From the Exorcist to Nefarious

Please stop right here if you are sensitive about movie “spoilers”!

Saint Pope Paul VI chillingly warned a half-century ago that “through some fissure, the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God” (6/29/1972).  The following year, we saw the release of the Exorcist film followed a half-century later by Nefarious.

Do these films share an ultimate message?

The Exorcist

 As per author William Peter Blatty,

While I was working on ‘The Exorcist,’ what I thought I was writing was a novel of faith in the popular dress of a thrilling and suspenseful detective story – in other words, a sermon that no one could possibly sleep through (5/7/2015).

Yet, the head spinning, projectile green vomit, and the desecration of a sacred object makes it hard to comfortably accept that contention.  More than catechetics was going on!

While at Jesuit Georgetown University, Blatty learned of a D.C. area exorcism involving an adolescent boy.  When Blatty authored the Exorcist novel in 1971, it is interesting that he had a fictitious Father Dyer joke with fictitious Father Damien Karras about needing to abandon their vocations.  Dyer cited “droves” of gay men then becoming Jesuits (cf, The Exorcist, p. 238).  Was Blatty ahead of the curve in recognizing such Jesuit trends?

I was unaware of any same-sex attracted Jesuits, when I began my Jesuit college in 1976. Author Andrew Sullivan estimates the percentage of “gay”[sic] Jesuits to now be 60% or more (cf, New York Magazine, 1/21/19).  While some Jesuits may have indeed embraced the siren call of fellow Jesuit James Martin to embrace behaviors always seen as sinful in the past, others undoubtedly saw same-sex attraction as a cross and remained chaste.

Is it giving Blatty too much credit to wonder if he was doing an “end run” defense of what the Church proclaims about human sexuality?  Well before his death, he was championing a canon law petition calling his Georgetown alma mater back to a full embrace of its Catholicism:

If that effort fails, the petition signed by Blatty and 2,000 other Catholics calls for ‘the removal or suspension of top-ranked Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic and Jesuit in any of its representations’….The petition marks the growing dismay of Catholic alumni like Blatty…who have long expressed concern about Georgetown’s increasingly secular drift and embrace of positions that contradict Catholic teaching on life and marriage (National Catholic Register, 10/14/2013).

Nefarious

While awaiting execution, Edward is interviewed by psychiatrist James Martin to assess if he is sufficiently sane to merit the death penalty:

The film lets everyone know there’s good and evil ….[people] today are doing Ouija boards, tarot cards, Reiki, yoga, getting pagan tattoos. All these are ways that people are getting infested. If you play with the devil, he will come.…

If we go back to the Bible, what does it say? There will come a time when good is considered bad, and bad is considered good, when women will be as men, when all these things that are happening in our world today, that the saints have prophesied about, that the Bible has spoken about….

The devil is the accuser. Ironically, in this film, he’s accusing us, quite rightly, as a society, of hiding the truth from ourselves. The devil has been so emboldened that now he’s dropping the mask….

We talk about the views and values of the Church: no euthanasia; no abortion; no murder. It’s a totally Catholic story (National Catholic Register, 4/17/2023).

Conclusion

While infrequently mentioned from Catholic pulpits, it is increasingly difficult to NOT see our own current times in Biblical warnings.

….Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones, no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place, but instead, thanksgiving.  Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure or greedy person, that is, an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God (Ephesians 5).

While famed exorcist Father Gabriel Amorth warned of a “temptation of sensationalism,” perhaps there is great value in the Exorcist and Nefarious, when sins against the sanctity of human life and marriage/family/human sexuality do not seem to be treated with adequate seriousness.  “As per Bishop Sam Aquila, ‘Although all Catholics should have a basic understanding of the reality of evil, we should also avoid being overly preoccupied with the topic of the devil. The Evil One is capable of using such a fascination as a means to ensnare us – with despair, fear, or discouragement.’  Only God is All Powerful, and He is absolutely victorious over the devil!!!” (Amazon review, 7/15/18)