"A Brick Came Out Of His Mouth" Michael & The Exorcist Files

We'll have exorcism cases where all of a sudden in the midst of the praying there's some heaving going on, heaving. And people will vomit the strangest things. Pins, nails, screws, bricks. Like a whole brick appears to emerge out of somebody's mouth. It's a real brick. It's a real brick. Did this happen to an exorcist you know? To me. How do you make sense of this then? I think most people's conception of exorcism is wrong. And if we correct it, then a lot of other questions are answered as well. Everybody loves talking about demons. But not everybody likes following what those ideas mean to their logical conclusion. And it's especially at this time of the year, we should all be very, very clear about what we're talking about. Because there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in our philosophy, Horatio. I'm so pleased to be joined by the hosts of the Exorcist Files. That would be Ryan Bethea and Father Carlos Martins. Father Martins, Ryan. Hello. Thank you for being here. Before we get into demons, obsession, possession, whether we talk about the occult too much, whether we talk about it too little, whether we talk about God enough, the return to faith, the massive conversions and baptisms we've seen over the last two years, I want to talk about Halloween. A major debate among Christians. Is this our holiday, All Hallows' Eve, before All Saints' Day? Is Halloween a Christian holiday? Should parents let their kids participate in Halloween? Or is Halloween of the devil and you need to knock it off? Knock it off and at most eat a Twix alone in your room. Oh, a Twix? One of the greatest candy bars. Okay, we'll discuss that. Father, what are your thoughts on it? Well, look, so there's no question Halloween began as a reaction to Christianity. So its very name is a repudiation of All Saints' Day. All Hallows' Eve is the root of Halloween. So the word hallowed means holy. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. May your name be made holy. So it was a reaction, it was a way to have the day before All Saints' Day as a day where evil and the macabre were celebrated. To bring a disrepute onto All Saints' Day because the Catholic notion of there being an honoring of the saints was to be repudiated. Today though, it has a different meaning, right? It's become a cultural phenomenon. It's become a phenomenon and it doesn't have the same meaning it had at its origin. So if I have no children of my own, but if I did, would I permit them to participate in Halloween? Yes, provided two conditions are followed. Whatever they dress up as cannot celebrate evil or the macabre, right? It can't celebrate gore. If they want to dress up as royalty, lumberjacks, sports athletes, something special, no problem. And they can go out and get their candy. The second condition is All Saints' Day, the day after Halloween, they have to celebrate with at least as much fanfare, right? There has to be that celebration. So under those two conditions, sure, that's fine. And look, in Christianity, our Lord himself reappropriated pagan sites for the Christian, Caesarea Philippi, where the Cave of Benias was. Right? So this is where he appointed Peter as the head of his college of apostles. This is where he stated, I'm going to found a church. So that place was a horrific place. So it was a place where bestiality was practiced, where you had the pagan rituals that are just unmentionable, right? You wouldn't mention them on polite television. And so this is the place where the Lord took Peter right to the devil's doorstep, rang the doorbell. And although he's speaking to Peter, he's speaking just as loudly to Satan. Like, your time is done. And I'm going to not only defeat your kingdom, I'm going to do it through a church, and this guy's going to be the head of it. And the attack the church is going to give against you, you will not survive it. Right? So often we think, you know, when he says that the gates of hell will not prevail, we have this image of hell doing the attack on us. And we're going to do it through a church. And the gates of the church are going to withstand. That's not what the Lord says. The church is the one that is going to be doing the attacking. So he completely reappropriated that place. If you go there today, it's a holy site. It's a site revered and treasured by the Christians. And where are the pagan rituals now? They're non-existent. In Rome. They're in New York, San Francisco, Chicago. But far away. They went and found some other corner far away. In Rome, you have the Pantheon, which was a temple dedicated to. To all the gods. In other words, in the words of St. Paul, to all the demons. And you have that now reappropriated. And it's one of the most glorious churches in Rome. All right. So what did they do? They did an exorcism of the place. They brought in relics. And they turned this pagan temple into a glorious church. So you can reappropriate a custom or a place or a tradition that has gone awry, that started worshiping. Glorifying the wrong spiritual entity. And you can appropriate it for. Well, this is kind of the broader point that I want to get into with you guys, is how to think about my relationship to the spiritual world. Not just all the good stuff, ultimately God, but some of the dangers and pitfalls and temptations there too. Because on the one hand, I'm a baptized Christian. I don't have any fear of some stupid demon. I don't want to. Hide in fear of them. On the other hand, just as I don't go seeking out cockroaches in my house, so too, I don't want to go seeking out the attention of these malign spiritual entities. So when it comes to something like Halloween, I think, okay, well, it starts as All Hallows' Eve. We have Christmas Eve before Christmas. We have All Hallows' Eve before All Saints' Day. But then it accretes this kind of malign, macabre, dark aesthetic to it. Okay. So I can either go as a zombie, goblin, witch for Halloween. I probably shouldn't do that. I can go as Paul O'Neill, which I did many years as a kid, and that's pretty good. One of the great heroes of the 1990s, okay. But it doesn't have any spiritual quality. Or I can go as a saint. You sometimes have Christian families, and they'll say, okay, you can dress up for Halloween, but you're going to go as St. Peter or St. Francis or something like that. Okay, that's very nice too. So what should be a Christian's posture? The fact that your show is really popular, the fact that. The interviews that I've had with exorcists and people who have dealt in the occult and come out of it, the fact that that's all really, really popular, what does that tell us about our posture toward spiritual reality and specifically the demonic? Well, actually, since we're talking about Halloween, I'd be remiss if I didn't share, we have a very strong connection with Halloween because basically the first time I filmed Father Martin's in Los Angeles was on Halloween. We didn't plan it that way. It just happened to be the one day he was available. So the first time I actually met him in person, and I don't know, it was my first exorcist, and hopefully the last one I ever need to meet. And so he rolls up, and he's got the kit, got the bag. The only missing was the tubular bells, right? Yeah, yeah. And so he walked. Was it dark and raining at midnight? Yeah. No, actually, it was sunny and Sherman Oaks. And so we went to a friend's house, and he actually, it's funny because he didn't tell his wife what we were filming. And she goes, oh, there's a little filming there, right? And then she walks in, and there's a little bit of a crew, and there's an exorcist in there, and he filmed a fantastic performance. I was like, oh, he earned the name that day. Obviously, sometimes you get names changed in the Catholic tradition, but he became One Take Carlos. One Take Carlos. He was fire that day. It was fantastic. Now, we finished up, and of course, after a good day, we all know how demanding this job is to be on camera, right? And so you're hungry afterwards. Yeah. And we're like, it's Halloween. Where can we go? So I was like, well, let's take him down to Hollywood. I don't know why, but I think we found a last minute reservation at a kind of bougie sushi restaurant. He loves good sushi, as do I. And I said, well, I don't know why, but I think we don't have time. We have to make a reservation. So he stayed, of course, in his priestly attire. We head to a sushi restaurant. We get up to the top floor, and this is like right down in downtown Hollywood. It's bumping. There are costumes that are not Paul O'Neill and saints all over the place. We go up, and to be fair, I will say, they did a great job decorating. The glass case where they have the fish had gummy worms and a hamlet skull, and it was tasteful Halloween. But then there was also some darker stuff everywhere. And all the servers were dressed up in costume. And so we are sat at our table, father in his outfit, me dressed as my costume as Protestant producer. We sit down, and our server approaches. The name tag, this is Lucy, and it is the devil. So tail, horns, red, the whole thing. And she goes, wow, I love your costume. It looks so real. And father goes, oh, hello, Lucy. I see we meet again. You might have said, too, why don't we keep work at work? or something, and she's like, "Wow, that's so cool. "It looks so real," and I thought, yeah, What are the odds of that, right? Lucy, you don't understand that in God's providence, you are a very significant symbol right now, but all nature is but art unknown to thee. So, all right, you meet the devil in Hollywood, as have many people. But, you know, that kind of underscores the point then. So, you're in Hollywood. You get these people making jokes, playing around, dressing up like the devil. There is a truly satanic place in West Hollywood, which is this very infamous gay bar. And I don't point out that it's satanic just because of the activities. It's called the Abbey. This is one of the most famous places in West Hollywood. It's probably the gayest neighborhood in the entire United States. And the whole place is done up to be a mockery of an abbey, of a Christian abbey. You say, well, what is it with this obsession with sin, mocking the church, having to, you know, I don't know, to take on the aesthetics and the adornments of the church? Why? And, getting back to my earlier question, what is the proper orientation of a Christian toward these things? You don't want to be too scared of the demons. You don't want to be too relaxed and allow some temptation to enter in. How do we approach it? You know, people ask us, they ask me all the time, Father, do you really take on the devil? Yes, yes. Aren't you afraid? And my answer is no. I've never been afraid of the devil. I'm afraid of God. I'm afraid of offending him. I'm afraid of falling outside of grace with him. But I'm not afraid of the devil. I respect the devil, but I don't fear him. So what's the difference? Well, the analogy that I use, it's an analogy, I begin the book with this, is, you know, inside your house, you have at least one knife. That is sharp enough that if you're not careful with it, you're going to cut yourself. So you respect the knife. But when you go to bed at night, you don't stay up worrying about that knife. And if you did, you and I, we'd be in agreement that there's something wrong with your mental health. So you respect the knife because if you don't respect it, it can cause damage. But you don't spend your life worrying about it. And so it's the same with the devil. When the exorcism is done, the only thing I care about is, okay, well, let's get to the Mexican restaurant, myself and the team. And that's where we let our hair down. That's where we debrief what happened. And, you know, the exorcism has been left in that room. So it, you know, we don't think about the devil. Well, we may talk about the K. Hey, what did you see? What did you feel? Because they may have an insight that I missed, and vice versa. And we put all, see, this is where we have the dialogue. Because in the room, you can't. The dialogue is between the priest and the demon. So they may slip me a no. They may, they may, you know, if they get something in prayer, I may get a no, but we can't have a dialogue. We can't have a conversation there. But at the restaurant, we do. So there, we assemble the attack plan for the next session. Well, Father, you have a good point, too. You brought this up on the show many times about, you know, the mockery of Satan mocking God has begun from the very beginning in the gospel accounts. I think you used the example of coming off the mountain of the transfiguration and the demonic encounter that happens immediately after that, right? Isn't it? Yep. Yeah. So the devil organized his own transfiguration there. So, you know, at the top of the mountain, the Lord gets an affirmation from his father, right? The same affirmation that happened at the baptism. And what happened after that? He's empowered with his divinity in such a way that now he begins his public ministry. He goes into the desert, and it says, the Spirit drove him into the desert to be tempted by the Spirit, kicked the Lord out, as if God the Father is saying to Satan, here's my boy, take your best shot at him. And so the devil, God knows where he was when that happened, but he was going to make sure he was going to get involved when this came around a second time. So now you've got the two prophets of the Messiah, Moses and Elijah, speaking to the Lord. We have no idea what they say. Although there was a ministry there given to the apostles, you know, they were able to say, see the Lord transfigure and all that. The greater thing is the Lord is receiving his instructions from the prophets of the Messiah, his prophets, saying, this is what the Father wants of you. So he receives this affirmation from them and from the voice of the Father. He goes down the mountain, and the devil is there waiting, and with a speed that is absolutely incredible, sets up his own mockery of what happened up the mountain. So here's the obnoxious father with the possessor, and he's like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. And he goes around, and he's got exorcists there. The scribes are there. Well, what are they doing there? These are exorcists for hire. And so they had made the boy manifest. So he's reacting. He's foaming at the mouth. He's flopping around. And so what happened during that time is then the father would pass a hat around. Look at my boy. Look at our bad lot. I went to this guy, and he wasn't able to get rid of the devil. I went to the Spanish lady on the corner. She wasn't able to get rid of the apostles of this guy, Jesus, and they weren't able to get rid of him. Have pity on us, and put something in the hat. That's what's going on. And the devil is putting in relief to Jesus. This is what your father is, right? This is what's going to happen to you. He's exploiting you, just like this father is exploiting his son. He doesn't love you. He's not going to affirm you. And the proof of this, look how raw Jesus is in the midst of that. There's nothing sinful about this. The Lord didn't sin. But you can be an incarnate God. So be God and man at the same time, and be annoyed, and be irritated. And so here's this obnoxious father who's got his set routine, and the devil is speaking to him through all of this. Really? Oh, your father wants you to die for the world's sin. Okay. To whom is the debt owed? Oh, the debt. Why doesn't he pay the debt himself? Why does he need you to do it? So all of this is hitting home, right? And the father comes up and says, hey, can you do something to help us? And Jesus' response is so raw. Can I do something? How long do I have to put up with this faithless generation? So imagine your pastor, right? Imagine you had a demonically afflicted God forbid, but say you did. You go up to your pastor, and you say, can you do something to help this child? Can I do something? How long do I have to put up with your faith? I'm God. Oh, you guys still don't get it? Which he says to Philip, too. How long have you been with me? You still don't get it? Like, I'm God. Yeah. So the other thing in the scene is Jesus doesn't want to define himself. And so he's coming down the mountain, and so there's this crowd gathered, because on a Tuesday afternoon, you know, having an exorcism at the base of a mountain, well, that's great entertainment in those days. And here comes down the mountain the heavyweight champion of exorcism. And it says they were filled with excitement when they saw him, because, oh my gosh, right? Like, we paid for a cheap ticket, and now the heavyweight champion is appearing. And he doesn't like this. And at the end, it even says, when he saw that a crowd was gathering, he dispatched the devil and left. All right, so there's a lot of rawness there. And this is just before the passion begins. There's a lot more to say. First, though, go to catholicmatch.com. The holidays bring many cherished traditions. Midnight Mass, perhaps, big family meals, at least one relative conducting a public inquiry into why you are still single. 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You know, when I was returning to the church, I was an atheist for about 10 years. And when I was reverting, I was reading the Gospels. I guess not for the first time, but it was the first time I did it really seriously. And in a disciplined way. And I was pretty convinced at this point that Christ is who he says he is. But the line that really persuaded me perhaps the most that he is God is that line, which he repeats in the Gospels, which is, how much longer do I have to be with you people? Because if I were God and man, that's exactly what I would think too. It's like, how much longer? I just want to go back up and be with my father. But I am here to save all of you. And you still don't get it. You still screw up almost every single step of the way. But the specter point then returns me to this same question, which is, okay, we're in this moment of 38% year-over-year increased baptisms in France, in the United States, and elsewhere. Okay, wow, that's great. We're in this time of the decline of religion leveling out, maybe even ticking back up again. That's really great. This is the first time we've ever seen anything like this in my lifetime. And we're in an age where people really, really want to hear about demons. One of the biggest interviews I ever did was with our friend, Fr. Dan Rehill. And we received a lot of notes about this. I think Fr. Rehill may have received a lot of clients because of this, because people had these problems of demonic temptation and obsession and possession, the distinction of which perhaps we'll get to a little later. But whenever something's really working, whenever something seems to be going really well, I always have to think about the other side. Is there some downside to people thinking too much about exorcism? And the demonic, is there a danger there as well? And so, it brings me back to that original question, which is, what should our posture be toward the manifest works of the devil all around us? Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because we read in Scripture, we are never to fear the devil, but to be aware of it, right? And so, there is a balance. And we obviously all know the C.S. Lewis quote, there are two errors that man fall into, right? To pay too much attention to little. I do think, and we are sensitive to this on the show, we try not. The show is a blend of dramatizations, which can be scary. But even that, it's interesting, because we've had, father got a letter from, was it a 90-year-old woman who said, you know, this is not that scary. Like, it's totally fine. And then others have said, like, no, we have like, there's prominent people of email say, I can't, this is so triggering to me, et cetera. So, there's a relative line. But we blend a lot of humor and teaching. But we do get lots of emails from people who hear these things. And this is the part I just like to be really sensitive of, because there are people going through, you know, when you're going through suffering and suffering, you're going through a lot of suffering. And so, I think, you know, tribulation, all you want to do is understand, right? The human nature is like, you want to find the formula. You want to find the prayer. You want to find. And it's interesting, too, even in just different traditions of Christians that reach out, like, what they're like, tell me, what prayer do I have to say? Is there a book? Is there an action I have to take? And you just want. And there are people who are suffering. And on one hand, we've had people who were suffering for a long time and told by their clergy in various denominations, like, it's just a mental health issue you have. You're just hallucinating this, right? And that doesn't help. And they could also be one of the. It also could be both. And then you have others who've written it, and they got healed, and they reach out to us, and they say, thank you for believing me, right? Thank you. Our Ouija board story that we put out, the number of emails I get from people who have had an actual encounter with Ouija board, people say, why do you believe this stuff? I was like, yeah, thank goodness. I've never seen that firsthand with me, nor do I want to. But the amount of people say, look, this is. I have seen this. I'm so glad I had bad things happen to me when it did. The other side, those people listen, they go, oh, that's it. I have all these financial problems now because it's a demon, right? And can you pray over me? And then the other downside of this, and Father Rijo wrestled this, is how many people have to say, I need Father Martins to talk to me one-on-one and do my blessing, my prayer, et cetera. And it's a shame because on one hand, we're so grateful and honored, but we also want people. We send 99% of emails like, please talk to your local clergy, et cetera. So the point of the posture, the downside is if we focus too much on it, they will think that there's something, that they have to only get prayer from Father Martins, or they might think they have a problem that's actually spiritual when it could be fixed. There are people that fathers talk to, they're like, you're making bad decisions. That's why life is in shambles, not because it's spiritual. Yeah. And it's also not your job to exercise every single person in the world. You actually have an office and an authority from the church over a particular group of people, and it would not be possible for you to exercise every single person in the world. So there's that difficulty. And this, probably, relates to exorcism itself. But on this point, there can be a lot of good that is done when people are aware that the devil exists. In my reversion, one of the big signs that pointed me back to faith was realizing that sin is real, and evil is real, and the devil is real. Because if those things are real, then God must be real. And so it actually was very helpful to me. But I want to be aware of the devil so that I can avoid him, do my best to cooperate with God's grace to kind of stunt his plans and impede him. But that's about it. I don't want to deal with the devil. I don't want to meet him. I don't want to talk to him. I don't want anything to do with him. Whereas it's difficult not to get a little bit curious. And I wonder, as you're performing exorcisms, as your fellow exorcists are, do you ever get a little curious when the demons start talking? You know, they're pretty intelligent in a certain sense, and they've been around a long time, and that would seem to me a real temptation when you're encountering them. You know, I really don't have that experience. I'm a convert from atheism myself, so I know what it's like to not believe, what it's like to not have hope. And so once I receive that, I just don't want anything else. So I never converse with the devil. I issue commands, period. So beyond commands, where I'm telling him to do something, something he doesn't want to do, the dialogue is non-existent. So he may ask a question, he may offer something. I don't answer the question. If he offers some tantalizing thing, be silent in the name of Jesus. And if he maintains it, if he keeps it up, then I'll ask a saint or the mother of God or the Lord to slap him. And every time he does this, increases pain. So that you're issuing a correction, because nothing that he offers is life-giving. Nothing that he offers, is the treasure that he hopes you regard it as. It's just, you're in the middle of danger if you're willing to accept a gift from the king of the mafia, right? You're in danger. This is not, don't extend your hand out to receive it, because it's going to burn through your hand. How does one go from an atheist to not just a believer? I know how you do that. How do you go from an atheist to a Catholic priest and an exorcist? Gosh, you tell me, and we'll both. We'll both know. I was ordained and I was just assigned to a church in Texas where the exorcists for the diocese were all stationed there. But hold on, you're skipping over the first part. The atheist to, you end up in seminary, you believe it, you end up in church. Tell me the adoration story. It's a sweet story. Yeah. So what happened is, so I was an undergraduate and I didn't believe, but I didn't believe as a result of an intellectual conclusion of the way things are, of the way I saw reality. If an all-knowing, all-good, all-loving God exists, why is there so much evil in the world? Why are there so many different religions, each contradicting the next? And frankly, why does God hide himself? Why do we have to take his existence on faith? So given these states of affairs, I thought, well, it's just not possible for theism to be true. And yet, I wasn't happy with that conclusion, because if God doesn't exist, then the moment you die, it's lights out. In fact, you won't even know that you died, because there won't be a you to be aware of it. So, okay, what's the implication of that? A hundred years after my death, such that everyone else who knew me is also dead, I might as well have never have existed. Now, these are not happy conclusions. Right. Right? Like, we're wired, and I was honest enough to see that we're hardwired to want to live forever, to want an infinite amount of happiness, and to have hope for the future. So, at the same time, you know, as I'm experiencing this and wrestling with this over a number of years, I met a small group of students and a couple of professors, maybe eight individuals in total, that wore their faith and wore it with an absolute peace and tranquility that came through. And it was powerfully attractive, the peace that they had. And the anecdote that I'd like to share is, I was having coffee with one of these students at a coffee shop, on campus. And we were seated at one of the, you know, typical round tables in a coffee shop. And we parked, we would both park our cars in the lot near that coffee shop, because it had the cheapest parking on campus. A guy came in and informed the guy with whom I was speaking, your car is wrapped around somebody's oak tree on the front lawn. Somebody must have stolen it out of the parking lot. So, he had parked there at about 8 a.m. We're having coffee at 11. And he's informed his car is wrapped around an oak tree. Your car is garbage. And so, he turns and he faces me again. And he says, well, I guess it just wasn't God's will for me to have a car right now. And he could still enjoy the cup of coffee. And that, like, we talked for at least a half an hour after. I can't remember a word of that conversation. But I can remember like it was yesterday. His reaction, like, he couldn't give a rat's rump that his car didn't exist anymore. You know, so this guy is living in the world, but the world is not living in him. So, nobody was like this. So, it was powerfully attractive, the way that these people lived. So, one of them eventually invited me on a Eucharistic adoration retreat, and I had no idea what that was. And, you know, I heard retreat, and I understood vacation. I I thought, all right, I'll bring the beer. I was the only one that had car in that group. Obviously your friend no longer had a car. He no longer had a car. So on that retreat, once I discovered what adoration was, like we're kneeling in front of, you know, in the Catholic context with a piece of bread that looks like a cracker. And we're going to worship this appearance of a cracker as God. And I just couldn't parse that. And I, you know, I plotted my escape. You know, what can I do to get out of this experience? But, you know, the witness of these folks was so great. I could not bring myself to lie to them and say like, hey, I, you know, I'm feeling sick. I, you know, I can't be here. I just couldn't do it. And so I did the most honest act I had ever done in my life. I got down on my knees in front of what looked to me like a cracker. And I had the equivalent feeling one would have kneeling in front of a tree and talking to it. And I said, God, I don't know if you exist or don't. I don't believe you do. And I feel like a complete idiot for doing this. But if you do, please reveal yourself to me. And if you do, if you can give me the faith I see in them, I'll give you my life. And so that shift went by, that hour-long shift. And then six hours later, I had another shift. And then at 3 a.m., my third shift began. And I went into that chapel as an atheist. And I came out as a believer. And what happened? God just revealed himself to me. There was nothing sensual about it. So I didn't see anything weird. I didn't hear anything weird. But my God in heaven, I knew I was in front of Almighty God. And every intellectual difficulty I had, I had a discreet answer for it such that I could write it out. And it resolved every difficulty I had. But more than that, I knew I was created in love. I knew God had a plan for me. I knew that he was preparing everything for this moment. And it was planned. So it was absolutely life-changing. Yeah, I was just revisiting the other day St. Thomas Aquinas' observation that it's better to love God than to know God. It's good to know that God exists. It's good to know things about God. That's all very good. But the point is to love God. And St. Paul obviously writes about this a lot. And I do wonder, I love theology and parsing the doctors of the church and scholastics and all that. I think it's really good and edifying, and I encourage people to do it. But too much study sometimes can lead you to forget that God is here right now. He's right here all around us, and he's constantly imminent and intimately involved in every single minute detail of the entire cosmos. And so we remove ourselves a little bit too much. And if we don't love God, we don't love God. If we knew that God were everywhere and really present in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity, we would probably behave a little differently. And then I think about the flip side of it, apropos of the exorcist conversation, which is people talk about these exorcist interviews, shows. They talk about it like it's Netflix. They talk about it like it's a horror movie or something. And it's, oh, isn't that really interesting? And oh, a chair flew up to the sky. And oh, isn't that strange? You think, okay, yeah, yeah. It is interesting. But if you knew that there were like a wild beast in the room right now whose every desire is to devour you, and he will do so in the subtlest of ways because he's much more intelligent than you are, and he's been around for a very, very long time, wouldn't you act a little differently? Wouldn't you be a little less cavalier about the whole thing? Wouldn't, you know, I don't know. Wouldn't that sober you up a little bit? Oh, yeah. It's interesting. I think in Scripture, because one thing that comes out, you know, and we'll get into possession, obsession, and all the sessions. And it's one of those things that there is this macabre fascination with it. But again, going back to Scripture, we have just enough, right? Like Jesus, we have one, Jesus spends like a third of his ministry casting out demons. So we know that's a big deal. You cannot hold fast to the teachings of Jesus Christ and be a Christian and deny the existence of a spiritual war. And the fact that he chose to demonstrate, I mean, there are multiple people that were set free solely, it says, so to show that God is real and he came. Interesting, I was with a Jewish friend of mine. He was talking about, you know, Jesus when he does his first exorcism in the temple and they said, is this related to David and the Davidic line of all the exorcism that had happened there? And the fact that Jesus could cast these things out, that was an enormous part of his ministry. So he, one of the main validators of Jesus Christ is his exorcism. And then as we progress through the gospels and then unto the epistles, right, we have, you know, explicit statements, that we don't battle just against flesh and blood, that we have powers and principalities, right? And that, and that we are to be aware of this. And, but then Jesus, you know, we only have one word, demonized. We don't have all these different terms in there. And I find it very interesting, you know, that I think, you know, to ask, to go back to your question, like, what's the posture? It's like, just aware enough. There's way more descriptions of fighting against greed, against sexual morality. I mean, there's a lot of things that Paul warns about. And, but there are important passages on just like, hey, we have an enemy, we have an adversary. It is aware. And so I find, I think it's, I think scripture offers us a really instructive ratio of just like, hey, this is very real. And Jesus casts demons out. And one of the hardest things for me, and this might be interesting because one of the challenging things for me, especially from a Protestant background, is you read these accounts in the scriptures and Jesus goes, come out. And it just comes out. Then you talk to Father Rehill, you talk to Father Martins, every father that's been on the show and they're like, oh, one and done, you got lucky. Right? These things take forever. And you go, okay, that is super interesting. So I don't know. So there is, you know, obviously we have a little bit in scripture and then from there it progresses. But yeah, I hope people don't like get too obsessed with this. But you point out, we have a deep, like human curiosity, a morbid curiosity. It's the same reason we slow down and watch a car wreck, you know, and it drives us nuts. Well, I was even thinking of the first scene of Hamlet, which is about the, actually Hamlet, which is about demons potentially, ghosts potentially. It is in fact about this conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism. Because Hamlet returns from the University of Wittenberg, which is where Luther taught. And the first question of Hamlet is, did he really see a ghost? There's this thing that shows up and he says, I'm the ghost of your father. And I was killed by your uncle who took my throne and you need to avenge me. And Hamlet says, well, is this really the ghost of my dad? I don't know what it is. And it pertains to the Catholic Protestant divide because the Protestants would say, it's not a ghost. There are no ghosts. It's a demon. And the Catholics would say, no, there can be ghosts. It can't be a demon, but it could be a ghost. And so what is it? And the funny thing is, even when you find out that what the ghost said was true, Claudius really did kill King Hamlet. You still don't know whether or not he was a ghost or a demon. Because that one, holy spirits don't usually say, avenge me. You know, vengeance belongs to the Lord. But two, Hamlet, believing what the ghost said, did lead to his own death and the destruction of his kingdom and all this stuff. So you still really don't know. You still have this mysterious spirit and we don't have to, we don't really know how to discern what he really is. So one, I guess, how do we discern that in our own lives when we're taught, when we, perhaps we do have a numinous experience. We see a ghost or an angel or a demon or something like that. How do we discern what's really going on here? And how does that pertain to our vocation, what we're actually called to? And then three, why does it take so long to cast out these demons? To your question. Results may vary, is one thing. We don't offer, I have a shirt that says same day deliverance and it drives Father Rehilden bonkers, he'll say. He's like, you're promising it's not going to be that fast, right? Then I remind him, one of his first exorcisms is the same day deliverance, right? But he's like, all right. Beginner's luck. Yeah, there's a signing bonus. It's your rookie, you know, pre-season match, you know? And if we correct it, a lot of other questions are answered as well. So the job of the exorcist is not to cast out the devil. The job of the exorcist is to find out why is he there? What rights has he obtained? And then it's his job to help the victim rescind those rights. Because if the devil has a right to be somewhere, I don't have the right to kick him out. And that notion, so we have this notion, the job of the priest hammers prayers from some sort of Catholic, magic, red book over the head of the demon. And so the demon then is overpowered. That is absolutely not what happens. You shout them very loudly too. And you shout them and that is not what happens. So if he has a right to be where he is, I don't have the right to kick him out. My job is to pray to weaken him to such an extent that I have access to the victim. And is it that you don't have the right to kick him out because the patient has free will? So if the patient wants to invite the devil in, you actually have no right to kick him out. God himself respects our free will. And 99.99999% of the time, that invitation is an invitation that the victim himself or herself never knew he or she was extending to the devil. So some type of sin, some type of relationship was formed. So that relationship has to be not just ended, but replaced with something else. neutrality in this realm, right? So if you want the devil out, you kick him out, but you've got to do an infilling there with God, with the Holy Spirit. So demons live in wounds. Wounds have two sources, trauma and sin. So trauma, a car, two kids are playing catch. Timmy and Joey are playing catch on the street. A car slams into Joey, knocks his head right off his body, right? Timmy sees this. His world is completely different. He threw the ball that Joey missed and caused the accident, right? And can you imagine the other circumstances that may apply? He knocked on the door that morning. He invited him out to play and he didn't want to. No, I should stay home and do homework and then started teasing him, belittling him, coaxed him to come out. So this trauma, this event has changed his theological view of all of reality. No matter what, if he had an explicit theological view, he had a view of reality and that's now altered, right? The world's not a safe place. It's not a good place. It's a place where horrendous evil can happen. A horrendously bad thing can happen and no one can stop it and no one can undo it. The demons are going to exacerbate those wounds to form, to take him into bondage. So what trauma does, why is trauma dangerous? Because it has the power to distort our view of reality so that we're no longer connected to the true. And if you're connected with lies, that's the breeding ground for demons. The other wound is sin. So, you know, personal sin, inherited sin, or like a generational sin. So the moral implication of a sin, the guilt, that's not passed down. But the effects of a sin can be. And I mean, at the heart of our faith is the belief that we've inherited original sin from our first father, Adam, right? So you didn't do, you didn't bite into the fruit in the garden, neither did I, but we inherited those effects. So generational sin, in the sense of a curse that has passed, can be passed down. You know, you have families where there's repeated patterns of dysfunction that are just uncanny. No male lives past 56 years of age. No marriage ends. People never die happily married. There's an abandonment of at least one of the spouses. So there's chronic adultery and that kind of thing. And then the third type is what I call transferred sin. Curses, hexes, spells. Evil that is willed upon another and has an actual effect. And now people can say, well, that's all in your head. That doesn't exist. It absolutely exists. Every single culture has a notion. The evil eye. I was just thinking about this the other day. As a good Italian, we have, you know, a lot of cultural Catholicism. But the other thing is you sometimes see the Southern Italians wear that little horn, you know, the little Malocchio symbol. But all these cultures have this idea of the evil eye, this like, this guardo where you're, you know, willing some evil upon them. In fact, Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae takes up the evil eye. And he, seems to give some credence to it. His argument is that with this fervent energy, the eye, which is touching physical reality, can change it in limited ways such that, in Thomas Aquinas' words, particularly mean little old ladies can curse tender, vulnerable children. This is like written in probably the greatest compendium of theology ever written. And so you think, well, all right, man, if the evil eye is good enough for Thomas Aquinas, you know, it's good enough for me. Uh, those are, those latter two issues are ones that I'm particularly curious about. Because you say, okay, yeah, there's trauma and you get these bad families of either drunks or adulterers or whatever, uh, many of whom run politics. Uh, but then you got, uh, personal sin. I get that. If I commit even one mortal sin, I'm, I'm inviting the devil in. I totally understand that. Uh, but then generational curses and, and especially like actual witchcraft, like, you know, hexes and things like that, that I think modern people have much more trouble dealing with because they say, why should the sins of the father be visited upon the son? So every sin is a covenant with evil, but some covenants are so strong, so visceral that they remain, they become a doorway whereby there's a jurisdiction where demons now have an, uh, a ministry that is allowed to them that has been open to them within a family line. And that just exists, right? Like I had a case, I talk about this, uh, this case in my book. So someone, um, so in, in, in the book, I made her to be a male. Uh, she, she's now comfortable with the, with the situation being spoken of. Um, but, but it was a female. And so she had, uh, she called me one day, um, hysterical. She, she lived in the same city in which I was living at the time. So her, her sister had just attempted suicide and she had two brothers who had committed suicide. Her father had committed suicide. Two men married two other sisters. Uh, none of them had been suicidal until the marriage. So one had already attempted suicide three times since marrying her sister. Uh, the other one, uh, hadn't attempted, but had now disclosed, Hey, I, I feel suicidal. And I've never had this before. He had been married to her for a year. Uh, her, her son, uh, teenage son was suicidal. So she was the only one in the family that, that was not. Uh, and you know, lost so many family members and, you know, she wanted this ended. Uh, so it's, it appeared. So in, in this cycle of persons, dad was the first one, but who knows dad, dad never talked about his, his own family, his own parents, grandparents did to, to an extent that, that there was some kind of, um, footing, some kind of understanding going on here. Uh, so all we had to go by was this and, you know, for her, uh, so I just said, look, uh, we don't know where, so how do you know what's a generational curse? Every suicide and every suicide attempt always happened on a Thursday. Always. That's not normal. That's it. There's too much patterning there. Uh, so I just said to her, look, we're, we're, we're going to invite the Lord here right now. I just prayed with her. It took all of 15, 20 minutes. There's no formula for this. Everybody wants a formula. Nobody would want a formula more than me, but there just, there just isn't. So you just say, look, uh, we're, we're going to invite the Lord now into your family. And you're going to speak with authority on behalf of your family. You're, you're as a member of your family, you are connected with them. And every family member has an authority. You have children, you have authority over your children. Your children also have an authority over you. If they come to you crying, bleeding, and, and, and they say, dad, do something. What happens? You get to work doing something. There's an awful lot of authority. That little guy just exercised over his dad. That's not nothing. A child has a dignity of a child and that brings authority. And so, so for her, I just told her, let's invite the Lord into every wound. So I just gave her the words. I said, repeat after me in the name of Jesus, I invite you Lord in, into my, into my life, into my family line. And I don't know where all the wounds are, but you know where they are. I don't need to know where they are. You put your finger on each of the wounds and I forgive everyone who contributed to these wounds. I don't need to know where the wounds are, whether a member of my family or not, whatever the source, we never did find out the source, but we didn't need to. It was done right there. It was done. Every, every remaining member of the family who is still alive, all the suicidal ideation gone. And I, it's been now 13 years. And so I, I'll, I'll call the people with whom I worked periodically just to touch me. You know, how, how, how's it going? Last time I called her was, was a year ago and she's a father. Everything ended on that day. It was done. It was Christ. It wasn't me. I, I, I just led her into begging the Lord, come into each place, come into each wound, put your finger in each wound, just end this. And the Lord said, yep, I can do that. So I, I love the story. I'm glad it had a happy ending. I, I also love your description of it, which is people are asking why it is this way. It, it just is. It's just how reality, works. I mean, some people when they have trouble, maybe they can accept God as existing intellectually, but they have trouble believing that he's a man named Jesus. And they have trouble believing that he had apostles and successors to the apostles and a church. And like they were in this place and then they were in this place. And they say, why does it have to, why does it have to be so particular? Like the scandal of particularity. And the, the, the answer is, well, it just is. I don't know. Why does two plus three have to equal five? It just does. It just does. I'm just telling you what it is. And you can persevere in, in some alternative belief, but it's not going to work out for you. And it's not really up to you because you weren't there when God created the heavens and the earth. And you weren't there when, you know, everyone was singing for joy. So that makes a lot of sense to me. The part that people are going to struggle with now even more is, hold on, like witches are real. Hold on. People can put hexes on you and stuff. Like are we, is Harry Potter a documentary? Is that, how is that real? Well, look, God made the universe, a moral universe. And that means it's possible to choose good and it's possible to choose and there are implications for each and you know the the first person the first individual to utter a curse in scripture was god himself he cursed the serpent he cursed the earth he cursed eve he cursed adam now his curses are are not an act of evil they're medicinal they're you're off you're you're on the wrong path right so so he curses them to get them on the right path and and you see that in the curses you know like so eve is cursed with pains and childbirth but now motherhood is going to be her glory one day she she's going to give birth like one of her daughters is going to be the mother of god who's going to give birth to god incarnate right so there's a glory in that cursing adam is cursed to perform labor he's got to work now whereas before he was taken care of now he's got to be the guy to take care of things but labor is now going to be the means of his salvation and one day one of his sons is going to be god in the flesh and is going to work for the salvation of mankind so so the you know the the lord cursed the fig tree and so paul cursed uh you know the the uh people who who individuals who went off the beaten path and and yet still called themselves christians and and who were poisoning the body of christ uh so cursing in of itself is meant to be a holy medicinal disposition, a holy and medicinal action, but it can be misappropriated. So the knife itself is neutral. The hand that grips the knife, now it determines the intent of the action behind the knife, and those have implications. So it is possible. So why does God allow witches in his world? Because he allows witches in his world. Because evil has an effect. And listen, folks, we are far away from heaven. This is not heaven. And so these kinds of things, these kinds of experiences, like the experience of evil, it keeps us connected with the fact that we live in the veil of tears. You know, it's so funny. Recently, for the American 250th celebration, I was in Washington, D.C., and I swung by the state fair. They did a big state fair on the National Mall. And the people putting it up, they were like, oh, it's a big state fair. And I was like, oh, it's a big state fair. And they were like, oh, it's a big state fair. And they were like, oh, asked if I would swing by, give a talk, whatever. So I ended up playing this little game that I had called the Yes or No Game, which is a series we have in the Word of the Card game. And we go up there, we bring up people from the audience. And one of the prompts, we had to figure out what we each thought about this, was something about witches. The Salem witch trials didn't go far enough, or some kind of joke like that. And anyway, this little nine or 10-year-old girl comes up. And her answer to it was, oh, yeah, that didn't go far enough. Because witches really exist. Out of the mouth of babes. And it was this kind of funny answer. We were joking around. The press went crazy over this. They completely misreported it. They, I mean, just lied about the whole interaction. They said, I lectured a little girl on witches. Which, in fact, she was lecturing me. And she was right. So I was glad that she was lecturing me. But they were really, it's really riled them up talking about witches, how crazy, how silly, how ridiculous, to the point that they were lying about it. Even this basic interaction. And in retrospect, I kind of think, you know, even if we had been kind of joking about witchcraft on the stage in this game, your reaction is making me double down in my belief that this sort of thing really is real. And so people are going to be watching this right now. They'll say, you know, I was with these guys. I was with the padre while he was talking about God existing, and even the devil. But hold on a second now. This sounds like some medieval folklore about little, but I don't know. If we live in a universe where you can will good and you can evil and there's a spiritual battle, I guess witches can exist. Maybe they don't have little pointy hats, but they probably exist. And a social phenomenon on top of this is there has been a major rise in self-identified witches, the Wicca pseudo-religion or neo-pagan kind of religions. So I don't know. There are a lot of people calling themselves witches. There's a lot of attestation to witchcraft and the occult and hexes and curses throughout history. And the very first one in the Bible is put on by God. So I don't know. Why is that so weird? Right. It's not weird. Yeah. And in our culture, in Western culture, it's not fashionable to talk about witches, the occult and curses and so forth. Go into any other culture in the world and it's part of daily life. So the devil doesn't hide himself there. He has a different ministry he exercises there because those people, they're much more immediately connected to spirituality. We don't. Most of our people have no spirituality. So why would he change that? Why would he be overt? It's working. So he has a different strategy for each place. So why, if he's already winning, he shuts up. He doesn't become overt. When you're winning, you shut up. There's also, I did a piece on this a few months ago and it was really interesting because I was reading record conversions and baptism, a lot of error, but also in general, over the last few decades, we've seen just a collapse of religion. And you wonder what's going on. And yet we see this huge spike in witchcraft, professed interest in the occult and just fascination stuff. And they talk about this re-enchantment cycle. And when you lose faith in institutions like governments, when you lose faith in religion, et cetera, there's a hole. Every human being is just wired to worship and be fascinated with something. It's metaphysical beyond itself. And to your point earlier, we were talking about what's the important posture to have. If you do not teach the reality of what this is, if you don't talk about evil and the fact that there is a real adversary who is out there and does will evil for you, that hole in that void gets filled with stuff. And we are seeing that play out right now all across the board. And it's really interesting too, because obviously Father Martin's other ministry too, he works a lot of relics, et cetera. And a lot of my Protestant friends, come on, heal people. It's like, well, that's actually in scripture. There are some things, right? But, and I said, what about a cursed object? Like, of course, cursed object. Of course, cursed objects are real, right? Absolutely. But no holy, yeah. Right. But then it's like, oh, angels are real. Well, demons, no. Demons, no. There is so much, there's such an interesting dissonance with some of this stuff. And I really do think a lot of it comes down to that we, you know, we want to be comfortable. And we want to think like, when you hear about tropes like, oh, Christians can't be possessed, right? That comes up all the time. And we're like, well, what do you mean by possessed, right? Because what you're actually like, you don't, we don't want to believe that, we want to believe that once we're baptized and we're saved, that we are immune from persecution and evil. And we just know that's not the case. And so a lot of this interest and fascination in the occult and witchcraft, et cetera, is just, it's like an age old thing that we're seeing in, is we want to circumvent God. We want to find ways to, you know, bless ourselves. And there is real power out there. I have a dear friend who went to a psychic and she, we'd get into debates all the time. And she'd go, you don't understand, this person read my mail. Like new thing, not the, you have a conflict with someone, right? You have death in your family. How did he know? Exactly. Your birthday happened in the last six months. Or you have a birthday within six months of this date, right? And she was like, no, they knew things that no one could know. And she's like, why don't you believe? He's like, I do believe you. I believe people are having real encounters with this, right? And that happens. And so that stuff is real. And that's why it's so important that people learn about what is real. Because that, you know, the scripture, my people perish for lack of knowledge. If we don't teach people about this stuff, I want kids, I want people to know that like, hey, and there's a discussion about what level of degree do we talk about this with different age groups. But you know, we want people to know there is a real adversary, right? And all this other stuff, there is no white magic. There is no like lighthearted stuff. Like no, this stuff. There's no Dumbledore. Yeah, it's real. And when you see this rise in this, it's really interesting though to see how people like Christianity, you're insane, dude. You believe this guy walked on water, right? But if I say this incantation and put this wax on this thing, et cetera, I can get a new job. He's like, bro, you're totally insane to believe that God loves us. Hold on. I just got to finish polishing my crystals here. Hold on one second. Yeah. And you see this a lot. A psychic played a big role in my reversion because the short version of the story, I think I may have mentioned it on air once or twice. I was an actor in my wayward youth and I was doing like a movie and there was this gal on the set and we were chatting. She was Italian. And we ended up talking about something. And she's like, oh yeah, my grandma likes Dante, whatever. So anyway, bye. Nice to see you. I see her six months later and I'm reverting to the faith. And she comes up to me at an audition or something. She says, oh, I'm so glad I saw you. I've been meaning to like reach out to you. You're not going to believe this. I went to see my psychic. I said, okay, what did I know? I'm listening. So I'm listening. She goes, anyway, I walk in, I've seen this psychic forever. And I walk in and she says, hey, who's Dante? We just had this conversation. And it wasn't even like, she just looked at the girl and said, well, you're Italian. You probably know about Dante. She had seen this psychic before and she comes up, who's Dante? And it so freaked me out. I said, give me the number of your psychic. I called the psychic. Didn't get through. I left a message. I said, how did you know about Dante? I need you to tell me how you knew about the Dante thing. I was curious. I mean, I was a little freaked out, but I was also curious. And I'm glad she never called me back because then I never went to see the psychic and that could have led to a world of misery. But it did clue me in. I said, oh man, if some random lady in Long Island knows that I talked about Dante, then there's a lot more going on that I'm totally aware of. Speaking of friends of mine, you mentioned the relic. and I'm like very relic-pilled. I came to that later. I shared a lot of the popular modern confusion. What is this? Why are we venerating pieces of dead bodies? And this is like very strange. A friend of mine, wonderful Catholic woman, has given me a lot of relics. I have a lot of first-class relics. I'm very blessed to have them. And then the other day in this very studio, a guest was here. It's not my story to tell, but it was a guy was here and I didn't know this guy. I wasn't supposed to meet him. I walk into the makeup room. He says, oh, there you are. Okay. Hey, I was praying and I was told I have to give you this crucifix with five first-class relics in it. And I said, huh? He was like, yeah, I was praying. And anyway, so this is it. And I said, well, you don't have to do that. He said, I don't want to do that. But I was praying and our lady said, I'm supposed to give you these relics. I said, oh, okay. He goes, but you got to pray the rosary every day. Like this rosary, not just pray the rosary. You have to pray this rosary. I was St. Francis of Rome that I'd never heard of her. Next morning, I said, thank you. That's very nice. Okay. Next morning, I wake up, got my phone on the table as I'm having breakfast. And I see Bishop Barron posted a quote picture. It's from St. Francis of Rome. This is now the first and second time I've ever heard of this woman in my entire life, back to back. I say, oh, well, I guess something's happening. I guess there is such a thing as providence. But before we return to the monic and the witches and all the rest of it, for the people in the audience who think relics are silly, fake, or evil, why is it that Christians are venerating parts of dead bodies? Well, Christianity stands on the shoulders of Judaism. And the Jews had a great reverence for the remains of those who are deceased. In the second book of Kings, a man is being buried in a grave. And suddenly, his corpse touched the bones of the prophet Elisha, who had been previously buried in that grave. So you had a grave, you had a shaft with shelves. And the dead man came back to life and rose to his feet. You have in the New Testament, you have a woman in a moment of light, the hemorrhaging woman, realizes all I have to do is touch the hem of Christ's clothing, and I'll be healed. She didn't touch Jesus. She touched his clothing. And that was enough. And he said, I felt power flowing out of me. And Mark, that's the Matthew account, Mark's account goes even further. And he says, however many people touched his hem, they were all healed. And then you have in Acts 19, Paul the Apostle, they touched him with cloths and handkerchiefs, common everyday cloths. So Luke, when he writes that, wants to be very clear. These were not magical cloths. These were handkerchiefs, and you blow your nose into them, and you're working tables with it. They touched them to Paul and then laid those things on the sick, and two things happened. Their diseases left them, and if they had evil spirits, they departed from them. So this is biblical. And so from the beginning, the church would celebrate mass over the tombs of the martyrs. And for two reasons, it was the holiest place with which to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice to the Lord. It was the holiest gift the church could offer God. And at the same time, it was the greatest honor that God could offer the saint by having the Eucharist celebrated over his or her remains. And so that became standard. So it is customary in every single Catholic and Orthodox church that the Eucharist is celebrated over an altar that contains relics of the saints. And we have an account of this going all the way back to basically the earliest days of the church in the martyrdom of Polycarp after Polycarp is killed. A disciple of John the apostle. That's right. And John was still alive when Polycarp suffered death. And his account is the beginning of feast days. So his followers said every year we would gather at his grave to celebrate that martyrdom and to offer the Eucharist. It's funny because relics, obviously, I think it's Calvin the quip, right? You know, if we added up all the wood of the true cross that we've accumulated, we would have enough to construct Noah's Ark. So one, just because something can be abused, right? Scripture can be abused, right? It doesn't mean that we throw it all out. Independent of the veneration of the saints, because obviously I think the big issue, right, is in the Protestant tradition, there's just no concept of conversing with, and it's unfair to call dead people because we still believe they're alive in heaven. They're alive. Yeah. And so getting outside of that, one thing that started, you know, because one, obviously working with him, and obviously he's a dear friend of mine now, and this is a huge part of his ministry, and he shares with me testimonies of people that just get healed. And of course, the first part is like, they just touch that object and then they get healed. Like, how does it, is this, do I need to now begin to be like raiders of the lost ark? Do I need to go start accumulating this stuff to, you know, heal? And then of course, I'm very leery too, because I don't want to, I don't want to foster an environment where people inadvertently, and I've seen this, right, have more faith in the object than they do in the system and the person behind all of this. And so that being said, we know, we have scriptural examples that physical objects can be conduits of God's power. And I also tease, you know, because we have these theology groups, right? And I'm like, bro, you have a giant jersey of like LeBron that's like, you know, with lights underneath, et cetera, and it's in a glass case. And I'm like, there's some veneration going on here, you know? And like, why do objects, you know, why do you have a, I have a friend who collects really cool objects. And I'm like, why do you vintage guitars? And this belonged to Eddie Van Halen, right? That's at least a second-class relic, right? Say, Eddie, play for us, right? I mean, the central fact of the Christian faith is something called the incarnation. So, you know, obviously the body is pretty important here. Exactly. But then one day I was reading, you know, since you're doing the Dante flex, I was like, oh, I was reading Confessions. I think it was Confessions of Augustine, or City of God. But he's very skeptical of relics. And he's like, I don't want this. And he's like, this is not something that should be done. And then they bring, and I believe it's the relics and there's a mayor who was born blind. And he said, and he watches this happen. And Augustine, it's funny, because like, that's the Protestant father, right? We all love Augustine. And he said, it changes mind. He's like, I saw people healed, et cetera. And this comes full circle in a weird way. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. All right. Well, he's openly skeptical. Then he changes mind. And then it does. And it's just like, it's a just a little exclamation point. And then he moves on. It's like, not the thing. Well, fast forward. I actually have a cool, you know, and I have a miracle, I don't call it a miracle, but a really cool answer prayer that happened with a father gave me a third class relic from his Arm of St. Jude tour, or as I like to call it, the Armed and Dangerous tour, but he didn't accept that as a name. And it also is really cool. It's a great gift to be able to hand out to people, right? Because even my staunchest Protestant friends are like, oh, this is really cool. Like, you gave me a cross that's been touched to this arm. Like, whether it's true or not, this is a beautiful symbology or whatever. They love it. And the other one, too, is actually there's, you know, again, piece of the wood of the true cross. I don't know, whatever. You know, it's funny on that point, though, because it's a very famous line. If you added up all the pieces of the true cross, you could make Noah's Ark. There was some study done on this in the last half century where they added up, I mean, we do know where basically all of these relics are, how many there have been, you know, and some are in private collections and private homes, but actually not that many over the last 60 years. And anyway, you can kind of add them up. And the study concluded the total sum of them is about a cross. It's only a third of a cross. See, well, there you go. And it's funny, too, because that one, there was a season where, and I think it was you or someone else who had, you know, these third class relics that have been touched to wood of the true cross. And so for a while, I would give that to some of my friends and like, well, I don't want to venerate a saint. It's like, good news, the saint behind this relic, I think you're going to be very comfortable praying with. This is the most Protestant relic ever. But I was at a conference and there was a panel going on and the show had come out and I was like, oh, I don't want to venerate a saint. And I was like, and it was a big hit, but there were these guys on stage. And I know none of us have had the experience where they were just, they were crushing it in a whole other area that I wanted to be involved in. And I just was, I was feeling covetous, like just candidly. And I was just like, and it was just bothering me. And I didn't like the mood I was in. And so I just kind of left this session. They had announced they were doing this project that I was like, oh man, because part of being in entertainment is that, you know, you can be working on something and then someone who's further along just goes one day, we're going to do this. And you're like, great. I've just erases all my efforts. So I went back in my room and just walked out of the hall. Right. And I actually called my pastor and we were just talking and he goes, man, I'm so sorry for you. You should totally repent right now. And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, I just, dude, you're, you're coveting some stuff. Like be thankful. God gave you got a hit podcast. People are getting saved. Revel in this. Be thankful. And when you see God doing something cool in someone else, get behind it. See what God's doing. Right. Great advice. Not fun to hear. And he's like, find a way that you can snap out of it when that happens. Yeah. Find something. And I looked over and I had my little third class relic from the tour and stuff. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to put this in my pocket. Right. And I'm just going to like, every time just inadvertently put my hand in my pocket, I'm just going to pray, Lord, I'm feeling this way, whatever it is. I'm frustrated. If I'm angry, whatever, just here's a physical, tangible thing that I can just like say, you know what, Lord, thank you for what you've given me in my life. Thank you. Cause we all know gratitude solves like almost everything. Right. And you know what? Thank you for what you're doing in them. Cause they're not like doing anything wrong. They're just, they're crushing it. And I'm just like, not a fan of it. And so I go back in the room and there's still this panel still going. And I wasn't, I was like, Oh, there it is. First one. All right, Lord, thank you. Thank you for what you've given me and forgive me for taking that for granted. moment one of the guys on stage goes hey um is uh you know we've been talking about film and tv and all this other stuff but we need to talk about podcasting because this is a huge medium and people are consuming hours and there's a show that was made recently called the exorcist files it's the best thing it formed me as a christian like i think i think he said bluey made me a better father the exorcist files made me a better man and he's like i don't want to honor him i think he's in the back right there right and just like this and i was like oh it works yeah um so that was a little on the nose wasn't it you know well but wait there's more right so i think this is amazing i tell this story call my pastor he's like see you guys are great right um fast forward three years later i'm in georgia at another conference um and i leave to go to the restroom at dinner and come back i'm just kind of standing in the back it's one of those like round table dinners and you kind of just like tired of sitting there so i'm standing back there's a panel up there and uh they're talking about another project and i just happened to put my hand in my pocket and i still carry this thing with me i was like oh wow all right well lord and i wasn't even coveting this time i was just like lord thank you so much like that's an awesome project like i love what they're doing etc thank you and remember what you did three years ago it's so important to build in reminders of what god has done for you in the past right and i was like lord thank you at that moment i kid you not and it was like the moderator goes you know what when this project started i remember because uh is ryan here yeah i remember you guys were praying together and i remember he blessed the project and you guys were praying together and then so and so and he goes actually yeah and actually he introduced me to this person it got embarrassing a 10 minute conversation erupted about like little things that i was involved with leading to this and i have nothing to do with this thing right and they go well i guess if you need prayer the man back there would love to pray for you right and just thank you and i got another round of applause and i went and i just felt like you know whether it was in my spirit or not it just was like a i did it once see i can do it anytime i want so just trust that i'm in control yeah this is when these things are going to happen i'm going to do it anytime i want so just trust that i'm in control because during my reversion these kind of things were happening a lot and it was it was really noticeable and it's kind of disorienting and and i thought well this is i need to figure out how to make sense of this over time and eventually they kind of happened less or less noticeably and then i went back and i thought all right sometimes the lord whispers to us sometimes sometimes he needs to shout in our face and shake us and maybe smack us in the head a little bit And at those moments, you know, we should be very, very grateful because who knows how we could have gone, you know, if not for these signs. Well, you're a priest because God spoke to you, right? I mean, you don't tell that. That's a cool story. Yeah. So it was a different retreat from the one from which I converted from atheism. It was seven years later. And, you know, when I did convert, I was ready for God to do whatever. And he was silent about what he wanted me to do. So I just, the time I was an undergrad, then I went to graduate school. So seven years later, I went on another retreat. And it was Tuesday morning, June the 3rd, 2003, at 10.18. I heard God's voice. Carlos, I want you to be a priest. I promise to make you very happy. End of transmission? There we are. Audible, sensual, or just a kind of infusion? So audible in the sense. That they were very specific words. But they were not physical in the sense of, they weren't auditory like my voice would be auditory to you right now. It was an inner speaking. And it just resonated all through me. And it's just as clear and present now as it was 23 years ago. Wow. So the point of vocation then brings us back to. St. Paul, who I was just thinking of a few days ago. And probably yesterday too. You say, you head to this big conversion in Eucharistic adoration. And then you say, whatever you want me to do for you, Lord, I'll do. And you don't hear anything. It is kind of curious that Paul has been persecuting Christians. He's on the road to Damascus. Blinding light. Sound from the sky. Other people hear it. Paul, why do you persecute me? You know, I'm Jesus. And you're persecuting me. You're persecuting me. Why are you persecuting me? And so he's convicted there on the road to Damascus. And he says, all right, well, you know, go on. You'll get more messages. You know, go on. I'll give you the rest of the story in a little bit. He doesn't give it all to him at once. He's blinded. His friend has to help him the rest of the way to Damascus. And then right afterward, Jesus talks to Ananias. So he finds this guy, this like random Christian in Damascus. He says, hey. Hey, Ananias, you got to go find this guy, Paul of Tarsus. And you got to go tell him what I want and lay your hands on him. And he'll, the scales will fall from his eyes. And so then Paul walks up to Damascus. And then he's just blind for three days. And then this guy shows up, says, hi, I'm Ananias. Yeah, oh, yeah, Jesus talked to you. I know. He told me. And he talked to me too. And here's what's going to happen. And he puts his hand on him and the scales fall from his eyes. And especially in our modern age where everything's instant and we communicate with people on the other side of the world. And instantly you say, well, why do you have to bring in Ananias? Like, why did God have to make Paul wait for three days and stumble the rest of the way to Damascus? And why did he have to involve this other guy that Paul didn't even know? And what, like, he was there. He was talking to him. He taught, you know, it's like there was not a ton of mystery. There is mystery. But there was not much left to the imagination. Like, Jesus is speaking to Paul directly. But he chooses not to tell him the rest of the story for three days, mediated by some other guy. Why? Well, for his own reasons, ultimately. You know, God has the right to be sovereign. And he can do things however he wants. And our job is to just say, yes, sir. You know, we can come up with a reason. And we may even come up with some really good, valid theological reasons. You know, God likes to work with others. He says he's meek and humble of heart. So he's not a showboater. He, you know, he likes to empower his children. And sure, you know, all of that is true. It's true. But he can also just decide to do whatever he wants. And that's that. Because he's God and you're not. Yeah. It's very frustrating. You don't dare tell God what to do. You don't. You can beg him. You can ask. You know, but in the final analysis, not my will, but yours. And in that will. And in that will, you're going to be the peace. Even if it doesn't feel like to you like that it is. Like, I'll be at peace if I get what I want. No. You're going to experience peace when God gets his will done. When his will is done, you're going to be awash with peace. And a lot of the time, you actually won't have peace if you get what you want. That's one of the other funny things, too. The answer I came up with was, one, you know, believers are part of the mystical body of Christ. And so, you know, we're all kind of in it. We have this privilege of privilege. This grace of participating in God's work in the world. And it's an incarnational faith. And it moves through history. And God enters into history. But also, when it comes to vocation, God can't just call Paul once. I suppose he could if he really wanted to. But probably it's a better idea to keep calling Paul. This idea of a vocation is something that is always happening. God is always talking to Paul. He's always speaking to all of us. Mm-hmm. And if we were just left up to our own devices. If one day God comes to you and says, "Hey, Ryan, here's what you're going to do for the next 50 years. You're going to do this, then you're going to do this, and then I want you to do this, and then this is going to happen." Okay, bye. You probably wouldn't do it. You'd probably, like, get diverted along the way. You'd put it off a little bit. In other words, you're in this relationship of grace with God to the point that, you know, Paul is taken up into heaven. And he has these mystical experiences. And it just isn't what a joy that is for a true vocation. Well, Paul, I just got back from a trip. We're making a docuseries on the Apostle Paul. And it was in Ephesus. And, you know, we don't realize how much Paul failed in the beginning, too. Yeah. We always want a profound encounter with God. And Paul doesn't have a hit single, really, until I think it's Corinth. Like, I mean, it takes a minute to get the band going. The other part is because that rest, I always wonder why. I forget if Paul was, like, 36 or 37. But he was older. He was older. And you go, why then? Like, why called then? Also, we don't know. Had Paul heard a little voice? Had he been ignoring it? You know? Did Paul finally get to a place where, because I will say in my own life, I know many others, God usually doesn't start with the parting the clouds and physical maladies. It's usually, like, we should do this. We should do this. I mean, you know, who knows why, like, why he chose to do that. The other thing is we have a testimony on the show. And this one messed me up the most theologically. And it wasn't one of his cases. So, sorry. The honor goes to a Protestant on that one. But this woman was sick for, like, two decades and had a good friend of ours. An awesome, righteous Christian couple. Like, as, I mean, as much as one can discern, like, character and purity from the external, this is it. This is, I think, they're the most amazing couple. And they thought she had MS or Parkinson's. Like, and she was just, and she's young. She's in her 30s. And speeches slurring, memories going. I mean, the prayer became for her. The prayer became for her, like, help me die with dignity so that I'm not a burden to my family. Help me not have paralysis in my face so I'm not, like, unseemly when company. he comes over. I mean, that's the, it's like, and had gone to the healing conferences, had gone to the, had fasted, had prayed, done everything. Like, I mean, all the things. Aunt goes to a family member, I think it was her aunt, went to a cultist, a medium or something like that. And then that, for something completely different. And it said, oh, by the way, oh, I'm seeing you have a curse on your family. Like there's a, you're one of your great grandfathers had an affair with a witch and left when he left his wife for the witch. And then actually went back to the wife. The witch was angry and the witch retaliated with a curse. And now the firstborn female of chronic illness or death throughout the family line. This is what the psychic said? This is what the psychic said to the, the aunt or the family member of this woman. So she calls her up and says, hey, you know, look what I just, I went to the medium and look what, look what I found out about our family. And they go, that's crazy. But then they go, well, I'm sick. And like, well, let's, let's just, let's take a look at our family line. And they go back and sure enough, firstborn female, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Similar to what father was talking about that story. And she goes and gets spiritual, gets deliverance, goes in, gets deliverance. One sec, instantly healed, instantly physical thing goes away. And I'm asking her going, aren't you mad? Like I'll be mad for, aren't you mad? It took, I don't know. You've been praying about this for 10 years, right? Et cetera. Why did God choose that? Also, why'd the family member go like, that's wrong. Like also, why did the witch play this role in the psychic? Ananias, the witch, why does it? And you just like, and classic, amazing response. She goes, man, I'm just so grateful to be alive and healthy. And that just makes everything better. But I kind of get like Ananias is a Christian. Right. The medium is some witch. Well, that's God's mercy. I mean, that's God's mercy. But that one is like why God chooses to, we have so many cases where they're going at it constantly. And obviously father, you jump in here, but it's like, they're going to the prayers and deliverance. And why one day they've been going on it for months. And then one day it breaks and the person is liberated. And the thing I've had to reconcile is okay. One, he says all the time, Jesus is the priest. And he knows the time and the place to extract the most fruit from this thing. So the person could be saying, I want to be free. I want to be free, but God and them know what's going on in there. And if they also, is there an element where like, God's like, you know what? I don't actually think you don't, you want my benefits, but you don't want my kingdom right now. So I'm going to let you experience this. Right. And people, you know, to the, I was an agnostic too for a long time. And it was just like this whole, I mean, cause the suffering and the stuff that people have gone through, I've now met people who've emerged from the church. I've met people who've emerged from cults and satanic abuse and it's stuff you didn't think human beings were capable of inflicting. Like there's supposed to be like a hard code that you just, there are lines you don't cross. And these people have experienced them and you go, God, like, I mean, I had a perfect upbringing and I'm like, how do I preach God's either? Like, yeah, it's easy for you to preach God's sovereignty and goodness, but like, look at all this. And ultimately I just come back to, it's like, man, if you believe what you believe about God, then all this exorcism, the fact that we have an enemy, all that stuff in some weird way, it's for the greater good. And it's, and it just, and it, and it, that messed me up for a long time. But you know, father always says, right. Satan is God's unwitting pawn. Unwitting pawn. He's on a leash. Yeah. And exorcism is a process and God knows what he wants to accomplish. Of course, all of us, the victim, me, the exorcist, any exorcist, we, we, we want that liberation to happen yesterday. And we don't have control over that. And God is sovereign. God has his purposes, even if we don't know them. And, and he has the right to not share his purposes, right? That's the benefit of being God. And so until you or I become almighty God, well, we have to abide by his rules. Job, Job, that one drives me nuts. Never gets an answer. At least he gets some justice, but he never finds out why he went through his ordeal. We know because we get this little preamble, but Job just goes, oh yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not God. End of story. It is probably my favorite book of the Bible. And it's the one when, when you finally get the upshot to it, it is, it is the one I cry basically every time I read it, you know, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Similar tone to the, how much longer do I have to be with you people? Like how much longer must I suffer you? Yeah, yeah. Oh no, surely, you know, surely, you know, yo, no, where were the measurements laid? You know, come on, what was it like? And it's just, yes, we, we all experienced this to some degree and we all struggle with theodicy. The problem of evil and suffering. Most of us don't even really have a conception of the depths of evil that can exist in time and space, like satanic ritual abuse, which you're, you're referencing. But there's a, it was, I've noticed this kind of strange thing in my own spiritual life, which I should have realized 30 years ago, probably. A lot of people despair because they feel like if they have a bad habit or even a bad habit of mind, that they just can't get out of it. That they, you know, they might go for a few weeks or a couple of months, but eventually they're going to fall back into the rut of some habitual sin or some habitual temptation or whatever. And the weird thing I've noticed is I go to confession. I receive absolution. Ego te absolvo. You know, God forgives you of your sins. And even if I'm wracked by all of the deadly sins, like I feel it physically, my pride and my gluttony, my lust and my wrath and my this and my that, I leave the confessional and I actually don't feel that anymore. And the thing I noticed is some thought pops into my head. Some pretty girl crosses the street. Some guy cuts me off in traffic. As long as I don't, with an act of the will, entertain those thoughts, I can basically go forever. Like there is, there is no time limit on falling into sin. I can basically go forever. And then the minute I start to willfully curse out the person in traffic or whatever, or look at the pretty girl on the street or whatever it is, now I can't get it out of my head. Now I am in this total rut in my mind where I'm, I feel much more temptation. And I suppose we can get into temptation, obsession and possession and all that. But that is basically the point. Like if you, if you're falling into these sins, mortal sins, it does require an act of the will, right? Like you are part of that. Yep. You cannot accidentally fall into mortal sin, right? It needs your participation. It needs your consent. So on temptation, obsession, possession, which we've referenced a few times now, everyone thinks of exorcism as Father Martin shows up in the middle of the night with the rain and the dark and the lightning flashing and screaming and heads turning and all that. But that is not, possession is not the main way that the devil messes around with us. No. So, okay, we know temptation, the person in traffic, the lady, across the street. Okay. We know possession when, you know, you start speaking or the demons start speaking in foreign languages and stuff. Okay. What's obsession? Great question. We have a case filed this week about this. Yeah. So obsession is also known as partial possession. So it's where the mind is compromised at some level. So when you have possession, you are owned, right? So the body is compromised. And physically, as if, as if he were inside you, as, as if the body were his own. When you have obsession, it, the body is not compromised, but the mind is. There can be fleeting moments where they're, they're, you know, a part of your body is, is, is not in control. But, but, but the mind is. So you can have, for example, just a recurring anxiety that is just visceral. You know, you know, you are, you are horrified by a sin you did 10 years ago. And, and you may have not even thought about it for eight years. And now all of a sudden the pastor, you, you, you can't shake it. So we're not talking about a mental condition here. We're not talking about something that is diagnosable by medicine as, as a pathology, which that needs treatment. We're talking about something completely different. An impending desire, like your own salvation is not had. Like you, you will never see salvation. You, you, should I marry Sally or should I marry Laverne? And, and this, and it's reaches a level, you're non-functional. So that you, you, you live your entire day with these thoughts. You fall asleep going to these, if you sleep at all, you wake up in the middle of your sleep thinking about these thoughts. So that's, that's obsession in its raw form. How prevalent is that? A lot more than what people realize, you know, and I think probably some of the accounts of, of possession probably relate to this, where, where there is, so, so it's outside the person's character and baseline. So there's a behavior now that is, that is absolutely new. It's not them. And yet they can't shake it. Nothing they can do shakes it. No doctor can shake it. So how prevalent is it? It's prevalent. It's out there. What do you do to fix it? I mean, it's a, to put it bluntly, is confession enough or? Demons live in wounds, right? Find the wounds. So, so when somebody comes into my office, you know, when I've been called, when I've been asked to see somebody, when, when, when a diocese is, you know, can you, can you undertake this case? I don't go looking for the devil, right? I have a person in front of me and my first question is, Jesus, what do you want me to do for this person? What is the immediate need? So, so I'm looking for the devil. I'm looking for the devil. I'm looking for that immediate need, the wounds. Just like, you know, if I, if I show up at your door and, I was just in an accident. My leg is bleeding. The first thing you're going to do is not offer me a drink and a cigar. Well, quickly. And then I'll say, and can I get you a bandage too? Right. But I just want to be hospitable. You're going to treat the immediate problem. And so what I'm doing is I'm looking for, you know, where is this person, Lord, lacking you? So in doing this, you flip the tables. Because most people think, you know, you go look for the devil. And the devil knows this. And he's going to be on his best behavior. Right? So he knows he's in the doctor's office or he's in the principal's chair. And he's being scrutinized. So he's going to make it look. He wants you, the exorcist, to think this person is just nuts. This person is just, or just is beat up by life. And just wounded and so many, like neurotic and so forth. So send this person away. Well, I don't do that. The person may have nothing spiritual. But we'll have wounds. So my first job as an exorcist is not to be an exorcist. It's to be a priest. It's to be a pastor of a soul. Right? So you go look for those wounds and treat the wounds. And sure as hell exists, if the devil is there, he's going to come to you. Because he is not going to appreciate that. Wounds are his habitat and his food source. You mess with those, he's going to come to you. What would you say today? Is or are the chief causes of the wounds? So it may be different times throughout history, but you mentioned the example of the trauma. You know, little Johnny sees little Timmy get his head blown off by a car. That's a trauma. It's not a very prevalent one, thank God. What are the biggest causes today? So it's definitely sin, right? So trauma in and of itself doesn't cause possession. But what it does is it causes a distortion. A scandal. A scandal. It changes your view, causes you to believe a lie. God is not good. God doesn't love me. I'm a horrible person. I deserve eternal misery because I've just brought about Joey's death by throwing a ball. Maybe even intentionally too high that he would have to go around and get this ball. Boom. A car gets him. But the two types of sin that are the most demon causing or that bring about demonization is dabbling in the occult, sexual sin, right? So why? Why? Why for each? Well, when you dabble in the occult, what you're doing is imitating the rebellion of Satan against God. And that rebellion had two aspects. One, there is a doubt of God's goodness, right? So following God is not going to make me happy. And second, he has put natural limits on you and your power and you're bypassing them, right? So I can't know the future. But if I go to the fortune teller, I've just bypassed that. So that's the occult end of it. So you are imitating. And replicating the sin of Satan. My God, it's usually, it's often, very often, a one and done experience with people. They go dabble into that. Now you've picked up something. Because you've handed over rights. And even if he doesn't claim the right right away, right? You can have a home in Florida that you never visit. But it's still yours. 25 years from now, you might decide to go and somebody else might be in there. Hey, buddy, get out. This is mine. He can claim those rights anytime he wants. The second is sexual sin. Why? Well, because the sexual faculty, the sexual appetite is the most powerful appetite within anybody. You know, people give up food for sex, money for sex. But it is the way in God's plan whereby we most resemble God. You know, a husband and wife come together in a love so strong, nine months later, they have to give that love a name. Right? So the devil's going to be there. So the devil's going to be all over that. The devil's going to try to mar that, exploit that, make it ugly, turn you into perversion. So we're born, we come upon the scene with broken. So our appetites are out of whack. And he's going to exacerbate that any chance he gets. Right? Just look at how much sexual perversion there is. Right? The animal kingdom, that's nonexistent. You have to be a human to be perverted. Right? You have to be a human. So the type of perversion that humans engage in has no mirror in the animal kingdom. You know, animals don't have a dysphoria that they undergo that humans suffer from. Right? So that's a peculiar, particular condition of the human being. But, you know, occasionally you'll have these, like, LGBT activists. They'll say, no, there were these gay penguins at the zoo. And, like, when you look into it, you realize, well, I don't know, they're not really gay. They're, like, holding their flippers together. And, actually, they're kind of taken out of their natural habitat. And there's all this weird stuff going on. But, yeah, there's no, like, NXIVM cult of giraffes. You know? There's no Epstein Island of leopards. Right. Right? That's a keen insight. It's never occurred to me. Yes. You have to be a human to be really perverted. And, of course, I think most people, it resonates for most people, that sexual sin is the way in. And it's not necessarily the worst kind of sin. But there are plenty of mystics in the history of the church who say sexual sin brings the most souls to hell. It might not be the worst sin, but it might be the most effective way to claim souls for the devil. Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So those would be the two, by far, that we see. The two most common. Obviously, they're not exclusive. You know, one doesn't exclusively become demonized through those avenues. But then what about specifically on the non-sin part? You know, Johnny seeing Timmy's head blown off. Yeah. What is it today? I mean, you would say for sexual sin, probably the biggest temptation is online porn. And then related to that, the lax sexual mores, the Cornell weird orgy and, you know, hookup culture and all the rest of that. But put the sin aside for a second. Is it, we live in a period of great divorce. We've had divorce laws liberalized. They're still being liberalized. It's so recent that we've liberalized divorce laws that I think it was 2011 or something in New York or later that they finally fully liberalized the divorce laws. So you have generations now of kids, most of whom have divorced parents. Surely that is scandalous. Surely all of the weird behaviors that pertain to sex are quite scandalous. We live in a time when we look the other way on violent crime or disorder in the streets. Maybe that could be scandalous. Are there any traumas that you think are more prevalent now than they were previously? We should talk about, I mean, the big one, half our case, a third of them involve unforgiveness. You know, like things that have, so you mentioned divorce, all these things that happen to people. And that can lead to, this is a tough one because, right, you know, if someone does something really wrong to you, like you can, it's natural to be pissed and angry. But we have, you know, we've had cases where, we had a case in season one where a demon pretended to be a girl's father and visit her and asked for permission to come into her life center. And her dad had walked out on her and left her. And her mom, and she had blamed her mother for driving the man away. And part of her liberation was forgiving her mother. And we've had multiple cases where, you know, people, like, are the victim and they still have to forgive their father. They still have to forgive their assailants. And so that part, and then forgiveness of self. We have probably our craziest case coming out this season that, you know, one of the main doorways that's like for the final boss battle, if you will. Like they're going to have to get through is some, basically being able to forgive oneself for things that either happened to them and done. Because I was blown away and we had a, we have some psychologists and therapists who will help us on the show to help try and capture the reality of what's going on. And also to be accurate. So the psychoses that these people endure. And one that I just was, I know a lot of people know this. I didn't know this. And it was very hard to write this and experience this. But the idea that someone who was, you know, taken advantage of and sexually abused does now have a new identity that somehow they were culpable. And that they were like, you know, and obviously. Asking for it or something. Yeah, I know. I mean, and this, and again, I don't know how prevalent this is, but like, it was like the fact that like, wait, because you read this and you go. You should be pissed. You should be angry. Like how, how dare they do this? And part of this individual story in the case that we're documenting is that that was like, oh, well, it happened multiple times. I'm the common denominator between all these things. So at some point it's me, right? And you think that's just, it's so evil and it's so horrible. And it's crazy how many cases the person has to struggle to say, I forgive so-and-so for something legitimately evil that happened to them. Yeah. And then, and then the self-forgiveness. So even, even in the case of Lena, this girl who had her, her dad walk out. So she, she had to forgive herself for having a dad that left her and didn't call her. She had to forgive herself for being a loser because that's how she defined herself. She, she had to forgive herself for being a kid who wasn't seen as valuable enough that the dad would stick around. So she had to release herself from that. Right? So this, this is a dimension of the Christian faith that, that people often miss out on. So the, the Lord's command to forgive is not just for those out there. It's for you, because you're not alone. Because after the fall, we can hate ourselves. And we do. And we mess up. And I'm my own enemy. So it can be often easier. Like so, for example, I worked in, when I first became a priest, I worked a lot with, I did a lot of prison ministry, and I worked with a lot of victims of abuse of all sorts. And the phenomena that I saw, and it so helped me in my ministry of exorcism, was that a victim often hates herself or himself, right? So he or she will come easily enough to forgive the perpetrator of the attack, the abuser, the person who brought great life-defining grief to me. And now, are you willing to forgive yourself for being the target, for being, having been created sexual, for having been lusted after, for being too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, to help yourself out of this, for being vulnerable, for being limited, for not knowing how to get out of this, for not being the solution to your own problems? And they're usually a sobbing mess by then. All right, so it is the releasing of yourself, of your own sense of inadequacy, and your own wrongdoing, in your own mind, in your own psyche, if you felt you contributed to the state of affairs. And that, the Lord gains a lot of real estate when someone can come to that point. And if you don't surrender that to Christ, he won't take it, 'cause he can't. He'd be taking stolen goods, right? It truly has to be surrendered. So the worst, most evil thing that you've ever done, or that perception you have of yourself, that you are no good, that you are useless, that you messed up, that you screwed up, if you don't surrender that, that the Lord can't take it away. But if you do surrender it, my God, forgiveness releases the power of a nuclear bomb in you. - Yeah, you see this really in the writing of Paul, with this paradoxical quality, where he does boast a lot. He says, "Oh, you guys say that you're children of Abraham? "You guys say you're Jews? "I'm way more of that than you, "and all these other apostles? "Man, I work way harder than they do, "and I've done way more, and I've suffered way more, "and I'm like the man. "Also, I'm not fit to be called an apostle, "and I'm the worst of sinners, "and everything that I've done is actually "just Christ accomplishing things in me, "and I don't even really exist. "It's actually, it's no longer I who live, "but Christ who lives in me." And that seems like a contradiction or some kind of poetic device, but it does express a profound reality of the Christian life. It's kind of the whole point, right? And so there's no contradiction for Paul when he says that. He's like, "Yeah, no, I am the man. "I'm found in all these churches, and I'm getting shipwrecked, "and beaten all the time, and I'm the man. "And also, I'm the worst." You know, isn't that, he sounds insane when he says it to modern ears, but in fact, that's probably the most sane approach you could have to yourself. - Yeah, he made his point very, very clearly, you know, with self-glorification checked by self-deprecation. - Yeah, yeah, you know, on the point, this brings up a, this'll be my therapy session, or my spiritual counseling session, because the point that you brought up on this girl who's some spiritual, some kind of entity said, "I'm your father, and I want to enter into your life," or whatever, I had this very strange thing happen to me. I was trying to discern the spiritual meaning of it. After a family member died, close family member died, I had a dream, and I saw this family member wearing all black, walking down a hallway. And I said, "Oh, so-and-so, are you walking to heaven?" And this family member says, "No, "I'm going to the other place. "And by the way, you are too. "Now wake up." - That'll get you up in the morning. - Yeah, so that's not good. I don't like either part of that. I don't, is that, and then I had to wonder, I mean, dreams can be prophetic. You know, a prophecy is less than telling the future, as my friend Father Rutler points out. A prophet is one who speaks the truth and seems to predict the future in the derivative sense of warning about the consequences of denying the truth. So, it's entirely possible that my family member and I will go to hell, God forbid, I hope that isn't true. It is possible that there's a kind of prophetic quality to that. It's also possible that that was just the devil trying to play with my mind as I was in a period of grief. How am I to discern what that is? Or should I discern it at all? Or should I just, you know, just gotta stick close to God and do what I can do and forget about the dream? Or should I surrender it to God, ask him to speak into it? If he chooses to, then I would take those words as gold. And if he chooses not to, then you don't give it any more value than you need to. But I don't think it's worth discounting entirely because there's a valuable spiritual lesson in there. All right, that the fact that hell does exist, it is possible that there's something else in heaven that's not in heaven yet. and you know maybe this dead relative maybe just needs prayers maybe there could have been a true aspect of the story and that is he or she is not in heaven yet but needs prayer the enemy could have just gotten in that lesson no I'm going to the other place that could have been a fake part a counterfeit part of that so so I would just I would surrender it to the Lord and then you live as if God is sovereign, God has a plan, God is bringing things for the good, provided that I cooperate with that. And you worry about engaging in that cooperation and you let God sort out the poker chips as they need to be sorted out. We get questions all the time about dreams and the role they play. It's tough because I have a few friends that have had those kind of dreams. like, we have a friend who had a dream that's like, a man was like, you're going to meet me in the airport and in a Middle Eastern country. And they went on faith. Like, in their 20s, young, by themselves, went, showed up. The same person from the dream met them in the airport. What? Yeah, ministry. No, this happens. Not to me, right? And your dream's different, obviously. Yeah, yeah. I hope we don't meet again in those circumstances. Yeah. It's hard too because, right, because dreams on one hand, I do think is an interesting valid way that God speaks. It's a time when we're still and our minds are wandering and he can kind of intervene. But we do have excessive nightmares. Now, obviously, in this case, this is just one scary. However, anything to do with eternity, that can be very scary. And we have many people write in and say, has this dream indicative of something demonic going on? And I will say it's tough because obviously people have nightmares. That's our brains working stuff out. We have many cases where one of the main symptoms is excessive nightmares that start happening. In fact, we have one case coming out this year that the main symptom that brought the attention of the church to this individual was the kid was experiencing such crazy dreams. And I'd be curious if you agree with this, but it's generally the degree and the severity, right? We all get nightmares, but when they start having repeated, grotesque, horrific, and this kid was hearing the sounds of, like, flesh ripping. They were having open-eyed visions, too, where, like, they'd see someone in their mirror, etc. And the family was just like, kids have imaginations, and their prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. The line between reality and fantasy is kind of blurred. And they did finally take this kid to a priest, get blessed, and it actually went away for a while. For years. Went away for years. For years. And then it came back with a vengeance. And now, again, there were other doorways itself in this case, but a lot of, actually, I had a friend who, it's crazy, when I first started doing this, it's funny, all the friends that you think are going to think you're crazy, they all go, okay, someone else leaves the room, and you're like, okay, so here's, let me tell you what actually I need to talk to you about this, right? And he goes, my sister brought this little tchotchke from some market in Bali or wherever it was, right, and gave it to my daughter. It was like, oh, it's a cool thing, right? That night, the daughter started having a dream where a deceased relative was visiting them, right? And I was like, hey, it's so good to see you. Can I come back and visit you? And like, of course. I think it appeared it was grandma or whatever, right? I think it was grandma. And then he'd come back, and at night, he would visit, and he's like, oh, what are you doing? And he's telling me the story. He's like, yeah, my daughter's talking to grandma or some family member at night. And he's like, what did she say? She's like, oh, she thinks you're great. We're hanging out. We're talking in dreams. And I'm like, I think that's weird, right? But then at one night uh grandma showed her true colors or whatever it was right and described as like a dolphin with like crazy fangs and like a monster that like tried to attack her and she was screaming and he's like well what has changed in the last like couple weeks and he's like and just he just looked over and he's like well i see this object right and i was like i think you should get rid of that and he threw the object away and dreams done really completely done again cursed object i don't know etc but like the thing is the nightmare side i'm i put this way i'm i love the idea of God speaking through dreams, seeing it happen. It does seem more often than not, I'm curious if you agree with this, that it's more often than not, it's the nightmares point towards like demonic rather than God speaking to us more profoundly through dreams. Right. And what you're looking for is patterning, right? Consistency. So a one-off nightmare or two nights in a row, okay. No exorcist is going to get up out of his chair to deal with that because 'cause that, look, this is life. - Yeah. but consistency and patterning right but even that object too it's not necessarily that the object was cursed but the maker of the object let's say sure could have evil and that evil is attached to the object because it was his and it can remain and this even scripture says don't even touch the clothing of the wicked all right tell me remember the why you don't accept gifts from people this is one of the first conversations we had he's like i don't accept gifts from strangers right and i'm like and we do get lots of weird gifts bless them many of them innocuous but like the gift where someone gave you uh some candy um so okay so it wasn't to me uh okay so but it well to someone i know uh know very well uh so he worked at a warehouse with this woman and woman was crazy about him wanted to have a relationship he wanted nothing to do with her for whatever reasons and so one day he's leaving work and and he's like i don't know what to do with this and he's like i don't know what to do with this and she says look i i make my own candy i made you this bag of candy best candy you've ever had um so he just takes it puts it on the passenger seat and drives home and forgets about the candy uh until the next day he gets in his car to go to work and he sees the bag oh yeah there's that candy and so he thought well i'm going to take a piece of candy out and eat all the candy had turned to hair balls of hair now are we sure that she did not just make him hair candy yeah yeah no he had seen them first she had shown him it was a twix and then obviously she had shown him and so so what happened well obviously they were cursed and obviously the fact that they turned to hair was a sign that some evil had been done to them and whatever temporary and how this works i mean you tell me and we'll both know i i have no idea why was there a 24 hour limit on this girl i don't i don't know but but sure as heaven exists he looked at him he said i'm not putting any of that in my mouth right so but but we'll we'll have exorcism cases where all of a sudden in the midst of the praying there's some heaving going on heaving and people will vomit the strangest things pins nails screws bricks like a whole brick appears to emerge out of somebody's which it couldn't even possibly fit down their mouth so there's an illusion aspect of it somehow at some level where this brick is emerging and this brick is permanent like it stays like it does it's a real brick it's a real brick did this happen to an exorcist you know or is this to me it happened to you you saw the brick yes and then you have uh some perhaps sometime under the chair that they're sitting in all of a sudden you're praying and and there's a some breakthrough in the prayer and there's a snake underneath it and there's a snake underneath it and there's a snake no i've never seen this snake but i've had colleagues that have a snake or or i've had a worm all of a sudden there's just a worm writhing underneath there's no way there was a worm there before you would have noticed the worm yeah yeah just we didn't we generally don't keep worms in our chapels it's a best practice how do we yeah that's right yeah people come in and clean and everything how how do you make sense of this then uh you know we we accept physical reality and the of physics and all the rest. So how does that happen? Like, what's the nuts and bolts of that? Pun unintended. You tell me, and we'll both know. We'll co-author a book, we'll make a lot of money. Because if you can harness that power, you can do a lot. No, I, you know, so in the midst of this, obviously God is sovereign, is in charge, and he's allowing these things to happen as signs that there's something here that's really wrong, right? There's some evil here, there's some perversion, there's something here that is badness. Badness is making an appearance. But at the same time, that badness is bleeding off. It's being extracted from the person. So what it tells you is, hey, there's a sign here of something leaving this individual. Right, it's not just a, I'm fascinated by signs and the emergence of meaning from signs and what the signs signify. And so it's not just that. It's not just that the signs point to, you know, all signs point to something. It's not just that they're pointing to the presence of some evil. The mode in which you are seeing the sign itself signifies that evil is leaving the person. Right, yeah. There's an expelling that's going on, which is great, which is exactly what you want. No, why does God do it that way? Why doesn't he just make the evil go away and we see it from its effects? He also does that too. Where there is no overt sign. But the effect, and that's the sign. The effect is a freedom. What did you do with the brick, if you don't mind my asking? Throw it in the ocean, throw it in a lake, smash it up with a hammer, throw it in the trash, take it to a vacant field and just scatter it. Like, I don't leave them intact. So I destroy it. I change the form such that what it was before, it is no longer that now. It's just a collection of constituent parts, like sand. You pulverize it until it's sand. Well, I mean, normally I don't do it myself. I just have somebody do it. I just, you know, I give it to somebody. So these artifacts, brick or otherwise, appear multiple times. If they're burnable, we burn them. Yeah, like that's a great way to get rid of a malifice, a cursed object. Sometimes they're, I mean, because this is fascinating to you, right? We've had cases where people appear to sprout fangs, and you've talked about, like, there's an illusory component where the demons, and I think you were positing that they manipulate light, and will cause you to see things. Because now the physical brick thing, that's hard to dispute. That's so mind-boggling. But then other things that you think defy the physical laws of the universe are actually manipulations of light. Yeah. So I had this case. It's one of the chapters of my book. It's a possessed firefighter. And so this poor guy is in his early 30s. He had been possessed since he was seven years old. And what happened is. How do you get possessed at seven years old? Yeah, so his brothers brought home a Ouija board and gathered with their friends around the table. And he's at seven years old. He doesn't know what's going on. But he's just sitting around because, hey, this is what my brothers are doing, and there's friends over, and this is some kind of action. So he didn't remember much about that experience other than the fact that it happened, that there was a Ouija board. That night in his room, as he's. He's in bed. The lights are out. He said a figure came into the room that was so black, it was so dark, that it made the rest of the room seem like it was in broad daylight. That's the level of blackness. It had the face or the head of a cat and the body of a human. And this thing came and made him an offer. It said, I will make you really, really strong, stronger than all your friends. If you give me. And then it named something. It said some word that he didn't recognize. This is what I want. And so he said, yeah. And so he said, this figure jumped up in the air, did a somersault, and went into his body. And from that point forward, this guy was the strongest kid around. He could pummel kids that were years older than him. He always had wanted to be a super, super strong man. Became a firefighter. But in the midst of this, he's possessed. So he would lose large gaps of time that he can't account for. So he just loses half a day. All of it, it was just morning. Now all of a sudden, it's evening. He has no idea where he's been, what he has done. He's in a different part of the town. One time, he had lost two days. He woke up in a different town. He had his pants on. He had his shoes on, if I recall. But he had no shirt on. His body was cut. His knuckles. So he had punched somebody or something because his knuckles were cut up. He had an extra. I can't remember what it was. It was something like $2,200 in his pocket. He has no idea what he has done. And so his wife knew this about him. So she was a woman. They married each other for looks. She had a conversion. And it happened when she saw his parents convert. They went to a mission that was put on by a priest at their parish. They converted. And they started living a new life, a new identity. She saw that, and it drew her in. And so he saw that in his parents and his wife. And he thought, this is what I need for me. I'm not happy. And at a certain point, the magic word that she said to him is like, look, man, we're in our 30s now. It's about time that we grow up. We need to start going to church. It's about time we grow up. And he said, yeah, it is time. So he went to confession on a Saturday morning. It was in the same town. Well, it was a neighboring town from where I was in my church. And when he walked into the confessional, he just started manifesting. So there was a voice coming out of him. I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. So that priest in the confessional called me up the road, up the. Up the freeway. And he said, I'm sending over somebody right now. His parents and wife are taking him. And he's fully. He's fully possessed. So I see him at my door, and I don't know if he's possessed or not. All I know is that this priest says he was. And he was a perfect gentleman. He was a huge, hulking man. And so I bring him into my office, and I ask him, hey, what happened today? And he articulated it beautifully, perfectly. And I, you know, why do you think? He articulated what happened in the confessional? In the confessional. Okay. So he was aware of that. He was aware of it, yeah. And why do you think it happened? And then he proceeds to tell me the story that I just told you of when he was a kid and all the different ways in which living life was like for him. And so I'm, at a certain point, I tell him to keep talking, and I put down stacks of books that I keep in my shelves in my office. And there are books on every single topic, some spiritual. Some completely random, like a sports team yearbook, how to drywall your basement, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm putting these stacks of books down, and I'm controlling his eyesight in doing that. So I know, in his mind, in his eyes, like, why is this priest doing this? Yeah, what book is this? Why is he putting all of this? This is weird. Like, what is he putting down now? So all of this is because I had left a glass of holy water on one of the shelves of the bookcase, and I just put my finger into that holy water. And there was a drop on my fingertip. That's it. So I'm coming back, and I, you know, his eye, he's looking at me. So he can't see me. That's the point. He's not looking at me, not looking for me. And as I walk by, I fling that drop of holy water onto his sweater. So on a human level, there's no way he could have perceived what just happened. He wasn't aware, and he didn't feel it. He shot up out of that chair lightning fast. I mean. So I was behind him. He shot up and turned his head back. He arched his back in a way that we were face to face, although his face was upside down. And his teeth seemed to sprout two or three inches. Like, he had his two canines, and he was hissing like a cat. So there was a cat manifestation, which made sense because of the figure that jumped into him. So here it is. Here it is. 25 years later, this figure. This figure and I are face to face. And so, you know, so what happened? Well, so I just kept saying to the cat, I don't want to talk to you. I want to talk to him. And so, and I command you to leave. I command you to set aside. You will allow him to come out. And so it went on for a couple of hours because he would make the poor guy go unconscious so that he couldn't answer me. But essentially, it came down to one thing. Say the name Jesus. Say the name Jesus. And that's what we, that's what I settled on because the renouncing of that offer that he agreed to, it was too much for him to say. Like, the demon was preventing it. But eventually, look, I just want you to say the name Jesus. Just say G, and that will account for everything. And then, G, G, G. And finally, he was able to say it. Like, G. G, Jesus. Jesus. And then he just belted out. Like, he belted out with somebody with his physique. Like, it was just, it just ripped through that whole place. And that was his liberation. It was a long time coming. That was it. One and done. That was it. That was it because the exorcism process had already long begun. It began with the witness of his family. It began with mom and dad. It began with the witness of his wife. It began with him seeing the happiness. Like, these people now, they belong to a different kingdom. And I'm not in that kingdom. So, all of that was exorcistic. The witness of good, faithful people, the effect of Jesus, is exorcistic. And plus also, like, he wasn't happy. You know, he wasn't in control, and he knew it. And so, for me, I had the easiest job in the world. I was just batting clean up, right? It was just the final skirmish. So, it had nothing to do with me. It was, Jesus had already done 98% of the work. Now, it was just the final confrontation had to be done. And I just led him to Jesus. And to be clear, Father, too, just because I know this will come up in the comments, you normally don't do same-day appointments like that. No, almost not. I mean, if it were to happen today, he would have come in on a different day. Because there's no such thing as an emergency exorcism. If the devil is there now, he's going to be there on Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. Yeah, right. You're not going to miss him. Yeah. And that avoids a lot of games, because sometimes, because somebody comes to you and says to you, "I want to be rid of the devil," doesn't mean they do. It doesn't mean they do. And they could be on the devil's payroll. And the devil is uncanny at finding a way, at the worst time, where this person's going to show up at your doorstep. And if you concede to that, well, now all these other plans of your day have been bulldozed, good plans. So the will of God is prevented, because somebody here now has demanded that, and this person may be on the devil's payroll entirely. So you know what? No, come in Tuesday at 9:00. That's my next door. No, can't you do any something right now? No, I can't. Well, what are you doing? Well, that's for me to know. Right. You're going to come in Tuesday at 9:00, and guess what? I'm going to come in at 9:00. Of those people who do that, 99% of them, you never see them ever again. Ever again. Do you think they themselves are aware that they're just messing with you? It's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. I think, you know, those people are really compromised. Is there any goodwill left in them? I don't know. And this is why, like, if somebody comes and is looking for liberation, and they're heavily demonized, before I do any confrontation with the devil, I want to see an act of goodwill from them. All right? So where do you live in town? Okay. So there's that church over there. You know, Our Lady of Sorrows is not far from there. They have Eucharistic adoration. I want you to go for nine Wednesdays in a row and do an hour of adoration. I want you to do that for nine. I mean, this is a person who might be demonized but not fully possessed. So there's a lot of freedom. Yeah. All right? I want you to do that. Well, so aren't you going to pray before? No. Do nine weeks of that. That's going to be really healing and exorcistic for you. Then come to me. And then I'm checking up. I'm asking, you know, from seven to eight o'clock, I'm checking with the priest there. Do you see this individual there? Is this person present? And so they'll come back to me, you know, after whatever time, at nine weeks. Okay, did you go and do those adorations? No, I couldn't. I was really busy. You know, Wednesdays I do my shopping. Okay, so this is not really important. Well, it's important, but, you know, I just, I have so many things going on. There's a sale at Macy's. That's important too. So I think you need to do this again. So we're going to start from zero again. And if Wednesday is not a good day, how about Thursday? Well, Thursdays I go to the club and I do this. I play squash. Yeah, it doesn't sound like this is really important to you. So you know what? Why don't you take a break? Why don't you take a break from our appointments right now? You go sit with God somewhere and do your business with Him. Because I have way better things to do than interact with you. I have people that really want help and they're willing to do whatever it takes to be free of the devil. And you're actually wasting my time. You're wasting the help that I can give to somebody who really wants it. So this conversation is now over. Right, right. And people have, you know, look, we've all probably dealt with this ourselves. You say, okay, look, I'm doing some sin or multiple sins and it's really messing my life up and I know it offends God. And it's really okay. So I go to confession and I receive absolution, which is great. But maybe you still have a little bit of an attachment to that sin. Which, you know, at a broader level is all these people who say, I want to be freed from the devil. Right. Mostly. You know, I really want to be free of the devil. Except for that one thing that I really like. You know, can I keep that one? Can I just keep? And you know what? So that. That is the most honest thing that can happen. And I welcome that. Right. I still like that sin. Like, let me know. Let me know that it's really visceral for you. Yeah, yeah. Let me know that I don't have a handle on it. That's great for me to know. Like, you're being honest. You're bringing things into the light. Now, Christ can do something with that. Right. So, and this is why we have a Lord. Look, Lord, this is too big for me. I need you to intervene here. And so, you know, as long as you're being honest. I'll be right there with you, pal. Like, I will not leave you alone. I will. I will bend over backwards to try to help you. And repentant. Right. That's good. And repentant. But we had a case. This got rid of the Dillon story. I mean, because that's. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and also the thing that blew my. He said half the people don't get saved or half. Half of them walk away from the exorcism process and choose not to get help. Like, and I was like blown away. Like, who wouldn't want that? Sixty percent. So. So that's my statistic. And and those of my colleagues. Six. Six out of ten people. who are bonafide, bonafide, demonized, they can't be helped. because they don't want the help. They're not willing to submit and surrender to Christ. The sin tastes too good. They want the pain gone. So the devil has come to get his money. He's come to collect payment and he's making their life miserable. And they're not willing to leave his clutches. They're not willing to trade citizenship in his kingdom for the kingdom of light. One of the cases we documented in season two, this famous Dylan story, we got a lot of angry emails because it didn't end well. People are like, wait, Jesus was to show up and he gets rescued and everyone's happy. And it's like, great. It's like, no. And this kid basically had this preternatural ability to, he just, call it demonic charm. He could just charm lots of women. Seduce. He had hundreds and hundreds. In seconds, a good girl raised, like who had never had committed a sexual sin in her life. It wouldn't even be in her radar. She, they, they would, such females, any females, but, but even those would find themselves powerless. Like would, everything within them was craving what this guy offered. And so he had had, this was a young man. This was a really young man. He had had over 400 sexual partners and he would go from college to college, enroll and just destroy girls. And, and so, so, so the devil had come collecting. So, so what happened is he had from, so he himself had been seduced by an older woman. From that point, he had this going on in him. And every morning or through the night, he would see this figure with a rhino's head and like an Arnold Schwarzenegger body, uh, wanting to attack him, but it was tied. It was chained by the neck to a post. And so couldn't get at him. But this one morning it charged him and it threw him physically against the wall such that his body made it. This is not just a dream. No, no, this is, this is reality. The body leaves an imprint. The president of the college called me. The president of the college called me because he was thrown so hard, his body left an imprint into the wall. So you could have the eight strongest men in the world throwing this guy and it wouldn't produce that. Uh, so obviously he was bruised, he was hurt and so forth. Um, you know, and so there's something here preternatural, and so I sit down and talk with him. And so he discloses, uh, you know, all of, all of this stuff, but he doesn't want to be free of it. In fact, he wanted me just get, get the exorcism done with because he had, his plan was, was, uh, to, to visit his girlfriend and spend all weekend fornicating with her. So just hurry up, do your thing. Cause I don't want to be late for my sin. Right. Like there's something charming about that actually, which is like, do you, you know what we're doing here? Are you aware of what you've asked me to do for you? Well, the kid's like broke, I mean, bruised and you said he was like, like, you know, bandaged up like he had been. I mean, I mean, I also, I don't know how he survived this. And I don't know why it, it, it, apparently he had no bones broken, but his side, uh, you know, so, so what stopped his body from going through the wall were this, the two by four studs, right? That's what stopped his body from going right through the wall. So you can imagine what his body looked like. Um, So, so for him, what he thought is like, yeah, I just do Catholic magic. Just, just give me a good dose, a double dose of that magic. And if we got time, give me a triple dose. Then, then I'm free of, I want to be free of this rhino thing. Uh, I want to be free of personal attack and I can just sin in peace. Like, I mean, just come in and sweep my room so that it's not going to get those unclean spirits around. You sweep the room and then it'll remain clean forever. Right. Yep. Yep. Is that, is that how the story goes? That's it. That's it. You know, one, speaking of young people and stories, we always talk about the, the exorcism of Emily Rose or the exorcist or whatever, all these exorcism movies. There is now a new exorcism movie. Did you, did either of you see the movie Obsession this year? Yeah, I did. You saw it? Father, you, you did not? I didn't. I, I just, I have so little time in my life. It's, no, I, You like keep work at work. I get it. And it's probably good that you didn't see it, but it, it actually was oddly, a good movie. I saw it because it was such a cultural phenomenon. I felt I had to see it for work. And unlike most movies I see for work, I actually enjoyed it. I thought it was pretty good, but it is a movie about possession. Not overtly so, but, or not sort of self-consciously so, but that, that is what it's about. Oh yeah. No, it's a war. It's a, I actually made the case and it's funny because that movie is very divisive. My friend group, I, I, cause a few of my pastor friends said, should we see it? And I said, okay, I told them disclaimers. There are a couple scenes that stick with you. Yeah. And it, and honestly, I totally empathize with the debate on horror. If you think obsession's wrong, like I will not fight. It is not for everybody to watch. It is so intense. However, and it, one is well done. It's very well done. And I was like, if you adjusted though, a few scenes, you know, there's some famous scenes that we know we're talking about that you didn't, you could probably allude to and you wouldn't have to see, but man, the whole thing is a giant cautionary tale. The main character has every opportunity to do the right thing and instead chickens out and decides to go to the occult. Right. And it starts with ignorance and then turns into, I willingly know what I'm doing. And, and the results are catastrophic. And so I think didn't, I think Bishop Barron even did a comment on, did he do a review? Well, he did. It was saying that there's some like some, there's morality of this. Like, yeah, I think it was him because he did a review. It said, I think it was him said, this is like a stark warning against the occult. And obviously this is a movie. Um, but yeah, I found it like, I mean, that resonated a lot when I watched it because we have cases like that. And the obsession case, the we document is not nearly as visceral or terrible as that, but I mean, that occult stuff is, is, is real and weird. And it's such a shame because he has every opportunity in that movie to like, cause he, so father, since you didn't see the movie, the long and short spoiler alert is this guy likes this girl and it's unclear if she likes him. You're not, you're really not quite sure. Maybe she does. She says, why when I have a crush on someone, he never knows. And, uh, but maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. Anyway, he decides to go to buy this magical device to put a spell on her, to make her like him. And then she likes him too much. So at the anthropological level, there's this very funny commentary on how sometimes you like a girl and then you start dating her and she gets obsessive about you. And it's, it actually changes the relationship and you no longer find her attractive. Um, so that's the anthropological thing. Then there's the spiritual level, which is, uh, sin. I think, I forget if it was Henri de Lubac or Balthazar said that, uh, sin is essentially trying to escape time. It's trying to gain some sovereignty over time, uh, at an even broader level, trying to, uh, you know, appropriate some of God's sovereignty to yourself when that's not due to you. And so in this case, if you like a girl, there's a way to go about it to try to get her to like you that maintains her freedom. But in this case, he's trying to enslave her and have her be possessed. But then the spirit that possesses her, uh, is no longer attractive. And, and indeed, you know, if you, if you just enslave someone to be your girlfriend, well, you're not, it destroys the whole relationship. Yeah. That's the worst part. Cause he, at some point in the beginning, he's ignorant. He thinks it's a tchotchke, whatever. He does it kind of as a joke. Right. But there comes a point when he goes, I know this is not really her. Yeah. And he's still, and he says, I don't care. And they progress the relationship. And it's just, maybe that's the entrance of the mortal sin, but it's, it's a terrifying, I should, I got a lot of angry people. I thought you said it was okay to watch. I mean, it was my text. We have a WhatsApp group that was very torn on obsession, but man, we did so well, you know, cause it hit on something. It did. It did. And my, our friend, uh, Allie Stuckey, she, uh, I get, I didn't follow this that closely, but she just made this whole commentary about how Christians shouldn't watch horror movies. And I think she made a pretty good point. Generally. I don't know. I didn't see the whole commentary, but anyway, I liked obsession and it, it clearly resonated with people. I mean, that's to me, what's most interesting about it. This thing, this movie was made for $3. It became a major, major hit. All these unknown actors are now big stars. Why is that resonating with people? Because they're engaging in these kinds of behaviors and they may be more pronounced today than they were previously. So for, before I let you both go, I know it's been, it's been a while. I didn't even get a second round of cigars very rudely. Uh, it's Halloween time. We're living in a particularly degraded age. There is some good news, which is mass conversion. There is a major spike in the occult. There is a major laxity when it comes to the sins that do tend to ensnare people to the devil, especially. So what's the advice for people who are tempted, perhaps obsessed, probably not possessed, but maybe they are, uh, practically speaking, go to church, pray to God. What do they need to do? Give your life to Jesus Christ. Get rid of your sin. Learn how to pray. Follow his way of life. You do that. You're going to be happy. You're going to be joyful. You're going to be in the grace of God and you're going to see how that grace changes your life. And you're, you're going to see how much joyful that you are and, and, and how, how much of a magnet you're going to be to people because they're going to see in you, just like I saw in the, in the college kids that I knew a happiness, a joy, a peace. and you recognize, I don't have that, and I want that, and I was fascinated and mesmerized by it, and I just found myself constantly hanging around this group because they were just so different. So you do that, you know, accept the Lord, get rid of your sin, learn how to pray, follow his way of life, and there is a recipe for happiness. But that second part you mentioned there, there are Christians who will say, well, you know, you sin, but we all sin, and it's not that big a deal. You know, I mean, this gets into some Protestant-Catholic disagreement, though it's even an intra-Protestant disagreement, too. This notion that, well, once you're saved, you can never forfeit your salvation. So you don't, basically, you don't need to worry that much about sin. But you're saying, you've got to get rid of your sin. Yeah. Those who sin, ask them, in their greatest moment of honesty, are you happy? You're going to hear no. Because you have sinned, because you haven't eradicated it. And where did you see that kind of living in the life of our Lord when he lived? Oh, he didn't sin. Oh. He frequently said, "Go and sin no more." Right. You know, my friend Andrew Klavan was speaking to a movie executive once, and I don't even know the guy's name, not that I would reveal it anyway, but a figure that is definitely characteristic of Hollywood and of that industry, and they're in this meeting, and he, he's talking about all sorts of lurid, graphic bad behavior, multiple girls and this and that and the other thing. But he's got a picture of his kids, right on his desk or behind his desk. So he clearly had a family, leaves the family, divorces, now he's doing all this kind of crazy stuff. But he's describing it as if it's really fun and terrific and it's the dream, you know, this is like the modern young man's dream. And so anyway. Drew, after he tells the story, he says, "Huh. Was it worth it?" And I'm hearing this secondhand, of course, but he instantly goes, "Oh no, not at all. Not even close. Not, not in any way was it worth it. Ah, okay." And it's true really of every sin. Yeah. Lot of promise, but no delivery. Yeah. Yeah. And it can mar everything, especially when you, you know, think back on memories that could have been happy, but if you were in a bad state, you're sinning and whatever, it kind of mars the whole, it just kind of dims everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's a basic, a very basic insight that is not as sensational as depictions of exorcisms in Hollywood, but probably on a day-to-day basis, probably most conducive to happiness and flourishing. Father, Ryan, thank you very much. Wonderful to see you both. Thank you. I have to make a confession and ask for forgiveness next time. I confess I was underprepared and I will be more prepared with more cigars for our subsequent conversation. Thank you both for being here. Go watch The Exorcist Files. Make sure you subscribe. Get the book. It's easy to remember the name of it. It's The Exorcist Files by Father Carlos Martins. And also, I'd be remiss not to mention, give your life to Christ and go to church. See you next time.