Two Strange things

Splake wrote:

“I think this movie brings some people closer to Christ, ( motivated by fear)”

I believe exactly that happened in the months immediately following the film's first release in December, 1973. However, I do not think this is a good thing. Any religious conversion based on fear is, imo, an extremely negative outcome. Fear of The Exorcist's content is the cinematic equivalent of scaring people with Hell-fire, because the implicit message is that if you don't convert, you'll be joining “the Legion” of demons of the type that are tormenting Regan. What is wrong with this is:

1. It encourages an uncritical belief in, and fear of, demons. Blatty's demon was fictional. Real, documented possession cases do not exhibit anything like the “entity” so chillingly evoked in Blatty's tale. On the contrary, most “demons” in Western possession cases – e.g., the “Robby” case that inspired Blatty, or the Anneliese Michel case – have nothing of the supernatural about them. They are simply adolescent thugs – bad-tempered fragments of dissociated personality that have temporarily escaped from the victims' unconscious, not truly supernatural, nonmaterial spirit entities.

2. It makes God the object of soul-devouring fear, because “He” puts a gun to the potential convert's head and essentially says, “You have free will. Reject me if you like. But you'll spend eternity burning in Hell”. Some choice.

It turns a Being who is infinite compassion and infinite wisdom into a vicious autocrat who would do things like burn “His” creatures in Hell, or murder King David's baby as “He” is said to have done in the Jewish Bible.

3. It makes the conversion process dependent on the truth or falsity of demonic possession. When a person converts out of demon-fear, and as they mature and turn away from that superstition, they vitiate the very reason that caused the conversion in the first place. The threat of Hell is removed, demons are removed. Escaping Hell is no longer a viable reason for having converted. The convert is then faced with either continuing on in the religion for trivial reasons such as “uplift” and companionship, or rejecting it completely. Thus a crisis of faith has been created out of the convert's original, misplaced, fear of God, Hell, and demons.

Therefore, true conversion, imo, must be motivated by love, never fear.

Thanks for your kind words, etrigan. I myself am now a panentheist (not pantheist) and a solitary practitioner of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, which is the result of a long search after I left the Catholic Church after some 27 years as an active Catholic. Yes, the judgmental creator-god, who blames his own creatures for flaws that the creator could have prevented or eliminated or simply forgiven, is one of the major factors that drove me out of Christianity. I already have enough problems without committing myself to a co-dependent relationship with an abusive deity…

listen to the Anneliese Michel tapes. No one has the answer

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The answer is to be found in the excellent book, The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel, by Felicitas Goodman. Anneliese's brain was undergoing a process that anthropologists used to call “the shamanic illness”. Had she received the correct care – i.e., shamanic initiation which was not available to her in her own culture – there is a good chance that she could have worked through her “possession” and been cured, or perhaps become a shaman herself. A shamanic culture would have recognized which “spirits” were surfacing from her unconscious and could have integrated the experience into an appropriate cultural channel. Tragically, her culture only recognized one form of possession: “demonic”. Her priests and parents basically permitted her to starve to death. Moreover, the transcripts of her “possessed” vocalizations are simply mad ravings, without a single hint that a supernatural demonic personality was inhabiting her body, nor were there any supernatural activities associated with her condition. Her family's and priests' folk superstitions about “demonic possession” had a very strong hand in killing her.

Any claim of supernatural possession is extremely extraordinary, and requires and extraordinary investigation and confirmation of extraordinary evidence. None such apply to Anneliese Michel's case.

Thanks, Fr Bowdern. I'll accept documented evidence of parnormal stuff and documented OBE's (veridical “seeing” of objects not visible except by a “floating consciousness”) …. same deal with a “superhuman” personality (but I wonder how you'd really be able to “prove” such a thing).  So I'm not theoretically opposed to possession, but pragmatically, I need to see … evidence 🙂

I have heard the tapes. Constant screaming thickens the vocal cords. If you’ve ever heard what constant smoking can do to the female voice, you won’t be surprised what Anneliese’s continual screaming did to hers. It’s not the voice, it’s the content/meaning of the speech, that would determine or at least suggest a supernatural origin. Anneliese’s “demon” did not say – or do – anything to indicate its existence. “It” was an alternate personality, a dissociated fragment from Anneliese’s unconscious. She was just a very sick girl, and with help from parents and clergy, the sickness killed her.

Glad you like the forum, hope you continue to post 🙂

granville is on a roll! 🙂

If we dig a little deeper, Michel did indeed see The Exorcist when it was released in Germany two years prior to her own possession. Imitation is the biggest form of flattery … and also deadly with a mind so fragile and overwrought with seizures and medications that were very ineffective in the 1970s.

Her voice is similar to those of psychotics in Bellevue who have reached stages of hysteria. It is a voice that not even closest family and friends can recognize.

Check out her case. The courts found guilt for those who killed Michel. I assume that the tapes did not scare the jury into believing it was “demonic” enough to find innocence.

Father Bowdern

Thanks, Cap'n. I'm sure we all appreciate the openness of this forum 🙂