Good Lord, Deliver Us

Of course the Church is performing exorcisms against the cult of Santa Muerte in Mexico, directly linked as it is to the drug-based violence there. The Church would be, or at least ought to be, doing that even if there were no such link.

Jesus Himself was a prolific exorcist, and He commissioned His Apostles to be likewise. Even the common baptism of an infant includes exorcism, and every diocese has at least one exorcist. Yes, right here in dear old Blighty.

The whole Church was baptised with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, and She manifests that baptism through a rich plurality of gifts, the charisms. The whole Church, and thus every member, is therefore both Pentecostal and Charismatic.

Every gift is a charism, and each is always given for the good of the whole body, in response to Her evangelistic activity, in the context of Her sacramental life, and subject to Her gift of discernment.

She exercises that gift within Her institutional life, because the institutional Church and the charismatic Church are inseparable; they are two aspects of a single reality. It is wholly unscriptural to impose any requirement that anyone exercise any particular charism in order to be considered a full, believing member of the Church.

There has never been the slightest doubt that the charisms include exorcism, the performance of which is restricted to suitably qualified persons, and it is only ever used against the power of that objective evil which we can but thank God that we do not fully understand.

But we understand this: that objective evil certainly includes the cult of Santa Muerte. Against which the Church can, and therefore not only may but must, deploy the full divine power the earthly exercise of which has been entrusted to Her.