"The Vatican's Exorcists"

You step out of the book feeling as if you've read a newspaper series in which the reporter has dutifully and professionally touched the bases, but only that. The profound questions the book's subject matter raises about the nature of evil and the mysteries of mind and spirit, as well as the more mundane but still intriguing world of ecclesial politics, are left tantalizingly under-explored.

Maybe it's because I've been in similar situations as a journalist, but I kept wanting Wilkinson to drop the disinterested observer mask and tell us what she thought of the strange things she was seeing and hearing, in person (Wilkinson is present at an exorcism) and from the priests, sufferers and others to whom she speaks. It would have been interesting to have learned how she personally came to terms with what she was learning.

Despite its shortcomings, "The Vatican's Exorcists" is a useful, readable and serious-minded overview of a complex and controversial subject. One appreciates the attention that a journalist of Wilkinson's stature devotes to an ancient phenomenon that is far more important to the lives and experiences of ordinary Christians worldwide than the scoffers in newsrooms, on faculties and even chanceries care to recognize.

She could have turned away from this story either in fear or in mockery — I have seen journalists do both — but did not. Good for her for taking exorcism seriously. Too bad she didn't take it further.