The Exorcist 2.0
A new movie about Father Gabriele Amorth’s activity as an exorcist is in the making.
As I read the article, I was puzzled.
It seems to me that the age of Hollywood movies treating the Church in a halfway decent way is gone. Rather, any movie dealing with the Church would, in the current Hollywood climate, deal with paedophile priests (obviously without telling us that these priests are, in their absolutely vast majority, homos), or other ways that try to portrait the Church in an unfavourable way.
Therefore, I immediately started to think how you can deform and turn against the Church the activity of an exorcist. Well, I think it will be difficult.
Any movie dealing with exorcism in a serious way will have to forcibly recognise:
- The existence of God
- The existence of the Devil
- The reality of demonic possession
- The Church as the authority which can deal with it, and
- The courage, faith and dedication of the exorcists.
All the points above to straight against the current Hollywood narrative; in fact, they undermine it.
It will be very, very difficult to twist this against the Church without turning utterly ridiculous. Plus, the movie is going to be, from what I understand, explicitly linked to the life of Father Amorth. This means that a “fictional” character who, say, dresses as a woman in his free time or is secretly attracted to children – as, no doubt, many a projecting Hollywood screenwriter would be tempted to do – is just not going to be in the cards.
It seems to me that it will be very difficult to make a film on this subject and avoid millions of cinemagoers going out of the projection room without thinking that demonic possession is a real issue, and the Church is, with the brave men She trains for the purpose, the right institution to deal with it.
Still, it seems also difficult to think that this issues might be dealt with in a purely “un-woke” matter, as this nowadays exposes a big investment to the risk of a massive boycott. The idea that this will be 90 or 100 minutes of movie, without some kind of perverted twist in it, seems not in line with the times.
I think I will have to wait a year to see how this pans out.
Meanwhile, I’ll say a prayer for Father Amorth; a guy who would have eaten these Hollywood guys for breakfast and spit their rest from his mouth before having a thorough mouthwash.
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Posted on July 26, 2022, in Catholicism, Conservative Catholicism, Good Shepherds, Traditional Catholicism and tagged "The Exorcist", Father Gabriele Amorth; Hollywood. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Mundabor's Blog 
I think I would have mixed emotions on the movie however I believe that Fr. Amorth commented that on scenes in the Exorcist they were pretty much spot on although embellished with sensationalism. I tread the book An Exorcist explains the Demonic by Fr. Amorth and found it both fascinating and chilling an a must read for Catholics. I was amazed how easy it is to leave ourselves vulnerable to intervention by the Satanic.
Thank you Mundabor. As always, a magnificent and profound reflection.
The last time I can recall that Hollywood put out a serious movie about exorcists was The Rite in 2011. The young future exorcist in the movie was based on a real priest; however, although the movie did not laugh to scorn the idea of possession or the existence of satan, it was full of howlers about the Catholic Church and about authority over devils. Some of the big ones I remember (from having last seen it 11 years ago) were:
– Ordination to the diaconate is a state that can just pretty much be walked away from
– A deacon can grant absolution/administer Extreme Unction
– A deacon can put on a priest’s stole and, with a lay woman, exorcise a devil without the devil noticing the deacon’s lack of authority and totally kicking his butt
To my way of thinking, the failure to portray accurately the nature of Holy Orders and the need for proper authority in dealing with the demonic (since the devil is a major legalist) is fairly pernicious, misleading and denigrating to priests even if it isn’t done in such a way as to overtly and intentionally disrespect the Catholic Church. So allowing the story to be based in part on these Protestant sorts of notions about the priesthood would be a way Hollywood could mess up this project too.