Demonic Possession, Exorcisms, And The Soul Of America w/ Fr. Aaron Williams & Shayne Smith
BUY CAST BREW COFFEE TO SUPPORT THE SHOW - https://castbrew.com/ Become A Member And Protect Our Work at http://www.timcast.com Host: Tim Pool @Timcast (everywhere) Guest: Fr. Aaron Williams Shayne Smith | https://shaynesmithcomedy.com/ Producers: Lisa Elizabeth @LisaElizabeth (X) Kellen Leeson @KellenPDL (X) My Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnews Podcast Channel - https://www.youtube.com/TimcastIRL
I mean, humans didn't even know that radio waves existed until what, like the 1800s?
So there are forces that exist beyond our perception.
That's a fact.
unidentified
In fact, when it comes to the Large Hadron Collider and all the research they're doing in quantum physics, we can't perceive any of this stuff, but we know it exists, right?
I serve as the rector of St. Mary Basilica and Cathedral Catholic School in Natchez.
unidentified
I think part of why I'm competent to speak about this, I recently served as a consultant for a movie on exorcisms called The Ritual, starring Al Pacino.
And then my academic background is I'm working on a PhD in liturgy, so in Catholic ritual.
So I'm competent to speak about how the church acts in these moments, but I appreciate the invitation to be with you today.
We were hoping to get Ian here, but he is unfortunately sick.
And only because he'd be like freaking out and saying crazy things at the same time.
But I guess we'll start with the first question.
Is demonic possession real?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, you mentioned earlier, right, priests get calls all the time.
And I'll be honest, right, I mean, the majority of calls, the overwhelming majority of calls we get, it's usually someone is, they're struggling with something, right?
They're dealing with a mental issue or someone in their family is and they're hoping we have the silver bullet.
unidentified
But what I will say is recently in the United States, we have seen a rise in demonic activity and situations where the church will go and investigate and we determine that there's not another medical or psychological explanation and so the church can be involved.
It's become enough of a need in the United States recently that a lot of dioceses, right?
So we just had two priests in my diocese underwent training in Chicago for that.
unidentified
And just this last year, my bishop actually brought a group of exorcists in to speak to all the priests in our area just to educate us so that we can recognize what is happening.
I would even say, as people often say, like we live in a post-Christian society, we live in like an atheist society, but I would go as far as to say it's not an atheist society.
And the interest in like new age things and like spiritual yoga and witchcraft and tarot and astrology and magic and all these other things, that's paganism.
unidentified
And obviously paganism is playing around with demons and opening yourself up to spiritual things you don't understand.
So that, and that's like wildly pervasive in culture.
I mean, every if it four out of every five girls you meet on Tinder have a crystal under their bed or whatever, you know, they have a shoebox with a freaking voodoo doll in it or whatever.
And they're reading the secret and doing all sorts of weird, like pseudo-magical things that are very insidious and open yourself up to like, who knows what.
It's like this, it's like about your sign or whatever, and they take it so seriously.
unidentified
It's insane.
I can't remember what it's called, which is probably good.
But in terms of the new training and the increase in requests for exorcisms, are you seeing things like what are you seeing as unexplainable or that defies?
So the things that the church normally is going to look for, does this person have knowledge of something they shouldn't have knowledge of?
You have someone who couldn't speak Spanish before, but now they can, you know, or you have an 80-year-old woman that, you know, now she can lift 50 pounds, right?
It's never like Hulk level.
It's not like what you see in the movies, but something that's unexplainable on that level.
One of the things that I've been told to look for by a priest is involved in this.
When they were renovating it, they went into the basement and they found this sort of secret room.
unidentified
It's under the front staircase of the house.
And when you go in this room, I mean, there's a pentagram on the floor and you have a table with a crystal ball in the middle and there's animal bones on the walls.
And so I took all of that and got rid of it all.
And then they asked me, what should I do with this room?
And I said, I don't think you do anything with this room.
You leave it here.
But yeah, so you're seeing that kind of thing now.
And, you know, and the thing is, is when people learn about it, right, they may not think it's cool, but they think it's interesting.
And that will lead you down a path where now it's no longer just interesting.
Now it does become cool.
And now have you witnessed people speaking languages they shouldn't know how to speak?
So I haven't witnessed a lot of phenomena myself.
I've seen some things that I thought were weird enough that I wanted to let the bishop know about it, that kind of thing.
Trying to think of a good example of something.
I've seen supernatural stuff.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not, yeah, I mean, I've experienced supernatural things, but I'm, you know, when I was involved with this movie recently, someone had asked in an interview, they said, are you involved?
Are you an exorcist yourself?
And I said, my desire for that job is in the negatives.
So I'm glad I'm not at that level.
But I have priest friends that are, right?
So when they were calling me to be on the show, actually, one of the things I said is, you know, it's usually hard to find a real exorcist because they don't like talk about it.
But I can talk about my friends' experiences.
And so, yeah, and I'm convinced this is a real thing.
And I think it's something that people need to be aware of, but it's also not something I think people need to be actively afraid of or obsessive about.
I've heard that, obviously, you said one of the things that they'll look for is something like some kind of supernatural ability or something like this.
And there are stories, I believe they're more rare, but there are exorcists and witnesses who say they've seen weird things like levitation or things like that.
Most of the time, like I said, what I'm seeing is more of it's knowledge of something else.
unidentified
It's they have additional strength or their voice is different.
Things that could be identifiable as signs of a mental illness, but then when they're tested by a psychologist, the psychologist determines that there is no mental illness there.
I started thinking about this because in the past several years, like especially since COVID, there are people that I've known my whole life that it seems like within the span of a week, their personalities flipped.
They speak differently, they behave differently, and they're behaving in ways I would describe as evil.
And it shocked me.
And maybe, you know, for those that are out there that are more secular, agnostic, atheists, or whatever, I don't know what you want to call it or how you explain it.
I will literally say there are people that I've known my whole life that I consider to be really good friends that will send me a message being like, how have you been?
And then a month later, it's sending me nasty, evil messages saying, you're going to burn.
Like, you deserve this.
You're sick, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, that's just like a light description.
There are things that people have done to me that have resulted in like legal action that I'm like, I don't understand how that's possible that a person would become that so quickly.
And that freaks me out because aside from things like that, where you could easily explain sometimes people go crazy, I don't know, they had a stroke.
I've also personally witnessed things that, and recently too, I would describe as physically possible, but defying what we would expect to be possible.
You know, I've not witnessed like a crystal manifest before my eyes out of thin air, nothing like that.
I have seen things that, you know, they say in, I guess, in quantum physics and mathematics, at some point, all of the oxygen in the room will be on one side.
Although that's trillions upon trillions of years for that probably did happen.
I have seen things that I can only describe as winning a lottery five times in a row.
So it's possible for these things to happen, but it's almost unbelievable.
And then considering what we've seen in this country with all the behavior, I think people are letting in some kind of demonic force or darkness that's influencing their behavior.
Well, I think it's kind of like what you're hitting on is kind of this soft occultism that we're seeing where people are just incorporating these just rituals into their daily lives because they're trying to fill that void of spirituality.
unidentified
Yeah.
And even beyond the tarot cards, I mean, you're just getting like just weird stuff that people have not incorporated in their lives prior, like daily affirmations, like Pilates and stuff like that.
So you can pray silently and Christ and the saints in heaven can hear you through the power of Christ.
unidentified
But demons can't hear your interior life, but they can be inside of you and poke around and look at what you're up to, see how you're feeling.
And of course, they're super intelligent beings that have a complete and total knowledge of everything because they're immaterial spirits that exist outside of time and space.
And so just by watching how you're acting, they can kind of guess on what you're feeling and how to push you and tempt you.
And so the idea is that they watch what you're doing and they try to like push you towards certain things.
You know, a lot of times when we see situations of oppression and possession, the person who's actually experienced in this is not always the target, right?
unidentified
Sometimes the target is the priest who's involved, right?
So I mentioned in the car on the way over here that we were listening to a recording of an exorcism recently.
Some priests were, and in this particular instance, the priest was trying to ascertain the demon's purpose.
And so he kept asking, you know, why are you here?
They become insane, which then makes them look crazy and behave crazy to us, you know?
And then so the reverse of that is when, you know, angels come and visit us or, you know, you're feeling terrible and you have the distinct feeling a family member who loved you and could be in heaven is comforting you or sending you a message in Christ allows them to do that.
So that's the reverse of experiencing the demonic.
In order to exercise someone, do they have to want to be exercised?
So exorcisms are what the church calls a sacramental.
unidentified
So I got to make this distinction in order to make this explanation.
So there are seven sacraments within the church, and the church teaches that the sacraments always are effective if they're done properly.
Sacramentals are effective if someone is properly disposed to receive them.
So I would argue that the person being exercised, that they interiorly are desiring holiness and sanctity and they're desiring deliverance, even if the forces that are also within them are not.
Obviously, the enemy doesn't want that to happen.
But, you know, it's not a case of I'm going to strap someone down and exercise them, you know, that kind of thing.
Well, it's not going to work.
You know, you could do that with baptism.
You shouldn't.
Baptism would be effective because God is the one who's acting here.
But in sacramentals, the Lord is acting through us, but upon the grace of our dispensation, our disposition.
So yeah, that's a good, I never thought about that, but I guess that would be the answer.
The reason I asked because we were talking about this last night, I mentioned it briefly before the show.
What would it look like if you tried to exercise by force?
And I don't mean physically restraining someone.
I mean like trying to bless or drive out demons from, say, some raging liberal at a protest.
It would look like the movie The Exorcism.
One of the ways in correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I've heard from priest friends two very interesting things.
One, that one of the ways you can find out if someone is possessed is by hiding the Holy Eucharist on you or bringing a very holy object or relic near them without telling them and they have a physical or odd reaction to it.
So if you put like the Eucharist in your pocket and went and walked around a protest and you were trying to be normal, but people were like hissing at you or trying to attack you, that might be an indicator.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is that not in any way like sacrilegious or blasphemous to do?
Yeah, I probably wouldn't carry the book.
I don't know how you would get it.
I did see a video actually on Instagram just last week.
It was a woman in Russia was in a church and she was brought in contact with a relic and just immediately she was having a vehement physical reaction to this.
unidentified
So that sort of thing, we do see it.
Funny enough, I can tell a story on the flip side.
An exorcist told me one way he can tell someone's faking it, because that also happens sometimes, is he has a copy of Green Eggs and Ham written in Latin and he'll begin reading it and see how they react and if they're reacting.
How do you write Green Eggs and Ham?
It's incredible.
Well, because you see these videos on Instagram a lot, specifically out of like Africa, and that'll be a guy who's going, and then people are flying backwards and that sort of thing.
And you see that and you're like, something's missing here.
unidentified
There's a little bit of performativeness to this.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's strange.
I mean, that's like overly performative or whatever.
The other interesting thing a priest friend had told me and I've heard from other priests.
And again, forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn, but is that it's actually a spiritual gift to come in contact with a demon or a devil or the devil in the long term because you are having a situation where you're confronting evil directly and experiencing it in such a way that it galvanizes your faith forever.
Whereas like that's why people who reject God or whatever, like, I've never seen a ghost.
I want to see it.
I want to have an experience, but I just can't have one.
So, you know, he's not going to go around and have people start doing things that are going to, you know, allow him to, you know, be manifest to someone, right?
I think for a lot of what we would describe as like default liberals, normies, I call them normies because they don't necessarily have to be just liberal, but if they actually, so let's say someone is living in sin, they're doing things that are driving them towards a darkness.
unidentified
I think there's a good amount of people that if they actually saw the demon manifest before their eyes, they'd turn around immediately.
I think deception is required to push people towards darkness because I think people actually understand that if a demon is trying to entice you to do bad things, it's going to be bad for you.
unidentified
And so there's a deception and no, no, what you're doing is good.
And then you're doing like weird magic stuff because girls think it's cool or whatever.
And you're like, well, it's like goofy.
Maybe if it works, who knows?
And then you're like, well, if the secret works, this will work.
It's like harmless.
And then you're experiencing like dark, you're, you know, trying to go pee at night and you're like overcome with a complete and total sense of dread, like there's something waiting for you on the other side of the door.
Have you ever, you know, when you're a kid and you're so scared that you're like, this is real, this is happening to me.
This is real.
I'm the most terrified I've ever been.
Blanket over your head.
Like, of course, to have that feeling as an adult is like indicative of like something real is happening to me.
But you like, you just explain it away the same way, like, cause it's just what we're designed to do.
It's not always just about like exorcism or whatever, but there are people who explain, I've witnessed this thing, and yet it is still in the mainstream.
unidentified
We don't believe any of it.
That's not true.
Yeah.
Because you never experienced it.
It's funny because when you think about how scientists will explain oxidization process through hemoglobin or whatever in your body, you're like, that's correct.
Like, for instance, we don't even understand why we yawn fully, right?
unidentified
We don't.
So yeah, right.
So, but the response I would give to that is, okay, first, you know, so people could ask the question, you know, for instance, why doesn't God just manifest himself over the whole world and everyone, you know, like announce through a trumpet that he's God and everyone will believe in him?
Well, one, God desires that we have free will because he desires us to love him, right?
not just to accept and believe in him and fear him, right?
He wants us to love him.
And if you're going to love someone, you have to love them freely, right?
You can't, you know, go up to the girl you like and put a gun to her and say, love me, right?
And she's not going to actually love you even if she says it, right?
So in order for us to authentically choose God, we have to have the ability to choose other than God as well, right?
We have to have that complete freedom, right?
So God permits evil to exist ultimately so that we have the ability to choose him freely, right?
So these manifestations, right, sometimes there's a reason for it.
This person, they need the effect of this grace or they need the experience of this to prevent them from making some decision down the road or whatever it is in God's providence.
But for the overwhelming majority of us, we just need to have normal lives and have the experience of learning to pray and learning the teachings of the church or whatever it is.
And that will be enough for us to have the ability to make that decision.
It feels like recently good is winning.
However, I'm curious as to why, you know, I went to, where was I, Shepherdstown or whatever?
They have a church up there with the Progress Pride flag.
Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons, I mean, obviously, right, I mean, there are Catholics who are going to individually believe these sort of things.
unidentified
But one of the reasons I am Catholic is because the teaching of the church, right, is one, we can't change the church's teachings, right?
We don't have the authority to change the church's teachings because they belong to God.
And so even if this individual person is espousing this belief, right, and there are people within the Catholic Church that do, that's not the teachings of the church, right?
And that's, like I said, I appreciate the firm foundation of that.
Now, you know, to kind of speak more to your question, I think especially in the United States, we are seeing, I think, within the culture, overall, a sort of return to traditional values and that kind of thing, especially among young people.
But I also think that sort of liberalism in itself is becoming a religion, essentially.
And so why is it affecting the church?
Well, because we are treating it, you know, as a religion.
Abortion and the most prolific demon in human history, it relishes in human child sacrifice.
unidentified
That's pretty.
Which one is that?
Moloch?
I thought that was going to be.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, he was so prolific in during the Peloponnesian Wars when the Romans got down to Carthage or whatever, and they saw what they were up to.
It was so disgusting to even the pagan Romans that they obliterated their society forever so that no one would ever even know about what they were up to.
We don't even know what languages they spoke entirely.
He's like, I felt like I needed to go through the whole super doom afterwards and bless the whole building because he had been there.
unidentified
I don't know how to find this.
But as far as like demons with names, demons are also of different orders of power the same way angels are.
So angels are more or less powerful.
And of course, heaven is organized in a hierarchy because that's how God works.
And everyone in a hierarchy serves the people below them because to have power and to be in charge is inherent is to serve.
That's like the good.
And the reverse of that is to dominate.
And so evil people who are in charge, they dominate as opposed to what a benevolent king should do, which is to serve.
So there are different angels of different ranges of power in order of magnitudes or whatever.
And some of the demons are fallen angels who are more or less powerful.
And there's like conjecture that Satan was a throne, one of the most powerful choirs of angels, which again makes it so funny that he was smited by Michael, who was in our key.
It's Lewis Amsalem who wrote, with fingers crossed, the old rabbit's foot out of the box in the attic, I will be sacrificing a chicken in the backyard to Moloch.
unidentified
Who did he send that to?
The header is Huma Abedin from from H so this is I thought this was one of Hillary's leaked emails It says from Anselm.
Oh.
Yeah, so it was a forwarded email, I guess.
Unless it's talking up, the email talks about Secretary Clinton.
I doubt she's.
yeah so apparently is it was it sent to her uh It's so strange.
Even the fact that someone is sending emails from a government account saying that they're sacrificing chickens to demons, probably not great.
The envoy seemed confident they would get M to sign the SJ Accord, skipping overhead.
Just before speaking to me, Beal had spoken with Arias, who expressed cautious optimism that we might have a breakthrough.
Arias told Beal to tell us that if that happens, the United States gets more credit.
Arias said the U.S. has played the game exactly right with the approximate mix of carrot sticks, toughness, and unified message, even-handedness, and above all, good timing.
Once again, this seems like a very straightforward, boring political email.
Beal said it was extremely complimentary of the great political instincts shown by Secretary Clinton.
With fingers crossed, the old rabbit's foot out of the box in the attic.
I will be sacrificing a chicken in the backyard to Moloch.
I think what the response is going to be is he's saying we want to get these accords signed, and I'm doing literally every superstitious thing I can to make sure it happens.
I mean, it also is kind of inappropriate for a work email to be like the, like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to go out and say, I think this is evidence the guy's actually doing it.
unidentified
Right.
But I would say to somebody who was emailing jokes like that, I'm like, let's be real.
I'm not going to go down someone and say, hey, don't put these weird jokes in there.
But if it was a common thing, I'd be like, this is probably not appropriate for work to be like making jokes like this when we're talking about political equipment.
I would be like, I need to come to your house and see what your chicken situation is, actually, before I keep getting these emails.
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah, this is about Honduras, I guess.
But, you know, the thing is.
Does that work out?
Do we know it?
Oh, I don't know.
This is from 2009.
What a weird thing.
So here's the other thing: the cremation of care, talking about the Bohemian Grove.
Apparently, like people have gone there and secretly filmed it.
And what they say is it's not explicitly that they're worshiping Moloch.
They're doing a performance to a Moloch-like deity.
But it's all just very weird when you find out that powerful, wealthy people go into the middle of the woods and put on robes and do this kind of like weird ceremony.
And the response you get, the first thing that they said was, this isn't true.
It's made up.
It's fake.
It's a conspiracy theory.
And then once the internet started to become a bit more ubiquitous and everybody had access to the videos and the articles, and we knew they actually were going to the Bohemian Grove and doing these kind of rituals, they said, it's a performance.
It's like a country club where we do a gag theater show.
And it's like, yes, that's still very weird because regular Americans don't do those things.
It's a strange, it is a strange kind of thing to do.
So one of the things that I have to look for, so I don't live in New Orleans, but I live near New Orleans.
And so that sort of culture and sort of Haitian and voodoo culture affects the area I will live in.
But one of the things I have to look for as a priest is when I'm distributing Holy Communion at Mass, right, I have to watch with my peripheral vision to make sure people are actually receiving the host if they're consuming it because people will want to steal the most blessed sacrament, right, the host, for use in these acts of worship, sort of demonic activity.
And it's happened before where I've noticed a man had taken a host and he pocketed it.
And so I went after him and got the host from him and consumed it.
And then, afterwards, to go in the park behind the church and see this altar he had erected where he intended to do this ritual.
Just this past year, I don't want to say where to protect the identity, but a priest I know that is involved on campus ministry at a major state university discovered that the pledges in a fraternity were told to steal host from the Catholic Church.
In modern culture, Beelzebub just means the devil.
This is a different, separate demon?
Yeah.
So in the rite of exorcism, a lot of these names are listed sometimes because the priest is told to specifically command that these demons depart if they're present, that kind of thing.
Sometimes we can say that, you know, perhaps sometimes they're used in a term like Leviathan could refer to Lucifer, but it also may be a separate entity and that sort of thing.
I've never, so people use Leviathan to reference Lucifer.
In the Ettas, he comes and visits people and stuff for sure.
unidentified
And all the pagan gods visit people.
That's one of their things is like who is a God and who's not.
But demons are beings that you interact with in order to achieve a material goal in this space-time reality.
So Odin was what you thought was God.
And he's like a story, but he's not like anyone people are trying to get material things from currently.
Whereas Moloch, for all of time, was like, I am a creature.
I want you to do X for me and then you will get Y. Whereas Odin was like, I am this almighty sort of father figure and I have wisdom and people were interested in that.
And he's a metaphor for all these other things, you know?
So that's a, there's a, I can't remember what saint it is that talks about a man who has sold his soul and he's being drugged down to hell and the angels are like, literally just say no.
And he fell into despair so that he thought he could not be saved because he thought he had sold his soul.
The demons had thrown him into such a depression that they convinced him to take him.
unidentified
But the angels were like, literally walk it off.
What are you talking about?
Like you're fine, you know, but that's kind of what they do.
I was talking with a handful of people a couple years ago about DMT trips.
Have you guys ever looked into dimethyltryptamine?
I have some friends who are burners and stuff, so I'm pretty well versed in their stories.
And there's this occult view of what powerful people are doing.
They've been doing, they're calling it extended state DMT trips.
These experiments have been going on for a few years where they hook people up to an IV and pump small amounts of DMT over a long period of time to create a prolonged DMT trip.
So the way people describe it, I've never done it.
And in many instances, they'll offer you knowledge or power in exchange for working with them or abiding by their will and things like this.
And he was just saying, never accept the deal when you hear the whispers.
However, there is one of the conspiracy theories is that powerful elites do this intentionally, take these deals and are granted knowledge, like you were saying, things they shouldn't know.
And they use this to empower themselves and gain control over other people.
It's interesting when you say that with possession, one of the things you look for is people knowing things they shouldn't.
unidentified
And then you have in this other area stories about entities from beyond the veil when you take this drug that will offer you up information you should not know, which will grant you more power in the material world, such as like what stock to buy, what company to invest in, where to find certain things.
To me, that all sounds very much the same, just described in different ways.
Yeah, well, there is a culture within the drug market, like the Cartel, for instance.
So there's, I was mentioning this earlier this morning, there's a, within Latin American culture, there's this weird and inappropriate relationship of sort of Christianity and paganism that intertwines.
And you start to see these sort of these death cults that enter into it.
You start to see a lot of sort of paganistic and witchcraft stuff enter into it.
Well, either way, within the cartel, you hear stories of things like witches cursing loads of drugs with the intention that people become addicted to them and right and so and therefore fall further into that.
unidentified
Right.
And then when you're also, when you're under the influence of drugs, you're more, you know, your reason is more affected.
And so you're more probable to commit sin, right?
Obviously, it benefits the enemy as well.
But yeah, so you, like I said, you see that within the drug culture.
I can't talk about this particularly, but I think you should read a little bit because I'm wondering if, you know, one way I'll describe it is: I grew up Catholic, left the church after my family, we switched schools and things like this, but I had a general understanding with religious class, we called it, and going to Mass.
I just don't follow any particular faith structure.
unidentified
But when I started reading about quantum physics and theory, that's actually what part of what made me move back towards believing in God is what I had learned reading as a kid that was never accurately explained to me.
And then reading this science and realizing that there was some connection there and that people may just be looking at something, but from different angles, I was like, oh, God, God is real.
And I think God is observable.
I won't get into my whole theory and breakdown of all that because it takes forever and I've done it several times, but I do believe that God is observable in reality.
We can see signs of God.
I think you probably agree.
And I've met people who think that's not true.
And I think they're just, they need information, information.
So I'm curious when I hear about all of this DMT stuff, which is wildly popular.
Everyone loves it.
You know, Joe Rogan talks about, or I used to talk about it all the time, and everybody was like, whoa.
It seems like there's something to it.
And I would describe it as there are signs all around us, such as with science, about unseen forces, like I was describing with the electromagnetic spectrum.
Forever, humans had no idea it existed because we can't perceive it.
And then one day somebody was like, hey, this weird thing is happening to this metal when I do something like this.
So there's something interesting with the DMT stuff that I'm getting to.
People have all of these stories of experiencing the same thing, the same entities and shared knowledge, which is one of the reasons why I think people are so interested in dimethyltryptamine, because it makes people feel like there may be real evidence of something beyond that we can't perceive as humans.
There's a famous story that Vice published a while ago where a man said he did DMT, large dose, blasted off, found himself in this strange reality where he met a purple woman.
This woman told him things.
When he comes back down, he was talking to one of his other trippy friends, and his friend told him about a purple woman he had met who told him these things.
And that's when the guy said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what?
I was told the exact same things from the exact same person.
And it's something like that.
There are so many stories where people who have shared trips, they'll go in separate rooms, they do experiments with this, and they'll take DMT.
And then these two people will report knowledge that neither should that no one shared with each other.
And so I'm, you know, I look at this and I wonder if humans are starting to touch upon these demonic entities.
They're being able to visualize and describe something that is tangible that I presume the church has known about for millennia.
But now through DMT, science is actually saying maybe these things actually are real and we can actually document their existence.
There's an odd, um that this is like getting into the realm of like kooky quackery outside of religion.
We're like, what, what, what?
But there are uh UFO investigators who have done research into it and they're trying to figure out like, okay, every time someone's abducted, I'm going to interview everyone who's abducted and I'm going to see if there's anyone who's interrupted an abduction experience, if that's ever happened.
Because abduction experiences, they tend to happen from beginning to end.
And the creatures who have who abduct these people and the people who say they have these experiences, they describe them from beginning to end.
They're powerless.
So UFO researchers are like, who has ever interrupted one?
So he starts to look through it and he finds that there are people who have interrupted these experiences, these abduction experiences, and universally all of them interrupted them by calling upon the name of Jesus.
Oh, wow.
So the UFO community got really weird about this, which is hilarious that dorks who are like, UFOs are real.
And then a guy's like, I think Jesus is involved.
And they're like, get this loser out of here.
You know, like they're, so they kind of buried these people and you can look it up and they've tried to like speak out against it, whatever.
But one of the interesting things about DMT is the universal experience with alien grays.
Almost everyone who does DMT has an experience with what they described as like an alien that as described by people who have seen them.
So they're like, oh, it's like a skinny type of alien, like an ET, like a, oh man, I'm making Alex Jones unproud.
I forget what the name of the aliens are with the machine elves?
Yeah, the grays.
Well, the grays are the grays.
The machine elves are different.
Okay.
I'm not mechanical beings.
Yeah, I'm not well versed enough.
But anyway, so they, people universally from different cultures who don't even know see these aliens.
So it's interesting that they're witnessing aliens.
unidentified
And then there's these other people who are like, well, aliens might have something to do with the demonic because apparently the name of Christ is the only thing that interrupts an abduction experience.
Alex Jones has talked about this that I don't put words in his mouth, but he's mentioned interdimensional entities.
Yes.
And it's fascinating because a lot of people will actually just say, what we've heard this, people will chat us all the time saying what people think of as aliens are demons.
Yeah.
That these, it's fascinating that it's like we lost the knowledge.
So this is very popular among the tech elite and I guess atheists to a certain degree, not everyone, but there are many that are entertaining the possibility that the universe we exist in was a simulation created by a more advanced civilization.
unidentified
The fascinating thing about that is what they're basically saying is that a higher power planned the creation of this universe for which we exist in for a purpose.
And I'm like, I'm just going to stop you right there.
You've basically, you know, I was talking to someone about simulation theory and I said, I recommend you talk to some theologians, priests, and learned holy men.
unidentified
Because when you discuss simulation theory, that's like chapter one of my religion book when I was five years old.
Yeah, it is silly to be like, God couldn't do it, but Gabe Newell could.
And so I wonder, you know, just going back to, so what we have here is I looked up common reports of demonic entities with DMT.
It's machine elves.
I've had people describe them as like slinky-like beings.
I don't know if you guys have heard that.
I don't know.
I've never done DMT.
I've never done drugs, actually.
And they describe them as like they have like this wavy, slinky-like structure.
But it also mentions commonly shadow figures and demonic shapes in some cases, especially with fear and anxiety.
The beings are hostile or terrifying, described as demons or dark gods.
And it mentions a religious overlap with ayahuasca ceremonies where people sometimes believe they encounter spirits, angels, demons.
I wonder if humans have actually known this for thousands of years.
There are learned religious holy men who talk about beings that exist beyond.
They don't have a form.
And just like with simulation theory, people are scratching the surface of religion 101 and trying to describe what they're seeing.
I wonder if we would benefit greatly from these hippie-dippy DMT people actually just going and talking to a priest for a little bit and finding that what they're describing may actually already be written down for thousands of years.
There's knowledge to be found.
I think there's the movie that I just assisted with to the ritual.
There's a great line that Al Pacino's character has in it.
unidentified
So he plays the exorcist in the movie and he's arguing with another priest that's struggling to believe that this is real.
And he says, you know, Father, the enemy's ways may be new to you, but they're ancient.
He's been doing this for thousands of years.
And you're right, right?
So the church talks about, if you look over human culture, right?
So one of the things I do in my field is ritual and liturgy.
So I study a lot of paganistic rituals and that kind of thing.
And you'll find similarities, right, from culture to culture, similar beliefs, similar religious practices.
And so the church says we call this the Vestigia Trinitatis, that there's vestiges of the Trinity all through the culture because ultimately there's only one truth, right?
And so when people discover truth, they're touching upon the one truth who's God himself.
And so when we discover these truths in these cultures, it's because ultimately, right, they're finally touching the truth.
And so, you know, I would say if you can look over thousands, millions of years of human history, and all of a sudden you keep finding the same thing popping up again and again and again and again, there has to be something true behind it.
And we in the 21st century aren't just totally, you know, oh, this is brand new.
One of the things that irks me with these like ghost hunter shows is that they're completely unserious.
And I think that we should be pursuing when people experience what would be described as supernatural phenomenon, a legitimate scientific exploration of this information.
Instead, what you get is EMF detectors and like microphones to make weird recordings.
And that's just some made-up stuff.
That's not actually the scientific method or process.
My mother is into ghost hunting or was, and I went with her.
I actually have an entire album about it.
But we experienced, we had like a supernatural experience, but the equipment is insane.
I think you have a very old game system taped to your face, actually.
unidentified
And they have lasers and like all kinds of weird stuff.
And, you know, it's built by who knows who.
And the science is shoddy, but some of it, it does seem to like do something.
I think a lot.
I was reading once that a lot of this phenomenon we experience can be explained by ultra-low frequency vibration, which creates like a sensation within your body.
You can't hear it or perceive it.
Possible.
I just find it fascinating that there are so many stories of people experiencing some kind of supernatural phenomenon and it is dismissed by the mainstream.
I think people are scared to admit it, but obviously the fact that ghost hunter shows exist, the fact that the DMT question is so popular suggests that regular people do accept there are forces out there that we can't perceive that influence us either physically or mentally or emotionally.
They're just like, wait, wait, what did you say again?
unidentified
Yeah, more, please.
Yeah, even for all like I converted.
So I used to have like a, I used to be a major leftist.
I had a show on Gas Digital with Kern Fisher where I pushed leftist politics and stuff and I quit that and converted.
And of course I had like tens of thousands of people be like, we're going to kill you over this now and death threats and all that.
Apostate.
All the wildest things you can imagine.
But over the course of time, when I would tell people I was religious, I would expect a lot of pushback from like, you know, the stranger parts of my religion.
But those are the parts that people are the most receptive to.
When I tell people like, oh, yeah, dude, spiritual warfare, I feel like I'm going through it.
unidentified
Like regular people will be like, do you, should I throw some sage down?
Like they think that they're like, people are like, yeah, to be Christian is weird and bad, but attacked by demons, yeah, I get that.
You're like, what?
So we live in like this, this very spiritual society that's trying to like discern this thing we all intuitively know is true, but they've totally thrown off the tradition that got us to where we are in this spiritual world.
That's like what I'm saying with the simulation theory stuff.
We were having a discussion with someone about this and I'm just like, you're describing the first thing they taught us in religious class when I was a little kid.
And these, these big tech guys think they've discovered something profound to say we're in a simulation.
And my response is, could you call it a construct instead of a simulation?
And they're like, yeah, sure.
And I'm like, a simulation implies it's a copy of, and you don't know that.
The rock is unworldly and that it is unsafe because it will bring demons to you.
unidentified
And I've not experienced it.
I don't know.
Maybe I reject demons or whatever, so they have a harder time dealing with me.
But again, I think, like I said, that's symptomatic of a culture we live in where we've inverted truth.
Right.
So, but what I do think you see right now, and I'm seeing this in the church, is the younger generation, it's becoming more traditional, more conservative, and that sort of thing, because we've reached a point where tradition and conservatism is the rebellion.
It's very, very similar to demons in Arabic culture.
And it even says here they can possess humans, causing illness, madness, temptation.
They are very much demonic.
I believe it even refers to Iblis, Satan, the Islamic equivalent of Satan.
He's a jinn who rebelled against Allah rather than an angel.
I think that might just be words, but they're trying to convey something similar.
I was reading once that most cultures have very, very similar basic belief structures around things like ghosts, possession, demons.
And the question was, why?
Why is there a culture in the Americas separated by thousands of years and tens of and 10 plus 20,000 miles, but they have a very, it's like they're looking at the same thing, but describing it differently.
How is that possible?
Unless they're actually seeing something.
Is there something actually there?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, we all intuitively know.
It's that thing where like when you're a kid, you have all these weird experiences and you get older and you kind of explain them away.
I didn't see a ghost.
I didn't feel that scary thing that one time.
I didn't hear a voice.
I didn't do that.
But when you, you know, and then now you're an adult, you rationalize everything.
And then, of course, you know, if the enemy is pushing you towards sin, they're like, well, I don't have to do that anymore.
I got this guy locked in.
So I'll just let him live in his sort of apathy.
And then we'll just see what happens with him.
So like you mentioned you spent time in the church of Satan.
Was that correct?
Yeah.
I was involved with like the church, so like the political organization.
Okay, so they pretend to be Satanists.
This is huge quotation marks because they are Satanists.
It would basically be like if I started a fake Christian church and a bunch of people showed up and I was like, all right, so we all don't have sex before marriage anymore.
unidentified
And we're going to pray the Our Father and worship Christ.
Anyway, give your soul over to Jesus, talk about it, and follow the laws.
And you're like, well, it doesn't seem very aesthetic if I'm doing it, right?
If I'm, you know, and so Satanism, you know, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law and all these other things.
You know, and so you think like, oh, this is just, this is a goofy, like, I'm just scaring silly Christians who are trying to put the Ten Commandments outside of courthouses, but you're participating in Satanism proper.
I mean, that is Satanism.
Yeah, I would just be curious, like, the extent of interactions you had with demonic.
Well, within that organization, there are people just doing political things and being aesthetic and whatever.
But then, of course, there's a bunch of people doing magic and witchcraft.
And I did get involved in that for a time where I was like, I don't know, I was reading.
Like universally, there's no one who does this kind of stuff that's like not into the weirdest, grossest thing you've ever heard of.
unidentified
Right.
And so basically they do get so into it that then they begin to be obsessed with power.
And yeah, just like the idea that like I could bring this into the world or I could summon or interact with this, like you become obsessed with the power that they make you feel, I suppose.
I think very luckily I was like, oh, I want money.
I want women.
I want success, you know, all that kind of stuff.
And as soon as my life began to fall apart as I received certain things and I experienced some really, really dark things, I was like, oh, I'm out.
So this is real, but you, you know, there's a price and a cause for everything.
So I'm out very luckily.
But there are people who get really into it and then they go even beyond what they're doing for themselves.
And now they're trying to do to others.
So then you get like satanic ritual abuse where people are like hurting children or trying to consecrate people to the devil or do things like they're playing the long game.
So they want the devil to hurt your family two generations from now type stuff.
And exorcists, as far as I know, do experience that.
Yeah.
There's a Latin adage within the church, Lexirondi Lex Crude.
Maybe you're just looking at this because you're interested, but as you become interested, then all of a sudden you want to see, well, does this work if I do it?
And that's why I think within a younger culture today, we live in a world where nothing is true, nothing can be accepted as true.
And so now you start seeing an uptick of people becoming Catholic, for instance, young people becoming Catholic, because they're finding the one place they can believe there's a foundation of truth.
unidentified
And not only do they become Catholic, but they become traditionalist Catholic, right?
But this last weekend, I went to a shrine that is like an hour drive outside of Denver or whatever, and it was packed.
So I was like, wow, there were a lot of people there.
It was really cool.
I think, you know, to get a little bit more to the political now, I guess, as we're, as we're getting into it, a lot of people had a sort of a wake-up call witnessing what just happened this past week.
And now it's fascinating what we're seeing.
I would only describe as demonic.
These videos that people have made celebrating Charlie Kirk's death look like something you would expect a movie to depict as a demon.
They're cackling and laughing and making Kubrick stares at the camera and calling for more.
And it's a behavior that we, as humans, associate with a demonic, like in our movies, this is how the possessed behave.
And so I see this and I'm thinking, you know, the way I described why I, I made a video last week, said it's time to bring back exorcisms.
And the point I was making is that I've traveled the world.
And almost entirely, the motives and behaviors of the individuals are entirely human.
unidentified
That is, they follow human vice, which would be the actions taken for reasons of envy, wrath, lust, gluttony.
These are very obvious things to us.
So when someone attacks another person, why did they do it?
And wrath.
They felt anger.
Sometimes just for no reason, they were angry.
Envy, they stole from you because they were jealous of something you had.
They attacked you.
And recently, I've experienced things that defy human vice.
Typically, when humans do bad things, they're getting something satisfactory from it, either emotionally or physically.
But with the death of Charlie Kirk, while some of it you can describe as emotionally satisfactory to those who have missions which are at odds with Charlie, a lot of it just seems to defy any kind of human benefit in any way.
And that to me feels demonic, that the only purpose of making a video like this or of desecrating a memorial, why desecrate a memorial to somebody?
And I feel like we've seen a massive uptick in that, which to me feels like demonic possession or influence.
Yeah.
So one of the things I noticed, right?
So you had this shooting at the Catholic school in Wisconsin, right?
Another story that happened within the same week that hardly anyone knew about it was there was a shooting at St. Michael's Abbey in California that was thwarted, right?
So a man from Alabama drove all the way to St. Michael's Abbey, right?
And I don't know the full story about how they discovered him, that he had this plot, right?
So that happened then, right?
unidentified
And then you have the Charlie Kirk shooting the next week, right?
And within that same week, I received a letter in the mail from an unknown person in Miami, never met this person.
I opened it up and it's all these just written, it's written in Sharpie, in red, white, and black Sharpie, this obscene stuff about Trump, about conservative Catholic women.
And there's no real threat in it, but it's just gibberish.
And it was written on lottery tickets.
Man, that's the craziest part right there.
Yeah.
And so, I mean, I get this and my immediate thought is I turned it over to the police.
I don't think it's threatening, but it's all in the same context of all of this.
And we've increased security to our school now.
Did you scratch them first?
Just to see, hey, wait, they weren't scratch all.
They weren't scratch all.
They were Powerball tickets, but they were blank Powerball tickets.
I think this story was largely missed by most people because it was stopped.
So NBC, look at this.
Alabama man who called himself the Angel of Death, arrested and accused of threatening California monastery.
They said that he had weapons.
He had brass knuckles, a dirk or dagger.
I think it's funny that they have to qualify what a dirk is because people don't know what it is.
He had a large capacity magazine.
I think it's silly that that in and of itself was a crime.
But considering the threats he was making, they're saying planning, sophistication, and professionalism drove from Alabama to the victim church to reiterate threats he had made via email.
And so on Sunday morning, I go to 8 a.m. at one church and then come back to the basilica for 10 a.m.
And when I got back for the 10 a.m. Mass for Easter Sunday morning, someone had come in and taken the flowers off the altar and hurled them across the church.
Right.
It's wild to see these things happening.
Yeah, I went to this church in Queens.
It was like a neighborhood where there was a lot of disturbed people.
And every like every Sunday without fail, someone would come in, try to fist fight like the pastor, try to fist fight a dean.
It was like a constant flow of just disturbed people.
It's like the Gracies when they used to run their gym and random dudes would challenge them.
Your pastor's like, this is not a jujitsu place.
Like, what is going on?
unidentified
Because remember, my pastor started taking up boxing.
I'm like, dude, I don't blame you for a reason.
You got to get a Robin Big situation going for him.
Just get him a big security guard.
Yeah.
And like the police were just like, again, okay.
That's crazy.
Someone will be there later.
It's like, dude, I'm glad that, for instance, the Michigan shooting and the, I'm sorry, the Minnesota shooting and the California shooting that was thwarted both are being investigated by the FBI as a as a Catholic hate crime.
Attacks on U.S. churches have risen significantly since 2021.
unidentified
Report fines.
1,384 hostile incidents targeting churches from 2018 to 2024, with more than half coming in the past two years.
Woof.
Yeah.
Dang, that's an see, and that's an uptick.
And then goes towards the demonic presence in society narrative there.
I mean, the craziest thing to me is how it's hyper-fixation on Christianity.
It's almost always.
I mean, there's tons of things in the mainstream that crazy people could target, but it seems like often the political movements are targeting Christian values.
You can take a look at, I mean, I'll keep it vague for the purpose of not being overtly political.
The left in this country seems to object wholly to Christian values and give a pass to other horrible values or religious structures.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or religious structures that say they're close to Christian values, but are not.
Right.
Well, like, look with Kirk, like what specifically, what problems, what acts they have to grind with and what they're drilling down on, is they're drilling down on beliefs that are widely held by Christians in the United States, which is like pro-life.
Opposition to abortion, opposition to gay marriage.
It's wild to imagine that being on the other foot in any way, shape, or form.
That if someone from another faith was like, remember to live out the values of your faith, women were doing arranged marriage, you know, or whatever, people would be like, yeah, that's their culture.
unidentified
But you go and wear your burker to the thing.
It doesn't happen.
But when he does it as a Catholic university and gets like, what, a standing ovation or whatever at the end, people are like, well, do you see all the women clapping?
That was evil, clearly.
Like, and then they go after him.
You're like, he's at a Catholic college saying Catholic things to Catholic people.
You're out of your mind.
Well, Stephen Crowder had a really great example of this years ago where with this baker in Colorado, they went and they said, bake me the cake with this message.
There's the subversion of Christianity because Christianity is like, to them, inherently attached to whiteness somehow, despite the fact that it's a Middle Eastern and African religion.
unidentified
It's growing faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world.
Every single culture has been colonized by another culture, but we are somehow uniquely evil because of our position in history and the fact that we did the Industrial Revolution, I guess.
That's why they will defend, you know, everything they claim that they're opposed to can be seen in other cultures they don't care about, even here in the United States.
Yeah.
It's just the United States.
Christianity is the bedrock of Western civilization, specifically the United States.
And so it's like, of course, these people fundamentally hate their fathers.
unidentified
And what is more paternal?
What is more representative of a father than Christianity, of God?
And so, of course, these people are going to react with not just vitriol, but like they have a personal grudge against Christianity because they feel like it's in direct opposition to every single thing they stand for.
Well, if you feel abandoned by your father, you know, you would also, I mean, and as a young man who grew up without a father and made all the mistakes young men without fathers make, I also was an atheist who was mad.
And so we are experiencing a crisis of fatherhood, I think, right now.
Absolutely.
I saw this video from Charlie Cook, actually, in the wake of the devastating horrible assassination.
Videos from Charlie have been going massively viral.
And there's a really interesting one where he is challenged on whether or not this country was a Christian nation.
And we've had this debate many times.
And we hear from liberals all the time saying they intentionally, the founding fathers intentionally did not put in the Constitution because it was not meant to be a Christian nation.
But what they're omitting from this is the reason why the founding documents at the federal level omit religion was because the states had slightly different takes on it.
And so the federal government was saying, we're not going to force Catholic Maryland to agree with Protestant Massachusetts.
Yeah.
And so the federal government says we're stepping back.
But the states themselves, just so I pulled this up, required belief in God or Christianity.
Massachusetts required officials to declare a belief in Christianity.
North Carolina barred anyone who denied the truth of the Protestant religion.
Pennsylvania required a belief in God and the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testament.
South Carolina required belief in Protestant religion.
It says, no person who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion or the divine authority, either of the Old or New Testament, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this state.
unidentified
They worded that very, very well to make sure.
There's a lot of commas there.
Who said the Constitution was written for people who believe in God and would be John Adams said for religious and more or ethical people.
Yeah, religious and ethical people.
Otherwise, it would be insufficient.
Wholly insufficient.
Wholly insufficient.
Yeah, yeah.
South Carolina, the states that required Protestants, Catholics were barred from holding office.
They make these founders like as if they're just these total progressive.
Like if you could just show them like the religious demographic makeup of Michigan, they'd be like, oh, I'm actually just never mind.
unidentified
Explicitly Anglican.
Sorry.
Yeah.
It's fascinating.
We've had such debates over whether there's a Christian nation.
And I think typically what I find of many liberals is they're just ignorant of the details.
I did a political compass test earlier, which is going to be up at like 2 p.m., which finds that I am a social libertarian.
It means I'm actually pretty lefty.
I do think the political compass test is flawed in how they ask the questions.
It presents absolutes, which if you're not going to just assert absolutes, it's going to call you a leftist because the questions are framed in such a way.
But ultimately, my point, what we really define as left and right in this country is whether or not you believe what's true or you believe the lies.
And so often these debates, the reason why the right has Charlie Kirk, the reason why he was able to do these big events and rally and debate is because the truth was on his side.
He knew that he could stand there and whatever you asked him, he could throw the truth at you.
And these liberals would be like, well, I got nothing.
And that's most of his videos.
The left responded by saying he was insulting ignorant college kids.
He let literally anybody ask him any question about what they believed.
And the purpose of going to colleges to talk to these people is where it's where people are supposed to be learning about philosophy, morals, the greater world.
And that's the place to go do it.
Yeah.
Well, but the problem is we, you know, education within the United States, unless you're going to a very specific, you know, liberal arts, conservative university, whatever it is, right?
So, you know, I am the rector of a Catholic school in Mississippi, and I stay in contact with a lot of students who are off at state universities and that kind of thing.
And, you know, they're being required to write papers, you know, against Trump or that kind of thing.
That's a requirement for class, right?
unidentified
And so we're educating people, you know, on the state level.
To question the government and to question morals and traditional Christian understandings of the world.
And so, yeah, you're going to have people going after Charlie Kirk, you know, because they're being told, they're being given this in schools, that this is what they have to believe, right?
Or they can't pass the class.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the whole idea of free speech is only supposed to work in a moral Christian society where murder is inherently abhorrent.
And so you can't murder someone unless you're in a duel with it, unless there's consent, because murder is a legal term.
unidentified
You can kill, you can't murder.
That is, you know, obviously the difference between self-defense and stuff.
And that's where the confusion comes when people are like, you're a Christian.
Aren't you supposed to be some kind of hippie that lets me do whatever I want to you?
You know, that kind of thing.
And it's like, no, that's not what Christianity is, even a little bit.
But so people, you know, we're supposed to live in a society where everyone has Christian morality, has massive societal consequences, no matter where they go in what state.
Because if they go against Christian morality, people will withhold their ability to participate in church, to participate in society at large, to participate in polite society.
But now we're finding ourselves in a situation where like, oh, actually, we're trying to do the virtuous thing.
And they, not only do they not believe in God, they don't even believe morality is objective.
They don't believe in virtue.
They're all utility.
And if you're living in a materialist utilitarian world as set out by Marx or whoever, then yeah, shooting people is what solves problems.
Like some stupid amount of them just Vondé, they did one of the first Christian genocides, or not the first Christian genocides, but the first modern European Christian genocide where the Vendée region of France refused to renounce Catholicism or surrender.
And the rebellion there was so bad that they asked Napoleon to go and he refused and was actually removed from the military for a time.
Almost ended his entire career because it was so disgusting what the revolution was doing to Bible-believing people in France.
And then, of course, like that extends to the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War.
What's the first thing the anarchists did?
Let's dig up nuns' bodies and pose with them.
Let's sexually assault and murder people in the clergy.
Some of the Republican death squads were heavily staffed by members of the Soviet Union's secret police, the NKVD.
unidentified
According to Ronald Rodosh, the price the Republicans paid for Soviet aid was the very factor that led to the Republic's eventual demise.
In exchange for military aid, Stalin demanded the transformation of the Republic into a prototype for the so-called people's democracies of post-war Eastern and Central Europe.
Yeah.
And then they, of course, the leftists began to fight each other like they do.
So the anarchists were fighting the P-U-O-M or whatever, P-O-U-M, I can't remember.
unidentified
That's who Orwell fought with, and they became disillusioned with them and left.
And then, of course, Orwell very famously talked about his experiences and how disillusioned he became with communism and everything, and how he stopped being a communist.
And, of course, he became a democratic socialist.
I can't remember.
But anyway, 30,000 priests and monks is the total number of religious men killed.
And people think it may be bigger, too, because there were, you know, people who, religious people who went to Spain to help and then, you know, weren't documented and were murdered or whatever else.
But didn't Orwell very specifically say while he was in Spain that the most voracious and terrifying of the Soviet agents were young women?
And he was like, the women were always the ones who were the most intense and the most willing to carry out party, pull the party line.
And I'm like, man, 80%, I feel like it was almost 80 to 90% women celebrating Charlie's death and being insane.
And it's like, wow, that tracks.
That tracks pretty well.
When women lose the ability to nurture and to be kind and loving, even in the face of hardship or frustration or whatever, that's when you know that's demonic, right?
That's the reverse of what a woman is, to cackle at someone's death.
Really interesting how it like mirrors what's going on in our society a bit.
Yeah.
So, but yeah.
What percentage of these, I mean, this is kind of what we've been getting at, but of these emotional sort of ailments that we're seeing are just spiritual attacks from demons.
I mean, I know we've been getting at this for the whole episode, but.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I can give a percentage.
But with the violence going on right now, how do you guys determine what's appropriate when you should step in and restrain someone, when you should block someone from entering the church?
Like, how do you guys come up with, how do you determine that?
unidentified
Yeah, so when the church is considering to perform a solemn exorcism, right, there's a standard procedure that has to be gone through where they get medical tests and psychological tests and that sort of thing.
If someone's in the instance, right, they're in my communion line, no one is allowed to take the host, right?
So how do I determine?
It's like, well, if you don't consume it, then I determine to take it from you.
That's the way it is.
We don't have any, at least not in my diocese, we have no rules to determine who can enter and exit the church.
Now, I will say since the Connecticut shooting, we're a lot more careful, especially about our school mass, right?
So we're locking all the doors except the front door, and then there's someone at the door monitoring who's entering and exiting.
But, I mean, there are going to be a number of people who are coming to my church all day long who may have, you know, I may visually discern they're weird, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily possessed, right?
But, you know, I think if we're seeing repetitive patterns of things that we saw in paganism, for instance, we brought paganism up.
Well, we may not have people, you know, we do have some people building statues to idols in America, but we may not have, you know, what we recognize visually as paganism, but we're definitely having paganism within our morals today.
And it's producing eventually the same fruit, right?
We talked about abortion, human sacrifice, and violence and this sort of hatred.
unidentified
I think it's ironic that the word hate is thrown out so much towards people with Christian ideals when the reality, at least from my perspective, is that where the hate is directed is Christianity.
That's how I feel, but that doesn't allow me to interact with people the way that priests would have been able to in older times, right?
The house I live in is a three-story antebellum mansion that used to have tons of priests in it and I live in it alone, right?
unidentified
And so it used to be this community of Natchez, which is relatively a small town by American standards, would have had multiple priests to go out and visit with people and be with the sick and be with people who are struggling.
And now they don't have access to that.
And I think people are suffering because of that.
But that's, like I said, that's an effect of the culture of the day where people just weren't being faithful.
And so they weren't going into seminaries.
It's also a reflection, I think, of the abuse scandal that the Catholic Church went to in America, that people didn't want to be, you know, put into an area where they're automatically assumed to be an abuser.
I'll say the day I was ordained, you know, I was walking to a restaurant and had my collar on and a woman held her son back from me and said, stay away from little boys.
Right.
I mean, so immediately Catholic priests are assumed to be the wrong person.
Right.
But yes, we're, we're feeling the effects of that in the church.
Like, could this be a result of like spiritual attacks from?
unidentified
Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying.
I think that because we have become more and more an un-Christian society, that's given the enemy a greater access to people.
Remember, we're a body-soul composite.
Our bodies and our souls are, as we're alive, they're irremovable from each other.
They are distinct and unique and together.
And so what affects one can affect the other.
That's why sin has temporal consequences on our bodies.
And so when you are spiritually sick or suffering or demons or whatever, that absolutely has effects on your physical and mental health.
Like, for instance, I was severely depressed before my conversion.
Like I had sought out medication and help for almost 10 years.
And one of the things right before my conversion that helped me push towards moving into conversion was I was at the point where I was doing the best I had ever done in life.
Like I had access to women.
I had all the money I could want.
My career was going well.
I lived in New York.
I was friends with famous people, yada, yada, yada.
And I was like, everyone's miserable and I am the saddest I've ever been and genuinely thinking about ending it.
And I was like, what is going on?
I have, I should be the happiest I've ever been.
You know, it was a spiritual sickness.
Whereas now I am, I don't even remember what it was like to feel that way.
I can kind of just remember the heaviness of depression and the sort of like strangeness of being sad for no reason and the frustration at that that then begets more depression that then makes you want to do less, then that makes you feel less understood, that then as a man makes you feel embarrassed because you're like, dude, I'm a pussy.
And you're confused and the depression builds and then it begets itself.
unidentified
And then you're in a cycle of destruction.
And then you're like, well, I'm going to medicate.
And then what do we medicate with?
It's drugs, pornography.
Well, yeah, I mean, because that's what I'm getting at is like with the removal of the clergy from hospitals and these sorts of institutions is, I mean, if someone comes in with that sort of situation, they're saying, I'm feeling these things.
They'll just say, oh, here's some more drugs and just it'll go away rather than providing a spiritual solution.
Yeah, Christian solution.
I mean, we used to, I mean, like, as a father of my household, I have the right to bless my wife and children.
And so if my kids or my wife is sick, like I pray over them and, you know, do the sign of the cross and pray over them.
And, and like, that is something that has been like really life-changing in our home.
I don't know.
I think if you're a Christian person and your wife or kids or people in your home are suffering, like pray over them, not just like in a, in interior way, like for real.
Put your hand on them and be like, in the name of Jesus, like, I hope I heal this person and take care of them and stuff.
At the very least, you're doing nothing but loving that person as best you can.
And at the very most, you're invoking the power of the Holy Spirit that can change people for real.
One of the most contentious debates we've ever had on this show was Orthodox versus Catholic.
Yeah, we get intense.
We're just so stupid.
And I'm just, I'm just thinking about how funny it's going to be with like the rise of Christianity now among Gen Z, church attendance and all that.
I'm imagining like the political dispute of left and right in 10 years will be the Orthodox versus the Catholics.
unidentified
Yeah, what's the right win so big relitigate these problems?
And it's like the political debates on the stage are literally, how do you describe it?
Internacine conflict.
The Holy Father has been making pretty wild strides towards maybe not church unification, but church healing.
I feel like we might not unify the churches, but we might get to a point where the Orthodox are universally allowing us to participate in some of their sacraments.
It's a cool year for him to become Pope because this is the 17th 100th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.
Yeah.
So, which also already denotes like, okay, 1700 years, it's a long time for this creed to affect the entire Western culture.
But it's a great time for him to start these dialogues.
He also recently reaffirmed traditionalism and the catechism in the face of German bishops trying to bless couples in like a sneaky way against Pope Francis' orders.
