The Exorcist theme

The Exorcist has to be one of the most disturbing films of its genre ever made. I well remember watching it at a cinema in Boscombe in 1974, some months after it had gone on general release.

Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church still performs exorcisms on occasion, and with some success. Did not our Lord say "Man does not live by bread alone...". We are still far from knowing all the ways in which mind, body, and soul interact with and influence one another.

Good and Evil are not imaginary constructs but may be seen, and felt in our everyday life by each one of us. There is no middle, or third way between good and evil, or between right and wrong. For evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing (Burke) or to look the other way (Wilberforce).

Organizations, such as political parties, which are only a collection of individual men and women who stand in certain relations to one another, may sometimes behave as if they too were demonically possessed, especially if they are led by men who are morally corrupt.

When this happens, when a party, like an individual, appears to go mad, it too may be helped back to sanity by a purging of its soul of the demon, or demons, which have been possessing it.

Such a spiritual cleansing may leave the party, like an individual, like the girl in the film, very weak and exhausted for a few days, or in the case of the party, months, but the road to recovery is then clear. Relatively quickly, in both cases, with good nursing, the sufferer can become fully healthy again, in mind, body, and soul.

It is worth noting that, towards the end of the short audio clip above, the tone of the music changes from sinister to joyful, signifying the inevitable triumph of good over evil, both in this world, and the next.