Adventures in RCIA - Deliverance Ministry in the Catholic Church PT. 3

Several more good points from Fr. Gabriel Amorth's book, An Exorcist Tells His Story.

Fr. Amorth notes a common complaint of any who study deliverance ministry. There are various degrees of impact that evil spirits can make on a person's life. There is no set terminology for these various degrees. It can work rather like a continuum, though there are instances where Satan's ability to work in a person's life can take a big jump. More on all that later.
Like most books on the topic, Fr. Amorth puts forth a set of terms he uses in his own text and which should not be assumed to apply to any other text on the subject.

Levels of demonic activity according to Fr. Gabriel Amorth:
Ordinary activity: just regular temptations and the crap that happens to obstruct our work for the Lord or distract us from our calling. Those were not his words, obviously, but that's the gist of it.
External Physical Pain: being physically flogged, beaten or pummeled by demons.
Possession: Totally taking over the body, but not the soul, of the victim. Making actions where the victim is unaware of what happens and is not voluntarily participating.
Oppression: Fr. Amorth defines this as being struck by the devil in health, jobs or relationships. Job and the woman Jesus healed of being bent over for 18 years are examples of his definition of oppression.
Obsession: Difficult to differentiate from mental illness. Victim experiences sudden attacks or sometimes ongoing obsessive thoughts. They may or may not be rationally absurd. Person lives in a perpetual state of desperation, prostration, or suicide attempts. If examination by a qualified professional yields confusing results, no resemblance to any known disorders, priest may attempt an exorcism.
Subjugation or Dependence: People fall into this when they voluntarily submit to Satan, such as through blood pact or some other ritual consecration.


I will include some further insight and detail from Lester Sumrall's teaching on the subject, which uses a different set of terms. Therefore I will have to explain this additional set of terms.
I want to stress that in no case should a Christian, be they Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, ever be afraid of Satan.



Lester Sumrall
Regression -  moving backward. First red-flag of a negative power at work. Going backward, not forward. Could be caused just by you, especially when too reliant on your own strength.
Repression - to restrain or squeeze. Restrains expression. Not permitted to be oneself probably sign of repression. Destroy natural expression of personality, takes away joy out of the person's life.
Suppression - Press under, to keep back, to conceal, an exclusion of desire and feeling
Depression -   to be low in spirit to have gloominess, a decrease in feelings of hopelessness or inadequacy
Oppression - pressure or power to crush, power to smother, to overpower another power, to overwhelm, to harass, to ravish, to rape.
Obsession - In the first 5 you can deliver yourself. this one, you need someone else to help you. To besiege, to haunt, to be fixed on a  single idea to an unreasonable degree. Mind no longer clear
Possession - To inhabit, to occupy, to control, to hold as property, to dominate, to actuate, to rule by extraneous forces.
Not everyone afflicted of the devil comes into it through the same order of steps. There might be other things, or steps might be skipped or things may occur in a different order. This process need not be carried all the way to complete possession. Nevertheless, this rough sketch of common series of conditions is helpful.

You must yield to Satan for him to gain control of you. Satan seldom takes a life completely in one shot. It is normally an incremental process, sometimes it takes years, sometimes the process is much faster than this if you give in very quickly. You do not have to realize it is Satan you are yielding to, It could be you think it is to your own feelings or your own mind, or to a spirit of a deceased person or an angel or something else. Rarely do people knowingly submit to the enemy.

Being very deeply involved in sin can lead to the enemy having a profound hold on a person.
"Submit therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you." James 4:7