At the end of The Exorcist, the mother can believe in the devil because “he keeps doing all those commercials” but Dyer responds: “Then how do you account for all of the good?” And that is the question that my novel and film implicitly ask: namely, if the universe is clockwork and man is no more than molecular structures, how is it there is love as a God would love and that a man like Jesuit Damien Karras would deliberately give up his life for a stranger, the alien corpus of Regan MacNeil? This is surely an enigma far more puzzling and far more worth pondering than the scandalous problem of evil this is the mystery of goodness. On its crudest level it would argue for transcendence by presenting supernatural forces as real but on the level that would stay with the reader long after he had closed the book, the theme was something other-and deeper.

Several years ago I set out to write a novel that would, not only excite and entertain (sermons that put one to sleep are useless), but would also make a positive statement about God, the human condition and the relationship between the two. This article has been republished as part of America’s special 110th anniversary issue. 23, 1974, issue, the editors invited William Peter Blatty, author of the novel The Exorcist and a producer of the film, to respond to America ’s critics. Campion, S.J., commented on the array of pundits who had emerged to analyze the film: “I would fiercely prefer to do without further comments on television or anywhere else, particularly from interested parties, about the ‘real’ meaning of the movie, the book or demons, possessions or exorcisms.”įor the Feb. I was positively pleased with the way my Jesuit brothers were depicted.” Walsh, on the other hand, wrote, “I was not offended by the movie…. Father Blake said it “uses the symbols and images of Christianity without preserving their underlying meaning.” Ms. Lauder, Robert Boyle, S.J., and the magazine’s long-time film critic Moira Walsh to comment on the film “The Exorcist,” which faced a barrage of criticism upon its theatrical release on Dec. 2, 1974, issue of America, the editors invited Richard A.

The exorcist william