Is demonic possession real?

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Does the Church still consider demonic possession real? Or does the Church consider it mere mental illness, as the rest of society does?

I am wondering if it is possible for people to actually invite the devil to possess them. There was a horrific murder case recently that has made me question whether the murderer is possessed, and in fact welcomed the devil into her life. She became involved in the online Goth culture, where talk of death and destruction is common, and in fact encouraged. The chilling poem she wrote about her own family (whom she murdered, with the aid of her 23 year old boyfriend) seems like something written by a demon, and not a mere 12 year old school girl.

What is the Church’s current position on demonic possession?
 
**[usccb.org/catechism/text/pt2sect2chpt4.htm](http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt2sect2chpt4.htm)**1673 When the Church asks publicly and authoritatively in the name of Jesus Christ that a person or object be protected against the power of the Evil One and withdrawn from his dominion, it is called exorcism. Jesus performed exorcisms and from him the Church has received the power and office of exorcizing.178 In a simple form, exorcism is performed at the celebration of Baptism. The solemn exorcism, called “a major exorcism,” can be performed only by a priest and with the permission of the bishop. The priest must proceed with prudence, strictly observing the rules established by the Church. Exorcism is directed at the expulsion of demons or to the liberation from demonic possession through the spiritual authority which Jesus entrusted to his Church. Illness, especially psychological illness, is a very different matter; treating this is the concern of medical science. Therefore, before an exorcism is performed, it is important to ascertain that one is dealing with the presence of the Evil One, and not an illness.179
 
I know a dude who has done exorcisms. . only found out after he finished teaching a non related course. would luv to ask about it but how to broach the subect.

“So Father, whats kicking the **** outta satan like?”

FYI most cases of so called demonic possesion is just crazies with a wierd psychosis but yeah it can be real too
 
Take a look at Malachi Martin’s book Hostage to the Devil if you need convincing. Martin is a Catholic theologian, best-selling author and a former professor at the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Institute.
 
My Father once asked our parish priest if he had ever participated in an exorcism. ( That Priest has since moved on to another parish)

From what I can gather that the priest kind of reacted in the same way as a World War 2 veteran does when you ask one of them about the war. He said “I really don’t wan’t to talk about it, but I can tell you it was exactly like the movie except it’s head didn’t spin around.”

I am sure it is something that still haunts him. I think once you see pure evil, it is not something you easily forget.
 
The Church does consider demonic possession to be real. I understand, however, that from priest to priest there are different views on how the phenomenon actually presents itself. It has often been said that the greatest trick Satan ever played was to convince humanity that he doesn’t actually exist, and I certainly think it is unwise to put all cases down to mental illness (although I am sure it is a psychological problem most of the time).

You could begin to look at this topic as it is referred to in the Gospels. Even at a time when illness of the mind couldn’t have been diagnosed with the scientific accuracy that is possible today, there was a distinction made between illness and demonic possession. It would be so easy, in the absence of a medical explanation, to dismiss any disturbed person as possessed. In Matthew 4:24 - “…they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases & torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics…”. Even today, the causes of epilepsy are not fully understood - why, in those days did they not simply class the epileptic as possessed, or that the paralytic was that way because of a demonic influence? I suggest that it was because there were other ‘symptoms’ which distinguished illness from possession - they are still used today to help identify true possession -eg.: abnormal strength for the person’s age, size; speaking a language they could not have known; knowledge of past events which the person could not have known in normal circumstances, becoming aggressive in the presence of religious persons, objects or relics & at the uttering of the name of God and the saints, etc.

Mark and Luke make similar distinctions to Matthew. In Mark 5 there is a story of a possessed man. Commanding the demon to speak, Christ is told: “My name is Legion; for we are many.” The demons cause the man to speak in the plural (Mk 5:12): “Send us to the swine, that we may enter them.”

While I am in favour of finding scientific and rational explanations for supposed possessions (since if a person who is mentally ill gets an exorcism rather than proper medical treatment that’s needed, there can be dangerous consequences), I firmly believe there are some things which science can’t answer - and true demonic possession is one of them. I have heard and read quite harrowing stories of exorcisms, which in many cases can go on for years. While the famous film was exaggerated in parts for dramatic effect, (it is based on a true story of a boy who was possessed) from what I have read in various documents, I think it gives a fundamentally accurate account of possession - I have even read of accounts of the possessed’s face changing form during an exorcism (as happens in the film).

As to whether one could actually invite the Devil to possess them, I’m sure they could - the question is would he take up their offer? I mean this in all seriousness, because as I see it such a person is already under the power of Satan. To me it stands to reason that likely ‘targets’ are actually those who so close to God - the ones Satan is most in danger of losing -Look at all the saints who were tormented by Satan: Padre Pio, the Cure of Ars & many others. Christ tells us that the only effecive tools against the power of Satan are prayer and fasting…
 
yes the Church recognizes that demonic possession is a real possibility, has happened in the past and will happen again. The Church has a process to deal with it called exorcism, which may be done only by a competent priest specially trained and delegated for this task by the bishop. One of the first steps in dealing with a suspected case is to rule out psychological or mental imbalance or physical problems, with the help of professionals in those areas. Fr. Gabriel Amorth’s book (he was the Vatican exorcist) is very illuminated and accurate.
 
I would suggest reading Father Gabriele Amorth’s books. He is the Vatican’s chief exorcist. He has performed 70,000 exorcisms.
 
I have a different vantage point than most people on the subject. I was present at an exorcism in the late 70’s when I did missionary work, and I currently work on a psychiatric unit.

In my experience there is a definite difference between possession and mental illness. There was a presence of evil during one exorcism that I have not experienced on the hospital psych unit. I’ve seen a lot of wild and crazy things here on the unit, but nothing like the 16 year old possessed boy 30 years ago.

I’m not going to go into details about the exorcism, but I will say this. I made a terrible mistake during the period of the exorcism which lasted over several weeks. The Jesuit who performed the exorcism convinced me it was ok to take the boy with a friend and I on vacation in my home town. Unbeknownst to me he had not been delivered yet, and started doing his thing in front of my family. We made an emergency call to the priest, and were told we were not spiritually mature enough to handle it. He told us to say a rosary and tell the boy to go to sleep in the name of Jesus, which we did, and he did fall asleep. The terrible mistake I made was that I took some drugs from my dad who was a pharmaceutical rep. I stole the drugs, and took them to get high. I was young and stupid. That was part of the reason I went to the mission… to get away from the drugs, and I slipped when I went on vacation.I took them before the episode with the boy began, thinking he was going to be fine with no idea about what was about to happen. God taught me a very hard lesson.

At about 3:00 am I woke with the boy staring at me. 2 things happened, I was immediately aware that what I had done was committed a mortal sin by stealing and taking the drugs, and I knew I was on the same spiritual plane as whatever possessed the boy. I experienced a terror unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before or since. What I experienced was way beyond fear, it was unbridled terror. I have never been afraid around psychotic patients, even the ones that we have to take down because they become violent. What I learned from that experience is one of the quickest ways to be open to the demonic realm is to get high. We put the boy on a plane the next morning and sent him back to the mission. I was also present during evangelization in a Mexican prison where several exorcism’s were performed. In all exorcism’s blessed oil, salt and holy water were used. The prayer used for the blessing of the salt contains a prayer of exorcism. It was in the prison that once the salt was used on several men they immediately fell to the ground and went into convulsions.

Demon’s are nothing to be fooled with or even be curious about. They are far more powerful than we are, and the only way to confront them in a possessed person is by wearing the full armor of Christ. I had to learn the hard way what happens when you get into their arena without the protection of God. As long as a person stays in the state of grace they have nothing to fear because they cannot do anything without God’s permission, and God will not let them harm us. It’s absolutely nothing to mess with.

So yes in my experience there are real demonic possessions that are distinctly different from mental illness.
 
PoliSciProf said:
Take a look at Malachi Martin’s book Hostage to the Devil if you need convincing. Martin is a Catholic theologian, best-selling author and a former professor at the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Institute.
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Malachi Martin is a little nutty isn’t he? There is a reason he is a *former *professor.
 
Ailina said:
Does the Church still consider demonic possession real? Or does the Church consider it mere mental illness, as the rest of society does?

I am wondering if it is possible for people to actually invite the devil to possess them. There was a horrific murder case recently that has made me question whether the murderer is possessed, and in fact welcomed the devil into her life. She became involved in the online Goth culture, where talk of death and destruction is common, and in fact encouraged. The chilling poem she wrote about her own family (whom she murdered, with the aid of her 23 year old boyfriend) seems like something written by a demon, and not a mere 12 year old school girl.

What is the Church’s current position on demonic possession?
Click to expand...
To offer my opinion, yes it’s real and what we see in society is with out doubt a society that has handed itself over to the demonic. We as a culture are under demonic oppression.

It is Satan that influences ppl’s actions when they commit murder like that whether they do it knowingly or not, they are most certainly under his influence. Things that we get into, especially kids now days can lead us to giving ourselves over to evil and we may not even realize it.

The devil does have to be invited in in order to be able to influence us and society as a whole has invited him, look at out culture, it is a immoral culture of death.

So at this point in time, IMO the evil one does not need to be formally invited in in order to wreak such havoc. We are willfully choosing him just by the culture we have chosen for ourselves and sadly, for our kids.

This is why we see so much horrible violence in our world today. I urge folks to not focus on the evil one, it is not good to do that but focus in the other direction and pray the Holy Spirit will inspire us once again to choose God over evil.
 
Exorcism are to be taken SERIOUSLY!!

You need to be ready to be saved. If she is exorcized and then goes back to her goth group and continues to worship the devil or whatever she did then the demons will come back worse…

Good Luck
 
Goth does not equal Satanist for the uninformed out there. Goth is more about affecting a certain dandyish style of dress and behaviour, emphasising black clothing and pale skin, and steeped in Romanticism and Industrial culture.

That said, a question about “demonic possession”: How would I tell if someone were demonically possessed?
 
I believe possession is real, but very rare. As for the “true story” behind the movie The Exorcist, it has been pretty well analyzed and debunked by Strange Magazine back in Dec 1998, issue 20. Although almost 50 years after the event (1949), the investigator (Mark Opsasnick) was able to track down the actual house (apparently never done before), many of the main people involved, at least one of the exorcists, and the actual “possessed boy” (now in his 60s). Great detective work and fascinating read:

The Haunted Boy of Cottage City: The Cold Hard Facts Behind the Story that Inspired 'The Exorcist’ (pdf)

Phil P
 
He had his faculties removed. I believe that he might not be the best source. Stick to Father Gabrielle Amorth. He is approved 100%. He is not as sensational as Malachi Martin.
 
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