St. Francis Expels the Demons from Arezzo
Exorcising Evolution
It is noteworthy that evolutionary beliefs play a central role in all five of the exorcisms described in Hostage to the Devil, either directly or indirectly. In one of the accounts, Martin describes the effects of belief in theistic evolution on an American seminary professor and on one of his students. The seminary professor, Fr. David, has been sent by his bishop to study theology in Rome and then anthropology at the Sorbonne so that he can teach anthropology at the diocesan seminary. Fr. David becomes a convinced theistic evolutionist and teaches his seminarians that the traditional understanding of original sin needs to be revised in the light of modern science. Nevertheless, he struggles to remain faithful to the traditional faith and morals of the Church in other respects, and agrees to be trained as an exorcist for the diocese. The tension between Fr. David’s belief in theistic evolution and his commitment to Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Catholic Faith intensifies when one of his students becomes possessed after being ordained a priest.
Fr. Jonathan, as he is called, has taken to heart Fr. David’s teaching on human evolution and has become a true disciple of Teilhard de Chardin. “Evolution makes Jesus possible,” he concludes. “And only evolution can do that.” Over time, under the influence of the evil spirit, he begins to endow the liturgical and sacramental prayers of the Church with an evolutionary meaning. Finally, he goes to New York City and forms a new church, dedicated to helping people experience ecstatic communion with the evolutionary god who is the universe. As his emotional and spiritual condition deteriorates, Fr. Jonathan meets with Fr. David who recognizes the clear signs of demonic influence. However, Fr. Jonathan surprises Fr. David by telling him that he must first exorcise himself—a statement that Fr. David ponders in solitude, coming to the realization that he must indeed choose between his belief in evolution and his faith in Christ.
Finally, while performing a marriage ceremony for his new church, Fr. Jonathan feels compelled by the evil spirit to try to drown the bride to be. Total possession ensues, and Fr. Jonathan asks Fr. David to perform an exorcism. Having renounced his faith in evolution in favor of Jesus Christ, Fr. David is ready to drive out the demon “Mister Natch,” demonic ambassador of Satan, who poses as the evolutionary god of nature, taking the place of the transcendent God of creation. In the course of the exorcism, the demon attempts to deflect the prayers of the priest in the Name of Jesus Christ by offering praise to the christ of evolution:
Two or three billion years ago, the Earth. Each one of us 50 trillion cells . . . 200 million tons of men, women and children. Two trillion tons of animal life . . . All so that Jesus can emerge. Oh, beautiful Omega! Praise the Lord of this world with which we are all, all 200 million tons of us, are one.
The exorcism reveals that the god of evolution is indeed the “lord of this world” in whose eyes we are all so many “tons of animal life.” This savage Luciferian god creates only to destroy, uses death, disease, and violence to eliminate the less fit, and abuses the weak to exalt the strong. Fr. David finally casts him out in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ—but he receives a special grace through the prayers of Fr. Jonathan’s mother, who pours out her heart in prayer to Mary, the Mother of God, until the demon is cast out of her son.
In Martin’s third case study, “The Virgin and the Girl Fixer,” a young man becomes confused about his masculinity and seeks to justify his pursuit of femininity and a sex change operation by denying the traditional Catholic understanding of the Genesis account of the creation of Adam and Eve. According to theistic evolution, God did not create man as man, and woman as woman, with distinct and complementary roles in the human family from the beginning. Man and woman arrived at their present anatomical structure, step by step, through a long process of evolution. Thus, a man or a woman is a collection of parts which have been cobbled together under the evolutionary god’s incompetent supervision. In this view, it is easy to reduce man’s masculinity to his sɛҳuąƖ organs and physical differences from woman and vice versa, rather than to see man as man and woman as woman, body and soul, from the beginning. According to the patristic understanding of Genesis, human sɛҳuąƖity is a gift from above, a reflection of the Trinitarian mystery. According to theistic evolution, however, human sɛҳuąƖity came up from the sub-human primates, and the first human beings were conceived in the womb of an evolved chimpanzee. Many even argue that sɛҳuąƖ perversions are “natural” since certain species of apes and baboons practice them. Since man’s body evolved from animals of this kind, they argue, it is foolish to argue that such behaviour is against our nature.