A while back, I wrote about how unfortunate it is that we often waste the time and energy of priests, asking them to do things that lots of other people could do. A priest once told me that this is the hardest part of his job, the non-priest stuff. It’s not that he thinks he’s too good to do office work or manual labour or show up at a BBQ; it’s just that he knows there are things that only a priest can do, and he wishes more people would ask him for those things.
Lately, I’ve been seeing a related phenomenon; people asking priests to do things that not only other people can do, but that priests really aren’t qualified to do. This happens a lot in Catholic online groups…someone will ask for advice, and several people respond, “Go to a priest.”
They frequently tell people seek marriage counselling from a priest, rather than from a marriage counsellor. Some priests may happen to be trained or especially gifted in this field, but most truly are not. It’s not a question of holiness; it’s just that counselling and therapy are specialised fields, and you can’t just show up and be holy, and expect good results, any more than you’d expect a holy priest to be able to give you good advice when your lymphatic system isn’t working well, or your vision is poor. There may very well be some overlap with spiritual matters, but that doesn’t mean a priest is the best person to go to. And a good priest will know this and say so to the person who requests this kind of help from them.
More and more often; and this coincides with an alarming rise in the fascination with “celebrity exorcists,” I see Catholics encouraging others to go to priests when someone is clearly suffering from a mental health crisis. A common example; a worried mother posts in a social media group for Catholics, saying her child has always been difficult, but there has been a recent, extreme escalation of erratic or violent behaviour, and the child isn’t responding to any normal interventions, and she doesn’t know what to do.
The last time I saw this scenario, no fewer than 20 other moms told her to run to a priest and request an exorcism. Sounds like demons! Go to a priest.
Let me be clear; this is negligent parenting. Anyone, but especially a child, whose behaviour is erratic and alarming needs an emergency evaluation by a trained mental health professional. There are countless psychological and/or physical conditions that can cause a sudden change in behaviour, and none of it is “demons.” There may very well be some spiritual component to the crisis, but your first line of response should always be to go to a trained mental health professional. And any decent priest will say the same thing.
It’s not just that a priest isn’t trained to do a mental health assessment; and it isn’t even that neglecting to go to the proper person for help means the person in crisis is not getting help. It’s that treating a mental or physical problem as a spiritual one is very likely to cause spiritual damage.
Imagine suffering terribly from some interior problem. Your world is suddenly falling apart, you are in terror and confusion, and you can’t seem to control your behaviour or understand what is happening to you, and you can see that everyone around you is upset, angry, and frightened.
Now, imagine the people you trust most, your parents and your priest, telling you that this is happening because there is something wrong with your soul. Right when you’re at your most vulnerable, all you are hearing is that a demon has gotten hold of you, and God is somehow losing the battle.
Now imagine that your parents and your priest put you through a long course of spiritual interventions of various kinds to combat this allegedly demonic attack, and it doesn’t help, but gets worse. It gets worse because what’s actually wrong is that you have an anxiety disorder, or PANDAS-related OCD, or some form of bi-polar disorder.
Now imagine that you eventually get appropriate treatment for this condition. You look back at the time the priest came to your house, and the way your parents acted, and how your conscience got probed for the secret thing you did to invite that demon in.
Tell me, how are you going to feel about Catholicism when you come out the other end? How are you going to feel about an all-powerful and all-loving God? How are you going to feel about your parents, and your priest, and your faith?
Demonic possession is exceedingly rare. The church knows this, and so when someone comes and requests an exorcism, the first thing that happens is that the person in question must be evaluated by a medical professional trained in diagnosis. Most of the time, this is where the matter ends, because it’s almost never demons. It’s almost always something else. And as such, it needs to be treated in some other way, besides spiritually.
Demons are real. Spiritual attacks are real. Mental illness and sinful behaviour are the results of original sin, which came into the world after humanity fell prey to the devil. And spiritual, behavioural, and psychological problems often have a lot of overlap. It’s a very good thing to pray for the healing of someone in distress for any reason, and it’s a very good thing for a suffering person to cling to God and to their faith.
But it’s almost never demons, and a good priest will tell you so.