Dear Omar:

In the article, Return to the Haunted Boy: Exorcist Case Update, by Mark Chorvinsky, published in Strange Magazine, I broke our laughing at this quote:

The manifestation of supernatural occurrences is the primary feature supposedly distinguishing between someone who is really possessed and someone who just thinks that they are possessed or is acting like they are. Since priests are not magicians, they are not qualified to determine whether or not the occurrences are the result of trickery or the supernatural.

The part in bold is really funny. Chorvinski is not qualified, nor does he know anything about the theology involved in possession. Without knowledge of the topic how can he truly "debunk" it?

Chorvinski made, like "The Amazing Randy" makes today, a fundamental mistake in their thinking, a flaw in science and logic — just because a phenomenon can be duplicated through trickery does not mean that it cannot also sometimes have a spiritual cause. Science 101 teaches that Correlation does not equal Causation. The correlation that a phenomenon can be duplicated does not mean that it is caused by trickery. The corollary is also true: because a phenomenon is consistent with demonological effects does not mean that demons are the cause. Chorvinski and Randy are flawed in their thinking in this way, thus we must cautious about their conclusions just as we need to be cautious about the conclusions of an exorcist.

With that said, both of these men have legitimately exposed fraud. Their success in exposing fakes made them cocky, and perhaps due to lack of personal faith (don't know about that one) they presume all is fakery. Again, that is not scientific or logical as science allegedly must be open for all possibilities so as to investigate phenomena without bias.

As for the case of the boy that inspired the movie Exorcist, there may very well be some irregularities. Given the nature of writing a book that one wants to successfully sell and Hollywood who wanted to sell movies I would not be surprised that a weak case of alleged possession could be overblown.

But, to properly evaluate a case a person must be qualified in both the demonology and in the ways of fakery. A magician can be a valuable asset to a team, but he needs to stick to his area of expertise and realize that "all that appears real ain't necessarily so" also applies to the magician's duplication of the phenomenon — "all that appears to be fake ain't necessarily so." 

Even experienced exorcists, however, can certainly be fooled and come to wrong conclusions. The most famous case of exorcism is that chronicled in the book Begone Satan. This case was here in Iowa in 1928 about three hours from where I live. In that case one of the entities possessing the woman identified himself as the damned spirit of her father. Another possessing spirit identified herself as the father's  mistress Mina. I am not aware of any other case at the moment where it is asserted that human spirits can leave hell and possess anyone (the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 at least suggests that those in cannot leave). Another of the possessing spirits identified himself as Judas. Demons are liars and often masquerade as human spirits. Although anything is possible I have doubts about the woman being possessed by her father, his mistress, or Judas (which the Church does not concluded is in hell). Was the exorcist fooled? I do not know.

We must always be cautious in our conclusions. In our program to train deliverance counselors (St. Michael Academy for Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance Counseling) we train students in logic and how to spot fakes (though we have not gone as far as teaching magician's abilities). We take a scientific approach, but with the knowledge that demons are real and they can manipulate phenomena. It takes expertise in both fields of science/logic and demonology to properly evaluation any case.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary