A History of Anglican Exorcism by Young Francis;

Author:Young, Francis;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE LATER CAREER OF MAX PETITPIERRE

Max Petitpierre, who entered the Benedictine Nashdom Abbey in 1947 and took the name Robert, had been Gilbert Shaw’s protégé from his very first experiments with exorcism in the 1920s. By the time of Shaw’s death in 1967 Petitpierre was generally regarded as the Church of England’s leading expert on exorcism, and was invited to join the committee on exorcism convened by the bishop of Exeter in 1964. After the Exeter commission published its report (edited by Petitpierre) in 1972, the commission continued its work under the name of the Christian Exorcism Study Group (CESG), with Petitpierre as chairman.60 John Richards served as secretary and Petitpierre stepped down as chairman, to be succeeded by Alan Harrison, in 1974.61 In 1976 Petitpierre published an account of his 50 years’ experience as an exorcist, Exorcising Devils, in which he explained his views and the techniques he employed.

Generally speaking, Petitpierre’s approach as a demonologist was to play down the power of the devil and demons, referring to demons pejoratively as ‘little devils’. Petitpierre criticised the use of the term ‘possessed’ to describe demonised people, suggesting that the idea of exorcism as a dramatic casting out of the devil dated from the sixteenth century:

[N]obody can be possessed by anybody but God . . . this way of looking at exorcism is a mistaken one. Previously [to the sixteenth century], exorcism had been a far from dramatic action – simply a prayer to the Lord to cleanse persons of evil influences. And it is in this sense that the words ‘Christian exorcism’ should normally be used. There are, of course, cases of demonic attack, although they are rare. Even in these cases, there is no need for dramatic behaviour – no need to shout or to command in a loud voice. It is only necessary to say quietly, ‘In the name of the Lord Jesus I command you to go, harming no one’ – and go the demon must.62

Petitpierre claimed that cases in which a person was ‘controlled’ by a demon constituted no more than one per cent of what an exorcist had to deal with.63 In the vast majority of cases, Petitpierre was called upon to perform ‘antiseptic’ or ‘minor’ exorcisms in which he believed any prayer would do to banish spiritual ‘bugs’ from people or places. Petitpierre used blessed oil or holy water for such exorcisms. He adopted a classification of hauntings that would become standard among Anglican exorcists, distinguishing between ‘place memories’ and ‘earthbound spirits’, and recommended the celebration of a requiem mass as the most effective means of removing the annoyance of ghosts.

Petitpierre was somewhat influenced by Spiritualism in his approach to the cleansing of ‘earthbound spirits’ from places, arguing that some people ‘do not quite realize that they have died’ and have to be helped to move on to the afterlife.64 Petitpierre condemned the Church of England for failing to teach the doctrine of the Communion of Saints in its Catholic form and blamed the rise of Spiritualism on the church’s refusal to pray for the dead.

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