(LifeSiteNews) — Joining me on this episode of The John Henry Westen Show is Father Aaron Williams, a consultant for the new horror film The Ritual, which tells the story of the most documented exorcism in U.S. history. We discussed the accuracy of the spiritual warfare and Catholic liturgy in the film, his unique evangelization opportunities while working on it, and more.
I began the episode by noting that many films about exorcism, such as The Exorcist, inaccurately portray the faith, so I asked Williams about The Ritual’s portrayal of Catholicism. The priest emphasized that, unlike many Hollywood films about exorcisms, The Ritual accurately depicts the entire exorcism process.
“Working with a few exorcists within my diocese, I feel very confident that what’s being depicted as far as the exorcism scenes and … the ecclesial life in general is a very accurate depiction,” the priest said. “And there’s a heavy emphasis in the movie, not only (on) the depiction of exorcism itself, but (on) the approach the Church takes to determine if an exorcism is necessary.”
“That was actually the only reason I was actually willing to be involved in the film, because I wanted to ensure if I was going to be part of this that the Church is being depicted in a respectful way and that exorcism is not being treated as a sort of theatrical prop,” he added. “But something that is given a level of reverence because we don’t want people to be obsessive about exorcism right now, because that can be spiritually dangerous. But I do think it’s important that people understand the reality of evil and how the church responds, and through the ministry of the Lord in the Church.”
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I jumped in to note that the movie takes place in 1928, and therefore the Mass would have been celebrated according to the old rite. I asked Williams about whether it accurately portrayed the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). He explained that the director of the film, David Midell, is actually Jewish and didn’t know much about the liturgical reforms after the Second Vatican Council, so he and other priests helped create accurate portrayals of the Mass that would’ve been celebrated in 1928.
“When (Midell) first came to start planning parts of the movie in the parish, I was having these conversations with him,” Williams said. “At one point, I said, ‘Now, do you want this to be sort of approachable to people in the modern day who’d be familiar with the modern liturgy, or do you want it to be accurate to 1928?’ He said, ‘I want it to be accurate to 1928.’ And so we started explaining the way liturgies are formed and how the liturgy would have to be celebrated back then.”
“One story I mentioned to some people is when the script was being prepared, David approached me and said that there’s going to be a scene where a priest gives a homily, and he wants the homily to obviously be topical to the story, but to be on a passage of Scripture that would have been read in Mass at this time of the year,” he added.
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“What we found is there’s an epistle that falls in the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, that would have fallen thereabouts at the time of year, they were looking for something that would happen towards the end of October, early November in 1928, and that year (that epistle reading) would have fallen around then. So even those little details, those are the kind of things that … as a liturgy nerd, if you wanted to go back and look at it, you’d be able to say, ‘Wow, they did their homework.’”
To hear more from Fr. Aaron Williams, tune in to this episode of The John Henry Westen Show.
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