Indeed, the Church has directed the faithful to avoid any kind of practices designed to predict or control the future, or, more directly, to access the power of Satan for any purpose whatsoever. Thus, readers who cared to notice were warned that engaging in the occult (In Latin, defined as "knowledge of the hidden") was dangerous. In the book, however, the young girl provides an opening to demonic forces by playing with an Ouija board.
“What can create that opening? Drugs, certainly.” “The personality of the victim must be shattered, so there can be an opening. You have to begin by examining how an alien intelligence or demon takes control of the organism of a human being,” he observed. “I have a number of explanations for the increase in possession in the Western world. There Blatty prepares the reader for a disturbing and ultimately violent confrontation between the forces of good and evil.Īnother priest in the story, Father Karras, a Jesuit and psychiatrist grappling with his own spiritual doubts, is a placeholder for modern secularists. When they have no answers, she turns to the Catholic Church.Ī seasoned exorcist, Father Lankester Merrin, is dispatched to the family’s home. In his fictional scenario, a young girl’s increasingly strange and violent behavior prompts her atheist mother to consult with medical experts.
But, as Catholics, we were also aware that the Devil was real.īlatty constructed a chilling narrative of demonic possession based on a true story of a similar case that haunted his imagination for many years. And my group of friends probably did approach it primarily as a horror movie. I was a high-school student when the book, and later, the film adaptaion appeared. RIP William Peter Blatty, who wrote the great horror novel of our time.
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