PAT Collins, CM, has been a Vincentian priest for the past 50 years. A firmly committed Christian who is involved in the healing ministry, he feels sure that he is on the right road.
“I get up in the morning with a strong sense of purpose,” he says, “and I never have to think what my life is about. I have lived a purposeful life.” The institution of the church, however, has, at times, looked at him askance.
“Some bishops might say I’m a heretic,” he tells me over zoom, as we discuss Holistic Healing – A Christian Approach, which is his latest in a line of books. “But that’s because my religion is focused on Jesus Christ. And most Catholics are deists – not Christians.” This, he feels, is why such terrible things have happened in the church in recent years.
“Those people never knew the Lord,” he says. “They believe, vaguely, in the instance of God and the afterlife, but they don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
A member of the Charismatic movement, who worked with protestant ministers for peace in Northern Ireland, his healing ministry – which includes the practice of exorcism – has given Fr Collins a certain degree of fame. And he’s no stranger to controversy.
He’s recently been outspoken about the Coronavirus – seeing it as a dress rehearsal for the end of time. And it’s all to do with our abandonment of God’s divine authority.
“There’s a price to pay spiritually if you lose touch with God,” he says. “The Coronavirus was not sent by God – but I see it as a consequence of our irresponsibility in the world - wrecking the environment and so on. And the shadow is growing stronger and stronger.”
Fr Pat has always had a scientific bent.
“I had a strong impulse to study medicine,” he says. “I had two uncles who were doctors, and my father was a veterinary surgeon. I took a scientific degree because I had an idealistic desire to help the sick, but I was conflicted, and ended up on this other route.” As a young priest, Fr Collins struggled intellectually, wondering how he could make a difference in the world.
“I thought maybe the universe was locked in on itself, and I couldn’t intervene,” he says. “Doctors can make a difference within the rules of physics and biochemistry, but how does God act in the world?” From the start of his ministry Fr Collins tried to help those in trouble; he trained as a counsellor and acted as a spiritual director over the years. This led him to a fervent belief in holistic healing with a Christian approach.
“I believe that we should take psychology in medicine more seriously. If we have a soul, and I believe we have, does it impinge upon the psychosomatic element of our existence? I would argue that it does, and that to neglect that is to neglect the holistic approach.
Fr Collins has expounded on these theories in this latest book. In this academic exercise, he gives numerous examples of times when, through his ministry, he was able to bring healing to people. But it didn’t come easily.
“I learned through trial and error,” he says. “Healing is a difficult thing to describe, but you have to have a strong intuition. Often, before a healing service I will pray, and see in my mind’s eye who is going to be healed. I know where they will be sitting and what is wrong with them.”
Admitting that many people are sceptical of this, he says that it Is God’s will that the person will be healed.
“You could say that it’s in my imagination, but I have seen people healed many, many times. The proof is in the pudding.”
It all started when he was teaching at a boy’s school, and a pupil, a treasured member of the football team, injured his back. Some of the boy’s teammates approached Fr Collins and asked him to pray for their friend’s health. He insisted that the boy request the prayers himself, and the two prayed together, but Fr Collins was apprehensive.
“I was thinking, I’m not up for this, but when I was praying for him, laying my hands on his back and asking God to heal him, I was putting as much faith in it as I possibly could, and all of a sudden, I just thought, oh! He is going to get better! And the next day, the boy’s pain was gone.
“That was the first time I saw my faith lead to healing,” he says, “I have seen so many people getting better over the years, but there have also been people who I longed to heal and wasn’t able to.” Sometimes it just takes time. When he heard that a friend of his was extremely ill, he was heartbroken.
“She didn’t ask me for prayers, but I remember in the course of prayer getting a complete conviction that she was going to get better. But it wouldn’t be immediately.
“About six months later, the illness was much worse, but I thought, now is the time to pray for her. I did so and she was positively okay the next day. And she has never looked back.” The bishops aren’t the only ones who have caused challenges for the priest. He’s had his battles with psychiatrists too.
“Many were practising Catholics. They go to church and believe in a good God who loves us all, but on a Monday morning when they put on their white coats, they seem not to believe. Instead, they believe in intervening with medical pills with no acknowledgement of the spiritual or supernatural realm.”
It was a while after he began healing services that Fr Collins performed his first exorcism – a ministry he explains in his previous book, Freedom from Evil Spirits.
And that’s because although he knew all about the Christian concept that the devil is always in the background tempting people, and that Jesus gave the church the power to overcome the evil one, he was doubtful about the existence of the devil in today’s world.
That changed when he visited Dachau concentration camp and went down to the gas chambers and then to the crematorium where children were burnt.
“I can’t explain it; it’s not rational, but I had an encounter with evil,” he says. “There was a demonic power of evil within the world and the God I knew was not greater than the evil.”
It wasn’t until he had a spiritual awakening that he began to revise his ideas. He doesn’t like performing exorcisms, describing it as a lousy ministry, but when he sees someone who is possessed by the devil, and is in the deepest distress, crying out for help, he does intervene. He’s careful; the person always has a psychiatric assessment first, and he always performs the exorcism with a group of people.
“But when you see someone being delivered, it is a powerful thing,” he says.
It is clear from Fr Collins’s conversation, and from his writing, that his theories are backed with some solid research. Whether you agree with his views and beliefs of not, his sincerity and passion are impossible to deny. Are his books important to him?
“They are,” he says. “A part of me is pretentious. I like to think of myself as scholarly, and academic life would have appealed to me. I like to put in my sources. I want my books to be accessible to people, but also to show that I’m not talking off the top of my head. I’ve done a great deal of reading.” Holistic healing.
Book Interview: Taking a holistic approach to cast out evil and heal the sick - Irish Examiner
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