Marshall’s defenders: Demons speak truth during exorcism.

legion of Tay­lor Mar­shal­l’s defend­ers seem to have picked up this claim from the false prophet him­self: Demons speak the truth dur­ing exor­cism; for they are com­pelled to by the pow­er of Christ. One per­haps should be grate­ful they are attribut­ing this truth-telling to the pow­er of Christ rather than the demons’ native hon­esty. Small favors. How­beit, it’s real­ly a claim that demons nev­er lie at all. For look you: When exact­ly do demons speak to us except when an exor­cism is going down? If you think you’re hear­ing the voice of demons, you might want to vis­it a psy­chi­a­trist. Dr. Mar­shall nev­er cit­ed any source for the claim that demons tell the truth dur­ing an exor­cism; he just said it’s “what I’ve been told.” He did­n’t even do us the cour­tesy of men­tion­ing who told him this tale. But his legion of fol­low­ers accept it as though the thing were divine revelation—or demon­ic rev­e­la­tion, which pos­si­bly is truer still. But dear read­er, I have a strange habit of check­ing these things out. And so I tracked down the tran­script of the exor­cism of Anneliese Michel, and here is part of what I read:

PRIEST: The rosary must be prayed more. And what else must be prayed more?

 

DEMON: I won’t say it.

 

PRIEST: The exor­cism?

 

DEMON: Yes!

 

PRIEST: How many times?

 

DEMON: Fifty times.

 

PRIEST: Liar! I com­mand you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

 

DEMON: A hun­dred times.

 

PRIEST: You con­tin­ue to lie. You are con­tin­u­ing to lie. I com­mand you, unclean spir­it, to speak, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. We call the Angels for help and ask the Queen of the Angels to com­mand you. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

—

PRIEST: And you have some­thing more to say, prob­a­bly for­get­ting [to tell] us some­thing, no?

 

DEMON: Der gehört schon halb mir! [It’s already mine.]

 

PRIEST: Ahh, you’re lying. You’re a brag­gart. You can lie well, eh?

 

DEMON: Yes.

 

PRIEST: You’re a brag­gart. You lie, as it is writ­ten. No? You lie, as it is writ­ten.

 

DEMON: That’s my gig.

—

PRIEST: Holy Water must go back into homes?

 

DEMON: No!

 

PRIEST: You just said it did!

 

DEMON: That was a lie!

 

—

PRIEST: Who are you? Say your names!

 

DEMON: I am Judas and Nero, Cain and Hitler. There are five of us!

 

PRIEST: Who is the sixth one?

 

DEMON: We lied about him.

 

PRIEST: Lucifer? You lied about him? When will it crack?

 

DEMON:When, when, when, when, when, when? For­get it!

Repeat­ed­ly the priest com­mands the demons, in Christ’s name, to tell the truth. And yet repeat­ed­ly he catch­es them in lies; and repeat­ed­ly they claim to be lying. Lying is their “gig,” one of the demons says. It’s what they do. When they say they have lied, one of two things is pos­si­ble: either they had lied and are telling the truth about it now, or they are lying about hav­ing lied. Either way, they lie and they deceive.

Anoth­er clear give­away that the demons here are lying is that they iden­ti­fy them­selves as Cain, Nero, Hitler, and Judas. But damned humans do not become demons any more than saved humans become angels. Dr. Mar­shall real­izes this; and dur­ing his pod­cast he spec­u­lat­ed that per­haps the demon who iden­ti­fies him­self as Hitler was the demon who was assigned to Hitler. The demons sound so red-pilled they must be telling the truth! The demons say what I, Tay­lor Mar­shall, think; they con­firm what I wrote in my book; it must be the truth!

But if you go fur­ther and read the Praeno­tan­da to the Rite of Exor­cism, you will find that the Church coun­sels exor­cists not to engage the demons or to trust any­thing that they say. (A priest was able to track this down.)

5. [The exor­cist] will be on his guard against the arts and sub­terfuges which the evil spir­its are wont to use in deceiv­ing the exor­cist. For often­times they give decep­tive answers and make it dif­fi­cult to under­stand them, so that the exor­cist may tire and give up, or so it might appear that the afflict­ed one is in no wise pos­sessed by the dev­il. …

 

14. The exor­cist must not digress into sense­less prat­tle nor ask super­flu­ous ques­tions or such as are prompt­ed by curios­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly if they per­tain to hid­den or future mat­ters, all of which have noth­ing to do with his office. Instead, he will bid the unclean spir­it keep silence and answer only when asked. Nei­ther ought he to give any cre­dence to the dev­il if the lat­ter main­tains that he is the spir­it of some saint or of a deceased par­ty, or even claims to be a good angel.

That last part is inter­est­ing: The demons might claim to be the spir­it of a dead per­son. If they do, give them no cre­dence; they deceive. I read noth­ing here about demons telling the truth under any cir­cum­stances. I read noth­ing that advis­es the exor­cist to ask the demons’ opin­ion of con­tro­ver­sial priests. The exor­cist is not to ask, Tell me, what think you of James Mar­tin? By engag­ing the demons in this way, you only pro­long the agony of the human vic­tim.

Demons lie; demons deceive; even dur­ing an exor­cism. Give them no cre­dence, do not engage them, don’t be curi­ous whether they think the toi­let paper should be unrolled from the top or bot­tom. That’s what the Praeno­tan­da to the rite of exor­cism says.

And that I need to write a whole blog arti­cle prov­ing this is utter absur­di­ty. But that’s where we are.