Exorcism hits the New York Times

You know a topic is getting to be mainstream when it hits the New York Times.  This past week, the Catholic Church held a congress on exorcism, and it hit the press in a big way.

The bottom line scoop is this: demand for exorcists is growing – big time – and the Catholic Church cannot keep up.

Today in America there are literally only a small handful of Catholic priests who are trained to perform the rite of exorcism and authorized to do so by their Bishop.  This even though the rite of exorcism is one of the main rites of the Church and has been for centuries.

Consider some numbers: there are about 300 million people in the USA.  About 22% of those, or roughly 66 million people, are Catholic.  Let’s assume, just for arguments’ sake, that a Catholic priest will only tend to the needs of a professed Catholic.  (This may or may not be true.)  To tend to the needs of their faithful in times of crisis of spiritual attack, the Catholic Church has…roughly FIVE trained exorcists.  Let’s see, that’s 13 million people per exorcist.  Ya think they are a little overwhelmed?!

The existence of evil, the power of Satan, and of his troops (demons), is a central tenet of the Catholic faith.  Catholics affirm this truth every time they worship.  And yet for many decades the Church played down exorcism, almost seeming to be ashamed of it or embarrassed by it.  Now a revival of interest has occurred and so the church is looking to boost its ranks of exorcists.

This revival of exorcism in the Catholic Church fascinates me.  Everyone in the West, including the Church, went through a period of scientism in the last century or so.  (Scientism is a belief that absolutely anything can be explained by science, and whatever cannot be explained by science must be a fake or a fraud.)  In the last 10 years or so, though, many people have begun to consider the possibility that there may be more “out there” than what science can currently explain.  Authors and the popular press have re-introduced the notion that God exists, and Hollywood has helped us to remember that evil also exists. Also, our society has become much more global.  We know of the traditions of many peoples, and we know that many have traditions of exorcism.  People who are suffering from spiritual attack now know that they are not alone, they know that help is out there, and they go looking.

In a way, then, the Church is responding to society accepting exorcism as real.  Exorcism is no longer something to hide from or to dismiss as a relic of ancient times.  At the same time, demand for help with spiritual attack has exploded, and the Church is naturally trying to grow their ranks of people who can do this work.

In my view, all of this is good.  We need the world to understand that good and evil do exist.  We need the world to acknowledge that evil is real, that spiritual attack is real, and that there are people who are trained to counter it.  Why?  Because people are suffering, and they shouldn’t suffer in silence or be shunned.  They should be helped and cared for.  And that requires an acknowledgement – by society as a whole – that these things exist and are real.

So – for what it’s worth – I say “good on’ya” Catholic Church for recognizing the need and for sticking by your traditions in seeking to boost your ranks of exorcists.  The world needs your work and the world needs your voice in helping people understand that this is real.