottled water that the couple had brought, waving his hand in the sign of the cross. As they walked out, Father Carmine, perhaps sensing Father Gary's confusion, felt compelled to explain:
“Lei é posseduta da un demons, muto,”
he said, struggling to find the right word in English. “Cannot speak,” he said.
“A
very powerful demon.”

“A
mute demon?” Father Gary asked. Father Carmine nodded.

Father Gary had heard about mute demons through the course. Father Daniel had weighed in on them, too. He wondered, though, how an exorcist could tell whether a person was really possessed by such a demon. Before he had time to question Father Carmine further, the Capuchin was ushering in a couple in their forties. This time the exorcism lasted about ten minutes, and the only noticeable reaction was the man's continual yawning. As with the two previous cases, Father Carmine tapped the man's forehead with his index finger, which Father Gary took to mean that the exorcism was finished.

The fourth person was another woman in her late fifties, with short curly reddish hair that was noticeably thinning. She entered with her husband and a ten-year-old boy who appeared to be her grandson. They all sat and Father Carmine began bantering with the boy asking about school and reminding him to behave. Father Gary could tell that Father Carmine had become almost like a parish priest, checking in with people, listening to their problems. After a few minutes, Father Carmine blessed the family, sprinkling them with holy water, and then the boy and the husband left. Alone with the woman, Father Carmine asked her how she was doing. “The headaches,” she answered in Italian, holding her head. Her voice became choked and she dabbed at tears with a handkerchief. “Terrible, terrible,” she said. Father Carmine nodded.

The woman sat with her head bowed and her arms in her lap as Father Carmine prayed the
Ritual
over her. Tears continued to stream down her cheeks and she grimaced occasionally, a little squeak of pain escaping from her clenched mouth as if she had stomach cramps.

After this case, Father Carmine took a ten-minute break, and he and Father Gary sat down in the office. Early on, Father Gary had decided he would not ask unnecessary questions or disturb Father Carmine's rhythm during the exorcisms. He didn't know Father Carmine all that well yet, and he wanted to make a favorable impression so he could keep coming back. Now, however, as they paused, he couldn't resist. “How do you know these people are possessed?”

Father Carmine quickly explained his “technique of discernment”— he noticed things through little “signs.” Most of these people, he said, had already been through several hospitals and had seen numerous doctors, none of which helped. “This last woman,” he said, “has terrible headaches, the kind that don't go away. They completely block her. No matter how many aspirins she takes, it doesn't help. You understand?”

“Si, si,”
Father Gary agreed, but he still wasn't sure how to be absolutely certain. The course had stressed that an exorcist should be skeptical in the beginning, and while he trusted that Father Carmine knew what he was doing, it bothered Father Gary that the “signs” weren't as apparent to him as they were to Father Carmine. Wary of being disrespectful, he held his tongue.

At 6:45 they took a short break and went to the basilica for evening prayer. Around fifteen people, including two other friars, crowded into the Cappella di San Tarcisio just off the sacristy. Among those praying, Father Gary recognized some of the people he'd seen in Father Carmine's waiting room. Apparently he would have to rethink his concept of what it meant to be possessed. Weren't demons supposed to stop people from worshiping?

They returned to Father Carmine's office and resumed the exorcisms. None of the reactions extended beyond coughing and yawning. One woman coughed so much that she brought up some foam. Father Carmine gave her one of the paper towels to wipe her mouth, then he threw it in the plastic trash bag he had attached to the door. At least Father Gary got an answer to the question about the bag's purpose.

Toward the end of the evening, Father Gary could see that the strain of so many exorcisms was starting to affect Father Carmine. Drenched and aching from being on his feet for hours, he shifted continuously and hooked his left hand into his rope belt behind his back while he prayed. Father Gary knew he must be exhausted.

Finally, at eight o'clock, Father Carmine turned to Father Gary and announced with a heavy voice, “We're finished.”

He could see that Father Carmine was drained; still he couldn't resist.
“Un momento,”
he said to Father Carmine.
“Una domanda?” A
question.

Father Carmine turned to look at him, his eyes lidded and heavy.

“Come back tomorrow afternoon at three-thirty,” he said with a nod. “We can talk a little then.”

When Father Gary stepped outside, the streets were practically deserted. A handful of antiquated streetlights cast a dull glow over him as he walked briskly to the bus stop on the opposite side of Via Tiburtina. Once on the bus, he realized that instead of providing answers, the evening had only raised more doubts. The people had certainly appeared to be troubled, but whether the cause was demonic, he couldn't say. None had displayed the classic symptoms of demonic possession. He knew that Italy had socialized medicine, that its population was 83 percent Catholic—maybe seeing a priest was easier for people than seeing a counselor, he hypothesized. And wouldn't a priest locked in battle against a demon let the answering machine pick up the phone?

He had to trust that Father Carmine had the experience to diagnose these people; after all, he'd been an exorcist for more than eighteen years. Still, something about the experiences troubled Father Gary. He felt let down that he hadn't found the definitive proof that he sought.

CHAPTER NINE

DISCERNMENT

Every man has close by him two angels, the one an angel of holiness, the other an angel of perversion … And how then, O Lord, shall I recognize the workings of these two since they both dwell within me?

—The Shepherd,
by Hermas

I
n mid-January, even before participating in his first exorcism, Father Gary had been asked by the director of pastoral formation at the NAC, forty-seven-year-old Father Steve Bigler, to give a talk to the seminarians about discernment. While not an exorcist himself, Father Bigler had taken the exorcism course the year before and wanted his seminarians to have more practical exposure. He thought of Father Gary, whom he knew from their time together the previous fall at the NAC.

The concept that most terrified Father Gary about exorcism was discernment—the possibility that he might get it wrong. He knew that several mental illnesses could mask themselves as demonic possession. Performing exorcisms on people with severe mental disease would most likely harm them, “fixing” them in this state. He was extremely wary of doing anything that might add to a person's pain by making an existing condition worse.

When Father Bigler contacted him, Father Gary immediately warmed to the idea of imparting some of his knowledge to the seminarians. In fact, early on, once he began to sink his teeth into the course material, he'd realized that while he might never be called upon to actually perform an exorcism, he could still be a resource for priests in the parish who had questions. He had seen how callous some priests could be in unfamiliar situations, turning people away who sought comfort for problems such as depression.

He gave his presentation on a Saturday afternoon in one of the NAC's small gathering rooms, with the seminarians arranged around a horseshoe-shaped table. Attending the talk had been optional, so only eight seminarians showed up, along with two spiritual directors and the director of spiritual formation, Father Mike Tomaseck. All found the subject intriguing.

Father Gary's portion of the talk focused on the teachings of the Church with respect to the Devil. To help the seminarians with the concept of discernment, he passed around a list of questions they might ask a person who claimed to be possessed, telling the seminarians that “these are just food for thought.”

The questions ranged from the obvious (“Please describe the experience that led you to believe that you are being affected by a presence of evil.”) to the less obvious (“How would you describe your own personal self-discipline?”). At the bottom of the page, Father Gary had written a small “end note,” explaining how the questions had been derived from the course material and how, in his opinion, “many of the lectures that have been presented do not only apply specifically to the demonic but to experiences leading up to demonic possession or other kinds of harassment and evil manifestations.”

Afterward, despite the low turnout, he was pleased with how his talk went. His main goal was to give the seminarians “some equipment in their pastoral bag” that could help them “minister and serve people, rather than tell them they were crazy.” From the course he had picked up the phrase “the exorcist must be the ultimate skeptic,” and he never got tired of saying it.

I
N ADOPTING THIS PRUDENT APPROACH
, Father Gary was following recognized protocol. The guidelines set forth in the
Ritual
clearly state that “the exorcist should not proceed to celebrate the rite of exorcism unless he has discovered to his moral certainty that the one to be exorcized is in actual fact possessed by demonic power.” In order to do this, the exorcist “must above all exercise necessary and extreme circumspection and prudence … He must not be too ready to believe that someone beset by some illness, especially mental illness, is a victim of demonic possession [nor] should he immediately believe that possession is present as soon as someone asserts that he or she is in a special way tempted by the Devil, abandoned, or indeed tormented, for people can be deceived by their own imagination.” The discernment of spirits is far more than just an educated guess, and is not to be confused with “intuition.” Instead, according to Sicilian exorcist Father Matteo La Grua, discernment is one of the gifts that God gives to the faithful. It is like a “holy light” that comes from God and that allows those who receive it “to see how God is present in things.” The Bible lists discernment as one of the nine spiritual manifestations (or fruits of the Holy Spirit), mentioned by Paul (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).

The practice of discerning spirits has a long history in the Christian tradition. For the mystics, such as Saint Ignatius of Loyola, it was a way to understand the impulses of the soul, which, he claimed, were influenced by either good angels (who desired the soul to be filled with “faith, hope, love and all interior joy that invites and attracts to what is heavenly”) or by demons (who strive to impede our spiritual advancement with temptations of sin and desperation). And while it may sound simple, it's not, because in their cunning, demons often disguise their attacks, sometimes even appearing as “angels of light.” The best way to differentiate between them, said Saint Ignatius, is to look at the end result of the action. If the message will lead to selfishness, hate, violence, and such, then its origin is Satan and should be resisted; however, if the end result is for good, then the source is God.

The
Ritual
gives three signs that indicate the possible presence of a demon: abnormal strength, the ability to speak or understand a previously unknown language, and the knowledge of hidden things. Yet even when these things are present, the
Ritual
still cautions the exorcist about proceeding. “These signs can offer some indication, but since [they] are not necessarily [caused by the Devil], attention should be paid to other factors, especially in the realm of the moral and the spiritual, which can in a different way be evidence of diabolic intrusion.” The most common of these is an aversion to the sacred—for example, the inability to pray or say the name of Jesus or Mary, to go to mass, or to receive communion. And when the two are put together (the signs and the aversion to the sacred), an exorcist may suspect he is dealing with a possession.

People seek exorcists for several reasons. The person (or someone who knows the person) simply attributes various problems to the intervention of the Devil. “When a person comes, there are many, many people who say, ‘Father, I have the demon inside me, give me an exorcism!’ Usually they don't need it,” says Father Carmine. “Generally, they are people who are a little unbalanced or maybe scared by some books or a movie. This is a very delicate issue. You have to divulge but without being judgmental.”

By far, say exorcists, the vast majority of people who come to see them fit into this category, and they spend much of their time convincing people that nothing is wrong with them. Unfortunately, this is not always easy. Many exorcists lament the damage done by well-meaning but overzealous people who convince others that they are possessed when this is really not the case. One exorcist from a diocese in the Midwest was visited by a parishioner convinced that her daughter's problems were caused by an evil spirit. She'd gone to see a “ghost whisperer” who told the woman that indeed her daughter was suffering from a curse that could be removed for $1,000. Upon hearing that there was an exorcist in the diocese, the woman took her daughter to see the priest. After an initial interview, the exorcist uncovered a history of mental illness in the family, so he advised the woman to take her daughter to a psychiatrist, telling her that it was highly unlikely that her daughter was suffering from a demonic attack. The mother, however, was unconvinced and returned to the ghost whisperer and paid to have the curse removed.

Numerous mental illnesses can also be mistaken for demonic possession. For this reason, exorcists should insist on a full psychiatric evaluation before proceeding. More often than not, the person has already seen several doctors without relief. Based on this failure of medical intervention, if a demonic presence is suspected, the exorcist might believe he has grounds to proceed. Typically, though, an exorcist will have a team of individuals (a psychiatrist, psychologist, and perhaps a neurologist) whom he trusts to help him with discernment. Not just any psychiatrist will do, however; collaboration is possible only when the medical or psychiatric expert is open to the possibility of demonic possession or obsession. Their being Catholic (or Christian) is also a plus.

Dr. Richard Gallagher is an academic psychiatrist in the New York area who has worked with exorcists in the discernment process. A devout Catholic, Dr. Gallagher believes in demonic possession, which doesn't mean that he seeks it out. “The role of the psychiatrist is to make sure that these phenomena don't have a natural explanation before jumping to a preternatural or supernatural one. There are many individuals for one reason or another in life that become psychotic briefly; they are delusional, they may well hallucinate and they are prone to think that God, the Devil, a spirit, aliens, are communicating with them and they really believe it.”

Over the past fifteen years, Dr. Gallagher has identified a handful of cases that he claims have shown clear signs of demonic possession. In one such case, he was working with a demonized person who was clairvoyant. One night while Dr. Gallagher was at home with his wife, his cats suddenly went crazy and began tearing at each other. The following day, when he went to see the patient, she asked if he liked the joke she played on his cats the night before.

“I am an experienced psychiatrist,” says Dr. Gallagher. “Obviously I have seen multiple personality disorders, but these cases never include the paranormal.” Instead, claims Dr. Gallagher, instances of demonic possession are more straightforward than cases involving mental illness. For instance, a person who has a “severe personality disorder” and who simply thinks that he has evil inside him won't typically have his voice completely change or experience total amnesia after a session, he says. “In fact, it is indicative of the full possession syndrome that the individual affected never remembers what the demon says while it is speaking during an exorcism.” And if it is a case of just an overactive imagination, according to Dr. Gallagher, an experienced psychiatrist should be able to tell the difference. “If you have the paranormal there is no way you can believe that it is not coming from somewhere. Even if you don't believe in the Devil, you have to say that there is some explanation beyond the natural here.”

People also come to see an exorcist because they are thirsting for attention (the fakers), a category also known as pseudo-possession. Exorcists say the difference between pseudo-possession and the real thing is fairly obvious. People who are faking generally will depict the evil spirit in the most banal and superficial of ways, while in a real possession, the evil spirit will correspond to the Devil as he is known in the New Testament.

Some exorcists have also devised little tricks to help them weed out the pseudo-possessions. Exorcists will use regular water instead of holy water, or even read Latin prose out of a text instead of reciting a prayer to see whether the person responds. Since in either case a demon should not react because the objects are not sacred, if the person does say, for example, “That water is burning me!” then the exorcist knows the possession is fake.

Only in extremely rare instances, say exorcists, is a person indeed suffering from some form of demonic attack.