A Tale of Two Exorcisms
Chris MacNeil oughta know better, having seen how her daughter suffered previously under the devil’s diabolical dominion.
“I may not have witnessed the exorcism,” she recalls, “but I sure as all hell witnessed the possession.”
Pun intended.
And though she didn’t see the emancipation of young Regan back in the original day of The Exorcist, Chris knew darn well it was Jesus Christ working through two Catholic priests that freed her daughter from the demonic, as so well depicted in the 1973 cinematic classic, a film for which Ellen Burstyn (Chris) should’ve won the Oscar for Best Actress.
So why, in the interim between the events of that movie and those of 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer, would Chris need ten years to study all kinds of religious rituals when God had blessed her in knowing that Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), that “the power of Christ [successfully] compels” demons to leave a possessed person, and that the Lord has specially commissioned the Catholic hierarchy to perform this ministry? Heck, even the late, great movie critic Roger Ebert understood “this preeminence” of the Catholic clergy.
So Chris oughta know, especially when facing down the devil by herself, that nebulous invocations of the divine are the spiritual equivalent of bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. “In the name of all holy beings, in the name of my beloved daughter Regan,” she commands in the sequel, “release this child!” Not surprisingly, Chris gets savagely beaten and nearly blinded in her ill-fated attempt as an itinerant exorcist (see Acts 19:11–17).
Funny how a movie that stakes out a religiously egalitarian, strength-in-numbers approach to exorcism, complete with a noted anti-Catholic bias, ends up affirming real religious truth in spite of itself.
That affirmation of truth includes the portrayal of Fr. Maddox, a pious Hispanic priest who unsuccessfully seeks diocesan approval to exorcise the two adolescent girls who’ve become possessed while dabbling in divination (see CCC 2115–2117). Alas, a hierarchy apparently wearied from the clerical sexual abuse scandal again tries to do institutional damage control, instead of protecting the welfare of the most vulnerable.
