Chris Flackett
William Friedkin was many things, but he was never scared of voicing an opinion, even if it was a self-criticism of one of his best works. The Exorcist (1973), his film adaption of the haunting novel by William Peter Blatty, was an unexpectedly massive financial success, and subsequently became one of the most celebrated horror films of all time (even if Friedkin doesn’t believe it’s a horror film at all).
You would think that such a successful film as The Exorcist would be free of any criticism from its creator, but no, there was one sticking point that Friedkin could never seemingly reconcile with: the ending.
Speaking in the excellent 2019 documentary Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist, Friedkin outlined that his issue with the climax came down to what he felt was a lack of clarity and a theological contradiction:
“The idea of demon possession and exorcism is the idea that the priest calls upon Jesus Christ through this ritual to exorcise the demon, and the ending of The Exorcist contradicts what I’ve just told you...I said, “Bill (Blatty), what happened there? He went out the window, obviously. How? Was he possessed?” “No!” Bill said. “He wasn’t possessed. No, he made the conscious decision to take himself out the window, and killing himself with the demon inside him”. “But you’re saying to me you want the demon to be gone when he goes out the window”. I said, “But Bill, that’s suicide—it’s a sin in the Catholic church. Suicide is a sin”. It was confusing then; it’s confusing now…I think if there’s a weakness in The Exorcist, it’s that…It’s not often as a director that I’ve had to film something that I didn’t completely understand, but that’s the only instance I can give you. To me, it’s a flaw…I can’t defend that scene…it asks for a total leap of faith on the part of the audience”.
I was admittedly surprised when I heard this; partly because I was fascinated that Friedkin, as a director who was usually so certain about what he wanted, could be confused about what he had depicted on-screen, but also that it had seemed clear to me exactly what the end of The Exorcist was all about, which got me looking again at why I felt it was clear and what had made it so to me.
In this article, I offer my own interpretation and attempt to reconcile this with Friedkin’s reasoning for the supposed failings of the film’s ending. Rather than a leap of faith, I will argue that there is a way to make this reconciliation by looking at deeply at the evidence within the film, as well as from Catholic thought and scholarship. Specifically, I believe the answer lies in Father Karras’s experience with Catholic guilt and the reasoning behind his chosen solution to the problem.
What Is Catholic Guilt?
We all know guilt; that nagging voice in the back of your head that shames and agitates you when you’ve done wrong and you know it to be wrong. It is clear, watching The Exorcist, that the character of Father Damian Karras (Jason Miller) is experiencing an extreme deluge of guilty feelings throughout the film, but feelings of a specific type of guilt: Catholic guilt.
The feeling of Catholic guilt is something that a lot of Catholics do attest to. Writer Madeleine Burgess defines Catholic guilt as “essentially an excess of healthy guilt..(it) stems from the church’s black-and-white view of morality. We whittle down the ideas of Heaven and Hell to good and bad. This gross oversimplification of human behavior doesn’t allow for shades of gray.”
Olivia Eiken takes it further by relating the origin of Catholic guilt to one’s understanding of their relationship to Original Sin: “Original sin is the tainted and sinful state in which humans of a Christian denomination are born due to Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. The forever sinfulness that we are bound to is especially prevalent in the Catholic upbringing, leading to the lifelong guilt many feel once they complete their first reconciliation.”
Essentially, we can view Catholic guilt as an constant intensity of feeling that whatever you have done and will do, you will never be worthy of God’s love because your origin is in sin and therefore grace may be unattainable, regardless of your actions. Now, I feel guilty if, to give a mundane example, I break my wife’s cup, or a household ornament. For a non-believer, the idea of an extreme, constant, needling guilt, of being caught between salvation and damnation and feeling unworthy of the former, seems no less than emotionally decimating.
This push and pull between doing good and feeling it makes no difference is evident as a driving force in Father Karras throughout The Exorcist, finding its form in his relationship with his mother, or more accurately, the manner in which he as the son is looking after his mother.
Mother and The Fourth Commandment
It’s clear throughout The Exorcist that Karras loves his mother; it functions as the pivot on which all else about Father Karras seems to turn. Early in the film, he is seen visiting his mother, he dresses her sores on her legs. He drops everything to visit her at the hospital when she is taken there and he is so distraught at her death that he has to be put to bed by his friend, Father Dyer.
This intense affection seems to run the other way also; although Mrs Karras is not in the film for long, her love for her son is evident in her tiny apartment. The wall above her bookcase is surrounded by photos, but only one is of her—all the rest are pictures of Damien. When she greets her son, it is with her face glowing, her hands grasping him with maternal tenderness. For a brief moment, you feel that such a good-natured, innocent love could warm all hearts and cure all ills.
This love, however, is complex. The love of the son is one thing; the duties of a son quite another. The Fourth Commandment famously instructs to “Honour thy mother and father”. The Catholic Catechism takes it further by stating: “Remember that through your parents you were born; what can you give back to them that equals their gift to you? The fourth commandment reminds grown children of their responsibilities toward their parents. As much as they can, they must give them material and moral support in old age and in times of illness, loneliness, or distress. Jesus recalls this duty of gratitude”.
You can understand the difficulty for Karras: not only has he got the worry, out of love, of ensuring his mother is cared for, but also that he is doing so to a standard that lives up to the expectation of his God. If you were to have any doubts as to your ability to do this, or believed yourself to be failing in your duty, the associated guilt would, I imagine, be intensely crushing.
Father Karras, it can be said, is doing his best, but there’s also an argument to be made that he might not be doing enough. His mother lives in a tiny apartment in what appears to be, if the kids jumping on a car outside are evidence, a dangerous area. There is a question as to how much Mrs Karras is left alone. When she reveals to Damien that his Uncle John visited her, she adds that his visit occurred “last month”. If Uncle John visited last month, when was the last time Damien visited her? There is evidence that a substantial amount of Mrs Karras’s time is spent sat in a chair with nothing but the radio for company. It’s a threadbare existence, both materially and emotionally.
Is Damien to blame for his mother’s condition? No. He’s doing the best he can with what he has, and he clearly loves his mother, but what is important here is that the Karras family believe that Damien is essentially at fault. Their faith dictates that the child bears the responsibility for their parents’ care. However, in choosing to take his faith further by working within the Church, Damien has put himself in a position where he cannot support his mother. By following his faith to its logical conclusion, he has put himself in a position where he is failing one of that faith’s tenets; a Catholic catch-22.
It can be argued that one form of evil is to tear a loving family apart, and beneath the Karras family’s conflict of faith lies what is often considered the root of all evil: Money.
Money Is The Root of All Evil
As part of his submission to the Jesuit order, Father Damien has undertaken a vow of poverty (a common although not consistent practice across the different Catholic orders), partly to follow the path of Jesus, partly to make a sacrifice, and partly to clear distractions from the contemplation of God.
As such, Damien does not own property or have much in the way of money. He lives in a Jesuit dormitory and eats in a shared canteen, much like a university student. It’s what makes his attempts to convince his mother move from her tiny apartment so quietly heartbreaking. “I could take you somewhere where you’d be safe”, he pleads with her, “you wouldn’t be alone. There would be people around. You wouldn’t be sitting here listening to a radio”. Mrs Karras dismisses such discussion: “This is my house and I’m not going no place”.
Mrs Karras is proud and stubborn, but regardless, Damien’s desire to move his mother is a dream that could not, and ultimately would not, come to fruition. His vow of poverty has disabled Damien’s ability to act. Mrs Karras cannot live with him in the Jesuit order, and he cannot afford to pay for another property for her, even if he could convince her to go. In fact, Damien can only give the little money he has to his mother when she has fallen asleep in her chair, partly due to her pride (would she take it from him otherwise?) and partly due to Damien’s shame that he cannot afford to give his mother more.
It’s true that Damien had to be his own person, as we all do, and that meant, for him, following his faith into the priesthood. For that, he shouldn’t feel guilty. So it’s intriguing that Damien’s uncle, the only other member of the Karras family we see in The Exorcist, puts the blame squarely on Damien and does so very clearly in terms of money.
When Mrs Karras has been put in the hospital, the Uncle takes a deeply concerned Damien to see her. Marching through the corridors, the Uncle tries to make a casual aside: “you know, it’s funny. If you wasn’t a priest, you’d be a famous psychiatrist on Park Avenue. Your mother, she’d be living in a penthouse instead of there”. There’s nothing casual in these remarks, though; the Uncle is implicitly putting the blame for Mrs Karras’s hospitalisation onto Damien’s shoulders, even though the Uncle is Mrs Karras’s brother and hadn’t seen his sister for at least a month prior. He should bear as much blame as Damien, and yet, from the Catholic point of view, Damien has not adhered to his duties as her son. The Uncle cannot even go onto the ward with Damien, as if he can’t bear to see what he feels Damien has done to Mrs Karras.
Instead of being able to give consolation to his mother, Damien is instead confronted with accusation. “Why you do this to me, Dimmy?” his mother cries, then refuses, in her agitation and distress, to even look at her son as he tries and fails to hold and comfort her. It’s a complete reversal of the tender greetings of earlier, and it’s heartbreaking to watch.
Yet, through the distress, Mrs Karras seems to share her brother’s opinion, that Damien is to blame, even though it was the brother/Uncle who put her in that particular hospital, not Damien, something the Uncle is quick to deflect. When Damien asks him, “Couldn’t you have put her someplace else?”, the Uncle responds bitterly, “Like what? Private hospital? Who got the money for that, Dimmy? You?” Again, the failing of being unable to provide quality care to Mrs Karras is laid on Daminen’s shoulders.
With such a heavy burden to bear, filtered through what would be perceived to be a failure in the practice of his faith, it’s no wonder that Karras would feel an intensely suffocating sense of guilt. Self-doubting his ability to perform his duties as a son and as a Catholic, it’s perhaps only a quick jump onwards to confessing to a loss of faith.
Smothered By Humanity
The Exorcist makes it clear that guilt has been playing on Damien’s mind for a long time; he actually confesses his loss of faith to a colleague, Father Tom Bermingham, earlier in the film, before Mrs Karras is hospitalised. It’s curious that during their conversation, Damien mentions his mother first before he mentions his loss of faith, even if he doesn’t implicitly link the two as a chain of cause and effect, the symptom followed by the disease.
When pressed, though, Karras transposes the reasoning for his loss of faith onto other people rather than his mother: “I need reassignment, Tom. I want out of this job. It’s wrong, it’s no good…it’s more than psychiatry, and you know that, Tom. Some of their problems come down to faith, their vocation, the meaning of their lives, and I can’t cut it anymore. I need out. I’m unfit. I think I’ve lost my faith, Tom.”
Apart from the fact that Damien thinks he has lost his faith, suggesting there is still the possibility of faith within him, it’s curious how Damien deflects the cause of his loss of faith onto his parishioners and away from his own guilt about his mother. The original novel of The Exorcist attaches more importance to Damien’s struggle to connect with those seeking guidance, but the film tilts the balance so as to put more emphasis on his relationship with his mother. Still, it is worth taking a slight detour to look at two particular moments in the film that do emphasise Karras’s struggle with serving humanity and the guilt that is at the root of it.
Early in the film, Damien is seen by Chris McNeil as she passes by the Jesuit house. She observes him being unloaded upon by another priest: “There’s not a day in my life that I don’t feel like a fraud”. Ironically, it is Damien at this moment that feels like a fraud, someone playing at being a man of faith, rather than legitimately being a man of faith. How is he to give guidance? And yet, the fact that Chris McNeil sees this particular moment and that Damien will regain his faith and find his salvation by saving Chris’s daughter, Regan, transforms the scene into a clever, uncanny moment of foreshadowing.
Likewise, Damien’s encounter with the homeless person at the subway station provides a further foreshadowing of Damien’s future. When the homeless person asks Damien for assistance (“Father, would you help an old altar boy? I’m a Catholic”), rather than leaping to the homeless man’s aid, Damien recoils with a clear look of disgust on his face. Friedkin zones in on this, going in close on the homeless man’s penetrating glare, as if his eyes can see deep into Damien’s soul. That’s enough to send Karras into a mild panic, and he walks away as the train approaches, in effect rejecting his fellow man, a decidedly un-Christian act.
Karras was unable to act with grace because he could not see grace in the physical dishevelment and mess of the man before him, a struggle to find grace where no grace is readily apparent. But Damien’s encounter here also foreshadows how his guilt will lead him to believe that his “lack” of care for his mother led to her death and perhaps her damnation. For, as we shall see, the subway returns in an unexpected way for Damien.
Dreaming of Descending Into The Earth
After his mother dies, Damien’s grief initially manifests itself in violence, taking to the punch bag in the gym to unload his anger. From there, he turns to alcohol, aided by one Father Joe Dyer and a bottle of Chivas Regal, and falls into a fitful sleep, where his guilt rises to the surface in the shape of a dream.
The dream sequence is among the most famous and celebrated scenes in The Exorcist, featuring as it does the “subliminal” shot of the demon face and a genuinely disconcerting atmosphere. It’s also a clear depiction of Karras’s subconscious processing his guilt for what he feels is his part in his mother’s death.
In the dream, Damien and his mother are apart, on opposite sides of the street, his mother emerging upstairs from the entrance to the subway onto the street. She cries for help but the viewer cannot hear any sound from her mouth. It is unclear whether Damien can or cannot hear her, but he can see her and calls and waves to her. This proves to be ineffective, however, as his mother cannot hear him and so cannot accept his help.
Damien attempts to run across the street to her, but it is too late: his mother has already turned and is moving away from him, descending into the subway and the dark bowels of the earth (the subway now becoming a symbol of his lack of care for his mother, using a location where he showed lack of care to somebody else asking for help). There is no resolution here, no reconciliation. The separation is real, literally and symbolically.
That Mrs Karras can’t hear Damien is particularly striking. It indicates how Damien feels his words and promises (“I’m gonna take you out of here, Mama. I’m going to take you home”) were completely ineffectual, just like speech that cannot be heard. Damien never made good on his words and ultimately couldn’t save his mother, so his guilt-ridden subconscious plays out what it believes to be the natural conclusion of such inaction: Mrs Karras’s descent into the subway as a metaphor for her soul descending into hell.
While this is open to scrutiny (why would Mrs Karras, if she was a victim of neglect, be sent to hell? Surely Damien, if his neglect contravened his faith, would be the one to be sentenced to eternal damnation?), we can rationalise this by acknowledging we are viewing the subconscious dream of a grieving man consumed with Catholic guilt, his (real or imagined) trespasses heightened by his sense of religious responsibility. Here, his guilt is trying to consume him whole by submitting him to the worst conclusion it can realise—that his inaction may have damned his mother.
Karras is truly at the bottom of his fall away from faith, the dream acting as final seal and confirmation. Now the mystery of faith begins to work at his salvation in the shape of Regan McNeil.
The Seeds of Faith Returning
Little needs to be said about Regan in this article, other than she is a twelve-year-old girl who undergoes a horrific transformation of personality that medicine and psychiatry, after eliminating all options, cannot explain or treat. As Regan believes she is possessed by the Devil, the doctors advise finding a priest to deliver an exorcism—for psycho-sematic purposes, of course.
This is how our faithless, doubtful Father Karras is brought in to assess Regan. His dismissal of exorcism as old-fashioned superstition infuriates Regan’s mother Chris McNeil, but even at full faith he might have dismissed exorcism, so in his faithless state all he has at his disposal is psychology (however, having said that, it is interesting that Karras confesses to Chris that he was a priest first, then he became a psychiatrist. Faith is still fundamental to his being, and by the end of the film, faith restored, he will find himself a priest first and foremost again).
Stanley Kubrick once said about The Shining, “As the supernatural events occurred you searched for an explanation, and the most likely one seemed to be that the strange things happening would finally be explained as the products of Jack’s imagination. It’s not until Grady, the ghost of the former undertaker who axed to death his family, slides open the bolt of the larder door, allowing Jack to escape, that you are left with no other explanation but the supernatural.” This move from the psychological perspective to the supernatural can not only be applied to The Exorcist as a whole but also to Karras’s perspective as he moves progressively away from earthly psychology and back into faith as his encounters with Regan proceed.
From their very first encounter, Damien instinctively knows this is more than a matter of psychology, but he can’t quite bring himself to admit it. Yet, the fact that Regan is accurately able to replicate the voice of the homeless man from the subway (and the words he said), and can imply that Mrs Karras is in the afterlife with the demons without anyone having told Regan of her death, is enough for Damien to discuss in his next mass “the mystery of faith” with a notably questioning tone of voice. This is the irony of Damien’s return to faith. The real ‘mystery of faith’ within The Exorcist is how a man can be converted to faith not by a sign from God, but by evidence of the Devil.
The film plays down Damien’s excitement, compared with the novel, at Regan’s impossible actions, but it does demonstrate his confusion, doubt, and uncertainty until there is no other option left to him but to believe. More than that, he wants to believe. He finds himself deflated by Regan’s anguished reaction to ordinary tap water, which Regan is told is holy water. This suggests that the embers of faith were still within him and had never fully left. Therefore, the Church had already won part of the battle for Damien’s soul. Now the Devil will paradoxically finish the reversion.
The battle between doubt and certainty continues, as Damien bears witness to the multiple backwards voices he captures on tape, followed by the horrifying internal writing on Regan’s stomach: “help me”. It’s enough to push Damien towards approaching the Church for permission to perform an exorcism, but even then, Damien can’t commit fully to faith. Asked if he’s convinced that the possession is genuine, he responds “No, not really. I don’t know. I suppose…” However, he does affirm that he wants to do the exorcism himself. He might not realise it yet, but this is Damien’s way to redemption over guilt, his desire to serve and help returning from the disgust he had embedded it in.
The exorcism will not only be of the demon within the girl but also the doubt within the man.
“You’re Not My Mother!”
The final battle and the restoration of faith begins with Father Merrin’s arrival at the McNeil house. He is the complete man of faith; solid, tangible, certain; the man Damien wishes to be. His faith is so complete, and unwavering, certainly in comparison to Damien. Even on the precipice of an exorcism, Damien still want to give Father Merrin the psychological background of the case. “Why?” come Merrin’s response, understanding that it is irrelevant. When Damien tries to suggest Regan has manifested three different personalities so far, Merrin shuts him down: “There is only one”. There is no time to doubt faith in Merrin’s world.
Earlier, the demon had told Karras that an exorcism would bring them closer together. This was prophetic as not only is Damien rediscovering his faith, of which the Devil is a part of the mythology, but also that the demon’s target was Damien all along, or at least a priest, the idea being to sully and bring the Church into disrepute by having a priest become possessed and killing a child i.e. Regan. The damage to the Church would be tremendous.
To that end, the demon, understanding that Damien’s mother is his vulnerable point, proceeds to attack with calculated viciousness. Obscenities are unleashed, accusations made (“You killed your mother! You left her alone to die!”) to break down Damien’s resistance, and yet Karras finds his faith bolstered, if his heart terrified, by the sight of Regan levitating the bed up from the floor, turning her head fully around, and by levitating herself off the bed itself. This is the point of Karras’s no return, the moment he cannot claim solely psychological illness on the part of Regan and finally opens himself to the legitimacy of the possession that he is witness to.
Damien finds himself momentarily alone with the demon, but not with Regan—the demon has taken on the physical appearance of his mother. This deeply perturbs Karras, who witnesses the demon revert to Regan’s physical appearance but retain the voice of Mrs Karras, playing heavily on Damien’s guilt by asking “Dimmy, why you do this to me? Please, Dimmy, I’m afraid”. The personal, accusatory speech is purposefully designed to weigh on Damien’s sense of responsibility for his mother’s death. Merrin returns but can not prevent an emotionally overwhelmed Damien from letting his guard down and screaming at Regan with pure rage and despair, “You’re not my mother!” The demon has succeeded in picking Damien’s vulnerability wide open, which forces Merrin to dismiss Damien from the room so as to prevent him jeopardising the exorcism.
The irony is that, although Karras has become too passionate and therefore potentially irrational and open to the demon’s influence, Father Merrin’s more measured, practical faith will actually fail to exorcise the demon from Regan, his body giving out on him before he can succeed. Merrin fails where Karras succeeds—through passion.
Faith Regained
The film now gives us a clear clue to Damien’s regained faith: he is seen praying in the McNeil hallway. That this gesture follows the confrontation with the demon that finally convinces Karras of the possession’s legitimacy is important.
At the start of The Exorcist, we are first introduced to Damien as he is watching Chris McNeil in action on the film set on Georgetown University’s campus. As Karras moves away, Chris can be heard off-screen shouting into a megaphone, “If you want to affect any change, you have to do it within the system!” This was a clear foreshadowing that Karras, after his trials throughout the film, will come to effect change through the system of the Church i.e. his faith. It also links Damien with Chris McNeil, as the possession of Regan forms the pivot for this change.
Now, as Karras sits in quiet prayer, Chris McNeil becomes the igniting agent for the change that she foreshadowed. In a quiet, breaking voice, McNeil asks Damien, “Is she (Regan) going to die?” It’s a simple and obvious question, given the circumstances, but it momentarily stuns Damien. He locks Chris into a shocked, almost disdainful stare before answering with quiet determination, “No”.
I believe it is this moment that finally seals Karras’s rediscovered faith. He has been confronted by his mother via the demon, he has prayed to God in reaction to this, and his return to faith has been rewarded by Chris’s question, which provokes Damien into a new-found love for God’s creation and his desire to save it. His shocked, disdainful expression says it best: why would we let evil win?
The demon has not exhausted its stock of provocations, however. Damien arrives back in Regan’s room to find Father Merrin lying dead on the floor next to Regan’s bed. The film leaves it open as to whether the demon killed Merrin or not, although the novel makes it clear that Merrin has a heart condition and his heart gives way under the pressure of undertaking the exorcism. In any case, Merrin’s death comes as a blow to Damien and once more his passion is provoked, although this time it is infused with his rediscovered love for mankind.
He attacks and hits the demon (perhaps the most unfortunate, questionable part of Damien’s actions, as essentially he is hitting a child), exhorting it to come into him, to “take” him, possess him. Much like how Friedkin uses changes of appearance to indicate Regan’s different states, we now focus on Damien’s face as it changes to reflect the states Damien finds himself in.
Initially, it appears Damien is successful; his face changes into a demonic form, suggesting that he has been indeed possessed. But in this, the demon has also momentarily won, as possession of Karras was what the demon wanted all along. Now the demon attempts to put the second part of his plan into action: to force Karras to throttle Regan to death. We can see Karras, via a POV shot, looming down on the now unpossessed, crying Regan, hands outstretched, but then something remarkable happens: Damien seemingly fights the demon and regains control over himself, at least for long enough that he can take decisive action (it would be intriguing to see how long Karras could have held the demon at bay before the demon took over again).
Then comes the action that brings us back around to William Friedkin’s issue with the film’s ending: the suicide of Damien Karras.
Mortal Sin and Forgiveness
Father Karras, in the brief moment that he has regained control of himself, leaps through the bedroom window and takes a horrifying plunge to his death down the famous steps that will forever be associated with The Exorcist. Friedkin’s assertion is that it is contradictory and ultimately nonsensical that a priest, specifically a priest who has just rediscovered his fate, would commit suicide, knowing that suicide is a sin. While I understand this position, upon analysing The Exorcist and researching the Catholic Church’s position on suicide, I believe that Damien’s actions at the end of The Exorcist do not contradict his understanding of his faith, whilst also retaining a tiny bit of the ambiguity into the bargain
I would argue that Damien’s suicide arises out of his passion. Between him regaining control of himself and jumping, there is very little thinking time at all, certainly no time to thoroughly consider the consequences of his action in logical detail. There’s just enough time for him to give an anguished cry of “no!” and that’s it. What this comes down to is impulse, a sacrifice arising out of panic and a love for humanity. I don’t know if I’d call it a spontaneous action, but it’s certainly close enough.
Damien is also influenced by the thought of his mother. Remember, his guilt over his mother has driven him throughout the film. Just before he sacrifices himself, Damien sees a quick glimpse of his mother’s face transposed over the window (this is not included in the theatrical cut of the film, but was inserted by Friedkin into the 2000 ‘Version You’ve Never Seen’ cut). Friedkin speculated that this might suggest Karras kills himself to be with his mother again, but I think it’s slightly more complex than that. I’ve demonstrated that Damien’s loss of faith can be directly related to his guilt over how he believes his failings in caring for his mother led to her death. Now that he has regained faith, he has the opportunity to make good on his failings and save someone else in a way he couldn’t save his mother. This is why he sees his mother smiling before he jumps: he is thinking about how he will make his failings right with this act. I don’t believe that Damien wants to die, but that this is the only way he can think of to save the girl in that moment.
Friedkin is of course right when he states that suicide is considered a sin. The Catholic Catechism states “It is God who remains the sovereign master of life. … We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of”. That’s clear enough, but when you look further into the sin of suicide in Catholicism, it gets more complicated.
According to Catholic theology, “What the Church teaches is that anyone who commits a mortal sin and does not repent before death goes to hell. Mortal sin requires three conditions: grave matter, full knowledge of the gravity of the action, and full and free consent to the action. If any of those three conditions are missing, there is not mortal sin. All we can say for certain is that suicide constitutes grave matter. Given the fact that people who take their own lives often are very ill or under psychological stress, those factors can impede their knowledge and consent, making their actions tragic but not mortally sinful.”
By this definition, we can say that Damien looks to have committed a mortal sin. As a priest, he would be aware of the gravity of committing such an act. He had full and free consent to the act, albeit potentially undertaken through impulse. But that third point, grave matter, allows for a certain ambiguity. Where would sacrifice (in especially esoteric circumstances as possession) stand in terms of grave matter? If someone gives their life and is fully aware of what they’re doing, but they are doing so to save someone’s life, would it still be a mortal sin or would it be forgiven?
Perhaps this is the beauty of Damien’s act; through the love of humanity found in his faith, he is willing to risk salvation as determined by that faith by sacrificing himself to save a child’s life. Whether Damien is deliberately sinning, he would know there is the possibility of forgiveness. Catholic theology teaches that “even then, between unconsciousness and final death, God might offer the person one final chance to repent, even if such an opportunity is not apparent to us.” The Catechism takes it further: “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”
Perhaps that’s why Father Dyer’s attending to Damien on the steps has added weight, beyond two friends sharing a final, tragic moment. For Father Dyer gives Damien the gift of being able to repent, to ask God’s forgiveness before death takes him. Although Damien cannot speak, he squeezes Dyer’s hand in affirmation as the Father asks him, “Do you want to make your confession? Are you sorry for having offended God, for all the sins of your past life?” That this forgiveness is sought is important to recognise. Damien did not want to die and reject the gift that God had given him of life. Yes, there may have been self-interest, in that Karras could now reconcile his guilt over his mother with this act, but ultimately, Karras acted out of love for humanity arising out of his faith. He is sorry for the method he used, but he’s not sorry for saving Regan. Therefore, personally, I do not believe he has contradicted his faith via his act of sacrifice.
Would William Friedkin buy my explanation? Probably not. It is complicated, but then, so is life, and so is faith. Perhaps the most important lesson we can take from Damien Karras’s sacrifice, whether we are religious or not, is that there is always a potential for forgiveness, thereby opening a door to salvation. If nothing else, I think that’s something we can all appreciate.
