Catholic Church has a lot more to exorcise

Having been raised Catholic, I try never to miss an exorcism.

For anyone picturing Linda Blair’s headspinning, projectilevomiting performance in the 1973 possession film “The Exorcist,” the real ritual isn’t nearly as fun. Yes, there are rare times when priests perform supposed demonic exorcisms, but the term is broad; part of the ritual of baptism involves an act of exorcism, a priest once explained to me at a christening. It basically involves praying and holy water; no one levitates or attacks Ellen Burstyn.

Sadly, I missed the exorcism Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco recently performed at St. Raphael Catholic Church in downtown San Rafael. The church is on the site of Mission San Rafael Arcangel, the 20th of the 21 California missions, and is home to a statue of Junipero Serra, the Spanish priest and founder of the mission system who was made a saint in 2015.

The Serra statue was knocked off its pedestal by protesters on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. While it is off being repaired, the exorcism took place where it once stood.

When I heard the news about the exorcism, I was suddenly hopeful that the Catholic Church had entered the 21st century. Yes, please exorcise all the missions of the legacy of abuse suffered by indigenous people at these sites, of the erasure of their cultures and of their forcd labor.

But that wasn’t the archbishop’s intent. Cordileone has proved to have an oldschool, socially reactionary Catholic philosophy that doesn’t leave a lot of room for empathy for the marginalized. His antiLGBTQ positions are a good example of that, as was his call for a discriminatory morality clause in Catholic school teachers’ contracts. He’s more conservative than the current pope, which hasn’t always sat well with Bay Area Catholics, a group of whom petitioned for his replacement in 2015.

“This sacred site has been desecrated, so we know there is evil here,” Cordileone said at the start of the exorcism, explaining that the ceremony would defend the image of Serra. Serra’s goal, he said, was “not to dominate and annihilate” indigenous peoples, but to “save them from domination and annihilation” by exposing them to the church. That line was hard to buy in 1769; in 2020, it’s nauseating. Move over, Linda Blair; it’s my turn to get sick.

I’d guess I’m probably closer to the average Bay Area Catholic in my mindset about the church than the archbishop is. After nine years of parochial school, I appreciate the glorious art, music and theatrical rituals of Catholicism: Give me a man in a dress waving a bejeweled incense burner any day, and throw in a couple Renaissance paintings while you’re at it! The more mystical aspects of the church have always been good literature, but I don’t take them literally.

That said, I have met many practicing Catholics — Jesuits, nuns, laypeople — who embody a religious desire to be of service to the vulnerable, and I admire them for that. But between the church’s antiLGBTQ positions, exclusion of women in leadership and general preGalilean dogma, it doesn’t feel like an institution aware that the world has evolved much since the Council of Trent. It also doesn’t reflect the culture of the Bay Area.

Still, I think the archbishop is right about one thing: Sometimes, exorcisms are necessary.

We should exorcise the missions, but start by expressing contrition to the tribal communities whose ancestors were oppressed at those sites. Engage in a dialogue about how the church’s financial resources could best make an impact in preserving the native cultures that the missions sought to uproot.

Exorcise all the places in the Bay Area where women suffered because of the church’ s anti birth control and anti reproductive freedom stances. Then exorcise Star of the Sea Parish in the Richmond District, where little girls learned a lesson in church misogyny when Father Joseph Illo decided to train only boys to be altar servers.

Next stop: all the Catholic schools in the Bay Area where queer kids got bullied and teachers chose to look away. Then we’ll exorcise all the Catholic parents who couldn’t accept their LGBTQ children because of the teachings of the church. We’ll close by reminding them how many of the great artists and musicians of the church were, in fact, gay.

At the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, we have our work cut out for us exorcising the doorways where sprinklers were installed to deter homeless people who sought shelter there. Did the church forget Matthew 25: 40 — “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”?

I can’t imagine how you could exorcise the suffering of the children ( now adults) who endured years of sexual abuse from priests in the Bay Area and then were pained further as the archdiocese and Vatican moved abusers from parish to parish and worked to conceal the truth.

Keep your holy water at the ready, archbishop. You’ve got much bigger demons to attend to than the people who toppled a statue.