Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist

Decades before dying while doing battle with the demon possessing Regan NacNeil in The Exorcist (1973), Rev. Lankester Merrin successfully extracts the same demon from a young man in Kenya. An African chief (or medicine man) tells Merrin at the end of Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) that he has made a rather bad enemy of the demon, which was not done with the priest. We know from The Exorcist that the demon will eventually kill the priest, but that is by no means the final word on a distinctively religious battle because in that domain, the human soul is eternal rather than necessarily tethered to a corporeal body. It is important, moreover, not to reduce religion to one of its aspects, or, even worse, to the stuff of any other domain, including the supernatural. Dominion reduces Christianity to one belief-claim and relies on supernaturalism to validate the religious phenomena in the film.

In the old church during at the film’s climatic event, Merrin incessantly repeats the identity of the Trinity to repulse and repel the demon from the young African man. Of itself, the very existence of the triune deity is abhorrent to the demon, likely because it, like Satan, is jealous of God’s pre-eminence and superiority. Even so, is repeating “Christ compels you” over and over sufficient for the demon to give up the possessed body? It seems realistic to assume that such an approach would reduce to a “No he doesn’t, yes he does, no he doesn’t” back-and-forth without a resolution. Adding potency, Merrin could preach the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels to the demon, which could be expected to reject in utter disgust the value of compassion as benevolentia universalis and especially to one’s detractors and even enemies. In addition to presenting the way into the kingdom of God to the demon, Merrin could try to convert the demon as a way of repulsing it enough to stop possessing the young man. Merrin could also point out that God is love, and what that means from a distinctly theological standpoint. For example, Merrin’s dialogue could include, “God is love—the sort that is self-emptying (i.e., agape) and this is superior to your puffed-up ego-pride by which you put yourself above Jesus’s voluntary sacrifice for us.” Besides being more distasteful than merely “Christ compels you” to the demon, the enhanced theological dialogue voiced by the priest would present the audience with a more substantive understanding of Jesus’s message in the Gospels than merely that he is the Son of God. Furthermore, that “Christ compels you” is coming from a “weak vessel” rather than from Christ himself means that the priest’s reliance on that line is not the best strategy for convincing the demon to give up the body. This is especially the case because Merrin had lost his faith and only recovered it because Rev. Francis had strongly asserted, “Satan is real.” If the basis of Francis’s declaration is not based in the religious domain—that is, is actually exogenous—then to the extent that Merrin follows suit, it is no surprise that the demon eventually—in The Exorcist—kills him.

Rev. Francis takes a long time to believe that the young African man is actually possessed. It is only when Francis sees the burn marks on the man’s forehead just after Francis has pressed a small crucifix on the man’s skin that that young priest believes that Satan is real. The religious faith of Rev. Merrin in God is in turn stimulated to return by Francis’s loud declaration, “Satan is real!” Whereas God as the Creator is like the condition for all that exists, and thus not an entity as we think of entities, Satan, and his demons are entities more easily recognized by the human mind. So it makes sense that faith in God could be derived from a declaration that Satan is real. The problem is that it is a supernatural empirical effect on young possessed man’s forehead that signifies and, even more troubling, validates the underlying religious phenomenon.

Even though such supernatural special-effects, including the fires that spontaneously start in the old church to provide lighting for Merrin and the demon, make for good cinema, the distinction between scientifically-valid empirical yet not-understood (and thus supernatural) happenings and religious phenomena is important. The supernatural is a subtype of natural science because the realm is empirical. Put another way, the supernatural can be thought of as being on the turf of science—just not (yet) explained. For the criteria and content of natural science to over-reach onto the domain of religion, even overriding the criteria innate to that domain, is to incur a category mistake. Basing the claim that Satan is real on burn-marks on a forehead treats empirical verification as determinative of the existence of a theological entity whose existence and basis transcends the empirical world rather than is based in it. This essence of religion renders it qualitatively different, and thus unique, from other, even closely related domains. Especially in a religion of the heart, such as Christianity, the validity of religious truth cannot rightfully come from seeing burn marks on someone’s forehead. Taking the latter as decisive gives a free hand to superstition.

Therefore, both Francis and Merrin depend on a non-religious marker to prove the existential reality of Satan, and, by extension, God. The meaning that God represents, which is theological love, which in turn is that which Satan rejects, is by implication not self-validating. This is deeply problematic from a religious standpoint. Depending on supernatural events or signs not only slights the distinctly theological meaning, but also remakes the theological into something else: the unexplained in natural science. The value of compassion being extending to rude people, for example, and even to detractors who disvalue rather than respect does not depend on unexplained observable phenomena. Either a person values agape love or not. Either such love is appreciated in one’s heart as being of great value, or as weakness. This judgment, rather than lines like, “Christ compels you,” captures what it means to internalize Jesus’s example and preachments in the Gospels. To a demon, those preachments may be more distasteful  than demands by a priest of Christ compelling obedience if the substance and essence of God is indeed love rather than domination to be served.

Devil’s Advocate

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The Scarlet and the Black

In the film, The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer face off as Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and Col. Herbert Kapper at the end of the film when the Nazi head of police in Rome abruptly changes his tune in challenging the Catholic priest no longer by threats, but by appealing to the priest’s faith of humble compassion applied even to one’s enemies so O’Flaherty will extend mercy to Kapper’s wife and children, who would otherwise fall into the hands of the Allied troops advancing into Rome. Before that dialogue, O’Flaherty and Pope Pius XII subtly debate whether the pope had been right in compromising with Hitler in order to keep the Catholic Church intact in Nazi Germany. The film can thus be viewed in light of the potential of the medium of film to convey and even thrash out contending theological ideas.

Before the Nazi head of the SS in Rome faces off against the monsignor oddly in order to ask him a favor, that priest walks with the pope though a cellar hallway packed with rare documents and other treasures safe below the war, which the pope calls “the inhumanity of man.” The pope’s message is that the Church must go on, even in such times of war. “Conquers may come and go, but the eternal Church must remain,” the pope says as a way into his claim, “My greatest single duty is to preserve the continuity of the centuries, the heritage and existence of the Holy Church.” It is as though that goal were an end in itself, and therein lies that pope’s vulnerability. “I have been condemned by many for not speaking out against the Nazis, for making a concordat with Hitler, which guaranteed the life of the Church in Germany.” Speaking out against the Nazis could have turned enough Germans against the dictator that a coup may have been more likely. Also, making a deal with a man who is arguably caught up in evil is problematic from a Christian standpoint. The pope himself admits to the monsignor, presumably in referring to speaking out against the Nazis, “Perhaps I could have done more.” Determined to keep the church doors open in the Reich, the pope could be saying that he could perhaps have spoken out more without jeopardizing the Catholic churches in Germany, or that not having spoken out enough may not be enough to keep the churches open there. “I’ve learned that Hitler’s drawn up plans to invade us and to create a puppet Papacy in Lichtenstein under his control,” the pope informs the priest whose active involvement in hiding escaped Allied P.O.W.s and downed airmen could tip Hitler’s decision in favor of invading and closing the Vatican. “Any activities that give the Nazis an excuse to invade our territory must be avoided at all costs. All such activities must cease,” the pope says. The clear message to the monsignor is to immediately back away from hiding the 4,000 men in and around Rome.

One of the pope’s assumptions is that “the essence of statesmanship is compromise.” Even in politics, this claim can be disputed, for not all political differences can be reconciled; sometimes, a clear choice must be made wherein one option is chosen and the other is rejected. In religious terms, the relevant question is stated by the monsignor: “What is our duty when we come face to face with evil?” The pope instinctively answers, “We must fight it.” The implication is that compromising with Hitler’s regime was a mistake from a religious standpoint even if it worked politically. The monsignor closes the loop by asking the pope, “If we must fight, how can we compromise with it?” The pope answers with, “In the abstract, we cannot. In practical terms, it is sometimes necessary to proceed slowly and with caution.” But the monsignor’s question on how to deal with evil face to face is not in the abstract; it is an applied question. Also, in compromising with Hitler and not speaking out, the pope was not proceeding slowly; rather, his conduct was static rather than dynamic in order to keep the churches open in Germany. So, the pope’s answer doesn’t really work. The monsignor picks up yet another problem with the answer in asking, “But isn’t that the same as saying, it depends on the circumstances?” Sometimes it is necessary, the pope claimed. But any necessity bearing on political expediency would of course be extrinsic to religion, rather than from the nature of evil manifesting differently. What about “doing what is right, come hell or high water, and God will give you the upper hand?” This is the monsignor’s position. “Sanctus simplicitus, for some it is easier than others,” the pope replies. Holding to divine simplicity in the face of evil, the pope is saying, has not been easy for himself. It can be tempting to apply situational ethics instead of maintaining a religious true north. So, the monsignor asks, “Is it ever right to see innocent people in mortal danger and turn your back on them?” The priest informs the pope that 4,000 men in hiding are under his care, and the pope is visibly astonished at the number. “Do what you think is best, considering what I have said, and with God guiding your decision,” the pope advises. The monsignor’s questions have had an effect, as the pope has shifted from telling the priest to cease all such involvement so the Nazis will not invade the Vatican and set up a puppet Papacy. It is indeed a judgment call; even if compromising with evil is abhorrent to religious tastes, the pope was not wrong to see to it that the Catholics in Germany could still have Masses to attend in order to be spiritually fed liturgically, especially when the Allied bombing of German cities was underway. To say that the pope’s responsibility is only or even primarily to the institution whereas the monsignor’s is to God would be unfair; both men are trying to do what is right even though they favor different strategies. This commonality does not apply later in the film when Kapper has one of men fetch the monsignor from his bedroom for a private, informal meeting at the Roman Colosseum in the middle of the night. That dialogue between the antagonist and the protagonist represents evil pitting against holiness.

The sheer arrogance of evil is on display when Col. Kapper, who wants his wife and kids to be sneaked out of Rome to safety in Switzerland by means of the monsignor’s network, admits upon seeing the priest, “nothing would give me greater pleasure” than to shoot him. The monsignor is unfazed. “Well,” he says back, “when it comes down to it, a bullet is your answer to just about everything.” It’s “the only argument you’ve got.” Rather than deny this, Kapper replies, “I had my orders. I’m a soldier. I do my duty.” It is interesting that the head of the Nazi police in Rome views himself as having been a soldier in a war. The priest scoffs, “You can’t hide behind that, Kapper. Don’t debase the word duty.” Conflating municipal police with an army on a battlefield, Kapper replies that in a war, his duty includes “whatever it takes.” The duty to do anything a person likes lacks any constraint, and his thus not a duty. The priest misses this point, and instead goes after the defense of the duty to follow orders. “And you think that absolves you of any responsibility?” “Yes!” Kapper snaps back. “What is important is the Reich, not Rome.” At this point, the monsignor could have pointed out that Kapper was not following orders when he lied to the Jewish leaders that by paying him in cash and gold, the SS in Rome would leave the Jews alone. Just as Eichmann was not under orders to march Jews out of Hungary to an infamous concentration camp in Poland, in the film, no one ordered Kapper to trick the Jews. So, following orders doesn’t hold up as a defense, and neither does duty, for Kapper sought to enrich the Reich and likely even himself by giving the Jews to have an incentive to collect money and gold.

Regarding the importance of the Reich, the monsignor asks rhetorically, “How many murderous dictators have talked that kind of rubbish?” Regarding Rome, he says, “The Church is still here,” whereas in a few years, “a few broken stones” will be all that is “left of your Third Reich.” Because Kapper knows that the Nazis’ pull-out from Rome likely means that the Reich will likely fall, he does not dispute the priest’s prediction. Rather, he tries to treat both men as equivalent in being subject to superiors. The oddness of insulting the priest while wanting to ask for a favor comes up again when Kapper tells the monsignor, “You crawl to your pulpit, obey his orders, just as I obey mine.” Kapper is referring to orders from the pope, rather than God. The monsignor conflates the two in replying, “You compare obedience to Hitler with the faith a priest owes to his Church? You think that’s the same? In the name of God!” The priest’s reply can be criticized because faith to the Church is distinct from following orders from another person, including the pope even though the Papacy is believed by Catholics to hold a special position in relation to Christ (so it could legitimately be asked, by the way, whether Jesus would have compromised with Hitler as the pope did or stand on principle against the evil). Nevertheless, the monsignor is right to object to Kapper’s claim that following orders from a pope is normatively or in religious terms equivalent to following orders from Hitler. The monsignor is so utterly disgusted by the comparison as if both men were simply following orders that he begins to walk away before Kapper says, “Wait!” It is only then that, for a bit, Kapper’s tone softens; he must now ask for the priest’s help.

Picking up on Kapper’s reason for the informal meeting in the middle of the night, the monsignor asks, “What is it you want from me, Kapper?” The latter replies, “They say you [priests] can’t pass a beggar or a lame dog, but that you see yourself with some sort of obligation to look after anyone in trouble. You help British and American prisoners, Jews, Arabs, refugees, anybody. It’s part of your faith. Is that right?” “Well, I wouldn’t deny it,” the priest answers. “That’s why I became a priest.” Kapper has been told that the faith is one of “brotherly love and forgiveness.” Forgiveness “is the other half of what you believe, true?” “True,” the monsignor admits. “Well, I’m glad of it,” Kapper says almost warmly, “because I have three more for your mercy wagon.” Yet again, the odd strategy of insulting the person even while asking him for a favor is evident. Kapper notes that if the Partisans get a whole of his wife and children, they would be killed. Sounding like he is demanding mercy for his family, the SS man says, “I want them out of Rome and safe; that’s what I want from you, priest.” Again, this is not the politest way of asking for a favor. Astonished, the monsignor asks, “You’re asking me to save your family?” Kapper tries to manipulate the priest. “If you really believe what you preach, you’ll do it.” Still astonished, the monsignor says, “You expect me to help you after what you’ve done? You think it comes automatically, just because you want it?” Even the Nazi realizes that he has no right to ask for mercy for himself. “I’m not talking about myself,” he says. Even so, the priest is astonished. “You turned this city into a concentration camp. You’ve tortured and butchered my friends. You violated every principle of God and man! I can’t believe it, after all you’ve done, you want mercy?” Again, not denying the accusations, Kapper replies, “I told you, for my family.” But “they’re just part of you,” the monsignor replies. “Part of what you stand for. They’ve taken whatever they could get without a thought for the suffering all around them. And now, you demand that they be saved? I’ll see you in hell first!” The priest knows that Kapper is correct about the Christian faith, that Jesus says in the Gospels, forgive seven times seven, including enemies, so in refusing Kapper’s “demand,” the priest is willing in the moment to go to hell rather than help the Nazi’s family. Picking up on this, Kapper says to himself of the monsignor, “No, you’re no different from anyone else. All your talk means nothing. Charity, forgiveness, mercy? It’s all lies. . . . There’s no God. No humanity.”

So, when Kapper is caught and is informed while being interrogated that someone, perhaps with a network, has gotten the Nazi’s wife and children to safety in Switzerland, the hardened SS man is surprised. Although the film does not include the man’s eventual conversion, the beginning of his turning away from the Nazi ideology to the Christian faith begins when he realizes that the monsignor has not even taken credit for the act of mercy, which implies unconditional forgiveness for Kapper’s family even though they benefitted financially while other people suffered greatly.

That neither brotherly love nor forgiveness of one’s detractors is conditional is clear from the Gospels. Even when demanded by an enemy who has not turned from evil, God’s love can reach into the dark, for otherwise how will God vanquish evil in the end? Is this not the ultimate telos of faith in the three Abrahamic religions? As much as evil deserves to be punished, and of course can be subject to divine wrath, for “Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord,” it is up to us to pour love as humane, humble compassion where doing so is hardly convenient. To say that helping Col. Kapper’s wife and children is not convenient for Monsignor O’Flaherty is a gross understatement; after all, the monsignor risked being captured by Kapper’s SS men when he went, disguised in a Nazi uniform, to visit his friend, Fr. Vittorio, who was in jail and severely ill from having been recently tortured. The neighbor-love evinced in risking one’s own life to compassionately minister to a friend’s humane needs, as well as in hiding P.O.W’s who could otherwise be captured and killed by the Nazis instantiates the presence of divine love, but what many Christians do not realize is that an even richer presence of theological love lies in compassionately serving the humane needs of enemies and even people whom one dislikes or is disliked by oneself. What the monsignor does for Kapper’s wife and children, and thus really for the SS police chief himself by extension, dwarfs the religious significance, from a Christian standpoint, of hiding 4,000 men from the Nazis and ministering to Vittorio. In short, “love thy enemies” goes beyond “neighbor-love” in realizing the kingdom of God within. Compassion for one’s friends, one’s neighbors, and finally one’s enemies can be seen along a trajectory of decreasing self-interest.

As the film winds up, the penultimate scene centers on a brief dialogue between the pope and the monsignor. “No need to rise,” the pope says as he enters the room. “In this imperfect world,” he tells the monsignor, “you may never receive the honor that is due to you. But I wanted you to know that in my heart, I honor you.” Because the world would not honor the monsignor for getting Kapper’s family to safety, the pope must be referring to the monsignor’s role in running the informal network that hid thousands of men from the Nazis in and around Rome. Referring back to the discussion in the cellar, the pope said, “I talked to you once of the treasures of the Church. Perhaps I deceived myself. The real treasures of the Church, what makes it imperishable, is that every once in a while, someone comes to it, my son, like you.” That the pope is referring to the treasures in the cellar, which symbolize the value in protecting the institution from the Nazis, is another indication that the pope is referring to the monsignor’s role in hiding enemies of the Nazi state with whom he sympathizes rather than to the monsignor humbly acting in compassion, in unconditional forgiveness, by moving Kapper’s family to safety in Switzerland. It follows that the pope has more reason than he realizes to honor the monsignor. At an esoteric level of distinctively Christian faith, the monsignor, in using his free will to decide to have his network get Col. Kapper's family safely to Switzerland, Monsignor acted out of strength rather than weakness, and could feel the presence of the divine nature more deeply than from helping Vittorio and all of the men in hiding. In honoring the priest on the basis of the neighbor-love that the priest took risks to manifest in compassion to Vittorio and the 4,000 Allied soldiers in hiding, the pope can been understood as taking the Christian faith only so far. 

The Omen

Released in 1976, The Omen reflects the pessimism in America in the wake of the OPEC gas shortage and President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up, both of which having occurred within easy memory of the two notable assassinations in 1968. Additionally, the drug culture had come out in the open in the anti-Vietnam War hippie sub-culture, and the sexual revolution, which arguably set the stage for the spread of AIDS beginning in the next decade, was well underway, both of which undoubtedly gave evangelical, socially-conservative Christians the sense that it would not be long until everything literally goes to hell. The film provides prophesy-fulfillment of a birth-narrative (i.e., myth) and a supernatural personality known biblically as the anti-Christ, who as an adult will set man against man until our species is zerstört. It is as if matter (the Christ) and anti-matter (the anti-Christ) finally cancel each other out at the end of time. Economically during the 1970s, inflation and unemployment were giving at least some consumers and laborers the sense of being in a jet trapped in a vertical, free-fall dive of stagflation that not even fiscal and/or monetary policy could divert. The pessimistic mood was captured in another way in another film, Earthquake (1974), in which a natural disaster plays off the mood of utter futility throughout the decade. It is no wonder that Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” resonated so much as a presidential-campaign slogan in 1979 as Jimmy Carter was mired in micro-management inside the White House.  The optimism of a resurgence in political energy overcame the decade’s sense of pessimism. That Damien, the anti-Christ in The Omen, survives the attempt on his life by Robert Thorn, his adoptive father resonates with that pessimism. Satan’s plan is still “game on” as the film ends, and this ending fits the mood in America during the decade. With this historical context contemporaneous with the film laid out, a very practical, manifestation of evil subtly depicted in the film and yet easily recognized by customers frustrated with corrupt and inept management of incompetent employees will be described in the context of pessimism from utter frustration. Such frustration survived the squalid decade of the 1970s at least decades into the next century.

The film’s plot, briefly summarized, begins with the adoption of Damian by an American diplomat and his wife just after their own baby died (was murdered) at birth. Damian, it turns out, was born of a jackal as foretold in the Bible. Followers of Satan recognize Damian’s true identity, which the couple only come to grasp after it is too late for them.  Robert dismisses the prophetic warnings by Father Brennen at the peril of Katherine Thorn, and ultimately Robert fails to ritually kill Damien in a church. Robert is especially slow to pick up on the signs; Katherine is more perceptive in coming to realize that the boy she thinks is her own son is evil. Robert is clueless regarding the “red flags” concerning Damien’s second governess, Mrs. Baylock, who is an “apostate from hell” according to the man who gives Robert the set of ritual knives with which to physically and spiritually destroy Damien. I want to focus on the employer-employee relationship between Robert and the second governess to render transparent a very realistic manifestation of evil that could otherwise simply be reckoned as merely unethical. Although the supernatural elements of the film are more dramatic, such as the hounds of hell attacking Robert and Jennings in a graveyard outside of Rome, the role of the dog that Mrs. Baylock unilaterally allows to live in the Thorns’ house is much more interesting from the perspective of how the banality of evil can and does manifest in our daily lives without us realizing how sordid such a manifestation of evil actually is.

Besides lying to the Thorns that her “agency” proactively sent her to apply to be Damien’s governess when in fact she was presumably sent by Satanists or even Satan itself to protect the devil’s Son, she presumed to ignore Katherine’s order that Damien be dressed to go a church wedding with his “parents.” Later, opening the bedroom door to let Damien out into the second-floor hall corridor on his tricycle even though Katherine is poised on a chair over a balcony in the hallway and then going to the hospital to throw Katherine out of a high window extend so far beyond being a bad employee that Mrs Baylock becomes unrelatable from the standpoint of employer-employee relations. She is more relatable—more realistic even though less titillating—in repeatedly ignoring, and thus disobeying, Robert’s order that that dog-protector of Damien must go. It is in this that the banality of evil shows itself.

In spite of having initially told the governess to get rid of the hound from hell, Robert is stunned on the night of the day when Katherine has her “accident” and is hospitalized, because he finds the dog still in Damien’s bedroom. Days later, Robert sternly reminds the governess that he had told her to get rid of the dog. “He’s gone now; they took him away this morning,” she lies, for when Robert subsequently returns from Rome, he sees the dog is still in the house! That the governess had initially presumed to allow the dog in without asking the Thorns for their permission is bad enough; that she repeatedly ignores Robert’s order is without doubt a valid enough reason for Robert to end her employment, but strangely he does not, and she even physically attacks Robert as he carries his boy out of bed, as if that were suspicious.

The sheer presumptuousness of the governess stems from what Augustine describes as the bad manifestation of self-love wherein a person’s love is focused on one’s own superiority, importance, or preeminence. Such sordid self-love, which is a sin rather than just selfishness, which is merely unethical, because in loving oneself above loving God, a person rebels from God in setting oneself up as a deity in self-idolatry. Pierre Nicole, a Jansenist (i.e., strict Augustinian) priest who lived in the seventeenth century in France, dismissed Augustine’s claim that self-love can also manifest positively in loving God’s image in oneself as a part of love directed to God; to Nicole, even enlightened self-love is still a sin.

The arrogance of self-entitlement such as evinced in sordid self-love is of course the foremost sin of pride, which lies beyond self-esteem, which is fine. In the film, Mrs. Baylock’s stubborn refusal to act on her employer’s order that the dog must go immediately stems from the sin. Seldom, if ever, do bosses or complaining customers realize that employees who presumptuously ignore orders or customer complaints are not just willfully stubborn, and even passive aggressive, but also manifesting a certain banality of evil in the midst of our everyday lives. Too often, supervisors would rather look the other way than expend the effort to fire and rehire, and even merely to keep tabs on an incompetent or rude employee rather than naively and conveniently assuming that giving an order is enough in such a case. Company executives, and even customer service departments, in such companies understate the severity of the managerial problem, which includes a faulty hiring process, and the problem with non-supervisory employees, including those in customer service.

The mass-transit company in Massachusetts is a case in point. Too many bus and subway-train drivers operate the respective vehicles aggressively in hitting the brake pedal so abruptly that passengers are literally jerked around as the buses and trains abruptly stop while still going too fast to stop without slowing down more. I recorded video and submitted complaints to the subsidized company’s customer service department over a period of months in 2025 only to find that even the same drivers were going along as if their supervisors were looking the other way in dismissing complaints of the reckless driving. The drivers, and I suspect their supervisors, and perhaps even the customer-service managers, conjoined incompetence to create the “perfect storm” of dysfunctional management (at taxpayer expense). The syndrome was systematic at the macro level, as employees of the mayors of Boston, Cambridge and Revere also dismissed the complaints because apparently in Massachusetts, the cities are not able (i.e., willing) to contact state-level agencies.

Even as the system from top to bottom in Massachusetts was at least as of 2025 mired in laziness, incompetence, and sheer stubborn passive aggression, it is the stubborn refusal of the bus and subway drivers to stop jolting the vehicles by driving very primitively that I submit resonates with Mrs. Baylock’s mentality in the film. Beyond merely being incompetent and having an attitude problem, supervisors, lazy customer-service managers, and aggressive employees can evince the banality of evil, which is ultimately based on the sin of self-love, which is really rebellion against God as superior to oneself. The aggressiveness and stubbornness of the bus and subway drivers can thus be viewed as symptoms of something deeper.

Although by 2025, the societal pessimism in American during the 1970s had passed, I would not be surprised to find that the level of customer-frustration with incompetent managements and rude, pathetic employees was sky-high. Not only had business schools failed in both research and teaching on lower and mid-level management, but the depth of the problem was often trivialized or overlooked entirely. The banality of evil may be as difficult to recognize in the film as it is in our daily lives as customers.

The BART and MUNI subway systems in the San Francisco metro area in California demonstrate just how incompetent and aggressive Boston’s mass-transit employees had become by 2025, because the operators in the Bay Area routinely stopped buses and trains normally. Managerial competence along with good hiring rather than expedient hiring to fill openings goes a long way. Following up with problematic employees should not be a managerial luxury but an integral task of supervision. The banality of evil, which transcends incompetence and attitude, does not extend supernaturally to bus and train machinery. The Omen is more practical than the film appears to be from all the titillating supernatural elements that promote ticket sales. 

 

The banality in Boston's mass-transit company can be grasped even from the sheer repetitiveness of the aggressive braking in spite of ongoing customer complaints:

Only some of the visible recalcitrant repeat-offenders in the system are pictured below, and of course their abjectly incompetent supervisors are hidden from the view of the paying customers but are no less culpable:

 

The Exorcist

One of the most iconic films of the horror-film genre, The Exorcist (1973) focuses on the duality of good and evil that the film’s director, William Friedkin, maintained is in a constant struggle in all of us. The dialogue between the two priests performing the exorcism on the one side and the Devil possessing Regan on the other not only reveal the duality, but also the essence of evil itself. Once this essence is grasped, interesting questions can be asked that are distinctly theological, as distinct from modernity’s trope of evil portrayed in terms of, and even reduced to, supernatural movements of physical objects. The decadent materialist version of the theological domain stems from modernity’s bias in favor of materialism and empiricism. In other words, highlighting supernatural physics as being foremost in representing the religious realm is how secularity sidelines religion, rather than how religion itself is. The bias of modern society is very clear in the film as the “professionals” go through alternative explanations first from the field of medicine, privileging the somatic (physical) and then the psychological domains of medicine. In other words, the narrative establishes (or reflects) a hierarchy of three qualitatively different levels of descending validity: the somatic is primary, and only then the psychological, and, if the first two do not furnish an explanation, then, and only then, are we to turn to the theological as metaphysically (i.e., supernaturally) real primarily shown by physical objects defying the laws of physics. Science, rather than religion, is thus still in the driver’s seat. The bias in favor of materialism is in the assumption that only after feasible hypotheses from modern medicine are nullified can theological explanations be considered (as credible). In this way, the film reflects the hegemony of materialism that has taken hold since the Enlightenment, and the relegation of the theological as “magical” supernaturalism, as in a bed levitating of objects flying around Regan’s bedroom. The essence of evil is instead interior. If religion is a matter of the heart, then how could evil be otherwise?

In the film, the physicians searching for the cause of Regan’s bizarre behavior initially believe that a lesion in the girl’s frontal lobe is the cause. The two physicians are so preoccupied with a somatic (i.e., physical) cause that they ignore the mother’s account of the supernatural shaking of Regan’s bed. One of the physicians insists, “I don’t care about the bed!” The monopolization of the physical medically is here being ridiculed by the filmmaker, for it is ridiculous to ignore a bed whose jumping around so obviously surpasses the physical strength of a child. Secular modernity is being portrayed as defiant, even ideological in the very least in being narrow-minded and petulant and obstinate like a spoiled child.

When no lesion is found, the physicians recommend that a psychiatrist be consulted. Even then, the obvious indications of the involvement of a supernatural entity or force are dismissed. Implicitly, religion is reduced to psychology. It is as if Rudolf Otto’s text, The Idea of the Holy, could be reduced to Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo. In the film, the priest Karras is a pastoral counselor, and he is brought in precisely for his knowledge of psychology. So when the possibility of psychosis can be excluded and the psychiatrists recommend that a priest be consulted to perform an exorcism, Regan’s mother Chris brings in Karras. Bridging both worlds, he confronts his own lack of faith by admitting to himself that Regen really is possessed by a demon. The elder priest, Merrin, is firmly in the theological domain, and so he has no doubt that he is battling a supernatural being of pure evil.

We have finally reached the theological level, having dispelled medicine in its two major categories. Karras’ loss of faith is no more. Significantly, what ultimately convinces the guilt-ridden priest of the distinctly religious basis of Regan’s problem are not the shaking or levitating bed. Rather, Regan’s impossible interior knowledge is what convinces Karras that a being other than Regan exists in the possession. Only an entity other than Regan could know of Karras’ guilt regarding his recently deceased mother and be able to speak English in reverse as well as in Latin. These interior signs are more important to the theological domain than are the physical (i.e., materialism) manifestations of the bed levitating and objects flying around Regan’s bedroom. The latter titillating optical displays make good movie-viewing but are hardly in themselves evil, whereas tormenting a priest about his guilt is because evil is the opposite of love.

Nonetheless, Hollywood has focused on how and whether to depict the Devil empirically—as yet another object that can be seen. In the film, The Ninth Gate (1999), the presence of the Devil is shrouded in bright light, contradicting the commonly held notion that evil lies in darkness because it is absent from the light of God’s truth. The viewers never get to see the Devil. In Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the Devil is only visible in one scene, when the beast rapes Rosemary. As in The Ninth Gate, the essence of evil is not depicted; the interior life of the supernatural being is not revealed even though it is much closer to the essence of evil. Likewise, in Poltergeist (1982), the characters’ astonishment is at how the souls and the supernatural entity appear visually.

The Exorcist is an improvement on those films in that even though the Devil itself is not shown (except in an archeological sculpture), its mentality is clear from how it relates to the priests through the dialogue. The blinding white light depicted in The Ninth Gate, the animalistic look of the Devil in the rape scene in Rosemary’s Baby, and the levitating bed and flying objects in The Exorcist do not do justice to the theological realm; in fact, they are distractions. They reveal modernity’s warped caricature of religion in reducing it to carnival tricks. The science of medicine can easily be viewed as superior. The emphasis on the empirical is itself in line with the materialist orientation of modernity. In simpler terms, depicting the theological in terms of physical objects is in service to the preference for modern (empirical) science. I submit that the nature or essence of religion is not material or physical; rather, the essence can be found in sentiments like love and hate.

It is in the dialogue between the Devil and the priests that The Exorcist goes beyond the other films in depicting the nature of evil, and thus of the Devil. That the entity possessing Regan enjoys tormenting the two priests is much more important than what the Devil looks like, or that it makes Regan’s bed levitate.

Once presented with the Devil’s nature, movie-goers can come away from the movie thinking theologically on theology’s own terms rather than on those belonging and pertaining to a qualitatively different domain (e.g., the natural sciences). For example, viewers might consider whether the Devil’s mentality, as depicted in the film, could be loved. Here, a crucial distinction must be made to avoid a Satanist (i.e., pro-evil) misinterpretation.  For the two exorcist priests to love the entity possessing Regan, they would be ministering to the entity with the intention of saving the mentality from itself or else riding the entity of the sordid mentality. Support for the claim that evil can be ministered to exists in  the Christian Bible.

In the Gospels, Jesus says of the evil men responsible for having him crucified, Forgive them, for they know not what they do. Rather than approving or loving their evil mentality, he is forgiving them for having it. In publicly pronouncing his forgiveness, he is ministering even to them, and as a result it is possible, given free will, that even they could be saved from themselves (i.e., the evil mentality). What if Jesus were to minister to the Devil tempting him in the desert? Can an entity whose very essence is the mentality be the recipient of a loving, unconditional heart?

On the ministering side, agape, or selfless love, is unconditional, and for this to hold, an entity that is evil cannot be excluded even if it excludes itself. Even caritas, Augustine’s interpretation of Christian love (derived from Plato’s love of the eternal moral verities) that includes self-love albeit sublimated to having God as its object, is universal benevolence. Caritas seu benevolentia universalis, according to Augustine. A good will (benevolentia) is not universal (universalis) if even the most squalid entity is excluded as an object of the love qua benevolence.

On the Devil’s side, can such an entity be rid of its mentality? I submit that it can, and thus the evil mentality is not the essence of the entity. Because Lucifer falls from grace, the fallen angel (i.e. the Devil) was once without the cold mentality. Therefore, that mentality cannot be the Devil’s essence. The entity can be distinguished from, and thus rid of, its current mentality.  

In The Exorcist, imagine if the two priests were to pray for the Devil’s soul even as the entity enjoys tormenting the two men. Forgive it, for it knows not the love of God. This is the perspective that enables a ministering to rather than an acceptance or approval of the mentality. What if the priests were willing to sacrifice their lives to save the Devil and not just Regan? It seems that the battle against evil would be won by unconditional love, but would the battle metaphor even fit were the priests ministering to the Devil rather than merely getting it to leave by shouting at it?  This would not be to love the mentality as if it were something to be praised; rather, it would be to state that love can not only survive death for the faithful, but also reach into the cold darkness of deep space devoid of God’s presence.

A young Satanist once told me that he loves Satan. “Then God is present in you after all,” I replied, “because God is love.” Love can reach into places that are presumably beyond God, where hatred reigns. Of course, it is one thing for a Satanist to feel love, even though misdirected to an entity with an evil mentality, and quite another for that entity to let go of its all-consuming hatred, ultimately, of God. In the Gospels, not even the Crucifixion dislodges the entity’s mentality from Jesus’ antagonists.

In the television mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth (1977), several members of the Jewish hierarchy in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, show no remorse even while hearing Jesus quoting from the Hebrew scripture while suffocating on a cross. One of the members says, “Even now, while nailed to a cross, he quotes from scriptures. Even now.” What would it take for the official’s astonishment at the sincerity of Jesus’ selfless piety to trigger a recognition of the wrong that he had just committed against an innocent person whose piety is evinced even under such extreme duress? After the Crucifixion, a Roman centurion who tortured Jesus rebukes Zerah, a scribe of the Sanhedrin who had instigated Jesus’ arrest, for continuing his obsession against Jesus. Not even having Hebrew guards stationed at the tomb are enough, Zerah insists, because Jesus’ disciples could lie that Jesus has risen, so Roman guards are necessary. After listening to Zerah’s relentless conspiracy theory, the centurion remarks, “What sort of person are you, if I may ask? His death is not enough for you.” Theologically, the message is that intractable stubbornness can continue to hold up complicity in the suffering and death of Jesus. By implication, the Devil surely is not touched by Jesus’ vicarious sacrifice on behalf of others. However, if enough people use the Crucifixion in the narrative as a model and instantiate it in their own confrontations with evil in other people, perhaps it will lose its force even where it is strongest. In other words, perhaps if instead of fighting against evil, we minister to those whose mentality is evil, the very notion of battle will dissolve, and with it, evil too.

In the film Mary Magdalene (2018), Mary Magdalene refutes Peter’s conception of the Kingdom of God as awaiting the Second Coming for the people to rise and Jesus be crowned king so Roman rule would finally be vanquished. “Jesus never said he would be crowned king,” she tells the disciples. “The kingdom is here, now,” she explains in dispelling the disciples’ misinterpretation of Jesus’ preaching on the Kingdom. The disciples see no kingdom because the Roman occupation has not ended, but she insists that “it’s not something we can see with our eyes; it’s here, within us. All we need to do is let go of our anguish and resentment and we become like children, just as he said. The Kingdom cannot be built by conflict, not by opposition, not by destruction; [rather] it grows with us, with very act of love and care, with our forgiveness.” Apply this rendering of the Kingdom of God to Jesus’ commandment to love one’s enemies and we have a kingdom ultimately built by ministering to one’s enemies, including coming to their aid, and, in so doing, vanquish our own hatred. Our foremost enemy is the mentality of evil. A person letting go of one’s own anguish and resentment first means letting go of that interior mentality, which is a prerequisite to changing the world by loving one’s enemies. In actuality, coming to the aid of one’s enemies can dissipate one’s own interior mentality of evil and thus bring inner peace, so the causal relationship goes in both directions. A person does not have to be at peace in order to extend love to one’s external enemies by ministering to them and thus dissipating external conflict, but having let go of one’s own hatred certainly helps.

In the Exorcist, the Devil tortures the priest Karras by reminding him of his guilt about having consigned his mother to a nursing home. Karras resists the Devil’s manipulation rather than views it as an opportunity to let go of the anguish. He could say, You know, you’re right. I screwed up, but I’m only human and I’m sorry. I do love my mother. He could then let the anguish go. Furthermore, he could pivot to ministering to his enemy’s anguish in feeling rejected by God. That would surely unleash fury. How dare you minister to me! It is pertinent to ask, what if one (or both) of the priests were to sacrifice his life while ministering as loving the enemy? That would be to instantiate the model of the Crucifixion. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” extends that model even to the benefit of enemies. Could even the Devil’s cold heart ignore that model being applied for the Devil itself? The answer, it seems to me, hinges on whether the Devil’s evil mentality is the Devil’s essence or merely an attribute; of the two, only the latter can be changed. I have in mind here Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accident. I submit that an entity of the sort that can have a mentality can be distinguished from a mentality because of free-will, which pertains to such an entity rather than to a mentality. If this is so pertaining to the Devil, then surely people who have an evil mentality can be ministered to from the standpoint of unconditional love as benevolentia universalis applies to one’s enemies.

The preceding thought experiment on whether the Devil can be saved from itself is distinctly theological. We aren’t thinking about Regan’s possession in terms of her bed violently jumping and levitating. In being valid in its own right and on its own terms, thinking distinctively theologically relegates and perhaps even defeats the secular primacy of the world of physical objects, and thus materialism. The audacious and derisive encroachment on religion even to the point of rendering it as something primarily physical, empirical, and material, rather than as interior to the human condition, is accordingly pushed back. The essence of religion can be investigated and discovered on its own terms and thus rendered more accurate and complete.