The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist

by Matt Baglio

  More than a few cognitive scientists have pointed out the potential benefits of an exorcism in treating people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Dr. Mazzoni, for example, believes the exorcist gives some people a way out by saying that their problems are caused by an outside entity and therefore they are not the cause, which, she says, “allows the patient to make a clean break … People get cured of demonic possession because basically the priest becomes the therapist and the priest is the one who is able to take control of the bad part of the person.”

  In comparing exorcism with the “traditional” approach to treating DID, Dr. Steven Jay Lynn notes that the former may actually be more beneficial. “In a way the exorcist's ritual is a lot clearer, because if the therapist believes that the person cannot be cured until they know all about the underlying personality system, and recover all the memories and have succeeded in integrating all the personalities— the person or patient can go through a tremendous amount of emotional pain in trying to recover memories, especially if they're not real memories. Now, an exorcism is a pretty clear-cut procedure that doesn't really depend on this extensive background of work with the person, so I would think that it may in fact be much more effective in helping people ‘get better,’ quote-unquote.”

  Dr. Richard Gallagher, however, says that that's not really the purpose of the Ritual. “I wouldn't do it for mental health purposes,” he says. “If you are dealing with a suggestive individual or an individual who is deluded into thinking they are being attacked by the demonic I personally think that an exorcism is a bad idea. I am sure that there are some people who argue that an exorcism can be psychologically therapeutic, but again that is not the primary reason that it is being done. It's being done because [the exorcist] thinks there is a genuine demonic entity involved and they need spiritual help.”

  Interestingly, neuroscience is also beginning to weigh in on this subject as well. Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California Los Angeles, has discovered a way to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that sounds very similar to how exorcism is practiced in certain circles. In looking at the disorder, Dr. Schwartz saw how the plasticity of the brain actually made people's compulsions stronger if they gave in to them, since the neural pathways increased in number when used. Because Dr. Schwartz believes that the brain has the capacity to rewire itself if given the correct set of instructions, he created a four-step program that he said could address the problem naturally. Similar to a religious person giving a demonic name to the compulsion, the first step in Dr. Schwartz's program teaches the patient to say that the problem is the result of the OCD and not the patient herself. According to Dr. Schwartz, reattributing is a particularly effective technique in helping the patient to redirect her attention away from the demoralizing effects of engaging in compulsive behaviors.

  These healing rituals may also work because of the placebo effect. Psychologist Dr. Michael E. Hyland, from the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, has done extensive research into placebos, which he prefers to call “therapeutic rituals.” “I don't like the word placebo because, one, it implies that we know what the cause of it is, and the other is that we know the mechanism, and we don't.” He first became interested in placebos as a way to “personalize” therapy. “It doesn't really matter what the therapy is, therapies work, that is the one thing you can be sure of,” he says. “Now, the question is, why do they work? That is a much more controversial issue.”

  According to Dr. Hyland, the conventional wisdom on placebo says that it works because of expectancy, but he thinks there might be other mechanisms involved. “It isn't just the expectation that you are going to get better or be healed; there is actually a far more complex process.”

  Dr. Hyland has come up with something he calls motivational concordance. “Our research suggests that two mechanisms are involved. One is the well-established mechanism of response expectancy. The other is a motivational mechanism where people gain therapeutic benefit by engaging in therapeutic rituals that are concordant with self-defining or self-actualizing goals. That is, when people self-actualize as part of therapy, then this produces therapeutic benefit through a motivational, non-expectancy-dedicated pathway.” Put differently, when a person feels as if his needs are being met through therapy, then this can help him to get better by motivating him to get really engaged with the therapy.

  Most important, Dr. Hyland's research showed that it doesn't necessarily matter if the person undergoing the ritual believes in it; what really matters is how it “feels” to them. “The ritual is basically concordant with your motivations. So, for example, if we look at prayer as a therapeutic ritual and people know about it, we see those psychological mediated effects, some of which might be expectancy.” In other words, spiritual rituals tend to work for spiritual people.

  However, Dr. Hyland is quick to point out that it is not entirely clear how and why the placebo effect works. “Even so, I can only explain ten percent of the variance; I can't explain much variance.”

  One of the theories he looked at in the hopes of going deeper was quantum entanglement, the principle stating that when two particles become entangled, then an observation made on one particle has an instantaneous effect on the behavior of the other particle, no matter where that particle is. If true, quantum entanglement could help to explain how things like healing from a distance, or the power of prayer, actually work. At present, however, Dr. Hyland is not entirely convinced that there is enough evidence to support this theory. “People say since funny things happen in the quantum world they must also happen in the macro world, and that may or may not be true.”

  For sheer ingenuity, perhaps no one has gone further in trying to debunk the world of the transcendent than Canadian neuroscientist Michael Persinger, who conducted a series of experiments in which he tried to prove that the major components of certain “mystical” experiences, especially Near Death Experiences (NDEs), could be recreated by stimulating the temporal-lobe region of the brain with electric current. In order to do this, Persinger created a magnetic device—which he termed the “God helmet”—that was supposed to be able to simulate the sensations that accompany mystical experiences and NDEs, namely floating outside the body, having a sense of profound meaning, seeing a tunnel of white light, and so on.

  As some critics have noted, however, the results of his experiments are far from conclusive, mostly leaving people with a feeling of slight wooziness, and not the coherent and lucid experiences described by those claiming to have had NDEs. Even British author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who used the helmet in 2003 and felt nothing more than a shortness of breath and slight twitching in his leg, said he was “very disappointed” by the results.

  In addition, some have pointed out the faulty assumptions behind the concept. As Bruce Greyson states in Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence, “Correlating a brain state with an experience does not necessarily imply that brain states cause the experience; the brain state may alternatively allow access to or simply reflect the experience.” As one critic put it, knowing how a television set works doesn't necessarily shed light on the origin of the signal.

  Inherent, of course, in the failures of some of these theories, say religious believers, is the problem of trying to weigh and measure that which may not fit into a laboratory namely spirits. Believers decry the attitude of critics that they say discounts the value of faith and tries to skew the argument toward the scientific (and especially materialist) canon, an argument that might be paraphrased something like this: Since we can prove a possible natural cause for the occurrence of something, then the onus is on you to show us the proof of your “supernatural” cause. This implies that any “proof” of a supernatural cause would have to be scientific in order for it to be considered legitimate or real. But are scientific standards really the only criteria that matter? In his refutation, theologian John Haught describes a concept that he calls �
�layered explanation,” which can be illustrated by answers to the question, Why does a pot of water boil on a stove? One answer is to say that the water is boiling because the H20 molecules are moving around and making a transition from a liquid state to a gaseous one. Another answer would be that the water is boiling because someone turned the stove on. A third answer could be that it's boiling because a person wants a cup of tea. All are valid answers but offer very different levels of understanding. For a person of faith, the scientific explanation seems valid only to a certain degree.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, some doctors and scientists are trying to bridge this supposed gap between science and religion.

  In their book, The Spiritual Brain, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and journalist Denyse O'Leary argue against the belief that humans are nothing more than “biological automatons,” and that spiritual experiences are simply the result of synapses firing in the brain. Instead, using a variety of scientific analyses, the authors propose a nonmaterialist view of neuroscience in which the mind is separate from the body. For instance, in looking at Dr. Schwartz's study on OCD and the way patients were able to reorder the neural pathways of their brain, Beauregard and O'Leary stipulated that for this to work, there must be some outside agent running the show.

  Similarly, in looking at “mystical experiences” (defined by the authors as “the experience of certain mystical contact with a higher truth or a greater power underlying the universe”), Beauregard used brain-scan imagery on a group of Carmelite nuns who were in a deep contemplative state in order to find out which areas of the brain are most active during such states. The scans showed that when these nuns reported having mystical experiences, rather than being isolated in a single area of the brain (the left temporal lobe, for example) the experiences neurally engaged different regions of the brain responsible for a variety of functions, including self-consciousness, emotion, visual and motor imagery, and spiritual perception. To Beauregard and O'Leary this finding suggests not only that these mystical experiences are as complex and multidimensional as the people who have them claim they are, but also that these experiences are the products of a healthy and functioning brain and not some simple “trick” or defect of the brain.

  Dr. Craig Isaacs, a psychiatrist from San Francisco who also happens to be an Anglican priest, is another person trying to bridge the divide. In the course of his work in both areas, Dr. Isaacs has treated numerous patients for mental illness. However, he is convinced that some of the people he has seen are suffering from a demonic possession, and in that case he has prayed prayers of deliverance over them.

  According to Dr. Isaacs, the key to distinguishing between the two is in differentiating the source: “Is the ego perceiving something from within the psyche or is it coming from outside the soul?” In other words, is the person imagining that he is speaking to a being (such as a child who has an imaginary friend) or is he really contacting a separate entity, something that Dr. Isaacs refers to as the “wholly other”? In his research, Dr. Isaacs has discovered five qualities that the ego experiences when encountering the wholly other: First, the patient experiences the phenomena as coming from outside himself; second, the experience is numinous; third, the experience is accompanied by numinous fear or awe; fourth, there is unusual clarity associated with the experience; and fifth, when a vision is involved there is almost always some form of luminosity, either a shadow or a beautiful light.

  The criteria are not common to psychosis, claims Dr. Isaacs. And depending on the therapist's school of thought, he says, one may address this problem inadequately or not at all.

  Dr. Isaacs believes in the concept that a human being consists of a “tripartite nature,” composed of body-soul-spirit, an idea that comes from 1 Thessalonians 5:23. This understanding can then be carried over into illness, for if a person is tripartite, then so too would be the various sicknesses that could affect him or her in one or more of these functions.

  In this model, sickness of the body is caused by disease, normally cured through medicine, while the second category, sickness of the soul (that is, neurotic and psychotic behaviors) is caused by “a breakdown in one of [the soul's] functions,” the cure for which can be psychotherapy or prayers of inner healing. The third category, “sickness of the spirit,” is caused by either personal sin or the demonic and can lead to what Dr. Isaacs calls “existential neuroses”—in which the patient may feel “a loss of freedom or the loss of meaning in life.” If the cause is sin, then the patient will be helped through repentance and forgiveness; if demonic, then through an exorcism or a prayer of deliverance.

  Since all the functions of a human being are interrelated, any illness in one function can affect the others. “Thus, spiritual illness may also be seen to affect the volition of the soul, or an illness of the soul may affect the actions of the body,” says Dr. Isaacs.

  WHILE IT IS CLEAR that advances in science and medicine have been able to explain why many people claiming to be possessed by an evil spirit may actually feel a genuine sense of healing after undergoing an exorcism, several questions still remain. Paranormal events—mind reading, levitation, speaking in previously unknown foreign Ianguages —continue to elude scientific explanation. Perhaps one day science will be able to explain why these things happen. Until then, however, it would seem a betrayal of the tenets of scientific curiosity to discount a whole range of experiences affecting the lives of so many people simply because they defy such explanation.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ORGANIZING THE MINISTRY

  The profession of exorcism has meaning if we as exorcists, through possession and exorcism, prove that God is not only present but stronger. This is a path of faith and I always tell that to the families I meet with in a parish where there is a possessed person. It is through the grace of God that these people can rediscover the evangelical message of our faith.

  —Father Giancarlo Gramolazzo

  In late March, Father Gary's bishop, along with other priests from the diocese of San Francisco and San Jose, came to Rome for the ceremony creating Archbishop Levada as cardinal. And though only in town for a week, the bishop found time to talk with Father Gary about his new assignment. Back in November, when Father Gary was just four months into his sabbatical, his bishop had asked if he would be willing to take over as pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Saratoga, California. The two sat in the reading room of the Casa one day, discussing the past and Father Gary's desire to bring renewal to the parish.

  With that business out of the way, his bishop asked him how the exorcism training was going, no doubt half expecting to hear a few dry remarks about a classroom, lectures, and textbooks. Instead he was shocked when Father Gary told him that he'd seen around fifteen exorcisms that week alone.

  “You mean you've actually seen an exorcism?” his bishop asked.

  “I've seen about sixty,” Father Gary said, correcting him.

  His bishop listened intently as Father Gary briefly described some of the scenes out at San Lorenzo. He mentioned Father Carmine's—and other Italian exorcists’—complaints that some bishops didn't take them seriously. As he talked, Father Gary was careful to reiterate how grateful he was to have had the opportunity to come to Rome and study. “Without the training, I wouldn't have known the first thing about how to proceed,” he told his bishop. It was a natural segue into the practical concerns of getting other American exorcists trained. “If every diocese is supposed to have an exorcist then we have a hell of a lot of work to do.” It just wasn't practical to ask priests to come all the way over to Rome for four months to take the course. One positive development came in the form of a conference in the Midwest that he was planning to attend in August. Apparently the coordinators were attempting to organize something modeled on the conferences of the International Association of Exorcists. This seemed like a good place to start.

  He and his bishop also needed to establish a protocol for when someone approached him about exorcism. Since he'd need to get his
bishop's permission before proceeding, a system had to be worked out. His bishop promised that they would set it in place when Father Gary got back.

  In the meantime, Father Gary shared his ideas about the kind of “exorcism team” he wanted to assemble. Because he was still concerned about discernment, he planned to err on the side of caution and vet potential “patients” through either a psychiatrist or a psychologist. The challenge would be to find competent doctors who believed in the possibility of demonic possession but who weren't overzealous about it, something Father Gary realized could be just as harmful as being too skeptical. In addition, he anticipated having a medical doctor and perhaps a historical theologian (something recommended by an exorcist at the Angelicum). Beyond the medical team, he'd enlist Father Kevin (also for his ability to speak Spanish) and a couple of other priests as possible helpers. He didn't think he was going to use a prayer group just yet (something Father Bamonte had recommended). Because Father Carmine had told him how ashamed people could feel, he thought it prudent to avoid distractions or the potential embarrassment that might result from bringing strangers into the room. At the minimum he would do what Father Carmine did, which was to offer up the person's name at mass.

  As their meeting came to a close, his bishop told him he was impressed with Father Gary's intentions and reiterated his support.