As fear and the desire for the sensational escalate, people in the US are turning in droves to exorcism to expel their demons. Anna Mundow reports on the supernatural popularity of an ancient rite.
On A muggy night in a packed auditorium outside Chicago, sociologist Michael Cuneo recently watched white, middle-class Americans going berserk. "Throughout the auditorium, demoniacs are paired off with exorcism ministers, wailing, thrashing, regurgitating," Cuneo wrote at the time. "Demons are being expelled in gushes of vomit and strands of mucus, and assistants pick their way through the heaving mess, handing out paper towels, holding paper bags up to peoples' chins . . . across the hall, an attractive, middle-aged blonde woman named Linda wails constantly, a high-pitched air raid siren of a voice. Young children roam the hall, taking it all in nonchalantly."
That night, Linda expelled her "Catholic demons", thanks to evangelical Pastor Mike ("the hardest working exorcist in America") who roared "Oh, yes, Roman Catholic demons, you've got to go . . . Mary, Queen of Harlots . . . Popes of the Antichrist . . . Demons of infant baptism . . . Demons of scapulars . . . " And so on. Many other entities were similarly trounced - demons of depression, fornication, divorce - and at 11 p.m., people were ordered to "box" or "bind" their remaining demons until their next airing.
Which would be soon.
"Exorcism is a booming business in contemporary America," explains Cuneo, the author of American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty. "And not just among charismatics . . . I have personally encountered more varieties of Catholic exorcism - official Catholic exorcism, bootleg Catholic exorcism, you-name-it Catholic exorcism - than I ever imagined existed."
The Vatican has noticed. In its most public response to the proliferation of freelance exorcists - the 1998 publication De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam (Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications) - it revised an exorcism rite that has been in use since 1614, this time emphasising the importance of prior medical and psychiatric examination while toning down the more colourful descriptions of Satan.
"The Vatican was very concerned about renegade exorcisms that capture the public imagination," Father Christopher Coyne, a spokesman for the Boston Archdiocese, confirms. "The Church goes out of its way to avoid publicity and sensationalism. So, among other things, the Vatican called for every diocese to appoint an official exorcist, to put a tighter control on things."
The number of full-time exorcists in the US Catholic Church was already rising. In the mid-1990s, there was just one officially appointed exorcist in the US. Between 1996 and 1997, however, that number rose to 10.
Ten official exorcists for 60 million Catholics in the US may not sound like a lot, but the Vatican's initiative signalled a further increase. The archdiocese of Chicago has appointed a full-time exorcist for the first time in its 160-year history (he is currently investigating over a dozen cases), and New York City's diocese now has four exorcists, including the Rev James LeBar, who became something of a legend in the field almost a decade ago when he assisted at the first televised exorcism in the US.
"Like it or not, there are many people in this country who are engaged in struggles with what they believe are demonic forces," LeBar told Cuneo last year. "And because the Church, for quite some time now, hasn't done its job in offering help to these people, many have been forced to turn to shady operators for help."
Much of that help is offered by an astonishing variety of evangelical exorcist or deliverance ministries (600 by conservative estimates, but perhaps three times that many are currently operating in the US) whose healing services run from comforting to sinister.
Pastor Mike expelling Linda's Catholic demons is an example of what Cuneo calls "the rough and ready school . . . a grapple on the floor, a slap on the back, a regurgitation, perhaps into a paper towel - no strings attached, take it or leave it".
The Word of Faith Fellowship, by contrast, employs security guards and lawyers, promising health and wealth as it harangues the faithful into submission. "Miracle workers in pink Cadillacs and pinkie rings, soul-savers in three-piece glitter suits and $60 haircuts," Cuneo writes. "This is the world of the Faith Movement. Gushing emotionalism, grasping materialism, tears on demand, hustles blessed with a thousand 'Amens'."
Evangelical congregations typically form around a charismatic minister or psychotherapist, and one of the most successful is the Rev Bob Larson, who runs an exorcism ministry in Denver, Colorado, and 40 exorcism teams across the country. "Our goal is that no one should ever be more than a day's drive from a city where you can find an exorcist," Larson recently told the New York Times. "Why should that freak us out?"
Catholic clerics may not be freaked out. But many are dismayed to see their flock straying to the evangelical outback and the rite of exorcism becoming a public spectacle. "Major exorcism is a very strict ritual applied in very rare cases after a thorough medical, psychological and spiritual investigation," stresses Father Christopher Coyne. "If I'm the appointed exorcist, I'm the only person who has access to the ritual, and I carry it out in complete confidentiality."
Explaining the difference between simple and major exorcism (the former is part of the baptismal sacrament), Father Coyne insists that baptism, confession and the eucharist continue to be the three healing sacraments in the Catholic Church.
But this is clearly too tame for a growing number of Americans who prefer their exorcism on demand, the more sensational the better.
Increased satanic activity is one explanation for that appetite. "The incidence of the demonic on the whole is rising," Father Jeremy Davies, co-founder of the 200 strong International Association of Exorcists, observes from his Westminster diocese in the UK. "The existence of the devil isn't an opinion, something to take or leave as you wish," Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, a Vatican spokesman, agrees.
Others see cultural, not satanic, forces behind the current exorcism boom, of which perhaps the most potent expression was William Friedkin's 1973 movie, The Exorcist. Based on Peter Blatty's novel about a 1949 exorcism case in Washington, DC, this horror film continues to spawn hysterical fascination with demonic possession and the priest-hero.
"Making the movie was strange enough," Father Tom Bermingham, an adviser on the film, told Cuneo. "But the aftermath was completely bizarre. Dozens of people contacted me every week . . . and they all believed that they or someone close to them might be demonically possessed."
A few years later, Hostage to the Devil, a lurid account of five "real" exorcisms written by ex-Jesuit Malachi Martin, created more exorcism devotees, among them many alienated Catholic priests who condemned the reforms of the Second Vatican Council for giving Satan a free hand. "Before the Second Vatican Council, possession was extremely rare," Father Robert McKenna told Michael Cuneo in 1996, "but after the council there has been a veritable plague of possessions . . . Vatican II and the new Mass gave an opening to the devil, and the devil has fully seized the opportunity." (McKenna was dismissed from the Dominican order in 1974 for refusing to disassociate himself from the breakaway Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement.)
Back on terra firma, more subtle influences prevail. The self-expression movement of the 1960s, the charismatic and pentecostal awakenings of the that decade, the recovery movement in general, recovered memory therapy in particular and the satanic daycare abuse panics of the early 1990s all contribute to a hysterical, self-centred yet peculiarly self-exonerating approach to evil.
'Part of the attraction of exorcism is the objectification of evil and the removal of one's own responsibility," says Father Coyne. "If evil comes into your life, it's not because of anything you've done. It's an outside agent. That's very convenient."
But Father Coyne points out that the Catholic tradition does not let the possessed off the hook: "Possession is usually assumed to be initiated by an invitation to evil on the part of the possessed. We ask what was going on in that life initially that might have precipitated the disorder. "
Having spent two years tracking exorcism ministries across the US and having observed 50 exorcisms, Cuneo admires clerics who quietly attempt to heal their parishioners, most often through prayer, sometimes through exorcism, frequently assisted by lay ministers.
Betty Brennan, for instance, born in Brooklyn, educated in a Loreto boarding school in Ireland, says that she is "the most experienced deliverance minister in American Catholicism".
Working for the past three decades with Father Richard McAlear, she dismisses the "Hollywood theatrics and . . . the psychological acting out", insisting that she and McAlear can "prohibit the demons from manifesting . . . We walk in and take the drama out of it".
Calming voices such as Brennan's, however, are currently drowned out by the howls of the possessed and the roars of their exorcist-showmen. For an increasing number of Americans, exorcism is drama - one that the Vatican can no longer direct.
Exposing the long face of Satan
253: The first mention of "exorcist" as a church office appears in a letter from Pope Cornelius.
1614: The Vatican issues its exorcism ritual manual.
1949: In Mount Rainier, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, a Jesuit priest performs more than 20 exorcisms over several weeks on a 14-year-old boy who is experiencing bizarre phenomena. The Washington Post reported that "the boy broke into a violent tantrum of screaming, cursing and voicing of Latin phrases - a language he had never studied - whenever the priest. . . commanded the demon to depart". The boy returns to full health.
1971: Peter Blatty's novel, The Exorcist, based on the 1949 events, is published
1973: The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin is released.
1976: Hostage to the Devil, by Malachi Martin, claims to document "the possession and exorcism of five living Americans".
1982: Pope John Paul II, who has referred to Satan as "a cosmic liar and murderer", reportedly drives the devil out of Francesca Farrizzi, who is brought to him writhing on the ground.
1992: The International Association of Exorcists (IAE) holds its first biannual meeting in Rome.
1994: 83 exorcists and medical professionals attend the second IAE conference, electing Father Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist of Rome, as their president.
1995: Pentecostal ministers in San Francisco pummel a woman to death as they try to expel demons.
1997: A Korean Christian woman is stomped to death by a deacon and two missionaries during an exorcism ritual in Glendale, California.
1998: A 17-year-old girl in Sayville, New York is suffocated by her mother, who believes she is driving out a demon.
1998: The Vatican issues a revised version of its 1614 exorcism rite.
1999: An Atlanta Journal Constitution poll reveals that almost 50 per cent of Americans believe that people are sometimes inhabited by the devil.
2000: Release of the director's cut of The Exorcist instantly becomes the cinematic event of the season.
2001: As the World Trade Towers collapse on September 11th, some observers apprehend the face of Satan rising out of the smoke. Pictures of the Satanic vision appear on the cover of tabloid newspapers