I had one woman from my office literally run out the door before she even sat down. To me, it just looked like home but I left out a key bit of information here – I had not been taking medication and so what I thought was normal and what was actually normal were blurred.
It seemed perfectly normal to me to live in a house that looked like a church. I also volunteered at the church, had many church friends (all Episcopalian, I should note since this article speaks to some Catholic issues – i.e., in the Episcopal church we don’t really do exorcisms anymore), I was also a church bell-ringer and I was a lay minister who wore a cassock (the black frock and a cincture that tied about my waist) and it was my job and mine alone to run the evening vespers that began at 5:30 promptly regardless of who was there.
I would be there at The Advent, enshrouded in my blacks, and reading from The Black Book of Anglican Prayer, beginning page 68, as I recall, and I would read to the congregation and in turn, they would answer back. Every once in a while I would get a tough case. Someone wandering in and who, because I was dressed like a full priest, assumed as much and would begin confessing their sins. I remember one girl in particular; young, beautiful, Italian looking with an accent who came to me because she was pregnant and thought that if she got an abortion, she just might go to hell. I remember thinking what a problem this presented.
Yes, I could by rights and rites take her confession and I did, and I could advise her, and I did, but I could not absolve her, which was the hardest part of all. What I could do, however, was to tell her as a friend what I thought and so I did this much and she was grateful. All I did, by the way, was tell her what the Episcopal Church believed. That the church does not believe abortion is a sin according to our canons; that we neither condone nor endorse. That we are pro-gay, that we are, for all intents and purposes, a liberal lot who wear too much madras and drink one too many Tanqueray and tonics in the after-church garden party.
I could not imagine any of these people holding me down and tossing water in my face and shouting “out demon out!" because they believed I had some impure or unclean spirit in me. Yes, I had the unclean spirit of epilepsy. Yes, village shamans are or were often epileptic (funny how in Western culture we institutionalize and marginalize what in other cultures is often revered and hailed as the village healer or leader. Both of these things happen in the world simultaneously. No communicating vessels, just different cultural mores and views.
Article comments
1 - Jumper Bailey
Having had some experience in the more enthusiastically holy-rolling churches growing up (we stopped just short of handling snakes), you have my sympathy on this one. Indeed, the "cures" seem to be more calculated towards inducing seizures than preventing them, although I suspect the seizures induced would be viewed as "psychogenic non-epileptic seizures" rather than epilectic ones in such a context, technically speaking.
2 - Jumper Bailey
...by which I mean that they seem to induce seizures even among those who are not epilectic.
3 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
Baily, you're bang on the money - this type of thing would or could induce seizures in anyone, esp. those with a lower seizure threshold... In an epileptic, most certainly they would.
be well - s.
4 - Baronius
I'm not sure why you focus on the Catholic Church. The Emily Rose story is based on a Catholic exorcism that happened 30 years ago. The Catholic Church has been performing exorcisms for a long time, and I don't know of any recent increase. It takes a long time to get approval for an exorcism, so I doubt that a post-movie increase would even be possible.
There are plenty of evangelical ministers who perform exorcisms, and they don't have the authentication procedures that Catholics do. So if that radio story is true, that's probably where the increase is taking place.