The John-Henry Westen Show - Why Demons Hate Strong Fathers

00:00:00.000 We fight an ancient enemy and the ancient weapons are best. And so in this book, we've put in some

00:00:03.860 of those ancient weapons. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the John Henry Weston Show. I am

00:00:09.880 so pleased to bring you these two guests. These are heavy hitters. Usually when you're talking

00:00:14.560 about the most severe battle on earth, people might think, ooh, down in the trenches of politics

00:00:19.860 with, you know, maybe on the Trump team or against the Trump team, God only knows. But no, when we're

00:00:25.300 dealing with the most heavy battle on earth, it's actually the battle against Satan. It's waged

00:00:29.020 primarily in here. And in order to fight it properly, you should actually know what you're

00:00:35.620 doing. I've got for you two guests who absolutely know what they're doing. In fact, they help

00:00:40.940 out in the ministry of deliverance or of exorcism and work with exorcists themselves. Welcome

00:00:48.260 to the show, Dan Schneider and Jesse Romero. God bless my friends. So good to be with you.

00:00:54.480 Thank you, John Henry. It's a blessing to be here. Thanks for having us on.

00:00:57.980 Same here. Thanks, John. Thanks for inviting us.

00:01:00.360 Okay. So you two have put a book out, a brand new book, and people can pick it up from Tan,

00:01:07.420 the founder of which just passed away, God rest his soul, Thomas A. Nelson. Your book

00:01:12.960 called Spiritual Warfare Q&A. What gave rise to this? I've had you both on before talking

00:01:19.440 about similar things, but tell us what gave rise to this collaboration between the two of

00:01:24.440 you. Dan and me have been doing a show on Wednesdays. It's called War College. And we

00:01:28.360 take a lot of these questions, a lot of email questions that we get or questions from the field

00:01:32.680 when we go to parishes or from different lay people. And so we just started, these are questions

00:01:39.640 that we're answering constantly. So I told him one day, I said, hey, why don't we just take these

00:01:44.860 common questions that lay Catholics around the country ask us? And I said, let's just put it in a

00:01:49.340 standard book to try to help the body of Christ. To me, that's how this book came out. Dan, we have

00:01:54.240 another take on this. Yeah. So Jesse and I talked about this from the very beginning. Let's put

00:01:58.600 together a Q&A book. If you remember, John, the radio replies back in the 50s, we wanted to do a

00:02:04.480 radio reply, spiritual warfare edition, but it's not clear who owns that title. So we just came up,

00:02:09.700 we just decided to, it's the same principle, Q&A. First, it was just going to be handling questions

00:02:14.140 from lay people. And then I still, I do a lot of teaching and training with priests,

00:02:19.420 consultation with priests and exorcists, parish priests. And there's a huge need there,

00:02:23.360 a lot of misunderstanding at the very, the battle really is taking place at the seminary level and

00:02:28.520 at the local level. This is where the battle is taking place. So we added two chapters of questions

00:02:34.580 from priests as well. Between the two of us, we get hundreds of emails a week asking these questions.

00:02:39.880 And we decided, well, let's just put it in a format, but not just, you know, we tightened it up to

00:02:44.000 make sure that it was, we documented what we need to document, footnote, we need a footnote. So

00:02:48.020 that's what separates it from other Q&A books. Everything we try to do, we try to do from the

00:02:52.100 heart of the church and be very precise in our language and direct. As you're dealing with, you

00:02:56.500 know, human souls, you know, the complexity of the human person. Jesse's such an organized guy.

00:03:02.180 He's got more and more files and more and more questions. I've got files and questions. We easily

00:03:05.820 have another follow-up, but this was the genesis of this project. Cool. So it's interesting. Yeah,

00:03:10.800 you're dealing with, with real souls, people's souls. You're also dealing with real spirits,

00:03:15.520 real beings. And that's the point of contention today. A lot of people like to say, oh, you know,

00:03:21.440 the devil, is he real? You're not, you know, there's bad things and people make bad decisions,

00:03:26.280 but the, they're actually evil demons. Is that a real, that's like a fig Newton of our imagination,

00:03:32.900 or it's, or it's, it's some kind of literary device that the scriptures use to make sense of

00:03:38.900 people? Give us the straight goods. Well, first of all, sacred scripture talks about angels and

00:03:43.680 demons. Sacred tradition talks about angels and demons. There's actually been a council. I think

00:03:50.240 the fourth laddering council, which actually defined it as de fide, angels and demons. It's in all the

00:03:57.100 Catholic prayers. For example, the St. Michael, the archangel prayer, short form, long form. The fact

00:04:03.240 of the matter is even Muslims believe in demons, even Jews believe in demons. So this isn't something

00:04:09.520 that's particular just to Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox. This is just part of the world that we

00:04:14.600 live in. Dan? Yeah, no. And again, it's part of the practical experience that Jesse and I have

00:04:18.600 working with cases over the years. We know doctrinally, dogmatically, these are, there is,

00:04:24.340 they are not a figment of our imagination. They are not the literary expression of the psychological

00:04:28.520 evil that we all seem to have. This is all part of the modernist training that many theologians,

00:04:34.920 priests, prelates, and others have been immersed in. You know, 20, 30 years ago, there was very little

00:04:39.640 belief teaching. Even to this day, there's, I don't know if there's a single seminary that teaches

00:04:43.860 angelology and cosmology from anthropogeny from that perspective. So there's a real dearth,

00:04:49.520 there's a real lacuna, if you will, in scholarship among Catholics. And so the Catholic Church is,

00:04:54.440 you know, beginning with Father Amorth, at the time when he was doing exorcisms in the 80s, there

00:04:59.620 was, I think, 12, nine exorcists in the United States at the time. And so there's been a real

00:05:04.480 movement. We recognize evil. It's becoming so blatantly obvious. So what happened was, in my

00:05:09.300 observation, is that we, we jumped in a little late, slow to the game, so to speak. And so the gap

00:05:15.600 was kind of filled by Protestant charismatic movements inside the Catholic Church that started

00:05:20.340 doing models that are not necessarily based on Catholic tradition. We fight an ancient enemy

00:05:25.880 and the ancient weapons are best. And so in this book, we've put in some of those ancient

00:05:29.200 weapons. What are those weapons? We put them in the book, kind of spell that out.

00:05:32.520 One of the things with all of the common man's experience of evil in their lives and evil spirits

00:05:39.860 is actually discernment of what you're actually dealing with. To understand the space, if you will,

00:05:47.840 in your head or your heart or wherever it is, that you kind of hear your thoughts, that

00:05:52.800 you would hear God speak to you, or that you would hear the devil. How do you discern what's

00:05:59.280 what? And do you guys believe that? Is there that space that you hear this sort of dialogue

00:06:04.520 with yourself, if you will? And is that a space where God and the devil can interact with you

00:06:10.440 as well?

00:06:10.780 I served as a helicopter pilot in the United States Army. And there was one channel that

00:06:18.440 everybody monitored. It was called Guard. So you had your AWACS guys way up in the sky,

00:06:22.720 your Air Force, your fast movers, your bombers, your jets, everybody. We're all listening and

00:06:27.520 monitoring Guard. We don't chatter on it, but you listen to the chatter. You use it for emergency

00:06:31.940 purposes. So when it comes to the inner person, the inner self, that Guard channel, by analogy,

00:06:37.800 is we talk to God on this channel. God speaks to us on this channel, but the enemy also monitors

00:06:43.460 and projects and chatters on that channel. So discernment of spirits, most of the church taps

00:06:50.700 into the Ignatian model of discerning of spirits. And you have to have that. Otherwise, God told me

00:06:56.320 this. God told me that. Jesse and I just shared an article with Father Ripper, or he shared with us

00:07:00.480 an article about a religious sister who's just written a book on vampires because God told her to write a

00:07:05.660 book on vampires. Well, how do we know? We have to have some discernment of spirits. Otherwise,

00:07:11.400 we assume everything is from God, and it's not. It's from the demon. Or we assume everything's

00:07:15.120 from the demon. It's not. It's our own projected self-talk. So we have to have a real strong

00:07:19.860 discernment, and you can only do that through prayer and working with a spiritual director,

00:07:24.920 obedience to the teachings of the church, and having some guidelines and benchmarks to know,

00:07:29.760 okay, this is of the human spirit, this is of the Holy Spirit, and this is of the evil spirit.

00:07:33.860 Jesse, can you take us through a practical sort of example of that, a small scale,

00:07:37.600 but one where there's sort of a proper but quick discernment, because these things happen

00:07:41.600 daily in that guard space, if you will, where that chatter exists?

00:07:46.260 Discernment of spirits, first of all, it's spoken of in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 10. It's

00:07:51.000 one of the spiritual. It's not a normative gift. It's one of the charismatic gifts.

00:07:55.180 The normative gifts that we receive in baptism and confirmation are the Isaiahan gifts.

00:08:00.720 So the discernment of spirits, it's not that difficult. For example, God is going to allow

00:08:08.740 us, every single one of us, certain temptations and trials, and he allows that in order to purify

00:08:14.040 us. But if you're in a state of sanctifying grace, and it is the Lord that is speaking to you in some

00:08:22.800 way, shape, or form, or your garden angel, it's going to move you to a life of goodness, beauty,

00:08:29.180 and truth. If it's your own human machinations, just thinking, by the way, this is called obsession,

00:08:38.940 diabolic obsession, where you'll find that the demons, there's this running commentary in

00:08:45.300 the head and the mind of the person, and it'll usually move them to dark places, depression,

00:08:50.700 anxiety, stress, a suicidal ideation. So it's pretty clear cut, oftentimes, you know, to

00:09:00.100 discern the voice of God, the way we discern the voice of God, it's not through some special

00:09:04.140 gift. We discern the voice of God as Catholics through the ordinary means, basically what I

00:09:10.120 call it grinding it out, through a daily prayer life, daily sacramental life, a life of order,

00:09:17.500 a life of ritual prayer, a life of purity and holiness. This is how you're going to hear the

00:09:25.280 voice of God. And I'm not saying audibly, but you're going to feel those impressions of where to move in

00:09:31.280 what direction. John, one of the things I think is important as well on this topic is John of the

00:09:37.140 Cross, for example, Doctor of the Church, gives some indicators that I think apply here. He's

00:09:42.840 talking about the effects of spiritual darkness, but they apply to the effect of prayer. How do we

00:09:49.640 know that we're following the will of God? And so some of the things that St. John of the Cross

00:09:53.700 marks as, how do we know we're growing in our prayer lives? Do I have an increased awareness of

00:09:58.720 my sinfulness and how offensive my sins are, an increased commitment to a life of prayer and virtue,

00:10:04.620 an increased ability to carry the cross, right? To begin to suffer for and with Christ,

00:10:10.540 and an increased living of my vocation. And that's one of the things that the demon might,

00:10:16.420 he might give you goods, he might give you some otherwise spiritual goods, but at the same time,

00:10:21.660 if it's contrary to your vocation, this is not of the divine spirit, this is of either the human

00:10:27.520 spirit or of the evil spirit, because the demon is always going to militate against vocation,

00:10:31.940 and that's very critical. He's always going to militate against redemptive suffering and the

00:10:36.720 carrying of the cross. And so the authentic spirit is going to lead us in closer union to Christ.

00:10:42.820 And those marks are some of the true marks. Increase awareness of my sinfulness and the need to do

00:10:48.140 penance, working within my vocation, purifying myself in and through my vocation. These are some

00:10:54.100 of the key marks that we can tap into tradition to understand our own discernment.

00:10:58.080 Just on that note, I heard something really astounding recently from Gabby After Hours,

00:11:04.820 a very Marian speaker, beautiful guy, in hand rosary all the time. I don't know if you know him, but

00:11:10.380 fascinating little clip I saw of him just talking about how, as men, we need to sacrifice for the

00:11:18.840 sanctity of our wives, as married men. And he was so convincing. He's very emphatic anyway,

00:11:25.460 but I was just, I was really moved by that. I was like, wow, step up your game, buddy. Go fast and

00:11:30.680 pray for your wife. That was fascinating. There is sometimes though, a conflict, just like you were

00:11:37.060 saying, Dan, about your vocation and a spiritual life. For people who want to enter a spiritual life,

00:11:45.120 I remember my dad was often accused of, you should have been a priest because you just want to pray all

00:11:50.400 the time. Is that a conflict? How does that work? How do married men in particular, and women and

00:11:57.420 mothers and so on, how do we put that in perspective if we want to pursue a very active life of the

00:12:05.020 sacraments and of prayer, but at the same time have family responsibilities? How do we make that work?

00:12:09.940 Yeah, I'll just say that the simple formula that the church has always given us

00:12:14.160 is that all of us are called to become holy according to our state in life. So a single man

00:12:23.440 is going to become holy in a different manner than a man with, with a family, with a wife and kids.

00:12:31.800 A priest is going to become holy according to his state of life as a priest, as a celibate,

00:12:37.600 a nun, a housewife, a single mom, a teenager. And so every single one of us is called to holiness,

00:12:44.000 holiness. St. Paul talks about that over and over again. And holiness basically means set apart for

00:12:50.180 the things of God. And it's not something that is supernatural. We can become holy by doing the

00:12:59.460 ordinary means that God has asked us according to our state in life, but we do it with faith and we

00:13:05.400 do it with a whole lot of love. Yeah. In the book, we talk a lot about, you know, and what our

00:13:11.440 experience is as well as based on field experience, and that is the authority structure. And it's

00:13:15.460 something that doesn't smack well in our modern society that has largely been influenced by

00:13:19.560 feminists. And by feminists, I'm not talking about womanist. I mean, you know, radical feminist

00:13:24.860 agendas and philosophies, which has infiltrated our education system, et cetera. We don't like that

00:13:29.540 word, be subordinate, to be a woman is subordinate to her husband. And so Ephesians chapter five, 1.00

00:13:36.180 wives, be subordinate. All it means, that word to be subordinatio in the Latin, upotasso in the Greek, 0.98

00:13:41.820 it means to be ordered under. It's a military term. And Paul's getting ready to go into Ephesians 6

00:13:45.380 on a military analogy for spiritual combat. We wage war against, not against flesh and blood,

00:13:50.940 but the powers and principalities. And the key to beginning that is getting order in the home.

00:13:55.940 And so as a military term, it means to be under the protection of. The authority structure has two ends

00:14:01.400 set up by God to provide and to protect. And so provision and protection, this is what a man is

00:14:06.840 called, or anyone is in a position of authority. You're in a position of authority here in your

00:14:10.140 apostolate. You provide through blessing, protection and provision. And that's what a husband is supposed

00:14:16.100 to do. Take his family, his wife and his children, place them behind him, hold up his shield and his

00:14:21.860 sword and defend his home. And Paul tells us, this is what men, men love your wives as Christ loved the

00:14:28.640 church, dying for her, putting to death, all of those things of our former lives. But the problem

00:14:34.540 is today is men are very effeminate, right? Oh, they've got cool beards, you know, and they're

00:14:39.520 smoking cigars. And we see Catholic guys and Catholic influencers with their cigars and the bourbon.

00:14:44.800 That is not masculinity. It's taking a punch. It's delivering a punch spiritually. It's being,

00:14:50.260 it's being a warrior on the inside. You know, you're a gentle warrior on the outside. You are,

00:14:56.080 you are the loving provider. You are a gentleman and a scholar. You are gentle and firm when you

00:15:02.140 need to be. But on the inside, when you're orienting yourself towards yourself, knowing that you're a

00:15:06.940 sinner and you've got to do penance for your sins and offering up yourself a living sacrifice to 0.67

00:15:12.380 defend your wife and your children as Christ and the church to purify them, that's only going to come 0.99

00:15:17.900 through a bodily engagement. One of these things that is challenging, but it's actually from my reading,

00:15:24.940 anyway. It's, it's recommended from the beginning. Now we do read in the scriptures and it has been

00:15:29.680 removed in many Bibles since the 1960s that our Lord warns some spirits only go out by prayer and

00:15:35.900 fasting. And if you read the Didache, it's clear from the way of the apostles, if you will, from the

00:15:42.540 beginning, we were supposed to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. That's sort of gone by the wayside.

00:15:48.900 Now it's mostly, yeah, you can have fish and like fish sticks and like crab and shrimp and everything

00:15:56.580 on Fridays. The whole idea of fasting on Fridays is kind of gone. What's the real rules on what we're

00:16:03.740 supposed to be doing as Catholics on Fridays and, and if, if you will, on Wednesdays? And where is

00:16:09.040 that gone? And does it still apply even though the church has now said, well, yeah, we just don't do

00:16:13.760 meat, but you know, fish is all good. What's the real story on that? Even the new code of Canada law,

00:16:18.780 it mentions that we're supposed to offer some type of penance every single Friday throughout the year.

00:16:24.860 So, and what's that for? It's to mortify our body by some type of spiritual discipline. And for example,

00:16:31.760 there's programs like Exodus 90. You got the Liber Cristo 30 day regimen. Fasting what it basically does,

00:16:39.240 it disconnects you from the world and it connects you to God. It makes you realize how mortal we

00:16:45.860 really are. I mean, we're about two or three meals away from, from dropping dead. This self-denial

00:16:53.260 of fasting is to promote a more sober lifestyle for Catholics. And it's, it's not something optional

00:16:59.820 because our Lord talks about when you fast in Matthew chapter six. So when you combine these acts

00:17:06.900 of self-denial, you begin to transform yourself from the inside out and, and you become strengthened

00:17:15.120 in your interior life so that you can overcome the temptations. For example, for men of impurity,

00:17:21.180 it trains you to master and control your, your disordered passions. Again, it disconnects you from

00:17:27.260 the world. And I think it opens up your soul also to deeper levels of prayer where you're building up

00:17:33.400 your interior defenses. Dan, the confusion is we have multiple versions of the new Testament of the

00:17:39.120 Greek new Testament. We don't have the originals. We have documents that are two or 300 years later.

00:17:43.500 So the new Testament that we use in the new American and others is the Nestle Allen. Well,

00:17:48.080 I think they're on current version number 28, Westcott, Hort, uh, the Vaticanus and others, they,

00:17:53.380 they, they, they retain the and fasting. Um, and so, and, and, and it's very evident as you,

00:17:59.360 as you point to, John, it's very evident in the fathers, Jerome, Augustine, uh, all the way up

00:18:05.300 through Thomas. Fasting was included as in, in the, the Methan and the Mark and verses on particularly

00:18:11.340 with the zest boy, with the boy of the evil spirit, this type, this just Janos, this type only comes 0.75

00:18:17.220 out through prayer and fasting. Some of the fathers point, like Chrysostom said, the problem was Jesus

00:18:22.300 was rebuking the apostles. And then some of the fathers like Augustine said, no, he, Jesus is rebuking

00:18:27.220 the, the, the father either way. It's through the, it's through bodily mortification that is going

00:18:33.780 to drive out certain evil spirits, vigils, prayers in common and fasting, tapping into the prayer life

00:18:39.800 of the church. That's why we do the Angelus private prayer, you know, holding vigils, going, doing

00:18:44.980 a late night of vigils before the blessed sacrament and fasting, engaging the body. Cause if you think

00:18:51.000 you're going to beat a demon that is far superior to you, who doesn't need to sleep, who doesn't need

00:18:56.240 to eat. He's been around a long, long time from the beginning and he's relentless in his pursuit

00:19:01.300 of you. And his intellect is a thousand times, a thousand times more smarter than you. If you're

00:19:06.560 going to beat him through trickery, it's not going to work. And by the way, the best example of that

00:19:10.860 is Jesus Christ, our Lord. When you read Matthew chapter four, verses one to one to 11, our Lord Jesus

00:19:17.260 Christ, how did he enter into spiritual combat with Satan? He withdrew for a time, 40 days, 40 nights

00:19:23.520 without food and a time of prayer. And it was, that was a preparation for his combat with the devil.

00:19:29.800 And in Matthew 4, 11, he rebukes the devil and the devil leaves him. But there was combat training

00:19:35.800 and fasting was part of it. Yeah. It's an unbelievable thing. What you said early on,

00:19:40.020 Jesse, there that is very, I'm true. And I think in my experience anyways, I would challenge anyone

00:19:44.720 you try fasting. And by the way, a tip for fasting, I used to have a really hard time with it,

00:19:49.940 particularly because, you know, getting to an interview, like I do just about every day,

00:19:55.460 I found when I was fasting and losing it, I'm not able to think straight salt in your water. Boy,

00:20:02.180 oh boy, that helped me overcome that real quick. So, but anyway, when you do that, when you fast,

00:20:08.560 and it's not too difficult with the salt anyway, in the water, Wednesdays and Fridays works really,

00:20:15.100 really well. And it also, you can see that, you can feel, you can see, you can experience for

00:20:22.540 yourself that detachment from the things of this earth. For men, as you said, from impurity, 0.61

00:20:26.640 impure temptations, from a kind of reliance on and feeling that you need the things of the world.

00:20:33.360 Wow. That seems to fall away with fasting, even on a human level, which is why the bodybuilders and

00:20:39.580 things like that can do it as well, because it has a very normal physio-psychological reality to it

00:20:46.680 that is a massive boost in the spiritual life. A hungry lion, an old lion, and a hungry lion

00:20:53.920 is still a lion, you know? And so that sometimes you have to remember, I'm going to do battle.

00:20:59.040 Oh, I better not fasting because I got this important meaning. I better not fasting because

00:21:02.520 I got this interview or whatever. That hungry lion is still a lion. And sometimes a hungry lion is a

00:21:08.000 little more aggressive. He's a little more dangerous than the satisfied lion that's kind of

00:21:12.600 kicking back with a full belly, you know? So doing battle, and here's my recommendation,

00:21:17.460 and it was hard for me, starting with just giving up meat on Fridays. As a meat lover from Midwestern

00:21:24.500 Ohio, United States, you know, there's two food groups, meat and taters, you know? And so giving those

00:21:31.060 that, just going meatless on Friday, you're joining a community of Catholics around the world, 1.00

00:21:35.920 and it's much more difficult than you think. And then start to go deeper, Wednesdays. And then

00:21:39.980 when Jesus is talking about fasting, it isn't just from food, right? Because, you know, what good is it

00:21:46.340 if you're fasting all day and your tongue is going ballistic? Fasting from speech, fasting from social

00:21:51.460 media, fasting from the internet, fasting from your phone, fasting from warm or hot water in your

00:21:57.140 shower, fasting from comfortable socks, maybe put a rock in your shoe for an hour and walk around

00:22:03.140 discomforted. There's a lot of little mortifications. There's a reason St. Therese, who never left Carmel

00:22:07.900 from, she entered at age 15, became, died in her early 20s, I think 21 or 22. She's made doctor of

00:22:14.500 the church, doctor of foreign missions with St. Francis de Sales, who baptized hundreds of thousands,

00:22:21.720 if not millions, as a missionary. She's doctor of the church and co-patron of foreign missions

00:22:28.480 because of the little way, these small little mortifications. That's all part of prayer and

00:22:32.660 fasting. A life order to prayer, a prayer of discipline, but also learning to make these

00:22:36.320 small little sacrifices. That's how fathers and husbands and wives and fathers and mothers can

00:22:42.280 really engage in the spiritual combat in a very easy way. For U.S. residents, creating a will has

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00:23:18.080 Something you said, Dan, early on in our interview here, you mentioned how

00:23:22.500 we sort of were late to the game and how there were a bunch of preachers and so on who were sort

00:23:29.640 of filling the gap which was left open and doing it improperly, if you will. So there's an ordered

00:23:37.420 fight the way it's supposed to work, but a lot of people now want to jump into the game and want to

00:23:43.380 cast out the demons themselves and say, hey, if the apostles could do it, we could do it. We know

00:23:49.020 Jesus said that you have to do it with prayer and fasting. We can do some fasting. What are the

00:23:53.720 ground rules of this? And is it, it's real? And what are we supposed to do, especially if we see

00:24:00.700 the demonic at work in our own lives? You know, it goes back to what I say is there's three

00:24:04.420 principles. The demon's going to yield or not yield based upon three basic questions. And it isn't based

00:24:09.660 upon intellect. It isn't, he's not going to look at me and go, oh gee, I better yield because Dan's got

00:24:13.060 his PhD and he knows a little bit about biblical Greek and his Latin is not bad. And he's smarter than his

00:24:17.880 parish priest, supposedly. He's going to yield or not yield on three things. Number one, he's going

00:24:22.260 to, he's going to ask, does this guy have the requisite authority over the person, the place

00:24:26.900 of the object? So we begin with the authority structure. This is what we've lost when we've

00:24:31.060 kind of uncritically accepted, you know, Protestant ecclesial models into the church because they have 0.89

00:24:37.920 some effectiveness. Number two is what is the merit or the, what is the merit or the state of grace of

00:24:43.900 the petitioner? If you're not in a state of grace, you get spiritual authority. But if you're,

00:24:47.600 if you're compromised with pornography, you're not going to mass or whatever, you mismatch,

00:24:51.200 whatever, whatever defects you are, to the extent that you have defects, particularly mortal sin,

00:24:56.080 the demon's not going to yield. In fact, if you're in mortal sin and you don't have authority,

00:24:59.040 you're going to be retaliated against. That's the barometer. And then finally, what does the enemy,

00:25:04.180 I mean, what is the person asking? So specificity in prayer, spiritual combat is important.

00:25:09.460 It's critical just as in physical combat. So knowing the rules of engagement and bringing them back to

00:25:15.580 Catholic norms as I think one of the contributions to, to knowledge at this, that we try to present

00:25:20.940 here in this book. In terms of specifics, you as a, as a person have control over yourself,

00:25:27.460 your property, your vehicles, your children, how does that work?

00:25:30.720 We are all, um, suri juris philosophically. The, we're, we're, we're our own, we have,

00:25:36.520 we have sovereignty over ourselves. And so you have the right to command demons, um, that are afflicting

00:25:42.740 you over yourself. So you can always pray prayers of binding prayers, et cetera, for yourself. But

00:25:49.520 also according to the authority structure and your vocation, you also, and we all have rights

00:25:54.860 and authorities over our temporal goods. And then, so all of our temporal goods, we have natural law

00:26:00.460 right to them and therefore the right to command. The husbands and wives have authority over each 0.82

00:26:04.640 other's bodilies by, by virtue of the marital, uh, debt. Uh, the two become one flesh. And so the

00:26:10.400 husband has authority over his wife's body and the wife has authority over, over his body. The demon

00:26:14.100 has no right to their body. And the husband has a second, a dual authority as head of household

00:26:19.720 over the wife. And together they have authority over their children. Now he's going to challenge

00:26:24.260 you. He's going to challenge your holiness. He's going to, it's going to, he's going to, he's going

00:26:27.440 to start looking. He knows us through our sinfulness and that's our weaknesses. Jesse is a kickboxer.

00:26:31.880 He understands exploiting weaknesses, but at the same time, that authority structure is really,

00:26:37.520 really critical. If that makes sense. Also, you can say humility, particularly in our world today,

00:26:43.400 that sort of militates against the church's traditional teaching on the authority of the

00:26:49.080 husband. It therefore, when the wife can exhibit that it can, can allow to be put into practice, 0.95

00:26:55.880 that authority, that must be sort of like a kick in the teeth for Satan. Um, because that's a,

00:27:02.200 in some ways it's a huge offering right now, just to be back to what is the true norm, but it's just

00:27:09.360 totally uncommon today. John, the true norm is that God has established patriarchy, authority

00:27:15.760 through patriarchy. And that's what we're trying to come back to, especially in this book. Uh,

00:27:21.220 you have three institutions of patriarchy in scripture. You have a father's patriarchal authority,

00:27:27.640 which is limited to his family. This, you know, it's called patriarchal authority. This is why Joshua

00:27:32.020 says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So that's domestic patriarchy. Then you have

00:27:38.260 the spiritual patriarchy. Those are the church leaders. That's the authority, which was delegated

00:27:43.820 to them by Christ. And that's limited to church matters. This is spiritual patriarchy. Then God has

00:27:49.940 also instituted a civil patriarchy. In other words, the government is specifically tasked with the

00:27:56.020 oversight of the protection of civic peace, the wellbeing of nations and countries, the common

00:28:02.280 good. Uh, that's why specifically you have law enforcement and the military. That's called civil

00:28:06.740 patriarchy. When everybody follows the domestic patriarchy, the spiritual patriarchy and the civil

00:28:12.780 patriarchy, things operate in an orderly manner. That's what we're trying to do in this book because 0.55

00:28:18.280 as Catholics, when Catholics end up believing that there's some, in some way, shape or form diabolically

00:28:24.560 afflicted, they go to the Protestant Pentecostal to say, well, how did they do it on the TBN channel

00:28:30.300 or the CBN channel? And that is completely spilled in those type of quote unquote, and air quotes,

00:28:36.540 healing services have spilled into the Catholic church. And what we're doing is we've, we've baptized

00:28:43.460 the Protestant Pentecostal model of healing and deliverance, and we brought it into the Catholic

00:28:48.880 church in the sixties. And so this book dad and me are trying to give Catholics say, look it, we have

00:28:54.940 everything to live holy, pure lives, to self-deliver. We, we go back to the ancient teachings of the

00:29:03.520 church, the prayers, the sacraments, living in a state of sanctifying grace, uh, you know, iron sharpens

00:29:09.140 iron, one man sharpens another. We don't need to go down the street on Wednesday night to some

00:29:14.940 Protestant Pentecostal to have them lay hands on you and, uh, give you an aspirin and make you feel 0.98

00:29:19.860 good. And so this book, we're trying to bring people back to the, the norms and principles of

00:29:26.600 Catholic healing and deliverance. Let me give you an example of that, that, that we, uh, that it kind

00:29:32.360 of addresses this. So if you understand the people are just, they want to know who can command, what's

00:29:38.760 the right to command. The right to command was based on principles we see in St. Thomas Aquinas, for

00:29:43.860 example, without getting heavily into St. Thomas here, but it follows the right to bless and the

00:29:48.860 right to bless. This is from the book of blessings. It says the, the, the, the ministry of blessing

00:29:54.080 involves a particular exercise of the priesthood of Christ and is exercising keeping in keeping with

00:29:59.960 the place and office within the people of God. And that lay persons administer the minute, the right

00:30:06.060 to bless within their office as lay people. And so then it lays out bishop, priest, deacon, and then

00:30:13.500 acolyte catechists and in lay persons. And in the, so there's principles there. So it all depends on

00:30:18.780 your office within the mystical body of the church. And so my orientation is different than my pastor's,

00:30:25.100 which is different than the bishop, which is different than the religious sister, uh, the

00:30:28.920 consecrated version in the Carmelite monastery. And we, we militate from that position.

00:30:33.880 John, an imprecatory prayer is one, and you said it in which I command the demons to leave.

00:30:39.480 I, I, and I can do it in relation to myself. A deep precatory prayer is one in which I petition

00:30:46.280 Jesus, our lady, St. Michael to drive the demons out. Again, if I have authority, which I have

00:30:54.120 authority over myself, my spouse, my household, my children, the ones that live in your house,

00:30:59.260 you can pray an imprecatory prayer. If you don't have authority and you're praying for your cousin,

00:31:05.560 you're praying for your uncle and your neighbor, then you should pray a deep precatory prayer.

00:31:11.340 Who needs your book? Uh, I think, you know, as we are coming up, people got a plan for

00:31:17.940 gift ideas and, and things, but it's one of those books. Yeah. Can you give it to anybody? I don't

00:31:24.280 know. They have to be sort of ready for it. Who needs this? And, uh, tell us of course where we can

00:31:29.820 get it. I would say that the serious Catholic, it's anybody who's, uh, wants to get to heaven 1.00

00:31:35.260 should get this book because there are rules to spiritual warfare and everybody's talking about

00:31:39.980 it right now. People that you wouldn't think would be talking about it, like Tucker Carlson

00:31:43.760 talking about, he got attacked by a demon at night, you know, Sean Ryan, Joe Rogan, Jordan

00:31:49.560 Peterson, Candace Owens. Everybody's using the word spiritual warfare. People know that what

00:31:56.240 we're living in right now, it's beyond Democrat versus Republican, right versus left liberal versus

00:32:01.920 conservative. Everybody's getting it now. Everybody realized that there's a realm outside of us that

00:32:08.500 we can't see. That is this primary evil. When I would, when I was a cop, I would say demons are the

00:32:15.340 primary evil. The crooks that I arrest are secondary evil. In other words, they're just the instrumental

00:32:20.820 cause of the primary cause, which are demons. So as a Catholic, I think that anybody who's a serious

00:32:25.880 Catholic wants to get to heaven, somebody who's living in a state of grace needs to get this book 1.00

00:32:29.880 because the only thing out there are these other models where are borrowed recycled Protestant

00:32:36.360 Pentecostal model booklets and handbooks that Catholics are buying by the boatload and they're 0.86

00:32:42.580 learning practices that are not part of the tradition of the Catholic church. They, they exceed the

00:32:49.140 boundaries of authority and they're not following the proper norms and principles of Catholicism.

00:32:54.460 I think this book is, is, uh, is something that's going to help people that really care about

00:32:59.420 healing and deliverance and wanting to do things according to the principles of Catholic teaching.

00:33:05.660 Is it fair to say, Dan, that it is, uh, more necessary today than in the past? Is it fair to say that the

00:33:13.500 demons are given more rain today, if you will, uh, in, in a way than they were in the past?

00:33:19.120 Yeah. You have to wonder how much of Pope Leo's vision of hell is actually being played out in our

00:33:24.220 own times. Does the enemy know that his time is short? So waking to reality. Um, I had, I had a

00:33:30.640 former student email me and said, Hey, I know your book's coming out. I'm a homeschool mom. I've got

00:33:35.020 teenage children. Is this a book for them? Is it above their heads? Is it going to be, is there anything

00:33:39.200 in there that's going to be inappropriate, age appropriate? I had to think about it. I said, okay,

00:33:43.420 well, they're not going to like what we say about Harry Potter. They're not going to like what we say

00:33:47.040 about modesty. They're not going to like what we say about horror movies. They're not going to like

00:33:50.800 what we say about authority, parental authority. So it's up to you. You know, I put, we put some

00:33:55.420 stories in there to kind of reinforce it catechetically. And so you ask about who's this

00:34:00.140 book good for? I think it, it allows a conversation for parents and, and teenagers to have a conversation

00:34:06.280 about something. Why, why your mom, oh my gosh, you guys are so bad. You won't let me watch this,

00:34:10.660 this horse. It's not that bad. You know, it's not that bad of a horse. It's just a slightly

00:34:14.340 horror movie. You know, we're going into Catholic seminaries and we're teaching them life in the 0.53

00:34:17.960 spirit and spiritual gifts in our seminaries, but we're not teaching them the triamunra of the

00:34:22.300 inherent dignity and the triamunra of innate to the priesthood as found in scripture and the

00:34:28.540 catechism of the Catholic church. So getting this to reform our identity of priest and their

00:34:34.180 understanding is actually, I think, another good audience that, that that'd be good to see get into

00:34:38.500 the hands of priest. So final question for you is probably one of the hardest. So way back during

00:34:43.880 the second van council, Pope Paul VI said, you know, from some fissure, from some crack, the smoke of

00:34:49.700 Satan has entered the church. We've seen today, particularly over the past, you know, 13, 14 years,

00:34:57.500 a kind of a discrepancy in Catholicism that's never existed. It kind of going away from the doctrines,

00:35:05.740 the teaching of the church that's never happened before. We have open bishops and cardinals

00:35:12.360 preaching and saying things that are so far off the page. It, it doesn't look, it doesn't sound,

00:35:20.840 it doesn't smell like Catholicism at all. Just the other week, uh, Michael Hichborn over at Lepanto

00:35:27.440 Institute showed an unbelievable thing about sexuality in priests at an organization of

00:35:34.380 U.S. Catholic priests that is supported by some very prominent U.S. cardinals.

00:35:41.380 How do we discern the smoke of Satan, the demons within the church, even among our hierarchy?

00:35:49.060 How do we as Catholics make sense of it, discern it? And how should that affect how we deal with

00:35:56.300 as husbands, as fathers, as mothers wanting to defend our families also from not only the

00:36:06.060 wolf in sheep's clothing, but the wolves in shepherd's clothing?

00:36:09.780 First of all, without a doubt, we're, we're dealing with right now with Marxism, modernism,

00:36:17.140 and masonry, the three M's, M's that have infiltrated not only society, but also the church 0.99

00:36:22.900 as well. Doesn't surprise me. I'll tell you why. I forget in which gospel it is. It tells us that

00:36:29.360 one of the apostles that our Lord handpicked, it says, and Satan entered into his heart at the

00:36:35.760 Last Supper. So we see right from the very beginning that Satan is going right after the

00:36:41.520 clergy. Also our Lord Jesus Christ, he's always talking about the kingdom of heaven, which by the

00:36:46.840 way is a Catholic church. He's saying that there's bad fish and good fish. He says that there's weeds 0.95

00:36:53.480 and wheat. He says that there's sheep and goat. And he says, don't take out the bad ones. Leave them

00:37:00.140 there lest you take out some of the good ones. My angels will come at the end of time and they're

00:37:05.640 going to be doing the sifting and throw them into the furnace of fire. So you and I, all three of us,

00:37:11.680 husbands, fathers, grandfathers, what's our domestic church? Our family. I'm not in charge of my parish

00:37:19.440 and I'm not in charge of my diocese and I'm not in charge of the world. I'm in charge of getting me

00:37:24.260 and my household. We will serve the Lord to get us to heaven. I'm the priest of the whole house.

00:37:29.360 That's my parish. And as a Catholic, I got to keep my eyes on Jesus. Hebrews chapter 12,

00:37:35.300 verse 2, the author and finisher of our faith. And I, through my personal faith and holiness,

00:37:42.120 that holiness should overflow through me as the patriarch to the rest of my family and get them

00:37:49.860 to heaven. At this point, every single person has to realize you are the priest of your home.

00:37:55.200 Get yourself, your wife, your children to heaven and pray for the church. And don't worry about it.

00:38:01.120 You know why? Jesus is God and Jesus is not asleep in the boat. Jesus Christ can handle it.

00:38:07.280 I love when Jesse goes, Jesse, that's awesome. All right. Let me try to, I hate following up.

00:38:13.760 I'm going to use a couple of bad words that you can bleep out. Okay. In certain circles, number one,

00:38:20.020 deposit of faith, right? Deposit of faith. We have to look to and return to the deposit of faith.

00:38:27.820 Modernism has attacked the deposit of faith through what we call process theology, that everything is

00:38:32.820 in this process of progressive evolution, evolutionary theory applied to, you know,

00:38:39.020 Deschardin and others applied to divine revelation. And so there is not a deposit of faith. That's what

00:38:45.820 the modernist says, but there is a deposit of faith. The role of the church is to safeguard that

00:38:50.700 deposit of faith. And so if we have, if the church is to, is to guard, it says in Dei Verbum,

00:38:56.660 Second Vatican Council, guard scrupulously, no guard scrupulously, hand down faithfully and prayerfully,

00:39:03.500 this is the role of the magisterium. And so of course, it's going to be infiltrated. Of course,

00:39:08.420 they're going to infiltrate the seminary systems. Of course, they're going to infiltrate the church.

00:39:11.320 This is what the enemy does. Countermeasures, infiltration. This is combat applied to the church.

00:39:17.800 And so returning to tradition. And so how do we do that? You know, we're all, I think the three of us

00:39:23.160 are pretty fond of the judicial Latin mass. And so part of that return to the tradition is keeping

00:39:27.980 these two separate, these two priesthoods separate. But what unites my priesthood with my pastor's

00:39:33.780 priesthood is sacrifice, suffering. This is why when the priest completes the sacrifice at mass,

00:39:39.380 we go forward and we kneel. And this is where our sacrifice unites with father's sacrifice and

00:39:45.240 persona Christe, returning to our understanding of tradition. Now, as for some of the bishops and

00:39:49.840 priests that you mentioned, that Lepanto has recently done, I think we just need, again,

00:39:56.120 look at tradition. What did St. Peter Damien say? He's got a great piece. I think I've seen something

00:40:00.980 on your guys, if you guys did a thing on that not long ago. And I was like, yeah, somebody's doing it.

00:40:05.180 I should have written that article for you. Because St. Peter Damien wrote to the Holy Father

00:40:09.900 in his day about the infiltration of homosexuality among clerics. And so going back, you know,

00:40:16.240 purifying and going back to the original, again, holiness, seeking the right guys, purifying our

00:40:22.940 ranks of some of this stuff. It's not our job. We're lay people. What can we do? We can stop giving to

00:40:28.300 these organizations or we can stop giving to the seminaries that are supporting this. But we have

00:40:32.460 to be detached and know that this isn't the first time. St. Paul says, there must be divisions is

00:40:38.860 the English word. But the Greek word heresis, it literally means heresy. It means pick and choose.

00:40:44.740 You're always going to have those. Paul says, you're always going to have these heresies among you

00:40:48.280 so that the way of truth may be known more clearly. But saying focus, stay in your lane,

00:40:52.180 focus on your family, not letting, regardless of the storm outside that's going on in the church and

00:40:57.460 the bark of Peter, knowing that Christ is in charge. And at the end of the day, Jesus is going

00:41:02.480 to call me forth. He's not going to say, hey, Dan, how many books did you sell? Jess, how many likes

00:41:07.320 and subscribes did you get? You know, he's going to say, line them up. He's going to call us to account

00:41:12.300 for what he gave us. Too much is given, much is requested. But he's going to call me and us all to

00:41:17.460 account for our wives, our children. Do we leave that legacy of Catholicism in our family? That's what 0.88

00:41:23.820 we're going to be called to accountable for. Stay focused on Christ. As for me and my household,

00:41:27.960 we're going to serve the Lord. Amen. Jesse Romero, Dan Schneider, so good to be with you.

00:41:33.240 Thank you so very much. God bless you. Thanks, John. Thanks for having us on. Thanks for having me.

00:41:37.580 Appreciate you, man. And God bless all of you. We'll see you next time. And make sure you pick up

00:41:42.200 Spiritual Warfare Q&A from 10 Books.

00:41:49.000 Aloha, everyone. This is Jason Jones for Lifeside News. We hope you enjoyed this video.

00:41:53.820 For more content like this, check the link in the description. You can also connect with us on

00:41:59.920 social media to stay up to date with the latest news on life, faith, family, and freedom.

00:42:07.020 Thanks for watching, and may God bless you.

The John-Henry Westen Show - September 26, 2025

Why Demons Hate Strong Fathers

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