EXORCISM AS DEALT WITH IN THE BOOK THE PEOPLE OF THE LIE BY M SCOTT PECK

EXORCISM - CASTING OUT EVIL SPIRITS FROM POSSESSED PEOPLE

For his statements on exorcism in this book, Peck should have been removed from practicing.  And the ideas that come with exorcism show that Catholicism should not be allowed to influence the vulnerable or children.

He wrote, "Exorcism is not a magical procedure - unless one considers love to be magical."  Strangely he writes, "exorcism is psychotherapy by massive assault."  "The whole purpose of an exorcism is to uncover and isolate the demonic within the patient so that it can then be expelled."

Exorcism is redefined as medicine.  A mental illness is really a demon.

Why is exorcising so hard?  He says the demon can be a power greater than what the team or patient can handle.  "Or the patient may not truly desire to be rid of it."  The patient must want to be healed for "human free will is basic.  It take precedence over healing.  Even God cannot heal a person who does not want to be healed."  Peck has a very high view of free will, "Free will is the ultimate human reality."

All of that is rubbish.  People do get better against their will all the time.  Free will is just an excuse in case exorcisms fail and you see them for the vicious superstition they are.

So his blaming the victim for unsuccessful exorcisms leads him to warn, "Then the outcome of an exorcism would probably leave the patient worse off than before.  The result could conceivably even be fatal."

He helpfully points out that an exorcism session may go on for twelve hours at a go.  Then we read, "the patient may be forcefully restrained during an exorcism session - and indeed, frequently is-which is one of the reasons for the team approach." As for the law he writes, "During the procedure of exorcism patients forfeit a great deal of their freedom. I firmly believe their forfeiture should be under legal conditions and conducted in a legal manner."

He says consent forms are needed "and if a patient is clearly incapable of such awareness, a guardian should be legally appointed to make a reasoned decision for him or her."

Now exorcisms in Catholicism are not legally protected like that.  And how can a guardian have the right to decide anything if the victim alone knows what is happening to her or him?  Family and friends have been wrong about loved ones being possessed. 

Peck writes that in both exorcisms he attended "the patients signed consent forms acknowledging their awareness that the exorcism might fail and they might even die as a result of the procedure."

Such forms are not legal.  Religion risks murdering those people.  Exorcism looks very like a scam by Satan to get the exorcists to risking leading or to lead the victim to her or his death.  The likes of Peck and the Catholic Church are just collaborators with Satan.

Despite having only attended two exorcisms Peck thinks he has the right to be definite that it is God who makes the exorcism a success.  He warns that with exorcism the key word is loving so any failure in love will prevent the exorcism from working. "The presence of one unloving person in the room is likely not only to cause the exorcism to fail but to subject the team members as well as the patient to the possibility of grave harm."  As science cannot test love, he argues it cannot test exorcisms so exorcism cannot become part of medical science.

Exorcists risk the death of the patient for something that is not testable or scientific!!

He writes, "Because it not only condones but insists on the use of power, I consider exorcism to be a dangerous procedure.  Power is always subject to misuse."  He realises that "one issue to be considered in relation to the use of power in exorcism is that of brainwashing.  I have struggled with this issue and have concluded that exorcism is indeed a form of brainwashing."

Brainwashing is a form of abuse.  Satan must be very happy indeed with exorcisms.

One exorcism he was present at was of a person who seemed sane compared to the other one.  The sane one was the one who had the "deeper possession and the more ghastly struggle for healing."  This warns that the best possessions are ones where the person seems okay.

He says demons do not get in suddenly but it's a gradual process where "the possessed person repeatedly sells out for one reason or another."  The victim is blamed.

He complicates things by approving of the notion that all cases of possession are really incomplete or imperfect.  Nobody is possessed properly.  The demons hides which he calls the Pretence.  "For the exorcism to occur, the Pretence must be broken; the demonic must be uncovered and brought into the open.  Accordingly, "one of the many risks of exorcism is that one cannot go into the exorcism proper with absolute, total certainty about the diagnosis of possession.  In fact, one should go into it with total certainty."  No wonder when he tells us of the two exorcisms he observed, "One of these patients had to be restrained for two hours during the exorcism proper; the other required almost continuous restraint for more than a day!"

So you tie a person up when you are not sure if they are mentally ill or possessed?  Even if they are both you don' know which of the two you are seeing now!

Of the two exorcisms he writes the demon had gone but "in both cases it very much looked for a short while as if the exorcism proper had failed.  The patients had returned largely to their preexorcism condition."  He warns of a situation where the demon was gone thanks to exorcism  but "repeatedly misled the patient into believing that it was still inside.  In these cases perhaps the greatest and most diabolic of all temptations for both patient and exorcism was to believe that the exorcism proper had been a failure when in fact it had been a success."

Exorcists can't get demons out at all.  Every excuse for failure that Peck can think of he coughs it up.  This is all about trying to make it impossible to prove exorcism - or any particular exorcism -  is nonsense.  It is what happens if it actually is nonsense!

One patient was still hearing the demon's voice but before exorcism it control that person but after the exorcism the person controlled the voices instead.  Touché.

Peck writes that he witnessed the exorcist at one of the exorcisms trying to enrage Satan so much that he "would leave the possessed's restrained body to attack him, the exorcist.  The maneuver did not work.  Despite its obvious homicidal fury at the exorcist, nothing happened.  And slowly, it dawned on us that the spiritual either could not or would not leave the patient's body under such conditions.  This led us to two conclusions.  One, already mentioned, is that ultimately the patient had to be the exorcist.  The other is that Satan has no power except in a human body.  Satan cannot do evil except in a human body...In fact, the only power that Satan has is through human belief in its lies."

Comment: Let us unpack all that.  Exorcism is hardly loving if it does that to a demon and fuels its sinful rage.  And the victim could be severely hurt by a demon making her or him strain madly against the bonds.  Is it right for anybody to ask a demon to use the victim's body to hurt him? 

Peck says the ultimate and only real exorcist is the victim.  So the victim is to blame.   And if Satan can only harm in a human body then there must be scores of secret possessions.  Maybe Stalin had the devil in him literally!

If Christianity is a religion of lies then it is a great asset to Satan.