BY BRITTANY JUDGE Staff Reporter
Purdue students reacted surprisingly to a discussion about exorcisms Monday night at the Catholic Center, intrigued by the complexities behind the decision to perform one.
While exorcisms are portrayed as entertaining and heart-pumping in the movies, The Rev. Vincent Lampert, the exorcist of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis, revealed the truth behind them.
“(Exorcisms are) not performed in an abandoned house at a dead-end street at midnight,” said Lampert. “(They) are always performed in the safest space.”
Lampert discussed the complexity that truly exists behind the performance of an exorcism. He emphasized, firstly, that the church assures that no symptoms of possession are due to confounding variables in the person’s life. The person is given a complete physical examination and psychological evaluation by the appropriate specialists, and Lampert will take a complete life history of that individual.
“The church wants to know exactly what is going on by consulting experts in this area,” said Lampert. “(We want to know), how did evil enter into this person’s life?”
Audience member Emily Kirby, a freshman in the College of Engineering, found this portion of the discussion most interesting.
“I didn’t realize just how many steps there were in the process to determine what the root cause of (an) issue was,” said Kirby.
Saint Michael's Journal 