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Saturday, Jul 31, 2010 |
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Features A diocesan exorcist on the job: pastoral care for the “intensely suffering”
July 8th, 2009By Rick DelVecchio "The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist," (Doubleday, 2009), by journalist Matt Baglio describes San Francisco-born Father Gary Thomas' training under a master exorcist in Rome and his return to his Bay Area parish to take up what may be the most misunderstood healing ministry in the Church.
What sets exorcists apart from priests who are skeptical of the ministry may be their biblical belief in the physical reality of evil and the power of prayer and the sacraments to vanquish it. Father Thomas, 55, who was raised in South San Francisco and is a long-time pastor in the Diocese of San Jose, is one such priest. Some of the strongest passages in the book show his dawning realization of evil's power to penetrate a person's being deeper than any physical condition.
The disturbed Sister Janica, for example, growls like a dog ready to bite, then emits an otherworldly scream. As Father Thomas witnesses the master Father Carmine De Filippis, a Capuchin, calmly recite prayers and lay hands on the victim, he feels the sounds are not human in their character and source.
Another victim, Giovanna, makes a sound that seems to come from the depths of her stomach - a sound the author describes as one a dog might make if it were able to speak. At one point she turns to Father Thomas with black, hate-filled eyes that appear to be as thick as Coke bottles. Father Thomas had worked as an embalmer as a young man, and the eyes remind him of the eyes of the dead.
Such experiences move Father Thomas to embrace the ministry as few other U.S. priests have done. He comes to see it as a means of relieving a type of suffering that seems to go beyond pain, and to help friends and family members as well. He sees how exorcists restore grace to vexed souls, and he sees the power of simple prayer and the administration of the sacraments to reclaim victims from the desperation and isolation Satan has in store for them. He learns that although the exorcist may undergo physical and mental trials as he battles the deceiver, he has the stronger hand because the Kingdom of God is above that of God's fallen angels.
Father Thomas' perspective had come to be similar to that of Pope John Paul II, whose papacy saw a return to the view that exorcism is a pastoral task with roots in Jesus' work as described in Mark's Gospel. In 1999, the Vatican revised the 400-year-old Rite of Exorcism and recommended it to priests, under legal guidelines that require it to be used judiciously through the authority that Jesus gave his Church.
In 2005, Father Thomas' bishop in the Diocese of San Jose, Patrick J. McGrath, picked him to go to Rome to train as an exorcist after a fellow priest in line for the assignment was unavailable. He completed a 40-hour course and observed 80 exorcisms as Father Carmine's apprentice.
Since returning to San Jose as pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Saratoga, he has led an all-Catholic exorcism team made up of two other priests, a physician, a psychiatrist and psychologist. He also assists the Diocese of Oakland on the rare occasions when a possible case arises there.
In the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Franciscan Father Guglielmo "William" Lauriola has performed exorcisms for 40 years (see related story.) Officially, inquiries about exorcisms in the Archdiocese were referred to Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius Wang before the bishop's recent retirement, Archbishop George H. Niederauer said. The archbishop said he is discussing the matter with Bishop Wang to determine future policy.
True exorcisms are rare. The book notes that in the 24 years before Father Thomas began his training, only two investigations into possible possession had been conducted in the Diocese of San Jose. Father Thomas has gone to his bishop for approval to pray the rite in five cases, two of which are ongoing.
The first three cases had their roots in a history of abuse, involvement with occult practices or addiction. The fourth concerns a scientist is his 40s who learned to "channel spirits" and who showed increasingly intense manifestations early in Father Thomas' work with him. Lately, the victim has been improving.
Father Thomas said he has just received approval to perform a fifth exorcism. The victim is a woman who believes herself cursed by a man trying to extort her for money. She has psychotic symptoms that have not responded to medication, leading the exorcism team's psychiatrist to suspect that something other than disease is at work. Father Thomas agrees: "I just sense a presence where there's just something else that happens to her."
Father Thomas prays the rite in the private reconciliation room at the parish church, with the subject seated and a second priest present.
Exorcism treats the "intensely suffering" and deserves a greater role in pastoral ministry and in the training of priests, Father Thomas maintains. He is nothing if not outspoken in his view that the U.S. Church is fearful and dismissive of exorcism and owes it to the sufferers to do more.
"Most of these situations are not diabolical but our Church has a responsibility to minister to these people because they end up going to evangelicals, going to charlatans, and they get in more trouble," he said in an interview with Catholic San Francisco. "It leads them to conclude we don't believe, and quite honestly they're right."
Here are excerpts from the interview with Father Thomas. Some of the questions are paraphrased:
How does Satan manifest in the people you pray over? People don't realize that either the prayers of deliverance or the prayers of the solemn rite have efficaciousness to them if they're dealing with a demon. They will stimulate the demon. The person will begin to have symptoms, seizures, eyes roll in the back of the head. Sometimes they will take on a reptilian appearance. They can easily speak a language they would have no prior proficiency in. It all depends on the power of the demon that may have infiltrated them.
Absolutely. Demons are deceivers and they're deceivers by nature because Satan's greatest deception is to convince the human race that he doesn't exist - and a lot of people believe he doesn't exist. Even before an exorcism or prayers of deliverance are prayed over a person there can be manifestations by the very appearance of a priest who's an exorcist. Most of them would happen once the prayers begin, but not always.
I always have another priest with me. Demons attack the exorcist and they attack where the exorcist is weakest. It's not so much a physical attack, although down through the ages there have been recorded appearances where saints claimed they had been attacked by demons. I never experienced a physical attack. Mine have been more spiritual, psychological, emotional.
Sexual temptation, trying to really jeopardize my celibacy, creating emotional disturbances in me where I might not trust certain people who are very significant in my life, particularly in the life of the parish. The temptation to seek inappropriate ways to gain intimacy with others. Exacerbating the experiences of loneliness that appear in a priest's life at times. Those are all ways.
Certainly Satan would not want to have any person with any kind of credibility that would call attention to his diabolical presence in the world and then trying to expel those presences. Christ uses me as a vessel. It's Christ who's the deliverer. The exorcist is the vessel. Why Christ chooses to deliver is a mystery, although it's all related to the greater glory of God.
No. The vast majority I have prayed over have become exposed to the diabolical or the preternatural more often than not out of curiosity. You have to open yourself. You have to create a doorway for a demon to enter. The vast majority of times a demon is not going to approach someone and tempt or enter them unless they have been in some way invited. I'm always telling people if you have a prayer life and you are in close to the Lord, you have nothing to worry about. That doesn't mean there are not other levels of temptations.
People think that Ouija boards are harmless. They are not, because what people do is they begin tapping into a realm that's beyond science, that's beyond the physical nature of human existence. They don't know what they're tapping into, really. The person I'm presently praying over channeled spirits. He learned how to channel spirits from his clinical-psychologist therapist, if you can believe that. And he tapped into a world that he has not been able to be completely freed from. We've delivered a lot of demons out of him - big, huge manifestations. He's better but he's not completely free. He opened a door that we have not been able to absolutely, positively close.
In every case I have to ask a variety of questions, much like a detective would. Have you ever been involved with the occult, satanic practices? What was it like growing up in your home? Abuse, pornography, violence? All of those kinds of questions are asked at the beginning to see if there might have been a doorway opened to something outside the physical. It takes a lot of time. We start with the lowest common denominator. Do people have a prayer life? Sacramental life? A relationship with the Lord? I may have them celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Eucharist, I encourage them to go at least weekly if not more.
Demons will hide. They'll go away. They do those things to conceal themselves. It's all about the lie. But once you get them to divulge their name, they lost. But it takes time. Once you know they're identity it's the first step toward their eventual expulsion. It depends on the power of the demon, depends on how long the demon has been infested in the person. It depends on what the person has done. It depends on the cooperation of the person.
Beelzebub. Lust. Fear. I delivered recently a very powerful demon whose name was Shroud. I got attacked and so did the other priest who was with me. He had a numbness down his leg for weeks. Some kind of nerve damage. He's better but he had this nerve problem for about a month. In my case it was all emotional. We had a very hard delivering this demon. He just wouldn't come out.
I don't see this not being part of what I do for the rest of my priesthood. Once you start doing this you kind of end up doing it for life. But I'm going to see (Bishop McGrath). He needs to appoint another guy besides me. There's too many people coming. It isn't just here. The guy in Chicago told me the same thing - more and more people come. I'm not surprised, the times that we live in.
For an audio clip from the interview, click on "Outspoken Exorcist" on the homepage of Catholic San Francisco Online: www.catholic-sf.org.
From July 10, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
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