_______________________________

ENTERTAINMENT LAWYER DESCRIBES DRAMATIC CONVERSION, CONFESSION, AND 'EXORCISM'

_______________________________________

[In his debut literary memoir, entertainment lawyer and cradle Catholic John H. Carmichael, an entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles, describes his descent into alcoholism and spiritual affliction after his sudden divorce and terminal illness of his mother, herself a recovering alcoholic. The author finds the ministry of the Church -- in particular the Sacrament of Confession and deliverance through his confessor, a member of a Catholic religious order at an Abbey -- to be keys to his recovery. He makes a startling reversion to the Faith and deep commitment to Christ after finding unexpected healing power in classic Catholic practices, including the Rosary and singing in a choir at the Extraordinary Form of Mass. Here's a sample from this exciting new book, free on Kindle, for immediate release on the Spirit Daily site only:] 

By John H. Carmichael

138:

I’ve written all my sins down, all the ones I can remember anyway, by name and number.

I’ve read accounts of near death experiences where people are shown the film of their life—doesn’t everyone always say my life flashed before my eyes—when they have a brush with death?

To prepare for my general confession I recline in a dark room on my leaky air mattress trying to play the movie of my life as it might appear at the end of it, as Mom’s life might have appeared to her in those unsettling hours before her death where she appeared to be undergoing a review of sorts.

There I am at five, sitting in the living room, watching Mom walk through the bathroom door drunk. When I knocked her over did I sin? When I denounced the idea of God a few months later did I sin? When in doubt I’ll confess it and let Father work it out. He’s had ten years to prepare for this. I’m sure he knows more about it than I do.

The time for living according to my terms has passed. Never have I seen a creature as helpless as my dying mother, except maybe animals in cages awaiting euthanasia.

There she was, bound to her bed, seemingly unable in that late desperate hour to recall her sins, to form contrition, to make a proper repentance, to receive absolution, except through that shaky exchange during the last rites. O God may it cover her, may our prayers assist her in Your sight, may she be purified and not eternally damned. 

139 

When I enter the chapel for confession Father Polycarp is playing the organ gently, skillfully, perhaps preparing for holy hour later in the evening. I’m impressed my confessor is also an organist. I don’t know how anyone in human history ever mastered the organ. It’s a beast of an instrument.

He finishes up, gathers a purple stole from the organ bench as well as a few small books and meets me in the back near the confessional.

Hello, he says, nice to see you.

We enter the confessional and sit across from one another. I place the sheaf full of papers bearing my dirty deeds on my lap. He has a big smile on his face, not giddy, but anticipatory. 

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, I begin. 

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been twenty years since my last confession. These are the sins of my life, for which I desire God’s forgiveness and mercy.

I do my best to simply state the sin and the number of times I committed it, to properly accuse myself, but Father Polycarp interrupts on occasion and inquires more deeply.

Especially concerned he seems to be with two things: my suicide attempt and my sessions with the psychic. He wants to know everything about them, my state of mind before, during and after the sessions with the psychic, any sense I had of becoming a different person just before the suicide attempt, and the intensity of the drug and alcohol use before, during and after that period.

My head is spinning. His line of inquiry unnerves me. He strikes me as very bright, like one of the top flight associates I used to work with at high rise law firms in Century City, whip smart, like he could have done anything with his life, but chose to do this instead.

We go for about an hour and a half and at the end I say, I think that’s it.

Good, he says. Well thank God for a good confession. But I need to say a deliverance prayer over you so, if you’ll follow me into the library, we’ll suspend the confession for a moment, and I’ll pray the deliverance prayer, and then grant you absolution by the power of Christ.

Uh, okay, I say.

Did he just say—deliverance?

I thought that was like an Appalachian thing, like a snake-handling, backwoods type deal.

Deliverance?

Right here above suburban Orange County?

I hope it doesn’t hurt.

Father Polycarp removes his purple stole, picks up his two small books and some holy water and puts his hand on the door knob of the confessional.

Father, I say, light headed and breathy, it’s just so hard for me to believe that any of this—is real.

He opens the confessional door. Without even looking over his shoulder he says, It’s all real, John.

He says this with an offhanded objectivity, like he was saying the parking lot is crowded or there’s rain tonight or we’re having stew for dinner. The perfunctory affirmation that the Catholic Faith is all real seems to this brilliant young man a fact no more exotic than blue skies or gravity.

Of all the testimonies, of all the declarations of faith I have ever heard, Father Polycarp’s is by far the most terrifying, the most compelling, the most withering, because he was not trying to persuade me of anything.

The Church doesn’t need me.

I need the Church!

I’m ten paces behind him and he turns to look at me.

He nods his head sideways as if to say, C’mon, it’s only a deliverance prayer.

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once quipped that you never want anything done to you in a hospital that makes doctors say to other doctors, Man I gotta see this. 

Does everybody get the deliverance prayer at their general confession? I would think not, otherwise he would have had the book in the confessional with him. Clearly aspects of my confession have caused him to think he needs to cast out demons or worse. 

Demons? In me? Well why not?

I’ve behaved like a demon lately. 

140 

We enter a small alcove near the library.

We’re a full service monastery here, he says with a smile.

Kneel down, he says.

Kneel down?

Yes.

I kneel down.

With great authority and calm self-assurance, he extends his hand over my head. He holds a large bound tome with the other.

He begins praying a long prayer over me in Latin.

Kneeling here, this is almost more than I can take.

I do feel something.

This is not a parlor trick.

He’s decidedly un-theatrical about this entire affair. He’s just doing his job, which makes it that much worse in my mind. I’m undergoing a, a—procedure: 

Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, he reads, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, et in nomine Jesu Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostri, et in virtute Spiritus Sancti, ut descedas ab hoc plasmate Dei John Carmichael, quod Dominus noster ad templum sanctum suum vocare dignatus est, ut fiat templum Dei vivi, et Spiritus Sanctus habitet in eo. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum, qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem. 

I’m teetering a bit as he finishes. There’s something substantial going on here. This ain’t a sweet nothing. He closes his book and asks me to read and pray the Act of Contrition, which I do: 

O my God, I am heartily sorry for offending Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the fires of hell, but most of all because they offend Thee my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen. 

Then he pronounces the words of absolution in Latin from memory: 

Deus, Pater misericordiarum,

(God the Father of mercies,)

qui per mortem et resurrectionem Fílii sui

(who through the death and resurrection of His own Son)

mundum sibi reconciliavit

(reconciled the world to Himself)

et Spiritum Sanctum effudit

(and poured out the Holy Spirit)

in remissionem peccatorum,

(for the forgiveness of sins,)

per ministerium Ecclesiae

(through the ministry of the Church)

Indulgentiam tibi tribuat et pacem

(may He grant to you pardon and peace...)

Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis

And I absolve you from your sins,

in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

(in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.) 

He smiles at me and says, I foresee great holiness for you.

I stare dumbly, blinking.

I want to respond but the words don’t come.

Holiness? What is that exactly? That’s one of those words people use. I don’t know quite what it means.

And great holiness for me?

What would that even be like?

I just say, Thank you Father.

Sure, John, he says. Let’s pray for each other, okay?

I’m struck by this parting act of humility. As if my prayers could further his spiritual life, he of the white habit and serene spirit, gliding through his divine office and sacramental ministry.

Okay, I say, dazed and somewhat weak. 

141 

I wander out to my car through a light mist that’s settled on the dark hilly landscape. The faithful are arriving for the eight o’clock holy hour and benediction. I wonder for a moment if I should join them, but I’m too tired.

I sit in the quiet interior of my car and wish I could cry from the catharsis of it all.

But it wasn’t exactly cathartic like a counseling session.

In fact, the young priest didn’t do much counseling at all. Instead I feel a sensation I can’t entirely name: a sweeping, dawning acknowledgment of where I’ve been and where I am now.

The tears begin to fall, but I can sense they’re not tears of relief, not tears cried at the culmination of a long battle. In this precise moment I suddenly realize I’m not at a finish line, but at a starting line. This awareness confuses me in my exhaustion. Now what, I think.

I confessed an awful lot of sins, some things I didn’t think were all that bad until I read that little booklet on confession and did some research. But now, now after having spoken them aloud, to have accused myself, and to have received the sign and sacrament of forgiveness, I really do believe there is such a thing as a soul and that the soul can be stained, occluded, ruined by sin.

I can feel the seriousness of my sin, the danger of it, its residue. I suppose it is the case that through some peculiar mechanism, I have recovered the sense of sin that the Popes have reckoned man has more or less lost of late. I see the sense of sin not as a burden but as an immense benefit, something that would have been impossible for me to come to on my own.

Do I feel lighter?

Somewhat.

But more than that, I feel aware.

I experience a groaning awareness of the horrific condition in which I was languishing, like a man waking up in a burning building, coughing from inhaling acrid smoke and looking for an exit.

I’m unnerved by my confessions of illicit drug use, drunkenness and sexual impurity. I realize I made a promisein my Act of Contrition. I promised to amend my life. To walk right back out and get lit after I get home just wouldn’t be right. But I don’t drink for the taste of the stuff. I’d just as soon have a lemonade on ice with muddled mint, or a Pellegrino with lime or even a chocolate milk if flavor and texture were all that mattered to me. I fancied myself a scotch connoisseur but who would ever savor the taste of that rank and peaty carcinogen if it weren’t for the eighty-proof kick in the pants? I drink to get good and drunk. If I’m going to stop getting drunk I’m going to need some help. I’m not sure the confession is enough, though Saint Augustine informed me recently that the beginning of good works is the confession of evil works.

I go to put the key in the engine and something arrests me. This time, not a field of grayscale Arial letters like over the bar that one time, but it’s the same voice: calm, impassive, interior. I don’t see it this time so much as Ihear it. The voice says: 

God needs you sober. 

I feel like I didn’t hear the verb correctly. Need? God needs you sober? How about want instead? Why would God need anything, especially from me, if God is God? Now I doubt myself, not the voice, but the verb. Was itneed or want? I know from my first experience with this strange phenomenon that there will be no follow-up questions allowed.

And whose voice was this that spoke of God in the third person? It didn’t strike me as God speaking exactly, but an emissary of sorts. Yet I’m quite certain it was the same voice that spoke and displayed the suggestion that Ifast in the bar so many months ago.

Finally I start the engine and proceed down the hill.

I stop the car on the steep incline.

A shock wave concusses my electrified body.

It hits me: I’m—an alcoholic.

And a drug addict.

Oh Dear God.

I was so caught up by the verb that I didn’t properly contemplate the implication of the word sober.

I know exactly what it means in my case: stone cold sober. It means never again, not a wee drop, it means a stark reversion to my tea-totaling youth.

So I am a drunk, just like Mom.

It looked different, it felt different, but alas my drunkenness was no less alcoholic than hers. Look at me! I don’t even have clean socks!

I betrayed Nicole.

I betrayed Nicole!

I’m suddenly stricken with the thought of Nicole. Elle, yes, of course, but Nicole—I managed to betray a child who was placed rightly or wrongly into my care, into my sphere of influence. What have I unwittingly taught her through my betrayal? The same thing Mom taught me? That people are unreliable, not to be trusted. Or worse, that there is no God?

Oh God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee—

Sober. Never again. No booze, no drugs, no mind or mood altering chemicals of any kind, just life straight-up without anesthesia. I’ll have to go through all that recovery crap with those black-coffee swilling drunks at those ratty clubhouses. Maybe I’ll have to go to a treatment center or some madhouse like that.

Oh this is terrible. I feel like Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones when he looked down into the pit to see what was guarding his treasure and saw snakes.

Snakes, he murmurs, why’d it have to be snakes?

Sober, I think, why do I have to be sober? 

[Link to FREE book on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing] 

Mary Undoer of Knots plus The Holy Cloak novena, $7.25

Michael Brown's books on Kindle or Nook

Return to home page www.spiritdaily.com