The Dark Sacrament

by David Kiely

  “What she heard from one of them was very strange. The medium asked her to go outside, because she saw the mother in the yard standing beside an orange duck. Linda thought this was bizarre. The family did not keep ducks, but she decided to check anyway. She found Lucy outside and, odd as it seems, the orange plastic duck she played with at bath time was lying at her feet. Lucy claimed she hadn’t taken it from the bathroom, and her mother had no reason to doubt her.”

  Did this occurrence confirm for Linda that her mother had indeed made contact?

  “No. She said the experience upset her, but that same evening something else happened that satisfied her that her mother had succeeded. She was resting on the sitting-room sofa when a circle of golden stars appeared in one corner of the room, whirled around for a few seconds, and then disappeared.”

  “I didn’t like the sound of any of that,” Canon Lendrum continues, “even though Linda was acting with what she believed were the best intentions—caring about where her mother might be. Make no mistake: such naiveté can be used by discarnate entities to disturb and disrupt lives. It was after that occurrence that Lucy began having her visions.”

  The canon goes on to cite the incidents in Scripture that record the living making contact with the dead. He views those examples as warnings and holds that they are as pertinent today as they were in biblical times.

  In the First Book of Samuel, King Saul requests that the witch of Endor, a woman possessing a familiar—a demon that does her bidding—commune on his behalf with the spirit of the dead Samuel. She succeeds, to her surprise, and it seems that it was the demon that made the contact possible. It is also interesting to note that Samuel is none too happy at his rest being disturbed.

  Also, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The former is suffering in hell and asks that Lazarus, the poor man residing in heaven, be sent back to earth. The rich man fears for his five surviving brothers, and asks that they be warned of the torments that await them if they do not mend their ways. His request is refused on the grounds that the living have the word of Moses and the prophets to persuade them. They should have no need of the testimony of dead men.

  And this is the nub of it, according to Canon Lendrum. Those who turn to the occult for answers are demonstrating a lamentable lack of trust in God.

  He reminds us of a passage in Deuteronomy: “Let no one be found among you who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.”

  They are also asking for trouble, the canon feels. Doors into the unknown can open. The Gillespies were fortunate that their particular door seems to have opened onto one of the more benign regions of extraphysical existence.

  We ask about the nature of the exorcism itself. It is our understanding that it was more a cleansing of the house than a deliverance of Lucy. “Yes, indeed. One can speculate that the lady whom Lucy had seen three times had possibly the greatest emotional attachment to the place. Probably suffered a good deal during the war. The armless soldier could have been the husband; the body part in the shower, the naked boy, possibly sons who died violently. Interesting that Lucy first saw the mistress tidying the videotapes. Asserting ownership, I’d say, then her praying by the wall and the monk praying also…trying to come to terms with the tragedy.”

  We wonder if any of Lucy’s apparitions congregated for the blessing, whether the canon was aware of any “presences.”

  He nods. “I did feel a presence, which I suppose could have been that of the mistress. I sensed that if I laid her to rest, the others would follow in due course. I celebrated a Eucharist with the family and prayed that she’d go in the peace of the Lord, where she could meet her loved ones again in the light of God’s love. Then I blessed each room in the house and the outbuildings as well.”

  “So all in all, everyone was happy,” he concludes. “It is wonderful to participate in such a healing victory. Experiencing the power of God’s love in these situations is something neither I nor those afflicted ever forget.”

  Image 3

  The effects of Father Ignatius McCarthy, used during an exorcism. Father Ignatius requested anonymity, and so is not pictured.

  PART TWO

  THE MONK: FATHER IGNATIUS McCARTHY

  A native of County Clare, he is eighty years old and has been a cloistered monk for fifty-three of those years. Despite having left the county of his birth some five decades ago, he has never lost the accent. He speaks softly, and one has to listen closely to catch his words. Yet his gentle demeanor masks an iron will and a fierce intelligence. There is also an air of another time about him; one suspects that the saints and Christian martyrs of antiquity looked and sounded a lot like Father Ignatius.

  His call to the religious life came when he was still a child.

  “I was enthralled by the whole solemnity and pomp of the Mass,” he recollects. “While other boys were most likely bored by that Sunday ritual, I was enchanted. I remember asking my mother what a priest did besides offering Mass, and she said: ‘He dresses in black clothes and prays a lot.’ I think maybe she didn’t want me getting ideas in that direction.”

  But the young Ignatius’s dream of becoming a priest did not diminish as he grew older. “I suppose when I got into my teens I became aware of what I’d be giving up, what the monastic life would involve, and that worried me. I’d be burning my bridges, and there would be no turning back. But, fortunately, God’s call was louder and stronger than all those petty considerations.”

  At age seventeen, he entered Maynooth Seminary in County Kildare to begin his seven years’ training.

  Following his ordination, he joined the Redemptorist Fathers and served as a missionary in Africa. Ill health forced him to return to Ireland before his five-year tenure was completed. He joined the Cistercian order in 1948 and has been with that community ever since.

  “I always had the idea that monks were a lazy crowd who sat about all day thinking deeply about things,” he says with a smile, as he gives us a tour of the grounds. “I got a rude awakening when I came here. Much of the work consisted of heavy farm labor. There are over a hundred acres of arable land surrounding the monastery, and most of it was under crop every year back then. Apart from that, we had a dairy farm with a milking herd of seventy or more cattle.”

  The tough labor that characterized his early life has now been replaced by a gentler routine, yet when it comes to spiritual matters, the rigid disciplines remain firmly in place and are embraced with as much fervor as ever. Prayer and meditation are the order of the day.

  His day begins at 3:45 a.m., when the Great Silence—imposed at 9:15 p.m. the previous evening—is broken by the tolling of the chapel bell.

  Vigils, the first office of communal prayer service, start the day. They are followed by Lauds, the second office or morning prayers, at 7 a.m., after which Father Ignatius prepares to say morning Mass. At 8:15 a.m., midmorning prayers, or Terce, are said. This is the shortest office of the day. At noon, midday prayers, Sext, are followed at 2:30 p.m. by None, midafternoon prayer, and Vespers, or evening prayer, at 5:30 p.m. The day ends with Compline, the final office. In between these seven prayer periods, Father Ignatius eats three light meals, reads, and spends time with those visitors who come seeking his help. He retires at 9:15 p.m., entering the Great Silence once more, and sleeps for four to five hours.

  His first encounter with the demonic occurred in the 1960s, in a most unlikely place: within the very walls of the monastery.

  Brother Francis was a young man in his twenties when he joined the order. Father Ignatius recalls him with sadness. “He was the proudest person I’d ever met…terribly self-centered and covetous. There was an air of danger about him, and when he’d get angry—which was very often—you really feared for your own safety. I remember him throwing a can of oil at me for no reason at all and then laughing whe
n it hit its target. He loved seeing people upset; he seemed to thrive on it. I’ve noticed that a marked immaturity lies at the heart of all evil, and that there needs to be a degree of dysfunction already in the individual before evil can take hold. Brother Francis ticked every box.

  “On several occasions, I noticed his light on in his room in the middle of the night…and in one of his rare moments of calm I asked him about it. He told me that in the dark something would visit him and press down on his chest. I offered to pray in the room with him. He asked me what good that would do, and in no time he was back to his usual, angry, self.”

  After a year Brother Francis was asked to leave.

  “He ended up a homeless deviant,” Father Ignatius continues, “and was charged several times with sexual assault, on both women and men. These days he spends his time wandering the roads, I believe. A lost soul in every sense of the word. I always remember him in my prayers, though. Where there is life there is still hope.”

  Father Ignatius’s introduction to exorcism occurred quite by accident. A fellow priest, Father James, a friend from school days who had been allocated a new parish in the west of Ireland, visited him one day with an unusual story.

  He explained that, since moving into the parochial house, he had been having some very strange experiences. On several occasions he had awoken in the early hours to find a young woman standing by the foot of the bed. She was dressed in clothes from ancient times and was badly disfigured down one side of her face. The priest, sensing that she was a lost soul, began praying for her. Within a matter of days, the visions ceased. However, things took a more sinister turn when one morning he found his breviary not on his study desk where it always sat but lying face down on the floor. From then on, other religious objects in the house came under attack.

  “He was terribly troubled when he came to see me,” Father Ignatius recalls, “and asked me if I would come to the house and pray. I did, of course, without hesitation. Father James reported that my intervention proved successful, and after that word spread. I was called upon to assist in other such cases. I take no credit for these successes,” he continues modestly. “We priests are simply channels through which God does his work. Our job is to remain firm in faith and never fear, because the Devil is as nothing in the face of God the Almighty.”

  Father Ignatius has always believed in the existence of evil.

  “I’m from the old school,” he asserts, “however antiquated that may sound. As a Catholic priest I believe in the Gospels, in Jesus’s life as the supreme example of how we should live. Jesus cast out many demons during his ministry and spoke persistently about the Devil and his works. The fact that Jesus spoke so clearly about the reality of Satan is the most powerful evidence we have. So we priests are duty bound to continue his work. We can’t cherry-pick those aspects of Jesus’s ministry we choose to accept as gospel and ignore the idea of Satan simply because it is distasteful to our so-called modern minds.”

  He has seen a rise in the instances of demonic oppression over the past few years—but is not surprised.

  “Materialism and consumerism have eroded spiritual values,” he concludes, “but they don’t deliver the peace and happiness people crave. We satisfy our egos at the expense of our souls. The result of all this moral decay means that Ireland may now be the second-richest country in Europe, but at what a cost! We have the highest incidence of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancy in Europe as well. Pope John Paul II, when he visited Ireland in 1979, warned of this moral decline. He said: ‘Your country seems in a sense to be living again the temptations of Christ. Ireland is being asked to prefer the “kingdoms of this world with their splendor” to the kingdom of God. Satan, the tempter, the adversary of Christ, will use all his might and deceptions to win Ireland for the way of the world…. Now is the time of testing….’”

  These days, this humble, devout man leaves the monastery only to deal with those cases that have defeated other priests—in particular, when a haunting takes on an antireligious character, indicative of the work of hostile spirits or demons.

  He spends most days in solitude and prayer, yet is forever willing to receive those who come to the monastery seeking his prayers and wise counsel.

  Truly this man is “in the world” but not “of the world.”

  It is said that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. The charge of inaction in the face of spiritual danger is not one that can be laid at the door of this devout and dedicated monk.

  The following five cases complement those of his Anglican counterpart, Canon William Lendrum. Father Ignatius regards each of them as a cautionary tale, but all serving to remind the reader of the formidable power of prayer.

  THE PIT BENEATH THE HEARTHSTONE

  CONNEMARA, COUNTY GALWAY, 1974

  A blue Vauxhall Astra sits idling by a farmhouse gate on a hot Sunday morning in mid-June. At the wheel is a young man, one elbow resting on the door frame, whistling to himself as he gazes beyond the windshield. Occasionally, he flicks a glance at the whitewashed cottage but, as yet, there is no sign of life. He sounds the horn a second time: one short, sharp blast that shatters the quiet of the countryside. But still nothing stirs. He lights another cigarette and sighs.

  Dan McBride has been ferrying the Dwyer brothers to and from Mass every Sunday for the past eighteen months. He is not particularly fond of the pair, but his mother feels sorry for them. Both are bachelors in their late seventies, taciturn men who rarely venture beyond the confines of the twenty-acre farm that sustains them.

  Dan grows impatient. He tosses the half-smoked cigarette into the hedge and is about to step out of the car, but at that moment, he hears the front door of the cottage opening. He watches Edward and Cornelius Dwyer emerge into the sunlight and shuffle up the path. Edward, as usual, is carrying a plastic gallon container.

  The men climb into the car and mumble a greeting. Their routine never varies. They wear the same clothes, nod politely, and use the same words of greeting before falling silent. Cornelius settles himself in the backseat and lays the two missals on his lap. Edward rides in front with the container between his knees. They are ready to leave.

  The tires of Dan’s car crunch over the rough graveled lane, which winds for a good mile to the main road. He remarks on the weather and is answered by a grunt from Cornelius.

  On arriving at the church, Edward makes the same puzzling request of Dan that he has been making every Sunday: “You wouldn’t get that filled with holy water while you’re waiting?”

  “Right-o,” says Dan.

  While the brothers attend the forty-five-minute service, Dan fills the container from a barrel of holy water by the sacristy door. His chore done, he passes the time by reading the newspaper and smoking a couple more cigarettes.

  On this particular Sunday, however, Dan’s curiosity gets the better of him. Back at the Dwyer cottage, he decides to ask the question that has been gnawing at him for the longest time.

  “Tell me something,” he says, as the men are getting out of the car. “Why d’you need so much holy water every Sunday? D’you make the tea with it, do yous?”

  The brothers turn as one and eye him sourly. “You needn’t give us a lift again,” Cornelius says.

  “No, you needn’t give us a lift again,” Edward repeats. “We’ll get somebody else to take us to Mass from now on.”

  Dan can only stare after the pair as they shuffle back down the path, Edward carrying the container of holy water in his right hand, Cornelius gripping the missals in his left.

  “That’s gratitude!” Dan shouts after them. Angry, he guns the engine and turns in the yard. His final glimpse of the brothers is in the rearview mirror as they enter the farmhouse without a backward glance. He will never see them again.

  Six months later, both Dwyers are dead, having passed away within weeks of each other.

  There were nine siblings in the family, four of whom died in infancy. Cornelius and Edward
were the eldest. Two sisters had married and were living in England. Shane, the sole surviving brother, was also married with a young family and lived close to the paternal home.

  It seems that there was bad blood in the Dwyer line. Shane discovered, on his brothers’ demise, that the unthinkable had happened: they had bequeathed the family farm to neighbors. He had taken for granted that he would inherit. He was shocked. Land that had been in the Dwyer name for generations now belonged to outsiders.

  He vowed to buy it back, if only to restore the good name of the Dwyers and their standing within the community. But, as the years passed, the demands of his own family took priority.

  Shane always felt keenly the loss of the land. Partly to heal the hurt, he threw himself into the education of his eldest son, Shane Jr., believing that the boy, by excelling in college, would win back the self-respect taken away from the father. But, even after decades had passed, the dispossessed man still hankered after the “home place,” as he called it. His dying wish was that Shane Jr. might close the gap that his brothers had so cruelly breached.

  In January 2002, that wish was fulfilled. His son bought back the land. He built a new home on the footprint of the old cottage in memory of his dear father and, in so doing, restored the family name to that little patch of Connemara that had always belonged to the Dwyers.

  The modern, two-story dwelling occupies an enviable position within the shadows of the Twelve Pins mountain range. It is a peaceful place, far from the main road and embraced to some extent by the rough natural beauty of Ireland’s western seaboard. There are no other homesteads in sight.