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Dialoguing the Exorcism of Emily Rose.
This film sets out, in a dramatic way that appeals to those who find horror movies and horror fantasy attractive, to pose the question of the reality of the spiritual world in contemporary secular society. It depicts a very traditional Roman Catholic exorcism in terms that would fit an eyewitness account from the Middle Ages and then a careful courtroom dissection of what happened after the event. We are left contemplating the ease with which secular psychiatry (and medicine in general) dismiss spiritual reality as being important for those involved in health care and mental illness in general.
The film is based on a true case that occurred in Germany in 1976 in which a young Roman Catholic woman Anneliese Michel, after an unsuccessful course of medical treatment, opted for a (church-approved) exorcism for her demonic possession. The Exorcism of Emily Rose traces the agony and death of a 19 year old student who believes she is possessed by the devil and the trial (for negligent manslaughter) of the Roman Catholic Priest (Father Richard Moore) who attempts to exorcise her and testifies in court about his actions. In the film, evidence is taken and scrutinized from a psychiatrist and an anthropologist and unsworn testimony from a doctor present at her exorcism is also depicted, leaving the audience to judge whether she was indeed a martyr or a victim of religious ignorance and prejudice, in which her religious advisors were dabbling in matters beyond their competence.
The prosecution claims that Father Moore (as her consulting health care professional) should have known that she was seriously psychiatrically ill and in danger of her life and made sure that she received competent care.
The defence claims that father Moore was responding to a cry for help from the young woman and her family given that psychiatric treatment had not worked and that he formed an opinion based on his and the family’s religious beliefs to proceed in accordance with their request. They also argued that such an opinion cannot be ruled out through mere pro-scientific anti-religious prejudice and called an expert witness to testify that in many cultures and contexts spiritual realities are taken seriously and have a definite effect on people’s lives.
The case concludes with Father Moore fulfilling a promise to Emily Rose and reading out her own letter about her death in which she sees herself as a martyr, called upon to show her contemporaries the reality of the spiritual world and the truth of traditional Christian beliefs about God, Satan and the possibility of demonic possession.
Despite its quasi-horror generic framing the film asks some serious philosophical and theological questions.
- Is it acceptable for those involved in the care of suffering human beings to take seriously a possibility such as demon possession?
- How does the world of the spirit relate to the world of science and medicine?
- Is it believable that Emily Rose is chosen as a martyr to demonstrate to the modern world the spiritual reality that is the subject of Christian belief?
- Can the sensational (and sometimes lurid) language of film help in communicating the reality of spiritual life?
If we take these questions in order we can build a theological and ethical framework within which to answer them.
- Demon possession and human suffering.
The film makes a case for the psychic reality of matters of the spirit including such things as visitation by the spirits of ancestors, encounters with ghosts of the dead, and possession by spirit entities depicted in the culture of the individual concerned. There are uncontentious and much more controversial interpretations of the claim.
The relatively uncontroversial interpretation begins with the fact that psychic reality is not objective reality and that meanings and images that are deeply relevant to a person have the effects they do because of their role in the person’s culture and identity. Therefore a person from a culture in which the presence and benediction of one’s ancestors is essential in recovery from a serious illness might find themselves unable to recover if there is some impediment to the ancestor’s participation. This, one could imagine, might come about if the hospital setting was hostile to spiritual awareness or the spiritual reality of the patient so that the patient felt isolated and cut off from his or her traditional connections and sources of meaning. On that basis, one could argue that a patient who was unresponsive to conventional treatment and whose personal reality was deeply spiritual should be given support in accessing appropriate advice and help rather than it being dismissed by an establishment wedded to biomedical orthodoxy and its secular and scientific prejudices. Emily Rose asks to be taken seriously and to have her deep psychological peril recognised and addressed in a way that affirms her identity (as a deeply committed believer). The psychiatric system fails her by dismissing her experience as something other but they cannot deliver on their confident claim that they know what is really going on by finding a regimen of care and treatment that relieves her suffering. It therefore seems that they should, on that ground alone, broaden their focus and try and see what she sees so as to deal with it in terms in which her psyche can find healing. Even given the fact that a psychiatric patient may have quite mistaken beliefs about the origins of their disorder and the complex mix of (biological, social, cultural, and spiritual) factors that are producing it, it is hard to argue that dealing with the patient’s story in its own terms is irrelevant to him or her being able to rebuild a life that preserves what is of value in the “sources of the self” that have formed his or her identity (Taylor, 1989)
The more controversial interpretation is that the realm of the spirit is real and active in the present world and that, just as a physiological breakdown in the brain can produce experiences and thought patterns that are highly disruptive to an individual’s health, so can spiritual forces and entities (with an existence manifesting itself through inexplicable and poorly understood – at least from a scientific point of view - phenomena). These “things in heaven and earth, not dreamed of in our (secular) philosophy”, are believed in by most of the human race and yet, in the West, a small proportion of the community (and, indeed, of the academic community) take it upon themselves to determine what is real and what is not. The testimony of Dr. Sadira Adani, (the anthropologist in the film who is ethnically distinct from white middle class normalcy and therefore “other” or “oriental”) raises the issue in a way congenial both to the uncontroversial (psychic reality) view and the more radical (spiritual reality) view of what is going on in the life-world of Emily-Rose.
But this brings us to the second question.
2. Science, medicine and the world of the spirit.
The uncontentious (psychic reality) view and the more radical or subversive view of our being-in-the-world both share the stance that an understanding of reality as described by biomedicine (in terms of cells, chemicals, purely patho-physiological explanations, and so on) is not adequate to an understanding of the spiritual lives of human beings. Beyond that, they may also agree that the proper rituals are required to engage with the spirit lives of patients in a way that respects their spirituality and helps them resolve the spiritual aspects of their illnesses. Both would also (usually) agree that cooperation with conventional biomedicine and its therapies can be a legitimate part of spiritual healing (provided the acceptance works in both directions). Both positions question the exclusive claims to truth made by those who accept purely biomedical constructions of the ills of human beings and instead affirm that we are complex psycho-neuro-humeral beings and that matters of spiritual concern have profound effects on us (both bodily and psychic – to do with the soul).
We ought also to note that an account can be given in the world of meaning, where the human spirit finds ways of articulating its life, for the alienation that keeps a human being away from her heart connections with what she experiences as a higher reality and allows “forces of darkness”(based in the principalities and powers of the present world order) to crush the life out of her and make it hard for her to breathe in the way she needs to sustain her soul. Emily-Rose experiences the beginnings of possession as a force that steals upon her with the odour of burning and crushes the breath out of her early on in her course of tertiary study.
A further theme in the film is the way that the scientistic and establishment world view can break into the structure of traditional belief and disrupt a young person’s deep connections with his or her ancestors, replacing it by the functional and material view of life predicated on one’s own (purely material) well being. The demons that emerge during the exorcism (on All-Hallows Eve) are those that inspired (or inspir [it]ed) Cain (the brother killer moved by envy), Nero (the sadistic hedonist who fiddled while Rome burned), Judas Iscariot (the political activist unable to respond to the incarnation of God’s love), Legion (the conflicted and confused madman), Belial (the demon of lies, emptiness and worthlessness), and Lucifer (the fallen light-bringer who rebels against God). These spirits sound familiar to those involved in tertiary education and often they discount or discourage students who try to maintain their allegiance to traditional paths of spiritual growth, learning, and knowledge.
Emily-Rose raises the possibility that hallucinations (as we encounter them in mental disorders) are different from visions and spiritual insights: they have different origins (in that they arise from disruptions and disturbances in the human brain) and their content or meaning to the individuals who experience them carries no coherent message. By contrast, visionaries and mystics throughout history have reported experiences in which meanings deeply connected with their beliefs become vivid or real for them and testify that these come from the realm of the spirit (in which we are all engaged, whether we know it or not).
The uncontentious or conciliatory (psychic reality) view of Emily rose might suggest that a possible means of triggering serious disturbance in the psyche is the stress engendered by an identity threatening conflict between one’s educational milieu and one’s familial commitments and identifications.
This leads us naturally into a discussion of the neurobiology of scepticism and forces that tend to alienate an individual from the sources of his or her being. A young person’s beliefs in relation to his or her identity are neither true nor false in the way that objective knowledge is, rather they relate to one’s value or worth as being-in-the-world-with-others and, if seriously undermined by an unloving or insensitive context, can cause deeper disruptions than those attributable to self-reflection and a critical reappraisal of (intellectual) facets of the mind. Therefore, we should ask of Emily Rose, “What is really tearing this young woman apart?” True responsibility for her condition does not recommend opting for one regimen of care over another but engages with her as a troubled young woman who needs to align the fundaments of her being within an order of love rather than envy, hedonism, political manoeuvres, conflict and confusion, worthlessness, and false enlightenment. And finding “true” answers to such questions (about the meaning of one’s being) has always been (and will always be) a spiritual quest.
Perhaps, when we consider her case as indicative of the plight of many young people who turn to drugs, sex, suicide, mutual exploitation, and violence as the primary modes of their being, we have all failed Emily Rose
- Is Emily Rose a martyr?
This question is profoundly difficult. When we consider the God who is the source of life and the author of our being, the God who sacrifices his only begotten son that we should live, it is not out of the question that a person, torn apart by the rulers of our present darkness, might enlist as a volunteer to die as a witness to the light. Again more than one interpretation is possible. We could see a magisterial God accepting the offer of the young woman to suffer unjustly so that a light will shine among us (held by grace and truth) to bear testimony to the reality in which we are all engaged. The only misgiving one might have about this interpretation is its affinity with the image of God as the kingly father figure on high looking down on his subjects.
This superstitious view in which God is a magic superhero dabbling in human affairs and manipulated by human sayings and rituals is characteristic of the dark ages (and much of the imagery of the film). Such a God might prove a point to unbelieving masses at the expense of one individual but the true light that enlightens everyone never puts his people through suffering to prove the truth –Job notwithstanding. Both the scientific view and superstitious religion alienates the human being from God, one by denying our engagement in the spirit world and the other by making Emily-Rose a living pawn on the chessboard of life, used by a God who is not her father and is not living within her through the spirit. Emily needs to know she is a daughter of God and that the light is in her so that the darkness cannot overcome it. This makes the false and destructive demons leave; once you are in the light and walking with the saviour, darkness has no part of you.
A more ecumenical interpretation might see Emily Rose as in communion with the omnipresent spirit of God who knows all, sees all, sustains all, and brings the kingdom of heaven to incarnation in each of us. She might find her communion disrupted by the messages and demands of a secular age and the way they are shaping her psyche. She finds herself “cracking”, psychically, under the strain, a state in which her spirit is broken, as is her story and her subjectivity as a human soul. Her body begins to show this tearing apart of her being and she submits, retaining only her connection (maintained through strength other than her own) crying out, in effect, “Into thy hands I commit my spirit”(the Martyr’s cry). A human being reduced to that state consigns herself to suffer whatever the embodied soul falls prey to, resting on the rock of belief “I know that my redeemer liveth, and that … In my flesh I shall see God.”
- Is sensationalism conducive to spirituality?
Sensationalism, of the Hollywood type, is a feature of The exorcism of Emily Rose (as it is of The passion of the Christ) but is it conducive to true faith and deep spirituality? The danger of portraying matters of deep faith in terms more suited to a fantasy or superhero movie is that the audience detaches (implicitly) from the reality of what is depicted and regards it as “make-believe.” The dual stance – this is fun but of course it isn’t real – is however also arrived at in quite a different way, in a sense depicted by the prosecuting lawyer in Father Moore’s case. He hold himself up to be, like father Moore, a believer but, through his questions and his approach to the case, shows that he thinks that matters of religious belief are not matters of real life and death. The film (like the Passion of the Christ) challenges that stance. In our face it says “This is real life death, flesh, blood , sweat and tears stuff, it is as real as breathing and as vital as food to the souls of those involved and all of us”. That message is worth conveying by whatever means but I would have to say that “the jury is out” as to whether buying in to the blockbuster generation’s images and symbols is the way of doing it.
The film reveals to us the four errors of human belief: (i) superstition; (ii) rejection of God and the prophets; (iii) the rejection of science (because of a false opposition with belief); and (iv) the rejection of God and the deification of science.
These mind sets are fuelled by enslavement to egocentric values in that they all presume that “man is the measure of all things”. That stance necessarily reduces the truth of our being to terms we can control whereas the truth is so much greater. In fact the light that lights every person has come into the world and continues to come into the world full of grace and truth in the lives of true believers and that light is such that it expels darkness wherever it shines and is welcomed in faith.
The role of faith is secured by another principle that is at stake in the film: the principle of sovereignty which God never overrides (unlike secular principalities and powers). Emily-Rose chose the path of spiritual struggle when the path of science proved ineffective and Father Moore chose to try and help her. That path was open to them by law but the tragedy of what happened caused people to lose sight of that.