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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Apr 23, 2009 11:40:43 GMT
I have heard it said - hearsay - that the rate of exorcisms in Ireland has gone through the roof in the past couple of years. Does anyone here have a view?
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Apr 23, 2009 18:39:01 GMT
Yes - I have heard rumours about exorcists having a lot more business than usual too.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Apr 24, 2009 9:14:24 GMT
Well, both you boys are being very flippant about this, but exorcism is a serious thing, something much of the clergy would prefer not to talk about. And it appears that there are a lot more exorcisms happening now than in recent times.
However, there seems to have be always some evidence of exorcisms. Many of the great houses in Ireland have some folklore concerning ghosts or diabolical manifestations and very often the Catholic priest was called when the Church of Ireland minister tried and failed. I suppose the best documented case of this phenomonon of diabolic presence is in regard to the 'Ghost Room' in Maynooth, where two students died in the 19th Century. A pro-longed exorcism was carried out by two Jesuits and the room was converted into an oratory dedicated to St Joseph, who is the patron of a peaceful death - the students, Mr McGinn and Mr O'Reilly, were buried in unmarked graves on unconsecrated ground, as suicides.
This episode has its fascination - it brings together the rite of exorcism, the belief in the demonic and the prenatural and the attitude of the Catholic Church to suicide. I believe there were serious mitigating circumstances in the case of both young men's deaths and that the treatment of their bodies was not correct, but it was a decision taken by the authorities in Maynooth over a century and a half ago and also, very few people have studied the contemporary records on the case in the Maynooth College archives. I know Mgr Patrick Corish, the Professor Emeritus of Modern History in Maynooth, has studied the documents, but I think he has been very discreet in his commentary on them. I also heard, this may be just student folklore, that some of the science departments in Maynooth, the Chemistry department was named, carried out some tests on the location which found the floor to be stained with human blood which will not wash away. I don't know if this is correct.
The 'Ghost Room' is now a waiting area among academic offices of the new 'NUI Maynooth' and has been so for 20 years. Some students told me that they went there, unaware that this was the 'Ghost Room' and felt a very weird sensation. Well, this is subjective, but very interesting.
I'd like to know if anyone else has anything to contribute on this strange tale, or any other like it. This is a real question of truth or superstition.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 24, 2009 12:04:39 GMT
I would be pretty cautious about this as well - there is a lot of sensationalism surrounding the subject. (Malachi Martin'sfantasies are an example.) Do Irish dioceses have formally-appointed exorcists? I know that many American and European bishops are actively hostile to the whole area, which they see as mediaeval superstition - and the bishop's permission is needed to perform an exorcism. How much of the revival of interest in exorcism relates to priests in good standing, and how much to schismatic priests? Michael Cox used to perform exorcisms on a regular basis and he attributes his ill-health to them. I am surprised he was not told "Jesus I know, and John Paul, but who are you?"
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 27, 2009 13:02:48 GMT
Speaking of Malachi Martin, I see from the latest IRISH CATHOLIC that Family and Life are offering HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL as a special offer to members. What on earth has possessed them to do this? I use the term advisedly. I have discussed Malachi Martin on the Catholic Literature thread - suffice it to say that the man was a manipulator, fraud and fantasist of notably evil life, who left the Jesuits in a hurry after being exposed as seducer of the wife of the journalist Robert Blair Kaiser (as detailed in Kaiser's memoirs - I should add that Kaiser has some very dodgy theological axes to grind but his account of Martin apparently deals in material of widespread public knowledge). I have read HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL. It is a work of fantasy based on anonymous and uncheckable sources in which sexual temptations are described in considerable and prurient detail. It also puts forward a very dubious theology of exorcism in which the exorcist is described as in some sense placing himself in the power of the devil as a sort of substitutionary atonement - hence the title HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL. The contrast with, say, Fr. Amorth's books (which have their own peculiarities but are unquestionably written by a long-serving and approved exorcist) is very marked. I would also recommend Michael W. Cuneo's AMERICAN EXORCISM (written from a pretty fair-minded liberal Catholic viewpoint) which has an interesting account of Martin and reports the scathing view of him expressed by many exorcists, including traditionalist schismatics as well as priests in good standing. In my humble opinion, anyone thinking of buying HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL for any purpose other than to expose Malachi Martin for the fraud he was should save their money to buy genuine Catholic publications. I am sad to see Family and Life, which does such good work, being added to the list of his victims.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Apr 29, 2009 11:03:11 GMT
I know some Irish dioceses have designated exorcists - Dublin and Limerick come to mind. Some of the smaller dioceses probably don't, but if things are as bad as I hear they will soon have. I am not talking about Michael Cox/Malachi Martin stuff here.
I can remember Cox'es outings as an exorcist. At one point, he exorcised RTÉ at Donnybrook - in around 1992. This sort of thing isn't serious, except insofar as it seriously trivialises something serious.
Malachi, after his departure from the Society of Jesus and the priesthood and his failed attempt at dishwahing, was in the position of the unjust stewart in St Luke's Gospel - to dig he was not strong enough, to beg he was ashamed. And he found an outlet as a niche-market pulp fiction writer. His secret was insuating that his fiction was actually fact. And thousands believed him.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on May 20, 2009 14:12:10 GMT
This is one aspect of religion that receives an inorinate amount of attention. I notice that the case of Anneliese Michel was given screen treatment recently, though with distortions. Frau Michel died during an exorcism on her in the German diocese of Würzburg, in most respects a liberal diocese. 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' were based on this case but the German language film Requiem was much truer to life (but not entirely either). Controversy surrounds the case which resulted in the girl's parents and the two exorcists found guilty of negligence leading to the girl's death. Anyone have any opinions?
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Post by hibernicus on May 20, 2009 16:51:44 GMT
The BRANDSMA REVIEW praised THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE but I thought it was a lousy film. One of the central issues surrounding the case is that the girl stopped taking her medication with the knowledge (if not at the advice) of the priest, and that this contributed to her death. EMILY ROSE has the defense counsel call as witness and anthropologist who testifies that the medication by its action on the girl's brain prevented the exorcism from taking force and hence the medication was responsible for the girl's death. There is no basis for that in the real-life case, and the suggestion by implying that the exorcism's effect was based on suggestion goes against the film's overall insinuation that she was genuinely possessed - they're trying to have it both ways. Two other points: (1) By presenting the case in flashback (i.e. the girl is already dead and the question is whether the priest will be punished for actions undertaken in good faith) the film distances the audience from any sense that she might have been saved if someone had acted differently and makes the priest the underdog; if it was told in chronological order the girl might be seen as the underdog and the priest appear somewhat differently. (2) The theological argument underpinning the film (identical with the explanation offered by the real-life priest and the Michel family) is very dubious. We are told that Emily Rose was not delivered from her demons because she was chosen to show the power of God by her sufferings. How does the case show the power of God? For everyone who sees her as a martyr there's another who sees it as a scandal whereby a young woman was driven to death through religious mania. God may not intervene in our natural sufferings, but where He allows supernatural sufferings wouldn't it be more in accord with His nature to provide supernatural help? Stephen Greydanus of Decent Films takes a similar view: www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/exorcismofemilyrose.html As it happens, I also saw REQUIEM when it came out and I will make some remarks on it next - whenever I find time.
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Post by Harris on May 20, 2009 22:50:55 GMT
Are you guys serious? Exorcisms? I would have thought that in the modern era mental or physical illness is more likely. How often does one actually come across demonic possession these days?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 21, 2009 9:16:36 GMT
Are you guys serious? Exorcisms? I would have thought that in the modern era mental or physical illness is more likely. How often does one actually come across demonic possession these days? Yes, Harris, we are serious. I should point out that exorcism is often associated with places rather than people - that seems to be the case in regard to the Ghost Room in Maynooth. But the case of Anneliese Michel in Germany in the 1970s is a suggested case of possession of an individual. But I am glad you joined, because the question is truth or superstition. The case of Anneliese Michel may have been a case of serious mental illness. In fact the Catholic Church'es rules in the matter is to assume a natural explanation for any strange phenonomena until a thoroughly inexplicable factor comes in. A friend of mine, a very left leaning clerical student who since has been ordained to the priesthood, gave me an example that he witnessed personally - not at an exorcism but of an encounter with a young woman believed to be possessed. This was before he became a clerical student and he was a social worker in Scotland - the location he told me about was in the Highlands. To cut a long story short my friend was a witness present during an investigation by a priest as to whether the woman was possessed. He said to me that as dreadful as the business was, there was absolutely nothing that could not be put down to psychological factors or psychiatric illness until at one point the girl turned to both the priest and the witness and mentioned to each of them a number of personal sins committed by them, giving dates, times, places and details. There was absolutely no way that she could have known this. This frightened my friend. I don't know if it was a decisive factor in his decision to become a priest, but I imagine it had an effect. But Harris, you'll just have to take my word for it that the guy isn't the sort of holy Joe who would be credulous - I would rate this fellow's view higher than most of the other seminarists I have come across because of his natural skepticism. Another phenonomen that exorcists look for and that is knowledge of languages that the possessed subject never learned. Notwithstanding discussion regarding language learning over on the general forum on education (which I intend to get back to), the matter of languages and their acquisition is less definite than above. I have an example from another context. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the charismatic movement flourish throughout the Catholic world. There was an active movement in Belgium promoted by Cardinal Suenens, which had the late King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola among its members. At the time, it seemed to be the way the Catholic Church was going, but the Belgian Church is pretty devastated these days, but I digress. At a charismatic meeting on the campus of Louvain University, a miracle was reported when a barely educated woman recited three of the psalms in the original Hebrew. This is a big deal, but on investigation it was discovered that as a young woman several decades previously, she had been a maid in a Jewish household and she heard one of the sons of the family read those psalms aloud as he was preparing for his bar mitzvah. The story shows how powerful the human memory can be, but when a natural explanation was arrived at, talk of a miracle was dropped. But exorcists are not looking for this sort of thing where the subject merely parroted what she heard many years before, they are looking for facility in speaking one or more hitherto unlearned languages which is not easily attributable to natural means (I am understating it a bit - it's like if someone you know who has never been overseas and has little education, suddenly comes out with fluent Swahili and Quechua and Vietnamese). Now, psychiatric advances considerably raise the bar for what is regarded as possession. Just as cases declared as miracles by the Lourdes Medical Bureau (at least half of whom must be unbelievers according to the terms of the trust which set it up) in earlier times might not be considered now, there is a greater body of evidence for natural explanations in regard to suspected exorcisms now than ever before. And presumably this will grow. But notwithstanding this, reports in many parts of the world including Ireland suggest that there are more rather than less exorcisms taking place. We are talking anectdotal evidence, but I don't believe that the Catholic Church is going to release statistics about the number of exorcisms it carried out. I should say that most religious denominations have a belief in forces of personal evil called devils or demons and have processes at least analogous to exorcism. I would say that it is the Pentecostals/born-again Christians who are perhaps more gung ho at seeing the work of the devil and going in to exorcise. This sort of approach cannot be helpful to someone who is ill. But the anecdotes I have relate to the Catholic Church who are more likely to count to ten before reaching for the Rite of Exorcism.
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Post by hibernicus on May 21, 2009 11:14:21 GMT
A few comments on REQUIEM as promised. Bear in mind that I only saw it once, four years ago, and rely on memory. The film does nominally leave open the possibility that the girl was really possessed (we do see her snarling and spitting, and she herself comes to believe that she has been called by God to be a martyr) but overwhelmingly endorses the view, openly voiced by her sceptical female friend (who tells her at the end, as she sees her physical decline "They're not exorcising the devil - they're exorcising you") that her symptoms derive from mental illness. The mundanity of her surroundings is insisted upon; although this device can be used in portrayals of supernatural manifestations to make them seem all the more shockingly authentic, here it is used to present it as unthinkable that God and Satan should be visibly duking it out in this world of Seventies hairstyles, fashions, and petit bourgeois fitted carpets. The explanation put forward implicitly (and to some extent explicitly) is that her initial psychological disturbance is the result of emotional conflict as she moves away from the ambit of her old-fashioned and rather authoritarian Catholic small-town family into university dorm life. (She is seen both fervently praying the Rosary at a Marian shrine in the mountains and sleeping with a boyfriend - - I believe the latter is a fictional gloss in the story which skews the presentation more in a naturalist direction, since it undercuts the idea that she is singled out because of extraordinary sanctity). The film suggests that her inability to express these conflicts openly (including, it is implied, both a degree of resentment at her parents' restrictive code and guilt as she transgresses it) leads to psychological disturbances which are interpreted by the girl herself, by her family, and by some priests whom they consult in terms of demonic possession, and that she comes to accept the narrative of possession and martyrdom as a way of making sense of her conflicts and finds a sort of peace in this. It is emphasised that she voluntarily submits to exorcism and is not forced - the film's implicit complaint is that somebody should have said "stop - this is absurd". (One of the odd features of the European witch-trials, which were basically a monstrous collective fantasy leading to the mass murder of innocent people - is that some defendants voluntarily -i.e. without being tortured confessed to being witches and doing what witches were expected to do. It has been suggested, on the basis of research into what was known of their circumstances, that these were people who were already to some extent at odds with the world and who found expression for these resentments by acting up to the stereotypical image of the witch when others projected it up on them. Hysterical pseudo-mystics, who in some cases have traces of genuine mysticism, may be a similar phenomenon. Fr. Herbert Thurston has some very interesting discussions of this in his essays - e.g. those collected in SURPRISING MYSTICS.) One interesting point which relates to Alasdair's comments on Church caution towards exorcism is that the old parish priest is presented as initially very sceptical at the suggestion that she is possessed - the main mover in the push towards exorcism is an amiable younger priest who has got involved in the Charismatic Movement. (I don't remember how they deal with the issue of episcopal authorisation, which is required for an exorcism. I think the issue is not mentioned in REQUIEM because the central focus is on the girl. In THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE we are told that the bishop gave permission for the exorcism but has now denied doing so and left the exorcist out on a limb; this I believe was the defence case in the real trial, and I understand the bishop did not deny he gave some sort of casual permission but maintained this was for a preliminary investigation, not a full exorcism. Has anyone more information on this?) REQUIEM should be treated with some care as an account of the case because its naturalistic presentation should not disguise the fact that it is a fiction based on a real case, and since I have never read an account of the original case I don't know which details were drawn from it and which were invented by the film-maker. Oddly enough although THE EXORCIST is a very questionable product it does try to raise genuine theological issues more clearly than EMILY ROSE (REQUIEM is not really comparable because of its different standpoint). I will post on it soon when I find time.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 21, 2009 15:11:07 GMT
Germany seems to bring out a certain schizophrenia in most non-Germans from the point of view of German Catholicism. Most of us know it is the cradle of the Reformation and therefore we see it as a Protestant county except in relation to WW2, when given the criticism of Pius XII and the Church (and the corresponding dearth of criticism of the majority Lutheran Church) one would think it piously Catholic.
There are 32 million German Catholics out of 79 millions. Between 4 and 5 million of them attend Mass on Sundays - which is about the same as the entire Catholic population on the island of Irelend. There still are some regions in Germany that are piously Catholic and German political leaders such as Helmut Kohl and Edmund Stroiber are openly observant Catholics. These are both conservatives, but there are practicing Catholics among the Social Democrats and Greens too. There are also surprising norms in Germany, such as the Kirchensteuer or proportion of one's tax that goes to one's declared denomination and the almost absolute bar on commerce on Sundays in most of Germany.
The film Requiem and story of Anneliese Michel focusses on the pockets of Catholicism that still exist in many parts of rural Germany, particular in parts of Bavaria. If Bavaria is the most Catholic part of Germany, Lower Franconia is regarded as the most Catholic part of Bavaria and Frau Michel came from the extremely rural end of Lower Franconia called Klingenburg. She attended Würzburg University (a Catholic University) and lived in the Catholic Students' hostel while there, studying primary education. Normally, places like this are reserved for practicing Catholic students. There may not have been such a distinction between practicing and non-practicing students in the early 70s. Requiem depicts a girl from the very Catholic Black Forest but she studies science at Tübingen, which is markedly less Catholic. However, it is easy to envisage the type of culture which saw a young Catholic sleeping with her boyfriend while reciting the rosary piously at mountain shrines - things where less polarised then than now. However, Anneliese Michel appears to have been more of a pious girl than the one in the film. Anyway, the mystery remains and neither film seems to have shed light on it.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 22, 2009 10:09:01 GMT
One interesting point which relates to Alasdair's comments on Church caution towards exorcism is that the old parish priest is presented as initially very sceptical at the suggestion that she is possessed - the main mover in the push towards exorcism is an amiable younger priest who has got involved in the Charismatic Movement. This is interesting. I don't know how true this is to the Michel case, but there does appear to have been a degree of skepticisim of exorcism in the traditional Church. The charismatic movement drew a lot of inspiration from the Pentecostals I mentioned, so they may have been more likely to see the devil at work. On the topic of the Michel case, German prosecutors did not appear the Bishop of Würzburg, Josef Stangl, on the grounds of age. Stangl was moving in a liberal direction but seems to have been shocked with the results and in the context of disappointment permitted the exorcism. His successor Paul Werner Scheele was very much in the liberal camp. The current bishop, Friedhelm Hoffmann, is closer to the present Pope. Würzburg has connexions with the diocese of Kilmore in Ireland, as St Kilian, apostle of Franconia was a Cavan man. It is also twinned with Bray and with Co Wicklow.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on May 22, 2009 10:39:36 GMT
A lot of time is spent discussing two depictions of a real life case - Anneliese Michel in Germany (not a superstitious back water) in the 1970s (not the Middle Ages). It seems to illustrate that exorcism and possession are real life issues. There have been books by more respectable exorcists that Malachi Martin - I am thinking of Gabriele Amorth (spelling?)
If the incidence of exorcism is increasing in spite of advance psychiatric knowledge which can give more natural explanations, something is going pear-shaped, somewhere. Of course you can't put an FOI request into the Church, but research into the number of exorcisms would be an interesting topic for an investigative journalist, I'd have thought.
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Post by hibernicus on May 22, 2009 11:31:50 GMT
First, a minor clarification in relation to Alasdair's response on REQUIEM. The girl in the film is not presented as sleeping with her boyfriend on a regular basis while remaining otherwise religiously observant. She does it once; the film seems to imply that she is trying to work out what it would be like to break with her parents' world and become what the film-maker would doubtless regard as a proper modern girl, but that her sense of what she is is so deeply tied up with the values of her upbringing that she eventually abandons the attempt and (to use the terms in which the film-makers would probably put it) regresses to the uncomplicated piety of her childhood and tries to escape from the growing pains of adolescence by treating them as demonic and to be exorcised.
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