Are there demons today

The idea that some force within us causes us to do harm is of course an attractive notion. It removes all personal blame and culpability, it places these on a force beyond our control.

The devil made me do it! We are possessed by the demons of our own past. Modern demons have the power of absolution. They are hostile to our doing what is right, they impede our free will and rational action, they make us do wrong to each other, but it's not our fault.

It is the demon working through us and that absolves us as we claim: "I am a victim of my own past! At what point is it appropriate to call the exorcist? The sad thing for us is that we are often unaware of how crude our modern concepts really are.

When we hear the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman who came to Jesus and asked that her daughter be exorcised we may miss its value. The wisdom of our age would explain the daughter's possession with a different language - maybe attention deficiency disorder, maybe schizophrenia, maybe a "cry for help".

Whatever form the girl's possession took, she asked to be freed of it and Christ rewarded her hope for freedom by granting her request.

So the demons of yesteryear are with us today. Language has changed and evolved but we remain like people caught on some infernal merry-go-round; the music plays, the carousel turns and we sing along. Somebody may start a new song, we join in, but the carousel keeps turning, and turns again and again and again.

Sometimes a brave person may try to alight; the Syro-Phoenician woman was one of these. A new created world springs up, springs up at God's command. Rising infection rates in central and eastern Europe suggest a correlation between vaccine scepticism and populist politics. The plan for the capital looks too much like another aspirational plan, not the inspirational one it should be.

Please update your payment details to keep enjoying your Irish Times subscription. For some, being told they do not suffer from demonic possession can be a letdown. Father Vincent Lampert, the exorcist from Indianapolis, remembered a young man who came to him seeking an exorcism but was told he was experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia. At this point he may begin looking for what the Church considers the classic signs of demonic possession: facility in a language the person has never learned; physical strength beyond his or her age or condition; access to secret knowledge; and a vehement aversion to God and sacred objects, including crucifixes and holy water.

Check out the full table of contents and find your next story to read. Only a very small number of exorcism requests make it through the discernment process. The Catholic exorcists I interviewed—each with more than a decade of experience in the role—had worked on only a handful of cases deemed to be true possession.

The ritual begins with the exorcist, who is typically assisted by several people, sprinkling holy water on the possessed person. The exorcist makes the sign of the cross and kneels to recite the Litany of the Saints, followed by several readings of scripture. He then addresses the demon or demons, establishing the ground rules they must abide by: to reveal themselves when called, give their names when asked to identify themselves, and leave when dismissed. Because the exorcist is working with the full authority of God and Jesus Christ, Catholic doctrine stipulates, the demons have no choice but to obey.

For those few people the Church believes are truly possessed, a half-dozen or more exorcisms may be carried out before the priest is confident that the demons have been fully expelled.

According to Catholic doctrine, in order to take possession of a person in the first place, demons rely on doorways—what the priest in Orlando warned Louisa about. These can include things like habitual sin and family curses—in which an act of violence or iniquity committed by one generation manifests itself in subsequent generations. But the priests I spoke with kept coming back, over and over, to two particular doorways. Nearly every Catholic exorcist I spoke with cited a history of abuse—in particular, sexual abuse—as a major doorway for demons.

Thomas said that as many as 80 percent of the people who come to him seeking an exorcism are sexual-abuse survivors. But from a secular standpoint, the link to sexual abuse helps explain why someone might become convinced that he or she is being menaced by something sinister and overpowering.

The correlation with abuse struck me as eerie, given the scandals that have rocked the Church. The second doorway—an interest in the occult—might offer at least a partial explanation.

Most of the exorcists I interviewed said they believed that demonic possession was becoming more common—and they cited a resurgence in magic, divination, witchcraft, and attempts to communicate with the dead as a primary cause. According to Catholic teaching, engaging with the occult involves accessing parts of the spiritual realm that may be inhabited by demonic forces.

In recent years, journalists and academics have documented a renewed interest in magic, astrology, and witchcraft, primarily among Millennials.

After listening to the priests and poring over news articles, I started to wonder whether the two trends—belief in the occult and the rising demand for Catholic exorcisms —might have the same underlying cause.

So many modern social ills feel dark and menacing and beyond human control: the opioid epidemic, the permanent loss of blue-collar jobs, blighted communities that breed alienation and dread. Maybe these crises have led people to believe that other, more preternatural, forces are at work. But when I floated this theory with historians of religion, they offered different explanations.

But more described how, during periods when the influence of organized religions ebbs, people seek spiritual fulfillment through the occult. Adam Jortner, an expert on American religious history at Auburn University, agreed. But just after my visit to Tacoma in March, I spoke by phone with Steven, with whom Louisa had recently reconciled, and he told me that she had been suffering for years from daytime episodes, too.

The incidents in the middle of the night frightened Louisa more and felt, to her, more supernatural, but Steven found these daytime experiences much harder to explain. One of these episodes occurred on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Louisa had followed the instructions of the priest at Saint James Cathedral, throwing out her Ouija board and some healing crystals. She and Steven had moved back to Washington State with their two children, hoping that proximity to family and friends would do her good.

They settled into a routine—Steven worked at a nearby warehouse; Louisa looked after the children—and for a while, Louisa all but forgot the nighttime incidents in Orlando.

She came home in the early evening and spent some time upstairs in her bedroom. She eventually returned to the living room and spoke briefly with Steven. Then she fell silent. When she began talking again, a new persona emerged. Normally an affable, meandering conversationalist, Louisa assumed a slow, measured tone. Recognizing the signs of what was happening, he told me, he grabbed his tablet and began filming.

The footage is dark and the sound quality poor. The camera is pointed directly at Louisa. The video lasts for about 20 minutes. I have all the time in the world. Halfway through the video, Louisa leans toward Steven and freezes, her face just a few inches from his.

As I watched, I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. All I could settle on, though, was that the camera had captured Louisa in some kind of dissociative state in which her emergent identity believed itself to be inhuman. When Steven first started witnessing these episodes, he assumed they were symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. Louisa certainly had had her share of struggles: In addition to these unexplained incidents, she also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and had a history of alcohol abuse.

Wynonna Gehrke, who became close friends with Louisa at Washington State University, recalls witnessing something similar. The emergent identity told them it was a demon that wanted to hurt Louisa. It creeped me out so bad. She gave Louisa her bed that night, and she slept on the couch. It was Palm Sunday, and parishioners began pouring in long before the start of the Mass.

I found a seat in one of the back pews and waited for Louisa. Midway through the service, I felt a hand brush my shoulder. It was Louisa. A few minutes later I slipped out to join them. Louisa pushed the baby back and forth in a stroller while her eyes strained toward the altar. In his first session with Louisa, in early , White began by encouraging her to discuss the problems she was experiencing.

He then left for a few minutes, returning with the purple stole around his neck that priests wear for both confessions and exorcisms. At that point the session took on the more structured feel of a Christian ritual.

But when he gave Louisa a piece of paper with renunciation prayers to recite, she froze. Struggling to read the words in front of her, she began moaning and then dry-heaving. Already a subscriber? Log in to continue reading. To unlock this article for your friends, use any of the social share buttons on our site, or simply copy the link below.

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