Father Jack Ashcraft, a Byzantine Catholic priest and sedevacantist critic of the Vatican, argues modern church leadership—from John XXIII onward—is illegitimate due to alleged infiltration by occultists, Soviet sympathizers, and Freemasons, comparing his stance to Malachi Martin’s later revelations. He dismisses claims he’s a Jesuit plant while warning that obsession with demonic themes or prophecy-focused media can invite spiritual harm, like possession filling gaps left by out-of-body experiences. Ghost hunting is deemed dangerous, and UFO abductions may involve government experiments or demonic deception. Ashcraft insists justification comes through faith alone, not the Holy See’s sacraments, and rejects macroevolution, aligning with Answers in Genesis’ literal Genesis interpretation. His warnings reflect a broader fear of moral decay in a godless culture. [Automatically generated summary]
Okay, a couple of items before our guest tonight, Father Jack Ashcraft.
And here they are.
Now, wait a minute.
I forgot all the thank yous, didn't I?
I've got to do those.
Thank you, Telos, for the great sound.
Joe Talbot, of course, here in Prump.
What are the odds of that?
About a zillion to one.
Keith Rowan, my webmaster.
Heather Wade, producer, StreamGuys, LV.net, sales is Pete Everhart, of course.
And TuneIn Radio for all that distribution.
You know, it's easy.
You get a telephone, an iPad, any kind of pad.
Just download, you know, the app and you're here.
You know, search for my name and you're here.
It's that simple.
Now, two women have apparently passed the Army's Grueling Ranger test, and even tougher and more dangerous jobs may well lie ahead.
The military services are poised to allow women to serve in most frontline combat jobs.
I don't think this is a good idea.
I just don't.
I don't know why.
Because I'm old.
Officials say the Army and Air Force, likely, will not seek exceptions, meaning they'll go along with it.
Army, Navy, and Air Force are going to go along.
Not so much the Marines, though.
They're going to seek an exception.
I'm not I'm a little puzzled, actually, why I'm against it.
I think that in a combat situation, a military man would want to save a woman probably ahead of himself.
Now, maybe they've somehow bred that out of them.
I don't know.
All right, there's a little bit of news.
Public service announcements have indicated recently that if you see a UFO in England, forget it.
Well, don't forget it.
I mean, call MUFON.
But the traditional people that have been investigating UFOs in Great Britain are giving it up.
Actually, forget the RAAF says forget it.
Don't even bother to report it to us.
Mysterious Universe shares a trio of UFO sightings.
This all comes from theanomalous.com.
You might check them out.
These defy conventional descriptions, which is impressive given the fact that UFOs are already defying conventional description in the first place, right, by what they're doing.
But when's the last time you spotted a flying glowing arrow?
How about a flying glowing arrow the size of an 18-wheeler over Long Island, New York?
According to eyewitnesses, not one but many who caught it on video, the UFO approached Long Island, MacArthur Airport, blinking lights, then stopped in midair, and then get this, began moving backwards.
Now, that is not generally something airplanes can do normally or ever.
And a bit south, I guess they've discovered several sightings of UFOs near a place called Oxmall.
I believe it is UXMAL in Mexico.
But you know what?
There have been so many of them that like in close encounters of the third kind people, visitors are frequently seen gathering nightly and waiting for the UFOs to show up.
One last housekeeping item, and then we're off and away, and that is I have said on my Facebook page, and now I'm going to say here on the air, we have something called time travelers.
Time travelers are people who join us for, at the moment, five bucks a month.
Time travelers are able to listen to any old show, any, you know, tomorrow morning.
You could be listening to this program.
Many of you, I'm sure, are.
And so it gives you the ability to do that, to listen to older shows as we have created them.
And now we're beginning to get a little pile of old shows, or a pretty good size pile, actually.
So you have that privilege.
And you also have the ability to go.
As a matter of fact, let me bring it up right now.
I got busy before the show.
We have something called the wormhole, and that gives you the ability to go to artbill.com, type in a question.
That suddenly appears on my computer, and then I can pass it on to the guest or not, depending on the quality of your question, frankly.
All right, comes now Father Jack Ashcraft.
He was ordained a traditional Byzantine Catholic priest in 2005 and a céde-vécontist.
That's a céde-vecontest, I believe.
And as such, he is a very vocal critic of the Vatican, as was Father Martin, exposing the infiltration Of the Vatican by forces in contention with Christianity who support globalism.
He is an independent author addressing apologetics issues like modern cultural changes, the paranormal phenomena, exorcisms, UFOs, and more.
He's been called, in fact, the Malachi Martin of the 21st century.
He is one of the leading authorities on cults, the occult, and exorcism.
So coming up in just a moment is going to be a very, very interesting man, Father Ashcraft.
And oh, I've got lots of places to go with this program tonight.
Well, the term sede vicantis comes from the Latin sede vicante, which means the seat is vacant.
Now, whenever a pope dies, the church is in a state of sede vicante.
However, the position of sede vicantis, which is the position that Father Martin came to later in his life, is that the popes from the start of the pontificate of John XXIII on down to the current claimant to the papacy are all anti-popes.
That is, they are not real popes.
They are false shepherds and not to be trusted.
And Father Martin came to that position himself late in life.
And that is really the connection I have to through.
Yeah, and he actually participated in the ordination of at least one Sedevicantist priest for the Roman Rite rather than the Byzantine, which makes sense because Father Martin was Roman Rite.
I mean, John XXIII, there were documents that fell into the hands of some sedevicantists that proved that John XXIII had been a Rosicrucian and possibly even a Freemason.
And from there, I mean, you have a whole lot of other things that connected to that.
A lot of the other prelates had connections to, at the time, Soviet Russia, were closet communists.
And then you had others who were outright occultists and Satanists, as Father Martin made very clear.
But the point is, is that Because we understand that the current hierarchy is not valid, they don't have any authority over us anyway.
So even if they did issue a letter, it would be meaningless because according to traditional canon law, we are quite valid and, in fact, at this point, are the only valid clergy that the Catholic faith will have.
He did know a great deal and probably shared more with me than he should have.
Things that I don't share on the air and some that I do.
But yes, you're right.
He knew a very great deal.
I guess he was close to popes and I can only imagine in my mind what it would take for somebody like yourself or Father Martin or any other priest to get to the point where you're saying the things that you're saying.
Well, yes, and it has been since the at least pretend pontificate of John XXIII.
And Father Martin, what a lot of people don't realize is that he knew, because in his very early years in the 60s and early 70s, he worked for one of the architects of the subversion and realized at some point, obviously, that he had worked for the wrong side.
Of course, like I said, some of the fans of Father Martin get upset when you mention that fact, but it is nonetheless a fact.
Father Martin wrote under various pen names, books, and articles in support of the subversive element that was present at the Second Vatican Council.
And he was on that payroll.
And at some point in his life, he clearly came to the realization that, whoa, I'm on the wrong side here.
And he switched sides pretty quickly.
So his information wasn't just because he was a Jesuit and worked with popes.
It was because he actively worked with the very subversive forces that he later in his life worked to combat, realizing the mistake he had made, I think.
You know, there were apparently some very shady characters around him.
And I do know that from what I've heard, this is just rumor, I don't know for sure, but he was getting ready to, along with another priest, expose a particular individual who was, I believe, a bishop.
And then he met his unfortunate and sudden demise.
But I do have enemies, and most of them are just online people who like to attack me, claiming I'm a Jesuit plant when I've never been a Jesuit in my life.
I had a group of occultists who attempted a smear campaign against me at one point.
And, you know, the usual hyper-fundamentalist crowd who attack you with, you know, whatever they can, make things up.
In fact, he once made a comment, Father, that he would walk down the streets in New York City, and he would see people, and somehow he would Know instinctively or in a way that only he could know that he was looking at what he called a perfectly possessed person.
Yeah, I mean, anyone who's involved in exorcism ministry for any length of time, and I want to stress that that is just a small aspect of an overall sacerdotal ministry.
But anyone who's been involved with it for any length of time develops a discernment and is able to recognize the signs of possession.
And there are some who propose a perfect possession, which means that the demonic entity is in full and complete control 24 hours, seven days a week, and that the personality of the host is subdued and is no longer in control of the faculties.
A perfect possession is only possible when the person voluntarily gives themselves over to this in exchange for money, fame, whatever it might be, as you said.
Those cases are rare, but I think that demonic activity is becoming more prevalent.
And I think it's because our society and our culture is moving more and more away from godly principles, away from morality, away from any sense of ethics, any objective values whatsoever into this post-modern milieu of absolute relativism.
Those are all hooks, enticements to deeper demonic influence.
And that generally leads to obsession.
You know, you're obsessed with a particular level or area of sinful activity, self-destructive activity.
And the next step beyond that, well, would be oppression first.
I would say oppression is first, precedes obsession.
Oppression is, the best way to think about that is you've read the story of Job and how Job was attacked in sacred scripture and Satan took away everything from him, his children, his wife, everything.
That is a biblical example of oppression.
unidentified
Now, in the current world, Father, hold your thought.
Father, can I ask an opinion question, and that is, how many people do you think are in various types of asylums who have been adjudged by somebody in a position to do so that they are crazy, they are mentally disturbed, but they're actually possessed?
I think it's not unreasonable to say that there is a good portion of people who are in psychiatric facilities who are under some form of demonic attack.
That's not to say all of them, because, I mean, there are many things that can masquerade or be mistaken for demonic activity that are actually psychological or environmental.
You know, things like temporal lobe epilepsy, Geschwin syndrome, bipolar, manic depression, etc.
Well, true enough, but there are a growing number of psychologists who have recognized the spiritual dimension to some of the approaches to psychotherapy and that in some cases exorcism has ended what they perceived to have been a purely psychological issue.
I can't remember the specific psychiatrist names off the top of my head.
I was reading about a report the other day.
One of the reports is available at my website, and there's also a link there to another website on the right-hand side there that will take you to another article by the other psychiatrists.
So they're both there for people who are interested in reading them.
They're pretty lengthy, very clinical, but they do explain the role of exorcism in psychotherapy.
Yeah, I would think generally, kind of like, again, close encounters of the third kind with the air controller asking the pilot, do you want to report a UFO?
And the pilot thought about it for a month and said, no, I don't want to report one of those.
The other day, I interviewed a leader of the Church of Satan.
This woman, articulate, very well-spoken, obviously well-educated, says that she was some time ago the High Priestess of the Church of Satan.
She was Anton Levay's lover.
She is the mother of his son.
And she presently is the chairmistress of the Council of Nine.
Now, when we booked that interview, I thought, oh, this is going to be some really scary stuff.
I mean, we're talking chains rattling, hellfires burning, that sort of thing.
The interview turned out to be Anything but that.
And in fact, I asked, I think the first question I asked was, do you so you worship Satan?
She said, no.
I paused.
I thought about it for a moment.
I thought, well, now wait a minute.
Here you are, head of the church, church of Satan, and you don't worship Satan.
Well, okay, so that's and what I'm going to do is I'm going to let you hear just a moment of that interview, and then I'll come back and get your impressions of it.
This was the most easygoing attempting to be likable Satanist that you're ever going to hear in your whole life.
Well, let me play this and then we'll talk more.
But again, I'm going to keep going down this road as far as I can take you.
And I will ask, is it possible to use a person's essence, bodily fluids, whatever, essence, in a positive way for them as well as a negative way for them?
Yeah, and I think a lot of people are not looking beyond the fluff in what she had to say to the philosophy that lies underneath it, which is definitely a malevolent approach to humanity just on a purely anthropological level,
not even to speak of the spiritual level there.
You know, with Satanism, you have two distinct schools there.
The Levy type tend to look at it from a sort of psycho-spiritual perspective, which is what you had from this woman.
And then you have people like Michael Aquino, who recognizes the literal Satan and sets out to worship and embody the character of the literal biblical Satan.
And you've just got flip sides of the same coin there.
One's just a little bit more honest about what they're worshiping than the other.
Not him himself, and that, I would say, is pretty rare.
I only know of a few cases where the entity claimed to have been Satan himself.
And even in those cases, you have to take that with a grain of salt.
Theologically speaking, we tend to think that Satan doesn't personally possess anyone, although there is some speculation that he will in the person of the Antichrist.
Rather, what we find in cases of demonic possession are the fallen angels who followed Satan and became demons.
They are the ones carrying out this work.
And they do so essentially because they envy and hate humanity at the same time.
And we were also created, as scripture says, in the image and likeness of God.
Angels were not.
And because we have such an intimate connection like that to the Creator, Satan and these angels who followed him, scripture says it was a third, they grew angry.
They hated us because they felt, because they were so magnificent, that they should be the rulers and they should be the beloved of the Creator.
And yet they weren't.
Satan himself, scripture tells us, was created with the essence of music in his being, and that he was an angel of light and, you know, a very beautiful angel.
And so the envy that must just rack his being at the fact that humanity was created in the image and likeness of God and he wasn't, and he feels that he is more powerful, he is more beautiful, he should be more beloved.
But that's not the case.
And so that's where you get this envy and hatred of humanity.
And that's why the demons attack humans.
They want to, in whatever way they can, mar, destroy the image of God in man.
And that's, of course, because I approach this from a place of faith.
Although there are some out there in the, I guess you would say, scientific community who approach the subject of metaphysics and try to prove things scientifically.
I don't really need that because I tend to take a biblical approach, a biblical worldview.
And so for me, when scripture says this is so, then I accept that is so on the.
Father Jack Ashcraft is my guest and knew this would be a good show.
I just knew it would be, and it is.
All right, Father.
You mentioned Armageddon, and you mentioned that you thought the influence of Satan was increasing, as did Father Martin.
I wonder if that final day that nobody knows when it will be, Armageddon itself, simply occurs when his influence becomes predominant, when it takes over, and then that's it.
Well, certainly a study of eschatology will tell us that society throughout the world will grow increasingly godless, immoral, and whether knowingly or not, everyone, every single person in this world is involved in spiritual warfare, whether they know it or not.
And so, you know, depending on your position in that war, in that battle, depends on what side you're going to be fighting for, knowingly or unknowingly, and what the end result will be for you personally.
But certainly, the scripture tells us that the culture throughout the world will become increasingly godless, malevolent.
I mean, even within their own stated belief systems, what they're doing is all whacked out and wrong, lopping off heads, doing the very worst things to people you can imagine, lighting them on fire.
Coming from the biblical worldview, then I also have to say that the homosexual agenda, which goes far beyond asking for mere rights, to, in some cases, forced participation in the lifestyle to one degree or another, that is indicative of what Scripture tells us would happen.
And conversely, let's point the finger at the church as well.
Churches not doing what they should do.
In my opinion, no one should go hungry or homeless who lives within five, ten miles of a church.
Now, if you think about how many churches we have in just the United States, we wouldn't need a welfare state if the church would simply fulfill Christ's command to love our neighbor as ourselves, feed them, clothe them.
Well, again, this goes back to the Second Vatican Council.
There was a document released that was published under the title AA 1025, The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle.
And it was the account of a nun who was also a nurse who was tending a dying priest.
And he proceeded to tell her his past and what he had done.
And what came out of this, out of his story, was that he was one of a number of men who were actually Soviet, I guess you could call infiltrators,
who their job was to enter the seminaries, become priests, move up through the ranks, and to destroy the social teaching of the church by first attacking the theology of the church.
And they were joined in this by a number of Freemasons.
And as a matter of fact, there were a lot of Freemasonic observers at the Second Vatican Council as well.
So if you know anything about church history, the Masonic Lodge has historically been a self-avowed enemy of the Catholic faith.
And so what emerged from this priest's story was that he, along with a number of other men, had infiltrated seminaries, had arisen through the ranks, and that they were the ones responsible for the destruction wrought at the Second Vatican Council, which is really the root of the rot that we see today.
And so really what you see in Vergoglio, otherwise known as Francis I, what you see in Vergoglio is the fruit of that revolution at the Second Vatican Council.
And what he is talking is patented social Marxism.
You're not going to see heads spinning and the pea soup type thing.
You know, you can see demonstrative outbursts, and you can sometimes witness objects moving, strange things such as words forming underneath the skin of the possessed.
I attended a private City of Acantus seminary program.
It was a mentorship program.
It is not accredited because we were not seeking to achieve academic credentials.
We were looking for any city of Acantus seminary, such as Most Holy Seminary or Most Holy Trinity Seminary in Florida, they're not accredited because you're not looking for some sort of academic standing.
The function of a seminary under traditional Catholic teaching is to produce priests, priests for the church.
And so the notion of accreditation and things like that didn't come into the question because we are not academics.
We are sacramental Priests.
Our bishops are sacramental bishops.
And we take a traditional Catholic approach to the formation of priests.
It's a seven-year education.
You know, you study philosophy, study theology, sacramentology, eschatology, etc.
Now, beyond that, I am currently working toward my master's degree at a seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio.
You know, Scripture is very clear about the nature of homosexuality, and it is not homophobia.
I am not fearful of homosexuals.
I do not hate homosexuals.
I care about the homosexual as much as I do about the alcoholic and, you know, anybody else.
I also want to point out that homosexuality is just as much a sin as adultery, heterosexual adultery, or heterosexual fornication.
They're all wrong.
I look at them all equally.
They're all wrong.
I don't hate the fornicator, the heterosexual adulterer, and I don't hate the homosexual.
And I think that is one of the problems in the discourse on these topics, is that you have one side who wants to get vitriolic and cast aspersions on the people who hold a biblical worldview.
So, you know, that out of, you know, I'm not even addressing that.
The idea, though, that it doesn't affect me, which it might be true for someone who doesn't have a biblical worldview, or even if you're a moderate Muslim who doesn't have an Islamic worldview, or a Hindu, you know, a traditional Hindu who, you know, also takes the same viewpoint.
The point is that it does affect us, and we're seeing that play out in the courts right now, where we're having people who are running marriage chapels, who are being forced now, told that they have to perform these ceremonies, despite the fact that they have a religious objection, which is provided for in the documents of our country.
But that's not being respected in the courts.
And so it does affect the church.
And one of the proponents of gay marriage, I can't remember his name, but there was an interview with him, and he said, he was asked, will this affect the churches?
And he said, well, certainly of necessity it will affect the churches.
And he said it would probably start on the level of their tax-exempt status.
So, you know, will it affect the church?
I think it's very possible that it will, and I think we're seeing that play out.
But, you know, I don't hate homosexuals, and I'm not afraid of them or fearful of them.
I don't think churches should have been involved in that.
Part of the reason is that one of the hooks of that tax exempt status is that churches really cannot legally advocate for any particular political party or candidate.
And, you know, if churches want to be involved in politics, which, again, I'm not a big fan of that either, then tax exemption is a mistake.
Beyond that, my personal view is that, and I take a very antinicene view of the church.
I go back to the apostles and the men who knew the apostles and studied directly with them, and I look at what they had to say of the church, and I take their view.
And I guess I'm getting him confused with Leo, our news guy.
Not surprising a lot of you did, too.
Actually, no relation.
Several have asked.
All right.
Father, here we go again.
Nathan from Austin, Texas asks, could you please ask, Father, if the Catholic Church is corrupt or rotten, does that not give legitimacy to Protestants?
Are there mistakes in the Bible?
Women not speaking in church, death for working on Sunday, and so forth?
And, well, I mean, the fact that there's corruption there for us proves that it's not the church.
This doesn't mean there's a defect in scripture or anything like that.
And I think if I understand the question correctly, nor does that mean that such things as women not holding the priesthood, et cetera, are wrong.
Nor does that follow.
What you have with the visible institution that people think of as the Catholic Church is what we call the Novus Ordo, the New Order Church.
And that's a term they used for their own liturgy.
And so it's a wholly different religion.
Does it lend credence to Protestantism?
No, not necessarily.
When you consider that state of Acantas believe that the church continues to exist in them, in their midst, in their churches, in their chapels, and with their priests and their lady, no, it wouldn't lend support to Protestantism at all.
And I think where there are cases of real curses, you're going to find that, just as you said, that these individuals, these targets, are not in a state of sanctifying grace.
They're outside that.
And because of that, there's not much that any priest can do to help them until they get their spiritual lives in order.
And that, sometimes you will even encounter resistance to that from the people who are actually feeling the effects of a curse or feeling the effects of demonic attack.
They will still push back when you tell them, here's the remedy, because it requires something of them.
And let's be honest, the spirit of the age is, I don't want anything required of me.
All right, so in other words, you really are saying, look, you may be possessed or you may be under the influence of a curse or something evil, but unless you change, my showing up as a priest and doing whatever I'm going to do isn't going to do the job.
There's a joint effort there in exorcism, in any type of spiritual warfare intervention.
It is a joint effort.
The priest and the person coming to the priest for that help, they have to work together.
And if that person is not willing to do what it takes to amend their lives, to get their spiritual lives in order, there is nothing any priest can do to help them.
It's like with perfect possession, and I'm sure Father Martin told you this, there's nothing you can do to help that person.
Yeah, so people are always saying they see times coming of, you know, the end days, Armageddon, as it were.
And frankly, looking around the world today, and maybe it's just, you know, we have short lives.
We don't live long, but it does seem that even in my lifetime, I have seen so much, I'm now 70, and I've seen so much of a moral and spiritual decline in the world that it does seem like the end days.
Oh, I see.
We have the little internet thing come up, so we can't answer that just yet.
I think that people, a lot of them, thankfully, I guess, are so fed up, and I've said this before, I'm going to say it again, that they're virtually politically speaking, and I'll hold it there, they're ready to burn it all down.
And that's why Trump is as popular as he is right now.
And it's that same desperation that allows for very masterful manipulators like Hitler and Stalin and people like that to come along and really do some damage.
We've got a problem with Skype, and this is kind of abynormal because generally with Skype, it just stays connected.
That's the way it is.
It stays connected.
But in this case, Father Ashcraft goes away for a moment.
I get a little notice saying, well, there's a problem with this call.
Hold on while we try to get the call back, and it will re-establish here in a moment.
I've never quite seen this occur with Skype before.
But the Internet, of course, is a great connected network, and things can go wrong all over the place.
All right, Father, you're back again.
I have no idea what's doing that.
I was just talking about the interconnected network that we have, and, you know, it just takes one little thing somewhere in that network to go sideways.
There you go.
All right.
Let's quickly get into, while we can, jump to your...
What would you say was your most frightening case?
The first time, I don't recall the gentleman's name.
He's deceased now.
I do know that.
Second time, it was a Novus Ordo priest who admits that he's not an exorcist, but he went up there and tried to do what he could anyway, without really doing any investigation, obviously.
And at the end of the day, it turned out that I was correct.
This girl was seeing a psychologist.
She was on medication, and her involvement with that program apparently caused her family some trouble in the community they live in.
Right, because you have this paranormal subculture who they think they have a grasp on these things, and they don't.
And what they do is they ignore the psychological, they ignore the environmental, and as a result, they cause more damage like they did in this case.
Just think, though, I mean, the best thing we could say about this case was that the girl was suffering from some form of depression, as I understand it.
I would have to say the case of a young lady who, this was in Kentucky, who was experiencing objects levitating in her home, words appearing on the wall,
and not just witnessed by herself, not just hearsay, but witnessed by several people, including a psychiatrist who was really at a loss as to how it had been produced.
Well, you know, even with things like that, you'll find that people remain skeptical because there is the role of parapsychology in there.
It's not unknown for women, especially women going through times of severe stress, to be able to manipulate their environments like that to cause objects to move.
Well, theologically speaking, you have a variety of different opinions on that.
You have some who believe that ghosts are the spirits of those in purgatory who are seeking our prayers, and so they appear in order to solicit those prayers.
Some others say that ghosts do not appear, that those are purely demonic entities masquerading as the spirits of the dead or our dead relatives in order to mislead us into believing things that are not true.
And so you have both of those viewpoints of the spiritual realm.
You find that when you get into these topics theologically, you know, there are all these different schools of thought on this, and one has to simply find what they think fits best.
So if you've got a call, if you've got a question or a statement, all I ask is you be, I want you to be polite.
All right?
Be polite.
I'm Mark Bell.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
unidentified
Something we do happening.
Something I can know.
The dream's coming so true Falling through my brain So I'm falling through Down on the grass Lost my home and a family And you won't be coming back Without love We're going to be right now Want to take a ride from the high desert and the great American Southwest.
This is Midnight in the Desert, exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
And again, I'm going to now give out the phone numbers, and I hope you will join us.
Actually, you've already joined us.
The lines are full.
Nevertheless, the public line is area code 952-225-5278.
You can get in on Skype ever so easily.
If you're in North America, America, or Canada, simply enter MITD51.
That's, as in Midnight in the Desert, M-I-T-D.
It's not case-sensitive, 51.
If you are outside the U.S., anywhere outside the U.S., in the greater wide world, please enter MITD55 into Skype.
That's M-I-T-D-55.
And in those ways, you can call us.
Now, let me stress this.
If you get through and you hear audio, if you hear us doing the show, that means you have made it through.
So hold on.
Don't hang up.
If, on the other hand, you ring and it's never answered, ring some more.
We'll eventually get to you.
All right, Father Ashcraft, once again, hopefully his Skype holds up.
It's kind of coming and going.
I don't know why, but it's a web of a world we live in.
And again, I ask you to please just, whatever else you do, be polite because I know you have ignited some tempers out there, Father.
So away we go.
Let's answer a few calls, and I've got other questions as well.
Let's start, I guess, with Matthew somewhere or another on Skype.
Hi, Matthew.
unidentified
Hello, this is Matthew, the Sunday school teacher, calling from West Virginia.
Okay.
I'm just disappointed that this man denies the authority of the Holy See and the false prophet Pope Francis, but will not accept justification by faith alone.
Well, without knowing the specific area of oppression, I can't address it well and adequately.
I would, however, encourage you, if you are experiencing what you believe to be oppression, to examine your life, find out where your weakest point is spiritually, and shore that up because chances are that's where you're being hit.
Father, have you recorded or what's the right word?
I guess evidenced in some way what you've been through?
Okay, we've lost him, unfortunately, on Skype.
Sorry about that.
This is a problem that we normally never experience when doing these kinds of shows.
I mean, when he is there, this is kind of odd.
He's absolutely there, and the audio is absolutely perfect, just like he was in the room, and then suddenly it cuts out and it automatically re-established here he is.
Father, you were involved, or not involved necessarily, but the film, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, you're suggesting it was a real case, or were you involved in it?
And it may be some expert out there on Skype understands what's going on.
But I do get a message indicating that his, and there it is, it disconnect.
And it shows, you know, kind of like your cell phone, you have a bunch of bars, right?
Five red bars.
And that's exactly what it's showing, five red bars, as though there is no internet on his side, which sounds like, frankly, a loose cable or something.
And I conversed or corresponded with Dr. Felicitas Goodwin, who was an anthropologist who studied the case.
And unfortunately, it was one of those cases where I tend to agree with the court that the priests were negligent because this young lady did suffer from a form of epilepsy, and they did allow her to stop taking her medication during their exorcism.
That was a huge error.
But it was one of those rare cases where you have mental illness, or in this case, it's actually a physical illness, epilepsy, attendant to a case of demonic possession.
She was possessed, but there was negligence involved there as well.
I think it's unknown, but I think it's certainly lower than the number of claims, that's for sure.
You know, I receive hundreds of claims in a year's time, and there are people that have been trained to investigate those on the temporal level, that is, the psychological, the environmental, etc.
And I'll forward those cases to those persons who do so.
And 99% of the cases come back as something quite normative for the human experience.
I wondered what Father Ashcroft thought about Fatima, because the reason why I'm asking, I find your program extremely interesting in the sense that I've never heard of a Catholic priest that didn't endorse the Vatican.
But on the other hand, I have friends who are into the Fatima aspect of it.
And Fatima, there's a priest in Fort Erie that deals with that.
But some of the Catholic people, I live near a cathedral, and they say that what he's doing with Fatima, has nothing to do with the Vatican.
One thing at a time, Caller, I can tell you, trust me, there are other priests that do not endorse what's going on at the Vatican right now or what has been going on for some time.
And that includes Father Malachi Martin, a very great man indeed.
I mean, I believe in it too, but the thing is, is that, in other words, the signal I'm getting from you is that just because it may not be endorsed by the Vatican really doesn't mean anything when it comes to God.
Yeah, and as far as traditional Catholic priests who don't accept what's going on with the Vatican, there are entire societies of priests who don't.
The Society of St. Pius V. I didn't know that.
The Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, CMRI.
On and on.
There are entire sacerdotal societies who are sede vicantists and reject this.
There are also the Society of St. Pius X who are not sedive accountists and they recognize the hierarchy, but they reject what they rightly see as their heretical teachings.
So there are a lot of us out there.
unidentified
Very interesting.
I'm going to have to Google that word, seda vicatus.
I've never heard of it, but very interesting is all I can say.
I'm going to remember this forever because I have a lot of people who talk about OBEs.
Oh, they're wonderful.
They say there is a silver cord attached to you that will always bring you back to your body when anything threatening occurs at all.
And generally people, and I had somebody really who was good with OBEs on recently, and he started out by saying, there is absolutely not a thing in the world dangerous about leaving your body, about doing OBEs.
And then a little later in the interview, he proceeded to tell me about two or three dangerous things that actually did happen to him when he left his body.
I'll go by the code name Jeff Scepter, Dallas, Texas.
Okay.
And my question is, I have had a close friend in the past who she's Catholic and I'm not Catholic myself.
She started getting into watching a lot of television ministry shows that were strictly about prophecy, the end times kind of stuff, strictly focusing on that as far as a religious aspect.
And at first it didn't really bother me much, but then she turned really incredibly violent.
And some of my friends and stuff said they literally thought she was possessed by literally the look in her eyes and whatnot.
And I'm just wondering, you know, do you have any pointers or anything like that that would stand out as far as, you know, I mean, you see the movies like Exorcist and stuff like that, and you see all these crazy movie drama things, but what is possessed?
Well, I mean, some of those are speaking a language that they have never studied, especially dead languages, knowledge of things that they couldn't know normally, things that are secret or hidden, and of course the ability to move objects, things like that.
There is, and I want to address one of the things he's mentioned here, is this, there can be a morbid preoccupation with the end times and with the demonic.
And that morbid preoccupation itself can be a doorway to demonic activity.
And that's because there's no balance in spiritual life.
And there is an entire industry out there in what I call fringe evangelicalism that focuses on this stuff almost entirely.
And the substance of these people's faith is in the various theories that are proposed and the books that these authors put out month after month.
And when that's the substance of your faith and it's focused on the demonic and the dark, inevitably that's going to have an effect on you, even if it's just psychological.
I told the people at Ghost Adventures the same thing, that they should stop doing this, that they weren't dealing with ghosts, and that it was dangerous.
But of course, when you're making a living at that, you're not going to listen to anything I have to say.
Let me preface this by saying that the fall of humanity had an effect on everyone, every single person in existence.
That fall did not just have spiritual implications, but physical.
We grow old, we get diseases, we die, we get psychological problems, a whole host of things as a result of the fall.
I tend to view homosexuality if there is indeed a genetic component.
I tend to view it in light of the fall of humanity.
It is an effect of the fall, just like the common cold would be an effect of the fall.
Now, having said that, is a homosexual going to go to hell?
Not necessarily.
If the homosexual is not acting on the homosexual desires, they're doing their best to live the gospel of Christ, then they have as much opportunity to achieve salvation as anybody else.
Let me stop you cold, Father, and ask you if science conclusively proves that homosexuality is a genetic matter, that, yes, people have desire, but it's driven by a genetic predisposition.
If that is proven absolutely, then wouldn't that affect your opinion?
In other words, if it was a genetic-driven situation, this is the way they were born, this is the way they are, that is that, then surely no fair God would doom them to hell.
Okay, so is everything written in the Bible to be taken absolutely literally in your view?
Or is it possible that over thousands of years some things that were written just might have been a view of somebody at that time and not the Word of God?
We take the viewpoint in a scripture, as the church always has, that it is divinely inspired in its original autographs, and that God guided the authors to write what it was in his will for man to know about his will, his person, and his plan.
And that while he allowed man to use the language that was common to man at that time, that the information contained therein is inerrant and infallible.
And that is Orthodox Christian teaching across the board.
That's not just me.
That is Christianity across the world, Orthodox Christianity.
Please, I appreciate the greetings, but we have little time.
And if you have a question for the father, I'd appreciate it.
unidentified
Yes, sir.
Father Ashcroft, what I have to ask is this one simple situation.
God gave us the ability to have free will.
He gave us the ability to think for ourselves and do what we want to do and have the ability to be as good as we want to be or as sinful as we want to be.
And from what I was told by one very intelligent minister that I ran across in my lifetime, I was told that the only way that he can truly do that was to remove himself and remove all evidence of himself of his existence to be able to give us the ability to have free will.
Because if we were to look up in the sky, it would be like a police officer looking down and us saying, yes, you've got to do what you have to do because I'm watching you.
If he had the ability to do that, and if he truly removed himself from our lives so that we had the ability to have free will, then why are the Satanists and the very religious people trying to use The basis of a book and everything trying to scare us into doing the right thing when he alone gave us the ability to create our own decisions as we see fit and
All right, that is going to take another show to properly digest.
We could talk a great deal about this.
Do you believe, Father, just sort of at the end of the program here, that God, and I'm sure you do, created the world as suggested in Genesis in a matter of days?