دانلود کتاب The Roman Rite of Exorcism

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That there is a world of demons is a teaching of revealed religion which is perfectly clear to all
who know Sacred Scripture and respect and accept its word as inspired of God. It is part of the
whole Christian-Judaeo heritage. There are some who hold that even if revelation were not so
absolute, an inference of the existence of evil spirits can be drawn from the magnitude of evil in
the world. They say that human malice and depravity even at its worst is not sufficient to
account for it, and it must be concluded that the devil is a real person and that his sway is
tremendous. As Franqois Mauriac writes in his life of St. Margaret of Cortona: "Evil is
Someone, Someone who is multiple and whose name is legion... It is one thing to be in the
realm of the demons, as we all are when we have lost the state of grace, and quite another to be
held and surrounded, literally possessed by him."
One gets the impression that the teaching about the devil's existence is not a particularly
popular one in our time. C. S. Lewis in his Screwtape Letters says something to the effect that
if the little inexperienced novice devils, about to start out on their work of seducing men, can
convince men that the devil does not exist, then half the battle is already won.
The first book of the Holy Bible recounts the seduction of Adam and Eve by the Prince of
Darkness; but it is to the last book that we must go for his origin. "Then war broke out in
heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought
back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge
dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world,
was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it." (Rv 12:7-9)
Christ our Lord overcame Satan on the cross, and ever since the latter's empire is shaken. Man
is delivered from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of the Son. Yet the
devil is not completely vanquished or trodden underfoot once for all, and the warfare against
him is carried out by Christ and His Church until the end of time. Therefore, St. Paul is
prompted to admonish us: "Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm
against the tactics of the devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the
principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil
spirits in the heavens... In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming
arrows of the evil one." (Eph 6.11-16)
Against these unclean spirits the Church uses as her weapons prayers, blessings, holy water,and other sacramentals to combat the ordinary power that the former wield over men. But apart
from this ordinary and general power that Providence allows Satan there is also a special and
terrible satanic influence called possession -- the domination by the demon over man's bodily
organs and his lower spiritual faculties. In later Christian times the term obsession is used
instead of possession, the former connoting a lesser kind of demonic disturbance. That Christ
reckoned with this satanic power in the same way that the Church has throughout her centuries
is evident from the New Testament; see for example Mt 9.32-34, Lk 8.2, Mk 9.13 if.
To be possessed can mean that Satan has gained mastery over the will so devastatingly that
sinfulness passes beyond ordinary depravity in the world, and its cause must be sought in a
power above the order of nature. To be possessed can mean that Satan has beclouded the
intellect, so that the light of faith cannot illuminate it. To be possessed can mean that Satan has
befuddled a person's reason; in fact, simple and superstitious folk have wrongly made lunacy
synonymous with diabolical infestation. In some instances of possession recounted in the New
Testament, molestation by the devil is manifested in various disturbances of the human body
itself, where he has gained control over a man's sight, hearing, speech, or the physical organism
in general. (Mk 5:1ff)
Christ handed down to the Church the power He once exercised over demons. The early
Christians were deeply influenced by what they had learned of their Master's dealing with evil
spirits, and there was on their part frequent use of the charismatic gifts of healing the sick and
driving out devils. But the prayers and forms used for exorcism in the first centuries have not
come down to us, outside the ones used in baptism. Exorcism became part of the baptismal rite
somewhere around 200 A.D. Thus the ancient liturgical records which date from the third
century, those dealing with baptism, give us the early Christians' belief about Satan and his
intervention in the affairs of man. In the devil's hatred for God he .turned on man, who is made
in God's image. In consequence of original sin men are no longer temples of the Holy Spirit but
rather the habitations of the demon. Not too much distinction is made between the possessed
and the unbaptized. Isidore of Seville puts both on the same level, and says that exorcism is the
ceremony of banishing the most wicked influence of the devil from catechumens and possessed
alike. (Dictionnaire D' Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie, V, Pt. 1, 963 if.)
It is difficult to fix precisely the time of origin of a special rite for exorcism. The evidence
would indicate that in the early Church acts of exorcism consisted mainly in the sign of the
cross, invoking the name of Jesus, and renunciations of Satan and adjurations and threats
uttered against him. But later on, especially in the Latin Church, the rites of exorcism become
more and more numerous, until in the highly imaginative Middle Ages there is actually a
profusion of them. To this period we must attribute beliefs and practices which are superstitious
to an extreme. Devils are believed to exist in the guise of certain material bodies. Demonic
possession is confounded with epilepsy and other mental or psychic disorders. Rituals of this
time prescribe that the subject remain in the presence of the exorcist throughout the period of
exorcism, that he observe a strict fast and limit his diet to blessed water, salt, and vegetables,
that he wear new clothes, that he abstain from the marital act. No less complicated are theinjunctions for the exorcist. And by the time we come to the fourteenth century magical
practices have been introduced into the ceremonies.
No doubt the present rite for exorcism will undergo improvement and revision along with the
general revision of the liturgical books recommended by Vatican Council II. But compared to
former times the rite as given in the Roman Ritual today is characterized by great sobriety.
Some minds might still discern traces of a certain naivete, yet at any rate it has been purged of
the unfortunate accretions of a period ruled much more by human credulity than by the
unadulterated doctrine of the Church. No longer, for example, does the official text afford any
grounds for the erroneous notion that diabolical possession is necessarily a divine retribution
visited upon a grievous sinner. God allows this terrible evil in His wisdom without the afflicted
person being necessarily at fault. It is one thing to have fallen into the slavery of sin or to be
afflicted with a bodily or mental infirmity, and quite another to have the devil enter into a man
and take possession of him.
The general rules for exorcism that follow are a clear indication that we have come a long way
from the superstitious notions that prevailed in the era of the Middle Ages. Noteworthy among
these rules are the ones that direct that the parties concerned should have recourse to the holy
sacraments, and that the sacred words of Holy Writ should be employed rather than any forms
devised by the exorcist or someone else. The instructions given below indicate that the Church
has carefully guarded the extraordinary power over Satan committed to her by Christ, and that
Catholic exorcism is poles removed from any form of dabbling in the spirit world which
springs from human chicanery or malice.
-- Translator