Interview with an Exorcist (Fr Vincent Lampert)

father vincent lambert lovely to have you here it's good to be with you i was going down the elevator to get you to bring you up to my office and i was looking on youtube i'm like what's he been on you were on vice you're on the history channel i thought it was a current affair but i guess it wasn't what else have you been on i've been on so many things i can't even remember all of them you were on the covert catholic apologetics channel capturing christianity as well so that's cool that's a joke of course but are you with cameron batuzi good friend of mine yeah so there's obviously a lot of interest in the kind of work you do there is and the fact that i'm happy to be public about it because there are many exorcists that prefer to remain anonymous but i've always thought that if the church doesn't talk about it then how do people know where to turn to get the true help that they need is it strange for you when people like i was looking at the vice video and they've got all this kind of haunted music and people flailing on the ground it's all very dramatic and it seems like they interviewed you in a dark room with like you know and i'm sure they set all that up is it do you do you feel like they're kind of uh not mocking it but kind of making light of it and trying to kind of get clicks does that make sense or yeah i think they they take and put their own twist on it but i've always been very open to talking to many different outlets you know even one that some people might consider to be a little suspect or maybe mocking what the church believes and teaches but again i think it's always important just to meet people where they're at present the information of the church and what people do with that ultimately is up to them when we ordained a priest june the 1st of 1991 so this is my 30th anniversary coming up congratulations hard to believe at diocesan priest i was ordained for the archdiocese of indianapolis okay and when did you did you have an interest to become an exorcist or did somebody ask you how did that work they always say that it if you volunteer for the job you shouldn't have it right the archdiocese of indianapolis has always had a stably appointed exorcist even when it fell out of practice in many dioceses in the united states indianapolis continue to have a priest designated for this ministry ironically he was the pastor of the parish where i attended grade school oh interesting and then he passed away in 2005 and after he passed away the archbishop of indianapolis was looking for a replacement so most of us were kind of trying to stay under the radar and yeah i happened to be at the archbishop's residence one afternoon for a meeting and i was planning to go on sabbatical in a few months after that and the bishop looked at me and said i'm appointing to be the exorcist he goes i have no idea what i'm asking you to do but when you're on sabbatical you can study this so wow let's move on to our meeting now and i think i was just in shock now did would that mean that you would have to give up your parish or some other role that you were doing no diocese no priests diaspora here's an extra bunch of work that's exactly dealing with demons in addition to the people you already have to deal with great yeah so i had no idea really what i was getting myself into and certainly remembered stories of monsignor john ryan was the exorcist in indianapolis and he's the priest who taught you in grade school yes okay yeah the parish saint anthony parish in indianapolis and then he passed away back in 2005. so when i arrived in rome in 2006 for my sabbatical i was living at the north american college and then talked to the rector there and said hey where do i what do i do can you direct me yeah and he directed me to father gary thomas yes the exorcist there in san jose and father gary's become a good friend and a good colleague in the ministry and he introduced me to the franciscan priest that he was working with and that franciscan priest was happy to allow me to come and kind of learn from him the church says that the best way to become an exorcist is the apprenticeship model and father carmine at the time had been an exorcist for 25 years he was trained by father connie amentini who also trained father gabriel amorth who became the chief exorcist there in rome so i was in rome for three months and then father carmony allowed me to sit in on 40 exorcisms while i was there so this was during your sabbatical in rome so you were just going for a rest you weren't going to study how to be an exorcist correct correct but but while you were there you actually sat in on the exorcisms knowing that this was you were now appoint the appointed exorcist exactly so why did the bishop assign you surely there's some sort of criteria he looks for in a priest well the right itself says that the priest should be known for his holiness his piety that's why the bishop and i would laugh over the years i'm like come on really why me you know a lot of the younger priests told me they would like to be the exorcist and the bishop would say i worry about anybody that would want the job now why why is that because i could i could see why you would worry about somebody who wants to be a bishop let's say because they have a power that they could abuse and it could go to their head but being an exorcist i mean uh i don't know okay i guess probably not a lot of power necessarily comes with that role why would you be worried about someone who wanted to be the exorcist of the diocese it could be it could go to your head because again you know there's a lot of people that will reach out to you okay yeah i currently get about 2 000 calls a year wow from people all over the united states even other countries that believe they're up against the demonic and are looking for help from the church so you have to be well grounded to be able to deal with that volume of calls and obviously i think i probably receive more than the average exorcist simply because my name is publicly you're on cameron batuzi sure yeah there you go yeah so because i'm publicly known and then i take the calls and then try to direct people to someone in their local area so i like to network with other exorcists does every diocese have an exorcist technically yes because the bishop is the exorcist okay so the local bishop is the exorcist by virtue of his episcopal ordination and then at his discretion he can appoint any priest to do an exorcism or he can appoint one or more of his priests on a stable basis so when i was appointed back in o5 i became one of about 12 stably appointed exorcists in the united states today they're about 125. the exact number really isn't known because again some prefer to remain anonymous but the colleagues and connections that i have so we try to work together especially here in the midwest and i belong to the international association of exorcist it's a group of about 700 priests and their helpers from throughout the world who gather in rome every other year we were supposed to meet last year but it was cancelled due to covid it's scheduled for this year but it'll probably get cancelled again so then hopefully we'll be meeting in september of next year and it's really an opportunity to come together for ongoing formation and just a sense of fraternity yeah yeah do you find it difficult having these profound experiences which i'm sure you've had in which we'll get to that other priests in your diocese don't necessarily relate to and so it must be helpful then to speak to other exorcists who've had similar yeah because we we uh are on the same journey so to speak so we're easy to it's easier to have these conversations because in addition to being the exorcist i'm also the pastor of two parishes in my diocese so probably half of my time is dedicated to exorcism ministry and then the other half of the time goes to the two parishes that i have hmm prior to being named exorcist named asked i don't know were you uh since you have become the exorcist have you taken the reality of the demonic a lot more seriously than before or have you always had this sense that no we live in a spiritual war there are demons who want our destruction um or since learning about it has that really made you a lot more aware of the battle going on around us i think i just became more aware i certainly have always accepted what the church believes and teaches on the the reality of evil being personified in what we call you know satan and his demons i will say that i was appointed to be the exorcist uh in my 14th year of ordination and i tell people that the appointment helped me to rediscover priesthood as a vocation as opposed to an occupation so vocation and the true sense of the word meaning a calling from god because i think it's a lot easy for priests today to get so caught up in the the day-to-day running of parishes that you kind of lose sight of what you're really doing you know just to make a parallel as a father it's it's a similar thing you know you get so caught up in getting the kids to soccer practice and making the house respectable making sure the kids aren't talking back that you can i can forget that i'm supposed to be the spiritual head of the household and and to be guiding my family to heaven you know and that's why i think i tell people that i think as an exorcist i've rediscovered what it means to be father wow and not just a manager of a parish do you encounter priests who mock the sort of work that you do oh yeah when i was first appointed back in 05 the bishop announced it at a gathering of the priest and more than one kind of laughed and thought we still believe in this what are we doing haven't we moved on from that so how do you handle that especially maybe not just outright kind of laughter in a in a group but when you encounter people who kind of look at you quizzically like are you serious this isn't this isn't a thing what's wrong with you it's one thing if it's happening you know amongst other fellow priests because one would think that because of their vocation they would recognize the spiritual battle that we're in but for folks that are outside the church i just simply like to present the information and again what they do with it is up to them because i will say there are many people that will laugh at the topic of demon possession and you know the satan and his demons and think that somehow that comes out of a primitive superstitious worldview you know as a time perhaps when mental health wasn't really understood and so that's the reason why i think i like to be public about the topic just to simply present again what the church believes and teaches and then what people do with that then is up to them but i like to plant spiritual seeds so to speak that's wonderful i think it was cs lewis who said you know the devil wants us either to be looking for him under every rock or to think he doesn't exist it seems to me that many in our society today would rather just mock the idea that that satan exists um although we're beginning to kind of see a new paganism emerging even in kind of popular culture i was driving home from the chapel last night and i turned on the radio and i don't know what this song is it's a i guess a modern song i don't listen to modern music because i'm too cool for that but she said something like i met the devil and he was okay or something like that i just said my god like we're slipping back into paganism here but okay but i think many people would just say well this is this is just as you say a ridiculous superstition that can be accounted for by natural factors right the idea that we're being oppressed by some invisible demon in red pyjamas and horns or something is absurd and we've grown beyond that and we should grow up we can address that but i think on the other end you might have people who are looking for kind of satan under every rock as the explanation for everything so i guess i'd ask you like out of all those phone calls you receive every year i think you said 2000 and thereabouts what would you say um this would be hard to guess but i'm asking you to take us take a stab at it would be the percentage of these people who are contacting you who just do have mental health issues i would say probably about half okay wow so that's significant that that's surprising to me that so half of them you think there is actual demonic activity taking place absolutely because it just in initial conversation with them now unfortunately i'm not able to help everybody that reaches out to me just because of you know distance in geographics which is why i try to connect people with someone in their area sometimes that can be difficult because many priests today you know somebody knocks at your door and says they're dealing with the demonic it's like you know close the door in their face you know hang up the phone you know maybe they'll just go away but that's uh that will send people to the wrong sources i believe because if people really believe they're dealing with the demonic and they're seeking for help the church does need to respond but even out of the sense of charity the church also has to be able to tell people that what you're dealing with is not demonic it's a mental health issue and then to direct people towards you know the people that can give them the true help that they need i've always believed that whether it's the priest it's the psychiatrist or the medical doctor all three of us should be working together to bring relief into the life of somebody who is suffering whether that be due to spiritual causes physical causes or mental causes but it is difficult i would say within the mental health field to find professionals who will at least be open to the possibility that what the person is suffering is something of a spiritual nature i like how you put that it's a matter of charity like it would be an unkind thing to pretend that you were under some sort of demonic uh influence if really what you were dealing with was some mental illness we'd be actually holding you back from receiving the help that you needed by pretending or being wrong about yeah and that's why i would say that the church will be doing greater harm if it labels someone who's being possessed and that label prevents the person from getting the true help that they need now i will say that when i've told people that what they're dealing with is not the demonic unfortunately many people that contact me have already self-diagnosed they already believe they're possessed and so they're looking for an exorcism but i'm trained to be a skeptic you know the church says that i need to reach moral certitude meaning beyond a any doubt that the person in front of me is truly dealing with the demonic which is why then i would rely on experts in the mental health field family doctors to have them weigh in on what they believe is happening so how can you be confident without a shadow of a doubt that this is the demonic like what what's the sort of process when somebody comes to you and says they think they're being uh experiencing the demonic how do you uh you play skeptic you play devil's advocate as it were how is it that you do that what does that look like so we have a protocol that we use in the united states so number one we would ask a person to have some type of psychiatric evaluation and that doesn't mean that the church doesn't believe them oftentimes when somebody you know you tell somebody you need a psychiatric evaluation they're like you don't believe me yeah but if you're going to go through an exorcism you also need to be mentally strong and if somebody's kind of on the edge that edge needs to be taken off and the mental health industry can help do that but but wouldn't uh i imagine you you alluded to most psychologists or many psychologists would dismiss the idea that this could be demonic activity so wouldn't it just naturally appear to them to be something psychological well and it's important to note that the church is not asking the psychiatrist do you think this person is possessed yes the church herself will make that determination but the church is asking these experts to weigh in and to say is there anything about this person that is outside of your understanding ah i see so what's the sort of response you've received from a psychiatrist when they have come to you and said i don't understand what's going on here what what's been an example of that and that's where you know again i would say it's very hard to find those folks okay because many of them would just simply discount the possibility of what the person is doing with this demonic but i have found some catholic uh counselors and psychiatrists okay but so you're sending somebody who thinks they're possessed or something like that to a psychiatrist if the person is exhibiting kind of unhealthy behavior that you would deem you know influenced by the demons presumably she's not going to say or he's going to say well no this person's fine they're going to see this negative behavior and attribute it to some psychological cause correct well they could but if it means you know if you're going to be diagnosed with tourette's syndrome for example but they'll say well the person might have this labeling if you will of being having tourettes but what they exhibit is outside of the scope that would lead to that diagnosis i see because oftentimes you know the same symptoms that we see in people that have mental health illness could be the same ones that we see in those who are possessed so again the church is looking for these experts to say well it may be similar but we're not drawing the right conclusion based on you know all the individual circumstances that are involved in this person's case and then i would require them to have some type of physical examination by their family doctor and then i would meet with the person or perhaps somebody from my team or even other priest in the archdiocese of indianapolis there's a questionnaire the vatican has put together an intake questionnaire trying to determine if this is demonic what was the entry point and it even begins by saying of some questions have you ever been diagnosed with a mental illness have you been prescribed medication are you still taking it if not did you stop taking it at the direction of your doctor did you do it on your own what type of music do you listen to ever been involved in the occult satanic practices or rituals black masses you know the list goes on and on but i would be trying to determine what the entry point would be step four the protocol would be to look for the four signs of demonic possession that are mentioned in the right itself which are which are the ability to speak and understand languages otherwise unknown to the individual superhuman strength so the person exhibits strength beyond their normal capacity three would be elevated perception the person has knowledge about things that they should not otherwise know and then for an aversion to anything of a sacred nature such as being blessed with holy water being shown a crucifix or a bible now some of the tricks up the slave you could say if i'm trying to determine is this truly demonic or is this person you know suffering a mental illness or are they just trying to put on a ruse so if i meet with somebody and i bless them with water i know if it's blessed oh really the demon will know if it's blessed but this individual won't know that because if it's truly blessed and it's become holy there'll be a negative reaction from the demon but if i bless somebody with tap water and they scream that might be an indication that that's interesting yeah because you send someone to a psychologist i'm still trying to figure this out they don't believe in the demonic necessarily they can't fully account for what this person's dealing with but that in and of itself isn't proof that it's demonic it just might be proof that we don't have a f and fuller enough understanding of uh psychology so it's not as if you can go on as you say you're not looking to her to say this person's possessed or not but you almost have to kind of assess her or the psychologist's account of what's going on and then it sounds like you have your own ways of determining whether or not this person is is uh being influenced by the demonic so holy water is one of them you said if you sprinkle them with tap water and they react that might be a sign are there other things that that you do to determine whether or not i might pray with somebody if i lay my hand on their head and offer up a prayer i might have a relic in my hand and so again anything that's of the sacred nature is going to create a negative reaction and cause some type of demonic manifestation if a demon is truly present you know the former exorcist in indianapolis monsignor ryan right across the street from saint anthony parish was a former mental hospital in indianapolis and he used to share with me that he would go and visit some of the residents to take communion and he'd walk in the front door and some of the residents would begin to curse at him and spit and mumble at him under their breath and then when he would make his rounds and then when he was leaving these same people would be good to see a father thanks for stopping in they were completely different and he believed that some of the people there were dealing with the demonic and it was the presence of the eucharist that he had with him and then when he was leaving he didn't have the eucharist anymore because he had distributed so sometimes i meet with people i may have the uh the holy eucharist on my person you know in a pics in my pocket and then to see if it creates some type of a negative reaction from the person again things that i'm aware of the individual is not but again if it's something demonic they're going to know if they're in the presence of something that's holy and sacred you said that while you were taking your sabbatical you sat in on 40 40 exorcisms could you tell us about the first sort of uh first or maybe not the one of the first exorcisms that you sat on that really struck you that this is this is as serious as it gets yeah father carmine the priest that was training me we would meet in a very small room and i was sitting across from this little elderly lady her husband was there i tell people i learned enough italian to to or lunch i thought well this can't be any bad this is a sweet little lady and we're just having a conversation and and then father carmine comes in and he puts a roll of paper towels on the table and then he walks back out he comes back in and ties a plastic grocery bag on the wall radiator he walks back out he comes back in with his purple stole on and he has the right of exorcism he takes holy water blesses this little old lady as soon as the drops of water hit her head she starts howling like a dog and her eyes rolled back in her head and she begins foaming at the mouth and growling and throwing out all these vulgarities and of course i'm over there thinking what has my bishop gotten me into and father carmen didn't even flinch he just reached over grabbed a paper towel wiped the lady's mouth off and threw it in the plastic bag and continued praying at one time at one point this was a pretty dramatic one too is that the uh the person started to levitate okay they got agitated so much the demon was agitated and then at one point the demon got very calm and got this hideous grin on its face and i looked over and the person is rising out of the chair wow and i'm looking at this like in disbelief and then father carmine reaches over puts his hand on the person's head pushes them back down in the chair and that was it was such an important lesson because what he taught me was don't focus on what the devil is trying to do but focus on what god is doing in this particular prayer of the church because later on in that prayer it it appeared that the demon had been cast out so then all of a sudden you hear the person's voice thank you for praying father you know this is so wonderful you don't need to pray anymore you know thank you for praying for me today the demon is now gone you can stop praying and father carmen you could tell that he knew not my first rodeo deception was there and he continued to pray and then the demon shouted out i told you you could stop praying wow and again there's that for me again i was just like wow wow but uh are most uh instances of praying over people who are possessed uh less dramatic than those two stories you've shared or is there always some sort of manifestation there's always a manifestation in fact the prayers of the church the ritual itself is meant to cause manifestations because only when the demon manifests does the battle against it begin because this the distinction should always be made between the person as an individual and the demon that is now using that person's body as if it were its own so once the demon manifest i would never reference him or her the reference would now be to the demon do they ever reveal their names to you they have the the newer right of exorcism so the new right came out and was promulgated in 1998 it was the very last liturgical right to be updated after the second vatican council that ended in 1965. it was released in 1999 uh there are some critiques that maybe it wasn't as effective as the rite of 1614 so from 1614 until 1998 goodness that was the right division yeah was very remain virtually unchanged so there were a couple revisions in 2004 and 2005 and then the english translation came out in 2016. but in the older rite of 1614 the demon is commanded to name itself because but when you know the name of someone you have a certain power or control over them so when a demon names itself it's showing that it's submitting to the power and the authority of christ can you think of a name that has been given to you in the past leviathan really leviathan a demon mentioned in the bible the great you know sea monster i worked with someone who was possessed by seven demons demons whenever somebody's possessed they always work in like clusters there's never just one demon that's always multiple demons and just as much as there is a hierarchy within the angelic world there is a hierarchy within the demonic world because when the angels fell they fell from all nine choirs and so this particular person who was possessed by these seven demons had invited them in they believed that a friend of theirs was possessed and then went up to their friend looked him in the eye and says what's ever in you i freely invite to come in to me so a misguided notion of charity and she said that no sooner did she say the words that she felt something come over her and i worked with this person for over a year the weakest demons were the first to go you know they they don't have that sense of strength but the demon leviathan when it named itself told me it did not have to leave because it had been invited in and one could say that in an exorcism the demon is commanded to return that which he has stolen namely a person created in the image and likeness of god because the human person we have the capacity to grow in holiness and virtue just because we make a bad choice doesn't mean we can't repent and renounce that now the demon would have us believe that one and done you know if you made a pact with me that's it but again the human person we can grow that's why as catholics we say conversion is an ongoing process so a person could make a choice to create an entry point for the demonic but they could come to understand the error of their ways and then seek the help of the church and so in this particular case uh i still remember when the demon was cast out because i commanded the demon to say hail mary full of grace you know right there from the beginning of luke's gospel and the demon looked at me and laughed and goes grace of full and then began shrieking and screaming and we were in an old convent chapel and a bell had just wronged and 400 school children are now pouring out onto the playground outside this chapel and the demon says to me if you stop praying i will stop screaming but if you keep praying i'm going to keep screaming and then people are going to come in here and see what you're doing and then you're going to have to stop anyway so then i commanded the demon to obey me in all things although an unworthy minister of christ to say the words hail mary full of grace in the order that i told it to say it and to leave immediately and then the demon that had been speaking in this very deep authoritative voice looked at me and in a baby's voice goes hail mary full of grace and then there was a shriek in every manifestation of evil cease quicker than you could snap your fingers and the person in front of me their face was beaming as bright as the sun golly that's when people ask me what did you do afterwards you know as a priest did you celebrate mass did you do a holy hour i said no i went to dairy queen it just sort of celebrated with a frozen something a chocolate shake yeah i was two hours from my parish this had gone on for a year i was kind of tired exhausted and gone on for a year yeah wow so it's not i mean that's that's interesting so it's not as simple as you kind of go in there and command the the spirit to pray hail mary full of grace i'll throw holy when it's done that's not it why is that the case is is that due to your inefficiency as a priest does that make sense like if if there was a very like i'm sure if our blessed lord came down from heaven and commanded it would go so so why is it that it takes a long time in certain circumstances is that on the part of the exorcist or is it on the part of the the person who is maybe being possessed who is still unwilling somehow and whatever freedom it has to i think the key ingredient would be would be faith so the exorcist has to truly believe in his power ability you know i had a colleague and i always liked the statement that he made if a priest takes his vocation seriously so will the devil but if a priest doesn't take his vocation seriously neither will the devil i think that's why it's important for an exorcist not to be a newly ordained priest but one who has formulated a priestly identity so you really have to believe in you know your priesthood that it really means something it can also take a while too because maybe the person that's possessed hasn't been completely forthright maybe they're still holding back something and what they're holding back could be the hook that the devil still has in this person's life oftentimes if somebody has done something to invite the demonic in they might be embarrassed by that but an exorcism like reconciliation is not meant to be judging anybody but i can only really help people if they're forthright and tell me exactly the circumstances that led up to them inviting the devil in and i will say too that ultimately god decides the moment of deliverance and even every exorcism prayer provides some benefit even at at that particular moment it does not give total liberation have there ever been times that you've been tempted to doubt the truthfulness of all of this i mean we all struggle with doubt from time to time are there times you just think this is all ridiculous like this is even after all i've seen maybe it can be explained through natural causes this this isn't true or are you i've never i've never had any doubts i may have had doubts in my own abilities and thinking you know you know why why am i doing this yeah but again it's always important to uh to realize that in an exorcism jesus is the main actor he's not the bystander even the priest that trained me the last piece of advice he gave me before i left rome was if you're ever doing an exorcism and for even a split moment you say wow look at what i'm doing he said you've just walked on unholy ground he says it's never about you it's about the person jesus christ and what he is doing in this particular prayer of the church through his minister and there is a danger today i think that's why going back to what we talked about earlier it's important for a priest to have a strong priestly identity to do this ministry because one could be caught up in their own ego and ego in fighting the devil is a bad combination that's a great quote uh you mentioned earlier the different rites of exorcism one was from the 17th century yeah i think you said and one was like 1950 something uh 1998 no one just came out which do you use and do you have a opinion on which one is better if pope benedict gave permission for any exorcist to stably appoint it to use any of the rights that are out there do you mind if i ask what you use i use a combination of both just based on the circumstances so uh i sometimes hear that the devils hate latin and i don't know if that's just people who are super into the latin mass saying that or if that's actually something exorcist experience i would say the devil hates latin because it's the official language of the church yeah and because the the devil wants to reject the church then he would want to reject that but have you encountered that as you've prayed with people whether it's been more efficacious to pray in latin than another language i i kind of would like to avoid that you know which is better latin or english i will say that the uh the older right the prayers seem to be more powerful in their structure the way that they're awarded yeah and that's been one of the criticism of the new right is that perhaps the language is not as authoritative or strong so i will always begin using the new right and then if i feel like i need an extra oomph so to speak then i will rely on the older right of the church but for me the most important thing is that whether it's the new right or the old right it's the prayer of the church yeah and that's to me needs to be what's primary because the devil knows you know he's all about division and if he knows that there's a debate in the church about oh right versus new right he certainly won't want to get involved in that to see if he can spread some of his division so to me the personal charism of the the priest is even more important you know if i'm not in a state of grace and i'm trying to do an exorcism nothing good is going to come from that you know exo pareo parato meaning when a priest celebrates the sacraments they're always efficacious even if the priest is unbelieving or sinful yes but that's not the case in an exorcism so the charism of the priest does matter in an exorcism which is why if i'm going to do an exorcism i will prepare myself i will go to confession spend time in prayer celebrate mass so i really want to lay it all out before god so to speak so that the devil doesn't have anything to attack me with during an exorcism you mentioned uh four signs of the demonic uh being manifested in people's lives super strength or knowing languages they shouldn't know knowing information they shouldn't know and then aversion to anything could you give us examples of these i mean um yeah the super strength latin yeah maybe examples of each that you can think of yeah so one of the exorcisms in rome was an elderly man when he when the demon manifested jumped up out of the chair and lifted the old metal swivel chair above his head with one hand so again you know you need some bodybuilder to be able to do that so that is a sign it doesn't seem that heavy does it picking up a swivel chair i mean i can do it and i guess he's an old man so it seemed a lot more difficult and obviously this is someone that i you know you get to know them because a lot of the people that i encountered in rome were coming back from multiple appointments you know that that whole scenario by the way you know father carmen his parish church was saint lawrence outside the walls and the first time i arrived there's at least 50 people in the courtyard waiting to see him some had appointments some didn't and you just saw a whole cast of characters that were looking for help it was actually a very very pitiful sight so to speak because these people are shared without a ship yeah they're they're in pain they're suffering and they're looking for help okay old man lifting the chair is that the example you've seen of super strength uh i i did an exorcism in the state of alaska when the demon manifested it took five people to hold the demon down my goodness okay what about languages that they shouldn't know yeah i've heard examples working with people whether they're speaking uh latin all of a sudden maybe ancient form of greek which i don't speak but how did you know it was an ancient form of greek if you don't speak it just from hearing the the uh the dialect so to speak the sound of it i like to study languages so i've studied italian in spanish and i know some russian just based on my uh ethnic background so to speak so okay yeah so there when demons and obviously i would know that you know in my preliminary investigation the person in front of me doesn't know latin and okay so it's not it's not possible that they're just speaking gobbledygook which you're mistaking for greek correct i mean that could that could be possible i'm thinking as a skeptic now who would say i don't know maybe this person's just talking in tongues the way modern evangelicals do and you're mistaking that for some other language and i would and you know in those cases that's why i would have um whenever i meet with somebody i would never meet with anybody one-on-one especially in today's world yeah so i would always have the person who's afflicted and that when a family member or friend would come with them i would have another priest so if i believe that you know there are priests that are skilled theologians in all kinds of languages i would have maybe one of them present just to have them weigh in with their theological expertise you know i don't claim to be the expert in the room on everything but i want to rely on you know what the church has to offer you know within its theology and so many people are skilled in so many areas and then they help me determine what it is that i'm up against you gave us example of super strength uh the ability to know languages so that they shouldn't know you talked already about an aversion to the sacred what's an example if you have any of somebody having access to information that they absolutely shouldn't have how would you even know that i suppose well because working with folks whenever a demon manifests it will always try to determine who's the weakest link in the room wow i would hate to be in there that's why i always laugh when people say oh father could i sit in on an exorcism i always say there's no such thing as exorcism tourism oh wow because i i had a deacon one time he was studying in rome which he was a transitional deacon and uh it was the demon leviathan what i was talking about earlier and when the demon manifested you could see looking through the eyes of this person stopped at him and you really knew nothing about him and just said you think you're so smart you're nothing but a sacko you know just because you study in rome doesn't mean you're anything and the person did not know this person at all so there would be an example of just a little bit of information trying to get into your head because again the devil wants to disrupt the prayer of the church you know he wants to be in control and in charge and that's why again for an exorcism you know the exorcist takes charge of the entire situation you know i determine where the exorcism is going to take place the devil doesn't get to determine where he will be defeated the church herself will make that determination thank you very much it's never going to be in an abandoned house on a dead-end street at midnight during a thunderstorm that's a great movie not an option but again the devil doesn't get to decide so always a sacred space so it could be in a chapel or in a church a place that's going to provide some sense of privacy i mean we don't want somebody just walking in who's stopping into the church you know don't let a candle or say a prayer all of a sudden encounter an exorcism that would be inappropriate again i determine who's going to be there myself the one afflicted a family member other people that are going to be there to to pray to represent the community and then uh we will begin have you had an experience of perhaps someone who is rather unbelieving or thought that their family member was suffering from anything but the demonic and you've seen their opinion change right then and there yes and it's important to know too that an exorcism cannot be performed on somebody against their will okay somebody has to want that a quick question just of clarification i think some people have the idea that if somebody's possessed they actually have no free will left that and that's not true because it's something that the person always remains and just because somebody's possessed doesn't mean that they're manifesting all the time so to be possessed somebody has created an entry point for the demonic into their life and so there's that connection with the demon but that doesn't mean that the person can't go through some of the normal aspects of their everyday life but there could be moments where the manifestation something triggers that connection with the demonic and then the demon manifest okay so there is some rhyme or reason to when the devil manifests itself in the in the person and that i guess is something something of a trigger can you think of examples of a person you've worked with in and whenever you know they've encountered the lady in in that was possessed with the seven demons in leviathan you know the very first time i met with her and her husband you know here i'm back on my own thinking where's father carmine you know where's my backup but it's just me and so i went to visit them and kind of do the intake questionnaire and i thought well this doesn't seem to be anything out of the unusual and and so uh the husband said well father before you go because i said i want to pray about this and you know just spend some time thinking about how to move forward and the husband goes well father could you say a prayer before you go i know sooner said in the name of that the demon manifested and lunged at me like a wild dog i mean i think i jumped back five feet my heart's like racing uh then i immediately just stepped right back up right into the face of this demon and then and prayed and how did she respond just this pure hatred look on her face looking at me i mean just pure hatred i don't know if you've never seen it it's it's really hard to describe it's a poor man who had to live with this his lovely wife but something would just trigger it you know sometimes in the middle of the night she would just sit up erect in bed the demon would start manifesting you know i was working with a colleague in another state recently and and the two demons that named itself in this individual were the demon molec in the old testament where people used to sacrifice their children to molech and then the other one was bill's able you know the lord of the flies and at one point when the demon molec was manifesting started chanting and i said well what are you chanting and molek looked at me and said i'm using my own language to glorify beelzebub because he's a higher ranking demon than me so i wish to give him honor and glory and then the other exorcist is looking at me like what do we do with that i guess it's a sign of tremendous hope that one can have a sense of humor regarding these things right if so we'll have a final word it would be very bloody difficult to sit here laughing about it absolutely and well we already know he doesn't yeah he doesn't we already know the end of the story what you were going to say though i think it sounded like you were about to say if you didn't have a sense of humor about these things yeah i was going to say i do have a sense of humor and i think it helps keep me grounded because when you deal with so many people that are on the fringes i mean it can really zap the life and strength and energy out of you so the sense of humor is what keeps me grounded yeah that's why they always say you know a joke you know there's no cost for an exorcism it's a ministry of charity so the church doesn't charge but the joke is that you know if you don't pay your exorcist you could get repossessed but that's a joke to be very clear oh okay yeah i used to i used to work with people and still do help chat with people who struggle with pornography you know i used to speak about this quite a lot this is my kind of full-time thing that i was doing writing books on it and and it was it was quite difficult to continually meet with people whose lives were falling apart because of their addiction to pornography and sort of in a similar way though in a much lesser degree i had to find kind of ways to just stop thinking about it i couldn't kind of take on their burden so if i would give a presentation somewhere and someone would tell me how their marriage is falling apart because xyz i would just have to go and lay it down before the tabernacle and then go have a beer and just i couldn't i couldn't bring on all that pain because it would crush me i imagine something similar must must have but i think for me to do exorcism ministry full time would not be a good idea okay i think as a parish priest that helps keep me grounded too just being able to celebrate mass on the weekends daily mass being involved in the lives of people whether doing weddings and baptisms in funerals it gives a good balance but to me i can't imagine doing exorcism in history full time i think at some point it would just really zap the life out of you have you ever encountered somebody who you suspected was possessed but they didn't and they hadn't approached you yet like maybe me or joe do you ever certainly not you okay good maybe joe but do you ever encounter people and you think oh dear what was that oh no well what's ironic about that is that i've had more than one occasion if i'm just out and about someone will go by me and i'll just have a sense that there's something demonic and that the person will be mumbling under their breath or even throwing vulgarities at me just out of passing i think the reality is that the devil knows who's working to defeat him yeah so he will try to to attack because you know there's there is something known as you know demonic oppression yeah could i could we stop maybe a moment and just kind of define these terms here's some of the terms that come to my mind and i honestly i'm not terribly clear about the distinctions so you can help us here you know you have oppression infestation uh hex hexes vexation vexation i apologize vexation uh possession obsession so obsession would be demonic so the church identifies four types of extraordinary demonic activity and then there would be demonic obsession which are mental attacks the devil is literally trying to get into your head so where everything we think is totally defined even our existence by the demonic so these are mental attacks then there's demonic vexation and i like the term vexation fixation would be physical attacks maybe there's marks or bites or bruises that appear on a person's body you know we've seen the movies incisions of letters that may appear for a period of time and then they subside have you encountered something like that oh yeah all these things yes absolutely what's the strangest thing you've encountered in regarding signs or things that have taken you know come on someone's body and how can you be sure that they didn't inflict that upon themselves because i've seen them like incisions of letters where they'll appear in front of me and then they'll disappear i mean i actually witness it that'll do it yeah good wow the thing is too it's important to note the devil will play on a person's memory and imagination and so that's why it's so important not to really get fixated on what the devil is trying to do that's one of the things i've learned in the 16 years i've done this ministry i'm not really interested in the devil's parlor tricks so to speak i want to stay focused on what god is doing i think that's the number one uh role of an exorcist we're not focused on the devil we're focused on god and the people that are afflicted we want to help them change their focus in their life away from the devil onto god who wants to save and help this person who's created in the image and likeness of god so we have obsession mental attacks vexation physical attacks there is demonic possession whereby the demon will then take control of the person's body this is the this is the highest this is the highest activity with a human is that right yeah so the person's all of their activities now are totally defined by the demon the demon will use their mouth to speak their hands to it almost feels probably is like an anti-incarnation that's what it feels exactly you know that's where you know why would the devil be interested in possessing a human body you know we get old our hair falls out we put on glasses yeah but the greatest thing that god did for us as you just said is the incarnation god took on human form so it's a way of satan aping christ in a way is it yeah because you know satan wants to mimic god in every possible way so in his own twisted sense he believes that he takes on human form when he possesses a human person how do you not just get super terrified about all this like even now as we're talking the demons are aware of what we're discussing if catholicism is true and all it teaches about the demons is true how do you not sort of fall into this um interfere fear that uh well i don't know that you'll be attacked by the demons i mean have you physically have you personally experienced demonic attack as somebody who's on the front lines oh absolutely yeah more than once over the last 16 years and again that's where that's where oppression demonic oppression is a gift from god they can be physical attacks even sometimes mental attacks but it's a gift from god which sounds really strange yeah it does that god allows one to be afflicted by a demon as a gift but there are good examples job out of the old testament we have saint paul himself who talks about the thorn in the flesh a messenger from satan said to torment him to keep him from becoming proud now no one would have thought that job needed an exorcism or saint paul needed one think of some of the great saints of the church padre pio you know there's i have a great little book about you know the devil and the life of padre pio padre pio used to call the the devil oh blue beard and he you know oftentimes at night the devil would come manifest in his room and try to torment him so he couldn't get any rest or sleep so he wouldn't be able to uh to hear confessions or meet the pilgrims who were coming to see him there in italy but in that book padre pio writes that one night he was trying to get some rest and he heard some rumbling in the room and he he rolled over and looked over there and says oh it's only you oh bluebeard i thought it was somebody important and then you rolled over and went back to sleep the sash now how many of us would be able to say that no i would poo the sheets you know this something happened recently like if my wife was here she would tell you dozens of stories of strange things that have happened to my family while i've been out giving talks to high schools on pornography and something that happened most recently i was asked to go give a talk in i forget where north carolina and everyone all the kids were social distancing which is fine but it's hard to give a talk when people are social distancing and wearing masks and uh so i gave this one presentation and it wasn't terribly well received i didn't think well that night my wife got into a car accident and had to be rushed to hospital and it was very traumatic and i was ready to kind of take off get in my car and drive home and my wife said to me stay there i think this is attack and that your talk tomorrow is going to be incredible and god bless her you know and i just thought all right and so i woke up that next morning with this tremendous resolve i went and spent an hour before i learned the blessed sacrament and i said to the lady who was hosting the event i went buckle up like these like these children's lives are going to be completely transformed and i knew it was because of the grace of god and because of the prayers and sufferings that my wife was offering up and i don't think i can't remember a talk that went as well people sharing so vulnerably but the nate the nice thing about this is every time the devil does something that he believes is advancing his kingdom he ultimately advances the kingdom of god it's got to be exhausting but but what i'm sharing with you does that sound like a legitimate thing i mean it's it's difficult to know whether these things are in your mind or not but at the time i felt quite confident that it would be the prayers and sufferings of my wife that were leading to the conversions of these young people yep because the devil wants to get us off track yeah and if he can get us off track then you know all the young people that needed to hear that talk would not have heard it if you would have just immediately left so what are some of the attacks you have received if you don't mind share if by the way if i ask anything just tell me to shut up if i'm getting a person on the last thing i want to do is pry where i shouldn't but i'd love to hear from you kind of some of the attacks that you've experienced and does it tend to be around when you are engaging in your ministry of exorcism that those attacks are stronger i i discovered that the attacks are stronger if i'm going to give a talk to young people really like at a university i'm the fellowship of catholic university students focus oftentimes will ask me to give talks and i've given talks at many universities across the united states but it always seems that when i'm going to do that i will experience some type of demonic attack i gave a talk in new jersey several years ago and right after the the that night i was going to bed and and i was attacked and i knew it and i knew i wasn't having a heart attack or anything like that and i knew that it was demonic and immediately just prayed and it ended instantaneously when you say attacked what do you mean it's like something was sitting on my chest and i just the temperature in the room actually went down it was really cold in there and i knew that there was a demonic presence what do we mean by infestation infestation would be the presence of evil in the location associated with an object even in an animal think of chapter five of mark's gospel the garrison demoniac where the demons go into the swine so infestation would be in a location so when people say my house is haunted and they're right if they are this might be one and the question again would be why because you know demons are pure spirits so as pure spirits we would say they're not they're neither here nor there we say they're here or there if they're acting there so the question would be that's right why is the demon acting in this location obviously it doesn't live in the house yeah it doesn't have an address like you and i have yeah so why so trying to determine that you know was somebody involved in some type of you know seances or whatever people are trying to communicate with the dead what took place in that house maybe a horrific crime of some kind but something had to happen in that location to bring about a demonic presence saint thomas aquinas says that god will sometimes allow the damned to manifest to people um so in your experience has the answer to why is my house seem to be you know haunted or something mean not a demonic spirit but a damned soul or no it could be a damn soul as you just said but it the question too would be could it possibly be a soul in purgatory so a soul that is seeking prayers i had a colleague who say that he worked with a group of religious sisters who were selling their convent and they said that there's something that's in there it a spirit manifest and whatever it is we don't want to leave it behind because you know we're selling the place and and the priest was like well how long what's been going on and they're like 100 years what you know lights would go on and off all the time for no reason things would move that people would hear footsteps you know a soul that's in distress that needs our prayers you know can't send you a text message or call you on the phone so the priest determined what they would do is that they would say at mass for their poles of the soul of this nun once a week for three weeks and he said as they were celebrating mass during the lord's prayer when they said deliver us from evil the lights went out in the chapel and the candles blew out at the altar wow it's like the soul was saying yes i'm in torment and that happened again the second week the same mass same thing deliver us from evil lights went out in the chapel candles blew out third week deliver us from evil candles went out lights went out a few seconds later the candles relit on their own and the lights came on on their own and then every manifestation of evil ceased and he believed it was an indication that the soul finally received the prayers that it needed yeah to go on and it's important to note that you know the soul of one who's died cannot choose to act in this reality god has to permit it you know once we die we don't act independently of god we may do that in this life but not you know in the life to come so if if it's a soul of one who has died that is manifesting god has to permit that to happen for whatever reason god may have but it's usually of a spiritual nature and in these cases people just have the sense that yeah strange things are happening but it's not terrifying because i think if something is truly demonic there's something in us that tells us you know this ain't good and i think it goes back you know think of saint augustine you know our hearts are restless the lord until they rest in you the human person has the innate desire for god and so if we're encountering something that's demonic i think kind of a you know a red light goes off so to speak saying this is not good but if it's a soul of one who has died again it can be troubling annoying but it's not but not it's not fearful interesting but you talk about the souls of the damn too yeah that's a debate in the world of uh international association of exorcist you know can and who brings the souls of the damned you know can they appear at an exorcism is it that satan drags them out of hell is it that god permits them to be there so yeah this is this is one of the the things that we would talk and discuss at our gathering in rome interesting um you've talked about different demons revealing their names has any exorcist you've encountered encountered lucifer like the the the big cheese of demons or uh does that not tend to happen that satan is possessing a person satan can possess someone in fact the priest who trained me he told i asked him you know what's the most difficult case of exorcism you've ever dealt with and he told me he had worked with somebody for five years and just seemed to be hitting a roadblock roadblock roadblock and he finally says to the demon is your name lucifer and he said the demon responded i used to be known by that name but no longer he said he found it kind of profound because lucifer can no longer use the name lucifer because to acknowledge the name is to acknowledge the giver of the name and since lucifer has now rejected god he will reject the name like a child who rejects his parents and changes his last name or something because it would be associated yeah interesting um how many people that you work with forgive me if this sounds um uh insensitive but end up taking their own lives because you're saying you know this this person took me three years i was working with them for five years how does somebody go on living like this you know i've never had that experience where somebody took their life thank god and i think that's why it's so important to tread cautiously again that's also the importance of getting people mental health care too again it isn't that the church doesn't believe but a person does need to be in a good mental place if they're going to go through the prayers of the church so i think that's so so important i presume you never film exorcisms tips for the the church doesn't permit it doesn't permit it but i could see a skeptic saying well isn't that bloody convenient because all that would be required to prove the existence of the demonic is to bring a camera in there and to live stream one of these people levitating like you say and you'd have proof of god's existence so why on earth not do that isn't this just a little bit too convenient says the skeptic or one could say if we did film them they would just say well you've manipulated the film that's true so i would agree with that i think yeah there's always a way that yeah it's a question of though where do you begin does one begin with faith and if you have faith then believing is seen or if you're just going to begin purely with science you're going to say you know seeing is believing but we're beginning we're coming from two different starting points so to speak when you speak on university campuses what are some of the and do you mind moving this maybe just a little more closer to your math um what are some of the kind of skeptical questions or rebuttals or do you get people up there challenging you in the q a period saying this is or not so much and if you do what's your response to them oh yeah there's always hecklers out there i had a young man in uh nebraska where as i was speaking he came in with an amulet around his neck and he grabbed it and he's aiming it at me as i'm speaking and he's mumbling something under his breath and i'm like what are you doing please child's play holy water okay you get skeptics i i had a person uh it might have been on when cameron i was with him yeah a caller you know and she was like well you know you said that you know like going to haunted houses and things could open up an entry point for the demonic and she's like i i don't really believe in the demonic and i like to go to all these things so why aren't i possessed and my answer is very quick i said i don't want to insult you but the devil doesn't need to afflict anyone that he already has control of wow that's definitely insulting but nice way to cushion it before you landed it but earlier you said that the the exorcist was a good film i think you said did you know the movie the exorcist or the exorcism of emily rose but these would definitely be within the horror genre so it doesn't sound like the problem with is with horror per se the movies are focused on what the devil is doing but in an exorcism the church is focused on what god is doing that's always you know who's getting top billing and for the church you get that in the in the next and we rose i mean you do have the kind of victory of christ i guess what i'm asking you is it sounded like you were criticizing this woman for going to haunted houses or that maybe she shouldn't but the experience of watching the exorcist is also horrific i mean it sort of plays into that same desire we have to be afraid and but in a healthy kind of way where i think because if that wasn't in the movie people probably wouldn't go and see it i mean i think there's a great fascination with the devil yeah you know if you're going to give a talk on jesus 20 people might show up but you're going to talk about the devil 200 people will show up there's always that intrigue with kind of the unknown joe you're cooler than me who's this idiot who released that video recently where he was sodomizing satan or the other other way around have you heard of this it was like the number one song that came out recently i don't know because again i'm too cool to know but our younger viewers might but we are seeing a lot of this this nike for example i think there were those custom-made shoes of the man who had human blood and again i don't know not i'm not with it but i mean this is all really bloody disturbing that this stuff is becoming well the devil's become mainstream and the thing is if people believe that somehow we can control satan you know you know we're the mouse and satan is the cat we're not in control here you know and the devil can do things to kind of lure us in maybe even give us that false sense that maybe we're in control we're calling the shots but ultimately we're the ones that are going to pay the price because it's again it's the nature of satan you know he still has an angelic nature go back to aquinas you know when god created the angelic world he gave them infused knowledge knowledge of what he called evening knowledge things in the natural order and then god said with the knowledge i have given you will you now honor and glorify me and that would be the the mourning knowledge and then lucifer along with one third of the angels took the knowledge that god had given them and then chose not to glorify god so they're considered to be imperfect creatures but the devil still retains his intellectual and nature and so which is greater than ours so again if we think we're controlling the devil the only one that we're fooling is ourselves that's why it's so important even in an exorcism to realize that it's not me i mean if we're relying on me we're all in trouble but if we're relying on the power and the authority of christ that's where we need to be and there's a growing trend today to treat the exorcist priest as a wizard or as a magician where people think that i have certain powers or abilities and uh that's a that's a path i never go down you know i don't have any ego in any of this you know i i'm happy to be an exorcist to do this ministry at the request of my bishop but ultimately it's up to him if he were to come tomorrow and say i've decided we're not going to do this anymore so be it wow he's he's he's in charge he's the boss and he's the one that you know the holy spirit has placed as my bishop and i accept whatever judgment he gives earlier you spoke about points of entry that lead to what i guess they would lead to things like well they wouldn't necessarily lead to things like infestation would they unless we're talking about a location but at least things like vexation and possession and obsession and obsess what is obsession those are the mental okay yeah that's right so what are these points of entry and what should we not be pussy-footing around with that you see christians pussyfooting around with does that make sense many of us want to kind of justify the certain behaviors and entertainments that we enjoy but maybe we shouldn't so what are some of these things that we should be on guard against and i would say that in the years i've done the ministry there are some dominant ways that people can open up an entry point for the demonic i think the ways are countless but some of the ways would be ties to the occult you know the word occult comes from the latin word occultist meaning hidden or secret you know focuses on the paranormal has to do with things like going to see a psychic or a median practicing magic and i like to remind people that all magic is inherently evil and i don't mean you know an illusionist yes you know pulling a rabbit out of your hat and that's a different thing but magic for what it truly is which is trying to you know have a control over people and to know the future and all of that all magic is inherently evil people try to communicate with the dead you know all these practices are condemned uh right there in the uh the book of deuteronomy in chapter 18 in the old testament because when people turn to something of an occult nature it's a violation of the first commandment when god says i am the lord your god you shall have no other gods but me and when people are turning to the world of the occult they're looking for a substitute for god so that's an an opportunity for one to open up an entry point the entertainment industry i think is another one there's a great fascination as we mentioned earlier uh with the devil right now there's many programs on tv there's all kinds of literature that are out there there are video games and whatnot and i think it creates a fascination with the demonic you think of a lot of young people today you know they all have these gadgets in their hands they're staring at a screen they're in isolation you know they're just all by themselves and uh i think that can be an entry point for the demonic in people's lives somebody can be cursed now curses are only effective if one is weak in their faith you know the curse means to commend someone or something to the devil to bless we commend it to god so as catholics you know we bless people we bless places we bless things but something could be cursed but we can't control what somebody else does they may wish us ill will we can't control them but we can control where we stand so that's why for me a curse is only effective if we're weak in our faith you know you think of paul's letter to the ephesians we need to put on the armor of christ if we're putting on the armor of christ somebody's trying to curse us it's going to be ineffective you think of psalm 91 i need not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day it's that notion that god is protecting and and guarding us you know first letter of peter your opponent you know the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking one to devour resist him solid in your faith you know james 4 7 resist the devil and he will flee so there are things if we're just living out our faith but again a curse can be an entry point being dedicated to a demon so i've worked with somebody it was in rome the lady i got to know in one of the exorcisms who shared with me that her mother had dedicated her to satan when she was born because certain her mother blamed god for giving her a child that she did not want so she decided to raise her under all kinds of satanic practices and rituals when she was 12 she ran away from that environment ended up on the streets of rome as a young lady she made her way to father carmene who began doing prayers of exorcism on her you know i saw her manifest when i was there the good news about this young lady is that she's going on to become a nun wow so just because somebody has dealt with the demonic doesn't mean that anyone is too lost for god to find them especially if they want to be found and now she ministers to street children in the city of rome she knew what it was like to live on the street so now she wants to make a positive difference in the lives of these young people so when i think of you know you've made an entry point for the demons i'm thinking of you have to be someone who's sinning or culpable in some way but now that you've just mentioned curses and being dedicated to demons it sounds like you don't necessarily have to be culpable in the sense that you have sinned uh say going going to see uh now the culpability may be that one is just not living out their commitment to god now what does that mean though because that sounds terrifying because none of us are living out a commitment to god to the degree in which we should be does that mean we should all be terrified that uh someone's gonna place a curse on us and we'll be buggered no i was gonna say that the the key ingredient is to still be able to call sin a sin and to repent which is a common theme throughout the bible you know the israelites in the old testament constantly rebel against god yeah but god always called them back to fidelity so to me that's the key ingredient all of us we're all sinners we're all going to fall short but can we still call sin a sin and i think we're living in an age when faith is in decline and a lot of people are living by three guiding principles that i like to say which are me myself and i know you may do whatever you wish nobody has the right to command you you're the god of yourself yeah that is it i mean there's the temptation in the garden that's exactly it you know you don't need god you can be god and you can determine what's right and what's wrong yeah but as long as we can still call sin a sin that to me is the key ingredient there because we can open up an entry point but then we have the power to close it with our faith i think it was uh who's this chief exorcist in rome what's his name again father gabriel amarth thank you yeah i i i recall it was several years ago i read his book but i recall him saying something like the sacrament of confession is more powerful than an exorcism because with exorcism the demon has the body but when you repent you're making it so that the evil doesn't have your soul is that right yeah and and reconciliation confession is a sacrament of the church an exorcism is a sacramental so sacrament is of a weightier nature you could say and anytime we confess our sins we place them in the hands of god and once we place them in the hands of god the devil cannot use them against us so literally when we go to confession we're taking the devil's fuel away from him so to speak that he's using against us because i think oftentimes catholics today especially can have this fear of going to confession but i like to remind people that confession is not about being on a guilt trip it's about recognizing that god's love and mercy is the greatest thing that we can know it's even greater than any sin that we can commit because god is always ready to forgive sometimes i like to just wonder for a moment you know you go back to the book of genesis after adam and eve had sinned and they went and hid and god comes to adam and says adam what have you done you know of course he pointed to eve and then he pointed to the serpent and i always like to imagine what would have happened if adam had said to god at that moment i've sinned and i'm sorry rather than trying to pass the block can i ask you to do something uh kind of on the off the cuff here uh it's a bit spur of the moment but i think you'll be okay with it could i ask you to look into this camera and to make an appeal to somebody who may have been or is away from the sacrament of confession what would you say to them right now i would say that people need to understand the true love and mercy of god you know one of the things every time we walk into a catholic church there's a crucifix sometimes people will say ah catholics you believe in jesus on the cross but the crucifix is so important because when we look at jesus on the cross he's basically saying i love you this much and you look at the you know the the wound in his side and basically he's saying he's inviting us to accept his love and mercy so i would encourage anyone who's been away from confession for a long time to put the guilt aside and just truly come and receive the sacrament and experience god's conditional love for you you know the human person is god's greatest creation because we are all created in the image and likeness of god so the human person reflects the divine image i think that's why the devil tries to attack us because he believes that in attacking the human person he's indirectly attacking god so again i would just say that recognize the great value and dignity that we all have being created in the image and likeness of god if there's any sin or burden that we're carrying with us bring it to reconciliation i like to remind young people in my parish i always tell them that going to confession is like throwing up nobody likes to do it but after you do it you feel so much better so sometimes i tease them and say the confessional is a place where you can go and spiritually throw up and then you can leave just feeling so much better about yourself and the fact that god loves you unconditionally that's beautiful thank you so much for that father what's your opinion and uh not just your opinion but i guess your educated opinion as you uh engage in exorcisms of yoga i find it difficult to demonize yoga but i'm open to doing it if you help me do it it seems to me that if somebody is uh engaging in certain stretches that that you know that this isn't uh intrinsically evil i don't know how it could be to use your body to stretch in a certain way but i also know people who are involved in in your line of work to a lesser degree who would say no absolutely it's a gateway drug to the demonic cut it out immediately don't be [ __ ] footing around with sin so tell us your opinion on yoga if you have one i do haven't okay and i and i will say this at first i i also think it's it's not healthy to always see the demonic everywhere because then we're giving the devil too much credit i do think that yoga could be something that could be suspect and could be an entry point because you know the exercises are not the issue the question would be the spirituality that's tied with it i say and can the average person make the distinction between the exercises and the spirituality and maybe the person begins initially just for the exercises i think that's probably wrong but then they become intrigued by the spirituality that's with it that's the subtle way i think the devil sometimes work is you know he makes it look appealing there's you know the fruit in the garden again did god really tell you not to do this so he can kind of lure us in and then once we get pulled in then all of a sudden we see the different layers that go with it so like with the practice of yoga you know we learned that you know the different postures and poses are actually forms of worshiping different demons so i hear that and it makes me troubled but at the same time i think who the hell are the demons to think they have any kind of monopoly on how i hold my body do you know what i mean like just because certain people intended to worship the demons through a certain pose surely that doesn't mean i'm no longer able to make a certain posture just because it happened to be the way these people worship demons but you might be indifferent is that you're really grounded in your faith okay but how many people are really grounded in their faith i think there's a lot of people today i think even the former archbishop in philadelphia archbishop charles chaput made the comment that there's a lot of people today that wear the label being a christian but they do not know the person of jesus christ maybe they're just going through the motions of their faith they show up at church on sunday and you know it's kind of like punching a time clock and then they leave so i think there's a big difference between somebody who's well grounded in their faith and somebody that's just going through the motions of their faith yeah i mean i've i mean i've even had i had a fellow priest tell me one time that you know he was kind of bored with catholicism he was going to explore buddhism oh it's like to me that's an example of you're not on a good path here yeah you're not in a good path and when it comes to yoga and things like that to me if you're not on a good path that's probably not the place to be yeah now it makes sense i don't think we can underestimate how weak we really are and when you start uh congregating with people who hold certain new age ideas um maybe we're kidding ourselves to think well i can do this a few times a week and i'm not going to be kind of swept up in this the spiritual aspect of this this this activity i think we get caught up in in deception we haven't alluded to this yet but we know we talked about the extraordinary activity of the devil but i think the ordinary activity of the devil is what all of us need to be concerned about okay it's how the devil tries to trip us up in our daily lives and when i talk about the ordinary activity of the devil i believe the devil has a four stage plan of attack and all the words begin with the letter d so it begins with deception which leads to division which leads to diversion which leads to discouragement so deception it's the lies of the devil he gets us to buy into the lies and then once we buy into the lies he did that with adam and eve and then what did they do they went and hid it leads to division we're broken we're no longer whole and complete and then where does that brokenness leave us that division diversion we're out in the weeds somewhere we're no longer focused on god we're trying to justify so the deception has led to the division which led to diversion and when we're no longer on the path of god it leads us to discouragement and discouragement will always lead to death spiritual death almost all the time and then physical death sometimes you look at the rise of suicides today but the good news is and i think we always have to be people of hope to me when one arrives at discouragement it's a crossroads so one pathway leads to death but the other one i believe leads to discipleship we have that reawakening think of john paul ii the new evangelization where we realize you know what my faith is more than just going through the motions it's really going to mean something to me i'm not just going to wear the label but i'm going to truly have that relationship with jesus christ the one that's communal i recognize the importance of the church and one that's personal meaning i'm going to live out that relationship each and every day of my life how important are things like praying the holy rosary or wearing a blessed item i think they're important if if we're grounded in our faith so we're not doing it as a magical thing i know there's many you know there's priests in my diocese you know somebody knocks at the door and says father there's a ghost or i'm possessed you know they'll give him holy water and a rosary they may not even be catholic and jokingly i say well did you give him a rabbit's foot too because if these people don't really have any faith they're going to put the power and trust in water or whatever but those things have to point to something greater and the something greater is our relationship with christ i had a young man in illinois one time who called me and said father my my girlfriend's possessed and i did what i was supposed to do to get rid of the demon but it didn't work and i was like well what you're supposed to do and he's like i've been burning sage in the house because i i've heard that demons don't like the smell of sage and i'm like are you listening to yourself you're putting your faith in sage and your faith needs to be in the person of jesus christ so you when you look at an exorcism you know if i bless somebody with holy water you know it's really pointing to baptism our new life in christ you know it's the notion you think of saint augustine you know in the waters of baptism you know we die to ourselves and we put on christ and once we put on christ we can never be lost again so it has to mean something deeper but which is easier just to hand somebody some holy water yeah or to sit there and evangelize so when the priest celebrates the sacraments they do work ex opera operato correct but when we hand somebody a bottle of holy water it's it's the oppo not necessarily the same thing but are you saying that holy water therefore doesn't have power apart from faith what if somebody i mean i can imagine somebody has a very limited understanding of what this thing is but they just know that it is sacred and they know they want the demon gone well they're powerful there's something certainly powerful about holy water but i want that to be not at the core jesus christ needs to be at the core at the center of our faith and then these things that we use whether it's holy water rosaries those are all very important and powerful but to me it's the relationship with christ that's what these people's point to don't they as you say they have to i think when sacramentals become a means in and of themselves yeah is when perhaps we're not on good ground yeah i agree i imagine some people listen to you and they think goodness maybe i'm possessed maybe that's what's wrong with me you know like i'm kind of addicted to pornography or i get really angry at my girlfriend or my children and um i guess how does somebody know that they're not in case there's a bunch of people watching right now and they're all terrified that they're possessed because they exhibit negative behaviors i mean they might be but how do you know well the devil can propose but he can't impose you know again think of with eve you know here's the fruit you know most people think it's an apple the bible doesn't say it's an apple but we'll just say that it is because that's what most people think he proposed he didn't force her to take a bite so the devil is always out there looking for an opportunity to tempt us but we can say no and the way that we can say no is being strong in our faith you know you know there's the devil attempting jesus at the beginning of his public ministry and then jesus responded by throwing scripture you know not by bread alone does man live but by every word that comes from the mouth of god so the power of the is of the word of god is you know can never be underestimated it's a vagaries of pontius yes i love that book talking back talking back yes when the devil is trying to to trip you up talk back but talk back with the words of scripture that's what jesus did yes and he teaches us the important lesson so i don't think we should ever go around worry that somehow we're all possessed right certainly the devil is trying to trip us up but if we're remaining solid and strong in our faith i could even see that being a temptation the temptation the devil wants us to think we're possessed because you could fall into a sort of hopelessness that you're no longer in control of your own actions or life and there always has to be a good distinction too i mean the notion that the devil made me do it i mean we all have personal responsibility so there always needs to be a distinction between misuse of our free will and the culpability that we bear rather than just trying to blame everything on the devil all right what i think we're going to do joseph is take a three-minute break and then when we come back we're going to take some questions from our our viewers cool [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] g'day and welcome back to this interview with father vincent lampet about did i say that right lampard yes about exorcisms in the demonic before we delve into the second part of our conversation i want to say thank you to catholic chemistry which is an excellent online dating service that will help you find a catholic husband or a catholic wife it was started by a friend of mine chuck gallucci him and i used to work together at catholic answers this is an excellent website for those who are serious about their catholic faith and are serious about finding a catholic spouse so go click the link below to catholic chemistry and you can start up a start a profile today and maybe meet someone and i've known several people who have met their uh husband or wife on there so maybe give it a try catholicchemistry.com again again click that link in the description below it's kind of awkward isn't that i mean we're talking about the demons and now but marriage is a sacrament and all that so amen do i mean the demons don't have a body all right they're obviously disincarnate say the word so but but how do they manifest themselves uh do you ever see them as it were i would say that we as we as humans would say that they don't have a form but certainly to god that they would okay in any time that people have seen demons and i've i've seen them as well always see them in the image of kind of a black blob almost so to speak interesting it's where uh think of like a black hole it's just the complete utter darkness you think about it because think of lucifer again when lucifer fell lucifer being seraphim angel closest to the throne of god meaning he would be radiating the glory of god yeah more than any other of god's creatures but when he chose to rebel against god and reject god then he rejected god's glory and so he's no longer receiving god's glory so then he's in utter darkness a good analogy i would give i have six brothers oh wow two sisters but growing up my brothers and i would take a little glow-in-the-dark ball you know you put it up against the light and then you would turn it off and then the ball would glow yeah the light is not from the ball it's from the main source being the light bulb but what's going to happen if it isn't constantly fed by the light bulb eventually it's going to fade out yeah there's lucifer no longer fed if you will by the glory of god so he's in complete utter darkness and that's why when people see images of demons it's always kind of this black blob so to speak like the moon devoid of the sun correct no longer has the radiation you think of saints you know you see a picture of a saint a painting or a stained glass window there's always a halo around their head well the glory they're radiating is not their own they're radiating the glory of god yeah that makes sense all right well we're going to take some questions now so if you're watching right now by the way great to have you here please do be sure to click the like button and subscribe and maybe share this video if you think this is a message that needs to be heard by more people the best way you can help us right now is not only by liking this video but by sharing it on facebook or twitter that would really help us a lot we're going to take some questions now from patrons and those in the live chat to be sure that you get your question read you might want to send it as a super chat so father we've maybe have answered some of these because some of these questions came in prior you're welcome to take another kick at them uh or go with them um let's see here benjamin handleman says i don't have my glasses so is there like and you've expl i think you've answered this is there like a special exorcist club or union or like conference where they meet up and share tips that is the international association based in rome one does not have to belong to it so i i like to belong to the group because again they bring in some excellent theologians and it's an opportunity to connect with other exorcists throughout the world i mean i've gotten calls people reaching out to me from help from the central african republic from zimbabwe from canada argentina norway you name it so belonging to that organization and knowing priests in other parts of the world helps me to direct people to someone in their locality who can perhaps give them the help that they need this might be a difficult question to answer but does the does the do the demons seem to be more active in certain countries than others again that might be difficult to answer because if you don't have priests who are actively ministering in a certain region you probably wouldn't know i was going to make your comment maybe you think of uh why you earlier you said why does it that exorcisms have to be repeated or over a period of time and my experience is that there's a difference between exorcisms performed in the non-christian world interesting and in the apostate world so the non-christian world would be where people have never heard the good news of jesus christ in those cases when people hear the good news demons the exorcisms are immediate and effective but in the apostate world where people knew the person in jesus christ but then rejected him it does seem that demons have a greater hold on these folks so you look at the united states today or the western world i mean western civilization was built by christianity and yet many people today are turning our backs on christianity so that may be why it does seem that the devil is having the upper hand interesting joe any questions uh yeah we have a super chat from uh capturing christianity hey captain christianity your boy cameron who's about to become catholic i'm just joking okay i'm sorry i keep doing that cameron what's his question uh he said lampard i want to have you back i'm capturing christian popular exorcism no this is not okay you can't cameron you cannot come into my live stream and advertise your channel okay so anyway apparently cameron batuzi wants you back on his show to review uh exorcism films anyway very good camera anyone else uh yeah uh austin adams uh said father lampard is the best and god bless all right thank you thank you all right i'll i'll go here but if you have one maybe just kind of lift your hand up so i know there's one there this one uh comes from emily mole thank you for being a patron emily she says is it true that if something was a pathway to the demonic harry potter homeopathy other alternative medicines etc i guess we'd have to debate whether or not they were or decide whether they were but it would be listed in the records of past exorcisms there's a current debate on if homeopathy is permissible for catholics due to the ritualistic method of creating the remedies and its roots in the freemasons one person is claiming it's okay and not an open door to the demonic because it hasn't been listed in an exorcism since its creation 200 years ago i'm not sure if that makes sense to you do you get the gist of that the gist is there are there are many things that could be an entry point for the demonic you know you look at different types of literature the person mentioned harry potter are there some medicinal practices that could be and that's why there's so much debate on these issues yeah in the world of exorcism and again the opportunity to come together and constantly grow you know exorcist you know we're not a part of the magisterium of the church so you know we're not the main teaching body we can share our experiences what we've encountered but there's a big difference between the experiences that we've had and what is official church teaching so there's many things like this that the jury may still be out on but i think they're being debated and discussed right now everything from like you met talked about the souls of the damned showing up during an exorcism debates on generational curses that's always a big one so there's many elements that are still being discussed from a theological viewpoint and right now we just don't have those answers i mean i find it i don't want to be lacks but i do think that sometimes certain activities get associated with the occult and then catholics drop the whole thing so you know homeopathy i'm not sure what she means by that but suppose she included in this things like using essential oils it's like how could using lavender you know uh oil be a bad thing and i i can imagine somebody's saying well because these people over there are using it which doesn't seem to me be a compelling argument for why we need to discard the use of essential oils to me one of the ways that i like to look at things is is it inherently evil yeah is it inherently evil if it isn't inherently evil i mean an item could be cursed i had a lady tell me one time that she was working with a priest and strange things were happening and it was determined that these dishes antique dishes were had been cursed so they destroyed them which to me was kind of crazy because the dishes aren't inherently evil right you know if something's been cursed we don't destroy it if somebody a person has been cursed we don't destroy them we would bless them we would pray so to me the question would be is something inherently evil now let's go back to earlier magic all magic is inherently evil you think of adam and eve you know the apple wasn't inherently evil it was used for the wrong purpose but for me the litmus test is always is the item in question inherently evil okay we have another question yeah we have several more super chats um luis asks father lampert what is mary's role in the moment of liberation father lampard says this question what is mary's role in the moment of liberation i suppose as it pertains to exorcisms well the church recognizes that our blessed mother is a very powerful ally for anyone who's up against the forces of evil and why is that the case you know you think of genesis 3 15 you know she's going to crush satan's head and so it's mary who reverses the no of eve so there in the garden you know eve gives in to the temptation from the serpent and says no to god but there's mary in the annunciation with the archangel gabriel this is god's plan and how does she respond i am the handmaid of the lord let it be done to me according to your word and then our blessed mother then has that unique role to play in the incarnation becomes the queen of heaven so the blessed mother is a very powerful ally even you know some of the fathers of the church would talk about you know the pride of satan but also the fact that he could not accept that human flesh would be elevated higher than himself certainly god taking on human form but then our blessed mother becoming queen of heaven do you call upon the saints intercessions in exorcisms yes it's a part of the the right itself the litany of the saints and you tend to find in your own experience that calling upon mary's intercession is more powerful absolutely absolutely and even during the litany of the saints during an exorcism there may be certain names of saints that elicit a very strong negative response from the demon and during the ritual i will take note of all of this and then parts of the ritual then could be repeated that seem to be pretty efficacious more efficacious than others we have a question here before we get to that from josh payment who is a patron who says what unique kinds of spiritual warfare is one at risk of when not in a state of grace as opposed to the kinds of spiritual warfare any baptized catholic in a state of grace and sacramental life is at risk of okay so is there a difference between spiritual warfare and unbaptized personal experiences as opposed to someone in a state of grace experiences yeah that made me just think of going back to what i said earlier about a non-christian versus the apostate world you know they're the end of the judgment scene at the end of matthew's gospel going to be separated into the sheeps and the goats and the goats are going to get off with fewer stripes because the sheep are going to get be judged more severely because they're going to have known how they should have lived their life yeah but did not do it so that's why you know the state of grace is so important and recognized in our sinfulness we're back to the importance again of the sacrament of reconciliation what are some of the most powerful prayers a lay person can pray um when combating the demonic well there's two different types of exorcism prayers there would be an imperative or major exorcism which is the command given to the demon and then there are supplicating prayers which are prayers addressed to god the new rite of exorcism that came out in 1998 released in 1999 has supplicating prayers in it the old right did not and the purpose of the new right was to put the overall pastoral care of people dealing with the mnemonic in the hands of every parish priest but any baptized person can pray for someone else but it's always important to make sure that the prayers are directed to god an example would be god see how your servant is afflicted come to the raid and give them the peace and freedom that they seek but again it's always directed to god and cardinal rotzinger back in 1986 made it very clear when he was you know in charge of the congregation of the doctrine of the faith became pope benedict but only a priest authorized by his bishop should be giving commands to demons anyone else should be uh doing supplicating prayers so in a sense as as a priest in persona christi you can kind of command the demon by your own authority as it were in the authority of christ which you represent in that moment whereas a lay person doesn't get to have that like i command you and you know is that what you're saying but they have to kind of call upon god yes and that's again that's what the church is teaching us and to me if one believes they're doing battle against satan being disobedient to the church gotcha and trying to fight the devil right is a bad combination but the same michael prayer would be something you would encourage same bible prayer uh i like the the uh the chaplet of saint michael that i'd like to i like that prayer a lot the prayer of saint joseph terror of demons this is the year of saint joseph yeah there's a powerful prayer the hail mary is the powerful prayer the lord's prayer i mean to me it's the very i don't know ordinary prayers that are part of the department that aren't so ordinary after all you know like you might think oh the hail mary yeah okay what's another prayer i can pay like what's something more special but as you say when you when you commanded that demon try and pray the hail mary you saw the power of the hail mary at that point huh yes yeah uh joe yeah this is a really good question jason asked if there is a connection between pornography and demonic influence i think i might add if you have any experiences specifically to relate to that right for those in case they couldn't hear joe is there a connection between pornography and demonic influences and do you have any experiences of that you might share and i think pornography reduces the human person to just an object and we go back again to what we've talked about earlier that the human person is created in the image and likeness of god so there's something sacred about our nature and i think the demonic component of pornography is it just reduces humanity to a commodity an object if you will it's almost like the person consuming pornography wants to do to that body what the demon does to the body in possession namely make it a puppet in a sense you know for my own selfish gratification and i think addictive behavior you know that could be another entry point whether it's pornography alcohol drugs whatever it might be addictive behavior could be another entry point for the demonic into people's lives and oftentimes i was going to say that the devil is so subtle that we may be caught up in addictive behavior and don't even fully grasp the gravity of what we're involved in this is my second espresso and just another good question there or yeah uh based byzantine ass watching movies like the conjuring series be spiritually detrimental especially if they're using real names and demons oh did you get that so based byzantine asks can watching certain movies uh like the conjurer i guess which is a horror conjuring series which would be problematic but the devil plays on a person's memory and imagination so these are the things we're putting into our minds yeah then the devil can use those against us but what would you say though about things like the lord of the rings which contains some very kind of horrible descriptions of how orcs look and what mordor is like i think that's where evil is so subtle is that we're being impacted on maybe a subconscious level that we don't even really fully understand what we're bombarding ourselves with i know the fear is that somebody would say well i don't want to expose myself to anything that could be in any way uncomfortable so i'm just going to watch hallmark movies and that's it and that seems to me to be hell actually but you know like i wouldn't want someone to go to that extreme i mean you've already kind of acknowledged that the exorcism is a is a decent movie which kind of depicts exorcism and we can talk about that in a minute but so presumably if somebody can watch a horror movie like the exorcist um then horror movies aren't intrinsically evil no that guess the question would be whether or not it leads somebody to have a fascination gotcha yeah and of course he's referring not to the exorcism or the exorcist but uh something different yeah because there's a lot i think there's a big fascination today with a lot of these movies on television and programs that you know that are that are meant to scare and terrify yeah but again if we're going to put these images into our heads we have to realize that the devil could use that to instill fear and terror into our lives the devil is always looking for an opportunity to to spread fear yeah because when you're afraid what are you lacking hope yeah hope is the key ingredient of the christian faith and the devil wants to rob us of that because if we're robbed of hope and we're in fear we're back in that world of discouragement uh we have a question here and this kind of gets to what i want us to address maybe a bit more at length if you don't mind we can take the wind out of cameron batuzi sales by addressing it here so you don't have to go to his channel uh sergio phelan says your favorite movie about exorcism demons or what movie do you think is the most accurate well i have to tell you that i don't ever watch any of these movies all right and the reason the reason is is that there's really no point to watching these things i see this this is work this would be like me going home and watching about a dude doing podcasting but yeah i really don't you know i think i i saw the movie the exorcist when you know it came out i was in high school why so you never had any kind of desire to kind of go back and watch it and no absolutely not i do think it's cool that when there's that meme right that everybody makes fun of the catholic church until somebody's possessed and then no one's calling the first baptist pastor up the road you know you know pastor john or whatever they're going straight to there's a great one i saw two as it says you know this is what everybody thinks i deal with and you see and you know linda blair is spinning and p suit flying out but this is reality and then you just see the priest praying with somebody yeah although some of the things you've described sound closer to the pea soup thing well those things are there but again really an exorcism at its core is a prayer yeah praying with somebody in a very profound way who's had an encounter with the demonic so that they can have a more powerful encounter with god because we can never we should never believe that somehow the devil and god are on the same playing field you know the devil is still a creature and a creature can never be on the same playing field as god the creator yeah uh yes joe yeah aaron asks hey father lampert is there any truth about the stories of john paul ii and pope benedict performing exorcisms as well as the 12th any truth to the stories of pope franc pope benedict and pope trump paul ii performing exorcisms yes there is truth to that so there's people probably see these stories online but john paul the second somebody they had brought to him a lady i think at a uh wednesday audience that they thought was possessed and then afterwards he did do an exorcism prayer on her that's the same way with uh pope benedict i think there's even examples out there of pope francis doing exorcism prayers as well um how should we what do you think of holy salt holy water in in the life of a of an average lay christian how should we be using these things i think they can be uh powerful sacramentals so i get requests all the time for people you know the older ritual has the blessing of salt and the blessing of water i think the danger would be though if somebody starts thinking it's all the the catholic stuff again i would just go back to those things are all important but let's make sure that christ is at the center and the core yeah and then let all these things have their proper place in the church ryan casey says how important is it to bless all food or drink including snacks before consuming in relation to demonic curses attachments and the like i think we bless our food first of all to thank god for the food but prayers also were a form of exorcism taking something from profane use and making it sacred so i think it's important to do that i also at the same time will say let's go back to what i said earlier let's not start seeing the demonic yeah this must be tough for you you must encounter a lot of people who are saying things like that like oh i had a snack and i'm not saying ryan casey's saying this but i had a snack and i forgot to uh pray grace before it uh i mean how do you gently encourage these people to calm down for lack of a better way of speaking i think you know i i think of the call to pray always which means to always have an awareness of god and i think so we can be praying very deliberate prayers but we also pray and by the manner of our life how we choose to live you know i probably throughout the day i have a a prayer that i really like to say i probably say it thousands of times a day it's always on the tip of my tongue and it's lord jesus christ son of the living god have mercy on me a sinner yeah it's just to have that awareness of the presence of god every moment of every day it's to recognize god for who god is and to recognize myself for who i am and my need for god so to me if we have that awareness of god maybe there's a time we forget to say a prayer or whatever but that doesn't mean that all of a sudden the devil then jumped in so sometimes people will say to me you know oh father you know i forgot to do this and i'm worried about the devil and i'm like well how many times have you gone to mass and received a blessing so why do you think that somehow that one little curse or one thing that you forgot but giving too much power has now negated all the graces that you've received yeah i i've been thinking about how christians often try to understand their lives and their christian vocation while excluding the demonic and i thought to myself trying to understand christianity without reference to the demonic it's like trying to understand the lord of the rings without reference to sauron you know how would you explain the lord of the rings you would say there was this ring and it was like not conducive to the flourishing of hobbiton and so they got rid of it and then they lived happily ever after and in a sense that's right but we've missed a big chunk of the story and i think likewise you you can think of christians you say well what's christianity about and they'd say something like well god loves us and we separated ourselves from him through sin and so he came and paid the debt he didn't know because we owed a debt we couldn't pay and now we're in relationship with him and can enjoy him forever and again that's fine especially if you're in an elevator but it's like you've left out this entire chunk of the fact that there are demons that want you to burn in hell for all eternity and i wonder if the reason we become so tired with christianity or bored with it is that it's like we're just looking for spiritual comfort as opposed to realizing you know we're in a war here you know this is not caddyshack we're in saving private ryan yeah we need substance you know we live in an age where we want instant gratification or quick messages you know but when it comes to our relationship with god i mean it needs to go deeper i mean theology is so important you know that's why even though as a catholic it can't just be going to mass on sunday when somebody says to me that you know the mass is boring it's the same old thing i'm like well tell me more about your spirituality and what you're doing or i will give the analogy that you know if you're getting nothing out of the mouth would you put into it be like going into a bank and saying i'm here to make a withdrawal and they look at you and say you don't have an account yeah you've never made a deposit so there's nothing to take out yeah and i think it's the same way with our faith but it can't just be fast food so to speak instant gratification how do we you know spend time and reading the lives of the saints you know i had a professor one time that said that you know when you read sacred scripture and there's something that you're not clear about turn to the lives of the saints because they fill in the gaps and i think that's that's why the you know the communion of saints and the saints are so important but again it's taking time to to read and something of substance and to learn about our faith and and take it to a deeper level you know if we all we ate was fast food every day we'd all starve you know for malnutrition yeah but we need to take our relationship with god to deeper levels that's true of any relationship you know if you don't take it to a deeper level eventually it's going to end you know if you just you're married and you and your wife just talk about the weather every day yeah that relationship's going to go nowhere yeah it has to go deeper and that's a good point because i could say no well i'm dedicating time every day to speaking to my wife what about the weather um here's a question for you we often talk about these things as being obstacles to the development of the christian faith such as pornography which is obviously something intrinsically evil we might think of other things too like that aren't necessarily intrinsically evil like you know soap shows on on television or something like that or or or secular music or something like that and uh but what about what about the sort of outrage media that's sort of 24 7 pumping through all televisions and podcasts right now i mean like i i enjoy listening occasionally to ben shapiro who you may or may not have heard of and he's a conservative commentator that often points to the craziness that's taking place in our society and i sometimes like listening to him because i think oh bloody hell i'm not insane i knew i wasn't insane so when when joe biden seems to indicate that a parent should have the right to give their child hormone blockers or maybe even have their genitalia disfigured and cut off like this is bloody freaking bananas right and so you listen to someone like ben shapiro and you're like yes i knew it was crazy it could be helpful um or if you're on the other side of the aisle and you listen to more kind of left-leaning kind of commentary it can suck you in so that i'm not reading the bible and i'm not really praying the rosary i don't have time to go to daily mass but i'm listening to hours of political commentary i mean how is that have you thought much about how this how the how the devil could use this to sort of keep us away from him or well the devil is an opportunist he may not be the cause of every problem but he can take advantage so you look at the division in our country today the devil can use that as an opportunity to advance his own kingdom you can look at covet 19. no the devil may not be the cause of that but he's again an opportunist he can use that as a way to get people into isolation good so people have to be self-reflective in a sense yeah because again the human person we're made for community yeah and if you want to punish somebody what do you do you isolate them go to your room sit in the corner yeah go to solitary confinement as a parent of four kids i would love to be sent to my room but yes i get your point yeah i always make that comment too that children need to tell them to take a nap they cry because they don't want to adults cry because they can't take a nap exactly like please i part of me would like and i'd well i won't say that because i'll offend everybody any other questions around there otherwise i have some here yeah i have a quick question from jen who asked if there's any other way that uh father celebrates after an exorcism yeah so for those who are watching live right now i missed that uh earlier father talked about a victory he had with somebody he'd been working with for a while uh and went and got a uh shake from dairy queen that's right is there any other way you celebrate when you experience victories in your ministry of exorcism or is that it just dairy queen well celebrating giving glory to god yeah because again it's what god has done it's god's achievement it's not mine certainly not at all so you know it's always give god the glory i think of john 3 30 the words of saint john the baptist he must increase and i must decrease to recognize that everything is about the honor and the glory of god and the other reality is you know being a parish priest i mean i've literally got gone from an exorcism to done a wedding all in the same day wow so you're talking about just trying to to shift gears right away so it could be an exorcism a wedding go right into the weekend math schedule so sometimes it just really isn't the opportunity to to celebrate so to speak but to go right into uh the next thing that needs to be done here's a good question from patron paul benner he says does being demonically possessed at death close off heaven for you can a possessed person go to confession or would they not have any desire to so these are a number of questions so take what you like would a possessed person have any desire to pray the rosary or could they would they desire to receive the eucharist i assume reception of the eucharist wouldn't automatically expel any demons or we wouldn't have much use for exorcist sorry for all the questions i only intended the first one and then i got on a roll so the first question had to do with does being demonically possessed at death close off heaven for you well possession is always only in a physical sense so there can never be an actual union between a demon and a human soul so when a person dies in that connection with the demonic ends because it's always physical because the human soul is reserved to god alone now the devil can try to get us to sell ourselves so to speak but that's the domain that's reserved purely for god so here's a question can someone be possessed and not be in a state of mortal sin can someone i thought you were going to say that can someone be possessed and not be aware of it oh well no can someone be possessed and not be in a state of mortal sin i think cause i think that's kind of what he's asking like he's assuming if you're possessed you are in a sad immortal sin therefore if you die while possessed you're automatically going to hell i would say that just because one's possessed doesn't mean you're in the case of mortal sin because i'm sure you do you work with people who repent of certain things and some people may have invited the evil indirectly maybe they were doing something that they shouldn't have been doing and they didn't really fully understand the gravity of their actions yeah and there is such there is such a thing as uh this is where i thought he might go with it there is something known as perfect possession whereby the person enters into a harmonious relationship with the demon so there's no longer any need to manifest because the person has surrendered to the demon i had an elderly man one time his family had reached out to me and they were christians of another faith tradition but the dad had never embraced any faith in god whatsoever and spent his life cultivating relationships with demons so i did go to visit with him and because they were concerned what will happen to him when he dies and he looked at me and said father i know my family is concerned about me but it's my desire to spend eternity with these demons that i befriended he goes i have no desire to be in eternity with god or in heaven i would prefer to be in hell with these demons that have become my friends what did you say to that that's that's crazy talk but again we all have free will yeah so now we can pray for him that he has some conversion and grows in understanding you know we think of the good thief on the cross yeah as long as we got breath in us we can always call out to the lord and if we're sincere god will hear us has your exorcism ministry confirmed what the church teaches about hell and hell being eternal and souls actually going there i'm sure you believed this prior to this you understand but has it has it sort of fortified that belief oh absolutely you know the interesting thing though too we talked about the souls of the damned and whatnot but i always also reflect on the fact that the church we declare saints but we don't declare sinners so it's not like we say there's a list of people there's not an anti-canonization that's right we don't say these people we know to be beyond the doubt hell yes we just don't know because again to understand the depth and of the mercy of god is is beyond us but we do believe there there are people that you know are in heaven it wasn't necessarily that they were perfect people but they came to terms with their own sinfulness and their need for god and they grew in holiness and virtue i asked this a moment ago um but what what what's the if you don't mind me asking what's the prayer you pray when you feel tempted or attacked is there a specific kind of prayer you turn to or not really uh invoking the holy spirit come holy spirit huh invoking the holy spirit and then i mentioned earlier that the the chaplet of st michael the archangel is one that i pray every day so i do like that one that's an appropriate chaplet for an exorcist yeah joe any any more questions we've got here yeah uh chris asked father i've heard saint athanasius say that scripture passage demons hate most is may god arise and let his enemies be scattered is this true or have you used it in exorcisms do you mind just kind of reformulating that for those who didn't hear him so it's a the question about saint athanasius and the quote again was god arises they've got to rise may enemies be scattered those who hate him flee before his holy face yes so i will say when i do an exorcism i stick with the ritual itself i don't improvise at all when i'm doing the right itself because again if i start improvising then it's what i'm doing and i want to make sure that i'm always doing the prayer of the church so if i'm just praying with somebody and i'm in that initial stage of trying to yes to reach moral certitude there may be things like the prayer of saint athanasius that i would use but once i reach the the point that i'm going to do the official prayer of the church then i'm going to use the official prayer in its form and not modify it in any way yeah barbara goss thank you for being a patron says how do exorcists or the people who request exorcisms now we've addressed this but it might be helpful to recircle it recirculate circle back yeah differentiate between the demonic and mental health issues are the two frequently found together as is common with addictive behavior in mental health problems some say we are nearing or already at a mental health crisis in our country but is some much of this demonic activity i think it could be a combination of both you know is it always mental illness 100 percent is it always demonic 100 percent or is it possible that both are present at the same time no did the the person experienced the demonic episode that caused the mind to fracture to just try to understand what it was going through i think that's why it's so important to work with mental health professionals i think that's why it's always important to if somebody believes they're dealing with the demonic or they're just not certain what's going on for the person to go and see their parish priest go to confession and even ask for the anointing of the sick you know i think the anointing of the sake is probably one of the least utilized sacraments of the church you know catholics today still think that you have to have one foot in the grave to be dying to be anointed but for me to be anointed you know you could be suffering spiritually mentally physically and just turning to the sacrament anointing of the sick can be a powerful way to receive god's grace you know i worked with a man one time that i told him that it wasn't demonic he was convinced that it was hmm i was actually going to ask you that have you had people who've said no this is demonic and you're like it it's not you didn't say something else and i told him and in my opinion i said i think this is and he already had a caseworker and a psychiatrist that he was working with so i arranged a meeting for the four of us to meet i just didn't want to say it's not demonic go away so i met with him his caseworker and his psychiatrist and i said to him it's my opinion that you're not possessed and his psychiatrist looked at him and said father says you're not possessed what is your response and his response was actually intriguing he said i'm disappointed he goes if it's the demonic then i can have an understanding why i act the way that i do bless him he said he's he said to the psychiatrist you can say that i'm schizophrenic and give me that label but you can't tell me why if it's the demonic then i have my why no that's good joe anymore no no well hey this has been a pleasure anything else you want to address before we begin to wrap up that we haven't oh we've talked about a lot do you mind passing me that book there right under the bible nope uh next one yes you've heard of that book i want to show people this book we have here so for those who are watching and i'll be sure to put a link in the description below father vincent lampert wrote a book called exorcism the battle against satan and his demons so we'll put a link in the description below hopefully you can click that go over to emmaus road press and and buy this book how did this book come about and what's the reception been like the reception has been good so a number of years ago i gave a talk at st louis university and there's a priest that works with uh dr scott hahn yeah where they'd reach out to different folks every year to try to get them to share their experiences in their faith series so this priest asked me if i would consider sharing my thoughts on the world of exorcism i thought when would i ever find the time to do that so yeah lockdown yes i thought that's what you're going to say so there's an example of yeah you can use that for good that's right the devil believes that he can use something for bad but we can always use it for good so then i use that opportunity to put together my thoughts and just to give people a glimpse into the world of exorcism now here's a question because we kind of began this interview by saying that if you're a priest who wants to be an exorcist that might be a sign that you shouldn't be but on the other hand i could see a priest watching right now and they're like for goodness sake like i'm seeing this stuff i'm seeing people in my diocese or in my parish who are i think manifesting and there doesn't seem to be anyone in my diocese who's taking this seriously so so what am i to do you see because the priest might think well you've just told me that if i want to be a exorcist i shouldn't be do i just then approach the bishop and have him appoint somebody or what's a priest to do who might be watching right now i think if there's a priest and he's interested he should convey that to his bishop and we say that this is something that he has a level of interest in and you know he's willing to work with people that believe they're dealing with that you know unfortunately today there's a lot of people many catholics that believe they're dealing with the demonic and when they reach out to the church doors are closed in their face phones are hung up calls are never returned they're just ignored and at least if there's a point person in every diocese then there's a place where people can go with their concerns you know we have a protocol in the archdiocese of indianapolis that i helped put together so it's an archdiocese and protocol and every priest has it so if somebody shows up at the rectory or the parish office they believe that they're dealing with the demonic here's a step by step that they would go through you know before they would talk to me you know just because you have a headache doesn't mean you're calling a neurologist and say i need brain surgery tomorrow you know it's again talk to the parish priest who's on the front lines who can provide that ongoing pastoral care and you know initially the priest and had the person go to confession anoint them so just the ordinary aspects of the faith should be the place we begin with most people and then perhaps it reaches the point where they may be referred to the exorcist or the priest in the diocese that's authorized to investigate these matters and it may be true that bishops just don't know which of their priests may have some level of interest so at least letting the bishop know that yeah yeah and there's many opportunities there's a an exorcism school now here in the united states which wasn't the case when i was appointed so there is a school where priests can be trained to be exorcist there's some great conferences that are held here in the united states so there are opportunities even if a priest doesn't have the official mandate from his bishop to get some education to be well informed to know how to offer pastoral care to people who are afflicted other than this book which you wrote again we'll put a link in the description below is there another book that you would recommend people read if they were interested in learning more about the church's prayer and exorcism i like father gabriel amorous books yeah what are those called do you remember i think ignatius published them if not yeah an exorcist explains the demonic and uh an exorcist shares his you know there's more stories the one that you know father amor died in 2016 and one came out just right after shortly before he died but it's a very it's a very good one and it's a the exorcist explains the demonic and i think it puts things in a very clear and concise manner that uh it's easy to read and understand okay how many people do we have watching right now joe uh one thousand one hundred ninety nine it's ridiculous it's beautiful glory to jesus christ we have over one thousand almost one thousand two hundred people watching right now uh so they must be interested in this topic in some way so i thought it might be helpful if we close this interview with perhaps you leading us in a prayer i don't know if that's putting you on the spot too much but maybe a prayer give me this book that you have there's a prayer in the background look at that because uh we are in the uh the year of saint joseph so this is the prayer i want to pray the prayer and then we'll we'll wrap up so thanks for watching everybody so this is the prayer st joseph terror of demons in the name of the father the son and holy spirit amen saint joseph tare of demons cash your solemn gaze upon the devil and all his minions and protect us with your mighty staff you fled through the night to avoid the devil's wicked designs now with the power of god smite the demons as they flee from you grant special protection we pray for children fathers families in the dying by god's grace no demon dares approach while you are near so we beg of you always be near to us amen amen father son holy spirit amen father vincent thank you kindly for coming down and being on the show yep my pleasure awesome that's great [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

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Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: x6YTz-B24FA

Length: 138min 31sec (8311 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021