Transcription
The notion of mortal sin is always a little hard for me because I can clearly understand grave matter, cuz it's like an objective thing. Like, I kind of get that. The full, quote-unquote, full knowledge and consent. I believe that's what the Catechism says.
Right. Um, that's where it gets tricky for me. And I've talked to many guests about this on here. It's just one of my sticky points in the church, you know, but I mean, I, I submit, but I'm just saying it's hard for me, hard for me to grasp because that there is such a huge spectrum of knowledge that a person can have and a, a pretty big spectrum on, on consent, you know, that somebody would have.
So, you know, part of me wants to say, "Wow, well, committing a mortal sin is really hard to do because you really have to be thinking this whole thing through." And a lot of grave, um, acts, grave matter, are performed kind of in the heat of passion.
True. You know, and so as a lawyer, look, [clears throat] I, in mortal sin, the punishment for mortal sin is, is, is eternal damnation.
Damnation. That's right. So, so we're dealing with, by way of analogy, and I think this, this might fail, but, but fix it for me. Um, I don't get the death penalty in civil court, okay, criminal court, unless
[snorts]
unless I have like premeditated murder. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, I get if I get second-degree murder or manslaughter or something, I might go to, I might go to prison for a long, long time, but I'm not going to get the electric chair unless this was premeditated. So, if, if I walk in and I'm in the heat of passion, throws me into, you know, a crazy state and I kill somebody, I'm not going to the electric chair.
Right, that's right. So, I, I, I've personally always kind of thought about mortal sin similar to that.
Mhm. And [clears throat] that might be very, very. And also, just one more thing, with Aristotle, he has these four moral characters, all the way from virtuous to, uh, continent, incontinent, and then vicious. Where it's really like a state of being. His, the vicious man is not somebody who does something bad. The vicious man who's somebody who's become habitually bad.
That's right. And so that has kind of influenced my understanding of, of someone in a state of mortal sin. Um, so I, I struggle with this. I think you see the kind of the parameters I'm sticking on that. Help me with that.
So, uh, you guys were play, uh, we published Prümmer, right? I don't know. Prümmer? Or maybe you didn't. Maybe that was somebody else. I thought you guys did. But I don't know, but I'll write down something. Sounds like I should.
Yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a manual. It's called, It's just a manual of moral theology by Prümmer.
Okay, we don't do that, but maybe we should. So, but anyway, in there, uh, he, he lays a lot of this stuff out. But actually, this actually gets all worked out by St. Thomas as well. So, on the side of the knowledge, um, he, he also talks about degrees, as you mentioned. So, the man in passion, if the passion gets to the point where it precipitates the judgment of the individual, so it all revolves around the judgment. So, if the, and the, the judgment is, St. Thomas says, where the intellect converts back to the image of the imagination to make a judgment about what is morally good or bad. In that particular case, if the image is a heavily affected by the passion to such a degree that it precipitates judgment to where it does not, it, as a result of that, does not is not able to see the truth of the matter, the reality of the matter,
Mhm. Then in that particular case, there's not. And that can be actually by degrees. But then there comes a certain point though, however, that you can still have passion and still the judgment, depending on its, the person's intellectual habits, can be such that it can actually judge like, "Okay, this is still grave matter." So, it all hinges on the moment in which the person passes to the, or the judgment becomes, recognizes this is grave matter. Up until then, even though it is objectively, subjectively it's not. Okay, that's on the side of the knowledge.
Um, and then after the person is, and this becomes an important point because a lot of times too, like, one of the things that a difficulty that a lot of people have, the struggle with, especially if they struggle with scrupulosity, is they'll come into confession and they'll say, you know, I had impure thoughts. Okay, that's, that's good that you confessed that, but I need to know how many of them were grave because there's varying degrees of that. But when it first comes in, that's not grave. The second thing is, is then there's also a thing which St. Thomas calls semi-deliberate. And that is when the thought comes into the mind and there is a judgment of the intellect about the thing, but it's not about its morality or the, the gravity of the morality. And so the judges it as from the point of view of the pleasure that's involved, then the will sees it, and the will and the intellect start basically causing motion within the image, um, which he calls semi-deliberate, but the person hasn't yet made a judgment. We, it's almost like daydreaming to a degree, but a little bit more involved in daydreaming. Yes. And the person hasn't made a judgment. It's, but it's once the, once the intellect then judges, wait a minute, this is grave. That's when it comes grave. So, the semi-deliberate, depending on which theologian you listen to, some of them say that St. Thomas says it's venially sinful, others say that it's, it's mortal or not, not mortal, it's not sinful at all. Um, but anyway, that being the case, it all hinges on once reason judges, uh, on a subjective level, that this thing is grave.
It's like, it's like your intellect is saying, now you're in a moral deliberation. Yeah. This, yeah, hey, this is
And now you have a choice to make.
is grave.
Right, right. That's presented to then to the will, and the will can, um, uh, even if the person knows that it's, it's, uh, so the, then the grave, then that's when it, that's when the will at that point, if it wills it, and this is what I actually talk about in my book, that the object as it's formulated by reason, then becomes the object of the will. So, when the will, when the, and reason realizes, okay, this is a gravely sinful act that's being proposed, if the will wills it, then it then it wills that object. And so, then the species or nature of the object, that is the gravity or the, the nature of the evil, then becomes, it becomes present in the will through the actual willing. And that's why since St. Thomas says, is essentially in the will, and essentially like that will and intellect together reach out and grab the object. That's right. Yeah.
It within the soul, and that's why it becomes toxic to the soul. And you can have situations where they, the person direction recognizes the gravity of the situation and that there's not a full consent on the side of the will. So, like, for example, you know, an example that I often give to people is like, you know, if you're in a situation and like, let's just say there's a zombie apocalypse happens and you're starving and your family's starving, right? And you know that going and taking this guy's food is going to result in him dying, and you're going to have to kill this guy in order to get it. There, there you might, there might be some sense of a semblance of recognizing, okay, this is grave matter, but the person's not necessarily giving full consent. Or when people get put in a situation where they're told they have to do something, they don't, they don't want to do it, but they have, they feel like they have to, there's not full consent. So, sometimes you'll have situations like that. So, the problem can either be on the side of the intellect or on the side of the will as to mitigating the gravity of it.
Can I, can I tell you my, I have something called the cheesecake story to explain Aristotle's four moral characters? And again, we're talking about a pagan, right? Yeah. So, I mean, but which is actually true, though, right? Right. So, there's good stuff in it. But you have Darth Vader. Uh, you have, uh, King David, and Frodo. And you have Socrates all at the dinner table at The Cheesecake Factory. All right? They've just had a delectable meal, right?
And [snorts] the waitress comes around and says, "Would you like a piece of cheesecake?" And she looks at Socrates and says, "Mr. Socrates, would you like a piece of cheesecake?" He says, "No, I don't even want the cheesecake. Okay?"
Right. And then she looks at, uh, Frodo. And she says, "Which, uh, little hobbit Frodo, would you like a piece of cheesecake?" And he says, "Oh, you know, Gandalf really told me I, I really, I really want a piece. I, I really do want a piece, but Gandalf told me I shouldn't have a second dessert, so I'm going to say no."
Right. Yeah. Then she looks at King David. And King David says, "Oh, Prophet Nathan says I really need to start controlling my urges. I shouldn't, I shouldn't, but I'll have a small piece."
And then she looks [laughter] at Darth Vader, and he says, "I'll take two." Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
And so, you know, I love that story because it's like, you know, it shows that that middle ground of what he calls the continent and incontinent person. Like, they're struggling. They're struggling.
And I've also likened, when I taught Aristotle in college, I, I likened, um, his notion of incontinence is like, it's almost like somebody doing a, a back squat. Like, we put too much weight on. Yeah. And we're trying, but we collapse under the weight. We shouldn't have put that much weight on. Right. Yeah.
Trying, but our legs give way. Right. Versus the vicious man who, who like, has no remorse. I mean, he just kind of goes and does it. Right. So, I mean, I know that the analogy there only goes so far for Catholic morality, but it's close. I think it's a solid foundation. Right.
So, this is why sometimes I wonder how many real, true, full-blown mortal sins a priest hears in confession because if they're that far gone, yeah, isn't repentance unlikely? So, they don't go to confession anyway.
Okay. So, the answer is, uh, without grace, there will be no repentance. Okay, good answer. That's good. That helps me.
It's only, in fact, uh, the, the church has always said that you can't repent of your sins, ultimately, even on the level of contrition, let alone attrition. You know, any of those levels, you cannot even do those without the aid of grace, which is why the church has always said it's presumption. If you commit the sin thinking, "I'm going to go to confession," you don't know that. You might intend it now. You might intend, but after the, after the, after you fall, God can retract the grace and you won't repent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, that's, wow, that's amazing. That really helps me because I was trying to reconcile these things. I mean, yeah, if you have rejected grace by committing this grave matter with your knowledge and consent. Yeah. I mean, at least according to Aristotle, which is, is limited applicability here, but it's like, okay, if you're at that point, you, you don't really want to confess. But yet people do. And I see that. I know that priests hear mortal sins in confession, and it's the grace that got them there.
Yeah, that's right. That, that really helps me resolve that. Aristotle was probably very right on the natural level. Yeah, I think so. I think so.
In fact, he's a perfect example of the heights that you can reach on a philosophical level without an understanding of the economy of grace. Yeah, yeah. Everything from just what you know, we were just talking about, all the way through, you know, the final end of man. I can't remember [clears throat] where it is in Aristotle, but it's in one of the, it's in, I can't remember which. It's not in the Nicomachean Ethics, so, but it, but in his other ethics, if I remember correctly, he says, you know, it would seem, it would seem that the, the, the final end of man would be to have this never-ending contemplation of the unmoved mover.
It is in the Nicomachean Ethics. It's in book nine, I think, of the Nicomachean Ethics, and he says that the ultimate, ultimate happiness, eudaimonia, as he talks about, is contemplation of God. It's just, it's contemplating, it's contemplating the unmoved mover. But then he says, "But such a state is too high for man." Yeah, cuz just, that's just, he didn't know about redemption. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Exactly right. Exactly. Yes. But that's, that's how he, that's how he finishes the whole Nicomachean Ethics, yeah. I mean, he's like, "Here is what actual virtue is. Here's what actual friendship is. And when you combine the virtuous life with friendships, you have eudaimonia or happiness." And then he's like, "It's kind of at the passing at the end. He's like, And it seems like the ultimate happiness would be contemplating the unmoved mover." You know? And it's like, "That's the beatific vision. You're almost there." Yeah. I mean, when you see what the, the jump from, you know, the pre-Socr- pre-Socratics to, uh, Socrates and Plato and then to Aristotle is pretty significant. So, it, it does make me really believe, especially when I read stuff like that from Aristotle, I'm thinking to myself, I can actually see why the fathers of the church said that, uh, it was the angels who taught the Greeks philosophy. Yeah. Yes. Cuz human beings are just not that bright. Yeah.
[laughter]
So, there's a place in, um, the City of God, Mhm. uh, where Augustine refers to the, um, the rumor or the legend or whatever that, um, ancient, uh, Greeks were, uh, um, in the same place at the same time as the prophet Jeremiah. Mhm. And that ancient Greeks could have been influenced by the prophets. And that might have been how they got some notion of monotheism that works its way into at least Plato. Yeah. Um, so, it's, it's interesting to me that maybe Judaism had its impact on ancient Greek philosophy. I'm sure it did to some extent.
That. I hope that's true.
Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's go back to your seminary. So, we were, um, you, you joined the fraternity. You have a, you have a love for the Latin Mass. You're praying the Latin Office. Mhm. Um, that formation, how was it? It was good, and then like, what, what was your early time in the fraternity? What was your, what was your ministry? What was it like?
Uh, so, when I was first ordained, even though I had a doctorate, my, um, superior, uh, at the time, decided to, um, put me in a parish, which I, which is, which I think was a, a prudent decision, frankly. Because, um, I have seen guys go from, you know, seminary to teaching in a seminary, and it, they don't get a proper context for what they're teaching. Um, and if they don't have enough pastoral experience, they don't get a, a deeper sense of it. So, he put me in a, on a parish under a pastor that was actually very good, um, the first year, and then after that, um, the, uh, Bishop Bruskewitz asked me to start teaching in his seminary. So, I taught for him for 4 years. Wow. [snorts]
Um, and, uh, which was actually a, you know, a good time, too, cuz then I met, met a, um, the academic dean became a close friend of mine. He would arrange my classes so I could start writing. So, that's when I started doing the writing. But, um, so, that's kind of where it all started. And then, you know, not to, not to go into it in any detail. I don't want to pressure you to say anything, but you eventually left that fraternity. Um, and then what are you, want to say about that?
Well, cuz, well, uh, the, um, the actual what happened was is that I was, I taught for the fraternity after I taught for Bishop Bruskewitz. Uh, coterminously, I was teaching for a little while, but I ended up teaching for the fraternity for about 7 years. But then, there was a pastoral situation which they, my superiors asked me to, you know, leave the seminary and go and go and address. Um, I mean, I think there's other reasons that they moved me out of the seminary, but I, ultimately, I think it was the will of God for this one reason I'll mention here in a minute. But then I went and took, uh, that pastoral situation. Fortunately, I managed to get cleaned up. It was pretty brutal, but it, we managed to get it cleaned up. And then after that,
Now, you weren't doing exorcisms yet. No, well, what happened was, the, the two years before I left the, they asked me to go be the pastor up at this place. Um, uh, like when you say you got it cleaned up, I kind of think you're talking exorcism stuff.
No, this was actually a practical set of problems that needed to be addressed.
[snorts]
Um, and so, um, the, but two years before they moved me, I was actually, I started doing exorcisms in, uh, Omaha at the request of the bishop there.
Okay. Okay. Um, and, uh, it, I had no intention of doing it. The, um, there was a pastor who, I was in residence there. I was also teaching at the seminary full-time, but I was in residence there and also actually as an assistant helping the priest. And he, um, uh, he, um, comes up to my room. I, I always tell people, I was minding my own business. And he comes up to my room and knocks on the door and says, "Hey, would you come look at this guy?" And I said, "Yeah, okay." But by this time, you have to understand, I had done a lot of consultation with exorcists because, um, they would contact me because I'd written these three books on psychology. And at a certain point, I asked one exorcist, "Well, why don't you just talk to your local psychologist?" And he said, "Well, it's because the demons actually understand human psychology the same way St. Thomas did." And so, a lot, the psychol-, the exorcists were talking to me about it. So, I had some knowledge of it, you know, about what was actually going on. And I had to then doing some deliverance work for about two years before I was even asked, like going and cleaning up buildings and houses and praying [snorts] over people that had minor or lesser forms of extraordinary diabolic influence. Uh, like oppression and obsession. But, um, but then what happens is is that, so he knocks on the door, I go down, and he opens up, and it's open to chapter three of title 12 of the Ritual Romanum, which is the exorcism of apostate angels by Leo the 13th. So, I, I look over this guy and say, "Okay, I see what this is." And so, I didn't get a third of the way through this, and boom, it was a full-blown manifestation. And so, um, I just stopped and I just said to the, the pastor, I said, "Well, send him to the archdiocese." Presuming they would have an exorcist. So, he writes him a letter, tells him the case, situations of the case. And, um, and we had seen the preternatural manifestation. So, the, we said, you know, we've seen it. So, you need to get, you know, we're sending him so that you can assign it to your exorcist. Well, they write back and say, "We don't have an exorcist." So, I said, "Well, write him a letter and tell him to get one." You know, like you could just order one online [laughter] something, something. So, uh, they, they sent it to that, and then they wrote back and two weeks later says, "We just can't find anybody who's capable of even doing it." Now, the exorcist that had, that I had been consulting with, said that one of the indicators that Christ wants you to be the one to process the case is that the demon will manifest preternaturally for the first time to the one he knows is to, to, to liberate. And, uh, there is a certain sense in which that's true. I don't think it's an absolute, but there's a general sense in which that's true because demons are hyper-focused on power. It's all about power. They've lost everything else. And so, the only thing left for them is power. And so, when you have, like, four or five priests enter a room, if they know who the exorcist is, who's the leading exorcist, they become focused on him. And the rest of them, they don't pay any attention to. They might, if, if the other one gets a little bit, uh, in their face or something, but they'll just, they'll totally pay attention to that guy. So, and so, um, I said, "Well, write him and tell him to try and find one. If they can't, then I'll do it." Cuz I figured then, if this is, if this is what God is asking me of me. Now, two months before that, I made, this is one of those, "be careful what you ask for" in prayer.
Mhm. So, I said to Our Lady, "Make me a man of prayer." Well, after I was an exorcist for about 3 months, I said to her, "I said, well, this isn't exactly what I had in mind."
[laughter]
So, uh, but anyway, so then, that's like saying, "Help me lose some weight," and they drop you in the desert for a month.
Yes, yeah, exactly. [laughter] Exactly.
I mean it like this.
Exactly. So, uh, I mean, there's some, there's some sometimes though that she's giving me graces to see things. I just say, "Okay." But this is the, um, the, uh, so then after that happened, then they just started sending me their cases, which started coming out of the woodwork. And [snorts] so, then I worked as an exorcist for them for 2 years, and then I was transferred up to this other place. I would still come back to Omaha from time to time to process, um, one or two of the cases that they actually had. And then while I was up there, a case came to the surface, contacted the bishop there. In the meantime, um, [clears throat] uh, uh, Bishop Slattery of Tulsa had cases that were starting to come up. And he asked me to actually go to fly down there and take a look at a case, cuz at this time, I was only one of 13 exorcists in the country. Mhm. And [snorts] so, I flew down, um, looked at the case, did the diagnostic. I said, "Yes, she's possessed. Uh, you're dealing with something that she's dealing with a case that also has a guardian spirit. So, you're looking at something protracted, 2 to 3 years at a minimum." That's how long, and it took him, I think, 2 to 3 years to, to liberate her. But any, so, I said, "I don't have time to do it, cuz I'm a pastor." So, he said, "Would you be willing to train somebody?" So, I trained a priest there who then, um, did, you know, did a good job on that particular case. And then, uh, he, uh, it, I, I was talking to him out loud because at this point, I'm getting people contacting me from around the country who are just, they're just trying to find anybody that would give them some relief. And so, I just was talking out loud to the bishop. And I said, "You know what really needs to happen? Somebody needs to set up some type of like an institute where people could just come from around the country, get cleaned up, and go home." And I wasn't thinking in terms of myself doing it at all. When I went back to Idaho, which is where this parish was, um, the thought started occurring to me, "You know, you really probably should do that." You know, and so I just said to Our Lady in, in prayer at one point, I just said, "Find me a bishop, and I'll do it." Well, about 2 weeks after that, I get a letter from Bishop, uh, uh, from, uh, Bishop Slattery, who then said, "Yeah, come and start it." Wow.
So, I, I went down, um, we started it there, and then the incoming bishop, um, uh, wasn't acrimonious or anything. We tend to have a pretty good relationship. He just did said, "I just don't want to continue the project." And fair enough, you're the bishop. And then it was at that point that Archbishop Aquila asked us to move it, um, to Denver. And so, um, it, when we moved, when I went to Tulsa, though, I told the bishop, there were two conditions. One, I'd still wanted to continue saying exclusively the old mass. Um, and then I said, "The other thing is, uh, I will do no other pastoral work because I have been a pastor and been an exorcist, and two problems is doing exorcism is extraordinarily time-consuming. It's time-intensive, and if you don't have a lot of time to it, people just languish and it protracts how long it takes to get people liberated. The other part of it is they start messing with your parish, you know, and so I just told him I just don't want to have anything to do with that." So, that's why we're semi-contemplative and we do only exorcism work.
Yeah, that's, okay. It makes perfect sense. I mean, I'm not sure that I would want my pastor being like a full-time exorcist at the same time. I mean, it's like hard to, yeah, be two things, you know.
It is. And one of, one of two things happen. I mean, you can't serve both God and mammon, type of thing. So, what happens is is that if they're really staying focused on their parish life, it means that their exorcism work languishes. But, or if they start spending a lot of time on the exorcism work, then the parish starts to languish. So, you mentioned the, the first condition was you wanted to be explicitly TLM. Yeah. Um, is, is that just mere preference for beauty, or have you found that to be more efficacious in the line of work that you do?
Uh, well, it's obviously both. I mean, so.
It was a rhetorical question. I just want you to talk about it.
[laughter]
Um, well, by this time, you have to understand, by the time I started this thing, I had already been writing articles about the traditional Latin Mass, and I even wrote one article about how the old Mass is more meritorious than the new, which created a whole, that created a whole kerfuffle behind the scenes. But, um, and so by this time, I had become intellectually convicted of its, I mean, even like I said, when I was 17, I said, "Well, this is better." By this [snorts] time, I have the, the theological and philosophical framework to seeing why it's better.
Yes. But then also, people who are possessed, um, almost to a man or woman, depending on whether they're, so woman or man is possessed, almost all of them will say it's harder to attend the old rite than the new. Yes. Um, and so, uh, and so, in that sense, I'm sorry. I've heard that it's like they can get through the Novus Ordo up until the words of consecration without a problem, but with the Latin Mass, they like, it starts immediately at the Judica because it's like, it just starts, they start having a problem. Is that roughly correct?
Uh, roughly, roughly. One of the things that we'll actually watch for is, um, where the demons are pinning. So, like, if it's a part of the offertory, we'll take a look at that part of the offertory because that tells us something about the dynamics of the possession case. So, um, but, but the, um, it's kind [clears throat] of funny. One time I, um, the, this woman who was possessed was complaining about, um, when she would go up to, excuse me, when she would actually go up to, um, to go to communion. And this is something that other people, you know, that you would hear in confession regularly, and people would complain about this, that, that when they were going up to communion, um, that all of the sudden they'd have, you know, through the whole mass, they're able to just focus, they have a good, devout mass, and then they walk up, and all of a sudden they just get barraged by these impure thoughts. And so, Beelzebub, which is another name for Satan, but he's the demon of impurity. I asked him one time because he was doing this in the, in this particular case. Um, I, cuz I wanted to make, I find out if it was him. Because if it was him, then there were things we could do to get him to stop. And he, and I said, "Is this you?" And he says, "Yeah, that's me."
[cough] [clears throat]
So. Wow. Uh, but they're, yeah, but they just find, they generally find the old rite just harder to get through. Yes, yes. Um, kind of to begin the wrapping up process. I mean, cuz that, that was a great story. I mean, it brings you up to the society, what do you call it? Uh, it's a Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother.
Okay. Okay. Um, so, [snorts] but it is a society. It's not a religious order, or is it?
Well, then, you technically speaking, canonically, you can no longer start religious orders. They all have to be societies.
Okay. I mean, you can still have the same structure and you can have vows and all that.
Okay. All right. So, you mentioned that you're contemplative and do exorcisms. Right. Talk to us about, well, cuz we're going to talk more later in another episode about more of your exorcism work. Mhm. I don't think of Father Rippenger as a contemplative, right? Like, that doesn't, I don't hear that often, right? So, talk [clears throat] to me about what that means. What is your daily prayer life like? Uh, what's your community prayer life like? Take us through that.
Right. Okay, so on the community side, like we have, uh, required prayers that everybody's required to say every day. Um, we only, we don't do the office in common. We do it, um, although some of the guys kind of started, they said, "Do you mind if we start doing None together?" And I don't have a problem with that. So, uh, even though I'm virtually never there to, uh, at None because I'm usually got things going on that, that to tend to. But, but we do on our major feast days, we'll do, um, Vespers together and that type of thing. And we also once a month, we'll do, um, a holy hour together, praying exposed to the Blessed Sacrament, and pray for an hour for the, for the sake of our cases. But outside of that, then it really just boils down to our own private prayer. So, we're kind of more like the Cistercians in that sense. Um, and so, uh, and so in addition to the Mass, we say the old rite office. Which, um, excuse me, if you know anything, you know anything about the old rite office, you know, it ranges from an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and 45 minutes a day.
Yeah, yeah, it's long. Yeah. I mean, I've been to Norcia and I've watched those guys do it, and it was, it was quite intense.
Yeah, it's pretty long. Uh, but, but what, what this is, and this is something that has kind of come up here and there, but part of the reason we do the old rite office is, um, one of the patterns that I happened to notice when I was a priest in the fraternity. I was an exorcist at the time, but it was a discussion that I actually had with one of my superiors as to why it is that it's e-, it that matters of chastity by and large,
[cough]
Excuse me. That's all right. But, um, chastity by and large. Sorry. No good news. You can edit. Just, just pause for a second, guys. Let's, let's get. That's okay. You've been talking a ton, so don't worry. I mean, it's just, it just happens.
That's actually what caused it. That's all right. Yeah. Um, actually, I, uh, about 2 and a half weeks ago, I had something I came down with, and my voice is just like slowly coming back.
Still coming back, yeah.
[clears throat]
Um, but one of the things that we, that I discussed with my superiors was a pattern that I was noticing in hearing the confessions of old rite priests and new rite priests. Huh. Interesting.
Pattern that I was noticing is is that the old rite priests by and large struggled less with chastity issues than the new rite priests. It didn't mean that there weren't chaste men in the new order, that wasn't it. But there, the differences that there was a, some kind of a difference, and I didn't know what it was. Well, what I started doing as a pastor is, you would get people that would, men who were married, they might fall in relationship with the sixth commandment, like once every six months to a year. But by and large, they were actually being chaste. And I, so I, what I just told them as I started telling them, "Why don't you just do Lauds and Vespers from the old rite every single day and see if that takes the edge off of it?" Well, to a man, it, every single one of them said, "As long as I did it, I never, it stopped." A number of the exorcists who were in the new rite, um, that started saying the old rite office said there was a shift that they noticed interiorly. I think it had a lot of it has to do with a discipline, um, and I think there's other things that go along with it. But we just happened to notice that that was the kind of a dynamic that they.
Do it in Latin if they do that, or can they do it? Or, yeah, well, yeah, because they, uh, they had to get special permission, like it's a brother or something like that, to do it in English in the past, and so you're still bound to it in Latin. Um, so they actually do it in.
So, I wonder how much of that is just the Latin language, cuz it's on the cross.
I think so. I think it's, I think it's all of it. I think it's more discipline, it's the Latin language, which is a sacred language. It's also the fact that, um, uh, you know, it's, it basically goes back to, um, Christ said, if you, you knock and it'll be open. Well, if you don't knock, it's not likely to be open. So, and this is, uh, and so the fact that they reduced in the prayers of the, of the new rite breviary, they reduced it down. Um, you're just not praying as much, you're not praying as much of the psalter. I think that you're just not asking for as much.
It's quality, it's language, it's all of it. Yeah. And so, all of them say, "It's a, it's a burden because it takes a while, but they said, once they started doing it, they just noticed a lot of, not so much, most of the exorcists that I knew didn't have a problem in chastity to begin with, but they would say that other areas of their spiritual life just cleaned up."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so we do that. So, between Mass and that, they, so you're up to two to two to hours and 15 minutes. Then we, we have a required, so, and so that's, we do the old rite office and those three things, just as requirements of the priest, but like I said, it does have a spiritual impact. So, it does keep us, give us a certain amount of protection. Then we, we have at least 30 minutes of meditation every day, and that's to protect the priests from diabolic obsession or they're attacking your interior faculties because you're using your interior faculties to meditate, and so that helps that side of things. Then we have, we have the required the Dolor Rosary, but all the priests must do the regular Rosary as well, but the Dolor Rosary specifically for our protection and for the, for the good of the society and our cases and that type of thing. But then a lot of us, right, right now, we're in the middle of doing a 54-day novena where we're doing the Rosary as well. Then in addition to that, we have a series of prayers that we actually have to say, and they're all tailored to deal with things like oppression, attacks on the community, attacks on our bishop. Bless you. Bless you. Bless you. Um, I'm just talking too much. That's right. Um, but, you know, so that it keeps our bishop protected because, you know, the authority flows through him to us. So, we pray for him every single day. So, it's all up to him, too.
Yes, exactly. Uh, the attacks go from you guys to him. Yeah, it can, and so we keep him protected. We pray for the diocese and we pray for, um, uh, specific things in relationship to our communities. So, we're asking for very specific things, um, in these set of prayers. So, it takes, uh, the average is about 3 hours a day. So, in the morning when I get up, um, it's, uh, you know, I clean up just a little bit, and then I start praying. Um, and then my normal schedule is, I will pray, uh, for about an hour and a half to two hours to get through, uh, a part of the office, the meditation done, and some of the other prayers, and the, and, uh, the Rosary. And then,
[clears throat]
um, if I don't have sessions that day, I'll say Mass. Otherwise, I wait to try, cuz we try and do the Mass in the session because it really weakens the demons in that regard. And then, uh, then the rest of the day, then I usually have, then I'll usually pray about an hour between about 3:00 and 4:00 to wrap up most of the stuff except for Compline, which I do right before I go to bed. And then there's a, there's a, some prayers I go, I say to help me sleep because it took me a long time to figure out how to keep demons out of my sleep. So, but, and then when I did, it, uh, it's been pretty efficacious.
Did you write those prayers? Did you find those prayers? Um, for sleep?
Uh, well, I did write some of them, and they would work for a little while, and so I still, they're actually in the deliverance prayers for the lady. It's in there, and people can read it, but, um, but then I started, uh, finding, um, there were different, I, I was finding that that would work for a little while, and then it would stop. And so, then I finally found an approach where, um, I start asking Christ basically each time that they attack me that he severs their power in relationship to the thing that they're attacking. And so, um, and then I also, um, commend, uh, my body and soul to Our Lady and my family, um, and then the priests and, uh, uh, and our society. But there's a, there's some. So, I started, there's a, I just did a few things, but the main thing that I do is ask Christ to, um, you know, if they attack this, then cut their power off in relationship to it. And that shut down on most of it.
The thing I love about your lifestyle, your community, your, your work that you do, I mean, I would, I would rather, you know, have to pray 3 hours a day and confront these issues and talk about these issues openly and know exactly the battle that I'm in and recognize it and be aware of it and therefore have to do all this extra work, so to speak, to kind of handle it. It's like, I'd rather have, I'd rather like know I have cancer and have to radically alter my life than not know I have cancer and live a happy-go-lucky life. And it seems like you have clarity on the reality of spiritual warfare, and I, I would think a lot of people, priests included, like they know it's sort of there, right? But, and so they have an easier life, and they don't have to confront a lot of the things that you confront.
That's true. But they don't have to pray as much, but they don't even, they don't have a full grasp of the war that's actually going on. Yeah, that's true. I, I think that's part of the value that you bring to the church and society and media and like, cuz you're, you, you're going up against what, 80 years of downplaying all of this stuff? You got, there's a lot to have to be right-sized on this, and so that's why I like what you're doing, and I would rather be, unlike in your type of lifestyle than in some other where it seems easier, but you don't even appreciate the battle that you're in.
Yeah, I think that's actually true. In fact, our prayers, you know, when I was first an exorcist, I'm obviously doing the old office and the, the Mass and being in front of the fraternity, and I was doing a meditation, but I started adding all this other stuff to start dealing with the, the battle that you're dealing with. And then over the course of time, we got in fashion to the point where if we maintain the prayer life, there is a battle, and the demons do attack you, but it's manageable, right? It's not, it's not as, uh, you'll get attacked, but then you're much more perspicacious about, okay, I'm under attack, and so this is what I got to do, and this is what I got to deal with it. What we started noticing is, and there's a high attrition rate among exorcists, and the only ones that really go the distance are the ones that have almost on that, either my level or, you know, just below my level of prayer life. They just, otherwise, you're just not going to survive.