Gavin F. Hurley
I was a teenager when I first watched The Exorcist. It terrified me. Later, in my twenties, I read Blatty’s novel. It still terrified me. But its complexity began to seep in. While the story was entertaining and the style was easy to read, the novel was also intellectual and spiritually engaging. Energized by the horror genre, this balance intrigued me—and sparked my interest in Catholic horror literature.
As many of us know, horror fiction can motivate meaningful inquiry. We ponder imagination when reading Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. We think about the nature of desire when reading Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart. We contemplate the cosmic expanse when reading H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space. But I realized years ago that Blatty’s novel motivates inquiry in a distinctive way. Not only is The Exorcist unapologetically Catholic, but it is also fueled by a classical approach. This is not too surprising. Catholicism has had a long partnership with the classical liberal arts tradition: one where theology reigns as regina scientiarum (queen of the sciences) with philosophy enlisted as her handmaiden. The Exorcist operates in a similar fashion. It is informed by both theology and philosophy. While it is written for popular audiences, many of its dialogues resemble Plato’s: they are fueled by Socratic Method. Moreover, both Chris MacNeil and Father Damien Karras wrestle with various tensions: between theism and atheism, religion and science, faith and reason, life and death, innocence and guilt, and hope and despair. This is the domain of the liberal arts. Meanwhile, the inciting incident—Regan MacNeil’s possession— stirs all these tensions into potent cocktail. Readers drink it down and become intoxicated by the horror of it all.
