Exorcism

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 1, 2000 by John L. Jr. Allen

Topics under discussion at the exorcists' meeting in Rome would have surprised, possibly even disturbed, Catholics who learn about church affairs largely from Sunday homilies or mainstream journals.

Hot debate, for example, surrounded the question of whether the souls of people who die in mortal sin are capable of possessing the living. Attendees were also interested in questions of technique, something Amorth covered extensively in his 1990 book An Exorcist Tells His Story. There he describes forcing demons to allow people to vomit up objects such as locks of hair and wooden dolls (the results of sorcery), and writes that sometimes one can detect the presence of a demon in people by secretly preparing their food using holy water and watching their reaction.

Such notions obviously strain credulity in many quarters, but Amorth, feisty and razor-sharp, makes no apologies: "The unbelieving Catholic world may laugh at my assertions," he said, but he knows what he's seen.

An unbroken tradition

Fr. Gregory Planchak, a priest of the Greek Catholic rite in the Ukraine, said that Eastern Christianity in both its Orthodox and Catholic forms has an unbroken tradition of exorcism. "We never stopped, unlike the church in the West, which virtually abandoned the practice 200 years ago," he said. Planchak joked that skepticism is largely restricted to "some priests who finished their theology in Rome."

Planchak said Western theologians have a harder time with demonic phenomena than the Eastern Orthodox theologians do. "Eastern theology comes from spiritual experience, including the visions of saints. It is mystical theology, so it's easier to account for this sort of thing," he said.

Such assertions were strongly rejected by Jesuit Fr. Robert Taft, vice-rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute and a frequent adviser to the Vatican on Eastern churches. "That's nonsense," Taft said bluntly. "It's part of this Eastern rap that they have preserved what the West has lost." Taft argues that in educated circles in both East and West the use of exorcism went into decline in the last 200 years, while in areas where popular religious belief remains strong, so too does exorcism.

"There are places in Greece where they use the ritual for the anointing of the sick if they see a snake in the house," Taft said. He referred to the connection in Mediterranean folklore between snakes and the demons that cause illness. "But it happens in the West, too. It's just not true to say that it died out."

Like most of his exorcist colleagues, Perea said that it was a spiritual experience, rather than intellectual conviction, that led him into this work. In 1976, two women came to him complaining of possession, and he began to pray for them.

"One of the two women, a very religious person who always had a rosary in her hand, was flung to the ground," Perea said. "The evil one began to speak, I could see the eyes full of hatred. This woman wanted to jump at me to catch my throat, asking me why have you come here, telling me to go back to Bombay. I began to pray in tongues. Suddenly her face changed, it became an angelic face. Her hands, which had been like claws wanting to hurt me, were now raised in praise."