Summary of Malachi Martin's Hostage to the Devil

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 When the police found Thomas Wu, he was in the barnlike Puh-Chi, conducting an exorcism. The police captain understood the priest’s message to be that he had found the wanted man.
#2 The storehouse was an inferno. With a tearing crash, the roof caved in. The flames shot up triumphantly and licked the outside walls, burning and consuming ravenously.
#3 During the war years in China, Michael was able to escape the Japanese occupation by hiding out with a police captain and a few parishioners. They made their way north-westwards, barely escaping the tightening Japanese net.
#4 I was not to learn of Michael for some time, or of the special price he had to pay day by day until his death.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christianity
• Catholic
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669395096
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Malachi Martin's Hostage to the Devil
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

When the police found Thomas Wu, he was in the barnlike Puh-Chi, conducting an exorcism. The police captain understood the priest’s message to be that he had found the wanted man.

#2

The storehouse was an inferno. With a tearing crash, the roof caved in. The flames shot up triumphantly and licked the outside walls, burning and consuming ravenously.

#3

During the war years in China, Michael was able to escape the Japanese occupation by hiding out with a police captain and a few parishioners. They made their way north-westwards, barely escaping the tightening Japanese net.

#4

I was not to learn of Michael for some time, or of the special price he had to pay day by day until his death.

#5

The essence of evil is real, and it exists in the world. It is not a process of magic, but it is preternatural in the sense that it is not of this material world. It is intelligent, and it uses and influences our daily thoughts, actions, and customs.

#6

The Church has never conducted a census of possession cases, but it has always insisted on thorough examinations of the persons brought to them for Exorcism. When a case of possession is reported by a priest to the diocesan authorities, the exorcist of the diocese is brought in.

#7

The Church has no official public appointment of exorcists. In some dioceses, the bishop knows little about it and wants to know less. However, he must have official Church sanction, for he is acting in an official capacity.

#8

The Catholic Church believes that there is an evil spirit that can take possession of a person, and that this spirit must be expelled. The testing of a case of possession is as rigorous as any medical or psychological examination.

#9

The place of the exorcism is usually the home of the possessed person, for it is only relatives or closest friends who will give care and love in such circumstances. The room is cleared of anything that can be moved, and doors and windows are closed securely.

#10

The exorcist will prepare his assistants for what they are about to experience by giving them three rules: they must obey his commands immediately and without question, they must not take any initiative except on command, and they must never speak to the possessed person.

#11

The priest assistant and the lay assistants prepare the exorcism room according to the exorcist’s instructions. The exorcist enters alone, and there is a feeling of Presence in the air. The signs of possession are as unexplainable and unmistakable as they are inescapable.

#12

The first task of the priest is to break the Pretense, and force the spirit to reveal itself openly as separate from the possessed. The possessed may remain silent, or speak with the voice of the priest. The priest must not be lulled by small victories or take risks on hoped-for stupidities.

#13

The Breakpoint is reached when the Pretense has finally collapsed altogether. The voice of the possessed is no longer used by the spirit, though the new, strange voice may or may not issue from the victim’s mouth.

#14

The priest must look for the Clash. He must provoke it. If he cannot lock wills with the evil thing and force that thing to lock its will in opposition to his own, then the exorcist is defeated.

#15

The exorcist is attacked by the possessed person, who is now being forced into the open. The exorcist must deal with something that is not enthralling, but intelligently so. He is made to feel as if nothing is ever right in the world.

#16

The five cases presented here are examples of how personal and intelligent evil moves cunningly along the lines of contemporary fads and interests. No fourteenth- or fifteenth- or sixteenth-century case would have any relevance for us today.

#17

The final section of the book focuses on the Christian explanation for possession and Exorcism, and how this explanation relates to the reality that surrounds us every day. It does not attempt to answer the ultimate puzzle of possession: why this person rather than that person becomes the object of diabolic attack.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The room was quiet again, except for the irregular breathing of 26-year-old Marianne. She lay on a gray blanket thrown over the bare mattress. With her faded jeans, yellow body-shirt, auburn hair straggling over her forehead, and the aging, off-white color of the walls around her, she seemed part of a tragically washed-out pastel.

#2

When Peter crossed from the window to her bed, Marianne’s face was contorting into a mass of crisscrossing lines. Her mouth twisted further and further in an S-shape. The neck was taut, showing every vein and artery.

#3

Peter’s death was a wake-up call for him. He had never fully recovered from the exorcism of Marianne, and he always spoke as if he were talking for someone else’s benefit. He was never the same again.

#4

Peter was a priest who worked for six years in Kerry. He was assigned his first exorcism when he returned to New York. It lasted 13 hours, and he never forgot the statement of murderous intent hurled at him by the man he had exorcised.

#5

Peter was asked to do his second exorcism in 1952. The exorcism took place in Jersey City. It was a sort of warmer-upper for the 1965 exorcism, which took place in Hoboken.

#6

Peter was a maverick priest who was very content with his work. He had no ambitions beyond being a priest, and he was fine with that. He was available to be tapped for a temporary visit to Rome and an accidental meeting that changed him profoundly.

#7

Peter was a counselor for the pope in Rome, and he met Father Conor and Monsignor Montini, who had a profound impact on the rest of his life.

#8

The world of evil spirits is like an authoritarian organization, with Joe Shtaleen as the leader. The most dangerous period of an exorcism is the Breakpoint of the Pretense, when the exorcist and the thing that possessed him clash wills.

#9

The man who would become Pope Paul VI made this change in Peter. He never exchanged one sentence with Giovanni Battista Montini, then Archbishop of Milan, who was involved in the council. Peter was fascinated by Montini, and he learned everything he could about him.

#10

In New York, a woman named Marianne K. began visiting Bryant Park. She never spoke to anyone, and never stood or sat in the same place twice. She always had a fixed expression, like a frozen smile.

#11

Marianne’s family was extremely religious, and she was raised to lead an orderly life. She never seemed to prefer one parent over the other. She had few friends, and was at ease only when at home. She never seemed to enjoy school.

#12

Marianne’s path began when she decided that her teachers, including Mother Virgilius, were phonies. She was deliberately isolated, as she did not communicate with her companions or discuss it with her parents. She was determined to work it out for herself.

#13

When Marianne was studying at Hunter College, she met the Man, who spoke to her through her book. He told her that everyone was pushing her to the edge, and that she wanted to get off it. She burst into tears.

#14

After meeting the Man, Marianne began to change. She lost weight quickly, and her parents became very worried. She never went to church anymore, and she lived with various men. Her parents were confused about her health, but they were hopeful that she would eventually change.

#15

After the Man left her, she began to follow his teachings and live according to her beliefs. She began to live by the light of her beliefs, and she quickly found that all people have a powerful force in them.

#16

Marianne’s development went through two stages. The first was rapid, and she became completely independent. The second was more difficult, and she began to adorn herself in false clothes and lose herself in others.

#17

Marianne’s isolation grew as she became more and more skilled at it. She began to believe that the self she was searching for was beyond and beneath the world of her physical actions and reactions. It was independent of that distracting outer world.

#18

Marianne’s struggle with the Man was not an isolated incident. She continued to meet others who were struggling to resist the flow that the Man gave them.

#19

She had finally stepped into the locus of her self, and she was overjoyed. But she was quickly brought back to reality by the sound of music from a portable radio on the arm of a passerby. The sound of children laughing, the tones of workmen nearby calling out jokes, and snatches of conversation from couples passing by all seeped with a new odor of old and new corrupting things.

#20

After the exorcism, Marianne began to deteriorate. She began to have sex with men and women, but never found anyone willing to go the whole hog. She was never the same again.

#21

Marianne was a strange woman who never showed any emotion except when confronted with a crucifix or someone making the sign of the cross. She radiated too much power and self-confidence, and she wanted to shout obscenities at people.

#22

In May 1965, George went to see his sister, Marianne, for the first time in about eight years. He was shocked by her changed appearance and behavior, and she frightened him. He knew that something was wrong with her, and she seemed to be speaking for someone else’s ear.

#23

The family had a difficult time dealing with Marianne’s illness. She would wake up from her coma and have violent fits of rage, and her parents would have to bring her to church authorities to have the priest come to their house.

#24

The exorcism began on a Monday morning in mid-October. Peter had prepared for