Pints With Aquinas - Real Life Exorcist Shares His Story w/ Fr Carlos Martins

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

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One. We're live. You were saying you like my chairs. I love your chairs. They're comfortable. People either love them or they hate them. So I'm glad to hear you like them. Well, they have you sit up erect

and not slouching and where you wanna fall asleep. That's what I'm open for. For an interview, this is a good position. The only problem is, of course, people swivel on them and then the camera goes out of focus. So we'd like nail them to the ground and remove the swivel function or they'll be perfect. Okay. It is lovely to have you them to the ground and remove the swivel function or they'll be perfect.

Okay. It is lovely to have you on the show. Well, thank you. You and I go back some ways. We do, we do. It's been, it's 20 years this year. So you and I, I spoke at the University of Toronto with a ex-ponography performer who will go unnamed

and pornography producer. And we spoke about the evil of pornography to this packed audience. Thank you for inviting us out. I remember a unit. This is how long ago was that? 12 years? That was in 2012. So it'd be 11 years now. Had a fella come up to me and he said, Hey, thanks a lot. I was going to go home and watch porn tonight and you've ruined that. And we're like, yes. Success. Yeah. Yeah.

The other thing I remember about you is just, you had a cornucopia of relics. And we were driving with you somewhere and you must have had a relic in the front by the, you know, the stick shift or whatever. And you would take it out and you would bless pornography stores and abortion things as right. You remember? Do you still do that? Yep. So that those are my two.

Those are two of my memories of you. Yeah. So, so that's a relic of the, the tomb of the holy innocence in, in Bethlehem. Uh, so, so especially abortion clinics, I like to, to bless them with, uh, the relic of the holy innocence. So back then you weren't an exorcist? When I was in Toronto I was. So I was not an exorcist for Toronto. I started in Houston. I started my priesthood there. In fact, I started as a deacon there in Houston.

And it was as a deacon that I was thrown into the spiritual warfare thing because the parish at which I was assigned, all of the exorcism and deliverance ministry were done by the clergy there. So any time a case came to a pastor, the pastor kicked it up to the archdiocese, and then the archdiocese kicked it down to that parish. And so it would be divided up by us. So even as a deacon, I was, I remember they were so busy, the priests dealing with possessions, dealing with people who were badly demonized. That one day, I remember one was just exhausted. He was coming out from a session.

day, I remember one was just exhausted, he was coming out from a session, and then he had one that was about to start shortly afterwards, and a call came in for a house that was infested, it was demonized. And then he just looked at me and he said, demon? He didn't like you. He said, Deacon, go get rid of the devil. And so I had zero training. And I absolutely would never recommend that for being kind of that being the practice. People need training for this. You were being obedient to your priest. Well, the thing is, I understood the where he was at. I understood the exhaustion.

And, you know, the thing is I wasn't fearful I I just I had a principle in mind and I don't know where I picked this up. I Don't know if I was taught or if it just was Kind of the Lord put it in me if the devil is is in a place in a person if wherever he is he is there for a reason. He has been given rights. And your job as the agent of the church to get rid of him is to help whoever established those rights or gave him those rights to take them back. And then once the rights are gone, the devil has to leave. So it's a very legal, juridical process.

I'd love to hear about this first experience of yours, but for those in the audience, what does it mean for a house to be infested or demonized? Steele- So this was a lady who had lost her own home, it had burned down, and so she moved in with her uncle, and her uncle was away. He was out of the country for a couple of years on business. He made his home available to her. And what happened? Just the first thing that she had mentioned was

wherever she was in the house, there was a sense of being watched. That she couldn't see anything watching her, but there was just this ominous sensation of being watched. And it would get, it was always intense, but it would get more and more intense at different random parts of the day. Objects would fly off the shelves by themselves. Something that was sitting, you know, safely on a counter would just drop onto the floor and shatter. just drop onto the floor and shatter.

The worst thing she said was a music box that was in her uncle's bedroom on the dresser that would chime random parts. Music boxes are creepy enough. They're creepy enough. Little in having a demon do it. Right. Right. All right.

And it gets worse. Keep going. Because, so it would just go off at random times. Now by this point, she had been there several months. So it had a key winder. Nobody was winding this box. She went to try to see are there batteries to it or is it somehow receiving electrical power.

She could not lift it up off the dresser. It was on four little small pedestal legs, but she just, it wouldn't budge. So she removed the key so that, you know, she thought somehow was this accidentally through the movement of the house or something being wound. She got rid of the key, it changed nothing. And then there was just games where she would be in the house and like, wait a minute, I

haven't heard the music box go off all day. Maybe it's over. And then at that moment, the music box would go off. So it's, you know, is it the case, people ask all the time, can the devil read your mind? Can he read your thoughts? No. But he's an excellent observer, so he can deduce what you're probably thinking by your body language. So when these certain things, is this what you had heard?

Or is this what you then experienced when you went there? Because I imagine you have people calling you, saying they feel like they're being watched. Like, all right, we'll just have an aspirin and go to bed. So this particular lady, try not to swing, sorry, or else the camera will not be coming. So this particular lady, she was very well spoken, she was educated, she didn't seem to be the kind of person that was given to the imagination. But that isn't saying anything because you can have really, really educated people,

well-spoken people, articulate people who are given to the imagination. What she had said, and again, I was kind of brand new at this, well, not kind of, I was brand new at it. What she said was, there was a convincingness to it. Like I looked at her face and she's not lying. And the first thing she said was,

maybe I'm just crazy. And somebody who is crazy is never gonna say that. I mean, in the sense of people with mental illness have a particular perspective. And that explanation is never part of their explanation of what is going on by and large. So this is what I account. So the first, she questioned her own sanity.

And so again, I am not experienced at all at this point. So she could have said anything, but in terms of her face, there was something there that seemed genuine. And you know what? Hey, I just wanna go check this out. So I grabbed what I needed to do, a house blessing. I grabbed, and that's all I was doing, right?

I was blessing a house, and I was not a deputed exorcist at the point, at that point. So I went to her house and she opened the door and I entered in and as soon as I did so, there was a ceiling fan that was still and it started spinning very, very slowly. I'm like extremely slow, fast enough that you could see it spinning but slow enough that like there's no setting that would cause that. It'd be the most useless pointless setting. And then all of

a sudden like spinning so fast like like like airplane propeller fast. Wow. Where it was a blur to say the least, the noise in the room picked up and cracked. It was an airplane propeller for all intents and purposes. Everything that wasn't extremely heavy was blowing around the room. How was the woman reacting as this happened when you entered?

She was in shock because it had never acted that violently. It was up to that point games, teasing, haunting kind of stuff. This was a lot more action than anything else. Before it was sounds and feelings, now it was a manifestation of power, if you will. And so, gosh, I remember her gasping and at that point I thought, okay, this is great because, hey, the, the devil's here. And so... She probably felt relief too,

knowing she wasn't crazy if you're encountering this. I'm sure she did. I'm sure she did. And I just went into mode, okay, I'm gonna go to that counter over there, and I'm gonna make holy water. Were you nervous, this being your first encounter? No, no, I, you know, maybe, maybe that's a gift. Like, I don't have a fear of evil. I'm a convert from atheism. So I, my fear is being separated from God. That's my fear. I don't have any other fear. So when you're encountering the devil, you're encountering a loser. He's already lost.

And now, that being said, the devil is not nothing. He is dangerous. Next to God, he's nothing. But he- Next to you he's nothing. But he... But next to you. Maybe? Well, he is dangerous and needs a certain respect, a certain difference. Why? Well, because he can hurt people and you cannot act flippantly around the devil. He will react.

He will react and frankly God will give him permission to react. God will allow him to manifest his power if you yourself exceed where you should be standing. God will allow the devil to give you a smack if you need it and to go back into the place where you belong. To recognize your own smallness too. The battle at the end of the day, the battle in exorcism, it's God's battle. God is the real exorcist. All of us are just his agents. He's the one that drives the devil out. It's never really about us. So if any of us, you know, if we die today, well, the church raises up another one tomorrow. So you went over to the kitchen counter. So went over to the kitchen counter, made holy water.

It was in the process of making that holy water that the music box goes off. And that's when she said, there, there, that's what I was telling her about. I thought, okay, no problem, we'll take care of it. So I just, I did a blessing of the place and in this blessing I asked God to come in and take away any and every evil that is there and I started at a corner of the first floor, went sprinkled holy water all throughout, went up to the second

floor, did all the different rooms there, and I saved her uncle's room as the last one. And when I entered in that one, so sure enough there was the music box and it's chiming away, and I put down the container with the holy water, the the holy water pail, if you will, and I reached down to pick up this music box and I pick it up no problem and then you know she lets out another gasp that she she was never able to do that but I picked it up no problem but as soon as my hands touched it it stopped chiming there was no chime whatsoever from it I opened it up there was nothing inside this music box.

There were no mechanical parts, there were no gears, there was no chiming mechanism, it was an empty box. Nor was there ever anything in it. Like there was never something that was in it that was taken out, where you can see screw marks or glue marks, screw holes or that kind of thing. I could see the keyhole. I could see where the, like it was a brass keyhole

where the key would go in, but the key itself would go into nothing. So was it then just a box that she thought was a music box? It looked like a music box. But nothing is there. Perfectly. From the exterior. And inside there was nothing.

Oh, inside it was a music box but the shell. I see. There were no mechanical parts that you would typically find within one. And it stopped chiming but I hit it with holy water anyway and it never chimed again. And so she was you know kind of free of harassment. So you know whatever was going on in that house, why wouldn't she get out of that house? She had nowhere to go. Her house had burned down,

and so there was a bit of a financial precariousness that she was in, and you know, and God bless her, she stuck it out. And that, you know, and I certainly, I don't mean this pejoratively, I don't mean this to belittle, but you know, that kind of thing is hard for a woman, right?, I don't mean this to be little, but you know that kind of thing is hard for a woman. It's hard for a woman to be alone in a situation like that.

Absolutely. You know with that teasing that is going on and the devil just craves that, right? He goes for somebody who is just vulnerable and she was, right? She had been through a lot, she had been through a lot emotionally and financially and so she was just and she had been through a lot she had been through a lot emotionally and financially and So she was just grateful to get this act of kindness from a family member now the irony is whatever was in that house Was in there because of that family member So she inherited it and so it was there from from day one now the thing is You know, I I don't have the authority

to take out Now, the thing is, you know, I don't have the authority to take out, to remove the devil from anybody's house. Nobody in the church has the authority to just kick out the devil. If you, in your place, are giving the devil a home, if you want him there, what right do I have to kick him out, right? It's your place.

So this house was not her house. So, but, but the one thing she said to me that really made everything, well, it put everything in a position where for all intents and purposes, it became her place. Her uncle said to her, this is your home. Treat this as your home. Well, then that's it. Then he's just given her

legal authority to evict whatever evil is there. Yeah. Wow. So, I mean, you said you're an atheist, you're a convert. So I know you believed in God and the demonic, but I know you said you weren't frightened. But I mean, what is that experience like? I mean, it must, you know, coming back and saying, did you come back and report all of this to the priest? Did it increase your faith, knowing that, okay, this is real, this Jesus thing. And I knew it was real, but now I've just encountered something

that's not explainable naturally. Did it increase my faith? In truth, I don't think it did, because it didn't need to happen. And I already believed it. Like the grace of belief that I received from the Lord was such that this didn't add anything to it. But what it did do to me was make me glad

that I was able to help somebody. And you feel really good about that, right? You were able to help somebody. And you feel really good about that. You were able to kick a bully off and kick him and send him somewhere where he's not bothering this person anymore. Mason Hickman So did you relay all this to the priest who sent you? Angus So I did. And God bless them. They were all

so tired that, you know, great. Tomorrow we'll get another one for you. Mason Hickman So this is quite mundane for them, you know, great. You know, tomorrow we'll get another one for you. So they had a lot. This is quite mundane for them, these sorts of experiences. You know what, Matt, it becomes mundane, right? When it's your job, it just, it becomes mundane, right? You're in the, you're living in the world and you have one foot in the supernatural that is manifesting within the natural.

And so it just, it becomes mundane. And you know, the odd, as an exorcist, what happens in this, what happens most of all is people wanna talk about the manifestations, right? And then I was sitting in my living room and this happened. And I'd assert, you know, all I need is two or three, okay, okay, okay. And you know, I wanna now go into what did you do?

What are the rights that are here? I wanna move on to the why. I see. Yeah, because they're probably just trying to grasp the fact that something unimaginable is happening. Right. And they wanna process that. They wanna process it.

And you wanna just get the demon out. And they wanna convince you that they're not crazy. And okay, that's fine. I don't want to hear, I don't need to hear about any more manifestations. I want to now get them to stop. So we, you know, and there are ways that you cross examine people to try to find out what the possible entry points may have been. I just want to pause here a moment because I imagine a lot of people would say something

like why not videotape this? Wouldn't that give proof of Christianity? Have someone come in behind you? It gives nothing. Well, maybe you think it'll give nothing, but I imagine there's some people out there like, dude, if I could see this stuff happen, it would do something for me. So why aren't you filming it? No, it wouldn't because Hollywood, those are called special effects.

So that doesn't eliminate that possibility. Oh, Martin's creates his own special effects. So that's one. Two is the fact that you're invading somebody's privacy when you do that. If you all of a sudden had an infestation in your home, If you all of a sudden had an infestation in your home, right, so let's say a variety of phenomena are happening and we can just fill in the blanks of what those are,

but your life becomes a living hell, right? You wake up with scratches on your body, your kids, and if you're being attacked, your kids are being attacked 10 times more, because the devil is gonna go after what you love the most. And so then all of a sudden, you call up Father Muriel, more. Because the devil is gonna go after what you love the most. And you know, so then all of a sudden, you know, you call up Father Martin's or whoever, whatever exorcist, and he shows up with a camera crew. How are you gonna feel

about that? But it's got to be at least one person who would say, no, I want the truth of this to be known. Oh, they do. So bring your phone with you. And then I automatically don't trust those people. Because what kind of fame are you looking for? I'm not gonna give you that audience. I'm not gonna be the vehicle that gives you a notoriety for this. You're coming to me for help in dealing with a spiritual problem.

As long as you cooperate with me in doing it the way it needs to be done, I'm your best friend. As soon as it veers from that, Hey, you know, sorry, it didn't work out. God bless you. Can you tell us an experience of somebody who's made contact with you and they were either lying or had mental problems such that there was no, is this a frequent occurrence or is it more likely to be the other? Six out of 10 are false. And they're usually false because of mental illness.

Sometimes they're false because maybe it's mental illness as well, but they know they're lying, but they just love attention. They just love being questioned and being doted on and being asked, you know, being given space and time to give an answer for something and they're not interrupted. And everybody is keenly listening to them. For some people that it just makes them feel really good.

Yeah, there's a lot of lonely people who want attention. A lot of lonely people. Hard to fault them in one way, isn't it? In a sense, in a sense. It's easy to get mad at them though when they're wasting your time, right? That's right, yeah. Because I remember when I was,

in my heaviest days of working in this ministry, you've got stacks of people requesting to see you and you have time for maybe one third of that. I see, yeah. Right, so you've gotta just whittle through. I can see why it would be annoying, yeah. You can only help the helpable. So if they're not at a place,

there might be genuine diabolical phenomena happening there, but if they themselves are not at that point where they're ready to do things your way, which is God's way, when they think, well, what I'd like you to do, Father, is I want you to do this. No, no, I am not here for you to tell me what to do. You're asking me for help,

and you're gonna accept the help I give you. And if that's not acceptable to you, then I'm sorry. If you knew how to undo this, then you would have done so. So the fact that you have me here, you are not here to give me instructions. You are here to follow my directions. And so that happens a lot.

It happens a lot. And why does it happen a lot? Because people generally have done something in their moral life that they're not ready to give up or they're ashamed to admit. And so they want you, they don't want the messiness to come out. They don't want the genie to come out of the bottle,

so to speak, right? The secret can lay a secret. You just come in here and sprinkle your magic church stuff, your holy water, your whatever, and just bless the place with a relic and that should be good. Then neither one of us will be late for dinner in our respective homes kind of thing. Wow.

It just happens. I would not be having that attitude if stuff started taking place in my house like you're talking about. And that's it. But six out of ten people, so those are my loose statistics, but all of my colleagues, that pretty well jives with them. Then out of the four out of the 10 that are genuine cases

where diabolical phenomena is happening, six out of 10 of those are not helpable because they're just not ready. They're not ready to give up what the devil gave them. Would you share one experience of that with us? Sure. So there was a woman that I knew who the devil had given her a profound and uncanny ability to essentially read people's hearts but only the negative stuff. Only the trashy stuff in their life or if for example she would go to a stranger and say your wife is cheating on you and she's cheating on you with a guy named Pete and guess what it was true

right so there was a sin happening and that sin is public domain in so far as the demons are concerned and they can disseminate it with whomever they want because when you're in a state of sin you belong to them right you're there so and everything that's yours is theirs so what would be so wrong about this happening so obviously there was an unfaithfulness happening which is wrong and wrong objectively and wrong in anybody's book. But to communicate that to somebody, you don't have the right to do that. Especially when it's, that knowledge is being, you're obtaining it through occult means,

and you know that you are. So that communication, in so far as the devil is concerned, insofar as the cause of that knowledge is concerned, is not helping the individual. So why did this particular individual reach out to you for help then? Because she had incredible diabolical attacks happening in her home. Her health was deteriorating. She had this incredibly ugly rash all over her body. She was barely able to sleep because she'd be stirred awake. There were noises, growlings, howls, train horns sounding in her home all through the night, all through the day, and yet she wasn't willing to settle down, she wasn't willing to set aside these extraordinary gifts that she was given.

So do you meet with her and interview her and then and see for yourself that these abilities are being given her and I see. Yeah so the fact, if I recall, she had already been a priest or two that were there and they had themselves had witnessed a strange diabolical phenomenon within the place, whatever it was, and I can't recall what it was, but so the last one kicked it to me and he said, look, I was there and I can vouch for this. So, okay, then I don't need to do that first layer of investigating, but I want to meet with her and where are you at, Mrs. with your walk with the Lord? Well, you're not walking with him. Okay. Well, are you ready to do that? Well, yeah. And

everybody is going to say yes. Okay. So we need to find out why is this happening. And you tell me, Mrs. Why is this happening? Well, I don't know most people are gonna say I don't know when they well know they well know but the shame the embarrassment Because now you're in front of the doctor right or the principal if you will whatever analogy you want and and and there's gonna be some Uncomfortableness and talking about what they did. And the point is that I don't do magic. I represent Christ in His Church. So I'm fresh out of magic. I never wanted to be a magician. It's never something I ever wanted to do.

And I still don't do it. And I couldn't care less for it. But I do bring the gospel, and I bring the light of Christ and grace. And if that's what you want, hey, I will be your best friend. If that is not what you want, God bless you. So how did you part ways with this woman then, if she wasn't willing to repent of something? So I mean, you work with her until if and when you reach a point where you say, okay, this is just not going anywhere. So she has not hit rock bottom enough, or is not willing to lay aside that gift that she shouldn't have, right?

Frodo is not willing to give up the ring that he shouldn't have. And that's at the heart of it, right? You have something that others don't have and it gives you a power. It's exhilarating. It, she, she had come to define herself by the, she didn't know what, what else to do. She didn't know how to be a human being apart from knowing the seedy and the dirty things in people's lives.

Knowing, you know, being able to, you know, tell people, yeah, your lost wallet is here. Like not every total thing was negative, but it was just enough to hook you. It was the worm on the hook that would sink you in and she loved to just control people. And so at a certain point, you know, I'm just, I'm not, you know, I can't get anywhere with you.

So do you think fortune tellers who are able to do something like that, that's actually supernatural if there be such people? These are gifts from the demonic gifts, quote unquote, or? So if you're doing an act of the occult, if you're engaging in the occult, by definition, that is a violation of the first commandment. Right? And so as an exorcist, the most common ways that people get possessed is through that, is dabbling in the occult, which is a violation of the first commandment.

And how is it? How is it a violation? Because when you participate in the occult, you are usurping the natural limits that God has placed in reality. Right? So going to a fortune-teller, well the future is not available to us. You're trying to usurp that. Putting a curse on somebody, well you maybe can't physically beat them up or maybe that that's just too messy It's too illegal. Mm-hmm, but you'll sacrifice a chicken and take its head and its blood and whatever whatever form of curse you want There's there's there's a whole bunch of them right and lots of nasty ones and each one will be nastier than the next You can afflict that on somebody and so now you've you've usurped a boundary that God has placed there. So in doing that,

in violating that, you are imitating the rebellion of the devil. You are one of his own. You are raging to God and saying, no, I will not obey. I will not respect your boundary. So what could be better fodder than a demon picking up the deed of you or to you than through that action? The second most common way is that people get demons is through sexual sin. And why is that? Because the sexual faculty is the most beautiful faculty that we have in humans in the sense that it is through that faculty that we participate with God in creation. So that beauty, like imagine the audacity that God would use mortals to bring about immortal souls.

It's just amazing. Right? I mean, if that doesn't spell of the meekness of God, what does? What does? So, so I walk just quick story. I had my son sleeping on the floor in our bedroom recently and I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I walked back and I just looked at him and admired how beautiful he is.

And I said out loud, I made that. And in a sense, that's true. I'm participating with God, this beautiful little immortal soul here. You absolutely did. So because it's so beautiful, the devil's going to be all over it. He's going to mar it in any way, in every way he can. And the appetite to the sexual appetite became the most wounded at our fall. Right. The fall of of of humans. And so that, you know, humans have a penchant for

not every human, but humans as a whole, the species of humanity has a penchant for every sexual deviation and aberration. And so the devil's gonna be awful proud of that, right? And he's gonna stroke that wound, he's gonna pick at it, he's gonna manipulate it to get you to desire what really at heart is ugly, but it becomes beautiful to you. And that perversion is demonic. It is, it's absolutely demonic. Those are the two ways. They're not the only ways, but they're the two most common

ways that people get, get demons. So I can imagine people watching right now and they may have had experience with the occult, many people, but I would say many more have had an experience with sexual perversion, being raised in a pornified culture, being exposed to pornography at a young age, maybe fornicating, committing adultery and these sorts of things. How does this not just terrify everybody watching who's engaged in at least one sexual sin and make them unnecessarily, what do you say, scrupulous? Or that maybe they've got a demon or something when that might not at all be the case. Like maybe what you're saying is unhelpful for a lot of people.

Well, they might. I mean, you may not have a demon inside you. You may not have a demon. You may not be possessed. You may not be heavily oppressed, but they won't be far from you. They will have their sights set on that appetite of yours. There's nature. Not everything is purely demonic. Our nature itself is broken and our nature craves at times through, you know, times of loneliness, stress. When we're not our best, it craves that which we shouldn't have. But the devil is really good at provoking that and is really interested in provoking that. And if he can lead you into an addiction, he's going to do so.

Have you ever encountered someone who has, I don't know, mental problems? Is that the best way to describe this? I don't mean to be unsympathetic here, but have you encountered somebody who was mad, let's just use even more of a pejorative term for the sake of just clarity, and then they expressed to you stuff was taking place in their house? I mean, surely it's possible that someone can be mad and that stuff is taking place in their house that's legitimate, right? Have you ever experienced that? Absolutely, right? So the right of exorcism calls for in what's called the prenotanda, in the rules, right?

In chapter one, the rules for engagement are listed and among them are, you know, people need to be evaluated for psychological issues. Now, oftentimes that gets misinterpreted by people and they go, well like you know the shrink he found something wrong with it. This person is a schizophrenic and this person is this and this person is that. What does that have to do with the devil? People with mental illness can also be oppressed by the devil. It's not an either-or. And so the thing is, what do

we do in evaluating such a situation? Well, we listen to the evidence and then we test for the presence of evil. There are a number of ways in which you do that. Please tell me how. It's not really difficult. So I'll, I'll, I'd like to get to exorcism eventually. I'd like to stay on the level of infestation and oppression, if that's okay. So maybe like signs that are the way in which you detect for evil. Sure. So I'll give you an example that, you know, someone came in one time and of course, like all I know initially is that there is a claim that the devil, that a demon is harassing person X. And so this individual came in and he was professional, middle-aged, well-educated man, ran a successful business, and he came in

stating that he had this this diabolical oppression happening with him, especially at night, but certainly throughout his house. And he would get a nausea anytime he attempted to do anything spiritual. So pick up the Bible, even to look at a holy picture, he would have this urge to throw up. Okay, so I sit down with him and I'm talking with him. Now I've arranged at a set time a person next door that he has not seen and that he is not aware of, but I've arranged

at 1.52 p.m. I'm going to be with this individual and at that point you are going to start praying against any and every evil in him. Right? So he doesn't know this. This is in your office, is it? This is in my office, but the person is in the next office over. Okay. Right. So the person I have praying, um, boom, I'm watching the clock and we're just talking about whatever. And I'm observing and all of a sudden, is there a change in behavior?

Is there an agitation? Is there a change in his mood? Does he become tense? Well, he closes his eyes and flopped over at 1.52. So bingo, we have something. So there's enough evidence, there's ample evidence that there's something here that's evil. And so that gets noted,

and then we move on straight to prayer. Like I'm gonna pray over this guy now, and I'm gonna test that experience. Sure enough, that just, it went up. Now, ironically, this man is a professional. This man is well educated, and so what, but he was also schizophrenic. Okay.

Right, and he had evil. So here you have these three elements here that depending on some people, unfortunately, some non-experts who they're, oh, they just, well, if he didn't have a degree, well, this is an uneducated person who has a wild imagination through watching movies and so forth, or, oh gosh, this person has a,

all this person needs is a shrink. And I'm sorry to admit, for the last 60, 70 years, shrinks became God in many circles of the church, right? Like the testimony, the opinion of a psychologist, psychiatrist, came everything. Every old problems were chalked up to dysfunctional thinking, in many circles, in many circles. Is that because many people in the church ceased believing?

I think they ceased believing in the supernatural. That's what I mean, yeah. Yeah. They ceased believing in the supernatural. That's what I mean, yeah. Yeah. They ceased believing in the supernatural. Well, obviously God is supernatural, but anything else. Yeah. It became, it's God and then just bad thinking. But you know what?

If you remove everything else, none of our theology makes sense. If there is only God and humans, animals below us and whatever, but if there are no angels, no demons, none of reality makes sense. Why? Because we're in this struggle, in this battle for what? God places us in a situation, if we have no supernatural enemy, then why does reality behave as if there is? Why would he allow us to have this interpretation? Why would his very word contain this?

Why would why would his saints for 2000 years have disseminated this reality if that weren't the case? So if all of a sudden you have an interpretation of reality of the church and human existence that is that variance with everything that has gone before us, you need to throw out that idea. I'm wondering what other tests are. Like what would happen if you were to say, bring an un-consecrated host before somebody possessed and a consecrated?

I would never do that. Why not? or somebody possessed and a consecrated. I would never do that. Why not? That it's very icky when you start playing around with hosts, pseudo hosts and that kind of thing. Same thing with water, holy water? I don't need to do that.

No, holy water would be different. So you have a couple glasses there on your shelf. And so one situation I remember, there was a firefighter who was allegedly possessed. And he came and he had manifested at a church down the street. And then that church, he was there with his family. His family drove him over to ours.

And so I met him at the door and I just remember he was an enormous hulking man. And I thought, gosh, if he does have a demon and he gets violent, or even if he doesn't have a demon and he gets violent, this is going to be really bad. Like there's not, there's no stopping him. And so I, I, I bring him into my office and we, we, I sit him down at a table and I'm just chatting with him loosely for a couple minutes. Where are you from? Where did you grow up?

What brought you here today? Tell me what happened. So he's telling me the account and I say, okay, just keep talking. And I go over to the shelves and I bring over a stack of books and I put them on the table with the spines kind of turned towards him. So I'm controlling his eyes. I know that he's gonna be scanning the spines and some of those books are gonna be spiritual.

They're gonna be, you know, St. John of the Cross is complete works, biography of a saint or two. But then random books like the Baltimore Orioles yearbook for 2012, How to Drywall Your Basement. And so why am I doing that? Why do I bring those kinds of books and mix them in? Because then I'm controlling his thought as well. Right?

He's going to be saying, what on earth is this priest doing? And that's going to provoke even more of a curiosity for the next stack. So I'm controlling the eyes again. So I keep doing that and then I walk behind him and I go get a stack but- He's not asking what you're doing at this point? No, I'm just, if he does, and I just redirect him back

to say, please keep going. I'm listening with full concentration, please keep going. And so I'm listening with full concentration. Please keep going. And so I'll have a glass half filled with water. And it looks like I just left a glass on the shelf, but it'll be holy water. And so I dip the tip of my finger in. So I just took a drop, literally a drop. And as I'm walking behind him, I fling it on his clothing.

And so there is no human way he would know what just happened. He shot up out of that chair and started hissing. And I remember- Wait, sorry, started hissing? He started hissing, so right when I was behind him, he shot out of the chair and he arched his head backwards so that our faces were parallel to each other. How's that even humanly possible?

But his was upset. I don't know. It's not. But it gets worse. His teeth seemed to sprout a couple of, like his canine teeth. So he was hissing like a cat and his face took on the demeanor of a cat.

Now, did his teeth actually grow? I saw his teeth as fangs that were two inches long. Did that actually happen? No, the devil can manipulate light. He can cause an illusion, and that's what it was. But that was a sign that the devil is there. So, all right, all right, we fulfilled, we did our due diligence, We've established that something beyond the

natural is here. Something in the realm of the preacher. How did you recover from, I know you say you're not easily afraid, but I think I would have soiled myself and excused myself for a few minutes if they had. What about the 37th time you see that? What about the 213th time? You're not going to put down your candy bar. Your cup of coffee isn't gonna leave your hand it just what did he think happened he was gone now now the demon is there there's a full-out manifestation all right so he's in a state of unconsciousness he's there somewhere did you watch his neck and head go back to normal what I saw was just a springing up so quickly that I it was so fast I could not see the movement that all of a sudden there's

just this upside down head in front of me you know hissing at me but this is really good like a manifestation is good because it shows you just did something, i.e. the church just did something, i.e. God has just done something that was threatening to this enemy of God. He's flushed out. So you have pushed him out of hiding and now he's out in the open. And so now there's a clash. And clash is good because he's out in the open. And so now there's a clash. And clash is good because the clash is what our Lord did with demons. So at the end of the day it's really about Christ and His kingdom usurping its sovereignty over the kingdom of darkness. You're merely an agent. All you're doing is applying the basic principles that the Church has given you.

You stand your ground and you assert the authority that God has given you. When people manifest like that, do they have a conscious experience of that manifestation, or is it as if they fell asleep and something else has taken over? So this gentleman had no knowledge, no awareness of having sprung like that. So in that moment he is suppressed. So he was possessed, proven by the fact that he had no conscious memory of it. Now the demon in the course of our clash then, in course of the subsequent exorcism, is at times going to retreat in order to get a reprieve because it's horrifically painful for the demon

to be subject to the prayers. And so he would come back, right? And he's kind of, he was groggy and in a kind of state of sleep and so what I said to him was, look, look, you need to tell this thing to get out. You need to fight. And even when the demon began to manifest, I just kept always saying to him, I know you're in there and I know

you can hear me at some level and I'm commanding that the demon allow these words to go through. You need to fight from the inside. You need to say to him, get out of me. I don't want you. I choose Jesus. And so in the end, it was, he was cooperating in every way. And I handed to him, he had been possessed for a long time since he was a young child. And, but he had had enough. Like he really had had enough

and he was ready now to work. So many people, most people, even if they have an evil spirit at some level harassing them, they think it's, you know, exorcism is like going to the hair salon. You sit there and you just relax. Again, I don't do magic. I am NOT a magician. So I will help you rescind rights. I know where you need to walk. I will show you where you need to do it. I will tell you when you need to exert yourself. And I will help you. I will help you. The Church will help you. But this has to be an act. You are an active participant. And without your active participation, you're just not going to be liberated.

So I mean, you said the first incident was you as a deacon, and then presumably you got ordained a year or so later. So has this been a part of your priesthood from the beginning and throughout? Or have you taken more of a more of a role as an exorcist over the last few years? Or no, it was all throughout. OK, it was all throughout. and and do you have to be sort of deputized by the bishop or? Wherever whatever diocese you are conducting an exorcism and you need to be deputized by that bishop so You know, for example, I I my US office is in the archdiocese of Detroit. I

Am NOT the exorcist for Detroit. I am not even one of them. Why? Because that's not the purpose why I'm there. But I do have faculties in different dioceses and where I have cases that are ongoing, where I have the permission of the local bishop to perform this ministry there. I recently interviewed a lady named Vespa Stampa, who was a witch and converted to Christianity. It's a very powerful story. But the night before, I woke up in the middle of the

night and couldn't sleep, and I was extremely depressed and oppressed out of nowhere. I had no idea what was happening. Didn't even connect it to the interview the next day. But it was just, it was so suffocating that I woke my wife up and asked her to pray for me. And she did. And the next morning I spoke with Vesper and we both experienced something very similar and even after the fact, right? So the point is, I know that when I do an interview like that or like this, that's going to make the demons not thrilled. I can't imagine what it's like being you, who's actually in the name of Jesus, of course, commanding demons to flee. What kind of spiritual warfare do you undergo and is it any greater than what the average

Catholic undergoes? You know, look, I can speak for myself. I can't speak for my colleagues. I have to... I would not say that I'm attacked more... more than the average person would be. Usually. With some exceptions. I did have a case I took on years ago

and that case is ongoing. So an exorcism can last, well, the average exorcism lasts about a year and a half and that's with an exorcism occurring once a week. So 75 sessions, let's say, is the average length. But some of them can go on far longer than that but one particular case I took on my phone would ring through the night so even if the phone was powered down powered off it would power on it would ring through the night and it would ring from a phone number that really doesn't exist even

the area code wouldn't exist you look up the area code and there's no such assigned area code but But that only happened, I remember for about a few weeks, then that was it. It was only when that case started. I do remember one day, and I've never had a day like this, I had three sessions during that day. And I was giving a talk at a parish in the evening. And as I was heading to that, I was driving there, the radio in my car started and it went to an ungodly volume that was far louder than what the dial would turn it to.

And I couldn't shut it off. And there was nothing I could do to this radio to get it to shut off. The windshield then fogged up. Now this was a warm summer day. So there was no reason for that to occur, but it did. And such that it became, oh my gosh, like I can't see out my window.

And so I rolled down my window and I put my head out and just in time to avoid hitting a guardrail. When I got to that parish, I had a projector. I was utilizing a slideshow that evening. My projector worked for about 30 seconds and then died. So I had a backup. I hooked up the backup, it worked for less time and then died.

The parish had one, so they go get it, and again, worked for about 30 seconds and then died. That was, I would say, the worst day. I have had colleagues of mine, priest friends who are exorcists, who have had way more spiritual attack. Some have been physically attacked, I never have. Some have a good friend of mine was tripped. He had terrible damage done to his Achilles tendon.

And then at his next session, when he was well enough to conduct one, that the fall happened just after Easter. And the first thing the demon said to him was, "'Did you like our Easter present, Father?' I've never had anything like that. I don't want to. I have been physically attacked, I've been physically hit, I've been hit really really hard numerous times. By people you're praying with? By the possessed.

Yeah. But I've never been, you know, I participate in exorcism with a friend with a priest friend. So we will often, if we can, if there's a particular heavy case, I may ask you, me an exorcist may ask you a fellow exorcist, would you mind coming in that day? Are you able to come? And so, and I've been there where a friend of mine is being picked up by a petite woman and being held, you know, two feet into the air, like his feet are dangling. And I grab her arm, and it's like grabbing a cement column. This 105 pound, 110 pound woman is hoisting this very large man. And it's only when I utter a prayer then, and he had by that point was already red. So I never saw him being picked up. So I heard in the room the people kind of gasping and I was

reaching for a relic of a saint to apply. And then I hear the gasping and I look at them and then I look at her and then I see the Sarma and then I look at him and by that time he was already turning red. I say he had been in the air enough time, there was no breathing going on. She had him by the throat? She had him by the throat. So I've never been picked up. I have been hit very hard.

I was hit so hard that I needed two surgeries to repair my skull. What happened in that situation? How were you hit? What was the circumstances? I was hit in the face. I was hit just over here, just beneath the eye, and it broke my skull and I didn't know that it did.

Wow. So I was knocked out. I saw stars. It took me a few minutes to recover and figure out where I was. And then I thought, you know, the pain wore off after maybe 10 minutes or so and I thought, okay, well I'm good to go. And then, you know, subsequently there was just an enormous amount of problems

that have been infection and so forth. And so they went in and had to do, particularly of the sinus structure had to be rerouted and so forth. He hit you with his hand or with the head. Is it comforting lightning fast? Is it comforting talking to other exorcists? We don't really talk about this stuff like You might present a case that is a conundrum. So I have not yet been able to flush out the demon or I've not been able to find the main

possessing demon. I'm stuck with this one and this particular stubborn belligerent demon says, I don't have to leave because I have the right to be here because of something about which I will not tell you. And so, you know, he'll present the cases, the details of the case and like, okay, and you're listening to that and you're processing and you also have one ear to God, is he saying something to me right now? You're discerning. All 18 antenna are up and you're absorbing as much as you can and then, well, you know, this is how I would proceed, Father. I would do something like this. But if it's interesting enough, you know what? I might like to come if you'd like to have me come,

and I'd like to see this behavior that you're talking about and see if we can't do something about it. And then do you need permission from the possessed? Absolutely, you do. Sure. Yeah. From the possessed or the bishop? Well, both.

Well, the possessed, the bishop? Well both. Well the possessed, you need permission. The possessed, if the possessed is receiving exorcism, he or she is already given permission, or at least the family has, the family who has custody. Is it documents they have to sign? Oh yeah. Oh sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You will signed a release and a waiver and you are stating I'm coming here of my own accord and I'm requesting the ministry of the church because I believe of this and the exorcist after having made his diagnosis is in agreement with the fact that you are possessed.

And so you're authorizing the church's ministry of exorcism to be done upon you. And if the person is not free enough to be able to do it, then the husband is, the wife is, the somebody is. And obviously you always have those people in the room. You want family members in the room always, but you also want your own people and your own advocates so that if it comes to it that you have many, many people that can give a testimony as to what

occurred in the room. Have you ever had a demon reveal your own sins and speak them out loud to shame you or have you heard of that happening? Sure I've heard of it happening. When you confess your sins sacramentally, they cease to exist. They don't exist after that. So there is no disclosure on the part of a demon because they don't exist in reality. But if you are stupid enough as a priest to go and conduct an exorcism and you have mortal sin, then the demon can easily jump into you

because really what's happening there, well, you already belong to him and you're coming in and you're giving him orders, he's your master. Right, so now the state of things is much worse than what it was. When this person was possessed and you weren't as the priest, things were really bad. Now that you're both possessed?

Oh my God, it's off the charts bad. You're the Easter egg that he really wanted. And that would be a good point to explain right now. Why is mortal sin such a debilitating thing? Because, well, it begins with the fall of Adam and Eve. When you were conceived inside your womb, your children, you have four children. When they were conceived inside their mother's womb, there were three people involved in their making, right?

There was dad, there was mom, and you each provided the biological material for life. When that biological material came together and the condition for life was just right, God infused a soul. So there were three involved in your making, and at the moment of that infusion, a human being came to be, right? But at the

moment that human being came to be, the penalty for the sin of Adam came and met him. He was subject to it immediately. So this is what I call, I call that the original injustice. So you're brought into the world through an act of love that involved three persons. Three persons cooperated, right? A divine person and two human beings to bring about new life and yet this penalty you became subject to. So in that moment your children did not belong to God. The moment they came to be inside their mother's womb, children did not belong to God. The moment they came to be inside their mother's womb, they didn't belong to God, and they

didn't belong to you or your wife. They belong to the devil. That is original injustice. And so they continued to belong to the devil until their baptism. So your baptism, my baptism changed our original owner. The devil, we ceased to belong to the devil. As people today they'll wait two years to baptize their children, they'll wait eight years. I mean sometimes they're so heavy I can't even pick them up to the font, right? I can't, you know, we

gotta get them a stand to stand on. They're just too heavy to manipulate. The kids are too heavy. But in that moment, the devil ceased to be their owner. God the Father became their father, their owner. Christ became their Savior. The Holy Spirit became their sanctifier. They received an entire family of saints in heaven. The gifts of the spirit were infused within them. And they had the right to enter into heaven upon leaving this earth. And they gained the right to have the dignity of a sonship or a daughterhood with God. They gained the right for that. The dignity that comes forward at a baptism is immense. Well, that continues until the person's first mortal sin. And then the effects of baptism are undone. The baptism itself is not undone. It doesn't have to be

repeated. But you've now evicted the Holy Spirit from within you, and guess what? You cease to belong to your original owner. And so until you reconcile with God sacramentally, that state remains. You continue to belong to your original owner, the devil. So in the prenotanda in chapter one, in the rite of exorcism, a priest is always advised, oh, he's ordered to go to confession before anyite of exorcism, a priest is always advised, he's ordered to go to confession before any and every exorcism. And of course we do.

I mean whether we need it or not we do. Whether you're conscious of grave sin or not, you just, you do. I mean we all, we may not have specific violations of the commandments but we may have a heart that was hardened this week and this way and that way and I judged that person I was short to my mother on the phone I you know whatever but you but you clean yourself in order to go and battle the Prince of Darkness who then if he is not able to lay hold of anything on you well it is to your benefit. What's more powerful an exorcism or a sacramental confession? One confession is

worth more than a thousand exorcisms. We do exorcism only to get the person into the sacramental life of the church. That's really the source of health. The seven sacraments are the seven ways Jesus Christ left to heal the world. They are the way that we receive God's very divinity within us. And to use the language of the Eastern Church, our Eastern brothers, they are the way by which we are divinized. Prayer divinizes us, sure, our good works, charitable works, sacrificing penance, but nothing divinizes us like the seven sacraments.

Has there been, I imagine there has been a steep decline in baptisms over the last 10-20 years in North America? And do you think that's responsible for the increase in demonic activity if there has been such an increase? Well, that's a symptom of the state of things. And that symptom is that the state of things is a disillusionment with religion

and an embrace of paganization. But the thing is, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. We are spiritual beings and we can't not be spiritual. And so with, you know, an abandonment of traditional Christianity, there has come along a plethora of aberrant spiritual practices, right? You know, women go down to the spa to go and spend an afternoon in the spa. They're offered a Reiki treatment. What's a Reiki treatment? Well, we're going to raise your energy level. This is occult. This is no basis in science. They will try to

convince you that there is. Well, we're going to use particular crystals or this person is a trained and licensed you know down the street in Michigan is one of the great where I live is one of the great training offices of Reiki right in North America. So they they will use pseudo scientific language to make it look like this is a rational sensible thing but when in, this is an act of the occult. But the abandonment of religion, right? So the abandonment of Christianity and a Christian worldview, right?

That gave you not just a relationship with God, but a moral compass, a spiritual compass that you were catechized, you were formed in school, you were formed by your parents, your neighbors and so forth, that you knew how to conduct. And there were things that like, you were formed in school, you were formed by your parents, your neighbors and so forth that you knew how to conduct and there were things that like you know what that's just that's a wicked thing. I've been taught about that I am NOT gonna participate in it. Kids today don't have that. Go on Amazon, type in Ouija board, see all the hits that come up,

start reading some of the comments. comments your parents getting this for their kids Grandparents getting these games for their grandkids saying you know I I wanted to spook them out and and tie them up for the night during their sleepover and this thing was hours of fun For them and they were they were saying they were contacting with genuine spirits and and then Someone's watching right now who has a Ouija board or tarot cards. What do they do with them burn them? And then. Someone's watching right now who has a Ouija board or tarot cards. What do they do with them? Burn them.

Get rid of them. Go to confession. Confess your sins to the Lord. Amend your life. Get rid of the sin out of your life. Then walk with the Lord. You walk with the Lord. You obtain his blessing his benefit.

You don't walk with him. You don't. And that's just the way it is. I've heard that the demons are particularly frightened of the theotokos. Absolutely. The mother of God is... And you know, more women get possessed than men, and by far interesting. I had that, I had that assumption. I also have the assumption, which might be incorrect, that more women are using tarot cards than men, but I don't know if that's true. In my experience, it absolutely is true. Men will do other things in terms of the occult. But,

but you know, it really comes down to, comes down to how men and women are made up. Men will commit more sexual sins than women. Women have a penchant for manipulation. When a woman in her weakness, a woman's ugliness will often show up in a desire to manipulate and control and behind the scenes. And because she can't in this, like men manipulate by being physically violent, perhaps, but a woman can't do that. And so has to manipulate emotionally.

That's right. That's right. Right? So, so yeah, there's the demon that came in through the tarot cards but then there's the the the the turning towards the tarot cards and what was beneath that right that also has to be treated right and then beyond that more primal to that is you know where are you at in your life? No, Donna, why do you feel about yourself the way you do? That has to be treated. So it's not just about the use of the tarot card. It's what were the conditions that led to that coming about?

Right, like you need some pastoral care. Right, the demons are usually a very small part of this ministry. A bigger part of the ministry is getting you into a place of health. And that involves getting an assessment of you, like where are you at? Learning about you. Why do you function the way you do? Why are you seeking the kinds of things you seek? What has led to that? So that, and that is far more time consuming, right? Is putting somebody into a place where

they can obtain healing and life. It's one thing to get rid of the demons, it's another thing to keep them out. So if you don't do that pastoral care, guess what? They're gonna go back out with that weakness and they don't know a different way to act. And so they're gonna be acting the way that they know how to act.

And they might be well-intentioned, as well-intentioned as you or I are, but they don't know what better way to act. Guess what? They're in trouble again. And now they're back in front of you. They need an exorcist again. So to protect your work,

there has to be attending of the sheep, right? When I was in Texas, it was wonderful because gosh, we had, you know, I was at a church where a lot of people, most people in that church had walked away from very hard living in their lives. Uh, a lot of the, the congregation, and these were people on fire for Jesus. They were wonderful, are wonderful, beautiful people. Many of them had criminal records.

Many of them were drug dealers, gang bangers and reformed, you know, reformed. But you know, to do this ministry, they were great because I could, I could call up a couple and say, look, I have this person here. I have Susie here. You know, Susie is in a bad place and I'm helping her get to a better place, but she needs some friends. You know, can you and Bert pick her up every Tuesday night, take her to a movie, right? Take her to dinner afterwards. And then I would call up a different, you know, Thursdays, can you make sure that

she goes shopping, right? Take her shopping with you. Then on the week, always somebody would be there to pick her up for church on Sunday. And shortly after, I mean, as long as you weren't outright manifesting in the church, you were given a job immediately. So Susie has a job, even if it's just slinging coffee.

So she feels important. I'm contributing here to this parish community. Now, you know what? She's learning what love is. She's learning what redemption is. She's seeing people who are on fire. She's seeing people maybe for the first time in her life, they're not taking advantage of me.

They don't want something from me. They're just offering. So that would be equal to everything in terms of healing. You know, like I just came from hell. I want to live like these people. Right? And that was so healthy. It was so healing Have you ever encountered a person who's become possessed who wasn't in mortal sin? Is that a possibility? Yes through Inheritance right through through a covenant that was made along the family line Now it it took a very strong Covenant that was made but so let me Let me go back a little bit and then I'll answer your question.

So demons live in wounds, right? So as an exorcist, people come to you and you need to assess the truth of what they're saying and so forth and okay, if it's true, now you've got to examine them. You know where are the wounds in their lives and sure enough it was through one of these or maybe more than one by which the devil entered. So wounds have two sources. Trauma. Timmy and Joey are playing catch on the street.

Timmy throws the ball far above Joey's head. He goes running after it, car slams into him, knocks his head clean off his body. Timmy sees this. His world is completely different. He threw the ball, it's his fault. He called on Joey's door that morning. Joey didn't wanna come out because he had homework but he teased him. Timmy teased him. You know, you're a little girl.

You know, you're a wuss. You're a suck. Come on out and play catch. So now that hurt, that shame, that guilt, that pain, the devil is gonna be all over that to manipulate him. If he doesn't get some kind of truth spoken to him here now, God's truth, then he as the twig is bent so grows the tree. The devil is going to want to manipulate that and nature itself is also broken too. And both of those factors working against it are going to create conditions by which it's easy to pick up demons. How? Because what trauma does is it distorts your view of reality.

It causes you to believe a lie. What would be the lie that Timmy encounters here? Well, there's no redemption for me. Regardless of whether he had a theological view or not, his theological view has changed. Does God exist? If he does, why didn't he stop this? Death is even more powerful than God. Nobody can bring back Joey. He's gone.

Right? So the world is not a safe place, it's a horrible place where little kids playing catch can have something this horrific happen. Right? So there's lots of room for distortion of belief there. The second type of wound is sin and sin has three species. so personal direct sin right you do a sin and it doesn't even have to be a mortal sin necessarily you played with a Ouija board you didn't know what you were doing look the the movie the Exorcist is based on a case where a little kid was was invited to sit

alongside his aunt as she played with a Ouija board. Guess what that night he became possessed He didn't willingly choose he didn't say to it even I hereby give myself to you and I summon you into me You don't need that but guess what he opened the wrong door at the wrong time And there was something standing behind of that door. So I encounter people all the time and say well I don't give the devil authority to have any jurisdiction or issue over me, but you're viewing this the wrong way. If somebody knocks at your door and you may not have any, you may not have delegated any permission for the person on the other side to do you or your family member's harm,

but guess what, you open the door, there's somebody standing there with a knife, kills you, kills your family members, what permission you gave is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. Spiritually, it's the same thing. You open the wrong door. You open the wrong door.

Now you're subject to the consequences. Personal sin. Then generational sin. And this is one that causes no small controversy among Christian churches, in particular some Protestant churches, because they don't acknowledge it at all. But look, our entire faith is based upon generational sin. What is original sin if not generational sin? Right, you had David and Bathsheba sinned, well David sinned immensely, and the product of their union was a child. The child died, the scriptures are very clear, because of the sin that David did. Not just with Bathsheba, but by killing her husband. Uriah was destroyed at the command of David. So the sin was not the child's, but the punishment for the sin was visited

on the child by the Lord. Right, so if you want to say that generational sin does not exist, you have to explain that somehow. You're wrong. Right. Then you have, well, the Pharaoh. So he puts a curse upon Moses, utters a curse, and what happens? Well, every firstborn of the land is struck dead that night during the first Passover. Every firstborn. None of the firstborns of the firstborn sinned. Pharaoh sinned. But the effect of the sin was visited upon them. When David counted, when he took the census against the will of the Lord, then he was given three options. Pick your punishment, A, B, or C. Right? The punishment he picked was for three days pestilence.

Right? So all of a sudden, all the food in the land is eaten by locusts. And David says, Lord, it's not them. The sin was not theirs. It was mine. Why are you punishing them? was mine. Why are you punishing them? So there is such a thing as generational sin. You know I had a person one time who contacted me and she had her her her one of her brother-in-laws had just attempted suicide. She had two brothers that had committed suicide. Her father had committed suicide. And so she had two brother-in-laws that married two sisters. One of them had attempted suicide numerous times after he married the sister, never before. And the other one who had married perhaps a year prior, he confessed that he had started since the wedding day to feel suicidal.

He had not yet attempted suicide. So I remember receiving this call from her and she was rightly so hysterical but I was out of state at the time. I wasn't available to help but I said look when I come in I will do so, I will help you. And shortly after I came in I got a call from her again, her sister took her life. Here's the kicker, every suicide and every suicide attempt always happened on a Thursday, always a Thursday. And when she told me that, man, we got a generational sin here. And I was never able to find out why a Thursday. But all I did was I let her through, and it was done in one session. Now, I had this conversation with her maybe 10 years, 12 years ago, something like that. I called her several months ago and I will follow up with people every now and

again. And she said, you know what father, it was done after that one session. And that one session was, was I said, look, you were a member of this family. And I don't know why this is afflicting you, but it is. look, you are a member of this family and I don't know why this is afflicting you, but it is, but, you know, generational, the generations are a conduit that flow both ways. So as it comes down to you,

so also what you do can go back up the other way. So you're gonna speak now for your entire family, your entire bloodline going all the way back to your first father, Adam and Eve. And and Eve. You're gonna repeat after me, I claim the authority of my bloodline, claim the authority of my bloodline. Lord I invite you in and to heal any and every wound that is here. And so you just vicariously you go after the spirit of suicide and every other sickness that is here. I don't want it here. I remove the authority it has from

whatever source it was by which it came. I claim freedom. It all ended that day. Completely ended. So the third type of sin then is what I call transferred sin. Curses, hexes, spells and that kind of thing, which are very real. And in fact, those at times are the most, in some sense, difficult to establish because... You can't get the person to repent of something they haven't done right and and who do you think might have cursed you well it could be one of 453 people because they have that many enemies or it could be you know I have no idea I have no idea or it could be you know it really it can vary by culture so if you're dealing with a culture with a person from that with an ethnicity which where culture is where cursing is common you

know you you can kind of start and begin there and and that can take a long time to identify a curse. But let's say you're with a culture that really doesn't have a cursing like the Irish for example but you might ask them do you have any Masons in your family? Yeah we do my uncle was a Mason but my his father who was my grandfather he was also a Mason well let's do a renunciation of that. And boom, all of a sudden the, what they're experiencing ceases. What's the difference? You've talked about infestation. What's the difference between oppression and exorcism and any other isms I'm missing.

It depends on who you ask. So we each have our own, like the, like, we have our own ways of categorizing, but in my way, which is not unlike what most others would do, but it's not necessarily equal from exorcist to exorcist. But when you're talking about possession, you're talking about that a demon, or more than one, has gained the juridical right to manifest from the inside out of the victim.

So we talk about them being in the person, but there needs to be a little bit of an explanation for that. Demons are not located in space and time. They're not composed of matter. So they can't jump into someone because there's nothing to jump. All right? They're pure spirit. So they are not, and you see the difficulty with humans is we are hardwired to understand reality as delimited by space. Right? We think of the elephant, we think of the Sun, the star, a supernova,

or whatever. It occupies a certain amount of space. Demons don't. Angels don't. So when they are inside somebody, what it means is they've gained the juridical right, the legal right, to manipulate that person from the inside such that their body is not under their dominion anymore. It's under the demons. And he only allows them to have, to use it to function with their body according to his will.

When he wants to allow them to function, they will. When he doesn't, they won't. So in the course of an exorcism, the demon is going to manifest because he's got to come to do what I call defend life and property. When a priest starts praying, it's really dangerous for him. So he's going to come out manifest. He wants to prevent the person from renouncing whatever happened. He wants to just shut that dialogue down and he presents himself in his sovereignty. And so of course then most of what exorcism is is praying. You're wounding the demon.

You know very rarely can you just go in and cast out a demon. If you're able to do that it's because he had very little jurisdiction to begin with. But when they have a lot, right, then something has to be done from the inside out. So you weaken them enough over time that you gain enough access to the human being. I need you, do you repent, do you choose to repent of this sin? Do you repent of anything and everything that is not of God in your life?

But it may have also been inherited, right? They may not have had anything to do with it. And this is where you just have to jump and poke around from in place to place looking for a weak point. And a lot of times you don't know where they are. Like you're just, you're in the dark kind of groping around, but you take kind of a prayer machine gun, if you will, and you shoot in some direction,

and once in a while you hear, ow, okay, well we've hit something. So pursue that. So you talked about three openings, sin, whether venial or mortal, inherited sin and transferred sin. I mean, this, how is this, I could see this being an unhealthy thing to talk about because I imagine everybody's like, well then maybe I'm possessed. Well, so are there signs of possession? Is there

evidence of it? And so we get these all the time. Father, I just would like to make an appointment with you. Just, just do an exorcism movie just so that I make sure I'm clean. Well, heavens no. We don't do root canals on healthy teeth, right? There has to be evidence that there's a problem. And there isn't enough of us. Like we have better things to do than to start ministering to healthy people. So then if what are you've mentioned a couple like nausea around the sacred what are some other signs that someone might be possessed? Oh gosh the losing of consciousness blackout periods right so you may have just lost two days you have no idea where you were today so now you

wake up on the other side of town without a shirt and you've got four thousand dollars in your pocket you have no idea where they came from you've got blood on you and you're not sure if it's your own or not. You've encountered this? Oh heavens yes that firefighter I talked about manifested as a cat for example. You will have people you, it's funny, what God created, creation, he created in a hierarchy. So you have the pure spirits, right? The angelic spirits from which the demons fell. You have humans, you have animals and so forth.

When a demon manifests, they often like to manifest as something lower than even the human, as an animal, as a pig, a donkey, a cow or slithering like a snake. Why do you think that is? Why not manifest as a superior spiritual being, like an angel, even a fallen angel? Because the animal thing is more scary for us. Yeah.

Right, so, and all of a sudden you might, you might start praying with somebody and they slip out of their chair and they start slithering like a snake around the legs of the table. Gosh. So, and it looks like all of a sudden they've got no bones.

And so it looks more convincing than if I was to pretend to be a snake. Oh heavens, yes. Yeah, even if a professional did it, who did that for a living. But it's not to say that all of a sudden the devil had the power to make their bones go soft. He doesn't have that. But the devil can bend light. He can cause an illusion. So you can look at that reality and absolutely fully believe that this happened, that the laws of nature were violated here. Well, they really weren't violated, but the appearance that they were violated, that took place. So there's an old Irish saying, believe none of what you hear

and only half of what you see. And that is good advice for when you're dealing with the devils. Do you think it's also the demon's way of mocking the image of God within the possessed to make them act like an animal? Absolutely, yeah. To debase their dignity. So we talk about the devil doing all of these things.

It makes it sound like the devil is close to being omnipresent or omniscient. So how much of this is demons like the devil is close to being omnipresent or omniscient. So how much of this is demons versus the devil? Does the devil himself possess people or is it demons? R. You know, you tell me and we'll both know. So, you know, look, demons are master manipulators. They're very proud of their manipulation. They're arrogant, more arrogant than anything you've ever seen. They are, they live in a world of filth,

lying, sin, rebellion. You can't ever trust a single thing a demon says outside of this particular exorcism and the liberation of this particular individual. So we compel them to say the truth in this matter, in this matter here, to get you out of Mrs. Shephouse. I compel you to tell me the truth. But was it you that really manipulated that election

in the third world country? Was it you that did? As soon as you ask that, right, you've now allowed your curiosity, you can trick yourself, you can lie to yourself and they get, you know, this, I'm really achieving good with this, you know, in doing this, because we're getting to the bottom of that

and I really wanna help humanity. This is false. This is, you are going to the demons to try to obtain knowledge. By definition, that is an act of the occult. By definition. That's a sinful thing. So I don't trust anything they say. I don't engage in dialogue with them. I issue commands. I give commands. That's it. If they don't give me enough, I command them to give me more for this case. And then when they're dispatched, they're dispatched. That's it. If they don't give me enough, I command them to give me more for this case.

And then when they're dispatched, they're dispatched, that's it, I don't care anymore. I may encounter in a subsequent case, a demon who identifies himself as the same one that was here in Mrs. Shephouse. It's a new time and a new play. And you know what? He feels familiar.

Gosh, yeah, this has the same kind of feeling. Is it the same demon? I don't know because they are master manipulators. I don't care if it's the same. I don't care if it's different. So for you, you know, for anyone to come up with, for example, because I'm asked this all the time, hey, I even had people write me and say, hey father, I'm a software engineer and I can design a great database that, you know, I even had people write me and say volunteer. Hey father, I'm a software engineer and I can design a great database that, you know, I could help you put together that would help exorcists everywhere,

a kind of a database, a repository of different demons and their characteristics and stuff. You know what? They had a characteristic there, that place that day, or this case, and then they go into a different, and they're completely different. They're all place that day or this case. And then they go into a different and they're completely different. They're all showmen. They're all Academy Award winning actors.

And they're also far more intelligent than us. Wouldn't it be like toddlers trying to understand grownups and coming up with a crude spreadsheet? Exactly. Angels, demons are nothing but fallen angels. Angels themselves, they, an angel, the word angel denotes an activity rather than a species. So angel means messenger, right? So an angel is a messenger of God, but he is, he's only an angel. So St. Gregory the Great teaches us, when he is delivering a message. The word

angel does not denote a species like dog, Doberman, you know, and but we as humans we think of demons as species of things. Well what kind of demon did you have? No, did you have a this kind of demon or that kind of demon? And you think, well, this demon, this is his nature. He acts in this manner. So you go into a different situation, he's going to act in that manner. That's not the case. Nowhere is that necessarily a part of the script. He can completely change, offer a completely different name, and exhibit a completely different personality and anybody

who says that's impossible, that doesn't have a notion of what he is talking about. Nowhere, nowhere in Revelation does it say they have to function according to a particular nature, a particular set of behaviors and characteristics. I began asking what other ways a person may know if they're being, if they are possessed. And I imagine it's a very small minority of people. Relatively so, yes, thankfully. One would be feeling kind of nauseous in the sight of the sacred, the other would be, what was, just real quick, what would some?

Just any aberrant behavior obsession. Oh yeah, the other one you just real quick. Just any aberrant behaviour obsession. Oh yeah, the other one you said was blackouts. Blackouts, obsessive behaviour, even an aversion to anything religious or an extreme attachment to religious things. The finest example we have in the history of the Saints is probably Saint Ignatius Leola who decided to grow his hair long, grow his fingernails long and start looking disgusting and live in a cave and all of a sudden it dawned on him because he started reflecting on it. I didn't know about this.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, he started reflecting on this and he said you know what, in doing this I think I'm doing God's will. But I don't have any proof that I'm doing God's will. I don't have any proof that in doing this, I'm pleasing him. I'm just made the assumption that taking the hardest road in life, giving up all comfort, that that's what he wants from me automatically.

But that's an assumption. He didn't tell me that. I decided to do this. And so in a moment, he started reflecting on his experience. And the one thing that he was, was an absolutely brilliant psychologist. And he started to analyze his experience for accuracy in terms of, is it a genuine religious

experience? Is this positive or not? Well he came to the conclusion, no, this I'm being manipulated to keep me from doing what God really wants to do with me. So an extreme propensity for religious things, sadness, depression, and anything that might look like somebody is ill. And that's a great cover for the demons. Uncle Louie, he's just sick. Well, it happened two years ago. He doesn't really leave out of bed. And so you think it's a medical issue.

Yeah, he's gone to all the doctors and then they can't find anything wrong with him. But there obviously is something wrong with him because he had no energy. But nobody has ever uttered a prayer around him. Or if they tried, you know, get out, get out, I'm tired, I need to sleep. But no one has really done a diagnostic, right? Done something subtle that you really, you close the mouse holes so that no other explanations could be had. And now you really render, you perform an activity so you can render a diagnosis.

Can only priests perform exorcisms or can any of the lay faithful and even those non-Christian do so? Right. So the rite of exorcism, so the ritual that we have in the case, may only be performed by a deputed priest in the church. So that's right in the rules. If you violate that, then you are sinning and you're going up against to the father of sin being one of his children and you're trying to command him. It would be very dangerous for you.

If you were to be a non-priest and you sit like the movies, the conjuring movies, which there are a series of horror movies. So you have this, they're based loosely on the life of a couple, the Warrens, which in the movie he picks up the rite of exorcism and starts reading it, commanding the demons. So again, this is part of the great big beef I have with Hollywood, that you reduce exorcism ministry to magic.

The ritual becomes a magical ritual, and all you need to do is read this and the demons have to magic. The ritual becomes a magical ritual and all you need to do is read this and the demons have to obey. That the church at the end of the day is an author of a magical book and that's why it has to nothing could be further from the truth. Built into that ritual several times is the priest referring to his own priesthood. You go there and you start reading this and you don't have the priesthood and you're identifying yourself as a priest. Again, be very dangerous for you. So this is a method that the church has developed for attacking demons. But that method in and of itself was published only 500 years ago. Right? For the first 1500 years of the church we didn't have a ritual. So what did the church do? It prayed. So oftentimes, in fact, I don't use the ritual. I just pray and I find I

get quicker results in that manner. So what is it that I pray? I don't know. Depends on what moves me that day. It might be the rosary. It might be just vicariously praying, just spontaneously praying, invoking God upon this person. And that's my preferred way. If I encounter a belligerent demon that is stubborn for whatever reason, and I have no access to the human being, to the person, then I will use the ritual in order to hammer him, shut him up, wound him. That might go on for many weeks

until there's enough of a beating up that has been done, that okay, I have a little bit of access to the person now, now I can get them involved. That's what you want. The whole thing is about relationship. You want to end one relationship and establish another. So what could a lay person do if someone asked them to pray for them because they thought they were being harassed by a demon or maybe even possessed?

Right. So I think that the safe thing to do is to always ask Jesus to liberate this person from any and every demon. Now, that's with regard to a friend, a colleague, somebody at church with you. Moms and dads, you have a spiritual authority over your children. So you tell the demons and you order them the hell out of your children's lives. And my wife presumably is the priest of my house for example. That's right. Your wife as the priest of your house. I'm the priest of my house. Oh. So I have authority over my wife and children. Exactly. That's what I meant. It wasn't a joke. Exactly. All right. So absolutely. And it's foolish if you don't take that authority. Yeah. It's foolish. You have an authority. Now, that being said, I want to be really clear with folks.

Don't go to the nearest strip club. Don't go to the nearest fortune telling place. And you start casting out demons. Why? Because you don't have any authority to do that. And even I don't have the authority to do that. Right. And you in doing that, what you're going to get is blowback and that blowback might take the skin right off of you, right? Because they're going to come and defend life and property.

Well, gosh, you know, why can't I do this? They're against God's will. They're doing something really sinful. They're doing something that really is aberrant and shouldn't be done and so forth. That person who is this fortune teller, she has the right to belong to the devil if she wants. She has the right to have a relationship with him if she wants. You don She has the right to belong to the devil if she wants. She has the right to have a relationship with him if she wants. You don't have the right to end that relationship. Who are you? I see.

And if God permits it, who are you to say it shouldn't exist? What authority do you have? You have no authority. Interesting. And so I remember in fact, years ago, there was a priest from a different religious community, he was saying how they had a couple of, you know, well a few novices, a few first-year seminarians that were joining the community,

and that is exactly what they decided to do. They went to the, you know, the little brouhaha down the street, the witch, the person that you could go there and you know for 20, 30 bucks you'd put a curse on whoever you wanted. They put their hands up against the brick of that building and just cast out the demons. Well they went back to their friary that night and the paintings started throwing themselves off the wall and then crazy screams throughout the place and it became a little shop of horrors overnight. Wow. And so the next day they had to do an exorcism of the place right to get rid of the infestation which they brought in and then you know there had to be

some deducing going on here. Wait a minute, when you guys came home is when this began, what were you guys doing? And so they admitted it. All right, well, don't do that again. I see. Are there exorcists who are more competent and powerful than others? Have you ever had to call upon a more senior exorcist to help with the?

I think all of us have called upon our colleagues for help. No one is the whole, only Jesus is the whole package. But you might call in somebody who may have a different insight than you have, who may have encountered certain pastoral situations that you maybe haven't. And all of us are always learning, right? We learn from one another and you encounter new situations.

And more of what we encountered doesn't make sense from one another and you encounter new situations. More of what we encounter doesn't make sense than it does make sense. So you're going in always with a certain lack of clarity that you detest, but this is just what reality is. So you go in with a friend that you trust. Like I will not do an exorcism with anyone, with someone whom I don't know. And why? The stakes are just too high. Like because even because you wear a collar around your neck it

doesn't mean you're a safe person. It doesn't, I don't know who you work for. I may know what diocese you belong to, I may know religious order you are incarnated in, but that's it. So I need to get to know something about a person and develop and just see is this person competent? Would this person be a danger in that room? Would I be in any danger if I participate in any exorcism here? How can I be certain that this person is somebody who can be trusted? Will Barron Whenever you perform an exorcism, I presume you have other people in the room with you? Peter Bregman Yeah, you have intercessors, for example. Will Barron Also a witness. I mean, who knows what kind of shenanigans

could be taking place and you wanna have. Exactly, you have several people. You wanna have somebody from the family there of the victim too, if you can help it at all. Some people have no family. But you want people that are going to be your advocate in case all of a sudden there's some claim made that something untoward was done by you towards the victim. advocate in case all of a sudden there's

he can plant a false experience, he can bend light, he can cause something to appear in front of you that is really not there and no one else in the room sees it. You see it and you're like how could you not have seen this? This just happened and so what you want is numerous people that can vouch that you did nothing wrong. You want mixed sexes. You don't want just men in there. You want women as well. In a court of law, you want people in that room that if it came down to in a court of law,

you look like the reasonable person. You took steps to ensure that everybody's safety was being protected here and you were acting always in a professional manner. So you have witnesses, I mean everybody is going to be a witness that you have there. You have intercessors, you have holders to hold down the victim, to ensure that neither you or nor anyone else is attacked.

You have, if you can have a physician there or a nurse or somebody with some medical experience, that would be to your benefit, if you can get that for sure. Somebody skilled in the psychological sciences, skilled in it, it would be to your benefit, especially when you begin a case, because that person can explain to you,

perhaps certain behaviors, propensities and weaknesses that this person has and can explain to you perhaps certain behaviors, propensities and weaknesses that this person has and can explain certain behaviors based upon this individual's background and trauma experience and so forth. Have you ever had a therapist talk with somebody who's been possessed and they themselves may not have been a believer but they realize they came up against something they didn't understand? No, I don't let any non-believers in the room. It would be very bad. I even mean as a referral, like somebody who

referred somebody to you, even as an unbeliever. Although I suppose they would have a naturalistic explanation. Have they referred somebody to me? Yeah. I have had that. I have. And what happened with this professional is that he encountered behaviors for which his science could not explain. And his own internal experience, he encountered evil. He felt evil internally, He felt a darkness. So he felt the presence of the ancient serpent. And so having tried everything else and having, you know, what was regular is every time he was around this individual,

he was in a dark place, he was agitated and he couldn't wait to break free from them. And so he came and said, look, I understand that you help certain people and, you know, could I talk to you about this and this is what I feel, this is what I experience and so forth. Now, would I let him in the room in an exorcism? No, I would only let somebody with a robust faith life, a full out believing Christian, because I don't wanna be response, I don't wanna bring somebody in a position of danger, because the devil is going to be under such powerful duress, under such pain he's

in Mrs. Shephouse here although she appears fine the next year and a half she'll be no problem the jurisdiction jurisdiction that he has there may still be operative and so he can jump back in anytime he wants, but now it's Dr. Milhouse here. He's the problem. So I'm just not interested in throwing water on a grease fire, which is potentially what would happen. Yeah, well we're going to take a. And then when we do, we're going to come back and ask you about maybe more stories that you've experienced in exorcisms, as well as take questions from our local supporters. probably the best app I've ever used, not just Catholic wise, but just all apps ever. If you want to grow in your prayer life, if you want to learn how to meditate, if you want to

listen to excellent Catholic audiobooks, you can't go past Hallow. Go to Hallow.com slash Matt, sign up over there and you will get access to the entire app for free for three whole months. So what are you good to lose? Here's the answer, nothing. All right, I want to say thank you to Emmaus Academy. They've put out this brand new digital platform to help you grow in your love of sacred scripture and therefore your love of Christ. If you're like me, you know how tempting it is just to waste so much of your day on YouTube like maybe you're doing now or listening to political podcasts and other things.

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I mean think about how many times you and I have subscribed to say Hulu or something else when we could be doing something like this and growing in our love of Scripture. So again StPaulCenter.com slash Matt go sign up today. You get two weeks for free. You don't think it's worth it after that time. Cancel it, you won't be charged a cent, but I think you'll be really impressed with what you see. Any sinner is capable of being a great saint. And any saint is also realization of this power that there is in each and every one of us. For good and for evil. The good Lord would have us lay hold of what is worst in ourselves.

Do not think that people who have virtue and kindness and other great talents just came by these things naturally. They had to work at them very hard. Any sinner is capable of being a great the realization that this power that there is in each and every one of us, for good and for evil. The good Lord would have us lay hold of what is worst in ourselves. Do not think that people who have virtue and kindness and other great talents just came by these things naturally. They had to work at them very hard. I'm sorry. Any sinner is capable of being a great saint, And any saint is also realization of this power that there is in each and every one of us. For good and for evil.

The good Lord would have us lay hold of what is worst in ourselves. Do not think that people who have virtue and kindness and other great talents just came by these things naturally. You're back. And we are back live with Father Martins. You have a podcast that I want to tell people about. Is it called The Exorcist Files? It is. Yeah, we have a link in the description below for those who want to check it out.

How did that come about and what is it? Yeah, so I was involved in different projects with the Holy See over the past number of years. And back in 2019, there was a gathering and there was a discussion, the discussion turned towards exorcism and spiritual warfare. And there was a lamenting that the, that there's a dearth of proper and good formation good Catholic solid formation For the people of God in this and frankly that a lot of information that that is disseminated That is being put out there is tainted. It's tainted by

alleged Apparitions by the by messages from alleged visionaries, it's being tainted with, you know, just stuff is being attributed to Padre Pio that is absolutely false, that he just never said. That even some exorcists throughout the world have published books or have offered information that is just false, like, or it's based on a theological premise

that is heretical. So anyway, the point being that I was asked if this would, because you know, I speak a lot, I do a lot of parish missions, I do a lot of conference speaking. And so because I, so the opinion was that I teach reasonably well, that would I be, could a catechesis on exorcism be undertaken? And from this, I encountered some, shortly after that, some statistics that just wowed me. And those statistics were, they were done by two survey companies. So one was Pew and they found that in the demographic of 18 to 29 year olds, that within a five year period, the number of period, the number of those who abandoned religion altogether increased by one-third in five years. At the same time, another company, Public Policy Polling,

discovered that 63% of the same demographic believe it is possible for someone to become demonically possessed. Okay. So you have in this one demographic, you have an increase in irreligiosity occurring, at the same time an increase of evidence. Something is happening in their lives that is making them conclude the devil is real. Right, so this is a stagger. I mean, this just jumped off the page at me. So I thought, you know what? This helped me settle on the format for the Catechesis.

I thought, what I'm gonna do is- The Catechesis is your- Is the podcast. Is the podcast, yeah. So my way of forming people, my teaching on spiritual warfare and exorcism is gonna take the form of a podcast. And in talking with my producer

and talking with different people that were part of it, the format, you know, I didn't want it to be a series of lectures because the very people that I'm trying to hit, these non-religious 18 to 29 year old folks, they're not gonna care about a priest lecturing on spiritual warfare. So what I decided to do was to give an account of my experiences and dramatically reenact

them in like a 3D, binaural format so that when you're listening to an episode, I'm presenting this case, I'm narrating the case and the case is being acted out by professional actors and you sound, and it sounds like you are in the room with them. So you will hear that dialogue happening around you. So you feel the situation and I thought you know this would be the best way that I know to Reach out to this demographic so that I could Attempt to give them some kind of a spiritual and moral compass, right? So I knew that I knew that it wouldn't be ignored I knew that it wouldn't you know, it wouldn't have no listeners, but I I never imagined it would have but I never imagined it would have the listening audience that it has. So this week we will hit three million downloads for that podcast. So what is

the effect? People, I have, you know, it's amazing to read the notes that come in. So the website for the podcast is exorcistfiles.tv. And I encourage folks, if you're interested in learning about the podcast, the information is there to be read. But there's also a sign-up where you can add in your email and when season two is going to launch, then you will be notified about it. But that website is also a way by which people can send me notes or the team notes, my producer notes and so forth. And I'm astounded what has come in from all over the world. People have, you know, there was one lady that wrote in she said, you know, I was born really young and my husband was never religious and we started to

have children when, you know, shortly after we got married and he never went to church with us. So I've gone the whole life of my children without him coming to Mass with us on Sunday morning. Well, the kids are now a little bit older. They're eight, nine years old. And so like if daddy doesn't have to go, why do we have to go to church? And so every Sunday is a war. And it's a war so much that she doesn't even, she can't even take in the experience at church because she's been clobbered by every kid who can clobber her. And so she had heard about the podcast, she suggested to her husband to

listen to it, and she never heard anything about it again. Well, months later he came back and he said, I've just joined our CIA. I heard the podcast. It made the spiritual acutely real for me and I started going to Saturday night Mass. They went Sunday. And he said, no, from now on we're all going to Saturday Night Mass Sunday, and he said no from now on we're all going to church as a family. So it's having you know it's had the the effect that I desired which was to make the spiritual real. It is not intended to be a horror production. There are parts of it that are frightening and they have to be because of the subject matter. But the whole point of the enterprise is to leave with a sense of hope and a sense of

joy that Christ has obtained a victory. Well, in a way, it's like you're doing spiritual jiu-jitsu. You're taking or spiritual whatever the martial art form is where you take that person's attack and you use it against them. Right. Right. right. I'm sure Father Lambert gets this. I'm sure you get this. Do you ever have people say, you're just making things up.

You're just looking for attention. You're just trying to build a podcast. You're just in it for the money. Yeah, and you know, at the end of the day, it's not my job to convince those people, right? It's not my job. It's my job to present the truth. And you know, that same statement

was said to our Lord many times. You know, you're full of it. Every time He was denied, every time He was questioned, that's really the accusation that's being made. And in the end, look, what is God saying to you in your heart about what I do? I could also seeing it be a sign of pride if a priest felt the need to continually defend himself against every accusation. Right. To concern yourself with that. Right. It's not my job to convince, but if you want help, you want help, I am here to help you. I'll be your best friend. If you don't want help, well then hey, so long.

It was nice chatting as brief as it was. I'm sure we'll have a lot of people watching this podcast who want to get in touch with you personally, you specifically, just as they might on your podcast. What do you say? I'm sure you can't answer every email, so where do you direct people? They can be directed to the website and I receive thousands of emails a month, so I cannot possibly answer them all. But they are screened, they're gone,

if there's something that I can answer that a way in which I may help people, I do respond to them. So, you know, emails like father, can you please call me, it's urgent, I will not respond to those. Okay. Emails that are sent in, you know, father, can you please call me? It's urgent. I will not respond to those. Mason Hickman Okay. Peter Worsley Emails that are sent in, you know, my, when I was 17 years old, I saw something while I was at summer camp. I saw a scary...

Mason Hickman Do you want to just bring in this mic down a little bit and pulling it in more? Sure. Peter Worsley Yeah, that's perfect. Peter Worsley Like that. Mason Hickman Yeah, thank you. Peter Worsley I saw something at a summer camp that was disturbing. I'd like to talk to you about, well, that, you well, that was 17 years ago. Like we moved on, pal. Yeah.

You know, I just, that would be lovely, you know, a lovely summer's afternoon, summer's day afternoon conversation, but I just don't have time for those conversations. So then do you direct people to their bishop, their chancellor? Yeah, if you need spiritual help, you contact your pastor. Okay.

And your pastor then will contact the diocese and then that'll start the wheels going. Can you say that louder for all the people in the chat? Why is that? Are they all trying to get in touch with him? Yeah, there's just various versions of like, will you help me through Super Chat or through like YouTube chat?

It's like, we've been trying to be charitable, but can you say that louder? Yeah, sure. Just repeat it. So like if you are in spiritual trouble, call your diocese. If you are in spiritual trouble, A. Eliminate the sin out of your life. B. Go to confession. C. Tell your pastor and ask him for help. And please do this in this order. So get rid of this stop sin. Go to confession and repent. Then go to your pastor and state what's happened and ask for his help. And if need be, ask for a referral to the

diocesan exorcist. And then do whatever they tell you. Like don't be telling the exorcist what to do. You are not there to give him orders. You are there to take direction. Well we have a ton of questions and a lot of them are pretty exciting. I want to get to them. But before I do that, I want to remind orders you are there to take direction? Well we have a ton of questions and a lot of them are pretty exciting. I want to get to them. But before I do that, I want to remind people that Exodus 90 has something called St. Michael's Lent. It's not their thing, it's the church's thing. It's a practice of fasting and penance that's really fallen out of popularity within the church. But St. Francis of Assisi used to practice it with his brothers. It's a 40 day period of fasting, which starts on the assumption of the Theotokos to the Feast of St. Michael.

If you go to Exodus90.com. You can learn more about it. You can put in your email, sign up, join the waiting list. There are literally at least tens of thousands. I would say that is a safe number. Tens of thousands of men around the world who are about to undergo this. And it's a great way to take your spiritual life to the next level. Speaking about repentance, speaking about increasing your prayer life, speaking about distancing yourself from avenues of temptation. This is a great way to do it. Exodus90.com slash Matt. Click the link in

the description below and sign up over there. Did you give a talk at a conference of theirs or are you about to? I have been invited to. I've been invited to give a talk. They're doing really good stuff. They are doing great stuff. All right, let's do this. Maybe think of this as the lightning round, Father. I'm sure we could dedicate a whole podcast to every one of these questions, but here we go. Megan M says, Father Carlos mentioned being the property of the devils before baptism. What is his view then on what happens to poor souls who die before they can be baptized through miscarriage or abortion? We have three little souls who never made it to us, and I can't fathom that God would create a soul only to give them to the devil. So God created an order and human beings

destroyed that order. And so God's offer of salvation is exactly that. He came and intervened in time to give us an alternative, an offer of salvation to stop the cycle of destruction. Now, with regard to your three little ones who tragically died before baptism, we believe in a merciful God, we believe in a God who is just, and who desires the salvation of your children even more than you do, because that desire that is inside you, he implanted in you, and it is a mere

reflection of the desire He has. However, the Church can only do what the Lord has given it jurisdiction to do. And with regard to being a mouthpiece of the truth, all we know with certainty is that those who are baptized and die in the state of sinlessness are assured of eternal salvation. This does not mean that your three little ones, your three unbaptized babies, are in hell. It doesn't mean that. But what it does mean is that until baptism the devil has real jurisdiction over us. What that means in eternity, I don't know. I don't know what it means. I don't know that. So look, I know a glimpse of it and I can flesh it out. Prior to our Lord's passion, death and resurrection, every single soul went to hell. Every single

soul. This means St. Joseph, Jesus' foster father, went to hell. Every single soul. This means St. Joseph, right? Jesus' foster father went to hell. St. John the Baptist, the greatest man ever born of woman, went to hell. But now hell had two places, right? It had Gehenna, which translated, means literally the garbage dump, and it had Shoal, which was the bosom of Abraham.

And so the righteous went to shul, or were in a state that is called shul, where they were waiting for the Messiah. Those souls that are in Gehenna, death is eternal for them. Now, it's not where Joseph went, to be clear. I'm sorry? Just to be clear, that's not where St. Joseph went. He did not go to the hell of the damned. For those at home. Correct, correct. Joseph did not go to the hell of the damned, to be perfectly clear. Do unbaptized babies, so persons who died before they could make a conscious decision for or against Christ, who died without the grace of baptism, where do they go? The Church does not have an answer for that, not with certainty. The Church points to a hope that it has, that God brings out a happy

ending for this, but that is an area of certainty God has not permitted His Church to possess. Okay, yeah. Can I read the Catechism, which basically echoes what you just said? This comes from 1257, paragraph 1257 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Lord himself affirms that baptism is necessary for salvation. He also commands his disciples to proclaim the gospel to all nations and to baptize them. Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. The church does not know of any means other than baptism that assures entry into eternal

beatitude. This is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are reborn of water and spirit. God has bound salvation to the to the second baptism, but he himself is not bound to it The church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received baptism are baptized by death by their death For and with Christ this baptism of blood like desire of baptism brings about the fruits of the baptism, etc. Oh, here's the part I was trying to look at. This is 1261. As regards children who have died without baptism, the church can only entrust them to the mercy of God as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved and Jesus' tenderness towards children which caused him to say, let the children come to me, do not hinder them,

allows us to hope that there is a way for salvation for children who have died without baptism. All the more urgent is the church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy baptism. Right. Yeah. And I can give Matt, perhaps in this situation, a little bit of a liturgical hope, a hope that comes from the Church's liturgical practice, which is not just merely an administrative action. The Church's liturgy is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Look, in what you just read right now, the Church has a liturgy for the death of those infants who die without baptism, right?

And it entrusts them to the mercy of God. But you know what? In the 2,000-year history of the Church, it has never prayed for its damned. Mm-hmm. Right? So, there's a segment of human beings that were potential human beings, because it is possible to be damned. So the church is not aware of anyone, not with certainty.

The church has never made a declaration because it simply doesn't have the knowledge that person X is in hell, not even with Judas, for example. It looks pretty damning when you read the scriptures, but the church itself has never definitively declared that Judas is in hell or anyone else for that matter, not even like Adolf Hitler. That certainty is not available to the church, but it prays for unbaptized infants. So that's a great sign of hope. Now, the church is unable to offer certainty.

What humility the church has, don't you think? Like, I love that line in the Catechism that says, the church does not know of any other means. In other words, the church isn't making this stuff up. We're teaching you what we received. Right. Susan LNFL says, what role, if any, does a guardian angel have in an exorcism?

Does a particular devotion to our guardian angel keep us a little more protected in turning away from sin or any demonic influences? Well, I would say it would keep you more than just a little more protected. You know, the guardian angel is there to be your agent and your advocate. You know, you were in trust from all eternity. You know, your guardian angel was known that you were his patient, your his client, if you will. So to cultivate a relationship with your guardian angel

and what does doing that do? You're in cultivating that relationship, you are giving him permission to be a greater part of your life and that is to your benefit. So that will protect you more, right? It'll keep you out of more trouble. The angels are higher beings than humans, but even they were created for the

sake of mankind, which is their own humility for the angels that didn't fall is is something astounding because this superior being. Is taking orders on your behalf and how often have you failed him? How often have you made his job more difficult by your choices and me as well for that matter? well for that matter. Michael and Angelina say, please ask Father if he has ever had help from Saint Michael, Gabriel, or Raphael in an exorcism, what stories would he be willing to share? Also, has he used a rock relic from Saint Michael's cave in Italy in an exorcism? And if so, what happened? So yes to all of the above questions. You know, what help do they give? Well, they help combat the demon. If the demon is really belligerent, and I learned this from a priest friend of mine, senior Pat Brinkin, who is an absolutely outstanding

exorcist and one of my best friends, just an amazing, amazing, amazing man of God. It was actually from him that when the victim, when the demon would break free from the holders and violence would begin, he would call on St. Michael, he was Michael, restrain him, hold him down. And then you would see this person who is berserk and out of control, sit down and, you know, and follow the exact command, put his hands flat on the table. The hands are put flat on the table. And there's just an incredible anger that is there.

So the angels are very much operative. One of the things I ask in an exorcism, well, I ask three questions. What is your name? For what purpose were you created? Who is your nemesis in heaven? What saint is your arch enemy? So why would I ask these questions? Because they give you really critical information and they sure as hell don't want to answer a single one of them. So you wear them down. You wear them down. So the name is... How do you wear them down? Through praying. Stop! Stop! No, I'm gonna keep going until

you tell me your name. Okay. So the prayer is kryptonite to them. Right? They're like, you know, how somebody putting a cigarette lighter to your fingertip, you know, they're bringing it over. At a certain point, you reach your limit. I see. Right? Well, tell me your name, or the flame goes back to your finger. All right, so it's, it's, um, torturing demons, basically. Well, I mean, you're, you're, you are proclaiming the word of God. They find it torturous. Right? So my job, I'm, I'm not a professional torturer and I don't think in that way.

And I don't take delight even in inflicting pain upon the demons because you know what? If I do so, I'm becoming them. Interesting. I'm not interested. I'm there to do a job. Interesting. I wanna do a job and you know what?

At the end of every exorcism, my routine, my team's routine, we go to a Mexican restaurant and I have a tall margarita and and that's what do you get to eat though? Oh, it varies. Okay. I love carne asada Margarita is the point though. I mean I could see you need to wind down after an experience sure sure but you you know, you're not you're not a. Sure, but you're not a torturer. A torturer is by definition an agent of evil and takes delight in that. And I don't take delight in that regard.

I take delight in the fact that there's justice happening at a cosmic level, at a grand level. But I just wanna go in, do the job, and then I just, I never wanna see that demon again. But I just want to go in do the job and then I just I never want to see that demon again. Yeah so I Was I was answering something or what was the question again? I think it was about st. Michael Gabriel like it calling upon them in exorcisms. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's it Have you ever asked a demon what they're like?

Oh, I was telling can you tell us a story of like a nemesis where you're like, huh, that's okay. Right. Yeah. That sounds cool. So okay, the name one is obvious. For what purpose were you created? Yeah. What do they say?

A whole host of things, I imagine. It's amazing. I was, I was created to protect virgins chastity. Oh my gosh. I was created to teach men to step into their identity. This is the things I say. Yeah, because they were angels. I was created to guard trees.

I was created to protect the world against fire. So you think about, OK, in Eden, right, in the earth's pre-fallen state, you know, could you have had a wildfire? Well, probably not. Why? There were angels there to ensure it didn't happen. That's a possibility. Sure. It's a possibility. So the point is that demons were created good. But you know that the reason I most often have heard as to why they were created, and it astounds me every time, and I've heard it so many times, I was created to be part of the throng that proclaimed glory to God in the highest above the shepherd's field. God created beings for that event. He created spiritual fireworks for

that proclamation. And the thing is then, you know, those demons, so they react horrifically, for example, when you sing a Christmas carol in the room. Really? In an exorcism. Or, you know, the next time I went to Israel and I went to the shepherd's field, I made sure to bring back a bag of rocks, right?

So you take a rock and touch it to a demon who states that this was my purpose and he rejected it. Well, this thing now is, is the cutting edge of a blade that wounds him. So is this part of a test as well for you? I mean, how many people have you said, why are you created? Like I imagine if somebody is faking an exorcism or faking demonic possession.

If we're doing an exorcism. It's already been established. It's already been established. It's already been established. And the answer is always something like that then. Something like that. It's- Like some holy purpose. Oh, absolutely.

That's what I mean. Absolutely. Have you ever gotten something that was like singular? Like I'm the only one, like for a specific thing? So I had one one time, and this will answer also the third question of who's your nemesis in heaven? This will slide into that one,

because both situations happen in one. So the steaman at one time would never state for why he was created. He wouldn't state it, wouldn't state it. Went back and hammered it, hammered that, hammered it, hammered it. And then, you know, I just, and I was in fact assisting another exorcist with this one. And so I was in the room and I was praying and it just, look, it just kind of came to me interiorly, like and it just, look, it just kind of came to me interiorly like dowry. I saw the word dowry, dowry, Our Lady's dowry. And I turned to him and he was proud and belligerent and loud and I'll

never tell you you effing priests, I'll never tell you, I'll never tell you. I said were you to be part of our lady's dowry. And he just dropped his head in utter, utter shame that he was created to be part of the gift God the Father gave to Joseph at the betrothal. And he rejected that. So So which saint do you think we called down? St. Joseph. Joseph. Right. So this guy failed to report for duty. Right. So and I had a relic of St. Joseph. St. Joseph's body was never found. Right. So his, we don't know where he was buried. It has been a 2,000-year tradition of the Church that one day his body will be found, it will be found incorrupt, and it will usher in a new reign of peace into the Church.

So this is even talked about in the Vatican in the Congregation of the Causes of Saints. So it is not an official teaching, but the church's mystical tradition, so mystics repeatedly have received this message. And the telling thing is this, no ancient church ever laid claim to possessing the body of Joseph, none. So what we do have is a cloak. In Latin, the word is a palium, a mantle, a

cloak, that after his passing it remained in the possession of the Blessed Mother and then after her Assumption remained in the the possession of Saint John the Apostle and then in the Church, and it remained in Palestine until the fourth century when Jerome the Church Father brought it and the veil of Our Lady to Rome and he placed both garments in the Basilica of St. Anastasia where he was the parish priest. Jerome had immense power because he was the secretary to Pope St. Damasus. So those two garments remain in that church to this day.

Powerful. Sorry, I was just looking at the more comments that are flying in here. You have a ton of people interested in this topic. Do you want me to send the super chats, Matt? Just send the ones that you are pretty sure I'd like to answer. We always prioritize locals questions first, obviously. We have have two for 50. So I'll send those.

Cardona says if demons don't have matter, how are they able to manipulate objects? Like the example of the fan, the musical box and the objects falling off the shelves. I understand they get the jurisdiction over the person, but how does that work with objects? Right. Because they're in a different order of reality. So we are in a different order of reality. So we are in an order comprised of two principles, spiritual and matter. They are not. They are in spiritual only. So our nature is confined to act upon physical things in a certain way. They are not. So they are able to do so. The mystery of God by which they are able to do that is a mystery of God. But they are absolutely able to manipulate reality. And the fact that it's biblical, it's a part of divine revelation, the fact that they exist

and they can act on physical reality. Every encounter of our Lord with a demon is an example of that. We have a super chat here. Thank you very much for the $50 super chat. This person says, one night I felt a negativity and verbally told Satan to depart from my home. As I finished my nightly prayers, I woke up to smoke,

my home caught fire, got my family out safely, but now I suffering. Did I go about banishing evil in the wrong way? I mean, it's hard, right? You're dealing with very limited information. I'm dealing with limited information. You know, look, you can you can have the demon leave.

You can order the demon to leave your home. If you belong to God. If you belong to the devil, he's not in your home if you belong to God. If you belong to the devil, he's not in your home, you're in his home. So your words have no power of eviction, right? Because you belong to him and everything that belongs to you is his. Ugandan Catholic guy, if you're from Uganda, hi,

I was there a few years. He did, he sent it in Ugandan currency. What a guy, I love you, thank you. He sent us 50,000 of whatever in Ugandan Catholic guy if you're from Uganda. Hi, I was there he sent it in Ugandan currency. What a guy. I love you Thank you Whatever you got in I love Catholics in Uganda. I've been there to speak He says could father kindly give an example or two of possessions He has encountered that resulted from sexual sins Has he ever encountered demonic activity that was triggered specifically by someone watching pornography? So the the answer to the latter question is yes.

You know, what has happened when people have committed sexual sin? Heavens, they become infected. So look, the sexual faculty is the way by which we bond with another human being, right? So the two become one flesh, we are told, when a man and woman comes together. So the sexual act produces a unity.

That unity remains long after that physical act is done. Right. As you walk away from one another, that unity remains. And this is why Paul says, you know, those of you who go to a prostitute, don't you know that you're bonding with a prostitute? Not just for the time that you're physically together, but now what is spiritually present in one

has been, the other has become infected with it. This is part of the reason why, it's not the only reason, but it's part of the reason why porn is so addictive. Because if you're lusting after an image, right? Lusting after an actress, an actor, whatever, what have you, well you're bonded to that individual but you're bonded also to every other individual who is also lusting. So you're becoming part of this nexus of powerful addiction. So aside from the psychological addiction, aside from all of the other things that make that, that make a human being addicted to porn,

that spiritual component is one to be reckoned with. So what happens when, you know, does there have to be full of possession? No, in fact, the vast majority of spiritual diseases, spiritual clinging are far less of possession? No. In fact, the vast majority of spiritual diseases, spiritual clinging are far less of possession, and I might add even far less dangerous. You know, being possessed does not mean you're going to be eternally damned, necessarily. You can be free of grave sin, and in other words, in the state of grace, and be possessed, and you can be possessed because you've been in grave sin, but you repent of that sin and in other words in the state of grace and be possessed and you can be possessed because you've been in grave sin but you repent of that and guess what that doesn't get rid of the

demon himself so so you can be possessed you're in the state of grace you die yep the demon leaves you and you go on to eternity internal blessedness right no problem but but far more dangerous is right? No problem. But far more dangerous is the temptation that we get under, right? That's the ordinary demonic activity and that's the only one that has the power to damn us, right? Temptation to sin. And if a demon is hanging around us he has picked up some jurisdiction, it's not strong enough to be anything too too oppressive but he is making a certain aberration appealing to you, a certain type of image you shouldn't have, a perversion. That is entirely possible and that is something that you would be better off perhaps with a fuller possession than in that state. This person asked to be anonymous. He says,

If we feel on a spiritual attack, is it dangerous to address the entity that may or may not be there without mentioning Christ? For example, after my deliverance experience from an obsessive, oppressive state by my bishop, I now often say, go away, usually more colorful language when I feel something. I've started including in Christ's name, I command you to go away. I think that would be highly prudent, right? I think I think you would you would to invoke the strong man that that has evicted Satan as the prince of this world. I think that would be a good move to do.

Bob says, if you know you're possessed, can you self-exercise via prayer? You know, that's a good question. I don't know. Certainly, almost nobody I have ever met could do such a thing. Is it in principle possible? I'm not going to say that it's impossible because I just don't know. But if you are able to do so, it is because God sent a grace. It's done through God, not through your own power. God has had mercy upon you and has enabled you to make the right choices and has given you help. And you know what? It might be your Aunt Sally who died 33 years ago and you were her favorite. And she's been praying for you from her place in heaven.

And thank God for you that you have Aunt Sally. And you will only know this one day when you cross over into eternity and you see all of the help that you're able to get from these folks who in life, you may have not given them a passing glance or just, ah, you know, and Sally, she's fine, but you know, I find her a little bit boring.

She makes cupcakes and they're all right, but I can't stand her personality. But you know what? In eternity, you will see what she did for you. Travis Goldie says, I just glanced at the news and saw the director of The Exorcist passed away today. It's got me wondering your opinion on these Hollywood films like Constantine Nefarious, which is one of the best movies I've ever seen. By the way, The Nun. Is it all harmful or is there any good in these sometimes exaggerated portrayals of faith? I know a great many non-believers

are sick of these films for the for the faith betrayed. Okay, so I need some clarity. Yeah, the director of the director. Can you look that up just to clarify the director of the exorcist? Friedkin. I don't know. It's the original exorcist. Yeah, he died. Well, heavens, he was an old man. Yeah, he's not he's not saying not young. Now there is a movie. William. Yeah, Friedkin. Friedkin. Okay. Yeah he died today. Well God you know let's say a Hail Mary for him. Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Have mercy on him O Lord the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. You know we're all gonna go there one day. Now there is so he it was Friedkin. Yeah. Have mercy on him, O Lord, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You know, we're all gonna go there one day. Now, there is, so he was Friedkin in Huda, okay, because there is a movie coming out called The Exorcist in October. Okay. October 13th is its release and it's, I shouldn't say a sequel, but it's a remake of the original. This is the 50th anniversary of the original. The original was utterly terrifying. Is it called the Exorcist Believer, colon Believer, the Exorcist, colon Believer. There was probably some spin-offs

of the Exorcist or some sequels. There were tons. This might be a complete remake. It's got an October release date. Oh, okay. This one in October has some of the actors in the original in it. And your thoughts?

I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. Your thoughts on Nefarious? Did you watch that? Oh, I absolutely did. I loved it. Nefarious is- The ending was weird and not even in a good way,

but the rest was brilliant. That was my summary. It was brilliant. Nefarious is the best movie about demonic possession ever made, easily. Wow. So most movies get caught up with, and the original Exorcist movie did as well, although it did it in a, that one was the most true to life of all of them. Really? It's the most true to life.

People ask me, things would happen in the movie, The Exorcist, does it really occur in real life? Yes, with the exception of one thing, the 360 degree head spinning. So that can't physically happen because that would be a direct violation. It would violate the laws of nature in such a way that it would render, it would violate the laws of nature in such a way that it would render, it would kill the victim because the neck cannot be twisted 360 degrees.

Now could there be the illusion of that happening? Oh sure, the demon is perfectly capable of doing that. But what these movies, beginning with The Exorcist did, what they presented was the depth of the demonic power, the crawling up the wall, the levitation and all of this kind of stuff. What Nefarious did was it brought you into the demonic mind, which is much more interesting. So that's the realm that I deal with, that an exorcist deals with. And that, I will tell you, is at the end of the day far more frightening. It's far more. Because, you know, if you saw somebody levitate in front of you, it would probably make the hair on the

back of your head stand up. All right, again, the 18th time would it do that? I see. 118th time? Yeah, eventually. At a certain point, you move on. And so, at the start of my career, I saw lots more of those diabolical phenomena than I do now. I see almost nothing now.

And that's the same with all of us. Really? Well, because they don't impress. So he doesn't waste his time. Now, if I bring somebody new in the room, if I'm training someone, oh yeah, then the Academy Award-winning demon comes out and, you know, watch this. I want to impress. I want to make myself big. I want, you know, I want this person to be scared of my power. They just get off on that. What's the craziest thing you've seen in an exorcism? Oh, gosh, that that is really hard to answer. I mean, I've seen levitation depends what you mean by crazy.

But see, there's an external experience. There's an internal experience. What's what's, I guess, the most shocking external thing you've witnessed. That if you were to share it with the average man on the street, they would say, I'm sorry, there's no way that they're you know, that they're picking up a human being and tossing a human being across the room like like as if it's like sheer nothing like in in a quarter of a second, this huge human being is being thrown across the room.

A 300 pound man being thrown clear across a very large room, does a flip in the air. That was the same session where I was hit in the head. He came off scot-free. I came off needing hospitalization. Yeah, what about levitations? What is that? How does that? I mean do you see that at first? The first time you look at it you go, okay something's going on. I'm not really seeing what I'm seeing. No. I mean it hits

you for what it is. Okay the devil is here. So if there was any doubt in your mind, yeah, they're really a possession here. Okay. Yeah. That'll do it. It just becomes for us matter of fact. Like okay, so the laws of nature have here been suspended. And so you move on, right? You move on to now getting rid of the demon here. I've heard that another identifier that somebody's possess is their knowledge of languages

they don't have shouldn't have access to. Is that true in your experience? They have never been taught correct. Yeah. Like not knowing a word or two or a couple of sentences, but perfect fluency. Perfect. So, so how about this? How about doing an exorcism and you're reading the ritual and the demon is saying the words along with you And the demon is saying the words along with you and correcting your Latin. Oh, no. So anything to get on the inside, anything to get into your head. So you're reading and he's reading it along with you, not after you.

Is it the person hears you by heart? No, no, that's not the way you say it. You stupid priest. This is the way you say it. Get it right. Yeah, I would evacuate my entire, I would be myself. I'm really glad that it's you and not me. But again, by the eighth time, by the 88th time. Yeah. No, I get it. So given indefinite time. Yeah. You start getting bored. What

else you got? You start getting bored. And that's what the demonic power, at the end of the day, the demonic power. How much worse can it get? Shh, don't ask that. Becomes boring. Yeah. At the end of the day, the demonic power becomes boring. What becomes, what always is intriguing

is to get into his thinking and to determine what is he really after. Okay, here is a question from Frank C. He just gave us a super chat. Thanks, Frank. He says, Hi, Father, can you recommend a prayer, devotion or specific modification that can help battle sexual immorality and temptations? The rosary and Eucharistic Adoration. and temptations. The rosary and Eucharistic Adoration. I want to recommend two to men especially. I've created a 21 day course called strive21.com

and basically every day it's like a three to five minute video. Tens of thousands of men are going through this, have gone through this. It's 100% free. Strive21.com. We can go sign up today and you might find it helpful as well. I send you slacks. Okay, thanks. We have another question here. Emily says, is it true that you have to find out the demon's name before it can be

cast out or is it just a just just movie stuff? It's it's helpful to find out the name, but it's not true that you must know the name. Someone is asking you to comment on Harry Potter. Yeah, you know, just full disclosure before you say what you're going to say. I have no problem with Harry Potter. Yeah, I'm fine with it. It might be a bad piece of fiction. I don't think it is. I think it's a fine piece of fiction. There's my cards on the table.

So, so I, I don't have anything against Harry Potter either. Um, so, you know, what would be, what might be a concern at a general level? I mean, what's happening in Harry Potter is a blurring of the lines between good and evil. So, you know, traditionally anybody who practiced sorcery was doing something bad. Now, do I think that kids will go away

from reading Harry Potter and automatically think that casting spells is something good? No. Will some kids? Yes, because of their own makeup, their own imagination gets them to experiment with that and so forth. But if I had children, would I let them read Harry Potter?

I would I would pick out for them better books that wouldn't have the lines of good and evil blurred like that Okay, there's a question here, could you help me pronounce this Thursday? Can you it's about the oh so the this Thursday? Can you, it's about the... Oh, so the Anneliese Mackell tapes? Are those genuine? What's your opinion on them? Could you tell me what they are and then have you respond? The Anneliese Mackell tapes are recordings of an alleged exorcism done on a young girl named Anneliese Mackell in Germany in the 70s and that's the exorcism, the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose was based on. I see, yeah, yeah. Familiar with this? Okay, your opinion? That's the exorcism, the movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose was based on. Familiar with this?

Okay, your opinion? So are the tapes genuine? Yes, they were recorded by the exorcist. A lot of ink has been spilled over the Annalise case. And that poor girl was possessed, there's no question. There's lots of evidence. It's one of the favorite cases for people to poo poo exorcism because they think that

the exorcist and her parents killed her through starvation and that's not true either. Would it have been prudent to stop the exorcism as she was losing the amount of weight she did? Maybe, but you know what? It's real easy to stand back and judge a situation from a distance and say, you know, this is what should have been done.

None of her family, none of her friends, none of the immediate people involved in the situation ever suggested anything was ever done incorrectly none of the immediate people involved in the situation ever suggested anything was ever done incorrectly or wrongly or imprudently. No one connected with it. So I think the thing is, the Lord decided for a particular outcome. It's not my place to judge whether it was her time to go, it was not her time to go, I just don't know.

But it was a genuine case with a genuine demons. The only thing that I think was absolutely done incorrectly in the case and I would, I was, to say I was disappointed is an understatement. I was abhorred by the kind of interrogating that the exorcists did to the demons and by the length of talking they allowed them to do, to talk about matters pertaining to the church at large, matters pertaining to the Second Vatican Council. You're saying the priest allowed the demon to do this? Yeah. And this is all recorded? It's all recorded.

And I would never, I would never ever give a demon a microphone for anything other than this case at hand and you're exiting this victim. Why did they record it, Dina? They recorded it, see at the time, like we are absolutely forbidden to record anything now. Anything that's recorded, for example, could be subpoenaed in a court of law.

And let's say, for example, okay, you picked up a demon here, there, or anywhere. Would you want your state of possession to be broadcast, like to become part of the public record? I would not want that. Right. Nobody would want that. And so anything recorded can be subpoenaed. The only thing that I record is an intake form where I have people record, give me personal details and and explain to me while they will answer specific questions that I use to help me determine where the wounds are and then those get locked into a safe and then at

a certain point I will assign them an alias and I will copy those forms and I will remove the original name and assign an alias so that their identity is protected and where I have those locked up that you know they're in my office I have somebody with instructions to destroy them if I were to die because at that point they're not relevant any longer. Something that you and Father Lampert, are you familiar with him? The other exes of that? Something familiar, the two of you seem like really chill

dudes, like really kind of grounded, level-headed, non-sensational guys. And I imagine if you weren't, you'd burn out quickly. Is that right? Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess, how is it that you, because I imagine seeing what you see and doing what you do I it I can imagine it being very exhausting and trying on the mind to the point where you have to retire and allow

Some new fellow to come up through the ranks. Why why maybe maybe I've got that wrong or why isn't that the case for you? I Just have so much confidence in God like I'm just so delighted to be part of his team and in his sovereignty. I have just so much. Look, the devil will outthink me. The devil will outmaneuver me. He has more strength than I have,

but he does not have more faith in God than I do. And that at the end of the day, you know, there it is. How important is humility for an exorcist? Well, gosh, I mean, humility is necessary for holiness, right? Our lady's great virtue is her humility, her nothingness. At the end of the Lord, the Lord is the winner and it is the Lord who exercises. If a case goes on for 13 years, I don't view myself as, you know, I don't, I mean, you will be tempted to think, gosh, am I really just useless? Like this really just, I just, you know, and you'll call in others here, like, do you want

to have a go at this? And, but at the end of the day, he's the one that determines the day of departure, if he determines it at all. And we just have to accept. That's it. There's only one God. He has sovereignty. We just accept and obey. That's true in our own lives as well,

isn't it, with the things we struggle with, be it sickness or sins that we keep repeating, falling into being repentant of. Thorn in the flesh, yeah. We would like that to be just that one prayer. But often we're being called to endure our unreturnedness. Or if we find the right rosary, the right devotion, if we, you know, the right apparition of Our Lady and read the right messages and all the right parish program that we do. This is good. This is really important to say because I find that people who, in my estimation, tend to be a little obsessive about the demonic also tend to be doing what you're doing there. Like they'll start ordering other people to do the devotions they're doing or to wear the kind of scapula they're wearing.

Why is that possibly problematic? Because it places too much emphasis on technique and on stuff. Yes. Right? We're not a people of technique. We're people of relationship with God. You know, so look, I think a lovely devotion, a wonderful devotion is the chaplet of divine mercy. I almost never pray it. Like I don't pray it every day. And not because there's anything wrong with it,

but I just. There's a lot of devotions. There's a lot of devotions. And I just, you know, that time at three in the afternoon, I'm doing something. I just can't drop what I'm doing at that time every day and just say the prayer. But even at other times like it's, I will pray that devotion, but if I'm around the dying sure I will.

And I enjoy doing it. But really it takes a special occasion or somebody dying for me to pray that devotion, but there's nothing wrong with it. So if somebody were to say, well Father, and I know, I guarantee because I just said this in the air, I'm going to get emails, I'm gonna get messages through my website of people saying, Father you just don't understand the importance. And maybe I don't. I think we're, I think we should be of the opinion that if the church doesn't mandate something nor should you. Right. Right. So to look at our Eastern Catholics and condemn them having different devotions seems highly arrogant. Right. Right. In my estimation.

What do you think of the screw tape letters? I'm not sure if I'm sure you've read them. Sure. Yeah. of Lewis's concept of, if you remember this, demons being assigned like angels? BD That does happen. We encounter that reality. We encounter that especially when you crack open a case, you crack open a kind of stronghold in someone and you isolate a demon and you forbid him to even leave until you say, no, no, you will remain here until you are cast out. You will remain. And at this point, if he's been weakened enough and he's just being leveled with prayer, then why are you here? What rights do you have? What other demons are here?

And what rights are at play? And then, and you will, you will occasionally hear that we were assigned, we were assigned over this family. We were assigned over people coming from this nation. We, we were assigned to do this, to do X. We were assigned to do this to do acts I'm curious about this scripture verse Let's see if I can

It's the one where he talks about you know a demon comes and It goes and you sweep the house clean and it comes back with a myriad of when a demon when a demon leaves a place It wanders through it's it is a, it wanders through arid wastelands seeking comfort, but finding none. Right? So that- Then it goes and, yeah, okay, and when it, so then it says, I will return to my house from which I came.

And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of the person is worse than the first." What does that mean? Well, so it means that when they're cast out, demons experience horrific pain, and they do. And they do. They will start at a certain point in an exorcism negotiating, well, if you let me stay, I promise I won't do you know I won't afflict this person this one I'll be better I will allow the person to go to church I'll do this I'll do that they start making peace terms right which are useless which which we

of course ignore but they will try to circle back and go back to the place where they came. And if they can, if they find it swept clean, if they find it hospitable to them, the wound is still there and they still have the right, they will go in and they'll say to their buddies, let's go. And so this is why, unless I get a cooperation from people, so again, I don't do magic, I bring Christ. And if people say, just get rid of the demons, just no, no, no, no, no, because if I do that, they're going to listen to me, they're going to leave. And what's going to happen is the fulfillment of this scripture.

They're going to come back with six demons, more, more, seven demons, more powerful than themselves. And then your second state is going to be worse than the first. And you know what you're going to say? That SOB priest Martins came here and he made things worse. That's what you're going to say. So unless I will help you if you were helpable, if you're not helpable, call me when you change your mind. We have a super chat here from Joe Sosa. Thank you, Joe. He says, Hi, Father, I was a non-practicing Catholic and had a spiritual awakening this year after going to Jerusalem. Just wanted to thank you for the work you are doing. YouTube is where young people engage.

Thank you. Is your work on YouTube as well? There's lots of interviews and stuff. You should post your podcast to YouTube. Even if there's no video, I'm sure your producer is, is, is listening. You should post his podcast to YouTube. Um, KH sent us a super chat. Thank you. He says, or she, hi father, not sure if you touched on it already,

but what was your calling to become a priest? God bless you both. I attended a retreat in 2003 and I I had no intention of being a priest never wanted to be a priest in my life and I attended this retreat and I remember it was Tuesday morning, June the 3rd 2003 at 10 18th and I Tuesday morning, June the 3rd, 2003 at 10.18. And I heard the voice of God. And it didn't come as an audible sound,

but it came as definitely words that ripped right through me and that I just could not ignore. Carlos, become a priest, I promise to make you very happy. That's what happened. And then I went- Did he? Oh, he did. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I couldn't imagine doing anything else. Can you tell us as we wrap up about your Relic collection or whatever you...

Yeah, so I have a ministry of Relics whereby I minister to churches, schools, and prisons throughout the world with a large Vatican-sponsored ministry where I teach on the saints and I give people an opportunity to venerate the relics. Why would I do that? Well, what are relics? Relics are objects that have a physical connection with a saint or with our Lord, and they're usually divided into three classes. First-class relics are the body or any part of the body, fragment of the body of a saint, bone, flesh, for example. Second class relics are anything a saint personally owned,

an item of clothing or a book, for example, or any fragments of those items. And third class relics are any objects that have been touched to a first, second, or third class relic of a saint, or anything that a saint himself, for example, touched in his life like a like a doorknob from a door that a saint would have used kind of thing. Relics we hear about in Scripture evoke healing. In fact, every time relics are

mentioned in Scripture, two things always occur. There is always a healing, and touch is the way by which that healing comes about. It's not because relics are magic, but because God is very proud of his saints, and he likes to draw attention to them by working miracles in their presence. So for example, in the second book of Kings, a man had died, was being buried. Inadvertently, as his body was being lowered into the grave, it touched the bones of the prophet Elisha. So the way they dug people into the ground, the way they buried people,

they dug a deep shaft into the earth and then there were shelves carved. And then somebody died. Body was laid on its own shelf until that grave was full. Then it was sealed. And they started the whole thing over again somewhere else. Inadvertently, that man's body came into contact with the bones of the prophet Elisha,

and it says he came back to life and jumped to his feet. In the New Testament, in Acts 19, we hear about St. Paul the apostle being so holy that when he would walk by they would touch handkerchiefs to his flesh and then lay them on the sick and it says their diseases would leave them and if they had evil spirits they would depart from them. So relics have a healing effect and are exorcistic and those things sometimes are two sides of the same coin.

Some illnesses have their root in the demonic, right? For example, we've done exorcisms on certain people that have tumors, like scientifically diagnosed tumors, like a particular cancer is identified and diagnosed, that is not necessarily a rare cancer. Just, hey, we've identified this cancer here. The exorcism is done, the demon is expelled, there's no trace of cancer. There are no tumor, the tumors are gone. And all the effects of the cancer are gone. All right, so not all cancers, I want to be very clear about that, not all cancers, not all

illnesses have a spiritual root, but some do. Get your life right with God and a lot of that junk evaporates. So how many first class relics do you own? Gosh, in my, I mean, I work with the Vatican, so that's hard to answer. Okay, roughly how many first class relics do you have at your house? Oh gosh, you know what? More than two?

More than two. More than 200? I don't usually give more information than that. Simply because my house, for example, where I live is not equipped to receive visitors that want to view a relic. Fair enough. I remember when we showed up at the University of Toronto

and we were in the rectory and you were unwrapping something that just was sent to you from the Vatican. I think it was an arrow shaft that went through some Christian during his martyrdom. That didn't come from the Vatican. So that was an arrow shaft that went through some Christian during his monocle. That didn't come from the Vatican. So that was an arrow that killed a Jesuit priest in Vietnam. So it was a bamboo arrow with an iron tip and with the bamboo feathers at the end of it. And so that killed the Jesuit that had, it has a

Jesuit seal on it. Who the Jesuit was that was killed we don't know. So a native Vietnamese discovered it, you know, so discovered it and pulled it out from his victim and then returned it to the Jesuits. So the only thing he could say is, one of your confreres was killed with this. And he was martyred or just... He was martyred. Yeah. But we don't know. I mean, is he an identifiable...

We don't know the identity of the man that was killed, but we have the arrow and we have the testimony. Could you close us in a prayer? So I know we've got these lovely men and women watching right now, men and women from all different backgrounds all over the world, right? Some are in serious sexual sin, some have had abortions, maybe some have performed abortions. I have no idea the kind of people who watch this show and they're listening to you and they want to get their life right with God. Can you lead us in that prayer? Sure, yes. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, mighty God,

I give you praise and thanks for this day, for the show, for Matt and all of the staff here and all of the people that have been viewing this show and that will view this show. Lord, I ask you to intervene in their lives and set them free from that which they don't need and just allow them to experience your glory, your love for them, the delight that they give you, and allow them to experience that delight present in you at their being. And so Lord, impart to them a love of you, convert them, and bring them into your glory in eternity. In Jesus' name I pray.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And one last time, where can people find the Exorcist Files? On any podcast platform, Spotify, on Apple Podcasts and so forth, but the website, exorcistfiles.tv, is where you can get more information. And there's a sign up there. We have a new season that is about to launch and we have some interesting things that are going to launch for only those that are signed up by email. So please do sign up. Well thank you. Thank you so much for

taking the time to be on the show. You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. God bless.