Hostage to the Devil

by Malachi Martin

  His new terminology (he was the author of many current neologisms), his daring thought, his scientific panoply, his international reputation, his refusal to revolt when silenced by chicanery, his long vigil, his obscure death, and finally the flashing wonder of his posthumous fame and publication, all this conferred on him, on his name, and on his ideas the efficacy once enjoyed by a Joan of Arc, a Francis Xavier, and a Simone Weil. When Rome would never canonize him, he was canonized by a new “voice of the people.” He was a marvelous source of esoteric words and intricate thoughts for American pop theologians.

  Very few realized that Teilhard’s vision had ceased long before his death. He had provided Christians with only a respite between the long autumn of the nineteenth century and the winter that enshrouded everything in the late twentieth century. Teilhard was neither strong food to satisfy real hunger nor heavenly manna for a new Pentecost. He was merely a stirrup cup of heady wine.

  Under Pius XII, the Roman Catholic Church of the post-World War II period was being constantly purged of “dangerous ideas.” And Teilhard fell foul of the censors. He was silenced and exiled, forbidden to publish or lecture. Nevertheless, his ideas ran through the intellectual milieu of Europe and America like mercury. David with many others drank deeply of this wine of ideas and believed that they were on their way to a new dawn.

  Of course, David knew from the start that he was destined for anthropology later on. Therefore, in Rome he concentrated on those theological questions which had a direct bearing on anthropology. He studied, in particular, the divine creation of the material world and of man, the Adam and Eve doctrine and that of Original Sin. He found that Church teaching was explicit: God had created the world, if not exactly in seven days, at least directly and out of nothing. There had been a first man, Adam, and a first woman, Eve. Both had sinned. Because of their sin, all other men and women—for all men and women who ever existed were descended from Adam and Eve—were deprived of a divine quality called grace. They were born with Original Sin. And this condition was only changed by the sacrament of Baptism.

  David was troubled that doctrines stated in this way, even including all the refinements and modifications allowed, were extremely difficult to explain in the light of the theories of paleontology current in his time. And the greater the impact of science on the mind, the more dramatic the difficulty.

  When the full weight of anthropological and cross-cultural studies was brought to bear on the question of human origins, a human being seemed to have a long and remote ancestry during which not merely his body was formed but what was called his mind and higher instincts were fashioned. And, of course, if you once admitted these beliefs and assumptions of “scientific” theory to be “facts,” or even highly probable, the idea of God creating the human condition and sending his son, Jesus, to save it from its dire predicament, this central theme of all Christianity was up for auction to the highest bidder.

  The genius of Teilhard was that his bid was as high as that of any non-Catholic or non-Christian in the field, to construct a bridge across such an impassable and impossible gap. And it was in view of this promise that David, along with a whole generation of men and women, adopted Teilhard’s formulation.

  But the fatal flaw was quick and sure. The creating god of Christians was no longer taken as divine. He became internal to the world in a mysterious and essential way. Jesus, as savior, was no longer the conquering hero irrupting into the human universe and standing history on its head. He was reduced to the peak of that universe’s evolution, as natural an element in the universe as amino acids. The thrust that would finally bring forth Jesus in the sight of all men was an evolutionary accident—a kind of cosmic joke—that started over five billion years ago in helium, hydrogen gases, and amino acids of protean space. That thrust had no choice but to keep on thrusting until it gave birth to the refined and culminating flower of “full human consciousness” in the “latter days.”

  Like the Great Stone Face on Franconia Notch that David remembered so vividly from his visits with his uncle, Jesus now simply emerged from nature. The Omega Point. Only this would be the final hour of glory, the Last Day.

  Neither David nor many others who spoke of the “greatest biological adventure of all time”—meaning human history—were alerted to the fact that, once the ancient beliefs of Christianity were interpreted in this fashion, it was a matter of time before other fundamental issues were affected, and very hard-nosed conclusions would have to be drawn. But present euphoria often beclouds later issues. Intellectual freedom has its own chains, its own brand of myopia. And a triumph of mere logic seems always to carry with it a neglect both of the human and of the essence of spirit.

  In this ferment, David’s mentality matured.

  From those years spent in doctoral studies, David has two deeply personal memories. Both took place on the occasion of his Uncle Edward’s death. It was during David’s second last year at the Sorbonne that the old man, in his eighties by then, started to die. David had just arrived back in Paris from a field trip in southern France when he received a telegram from his father: Old Edward had not much time; he had asked for David repeatedly.

  David caught a flight that evening. By the following evening he was back in Coos County on the family farm. Edward was sinking gradually, coming out of semicomatose states and lapsing back again.

  Toward midnight of David’s second day at home, he was sitting in Edward’s room reading. His family had retired for the night. The room’s only light came from the reading lamp on the desk where David sat. Outside all was quiet. A late wind sighed softly in the trees. Occasionally a very distant cry would echo from the surrounding countryside.

  At a certain moment David raised his head and looked at Edward. He thought he had heard the sound of a voice. But the old man was lying still, breathing with difficulty. David went over, dipped a hand towel in a bowl of water, and mopped the perspiration from Edward’s forehead. He was about to return to his chair when he again heard, or thought he heard, a voice—or voices—he was not sure. He looked at Edward: he was unchanged. Then he lifted his head and listened.

  If he had not known better, he would have sworn that about half a dozen people were talking with low voices in the next room. But he knew that, except for his parents and one house woman, he was alone with Edward in the house.

  Edward stirred uneasily and drew in a few quick breaths. His eyelids fluttered for a moment. He opened them slowly. His gaze traveled across the ceiling to the far corner of the room, then back again to David. “Can I help you, sir?” David asked. He had never addressed Edward in any other way. Edward gave a characteristic shake of his head which David knew so well from the past.

  Almost immediately Edward went into a short death agony, inhaling long, deep breaths, exhaling laboriously, heaving his chest, and groaning. David pressed the bell to call his parents, knelt down by the head of the bed, and started to pray in a whisper.

  But a motion of the old man’s finger stopped him. Edward was trying to say something. David bent his ear down close to the dying man’s mouth. He could barely hear the breathed syllables: “…prayed for them…I prayed for them…coming to take me home…you did not…lad…home…you did not…home…”

  Those voices, David thought. Those voices. Men and women. When had he been with Edward and others when Edward had prayed for those others and he had not? Why would they need prayers? He could not get it out of his head that Edward had been talking about their visit to Salem. He did not see any connection. But he could not rid himself of the idea.

  Edward expelled one long breath. His lips moved and twisted slightly. David heard a faint rattle in his throat. Then he found himself alone in that long, deadening, unbroken quiet when the dying is done. Edward’s eyes opened to the glassy sightlessness of a dead man’s look.

  After they buried Old Edward, David stayed for a couple of days; then he went down to New York. He had one or two errands to do in the city, and he had a chance to mee
t Teilhard de Chardin. He brought with him a copy of Teilhard’s Le Milieu Divin in the hope of an autograph.

  The meeting with the French Jesuit was brief and poignant for David. The mutual friend who arranged the meeting warned David as they drove to meet Teilhard that the old man had not been well lately. “Let’s make the visit brief. Okay?”

  Teilhard was much thinner than David had expected. He greeted David affably but crisply in French, chatted for a few minutes about David’s career as an anthropologist, then took the copy of his book from David’s hands and looked at it pensively. As if making up his mind on the spur of the moment, he took a pen from his pocket and wrote some words on the flyleaf, closed the book, handed it back, and glanced at David. Teilhard’s lips were pursed characteristically, his head slightly bent to one side and forward.

  David noticed the strength of Teilhard’s chin. But, much more, it was the expression in Teilhard’s eyes that imprinted itself on David’s memory. David had expected to see the long, deep look of a man who had traveled very far and thought very steeply of the deepest issues in life. Instead, looking at him across the humped curve of that aquiline nose, Teilhard’s eyes were very wide open. They had no hint in them of memories or reflections, no remnants of Teilhard’s own storms. There were no traces of any glinting intelligence. The old paleontologist was completely with David, totally present to him, taking in David’s own glance with a personable expression and a direct simplicity that almost embarrassed the younger man.

  After a few seconds, the older man said: “You will be true. You will be true. Father. Search for the spirit. But, even if all else goes, give hope. Hope.”

  Their looks held together for a moment more. Then they parted. Returning to the center of the city, David remarked to the friend who was driving: “Why in the end, or how in the end, did it become so simple for him?” His friend had no answer for him.

  Suddenly, David remembered: what had Teilhard written on the flyleaf of his book? He opened it. Teilhard’s dedication ran: “They said I opened Pandora’s Box with this book. But, they did not notice, Hope was still hiding in one of its corners.”

  David was bothered for weeks after that meeting by a nagging idea that hope had become difficult for the seventy-three-year-old Jesuit. But after his return to Paris for the remainder of his courses at the Sorbonne, the sharpness of the incident faded temporarily to the back of his memory.

  By the time David returned to the United States in June 1955, Teilhard had been dead for over two months.

  When he did return to the United States, few of David’s former associates and acquaintances could recognize the new intellectual man he had become. He was thirty-four by then, in robust physical condition. His six-foot frame was lean and well muscled. His friends did notice the premature grayness, the faint but definite lines of maturity around his mouth, the disappearance from his face of that youthful ebullience with which he had been clothed five years before when he set out for Europe.

  Another look had replaced the ebullience: it was a certain “definitiveness,” as one friend described it. David’s eyes were fuller in meaning. He spoke just as pleasantly as before, but less casually and with an emphasis that conveyed more meaning than ever before. When he talked of deep matters, those around him felt that what he thought and said came from an inner wealth of experience and resources gathered carefully, marshaled in harmony, and kept bright and burnished for use. He had the “finished” look. And more than one elder colleague remarked, “One day, he’ll be the bishop.”

  Before starting his lectures at the seminary, David spent one extra year in private study, visiting museums, and traveling to various parts of the world where paleontologists were working in the field. This extra year was invaluable to him; he had time to reflect on the condition of research, to catch up on his reading, to acquaint himself with professional colleagues in the field, and to examine the various diggings firsthand. Then, in mid-September 1956, he arrived home to Coos County for two weeks’ vacation on the farm with his parents. The following October he started giving his first courses at the seminary.

  The next nine years of his life passed uneventfully. From the beginning he was popular and highly thought of. The students conferred on him the nickname of “Bones” because of the fossils he kept in glass cases in his study.

  In May 1965, he was again staying in Paris, attending an international convention. During the three weeks he was there, he was asked one evening by an old friend, a parish priest from a northern French diocese, to help out as a substitute assistant at the exorcism of a fifty-year-old man.

  David had very little knowledge of Exorcism. Indeed, from his anthropological studies he was inclined to regard Exorcism as a remnant of past superstition and ignorance. Like any well-indoctrinated anthropologist, he could parallel the Roman Catholic Exorcism rite with scores of similar rites from Africa to Oceania and throughout Asia.

  “No, Father David,” the parish priest had answered him amicably when David had let the old man know that in his opinion Exorcism and satanic possession belonged to the world of invented myth and fable. “No, Father. This is not the way it is. Myths are never made. They are born out of countless generations. They embody an instinct, a deep community feeling. Fables are made as containers, fashioned by men deliberately to preserve the lessons they have learned. But this—satanic possession, Exorcism—well! come and see for yourself. At any rate, help me out.”

  In this exorcism David was substituting for a young priest who had fallen ill in the course of the rite. The exorcism had already lasted about 30 hours. “Just another couple of hours, and it is the end,” the old parish priest had told him before beginning.

  In fact, by the time David entered the case, the worst was over. After only two and a half hours more, the parish priest was about to complete the exorcism and expel the evil spirit. He asked David to hand him the holy-water flask and the crucifix.

  At that point, and without warning, the possessed man became rigid. He screamed and jeered: “If you take it from him. Priest, we needn’t leave. He has too many enemies. We needn’t leave! He didn’t help them when they asked him. We won’t leave! We needn’t leave!” Then a hideous, raucous laughter cackled at them all. The possessed man pointed a fine finger at David. “Hah-hah! Burnt. And he didn’t pray for them…Father of hopelessness! Hah-ha!”

  David’s nerves were jangled. The parish priest took the crucifix and the holy-water flask himself and concluded the exorcism successfully. Afterward, he had a short chat with David. He calmed the young man, but added: “You have a problem. I don’t know your life. I am sure God will solve it at home for you.”

  Back in his own diocese, David had a heart-to-heart talk with his bishop, who remarked on the change in David: no longer the self-confident, sometimes cocksure, always rather inaccessible intellectual he had known, David was now questioning and searching for internal peace, working through some puzzle he could not verbalize but which he felt entangling him.

  David talked on, telling the bishop about the Paris exorcism and about his meeting with Teilhard years before.

  “Well, have you some serious doubts about your orthodoxy as an anthropologist?” asked the bishop after a time. “Or rather, perhaps, I should phrase the question differently. Do you feel that the exorcism experience has opened something in you, some deficiency perhaps, which your anthropology and your intellectualism were only hardening and making permanent?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” David answered. “There is the death of Old Edward. Why did I take his last words so seriously? I know they meant something personal to me. But I don’t know exactly what.”

  “Look, David,” the bishop finally said, “I will put you in touch with Father G., the diocesan exorcist. He has very little work, thank God. But he can help you one way or another—at least as far as the puzzle of that exorcism goes.”

  Father G. turned out to be a breezy character full of snappy little phrases and quick, jerky movements. “Ok
ay, Father David, okay,” was his comment on David’s story. “You have a problem. I have no solution for problems except action. I’m not an intellectual. I failed every exam they gave me. But they needed priests in the diocese so they let me through. I can say a valid Mass and baptize babies at any rate, even if my Latin is awful. And I am a good exorcist. The next time we have a case of possession, I’ll put you in the picture. Only concrete participation in this matter will help you.”

  True to his word, Father G. took David as his assistant exorcist in two cases of possession the following year. Both were relatively uneventful; at any rate, nothing personal to David occurred in either of them. David, however, underwent a continuing change within himself in the succeeding two years. His experience with the possessed man in Paris and with the two exorcisms at home had convinced him that, whatever was at stake in possession and exorcism, it was not a question either of myth or fable, or of mental illness. In addition, he had to keep struggling to make sense of his personal history. He kept stringing a few facts together, trying to make sense out of them.

  There was, first of all, the dying conversation of his Uncle Edward about praying for “them” and their going “home,” and David’s own failure to pray for “them.” Then there was Teilhard’s “give hope” and his words on the flyleaf of the book. And, finally, there were the jeering words of the fifty-year-old man in Paris. On the face of it, he could not understand any of these things, and there seemed to be very little connection between them all. Yet David felt sure there was a connection, if he could only perceive it.