In this episode, Father Chad Ripperger talks with us about the role of exorcists in the modern world and how they are often out of step with the rest of the world when it comes to their role as public faces of exorcism.
00:02:04.980Now, Father, your role as an exorcist is a very interesting one.
00:02:08.820You've been very, very public regarding exorcism and the role of exorcists.
00:02:13.360Before you was Father Gabriel Amorth, who I believe brought about a time when more people knew or got associated with or knew more about what's going on in the world of exorcism than at any other time before in history.
00:02:26.900And you've sort of continued in that noble tradition.
00:02:31.060And you've, at least in the public perception, have taken on much of the mantle of being a public spokesman for exorcism and being the reality of exorcism, of course.
00:02:42.080And it must be somewhat daunting to be in that role.
00:03:02.820And then from there, I branched out and did a number of different things.
00:03:05.380But what I realized what he was actually doing when I was reading his book, I saw the value in the fact that he was doing two things.
00:03:12.380One is that he was informing people of the reality of the diabolic, but also this is how spiritual, this is the complexion, and this is how spiritual warfare works.
00:03:32.360And then the other thing is, too, is which is something which I've tried to do in his same vein is there are times when I will talk about things that have happened in session, but never for their own sake.
00:03:46.160And that was something that I noticed that he did.
00:03:48.040And so I saw that what he was using this as a form of kind of not evangelization, but of catechesis for us to actually know.
00:03:55.000And so what I began to realize, too, is that even though Father Morse's work was out there, a large part of the people simply did not have a knowledge of how spiritual warfare was working.
00:04:05.640And as a priest and even as an exorcist, but even before, as I was an exorcist, I just noticed that a lot of people were getting kind of mopped up in the spiritual battle with because they didn't know even just elementary things to do.
00:04:18.520And if we would just educate them, then that would actually help it.
00:04:22.620So I initially didn't want to be known as an exorcist.
00:04:25.580In fact, I operated as an exorcist for a number of years before I even stepped out onto the public scene.
00:04:31.300But and even then, I only did it really as a catechetical thing.
00:04:35.240And it's only became much, you know, it became about 10 or 15 years after that that I actually started talking openly about, OK, these are sessions.
00:04:42.740This is what happens in possession and things like that.
00:04:44.860But otherwise, it was primarily to educate people on that.
00:04:48.420So I see it as kind of as an obligation as a priest who's knowledgeable in this area in order to catechize people.
00:04:55.140So in this kind of ironic sort of way, being an exorcist is in when people hear that you're an exorcist, you either get one of two reactions or they're like, wow, that's amazing.
00:05:06.920You know, and then they basically believe everything you say, which they shouldn't.
00:05:10.380They should only believe in everything the Christ and the church says.
00:05:13.200But on the other hand, then you'll get people who just dismiss you altogether and think you're just a complete nutcase.
00:05:17.960So I kind of look at as I look at it as indifferent.
00:05:21.320And if it does allow me to open up people's hearts for me to be able to talk to them about the reality of church teaching or what the what's the complexion of spiritual warfare is, then I'm willing to accept it.
00:05:32.960But otherwise, I don't pay too much attention to it.
00:05:34.940But what you just said there, Father, is so important.
00:05:37.960The catechetical value of being able to teach people, as it were, the rules of engagement, how to engage in battle with demons.
00:05:49.460If you had to or if somebody asked you, what are the top three rules of engagement?
00:05:56.080Because, I mean, as a father of a family who, you know, if you believe in the divine and in the spiritual realities, you'll know that there's satanic activity directed at your family.
00:06:06.880It's evident if you've lived long enough in family life, you know that.
00:06:10.980So what are the few tips you could give, especially fathers, let's say, because they're supposed to be the head of the household as fathers.
00:06:22.600Well, the top three, I would probably say are first and foremost, just lead a normal Catholic life.
00:06:28.180And by normal, I mean getting to confession, getting to mass on Sundays and holding obligations, but getting to confession on a regular basis, receiving the sacraments, doing your prayers, which the church has all said.
00:06:37.260So just leading a normal Catholic life, making use of the sacramental.
00:06:40.860So if you just do that, that itself is going to be one of the principal ways to keep yourself protected.
00:06:45.800And this is one of the ways that the fathers can inoculate their children is getting them to have a true love for the Catholic faith and the practice of the Catholic faith.
00:06:54.780The second one is, I call it staying in your lane.
00:06:57.820The authority structure of who has rights and who doesn't to give commands, it's infused in their minds.
00:07:12.080You can pray for other people and you can ask our Lord to help people if you think they're under diabolic attack.
00:07:17.980But don't be praying, trying to command the demons to leave them if you don't have authority, whereas parents do, et cetera.
00:07:24.140So just stay in your lane, because we found if you stay in your lane, the retaliation is very much minimized.
00:07:30.180And also, because authority is to provide and to protect, it also means that as long as people stay in the authority structure, then they're going to be protected.
00:07:38.580And then the last one is something that we've really kind of noticed.
00:07:43.400It's a matter of maintaining discipline in your spiritual life.
00:07:47.060In other words, there has to be some area of your spiritual life where you're practicing self-denial every single day in the practice of it.
00:07:54.380And if they do that consistently, then we find they're, generally speaking, immune from diabolic influence.
00:08:00.500In fact, what we have found is that about 80%, not including possession so much, but in lower forms of diabolic influence, we've noticed that about 80% of those evaporate once people just develop basic interior discipline in their spiritual life.
00:08:16.760And so those are the three, I would say.
00:08:19.040One of the things you mentioned there, I think, is very, very important.
00:08:27.960So all the way from the time of the Old Testament, all the way up until New, in fact, the authors actually say it's part of a natural law.
00:08:34.120Because children are born to the parents, the parents have a natural law right over determination regarding certain aspects in relationship to the children's lives.
00:08:44.020That authority over them, that authority is to provide and to protect.
00:08:48.000So the providence, the protection is both material in the sense that, for example, the father has a right to protect his children from, say, an intruder into the house.
00:08:57.280But he also, therefore, has a right to protect him spiritually.
00:09:01.080And so the father actually has the right to command the demons to leave his children alone because he has authority over his wife.
00:09:06.840He has the right to command the demons to leave.
00:09:09.400The wife, actually, or the mother, has the right to command the demons to leave the children because she has authority over them, etc.
00:09:16.020So in my book called Diabolic Influence, there's an 80-page chapter.
00:09:19.960It's literally 80 pages on the authority structure.
00:09:22.400And the reason I go into it is because in the spiritual warfare, the authority structure is absolutely everything.
00:09:27.040Because the demons, it's all about power.
00:09:28.800So once you understand the authority structure, then you can make use of it.
00:09:31.780But in there, I parse out who actually has authority and who doesn't.
00:09:34.660So the parents actually have that part from the natural law to basically command the demons to leave their children alone.
00:09:41.280And the husband to tell him to leave his wife alone.
00:09:44.940And in the context of that, in the book I talk about, there's three different kinds of rights in relationship to commanding the demons to leave.
00:09:51.920The one is the natural law, just a natural law right over our own body.
00:09:56.280So, for example, I can command the demons to leave me alone because of the fact that this is my body and the fact that they're attacking it.
00:10:15.760So if you actually read, there's a book called Moral and Pastoral Theology by McEwen Callen.
00:10:21.440It was probably one of the top moral theology books in English before the council.
00:10:25.520And in there, it's like paragraph 2556 about, they talk about, no, the lay people actually do have a right to command demons to leave in relationship to themselves.
00:10:49.740So, for example, the fact that I have obligations to take care of my mother, for example, gives me, not just as a priest, but even as a son, gives me the right to command the demons to leave her alone because I have obligations to her.
00:11:02.300And so those are the three ways in which that would actually happen.
00:11:05.080So in relationship to marriage, the wife has rights over the husband's body by virtue of the marital contract.
00:11:13.000And so she can command the demons to leave, even though she doesn't have authority over her husband in that same manner.
00:12:52.540Since the Council of Trent, the church has restricted the doing of exorcisms over the lay people strictly to the clergy.
00:13:01.300That is specifically to priests alone.
00:13:04.480So not even even if you receive the order of exorcist, you can't and you can't employ it because the church has bound that power.
00:13:11.340And so but the priest, even he can do minor exorcisms.
00:13:17.460So, for example, he could just, you know, impose hands on somebody's head and mentally command the demon to leave the person, something like that.
00:13:24.220But to do solemn exorcisms, he has to have permission from his local bishop because the bishop is the exorcist of the diocese and then he can delegate it to the priest.
00:13:33.200Is there not also something about a bishop having more power somehow in terms of an exorcism?
00:13:39.520He could do more than than even yourself, like an official exorcist?
00:13:43.920So because he has the fullness of the priesthood and also because of the fact that he has jurisdiction over his diocese, his the power that he exercises due to his authority as the bishop is far more extensive than it is to a priest.
00:13:57.240So I'll give you an example. One time I asked a bishop to impose hands on this one woman and he did.
00:14:05.340And she said when he put his hands on her head and started praying to drive the demon out, she said the pain that she experienced, which is basically the pain that the demons experiencing, because the person's experiencing the same pain, she said was worse than childbirth.
00:14:19.240That type of thing doesn't happen in relationship to to myself.
00:14:23.140So this is an indicator that the bishops, their power is much more extensive in relationship to that.
00:14:29.640So it's not just in relationship to casting the demons out, but it's even in relationship to keeping their dioceses protected.
00:14:36.860So one of the books I'm actually I'm going to write here once I finish that I'm working on another book, but one of the books is just going to be a short book, like 60 pages.
00:14:44.320And the title of it is called The Power of a Bishop.
00:14:47.400Most bishops don't have a clue how powerful they are.
00:14:50.560Even when bishops are bad bishops, the demons have a tremendous loathing and hatred for them because of their position and power that they actually have in the context of the spiritual warfare.
00:15:04.040So, for example, the bishop, he determines what graces flow into the church and to his diocese by what devotions he promotes, what he permits, what what liturgical stuff he permits, how he enacts liturgical laws in his policies in his particular diocese.
00:15:19.380But then also in relationship to the diabolic influence, he has the power to exercise his diocese every single day and literally drive the demons out of the diocese.
00:15:30.720And it won't affect just the Catholics. It's going to affect everybody in the territory.
00:15:35.800And so if the bishops were doing that on a more regular basis now, they have to they have to be spiritually up to snuff.
00:15:40.960They've got to have their own spiritual life in order.
00:15:43.100But if they were doing that, I personally believe and this is maybe it's just an opinion of mine that if they started doing that, that even the political situations in their diocese would begin to shift.
00:15:55.140And so because the demons would have less impact or less influence in those particular situations.
00:16:00.600That's amazing. And would that then also sort of translate up to the pope?
00:16:06.840Yeah, it does. Not so much because of the fact every bishop is like the pope in the sense that they have the fullness of the priesthood by being a bishop.
00:16:12.980He has the fullness of jurisdiction of the whole church. And so because of that particular power of jurisdiction, then he's even he has even more power in relationship to being able to cast demons out.
00:16:26.500I've never heard of a bishop doing like a daily exorcism like of his diocese or even remotely something like that.
00:16:33.680But you don't have to name any names. But do you know of any bishop who is doing this yet?
00:16:37.320I'm not daily, although there could be a couple of them that are doing it daily.
00:16:41.640I do know that there were some that were doing it. There was a few of them that started doing it weekly.
00:16:49.620And there were also some that were doing it because of particular issues that had risen in their diocese and realized this was diabolic.
00:16:57.020They were doing actual minor exorcisms in order to kind of drive these demons out of their diocese.
00:17:01.060So there were some, but it's to my knowledge, I don't know for certain, but to my knowledge, it's just a small handful.
00:17:07.720When people hear that you are an exorcist, there are likely some who say, you know, you don't really believe in all that, do you?
00:17:15.760You don't really believe that people can, you know, levitate or fly and like we see in the movies.
00:17:22.380If people just say, you know, what do you say to some?
00:17:24.260Because I actually had this at the University of Tulsa.
00:17:26.260This one guy asked me, what do you say to someone like myself who doesn't believe that any of the stuff is real?
00:17:30.640And I said, I don't have that luxury to be able to disbelieve it or not believe it.
00:17:36.740This is actually one of the things that I find so fascinating because everyone says, well, these are just all psychological problems.
00:17:41.520Well, it's not so much now because of the fact that we get people from literally all over the world coming to us for help.
00:17:46.560But before then, a majority of my cases were being referred to me by psychologists because they were saying things that they're like, that is not a psychological problem.
00:17:57.140So the fact that they would and we actually even saw this in Indiana.
00:18:01.620Father, I think it was Father Lampert, in fact, had the case where the kid was in the hospital.
00:18:06.760The hospital staff was seeing the kid run up the side of the walls backwards.
00:18:10.360Right. And then you had people levitating and things like that.
00:18:40.500But I just don't let them get away with that kind of stuff because they're just trying to be showmen and they're just trying to distract you.
00:19:05.640Now, sometimes you can't make you can't discern whether it's one or the other, but there are some things that are clearly outside of a human being's capacity to do.
00:19:14.060And that's what you tend to see from time to time.
00:19:16.540One of the things we're seeing or getting into now, at least in today's day and age, there seems to be an appreciation for kind of weird manifestations.
00:19:33.560Or perhaps you wouldn't be seeing that much because you'd be dealing with those people who want out rather than those who want to use it for gain or whatever they want to use it for.
00:19:45.080Usually we the only time you will see somebody who's actually doing it for power's sake and that they want to do those kinds of things or at some time.
00:19:53.480And this is also the same principles apply to someone who's perfectly possessed.
00:19:57.880You will only see those types of people if they're trying to take you out as an exorcist, because they'll and because if they can take you out, then it's a form of empowerment for them.
00:20:09.620Whereas most of the people we and I don't see those types of people because we have a whole process that people have to go through before they can see us.
00:20:16.040And they get vetted out very quickly because there's certain traits that you see among those people and you can pick them out pretty quickly.
00:20:22.160So we see the people that just authentically want help.
00:20:29.120You're in a place where you get to see much of the spiritual reality.
00:20:33.760So most people, they have lives where they don't really see any manifestation of the realities, really, of faith and spiritual life and or any kind of power outside the normal.
00:20:46.240So faith becomes an exercise of having to believe.
00:20:49.280And it's like blind faith, if you will.
00:20:52.600But the miraculous or super normal isn't part of their normal lives.
00:21:09.240I one time jokingly said to a friend of mine, I said, you know, being an exorcist is basically getting to have a mystical life without being a saint.
00:21:15.440Because you tend to see so many different things.
00:21:18.880What it does is, I think one of the best descriptions was by an exorcist in Rome.
00:21:24.940He said, it's the Christian life writ large.
00:21:28.840And by that, he was meaning that you see the reality of the church's teachings regarding these things.
00:21:36.700So, for example, every single demon, there is some point of Catholic doctrine, which was the point of his fall.
00:21:45.480And so you begin to learn the demons themselves gives testimony to the truths of the Catholic faith in forms of clarity that you just it's hard to even hear human beings of the of the highest caliber express it with those kinds of that kind of clarity.
00:22:00.540But also the very fact that the demon is conviction that because he was infused that this was a particular point of doctrine that he had in relationship to what God was asking him regarding his task and he rejected it.
00:22:15.780And so this is the thing that he hates or that he attacks or what have you.
00:22:20.800And so you start to learn those particular learn about much clarity because this thing, it's it's manifesting in a preternatural way.
00:22:30.680It's something that human beings can't do.
00:22:32.100It's talking in a voice, the person it's using languages that the person doesn't know.
00:22:37.440And this thing is talking about things with it about the Catholic faith that gives absolute clarity to some of these things.
00:22:45.740You know, I, for example, let me just give you an example.
00:23:23.520Father, you've been so generous with your time.
00:23:25.560If people want to learn more about what you do, learn more about exorcism and how to defend themselves against attacks from the evil spirits, where should they go?
00:24:15.260And then also mental health care professionals can also buy it because it gives the diagnostic material about how you can discern between something that's psychological and something that's diabolic.
00:24:24.660So those those would be the two places I'd recommend.