Hearing Voices and Casting out Demons

 

John said to him, "Teacher, we saw someone who doesn't follow us casting out demons in your name; and we forbade him, because he doesn't follow us." 39 But Jesus said, "Don't forbid him, for there is no one who will do a mighty work in my name, and be able quickly to speak evil of me. 40 For whoever is not against us is on our side.

 Mark 9: 38-40

This first part of today’s mass reading suggests that anyone is capable of casting out demons and qualified to exorcise—even a non-Christian—so long as it is done in the name of Christ.

This does not seem to be the common understanding in the Catholic Church. A formal Catholic exorcism requires special permission from a bishop, is done only by a designated exorcist in each diocese, and often requires a lengthy bureaucratic process designed to find some reason not to do it. By canon law, the Church will not sanction an exorcism until and unless something uncanny happens, that seems to rule out any physical cause.

This is not logical. Demons are intelligent beings. Why would a demon make their presence obvious in order to get exorcised?

One suspects the Church is primarily concerned here with bad publicity—about being accused of being “unscientific.”

Yet from the point of view of someone hearing demonic voices, it makes much sense to try being exorcised. At worst, it will not work; but, unlike the various psychiatric treatments, exorcism is entirely non-invasive and has no side-effects. And it does not require avoiding any other treatment.

The good news is that we need not rely on the Church for exorcism. The Bible itself says that anyone can exorcise. All that is strictly necessary is to call upon the name of Jesus Christ. 

Origen writes:

For it is not by incantations that Christians seem to prevail (over evil spirits), but by the name of Jesus, accompanied by the announcement of the narratives which relate to him; for the repetition of these has frequently been the means of driving demons out of men, especially when those who repeated them did so in a sound and genuinely believing spirit. Such power, indeed, does the name of Jesus possess over evil spirits, that there have been instances where it was effectual, when it was pronounced even by bad men…