#224 Dan Schneider - U.S. Army Attack Helicopter Pilot Turned Exorcist Assistant

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Dr.

Dan Schneider, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Sean.

Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

It's an honor to be here.

It's my honor.

I love these conversations.

And I've been looking for somebody to talk to about spiritual warfare for a while because I don't understand it.

And so I'm really happy you're here.

You're an expert on it.

And I can't wait, man, just I can't wait to get your life story and all the other rabbit holes are going to go down.

So it truly is my honor.

So thank you for being here.

I appreciate it.

But everybody starts off with an introduction.

Dr.

Dan Schneider, adjunct professor of theology at Franciscan University of

Steubenville and member of the St.

John Henry Newman Research Center of Theology at the Merivale Institute in Birmingham, England.

Degree in business administration from Notre Dame, a master's degree in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, and a PhD in biblical studies from the Merivale Institute in Birmingham, England.

Former amateur boxer, U.S.

Army attack helicopter pilot, and Gulf War veteran, a Benedictine oblate who has been involved in teaching and evangelization in the Catholic Church for nearly 20 years.

Co-host of the podcast War College with Jesse Romero, worked for many years in the Catholic

Apostolate of Deliverance and Exorcism, and as a founding member of the

Libra Cristo, a movement in conjunction with Father Chad Rippinger.

An accomplished author in the field of spiritual warfare, your book, The Libre Cristo Method, a field manual for spiritual combat, assisted in the official biography of Father Gabriel Amarth,

author of another book coming out soon, Spiritual Warfare Q ⁇ A.

Priests and Laity.

Coming out in August provides practical guidelines for today's Catholics seeking to become better soldiers for Christ.

And you've been a part of approximately 500 exorcisms.

Yeah, it's hard to keep track, but yeah, it's been several hundred I've been involved with for a while.

Caseloads come and go, as you know, sometimes you'll go months without anything and then you might do three or four cases a week or a year or so.

So yeah,

yeah.

Man,

what is the

I mean, how do these pop up on your radar?

Well, we work the way we work,

we work in conjunction with a local bishop bishop and

the mandated exorcist.

So this is somebody that the bishop has appointed.

And so we're working kind of within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

So and then, you know, depending on your diocese, you know, you'll get sometimes three to five inquiries a week for cases, depending on where you're at, how big your diocese is.

But some dioceses are getting more.

Father Ripper, I don't know, he's probably getting

a thousand a week or something, maybe not, maybe a 100,000.

1,000 a week?

Just inquiries, yeah.

I mean, it's something ridiculous, the number of emails they get a day, 150 emails a day or something, of just coming in asking.

It's like 360,000 emails.

Maybe not that many.

Maybe it's a year.

Yeah, but it's more like 100, well, what do you figure?

35,000 is 100 a day or something, 150 a day.

I mean, inquiries, people are asking.

And this is people all over the charts.

I mean, they're not all afflicted.

A lot of people are just

mental health and spiritual health that they don't really need to see an exorcist you know but i mean that's just it's just interesting to me because

i mean it would take a lot for me to

to make a call and say i i'm pretty sure i have a possessed friend family member son daughter wife what you know whatever i mean it's

it's not out there for you you know what i mean because you're in it but i mean a lot of people that's that's that's out there to know that, that, or to think that you have a possessed loved one.

When you're suffering, yeah, I mean,

you'll try to find,

you know, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, you know, and so, and when somebody's suffering and they're suffering affliction,

then they're going to reach out to anyone that they think can help them, you know, and

so the hard part is ferreting out legitimate cases and,

you know, people just need they just need to get back go to confession get their spiritual lives or physical lives back in order you know so not everybody in the introduction to my book father ripper crew wrote some statistics the last year they kept statistics

um it's probably been about eight years um but they had 600 cases that year of that that were accepted that had potential for probably you know to move um through the process and so of that 600 only three were actual possession So you can, then,

you know,

there's the number of actual possessions that are asking for help.

And I think there's a lot of uncontested possessions out there as well.

I mean, look at Hollywood, look at Washington, D.C., you know.

Everything.

Yeah.

So, I mean, these are contested possessions, if you will.

But even then, out of 600, only three.

So it's a fraction of a percent of actual possession.

And so our system is designed to help people to achieve self-liberation and only in extreme.

You don't send

SEAL Team Six Six or you guys, you know, SEALs in every single time.

You kind of work your way through diplomatically until you go to the extreme cases of, you know, for what you guys did.

So same thing in spiritual combat.

So if we can get people to self-liberate,

returning to the sacraments, et cetera.

So we've got a process in place for that.

And also they found

a lot of those, you know, we have to ferret out psychological.

And a lot of people will just start praying over people

and it's just psychological.

And you actually do more damage than good by praying over somebody who just needs to see

their mental health in order.

So you start praying over somebody that's convinced they're possessed and they're not, the demon's going to stand right over the shoulder and say, see, even Jesus can't help you.

So that's the danger of it.

So there has to be a system of

how to differentiate between the real cases of possession and the psychological affliction.

Wow.

I mean, when you talk about going back to the sacraments and trying to get people to

heal themselves, I mean, this is, I grew up Catholic and I kind of lost it

in the SEAL teams.

Didn't kind of lost it.

I lost it

until about two years ago when I had a profound experience.

And

so I started looking into,

I just like to learn.

you know and and and um

and uh so so now i'm i'm drawn back to the catholic church i I go every once in a while.

And

we say a Bible study at the house.

But one of the things that I just never really understood, and

the Catholics, I think, are the only ones that do this, is confession.

And so

I've asked a handful of priests, you know, why do I need to go to confession?

But

it still doesn't register to me.

Why do I need to confess my sins to a priest?

Why can't I just confess him myself?

Yeah.

I guess what I'm asking is,

why do I need a priest

in the middle of me and Christ?

Yeah.

He's not in the middle.

I mean, in Catholic theology, the priest stands in persona Christi, in the person of Christ.

Whoever listens to you listens to me,

Jesus says.

whose sins you forgive or forgiven, whose sins you

hold bound or

are bound.

And in fact, in John's Gospel, when he says, who sins you forgive or forgiven, whose sins you bind,

have already been bound, have already been forgiven.

He uses a past perfect tense in the Greek.

So the churches, particularly the hierarchy, the priests of the church, are the instruments of Christ on earth.

And that bears out in our experience working with cases of possession.

Father Gabriel the Morth, whose book that I did, the developmental editing, it was written in Italian and translated in English by an English speaker that was more Italian by this point than he was English.

So I had to help clean it up and got to know the life of this.

He's a famous exorcist.

He was at a time in the 80s when it was not cool to believe in the devil.

You know, kind of a progressive liberalism had taken over academia, had taken over much in the church, not unlike

some of the Main Street Protestant order denominations as well.

The devil was just

a spiritual embodiment of the evil that's in all of us.

He's not personal, you know.

And so

I think we had at that time maybe

12 to 17 exorcists in the United States alone, you know, only in the United States.

Italy had like 20.

So there weren't many.

And so Father Gabriel Lamourth, he's got several books, are really good books.

I mean, his books are An Exorcist Tells His Story.

So

he's reportedly done a million exorcisms, and he would do six to eight a day for years.

And here's what he said.

He said that one good confession is worth 100 exorcisms.

Because confession takes the soul back, right?

Because

the demon, technically speaking, only possesses the body.

He doesn't possess the soul.

The soul, you know, as Christians, we always have the de profundus privilege.

Psalm 130, out of the depths I cry unto you, O Lord.

We can always cry out.

So we have a certain sovereignty.

We are philosophically call it

sui uris.

We have our own authority over ourselves, and we have a sovereignty to choose or deny Christ, you know, and live by our own decisions.

So the demon ultimately, even in cases of possession, there's been some enmeshment with the demon and the person, but ultimately what he possesses is the body, technically.

And so confession, he says, strips souls from the demon.

Right.

I mean, I'm sorry, possession, I mean, confession strips souls from the demon, and exorcism just takes their bodies back.

I mean, you can be in a state of mortal sin and not be possessed, and or be liberated and continuing state of mortal sin, or you can be in a state of grace and be possessed.

Emily Rose is a case of that.

I mean,

but

so through my studies and discussions and stuff, you know, outside of the Catholic Church with Christianity, I mean,

when Jesus died on the cross, wasn't that that was for forgiveness for all of our sins?

I mean, so, so kind of the way I,

and I'm not saying, oh, just live life however the hell you want.

I'm saying, you know, isn't, wasn't that the point of him dying on the cross was for, to forgive us for our sins?

Yes.

And so if all of our sins have already been forgiven before we even commit them, then why do we need to go to confession?

Yeah,

because he instituted, particularly at the Last Supper, he instituted the priesthood.

You know, when he said, again, in

John or Luke chapter 10, when he says, whoever listens to you listens to me, right?

He's not talking to Susan from Parish Council and

some Karen, you know, Karen the Charismatic.

He's talking to the apostles.

And he's talking to the 72 who, if you look at the 72 in Luke chapter 10, for example, every single one of those 72 were bishops of an early church,

first diocese, or you would say, the early seas, Damascus, Cilicia, these other places in that part of the world as Christianity spread.

And so we see a movement, the Catholic Church traces,

every bishop can trace his authority back to one of the apostles.

And so it's that authority.

I mean, we can get into the...

into the Greek if you want, what it means.

I just presented an academic paper on this in London last year, on what it means to be sent apostolos, where we get the word apostles.

I mean, I can just tell you in session,

demon looks at me.

I got a PhD.

I read the scriptures in Greek.

I muddle through Hebrew.

My Latin is pretty good.

And I'm a meat sack.

I'm nothing.

I'm a non-threat.

But he can tell you,

I'll sit down and prepare the cases before the priest comes in, the exorcist comes in and pray.

And

the demon through the person will say, the bishop's not in town today, is he?

Wow.

You got a different exorcist today, don't you?

It's not what you know, it's how you know it.

And so and so the demon,

I can tell you the day that it purified this for me.

I was assisting in a session.

When I assist, as a layman, the priest does the work.

I'm there to protect the exorcist.

I'm basically hando for the exorcist.

I'm just protecting the job of the lay people are to pray and to protect the exorcist.

So the exorcist is praying and the demon was was uh uh you know being resistant and the guy that i was training with kyle clement father ritbicker's right-hand man says hey go grab that picture grab the picture of the bishop

probably not somebody i would be politically aligned with you know he probably probably not somebody you'd have on your show

you know

i hold the picture up The priest says, I command you to look at the prince of the apostles in this diocese.

I command you to look at the face of an apostle.

And the minute the demon sees the picture of the local bishop, begins to manifest.

Wow.

Just seeing the picture.

There's times we've had,

they're walking through a convent where they're doing the exorcism, and the person, as they're walking back to the room, they would stop and kind of get a little edgy.

And

there's a chalkboard there, you know.

And then they move the chalkboard and it's the picture of the bishop back there.

So it's not the person.

It's It's not a charism.

It's the office.

It's the office.

And so when Christ sent the 12,

in Luke chapter 9, for example,

he says, and Jesus sent them with power and authority.

Those are two different things.

That's the difference between a developed Catholic theology and say, you know, a modern theology or a Protestant theology.

Power is not the same as authority.

Power is the ability to affect change.

Authority is the right to command.

I have the power if I want.

If you leave and you guys aren't here, I could switch stuff around.

I can move it around.

I could paint.

I have that power, but I don't have the authority.

This is your place.

And authority comes from office.

And when Christ sent the 12, so.

So are you saying the office is the 12?

An office, the office of head of household, the office of bishop, the office of priest.

Authority goes with, it's bound with the office.

And not necessarily,

just as Jesus come, Jesus died for all.

But as St.

Paul says, I make up what is lacking.

He said, in my body, I make up, Colossians 1.24, I rejoice in my suffering, for in my body I make up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ's body, which is the church.

If Jesus did everything on the cross, what's lacking?

What could be lacking except for our participation?

But as Catholics, we believe in a unique priestly participation.

We separate out the sacerdotal priesthood of the ordained versus the universal priesthood that we have as baptized.

And the demon sees the difference.

This isn't just theology for me.

I've just seen it again and again in the field.

You know, I watch.

The lay people are pretty much non-entities in the room.

But he's looking and he sees the priest.

And as you bring two priests, it's even worse.

So let me ask this then.

You know,

things have happened in the Catholic Church.

There's some evil.

It just, it is what it is, you know.

And

so so let's say that you have a priest that,

I mean, I can't sugarcoat it, you know,

talking about kids stuff, you know what I mean, the molestation, stuff like that.

I mean, what happens if a priest that was involved in that

shows up at an exorcism?

Does the demon respect that priest or is that priest on their side?

He's not on their side.

He's compromised.

He's Bergdahl.

Do they know that?

Oh, yeah.

The demons snow.

There's only one time in session that I saw the demon not

obey the command of the exorcist.

Only once.

And that same session is the only time that

I ever hit the radar screen.

Only once.

And he started calling out team members and calling out, mocking us and mocking the exorcist.

And

I find out a year later he was morally compromised.

Wow.

Wow.

Because the demon knows that.

This is another true story.

There was

an act.

Father Ripper was in session, and there was another priest.

and the demon starts calling the priest sins out

he starts calling him out and so they stop the session go outside hey do you want to go to confession yeah the second the trainee goes to confession they go back into the session starts session and then exorcist says who is this guy and the demon looks at him

didn't know him

He knows us from our sins.

That's how he knows us.

That's how we break pattern.

That's how we have have a camo break in pattern.

It's the little shiny stuff.

That's why we wear subdued ranks in the field as officers.

All of us wear subdued ranks.

When you break the pattern, that's what sees us.

What's the pattern break?

Sin,

anything inconsistent with indelible mark of baptism, these are pattern breaks.

So when a priest is compromised, it's, you knew Bergdahl.

Remember him?

Yeah.

The one that

walked out.

That's when a priest is morally compromised, they burged all that guy.

You know what they did to that guy.

Wow.

He came back with his head shaved, right?

You know what that means.

So when a priest is compromised morally,

it's well, watch Nefarious.

There's a scene with a priest there wearing a rainbow stole.

And it's a pretty interesting scene.

The way they portray the demon reacting to the priest instantly reacts in fear and defensiveness.

But once he realizes who this guy is, he dismisses him.

So it's the same thing.

So if a priest is morally compromised, and I've seen it, I mean, I've had cases of priest

possession.

And

so, yeah, he's going to constantly whittle away.

Man.

But if you're going to, but you think about it, and I'm not going to just pump up the Marines, but the Marines are kind of special.

As you know, you work with Marines, you know, they're like the Rangers.

You know, I was with the Rangers briefly, and they're unique guys, you know.

But if you want to take down the Marines, one of the greatest fighting forces, arguably, of course, you know, you guys and all that, but the cavalry, I've got them.

Totally different.

They're totally different.

Marines would kick our ass.

But But they're way too many of them.

There's too many of them.

They love doing that.

They love it.

And, you know, they love crayons.

You know what I mean?

They're just fantastic guys.

You know, I just pick on the crayon.

I don't want to get any Marines mad at me.

But if you want to take down the Marines, you're not going to beat them one-on-one.

You know what I mean?

What do you do?

You go from the top.

You get politically minded.

You purge them of

warriors, of the officer ranks of warriors.

Leadership.

You purge the leadership.

You put politically minded men in charge of the leadership or women.

You put people that are favorable to the current narrative.

You infiltrate from the top down, right?

And then you just little by little, you just know who wants to join that Marine Corps.

Look what happened when Trump was, when he was elected, before he even was sworn in,

enlistment spiked the 30 days after, because men like us that have a warrior soul, you know,

they don't want to, I don't want to go there and...

and share a bathroom with some tranny.

And so that's how you take down one of the greatest fighting forces in the modern world is infiltrate them from within.

So why would that technique not work with an institution like the Catholic Church?

That's interesting.

I know, I just never thought of it like that.

Yeah, but well, thank you.

We're going to dive a lot more into that.

A couple more things.

We jumped into it kind of quick, right?

Yeah,

I told you, I'm excited.

I want to, you know, and I'm going to watch that movie, but there's not

a whole lot that terrifies me in this world.

But

spiritual warfare, demons, ghosts,

I get this rule: If you can't kill it, then don't fuck with it.

And I hate watching the exorcist movies because it scares the shit out of me.

But I'm going to watch it tonight.

Nefarious is good because it's not a slasher.

Father Rippiger was once working with somebody in Hollywood and he asked them, why don't you really portray what it's really like in exorcism?

And this producer

replied to him, if we did, it would terrify people.

It would be too scary.

You know, they wouldn't want to watch it.

But nefarious is you begin to see what the enemy, how he thinks, because these guys, admittedly, and they told me,

I presented with them at a conference and did a panel session with them.

I met the actor.

I think his name is Sean Patrick.

I forget his name.

He's a good guy.

He's a Jitsu guy.

And they watched hours of Father Rippaker's videos to get...

to understand the diabolic psychology.

You know, when you're dealing with your enemy, as you did,

you have to understand the way they think, their patterns, how they operate.

We're dealing with an apex predator, with somebody who doesn't sleep, with somebody who doesn't have a body.

This isn't like the predator.

If it bleeds, we can kill it.

This doesn't bleed.

But there are certain ways that you can beat them.

You know, we fight an ancient enemy and the ancient weapons are best.

And so going to the ancient weapons is the only way you can beat them.

But the problem is he takes guys like us, and I had to learn this lesson.

We're so used to carrying...

world weapons, good weapons, but those don't work.

You have to fight with spiritual battle, spiritual weapons.

And that's what we try to do is, and our apostle is try to teach people how to fight back with the spiritual weapons.

You know,

do you know Father Dan Rehill?

Yeah, I just had Master there today and got to spend a little time with him.

Man, I love that guy.

But I met him here, I don't know, maybe about a year ago and interviewed him.

We've become friends since then.

But, you know, I remember when he walked in here, he said, hey, you know,

weird things happen when I talk about this on camera.

And he's like, so don't be, don't be weirded out if the cameras go out or we have some technical difficulties or whatever.

I just, like I said, it's just hard for me to wrap my head around it.

And

sure as shit,

we got into the interview.

And as soon as he brought up Jesus, the AC started just whooshing.

And I was like, my whole team was like, okay, wow.

Yeah, we've seen that, you know, sometimes when we're doing spiritual warfare conferences and that, the demons still love water, you know, just like the Gerrisian demoniac going down from the human to the lower life form of the pig into the water.

They love water because you can transmute through it very quickly, you know, and the way that they can operate.

And so there's always, a lot of times you go to a parish and they're not really ready and roofs leaking, toilets back up.

You know, there's always, not always, sometimes there are, but it's just learning, again, the demons, the angels go where they're asked, the demons go where they're not resisted.

And so learning the power of prayer, I think it was Blaise Pascal said that God instituted prayer to bestow on man the great dignity of being causes, that we pray to be, we're causal of God's action, you know, like St.

Paul says, making up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ's body at the church.

Now, if Christ said from the cross, it is finished, what could be lacking?

Our participation in the bringing about of the gospel.

And again, in Catholic theology, we'll separate the priesthood from the laity, but we're all called to do that, each in our own way according to our vocation, you know.

Wow.

Couple things here.

Please.

So

couple gifts.

One,

vigilantly gummy bears, legal in all 50 states.

I'm not going to pee hot when I have some of these.

You'll be good.

You'll pass the next drug, Cuspect.

I promise.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you.

And then I got a really good friend.

His name's Don Razzo.

He's a Navy SEAL.

I need to meet him.

I've heard good things about him.

Oh, man.

You haven't met him?

Uh-uh.

So he does these rosaries and he's given them, he's given me quite a few of them.

And so I too carry a rosary everywhere I go.

Outstanding.

And so.

Well, thank him for me.

I will.

Thank you.

I will.

Yeah, that's outstanding.

You can't have enough.

Yeah.

It's like, how many...

I have them everywhere.

My wife would ask me, like, how many handguns do you need?

Well, I mean, we need one in this room.

We need one in this room.

A lot.

No, i remember growing up as a kid i would you'd sit down in my grandpa's house and he'd say all right no pick that up bring it over here and then he'd yell at you if you didn't handle it safely and i was just little you know and so it's like like rosaries you got to have one in your reach at all times so thank you yeah you're welcome and then

one last thing before we get into it i've got a patreon account it's a subscription account we've built a an amazing community there.

They've been here with me since the beginning.

And so one of the things things that I offer the community is for them to ask each and every guest a question.

And so this is from Ava Evans.

Dr.

Snyder, thank you so much for your service.

Given your background and acts of service, what advice do you have for those battling spiritual warfare?

And how have you kept yourself grounded when enduring hardships and situations that may test your faith?

Yeah.

What was the first question?

The first question was, what advice do you have for those battling spiritual warfare?

Yeah, I think being prayerful, growing in virtue,

you know,

the big thing is growing in holiness and purity of thought, word, and deed.

What attracts a demon to us is pattern breaks, anything inconsistent with the indelible mark of baptism, pattern breaks.

But

growing in holiness of thought, word, and deed, that's the big one.

In terms of endurance, I had a buddy who was retired 06.

I forget what team he was.

Green Beret, he was a Green Beret, whatever.

I think he was, what group he was, I think he was fifth group.

But anyway, there was a Marine going through the Q course, and he kept asking him every week,

how do I get through this phase?

How do I get to this phase?

And so my buddy kind of got tired of trying to give him the cheaters on how to get through.

And he says, all right, if you want to get to the cue course, You got to do three things.

Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and keep walking.

You know, and I think the spiritual life is that way.

Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and keep walking.

Just keep praying, keep working, get your house in order, get your relationship with your husband.

You know,

husband and wife need to get the relationship, get that in the right order.

Husband needs to be, he needs to be the door kicker, you know, head of the household, getting that in order, and then being prayerful and learning to endure when the suffering comes.

So before we get into your life story, I was hoping that you could lead us in prayer.

Okay.

Name of the the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him.

We humbly pray.

And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

Our Lady of victory, pray for for us.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

I just want to add one thing real quick.

You know,

Adam Banks, who used to work here, is the one that puts you on my radar, and his mother is going through some really tough times, and so is he right now.

And so I just want to pray for him.

And I just hope that this interview

brings hope, enlightens, brings people to Christ.

And that this interview just reaches far and wide and helps everybody who's willing to listen.

Amen.

Lord, heal Adam's mom.

She sounds like a good woman.

Amen.

But thank you for that.

Thank you.

So let's...

I did it in the vernacular.

I didn't do it in Latin, so I don't want to freak anybody out right on.

But so let's get into your life story.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in the south end of Columbus, Ohio, kind of a blue-collar area.

Third generation.

You know, we've been in that.

I was the black sheep that left and never came back.

And,

you know, kind of a blue-collar working area, tough neighborhood.

Right and wrong was very clear.

My dad's from there.

My mom is from southern Ohio, like J.D.

Vance, Hillbilly Country, Southern Ohio.

Good people, salt of the earth people.

And my dad was a union electrician.

All my uncles, cousins, my grandpa, they were all electricians or linemen.

And my brother and my sister and I were the first to go to college.

He sacrificed to put us through Catholic school and pushed us.

And

so I had a really kind of a classic childhood, you know, old neighborhood, you know.

But also

it was a tough neighborhood, you know.

It didn't take any nonsense from anybody.

It wasn't suburban America.

We were about a mile from downtown Columbus.

You didn't go this far in this area.

You didn't go this far.

They didn't come into our neighborhood.

We didn't go into theirs.

You had a lot of mutual respect, but

you learned to get a little street smart and you learned to,

a bad guy is a bad guy and a good guy is a good guy.

And you don't judge people by the outside.

You judge them by the kind of character they have.

But

it was a really blessed.

Looking back now

is a great childhood.

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And the truth is, there's a double standard here in America.

You see time and time again, people defending themselves, defending their family.

and then the judicial system goes after them.

It's a double standard.

And if you don't believe me, check out episode number three with Don Bradley.

That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

Because it's not just about what you did, believe it or not, it's how the legal system interprets it.

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Did you grow up Catholic?

I did.

Did it sink in at a young age?

No.

No?

No, I mean, you know, I hear these guys and, you know, they have these wild stories and 20 years they leave the church or whatever.

I never miss Mass.

I think I missed once in Iraq.

I even served Mass.

You've never missed, you've missed one in Iraq.

One in Iraq.

And one time, I think as a kid, I was staying with a friend and we were traveling or something.

His parents didn't take us when I was young.

So I've never missed Mass.

So it does, it did sink in.

And from that level, it sunk in.

I mean,

conversions, not everybody has these St.

Paul conversions.

Some of us, God hits us, you know, most of us, you know.

What's a St.

Paul conversion?

You know, St.

Paul is struck blind, knocked off his horse, you know,

and Paul on his road to Damascus, he tells of his story when he was on his, and actually the Apostles, he's riding to Damascus.

He's persecuting Christians.

He gets knocked off the church, off his horse, and

he gets struck blind, and Jesus says to him, Paul, Paul.

Why are you persecuting me?

Which is interesting, by the way, because

he's not persecuting Christ.

He's persecuting the church, you know, and the body.

The church is the body of Christ.

So, so he's struck blind and has this instant, you know,

infusion of the revelation and becomes an apostle,

called to be an apostle, as he says elsewhere.

And so, instant conversion and straight into it.

But, you know, that's those are rare.

Most of us, you know, I was just reading, I was thinking about you too.

I was kind of praying for you and praying for this week.

And I was reading

Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, you know, I shall not want.

I shall not what?

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Want.

Want.

Like desire.

I shall not lack.

I shall not lack.

Okay.

Let me see.

I hate to misquote it.

So let me make sure I get it right.

If you don't mind.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You've probably heard this before.

And if you don't know where to start in the scriptures,

to start with the Psalms or the Proverbs, when I first started having deepening conversion, there's 31

Proverbs.

Just read one a day, one for each day of the month.

Yeah, just pick up the Proverbs.

It's just old wisdom, you know.

It just kind of keeps you grounded.

You know, when I started, you know, learning to overcome passions and emotions, you know, just dealing with life, just sitting down every morning and reading the Psalm of the day.

So today's, what, the seventh or the eighth, read the eighth?

I mean, sorry, the proverb of the day.

But the Psalms are another good one.

The Lord is my shepherd.

There is nothing I lack.

In green pastures, he lets me.

You let me graze to safe waters, you lead me.

You set a table before me while my enemies watch.

And then verse 6, Psalm 23, only goodness and love will, sometimes it says, follow me.

Or this one says, pursue me, all the days of my life.

And sometimes we look at that and we'll be like, so somehow God was over here, kind of like a shadow, you know.

But the word, the Greek word here

means to

You've ever chased an enemy down in combat and you're on a, you're, I mean, you're on a dead run to catch this guy.

That's the word.

It's a combative term.

It's a military term.

He hotly pursues me.

We are on hot pursuit

all the days of my life.

And it's not just goodness and love.

That sounds really sugary and nice.

It's mercy.

The Greek word is mercy.

The Hebrew word is hased, which means God's covenant faithfulness.

Regardless of how unfaithful we've been.

back in the CIA days, back in the cavalry days, no matter how unfaithful we've been to the vows that we made through our baptism baptism and through

our faith journey,

his covenant fidelity in the form of mercy doesn't just follow us quietly like a shadow.

It pursues us hotly like a warrior.

When God parted the sea and destroyed the army

of the Egyptians, Moses had even freaking out.

And what did he, he just cries out and writes this poem.

God is a warrior.

You know, warrior is his name.

I mean, that's the warrior, the hound of heaven that's pursuing you and pursuing me.

You know, and so sometimes that hound of heaven overcomes you immediately and it's just their lives change.

But for the rest of us, little slower guys like you and me, it's just a little process.

You look back and, because if you hit us all at once, boom, I know how to hide.

I know how to sneak into the woodline.

You won't see me again.

I'll fly nap at the earth and I'll be gone.

I'll fire a couple of flachette rounds.

I'm going to boogie out of here, put on the MVGs and you won't see me for a long time.

So

he has to hound us and slowly overcome us, you know, some of us.

So yeah, so my conversion was over time.

So it sunk into the extent of, yeah, we never miss Mass, ever.

You know, pray the Rosary, don't miss Mass.

But it wasn't until later life experiences that I start to really, did it wake up, you know, and become personal.

And it became

something real.

You know, we can get into that later.

Why do we pray the rosary?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I can just tell you, let me give you.

Other than just pray.

It's meditating.

There's multiple effects, but it's meditating on the life of Christ, purifying the mind,

focusing the mind.

It's like saying, why does a fight?

I was a fighter.

Why does a fighter run three miles?

Why didn't he just spar?

I just heard there was a heavyweight fighter that

never ran.

Was it?

I forget who it it was.

I was just talking to somebody about this fighter.

He never ran.

He just sparred for like eight hours a day.

That's rare.

Most guys have to run because it gives you endurance.

It helps gives you the gas in the gas tank.

And so the rosary,

it's a way to force the mind and the body to engage.

And when the body is distracted

through the words, the prayers, the mind starts a free to begin to meditate on the mystery.

So today's, each day has its own mystery.

Today's Tuesday, the sorrowful mystery.

So you're going into the mysteries of Christ's suffering.

The first sorrowful mystery is the agony of the garden.

So you start to put your mind upon the agony in the garden, placing yourself, picturing yourself there,

meditating on the scene.

So you're praying the words, right?

of the Hail Mary during the 10 Hail Marys, but your mind is meditating

on those mysteries.

But I can tell you,

again, our experience, my experience in spiritual combat,

I used to think the rosary was just something that little Latina ladies, Italian ladies, this was not for men, you know.

And

this is a weapon.

Padre Pio, Saint Padre Pio, when he would refer to his rosary, he was a stigmatist, which means he got the marks of Christ on his body.

Saint of the church, he says, Give me my weapon.

He's talking about his rosary.

In session,

when

the priest has to kind of, oftentimes in the bad cases, we'll have to have a psychologist there or someone, the therapist, the counselor there to make sure the priest isn't pushing the human threshold either, how much they can endure.

And so when it's time to shut down the session, the priest stops.

He looks at the team.

The team has to stop praying the rosary because the rosary, it's like,

I'm going to date myself, but it's like the M60.

You know, it's a saw.

It's a semi-automatic weapon that's just putting rounds down range.

You know,

like at Ranger Honor, you guys did life fires back in the day, you know, you had the mud, the mud pit, you had to go under the barbed wire, and they would shoot live rounds over top of you.

And that's what the rosary is in combat.

Yeah.

And so I can't explain, I can give you the theological reasons, but in spiritual combat,

this is a weapon.

And so, but interiorly, it helps you purify your memories.

You know, all these guys in this room, and I'm going to find something really cool to add here, something helicopter related, but we all have our memories, and all those memories, some of of those need to be purified.

And so, meditation

helps to purify our memories by putting our minds onto the words and deeds of Christ.

And it helps to sanctify our vision.

We start to see the world, to see our own history, our own mistakes through the love, the mercy,

the power of Christ.

Who was Padre Piel?

He was an Italian saint.

I think he died in the 60s.

He was a Franciscan friar, a stigmatist, meaning so very few, but some of the saints will get the marks of Christ on their body.

Like St.

Paul might have been.

St.

Paul says, I don't know if it's in Galatians.

He says, I bear the marks of Christ on my body.

He may have been a stigmatist.

Sometimes they'll get crowned, like St.

Rita got one in here on her head, one of the crown of thorns.

Padre Pio had the crown, that had the thorns in his, I mean, wounds in his hands, nail holes.

And I can just tell you anecdotally:

you know, sometimes in session, the priest will ask me, okay,

all right, you're the cav guy.

Recon by fire.

He doesn't know recon by fire.

You know, recon by fire, right?

That's one of our tactics.

It's one of the stupider things that cavalry shouts do.

You go until they shoot at you.

You see the muzzle blast, so you know where to shoot back, you know.

So

on several occasions, the priest will say, hey,

go ahead and light it up.

And so I'll get images.

And some, you know, demons have personalities, you know.

And so this one in particular I will show the video of Padre Pio saying Mass or holding up his hands with a stigmata wrapped in the bloody cloth giving the blessing instantly

from his hands oh yeah it bled non-stop somebody asked him did father does it hurt he says it doesn't tickle it's a bleeding wound you know so this is this is this is the colossians 1 24 at its deepest you know i rejoice in my suffering so what does that what does that mean when somebody has that

um

It's a mystical union with Christ.

It's a deep mystical union that you're sharing in his suffering in a deep mystical way.

This is the deep waters of

Christianity is sharing in the suffering of Christ.

Anyone who has suffered understands this to some extent, you know.

Even like deeper than that, what does it mean to share the suffering of Christ?

In this case, it's bodily.

It's sharing in his wounds.

It's a mystical gift given,

and it hurts to those.

It's very rare, but it shows someone who has progressed so deeply in holiness.

I mean, they would, he told story.

I mean, this is a guy that lived in

our lifetime, if not our parents, for sure.

And they would hear

his friars report.

that he physically battled this, battled the devil.

They would hear lashes taking place and the room getting wrecked.

And so there are some saints that go deep.

You and I, we're just hammering eggers, we're just grinding it out, but the truly holy, and I know some, particularly consecrated women, holy, holy women.

You've seen it.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I've never seen the stigmata, no, but I've seen

holiness and purity like you, like you can't imagine.

That's what battles.

Because the coin of the realm in spiritual warfare, the coin of the realm is blood and purity, sexual purity in particular.

These are some of of the weapons that we battle with.

Sexual purity.

Sexual purity.

What is that?

Well, consecrated virginity is one.

And I've been in session

and the demon is there and he's bound.

And he sees the priest.

The priest is, he's got the belt, you know, in Spanish, the sintoron.

You know what I mean?

He's the guy that's going to bring the pain.

But I've been in session where there's been religious sisters or, you know, consecrated sisters.

He doesn't register us.

He doesn't see the lay people.

We're just there.

We're just muddled in the background.

Unless you've got some, once in a while, he'll call one out.

But for the most part, but I've been in session where there's been a consecrated virgin in the session.

And

the demon looks at her with this look in his eye like,

what are you going to do with that?

You know, that scene, what was it?

When there's a torture, it was an old 70s movie.

What was the name of that movie?

And

there's a torture scene with a dentist, and he kept asking him, is it safe?

Dennis Hoffman movie.

I forget the name of it.

Is it safe?

Is it safe?

The demon's looking at him.

He's like strapped to a table.

And he knows that there's something powerful there.

And it's the consecrated virginity.

But there's something iconic.

There's something mystical about it.

But

when the demon has sensitivities,

to various saints of the church, again, it's hard to people to understand unless you see it.

But God always sends help from the mystical body.

And so when the demon shows a reactivity, a sensitivity to a mystic, I mean, to a stigmatist,

it's largely because these are people that defeated Satan in the flesh.

I mean, they mortified their flesh so much so that they become like Christ.

And it's usually a call.

If Faju Pio shows up, and he shows up often, it's a call for the individual.

You want to beat this demon?

You need to pick up your cross.

You need to use the cross as a weapon.

That's the way the early church fathers saw the cross.

You know, in the first century, first two centuries, it wasn't this sugary Jesus, skinny gene Jesus who hair smells like Christian Dior and he's got a kind of a cool beard.

Christ is a warrior, you know, Hippolytus of Rome.

One,

I did my doctoral thesis partly on this guy, but he was born in 150, 170.

He was a disciple of a disciple of John the Apostle himself.

He said the cross is a war memorial, a tropion, it says.

The word trophy, you see some trophies in here.

Trophy, the Greek word tropa'o means to turn.

So a trophy is where we get the word trophy.

In the ancient battlefield, you know, I was a conventional fighter.

You were a spook, right?

So your view of the battlefield is different than mine.

But

in a tank battle or heavy infantry, an ancient battle, where you've had, you know, line of men

in front of the line of just layers and layers.

At one point, one side turns.

One guy says, I'm done.

I'm not dying for this cause.

And he'll turn, tropa'o.

And at that, once that guy turns, then the next guy turns, the next guy turns, the ranks break.

And this is when the cavalry came in.

That's why we have longer sabers than the infantry because they could slash down from higher above, you know, with longer sabers.

And that's when the slaughter began.

But that point on the battlefield, was sacred to the ancient warriors, the ancient mindset, to the Romans, to the Greeks.

That point of tropa'o, that turning, they would put a cross, ironically, they would take a T, the Greek T, the tau, and they would drape over it the curist, which is the body armor.

They would put a helmet.

They would take the weapons that the enemy had, and they would put it in that spot, and that's how it became sacred.

It became a war, well, we hear the word war memorial in English.

Hippolytus of Rome says that the cross of Christ is a war, it's a tropion, it's a war memorial.

This is where Christ cut off the head head of the demon Goliath.

So, and you can look, I can give you multiple

second century, third century, fourth century.

This is the way the early church saw it.

They saw the cross as the vexilla.

This is, you know, you guys have the cool trident and you have, you know, your own guide on.

I have the cavalry with the horse and the lion, the first calf, our guide on, right?

Tertullian,

also second century.

The cross is the Christians'

vexilla.

It became the place, this is when

St.

Ambrose's late 300s

describes Helena, Constantine's mother, who found the relic of the true cross, saying that this is where Christ put the demon under the yoke.

And it sounds like funky.

It's like, oh, what is that?

But if you want to understand history, to be put under the yoke, when an enemy was captured, Once the battle was over, once the slaughter ended, then they took the captives and they would sell them into slavery.

They would strip them of all their weapons and armor down to their underwear.

They would set up a makeshift

post.

They would take two of the pilas,

the Romans used these long,

like 11-foot long,

really range weapons.

Primitive artillery.

You had primitive artillery with the range weapons, the spears, and also slingshots.

And so they would take three of the pila and they would make it, they would put it about four, they would make a U-shape into the ground.

And then the conquering general they would put him in a makeshift throne and all his regalia, and he would sit there surrounded with his primary officers, and the enemy would line up bound in chains, and they would

mitere sub ugum is the Latin.

They submitted them, they sent them beneath the yoke, and they would bow in homage.

This was the greatest disgrace to an ancient warrior, especially to the ancient Romans.

This is the imagery that the ancient church used on the victory of Christ on the cross, you know, that he put the devil under the yoke.

you know, and so and so I don't know how we got on this topic, but

God is a warrior, you know, and you see this in combat.

I see this in spiritual combat again and again and again.

The victory is his, it's not ours, you know.

It's not my gift.

It's not charism.

It goes by authority and it goes through the power of Jesus Christ and his church.

Why did you, when did you join the military?

So I came from a military family.

My dad was an Air Force NCO.

You know, he told me two things.

You got, you know, more,

he sacrificed so we could go to Catholic school.

I never went to public school, Catholic school my whole life.

And he was an he was an Air Force NCO.

My brother went to the Naval Academy.

I have a nephew just getting out of the Navy.

He was in a sub.

His personality is the Navy sub-type, kind of stereotypical Navy sub-guy.

Like, good.

See you in six months.

Yeah.

So, so we're military family.

And

so for blue-collar guys, it was a good way to pay for college.

I was a good student, and

so my brother went to the academy.

I looked at West Point, but I turned down West Point to go, took the ROTC scholarship at Notre Dame.

And providentially, it just kind of worked out.

Actually, my congressman gave me a appointment to the Naval Academy.

And I'm just not a Navy guy.

I actually was honest.

I used to get seasick.

I would get sick on a swing.

I had motion sickness really bad.

You never believe it that I was a helicopter pilot.

I used to get motion sick.

So I put down uh I got seasick once and I think that's what that's what got me thank goodness not sent to the naval academy and he gave me the appointment um so my my congressman appointed me to the naval academy i got waitlisted and then i got into west point and then and then the weekend before beast barracks i get a call from west point saying hey we got you an internal accommodation you know commandant's appointment you got to be here monday and i said well i need to talk to my dad He said, no, you got to let us know right now.

And I said, well, if you got to know right now, the answer is no.

And so I already had a scholarship for Notre Dame.

I had a full ride.

So for a Catholic kid from a blue-collar neighborhood,

it was West Point or Notre Dame.

There's not much better than that.

Unless you're playing football at Ohio State or something, you know.

But

I can't sing or dance.

So military was.

So you

went through school.

joined the Army, became a helicopter pilot, deployed to the Gulf War.

Right.

What was your experience like in the Gulf War?

You know, it was,

well, first I went through RTC and I wanted,

I mean,

I wanted Ranger all the way.

That was my life's goal.

And the one thing that I wanted, I could accomplish pretty much anything I wanted to, you know.

But I mean, I maxed the national Latin exam, you know, aced the test almost.

I think I missed two questions.

I mean, I was a good student.

So I wanted Ranger.

And then I went through, the cadets go through what's called advanced camp.

It's kind of like basic training, but it's a little, it's a little nuanced from basic training.

And while I was there and started humping, I was like,

this kind of sucks.

You know, I kind of, this is my feet hurt, you know?

And I got, I got really little girl feet.

I got the worst feet, you know.

I just started to do jiu-jitsu and it's really toughening my feet up a little bit

because, man, I was like, man, this, this is not, I'm still gonna do it you know I want to be hua I want to be infantry I want to be ranger and then we had a we had a at a you know this uh display uh a Cobra a scout comes over and and and then a Cobra comes right behind it and and then he moved his head and the and the the the 20 millimeter Gatling gun he moves his head and he starts going like this with it I was like

you had me at 20 millimeter Gatling gun

and so so I got back, told the commander, hey, sir, I'm sorry.

I don't want to go infantry.

I want to go aviation because I finished top of my class.

And he says, dang it, we told you you needed a flight physical.

He should have told us they had to send me back, get a flight physical, make sure my eyes were good.

I had like 2015 in this eye and 2010 in that eye at the time.

You know,

I could see a lot farther than most people.

Now I have, now I'm like, Clark can't, you know, when he doesn't have, when he puts his glasses on, whatever.

So I put in for aviation and got it.

And right out of, I mean, mean, I graduated.

Right when I should have gone to Ranger, I had a chance to go my junior year, but they talked me out of it in college because I was afraid if I got hurt, then it would mess up my, it would delay my, my commissioning.

I was a beast at the time.

You know, I had a 42, resting heart rate of 42.

I was fighting every weekend.

I was traveling.

I was fighting

in the ring, fighting in bars, fighting anybody that wanted.

I was...

Fighting in bars?

Oh, anything.

I have more fights out of bars than in the ring.

I mean, in bars than in the ring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I was just, and I was in shape.

I was incredible shape.

And I cracked, before I left college, I had cracked my nose, every knuckle in my hand.

I mean, I just, you know, but I got little girl hands, you know, I don't have hands.

I don't have your big, like, fat hands.

You know, the guys that have sausage fingers, those are the guys are the knockout guys.

So, so, but I was in great shape, but I had to delay it.

Let's hear your best bar fight story.

Oh, um,

just put me on the spot.

I hate telling so many.

huh?

Can we pass on that and come back later?

Do I need you going to put me on the spot?

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

I was a catcher in baseball.

So the bench clearings are sometimes better than bar fights.

So I was a catcher.

And

when I was a kid, I'll tell you one story when I was a kid.

My kids still pick on me for this story, like, dad, is it too soon to talk about your bike?

And I'm like, yeah, it's a little too soon.

So I was, I think I was in like a fifth grade.

My dad got me this bike.

And

it was a cool bike.

It was a huffy,

I mean, and the commercial, like lightning came out the back.

You know, I mean, I love this bike, but it was Christmas in Ohio.

And so I can't ride this bike for till spring.

It's, I mean, it was one of those winters and you got a foot of snow every day and it's just, you can't go out.

And I didn't want to get it muddy.

So I finally get it out.

And

he,

so I'm riding out, I'm driving it around, and these three guys, and they're big guys, they're like teenagers, and I'm like 11, you know, I'm a kid.

And I think I was like fifth, fourth grade, and they come over, like, hey, man, it's a nice bike.

And one of them hits me, knocks me off, give me a couple kicks, they take my bike and take off, right?

And I take that bike back.

And they give me this piece of crap.

They leave this piece of crap bike, you know, and I go back.

And, you know, my dad, my dad was, he was the Gran Torino, you know.

And so,

and instead of them doing what we would do, go buy him a new bike,

he says, Why didn't you fight back?

There was three of them, and they were teenagers, you know.

He says, Son, you gotta learn how to fight back in this life, and you're gonna get taken advantage of.

You gotta learn how to fight, you gotta stand up and fight.

I don't want you ever to walk out here.

At least let them know they were in a fight.

I don't care if you take a butt kick and you fight.

So that was kind of the day I said, Well,

I'm gonna learn how to fight someday.

So that was the day I decided I was gonna be a fighter.

So after that, you know, I took my dad at his word.

All right.

And he was right.

And fast forward, I'll get to the fight story in a second.

But

about,

I think I was about your age.

I was maybe 40, 45.

My kids were getting a little older, a little mouthier, you know, a little harder.

And

I was, you know, a military guy, you know.

You can't shake it.

My dad was getting a little older.

And he was the original grand trainer.

After he died, died in 2016.

I can't tell how many people come up to me and said, Man, I loved your dad.

You always knew where you stood with him.

And he was the original Gran Torino.

I had, I mean, a dozen guys told me the exact same thing.

So I called my dad one day and I said, Hey, dad, yeah.

I just want to thank you.

He said, For what?

You grumpy, you know.

Always in a bad mood, but a great guy.

Just always slightly edgy.

Just want to thank you for being a hard ass.

He thought I was messing with him.

He goes, What?

What are you talking about?

I said, well, I'm raising kids.

I got boys now.

I know you raised me.

If you ever thought you were too tough on me,

you weren't.

And if my kids love me half as much as I love you,

I'll die a happy man.

He started crying.

I was like, yes, I got him.

I wasn't trying to, you know.

But I think he probably struggled with that, you know.

But that's the neighborhood we grew up in.

If you took any craft from anybody, you were just going to get, you were just going to take a beat down.

We would walk to school one way in uniform, looking dorky, and then we had the public, it's a classic neighborhood.

We'd walk this way to St.

Leo's Grade School, which is now a community that's Latin Mass Institute of Christ who came to taking over.

I went back to Mass theater last time I was home visiting my mom.

And I never cried, man.

I was bawling.

I was like, man, this is awesome.

So we'd walk to school this way, and then these rough public school kids would come this way.

And you had to make a decision every single day.

You're going to move out of the way, you're going to make him move every single day.

And I just reached that point, I'm not going to move anymore.

You're going to move for me.

I'll be polite, I'll be respectful, but you're going to move for me.

So,

anyway,

so a couple years later, I'm going into high school, and my dad sacrificed to go to this Catholic high school.

It's all male, college prep, you know.

And

playing, and so, well,

the next season, we're playing baseball.

Let me back up.

So, we're playing baseball, and my baseball coach tough guy um two guys elfline brothers their son the uh um

uh kenny's son plays in the nfl dad's a that his dad's a bricklayer mom's a pian they own a piano moving company a son all-state all-american line all-american linemen ohi state now in the nfl matthew elfline his dad and his uncle were my coaches First day of practice, I was fifth grade, my brother's in the eighth grade, and

they said, we need a catcher.

The catcher's hurt.

Who wants to be a catcher?

I was like, I'll be a catcher.

Because you get to gear up, you know.

No, no, no.

I need somebody else.

Nobody wants to be a catcher because you're always getting hit with the ball.

You get beat up.

I said, I'll be the catcher.

He said, no, no, no.

Find somebody else.

Nobody wanted to do it.

He said, all right, come here, Snyder.

You'd be the catcher.

I mean, this stuff didn't fit.

You know,

he sits me down.

After the first, you know, he sits me down and he says, no, listen,

they're going to try to hurt you.

Everybody leaves home plate dirty.

If they don't slide, they're going to try to hurt you.

So here's what you do.

You take a baseball in your right hand.

When you're coming into home, you make a fist and you put that into that glove and you put your feet under you.

And if they don't slide, you make them slide.

And you put that right there and you tag them.

It's a clean, it's legal, but if not, they're going to hurt you.

First inning comes,

the guy takes a bat.

He swings foul ball.

I pick it up.

I hand it to him.

I go back to the bench after that in the dugout.

Chews me out.

What the hell are you doing?

What?

I'm just being nice.

He says, you're not a nice guy.

You're not being nice.

You got to stand up and down 100 times, 500 times a day.

He's got to do it four times a day.

He can pick up his own bat.

If you want to help him, kick it at him.

Kick it out of your way.

So you're tough, tough guys.

So we're playing incoming freshman baseball.

And

so a guy comes in at home plate and he's going to take me out.

Now, this is...

St.

Charles preparatory versus Columbus de Sales, St.

Francis de Sales.

This is the Catholic League, Summer League, you know.

So this guy comes around third base and I'm a southender, you know.

And so he's coming hard, and he's going to take me out.

And he starts lowering his shoulder to take me out, but I'd already learned.

So I

made him slide.

I made him get dirty.

So the rest of the game, he's telling me, hey, man, I'm going to do this to you after the, I'm going to, you know, every, the rest of the game.

I was like, okay.

So after the game, the coaches were over there.

He comes over.

He does the classic,

you know, monologuing.

And so you're in the south end.

End.

You throw the first punch.

And it was actually a good punch.

I dropped a guy and

then he was out for a little bit.

And by the time he gets up, everybody came over.

My dad's like, son, what have you done?

You know, he goes to the principal, hey, what do we do?

What do you do in this situation?

The principal's like, this guy's a Vietnam veteran.

He says, I don't know.

We've never been in a situation before.

So, so it worked out.

They just kind of kept an eye on me.

They let me stay.

I ended up finishing top of mind class, I think, academically.

But yeah, I've learned, though,

avoiding bars and that sort of thing.

Even then, I was smart enough to, because you never know you're going to get hit from behind.

I tried to avoid them.

We've had plenty of skirmishes too.

But anyway.

All right.

Back to flying helicopters.

Okay.

So you did your first solo flight in 10 days.

Yeah, I just found out they don't do that anymore.

Yeah.

So you start on a Monday

and then the following Friday you do cylify.

The instructor gets out.

Back then we used Hueys as our, as our, and all of our instructors were civilians, but they were all Vietnam pilots.

And so I get there and again, I was always, I get, I'd get on a swing in the playground and get air sick, you know, see, motion sick.

So I get in a helicopter and man, I'm sick every day.

So after about three days,

the IP is like, hey, man, you got to see the flight surgeon.

So the flight surgeon says, I can give you three pills, but if you can't overcome it in three days,

you're going to get booted and you're going to go wherever the Army wants you, which means Signal Corps or,

you know, I could be a personnel clerk.

You don't want to do it.

I don't want to be a REMP, you know?

And so I took the pill the first day.

And I didn't get airshake, but man, I was woozy.

You know, I was just kind of my, you know, helicopter probably is, I mean, mean, it's all touch.

I mean, you're just, you're just slightly moving your fingers.

You're squeezing, you're working the pedals, you're just squeezing your toes.

You're not, it's not a heavy, it's not rough like you see on the movies, you know, no, no, no.

It's just, it's very, it's very soft touching.

And so I took a half a pill the next day, and it still kind of jacked me up.

I'm three days away from my solo flight.

And you got to pass yourself, you got to do three passes around the airfield.

And every couple years somebody crashes, and that's just the way it is, you know.

And so on the 30th I said, I'm not doing this and I'm not leaving without my wings.

So I threw it in the trash, got up there, and I said, Lord, if this is what you want from me, I'm not messing with me.

I'm not participating in this anymore.

And so I just got up there, didn't get sick, and I don't think I've been air sick since.

Wow.

It's just,

yeah.

So we solo flight, we had our solar flight that day.

I didn't know what I could hardly hover because my first two weeks, I was sick the whole time.

I mean,

my stick buddy was kind of like, hey, man, man, help me.

He said, help me out.

It was a disaster,

but I got through it, you know, got my solo wings.

And they don't do that anymore.

And I just heard, a good buddy of mine, his son, he wanted to join the military.

And I was like, all right, let me walk you through because this is like walking on to use Carlotta if you're not careful, you know.

So

he went into the 82nd.

And when he graduated, I was able, as a legacy, I was, you know, since I went to airborne school, I was able to pin his wings on.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah.

But they did tell us, if you give him blood wings, we're going to escort you off post.

And you know what blood wings are, right?

Oh, yeah.

Like, really?

I mean, it's a little teeny pin.

I had, you know, have you heard of Charlie Mike?

Charlie Mike was Lieutenant Colonel Leonard B.

Scott.

He wrote a book called Charlie Mike, Ranger in Vietnam, about his story of Vietnam.

He was our airfield commander.

He's fantastic.

Just amazing guy.

And so I got blood wings from Charlie Mike.

And did you go through?

You guys go through Benning, don't you?

Did you go through airborne squad banning or did you have your own?

Yeah, we go through Benning.

Now they have their own.

Yeah.

So remember Ngawa, the tower?

Yeah.

So I'm over there.

I'm like, hey, man, what was it like jumping Ungawa?

He's like,

you mean that thing?

I'm like, yeah, that thing.

He's like, no, we don't jump that anymore.

What?

Somebody got hurt, so they don't jump it, you know?

So yeah,

the army's changed a little bit, you know.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, I got some blood wings, too.

Yeah.

It's a rite of passage.

It is.

You know, it's like robbing the next generation of that.

Yeah, it is.

That's the way I feel.

Yeah.

And yeah.

Yeah, no, man.

You don't want to be, be, you didn't want to be the guy that didn't get them.

Yeah.

You know, that's usually that's a sign that you probably shouldn't be there.

You shouldn't be there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Blood wings are, yeah.

I'm sure, I'm sure when you got your, was it the trident they call it?

Yeah.

I'm sure you got that then too.

That's a cool tradition you guys got, by the way.

Yeah, it's, uh, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

No way.

But, but, so then you go to, you do the Gulf War.

Yeah, so I went, I went right from flight school.

I got a Ranger slot right out of flight school.

But the problem was

I was in peak shape a couple of years, I mean peak peak shape, and then I'm sitting on my butt for a year straight.

You know, I'm sitting in the classroom for six months, and then I'm sitting in a cockpit, you know.

And so the only training I'm getting is at night, you know, all day long.

It's academically rigorous.

And then nine, 10 o'clock at night, I'm loading up a rucksack with free weights and I'm running through neighborhoods with free weights trying to get into shape.

And

I'm humping through some neighborhood and I fall into a ditch somewhere, bash my knee.

I get two 45-pound weights come up, slam my head.

I get knocked out somewhere in front of somebody's house.

Who knows how long?

I wake up, just get up, keep rocking, you know, but when I got to Ranger, my feet were soft.

I just didn't have, you know, from sitting for a year or so.

So kind of re-injured that knee.

And then

so I'm just kind of, I get about halfway through and it just, you know, I was otherwise

my peers were good.

But

I kind of got tangled up there with that injury and they're like, hey, man, look, you're an aviator.

You don't need to be here.

Your unit needs you back.

And

so I was devastated.

I spent a couple weeks at the Gulag waiting for processing out and I never tabbed.

But it worked out.

It's funny, you know, God writes

straight with crooked lines, as they say, you know.

It worked out that had I tabbed, I probably wouldn't have had the experience that I had in Iraq.

And ultimately, my experience there was spiritual and I

found my faith there, the initial movements of it.

And so, yeah, so looking back now, it'd be nice to have the Ranger tab on the wall,

but more importantly, I'd rather, instead of Ranger, I'd rather have it say Jesus, you know, got my Jesus tab.

So I went straight from there over to my unit.

with the seventh, first of the seventh Cav, we were division cav for the first Cavalry Army Division.

So we were air and we had three ground or scout troops with the Bradleys and then two air troops and I was in one of the one of the air troops.

What was your experience like there?

Conventional, typical, conventional.

You know, we were CAB though, you know,

you know, half-assed and full-blast, the CAB motto.

You know, so it was typical.

CAB experience, but

days and hours of boredom on end, punctuated with moments of intense

excitement and adrenaline, dumps,

and everything in between.

So we were up on the border,

from the beginning, we were one of the first units over there.

We were up on the border in Iraq and the kind of tri-border area.

And

we were flying, you know, cavalry have recon, screen and attack.

And so we were largely doing reconnaissance and screen lines, you know, so for the main body doing a lot of recon.

So we captured a lot of guys,

caught a lot of bags, you know,

they would slip out.

The conscripts, you know, we caught guys in the front that were forced.

They would just grab guys off the streets.

They, you know, was the second largest standing army in the world or something.

They were taking guys off the streets and throwing them.

you know, and into foxholes and stuff.

And we were bombing them so bad, the B-52s and stuff.

So they were coming over at night in droves.

They were sending teams out to kill them, kill their own because they'd rather kill them than let them desert.

So we caught a bunch.

We had fences

set up with all the guys that we captured.

So we were flying a lot of screen lines and a lot of, you know, we ended up over by the,

what's it called?

You know, I flew over

where they lit up all the trenches with oil.

Like that's going to, thinking back, it was so primitive, you know.

They're stringing up concertina wire and burning, they were still digging ditches and triangles, you know, and filling them with oil and burning them.

That's not going to stop us.

You know, we just, and they had trench warfare and we just bulldozed over them, you know, bulldozed them alive.

Wow.

Engineers did, yeah.

And so, and so then we get into Iraq and

I mean, it was over pretty quickly.

But, but I remember

they told us,

you know, we were, again, we were right on the right on the border.

And during the artillery barrage, there was the largest military, I mean, artillery barrage in military history.

And I forget how many MLRS, one MLRS, remember that, the multiple launch rocket system, one of those will clear a football field and put a bomblet every 12 inches.

And they think they had 100 of them go off.

And so we're watching it.

It was like two or three in the morning.

We all got up to watch it.

It was like 4th of July, you know?

And so it was just, whoo, whoom, whoom.

I mean,

I mean, it was, it was unbelievable.

the destruction.

And after a while, we were like,

damn.

You know, even now I was sitting watching the fireworks the other day and everybody's

smoking and joking, having a good time.

And I just could still picture that.

That artillery barrage.

It just kind of stuck with me.

And so that was kind of, and then we went in and did the invasion and had some experiences there.

What kind of experiences?

I'll give you spiritual or you want the

both.

Well, before we would go the cat and look if you're a if i'm a i'm a pilot when i feed on the ground i'm nervous to me it's big sky little bullet you get put me in the air and i'm happy i can get out of the way you know and uh so i would always make i would always find a reason you know so i went to the chaplain hey those poor those poor guys up up in the bradleys they need catholic mass let's go let's say mass for them i'll get let's get permission from the colonel and i'll fly you up there so i would fly i was in a huey at the time i'd fly him up and he would they would pull back the catholic soldiers would fly back or the troopers would drive back and he would have mass for all of them.

And

he was a good guy.

And right before I went over, it's funny, talk about confession.

There was a Catholic chaplain that lived in the same apartment complex.

And I was just kind of there temporarily as I was getting ready to deploy.

And he was gay.

And he kind of told me he was gay.

And I was like.

Thanks, Father, for telling me that, you know?

I was like, I hope that was cathartic for you, but it was really weird for me.

Okay.

So,

and then he's like, can you go to confession?

I'm like,

I'm not going to confession, not to you.

I'm sorry.

And so I didn't go.

And I was like, I don't need to go to confession.

I mean, that was my mindset.

I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to go.

So

we're flying in to, and I was flying this chaplain, the Catholic chaplain, brigade chaplain, every Sunday.

And they told us right before the artillery, they said, look, everybody here, make peace with the Lord because,

you know, we expect they expected like 75% casualties, what they told us.

They didn't know.

They were supposed to use chemical welfare against us, all this other stuff.

And I remember flying back, flying missions, going back to the rear, picking up stuff, maintenance stuff, whatever.

And I saw when they brought in just Connix and Connix

filled with body bags, because they were ready.

Because they didn't know.

They didn't know that the second world's largest army was just going to collapse.

We just pounded them.

B-52 strikes the artillery, there was just very little left by the time we got.

There was, you know,

we ran up against the one of their, they had two divisions that had T-72s, but the rest were T-62s.

They were trash.

And

we were just killing them, you know.

And so

by the time we got in, I mean,

it was just destruction.

It was just

shit everywhere.

You know,

destroyed aircraft, blown up tanks.

There was a,

we had playing cards, you know, with all, you guys probably did too, but playing cards with anti-aircraft and different tanks so we could identify them, you know, so you're playing cards and you're looking at, this was a Zeus, we call it the Zeus.

I think it was a Zeus.

It was an anti-aircraft four-barrel.

He would crank himself around, you know, and

either an Apache or an A-10 hit it.

It might have been a main tank round, but all was left, the barrels were just

crumpled.

like a pretzel.

And the only thing left on this guy was his right arm, which is hanging there, this charred charred arm.

And that was kind of our, I had to see it every day because that was kind of my path.

We didn't have GPS, you know, we didn't have anything.

We just had to fly kind of by dead reckoning and just kind of winging a prayer.

And so that was one of our spots.

When you see, we get the old lefty over there, you're going to, you're going to turn 030 and get back to where we were.

And so, so we're, anyway, we're flying in that first day, and Hussein had, Saddam Hussein had lit up all the oil fires, if you remember.

And it was, I was in a Huey,

and

I had two door gunners and a co-pilot, And the soot was so bad.

And it was raining.

And the orophilos were just burning.

We're just not too far away.

You can kind of see them in the distance.

And they're just, and about every 10 minutes, we'd have to.

And then we were lost.

We were separated from our units.

We had two other Hueys with us.

We were crossing over.

We had an Apache and two Hueys.

And then right when we crossed the border, the Apache says, hey, I got something light.

I got to go back.

And we're like, you freaking.

So we started just cussing this guy out.

Like, dude, suck it up, man.

We're flying into Iraq, you know?

So we got three slicks

and pouring down rain.

About every 15 minutes, we got to stop.

The crew chiefs got to get out, put water on the windshield because the windshields are just black with oil soot.

It's getting dark.

We're running out of gas.

And

so I'm like, all right, guys, look, we're in the middle of Iraq.

We're lost.

And I'm the lead aircraft,

you know, chalk one of three aircraft.

I'm like, all right, guys, here's what we're going to to do.

We're going to land.

We got five minutes of daylight left and about six minutes of gas.

And we're going to land and we're going to set up a perimeter.

And we're going to pull the 60s out.

We're going to set up a perimeter.

We're going to 100% security.

And we're just going to hunker down for the night.

And we don't know what to expect.

So I'm just, you know, you talk about,

you talk about suddenly finding prayer.

You know, there's no atheists in foxholes.

So, so as we're just flying,

praying quietly, listening to the wine, the drone, and all of a sudden, as we pull up, we see some...

It was too late to pull.

We can't maneuver up because we had

about 30 feet visibility, which means you can see about 30 feet in front of you.

And so we're going about 10 feet off the deck,

probably 70, 80 knots, which is as slow as you can really go.

And just.

I mean, you're going to run into a Jeep if you hit a vehicle.

So we see a vehicle.

We're so low we have to stop and land.

And we didn't know if it was enemy or not, you know.

So we had to, we had to stop and get out and fight if we were going to fight.

So we land, we look up, and we see that upside down V, you know.

And

thank goodness.

Crank it down.

It's pouring down rain.

Shut the aircraft down, button them up.

Everybody just disperses into the first tent they find.

And I'm just like,

you know,

that was a close one.

I roll in there.

The first tent, half thinking, man, I hope this this is a pub.

I'm just fantasizing, man, I hope this is a pub, you know.

And I walk in, and there's the brigade chaplain.

Looks at me, and I look at him and he goes, Hey, what's up, LT?

And I said, Hey, sir, how's it going?

He goes, You want to go to confession?

Yeah, I'll go to confession.

So I knelt down there and went to confession, and that was kind of the beginning.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then later, we

put us at one of those places that was was cleared by the MLRS.

I mean, it was

eerie.

It was one place it was like I was flying, and my co-pilot, I hear him say,

he said, hey, LT, what's going on?

I look around, I'm like, what?

Nothing.

He goes, you're hovering.

And I realized I was about 100 feet and I was just hovering.

And it was like I was hovering on top of this, the world's giant golf ball.

I mean, it was just a bomblet of an MLRS every 12 or 18 inches of just pure destruction.

And so we set up camp at an old airbase that we had bombed and

there was,

we would land and the dogs would come over.

You know, whenever I read the Psalms and the dogs and the dogs, you know, and the Psalms talk about the dogs of war,

they lick up the foes, you know.

The punishment of Jezebel.

If you read that story, we've read that in session.

It's powerful.

It brings back a lot of memories.

Her body is thrown from the second floor and dogs lick up her.

If you read the story of how Jezebel, the evil, wicked queen.

Anyway, so

we set up a combat outpost up there, got a perimeter set up, and we're just waiting.

We're about a mile or so, I think,

from the highway of death.

And there's dogs everywhere, man.

And these things are like half jackals.

They're not like Rover back home, you know.

And there were some guys that take the puppies.

I remember one guy, he's dead now.

He was killed in 2000.

He went back as an Apache guy in 2016 and crashed in Iraq.

And he was, I never forget, he was holding this puppy, man, like just holding on to home, you know?

And the other guys were getting on him.

We're like, hey, man, you guys, those things are wild.

Don't do that.

They're eating the dead bodies out there.

I got to shut up.

And we would land.

We would crank up every morning and go fly.

And there was one dog.

There were three of them that would hang around our aircraft because, you know, crew chiefs and the guys always throw him stuff.

And one of them, he would be there sleeping.

And it wasn't until we got the full crank that he'd get up.

And we finally realized that he was deaf.

He was shell-shocked from all the, from all the artillery.

So this dog, you know, once he felt the rotor rock, it would wake him up.

So I went for a walk one day and I just not, you know, one for a walk.

I just clear my head a little bit and just praying the rosary.

And then I walk over and I see these dogs over there and then I

and they start growling as I got closer, you know.

It's like

pull my weapon out and looking at them and sure enough, they're digging up dead Iraqis.

They had, we We found out later that they had

bulldozed, the engineers had dug big pits and just bulldozed a lot of dead bodies from Highway Death to clear it out.

Jeez.

Yeah.

So

brings new perspective on the dogs of war.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How did you leave?

Military?

Iraq.

Oh,

I was

the assistant S-4, which you didn't have all those crappy side duties that officers had to have.

So I was the officer in charge of laundry morale, you know, Henson Pulver.

So

I was so busy trying to reconcile the books, so, you know, zeroing out stuff so the commanders didn't have to account for everything.

We burnt so much stuff.

You wouldn't believe the size of stuff, the camo netting, IR camo net, everything.

We'd burn it all.

And so I was nonstop busy trying to reconcile the books so the colonel wouldn't take any hits for missing stuff.

You know, I mean, that's just the way it was.

You had to reconcile everything.

So I kept busy.

I didn't have time to sit around and think about it.

Get on an airplane, come back.

And

then our aircraft, so we fly back on a,

you know, on a,

obviously not flying a helicopter back, so we're flying back commercial some way.

And we get back and our aircraft are dropped off over in somewhere near Houston at a port there.

So we drive over from Fort Hood to go pick them up

and then pick up the aircraft and I jump a ride with a scout pilot.

I'm in a scout, no doors.

And, you know,

the weather in Texas, the weather rolls in in Texas and a tornado hits out of nowhere.

And we're getting rain on the side.

And

we're flying through downtown Beaumont, Texas.

We have to land in a shopping mall

because we're getting blasted and just covered up in weather.

And so anyway, so I thought to myself, man, I survived all that and I'm going to die in front of Lubies, you know, in Beaumont, Texas in a weather storm.

Had another guy punch in not long after that, one of really good pilot storm came in

at Fort Hood and punched in inadvertent IFR, they call it inadvertent

instrument flight rules, punches into the clouds.

Calls tower, climbs up, does everything right, hands the controls over to brand new pilot, and the guy got disoriented and came to a a hover at about 1500 feet and it just fell out of the sky and he was killed both of them were killed so the weather can be bad it's not your friend you know yeah yeah

wow another guy crashed with the with the task force he was hit a test ride he was like these are all great these guys are way better pilots than i ever was and uh he he crashed with chinook

um

with a check ride with the task force 160.

so

but uh

but yeah so i came back

and got out of of the military not long after that.

Why did you get out?

At the time,

you needed,

you know, I was an officer, commissioned officer, and the warrant officers

did most of the flying.

And so the Army was

transitioning from Hueys to Blackhawks and Cobras to Apaches, and they told me I couldn't get a transition because I was commissioned.

And that would have meant

13 months unaccompanied in Korea and then Pentagon,

Korea, Pentagon.

I would have been a staffer the rest of my life.

Gotcha.

And I couldn't get in the task force.

Now I had enough hours.

Now they've lowered to like 500.

I had enough hours to go to task force, but I couldn't.

At that time, it was like 1,500.

And there's no pathway to get the hours.

There's no pathway to the Apache.

And so I decided, got the t-shirt, been there, done that, time to move on.

Right on.

Yeah.

Right on.

Well, let's take a quick break.

Okay.

And then we'll pick up where we left off.

Got it.

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All right, Dan, we're back from the break.

And so

I want to get into what got you into theology and biblical studies and all of that kind of stuff.

Yeah, so

you know, I had that experience in Iraq, went to confession.

Actually, right before I didn't tell the story, but I remember after they told us 75% of you are going to be dead or evaced out of here in the next 48 hours, what they told us.

And

so make peace with God.

So I went for the,

you know, we were a little, I try to stay out of mortar range and artillery range, particularly for the aircraft.

So we were a little further back, kind of middle of nowhere.

And so I was just going for a walk and I was like, all right, Lord.

I'm just walking to the flight line, a little past the flight line in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, you could see the aircraft, but I was just walking around.

All right, Lord, I don't know what to do.

You know,

I'm going to make peace with you.

It's what they said to do.

I'm a good soldier, you know.

And everything, you know, you've been in the desert many times.

It's just brown, brown, brown.

And I see something shiny in the distance and I walk over and I pick it up.

And it was a finger rosary.

Ever seen those little round finger rosaries?

And so

I said, well, I guess that means I'm going to pray the rosary.

So I started just praying the rosary.

Guys would come over.

Hey man, I was Catholic.

Can you show me how to forget how to pray the rosary?

So I'm over there.

I don't hardly remember how to pray.

I'm showing these guys how to pray the Rosary or Payne the Rosary and all that.

And I get back.

I get back from,

and I'm still in my unit.

And

of course, like every young guy, had to have a sports car and a Harley-Davidson, you know.

So

I had the coolest two-door.

Mustang, one of those GTs, but the tires are about that big fat, you know.

And I had the front end of my bike.

I had it in the back seat of my car.

And I was taking, I was just picking it up from a Harley dealer and my platoon sergeant was in the car with me.

And I'm riding down the road.

And

when I was praying the rosary, I said, all right, Lord, when I get back, I'm not going to live like a scumbag.

I'm going to be a good guy.

And I'm going to, I'm going to follow you.

And I give my life to you, you know.

And so

I get back and I really kind of forgot about that.

And so I'm driving.

picking up my bike, the front end of my bike, and it's in the back, jammed in, you know, because just jammed it, you know, a truck I just jammed it in the back seat of this sports cars Ford Mustang Toon Sergeants on my right and we're just cruising trying to get back get back to post and and I and I and there's a semi-truck over here it's raining and I try to start passing this guy to the right but I have these big old fat tires you remember that old Mustang those old Mustangs and and as soon as it

And as soon as I get next to this guy, I start to hydroplane.

I get a gust of air and I start the hydroplane off and I start sliding off the road like this.

This is how you know I was a pilot because we always do that.

So I start sliding off the plane.

I mean, I start hydroplane, sliding this way.

So I'm going sideways.

My first thought was, man, I'm going to wreck my dang cool car.

You know, I'm sliding sideways towards the guardrail.

But as soon as I hit the gravel on the side of the road, the nose came to the front at the exact moment the guardrail was coming up, that little, those guardrails that come.

And those two wheels hit that guardrail perfectly.

And I was airborne, spent upside down and slammed and slid.

It seemed like a football field just sliding.

It was an awful sound.

And my first thought was, I mean, I used to watch the Dukes of Hazard.

This thing's going to blow at any minute.

A team, it even blew up before it hit the ground in the 18, you know.

So I look over to my platoon sergeant.

He's got blood coming down his head.

I thought he was dead.

I reach over to undo my seatbelt so I can get him out.

And right when I go to, I'm upside down now

and the roof was completely smashed to the dash.

And I'm upside down and it's dead silent.

It was so silent and I had such a lack of pain

and zero adrenaline.

I mean, it was just, you know, sometimes you get into the zone, especially I just come back from Iraq.

It took a lot to kind of get me rattled, you know, because

little things like getting cut off in traffic or they don't have what I want at the grocery store is annoying, but big things, it doesn't really phase you, you know.

So

I'm so pain-free, and it was so quiet.

And I looked at my platoon sergeant who was completely out.

I thought, I'm dead.

I'm dead.

I mean, it was deathly quiet.

And then

I started hearing tinkling of the rain on the underside of the car.

And I was like, tink, tink, tink, tink.

Yes.

So I reached down, undo my seatbelt, but I'm up like this.

And right next to my head was a little Gideon's Bible that they had given us, you know, the chaplains give out.

My dog tags, I had a little cross and a scapula like the one I gave you.

And I had that, but after a while, it just became a tangled mess.

And so I just would carry that in my bottom pocket of my flight suit, figure if I crashed and burned, then they would find it anyway.

So that was sitting.

right next to my head.

I had lost this.

So I had this little Gideon's Bible, my dog tags, my cross, little gold cross that my girlfriend, who's now my wife, gave me, and then

my scapular.

And at that moment, I looked.

That was the first time

I heard the voice of God.

He said, I remember what you said.

And he brought me back to that moment.

Remember our little deal we made?

And

I grab it, put it in my pocket, pull my platoon sergeant out, and

the army was changing very quickly, and I knew it was just time to get out.

What do you mean you heard the voice of God?

Well

I've heard a few times, not often, and you can't trust it because you know the demon is as good as Jeff Dunham in faking God's voice.

He's a good ventriloquist.

You got to be careful.

But I was just had this deep conviction

and God said, I remember.

I took you at your word.

You know, it's hard to explain, but it's, it's,

a gut feeling.

It's a

thought that pops into your head.

It's a thought, but all time stops around it.

So it's like,

yes.

But you have to be careful because the demon can mimic that.

So how do you know it was him then?

The flush of memories, personal thoughts, personal prayers that I knew.

the peace that comes with it.

Do you feel that you can differentiate between when a demon is telling you something and when God is telling you something?

Yeah, I caught a demon

doing that to me.

And

when you catch them

faking God's voice, it's pretty scary.

So you learn to not trust any of them for me.

So,

but normally,

the tree is known by its fruit.

So when you're discerning the will of God,

there's peace.

Now that I'm married, it's affirmation through your spouse.

As you know, if

you have one of them at home,

of the female species, they view the world totally differently.

And they see stuff from oblique angles that we don't even think about.

So discerning through your spouse, who you're married with, that's a good way to discern the will of God.

But it's the peace.

You know, when it's a demon giving you a fake consolation, it's like one of the prophets, I think it's Ezekiel, said that God took the scroll and he put it into my mouth and it was as sweet as honey.

And when it hit my stomach, it made me, it soured my stomach and made me sick or made me nauseous.

So when the demon fakes and projects

a voice, a locution or whatever,

it might taste sweet at first, but then something's going to sit kind of contrary.

You start to learn to discern.

that at the beginning of conversion, oftentimes God is just,

it's awesome.

It's butterfly kisses and, you know, he's like letting you know.

But then after a while, he pulls back and says, now you got to learn to listen to my voice.

And so learning to discern that voice.

But for that one, it was almost like, boom.

Now, how do you know when you've been punched in the nose?

Because you got blood and

suddenly you've quickened your thinking very quickly.

So yeah, so So I realized that the military, you know, there was no chance for me to get into this task force.

I had no chance, very little chance to get the Apache.

I was going to be a bureaucrat the rest of my life.

Our squadron commander, battalion commander, was furious when I put my paperwork in

because I was a good officer.

I finally told him, I said, sir, I'm a warrior.

That's why I came to the military.

And

I can't be a bureaucrat.

So that experience reminded me that I was starting to drift back into that other lifestyle.

You know, just not horrible, you know.

Still went to Mass and all that, but I just wasn't,

had i had forgotten about god again you know so that's when i i decided to put my paperwork in what i realized was we had a i gave a i had to give a pt test to my my commander who was he was a captain okay i was a first lieutenant and um

and he

he gets on the scale well first of all i'm giving the pt test and i and you know when you once you get your combat i mean i couldn't wait to put that in the army you get your combat patch on your right arm i couldn't wait man that man i was gonna walk sideways the rest of my life you know

and i remember after i got back they had to make us we had to we had the commanding general had to mandate you have to put it on your shoulders

by the time you get it you're like ah it doesn't mean i don't want it i don't you know i don't need it anymore it's not what i thought it was my my my my my squad my troop commander at the time um didn't go And he says, you know, that patch doesn't mean anything when it comes to getting promoted.

I was like, oh, okay.

And he just starts laying into me.

I'm like,

okay, sir, whatever, you know?

So he does a PT test and I give him a PT test and he gets on the scale and the scale starts popping.

He slides it to the left and he says, you know, 175.

I said, all right, okay.

So then the next day, I had to give a PT test to a pilot,

you know, and a good pilot, but not a very fit pilot.

And he, he, and the commander tells me, hey, man, if this guy doesn't pass us, you're going to kick him out of the army, you know?

You got to be honest and kick him out.

And I was like, okay.

So we get there and I'm like, listen, I forget his name.

I was like, look, dude,

you got two kids at home.

You're a good pilot.

I don't care if you've got a puke.

I don't care if you have to crawl.

You cross this.

Don't put me in the position that I have to bounce you from the army six weeks before I'm getting out.

Sure enough, he busts it.

He misses it by like a minute.

And the last half a mile, I was running alongside him, just chewing him out, you know.

But I passed him, and he's probably a

CW-04 this day, and probably very thankful for that.

But he was a good man, a good pilot.

So, but I realized that,

like I said, the Cav half-assed in full blast.

I had a Vietnam veteran just getting out, or maybe he was

already out, but he was an older, old, like this guy had been, he was command, he was a master sergeant, command sergeant major, very old, not deploying.

And he said, the caval take care of you.

They're not worth a crap in peacetime, but it'll take care of you in combat.

And I found that to be true.

So get back to peacetime, and it just, it was a, it was kind of a government job in conventional warfare.

I was like, yeah, I'm going to get out.

So that's when I, that's when I, I, I

got out of the military and

started doing other things.

When did you start getting into

theology and biblical studies?

Yeah, so again, it's like the hound of heaven, you know, will pursue you.

But

I started getting, I got into business, started working for myself and kind of forgot about God again, you know.

So I get it, man.

I get it when guys don't,

you know, I just kind of drifted and I had God perfectly over here, but I was pursuing my own career, my own goals.

And then things were kind of going sideways.

And

it was just life was getting tough.

And I just just realized it's, I gotta,

I gotta do something, you know, she had to get off the pot type of thing, you know.

So I remember this has probably been maybe five years.

I don't know, I'm trying to think, 10 years since deployment.

And I pulled over in the side of the field, chili field, and I was, and I started yelling out at God like, hey, what the heck?

You know, I gave my life to you and now things are getting worse and yada, yada, yada.

So I just started, you know, I talked to God like I talked to you, you know.

I mean,

and sometimes you yell at God, he yells back.

And again, only a handful of times that I know the voice of God.

And

he says, and I just hear this words, choose today.

You know, from Jeremiah, I mean, Joshua stands at the promised land.

Choose today,

you know, whom you're going to serve.

Right?

As he stands at the promised land, you're going to serve the false gods that your father served?

Are you going to serve the true and living God?

As for me and my household, we're going to serve serve the Lord, is what Joshua says.

So I hear that from scripture.

Choose today.

What do you mean, serve the false gods that your father served?

And at the end of the book of Joshua, he's standing at the promised land.

And so they were being punished as they went into the promised land.

They were falling into false, a couple times they fell into idol worship.

And so to punish them, that generation weren't allowed to see the promised land that they were delivered out of Egypt for.

What do you mean idol worship?

Is that things, watches, cars, motorcycles?

Well, today, but no, this was worshiping demons.

Psalm 96, 5, the gods of the Gentiles are demons, it says.

And so the Israelites continually, over time, fell into idol worship, false gods, Baal worship and other demon gods of the pagan nations, because they brought him power.

They didn't trust God, so they would get instant power.

If you're not listening, I'm going to go to this guy.

Who are those gods?

They're still around.

Do they have names?

Yeah.

What are they?

Baal, Beelzebubal,

Moloch.

Who are they?

Just go through them.

Ashtar, Ishtarah, Ashtarah.

I mean, I've heard a lot about this stuff.

I heard a lot about Baal and Moloch.

Yeah.

Well,

Baal means Lord.

Moloch is one of the, one of the,

various

nations in ancient Israel had their own deities.

And And

so they would,

you know, they had

the sun god, they had the son of the main god, they had other figures that seemed, you know, somewhat similar to Christianity in some way.

Moloch was one human sacrifice, you know, and the gods, Israelites would continually go back to the same two or three

for success in war, for prosperity and,

you know,

crops and

financial prosperity.

And there was always

gods that would do

sexual things.

Part of their worship was depraved sexuality, human sacrifice in extreme cases for special needs.

These things have been around forever.

I mean, read the story of...

of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico in the 1500s.

the missionaries that were down there recounted that they were, I don't know, I mean, they were hundreds a day, they were sacrificing to this ancient demon there, cutting their hearts out while they were alive.

Human sacrifice.

And so these things have been around for a long, long time.

Can we go through them one by one?

I mean, who is Baal?

Well, each one has their own.

Baal means Lord.

or master.

So does that mean that's all of them?

No, it's kind of

Baal or Baal

is kind of

one that was very common

among the East and Egypt.

What's interesting is if you look at the book of Hosea,

I have permission to.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hosea.

Hosea is

when God revealed himself in

when God revealed himself to the Israelites, first he reveals himself as a warrior, the warrior God.

285 times in the Old Testament,

you have the name of God as the Lord God Almighty.

Sometimes you hear it, the dominus Deus Sabaoth, the God of hosts.

This is the God that intervenes for his people.

against cosmic forces.

This is the God that the early church fathers understood Christ to be, the warrior God.

And then in

Sinai, he reveals himself.

I'm a jealous God.

Right?

I'm a jealous God.

Punishing the children,

punishing the sins of the father to the third and fourth generation of the children because I'm a jealous God.

And so that word jealous, the Greek was zela, zelos.

It means zeal, but it means the passionate zeal of a lover commanding the the fidelity of his bride.

And so to those who hate me, and then he lists off, what does it mean to hate God to follow false gods, to follow false gods?

So God reveals himself as the divine beloved, the beloved lover of Israel.

He reveals himself.

In fact, in the Jewish rabbis

in the ancient world, they saw Sinai when God revealed himself and gave the Ten Commandments as a betrothal ceremony, that the command to wash yourselves.

It was like a nuptial bath in preparation for God to wed wed himself with his people.

And then they commit over and over again, they keep falling into idol worship.

And we're no different.

Let's not judge these ancients because we're no different.

I mean, look at Marina Abramovich,

look at P.

Diddy, look at the Olympic ceremony.

Who's Marina, who'd you say?

Marina Abramovich.

Is that the artist?

Yeah, it's an artist, correct.

She's an artist.

Yeah, I mean, I've seen...

Yeah.

We'll throw some of her work up.

Yeah, she don't.

It's demonic.

It's demonic.

Yeah, look at the Borberites.

Epiphanius of Salamis in the 600 or 700s writes about a group of

infiltrators in the church called the Borberites, the dirt eaters.

Anyway, they were doing satanic rituals in the name of Christianity, and it's not a whole lot unlike a Bronovic work.

So where did Baal, I mean, where did Borbit come from?

So Baal comes, it means Lord or Master, but it also means husband.

So bring me back to Hosea.

Sorry, we're getting tangential.

Hosea is told by God to, I want you to

marry an unfaithful woman, a prostitute, so that when everybody looks at you and says, that poor dude, they can see this prophet living what God is experiencing.

Kind of a metaphor for what God, this is what it looks like.

You have a faithful man.

married to an unfaithful harlot and raising harlot children.

That's this generation of Israelites because

they were already now in exile.

And God says, I will allure her.

I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart.

From there, I give her the vineyards, etc.

On that day, from the day when she came up from the land of Egypt, right?

So just as in Egypt, she was my spouse.

I betrothed to her.

So now you're falling into it again, but I'm going to call you back as your divine bridegroom.

Oh, on that day, says the Lord, this is Isaiah chapter 2, she shall call me my husband and never again my Baal.

So Baal means husband or lord or master.

So in Spanish, you can introduce,

I want to read and introduce this in English, but I don't think it's going to catch.

A woman will introduce her husband in Spanish.

This is eso es mi señor.

This is my señor.

So señor is husband or lord, right?

I tried to get my wife to do that.

She's like, I don't think so.

I tried to tell her, you don't have to call me Dr.

Dan.

You can call me Dan, by the way.

I said, hey, I like that.

When I finished my doctorate, I was in England and they said, said, congratulations, Dominus Doctor, right?

Which is an ancient title, Lord Doctor.

I told my wife, hey,

maybe we should start that as a new tradition in this house.

She's like, I don't think so.

Are you going to cut the grass or what?

You know?

So she shall call me my husband and never again my ba'al.

I will remove from her mouth the names of the baals so they never be invoked.

I will make a covenant for them on that day.

with the beast, etc.

I will espouse you to me forever.

I will espouse you in right and justice.

And so when

we see this, this imagery of espousal, this is why in almost every case of possession, there's some sexual element, almost every case, sexual deviancy.

And in some form, some sexual deviancy, in some form, often some form of

idol worship of some kind.

Remember Psalm 96, 5, the gods of the Gentiles are demons.

And so when you're offering worship to them, whether it's, you know,

these different ones, but by all means, Lord or husband.

And what we have is...

This doesn't make sense to me.

So why are the, I mean, the Gentiles are the ones that believe in Jesus Christ, correct?

For everybody that's not a Jew,

am I right?

Or an Israelite.

Am I correct?

Well, this is pre-Christ.

This is six, seven hundred years before Christ.

Okay.

And so that was what was shocking about Christianity.

And St.

Paul particularly went,

his mission was to the Gentiles, to us, you and me, because we're Gentiles.

You know, this is why when Jesus says that very unkind thing to the Canaanite Gentile woman, when she says, my daughter is possessed by a demon, he says, it's not right to give to the children, belongs, give to the dogs that belongs to the children, because the Gentiles were considered dogs.

Well, the same dogs that I saw wandering around in Iraq.

What are dogs?

Scavengers?

They copulate indiscriminately, right?

You know, when they talk, when, when, when in Leviticus, in the Holiness Code, when you go into the land that I'm giving you, do not do what they do, the Gentiles do.

You should not have a relationship with your mother, with your sister, with you, list off all this incestual things.

Because in their ritualistic practice,

this is part of what they did.

And only dogs in creation,

at least in the imagery of the biblical writers, dogs copulate in such a way.

And so Jesus is saying, she's a Gentile dog, right?

Very unpastoral, right?

In Gentile territory.

And she, and

the woman says, even the dogs eat the scraps off the table from their master, their Lord, their husband, their senior.

And so

the church, that's what blew the minds of the, they couldn't believe.

The Jews couldn't believe, okay, maybe he's the Messiah, but there's no way the Gentiles.

And so if you look at the writings of the first few centuries, it's how the Gentiles are now being included into the covenant family of God.

That was mind-boggling.

Even the debate with Paul and Peter over circumcision

in the scriptures, we read is that the debating over Judaic laws, should they carry over, etc., because it was mind-boggling to the Jew that these dogs, these filthy

dogs

that are ritually unclean,

could also have salvation in Christ.

But all that imagery is when

it's what's amazing for me as a scripture scholar

is to see the scriptures come to life.

It's not just theory or it's not just, okay, read these things so you can go to heaven.

I mean, when you're dealing with Baal,

And the one who battled him,

the story of Elijah, are are you familiar with the story of Elijah?

Elijah the prophet battles.

I talk about Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

And the Carmelites, they trace themselves back to Elijah the prophet.

Elijah the prophet,

the Israelites had completely abandoned, mostly abandoned the living God.

Elijah the prophet says, okay,

let's test.

Let's see whose God is real.

If the Lord is God, then he'll manifest himself.

If Baal is God, then let him manifest himself.

So

let's have a competition and we'll see who lights the fire.

This is in 1 Kings.

Let's build an altar

and call down fire from heaven.

And if your God calls down fire from heaven, then he's God and we'll worship him.

So they started calling out to God,

to the true Baal, and they started cutting themselves.

You hear about this phenomenon of young people cutting themselves?

It's very common.

We see it in most of our, we've seen a lot of cases of cutting.

I can give you a side ex-cursus on that.

They start cutting themselves and bleeding and calling out.

And Elijah, this dude is bad.

He starts mocking him: like, hey, maybe he's on a trip.

Maybe he's tired.

Wake him up.

Bring him down.

Nothing.

It says, and nobody was listening and nobody was there.

So Elijah says, okay, my turn.

Put wood on the altar.

Pour it with water.

Bring a trench around it.

Pour more water on it.

And he says, May, Lord, may God,

may they know that you are the true God.

And he called fire down and fire consumed it, right?

And then he says,

they took

the handful of the guild of prophets with him.

They said, grab the prophets of Baal.

And they took them down to the river Khaidan, I think it says, and they slit their throats.

Very non-pastoral.

But when you read that

in a session,

And just have the priest or the deacon that's there reading that story, and Baal is present possessing this person, person, they go

ballistic because you're reminding them of when they were defeated in the flesh, and they will always be defeated, despite the small victory they might be temporarily having over this person.

Christ and his church is going to have sovereign reign over them.

Very powerful.

So, Baal is

still trying to wrap my head around it.

So, Baal means Lord.

So, does that mean it could be anything that you worship other than God and Christ?

Yes and no.

So each culture would have their own kind of version of it,

but just as there's different titles manifest different things,

the jealous God,

the warrior God,

you know, the different titles for Christ, all those reflect something about who he is.

Son of David, son of man.

Those are all.

Prince of peace.

Different titles about Christ give us some aspect of who he is.

And so

you have different titles of the devil that go back to that as well.

When was Baal introduced?

To humanity.

I'd have to think about that.

I imagine,

I don't know.

Probably somewhere on the Egyptians were probably one of the first.

We still worship him

yet to this day.

Yeah.

What about Moloch?

Who is Moloch?

He was one that I think that was more Syrian,

but it's one of the ancient tribes around there that they did human sacrifice to.

And where did he come in?

They each had their own forms.

The Assyrians would have one form of it, others would have.

But basically you have Baal, Moloch, and Ashtarah, which is a female deity that they kind of worshipped as well.

They did a lot of sexual rituals with.

Those would be some of the main ones, kind of groupings underneath them.

But again, it's complicated as a...

What was her name?

Ashtarah or Ishtar.

Is there one, Esther?

Esther?

Esther was

a book of the Bible.

And she was a Jewish woman that became queen.

But no.

There's not a demon, Esther.

How do these live on?

They're immortal.

I mean,

they're created.

They're disembodied creatures who have

an immortal, you know, they live for eternity.

I mean, you just,

what am I trying to say?

I mean,

there's just

not a lot of discussion about Baal, Moloch.

the other one that you mentioned.

And so, I mean, where are people finding them?

Um,

how do they inject themselves into people's lives?

I mean,

I know a little bit about it, but

there's threads in TikTok and other places for witchcraft to learn spells and stuff.

And

yeah, sorry to interrupt, but we

know I'm listening.

Yeah,

so they're there.

The old saying is: if you look for the devil, he'll find you.

You know,

so they're out there.

And they, again, just like we have,

you know, I'm high liturgy,

trad Catholic.

So given the choice, I'm going to Latin Mass.

High Mass, Gregorian chant, the whole thing.

And then you've got on the other spectrum, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious.

You know, you know, those Christians, like, I just think you need to be spiritual, but I just don't want all these rules of religion and everything in between, right?

So you've got us, me over here.

You've got your kind of spiritual people that maybe go for a walk on Sunday and have a little picnic with their family.

And then you've got, you know,

everything spectrum in between.

Well, the occult world works the same.

You've got everything from I'm spiritual but not religious, meaning I'm not ritualistic.

So

I do a little Wicca.

I do a little

minor things over here, all the way up to your full.

liturgical satanic rituals and everything in between.

I mean, the Levayan Satanism was copied after the Catholic Church.

They have sacraments, they have the sacrament of confirmation, they call their priests priests, etc.

Really?

Yeah.

You had to Google Anthony LeVay's death.

It's pretty interesting.

What is it?

Apparently

he started screaming out.

He had a vision of hell and started screaming out, no, no.

I served you.

I followed you.

What are you doing?

No.

That's what apparently is out there on the internet.

I've read good sources that he didn't die well.

You know what I mean?

So, but

these ancient guys are out there, you know.

I mean, if you look at Exodus, I mean, yeah, Exodus chapter one, it says, and they, and the Israelites were forced into slavery and they built for Ramses and Pithum.

They built pyramids or they built buildings for Pharaoh, right?

Well, those two cities in particular, so here's the Jewish people coming out and they're going into slavery.

And those two in particular,

the deity that was worshipped in Egypt,

that the Pharaoh represented

and also was

in those particular two cities

is the deity named Atun.

Remember, gods of the Gentiles are demons, Psalm 96.5.

A-T-U-N, Atun.

This was the great bisexual god.

The great bisexual, also known as the great masturbator is what his name was now this is not just me finding kooky sources this is academic sources looking up what this stuff I mean I'm using

you know I'm doing academic research I'm not just pulling stuff off the end of Wikipedia okay so so these are the deities that are there but think about it God created Adam and Eve in our image it says in Genesis chapter one in our image let us create man male and female let us create them so something about the binary of the male and female

reflects the inner life of God.

We see hints of the Trinity already

when God speaks in our image and not let us create man in

our image.

And something in the male and female reflects that.

And then now we get into Egypt and the slavery of Egypt, you have the great bisexual God.

who begets, I won't even discuss how he does it, how he begets children and spits them out of his mouth, and he can change genders and can allow others to change their genders.

This goes back to ancient Egypt.

Describe it.

Describe it.

Sounds graphic.

It is graphic.

What is it?

He ingests his own semen and produces children out of his mouth, as opposed to God creating and begetting Adam and Eve.

You know, this in their mythology, this is how this

deity that is both male and female.

What is a deity?

Is that a demon?

Psalm 96.5, the gods of the Gentiles are demons, so it's a demon, yeah.

So you fast forward, not to jump too much in time and space, but the Olympic ceremony, right?

Everybody was outraged because it was a mockery of the Last Supper.

I don't think so.

I'm not sure.

I mean, it was a mockery.

Anytime they can mock Christians, they can.

But this is a Dionysian ritual.

That was a representation of Dionysus.

Are you familiar with that?

Another ancient.

I'm not familiar.

Yeah.

So

I was reading the Roman historian Livy.

Okay, you had Roman historians, you have Livy, Livy, Herodotus, and a few others.

Josephus was a Jewish Roman.

But around, I think it was around 100, around the same time that the Book of Maccabees was written

in the Catholic Bible, the book of Maccabees is around that time, 200, 150.

They were, actually in the book of Maccabees, a couple of things.

It says,

and the Israelites, Judas Maccabeus, and the Israelites waged war joyfully for the Lord.

And so giving us a little precursor into waging war.

But what were they waging war against?

The Gentiles were forcing them.

If you did not submit to the Dionysian rituals, you lost all property rights.

I mean,

they were forcing them them to convert to this ritual, and this ritual was nasty.

You know, so what this was, this came from Greece.

And picture in your mind what was going on at that Last Supper ritual.

I mean, that Last Supper, I mean, this

Olympic.

The Olympics.

The Olympic, yeah.

So you have a guy there, you have trannies,

right?

You have the guy there laying on the table, right?

You have

boys with children, you have transvestites, you know, and so they go into,

so anyway, Livy describes this, and you can look this up in his writings, he's describing to the Roman Senate in 150, I think, 100 to 158 BC.

We do not want to let this into our pantheon.

We don't want to offend this God.

We don't know who he is, but let's let us twist this a little bit and let's just make him the God of wine.

And so it kind of comes into Roman culture a little differently as Bacchus.

But Dionysus, the ritual, the original, the origins of Dionysus was

Greek women would go into the forest, and they were called mynads.

We get the word maniac, right?

And it would be drug-infused, drug-fueled, alcohol and drugs, particularly

women would go and just,

the idea was to break societal norms because women in Greek culture were much more...

You see this, you this today.

You go, look at the way women are treated in the Middle East compared to, say, Rome today.

So

you see how

this is kind of an ancient,

the way women were treated back in even ancient Greece, pre-Christian Greece.

So they were, they were,

this was an exp they would go out and express themselves and they would have orgies and they would go, their hair would be crazy and they would scream and yell out and they would have orgies and these other things in honor of this Dionysian, this god Dionysus, who was also known to change, able to change his genders.

So some of the men said, this sounds like fun.

Naked women out in the woods, getting high, drinking, whatever.

So

they started instituting and letting men into these rituals.

But

If you want to be a part of this woman ritual, you have to do certain things

like a woman, you know.

And

it was obey or buffet.

And Livy, the Roman historian Livy describes it, that they would, part of the drums that they would beat would hide the screams of those who refused to comply to these sexual rituals, sodomistic rituals, that they would take them into caves and sacrifice them, human sacrifice.

And so Dionysus

is an ancient.

Pre-Christian, I mean this ritual is pre-Christian.

And so in the Olympics, I think what they were saying is,

I know this is, at once was a Christian country, but we were here first.

And we're claiming it back.

We're taking, you know,

we're taking this space back.

Think about Rome.

If you ever been to Rome, it's amazing.

You should get there.

I've been there.

Maybe someday you go there and interview the Pope.

And

the pantheon, the Greek pantheon, what's called the pantheon, it's the pon theos, all the gods.

It's now the church of St.

Mary and all the martyrs.

And so this is a beautiful church.

There's a big opening in the middle, and they drop rose petals down on Pentecost every Sunday.

It's an ancient church.

So they converted this church

that,

and it's very Roman to do this.

You take a pagan place, and you baptize it, and you make it Christian, you know.

And so they take this place.

this celebration to all the pagan gods, and we now call it St.

Mary and all the martyrs.

So, all the martyrs, and it's filled with relics of early church Roman martyrs.

I had Mass there in one of the small catechols, small chapels in the basement there with, I mean, second-century martyrs, like 100, 120,

Felicity, Perpetua, 150, 80, martyrs that were killed.

And

so, going back in the Catholic tradition,

we understand that the angels who fell,

their thrones were vacated,

right?

The fallen angels.

And

God replaces them with us, which is one of the reasons they hate us so much.

So now what became

the church or the temple to all the gods now becomes the temple to St.

Mary and the martyrs.

And so, which is

which is why

they have such burning hatred for us.

And so space is sacred, both to us and to them.

And so I think what's happening is across the world, they're saying, hey, we were here first, guys.

We're just taking back.

You guys displaced us when Christianity was here and you guys kicked us out.

We're just going to reclaim we were here first.

I think that's that whole

opening ceremony was part of that.

Wow.

When you start to see what's happening,

that's why in the book I say, and this comes from Kyle, Father's right-hand man, he was my sensei, he was my master, my master sergeant, and teach me a lot of this stuff.

We fight an ancient enemy, ancient weapons are best.

These guys, man, they've been around a long, long time.

They've been trapping.

One time, Father Ripperker asked the demon, why do you keep doing the same things over and over?

To trap humans, he said, because they work.

But I was just doing some training of priests and teams in Germany.

And in Berlin,

there's a church, there was St.

Peter's church in Berlin that was torn down, and in its place is now an interfaith worship space for all religions.

Hindus, Muslims,

you know,

and it's just this, as the church gets weakened, the enemy's pushing back.

I mean,

that might sound insane.

No, it doesn't.

I mean, I'm paying attention.

Yeah.

And I mean,

I've talked about this before, but when I see things like the Olympics or

I'll list off a number of things here in a minute, but when I see things like that,

it actually strengthens my faith in Christ because

that's the other side, which is obviously alive and well right now.

And I look at that like, look at this.

Like, this is.

It is what what it is.

And if that's real,

then so is the good side.

And so, you know, ever since I've

come to Christ,

I've been paying attention to these things.

And while they enrage me and they piss me off, and I get really upset, ruins my day, my week, whatever.

You know,

at the same time, it's strengthening my faith because if there's a dark side, then there's a good side.

And, you know, but just just in the couple of years that I've kind of come back to,

you know, we've seen, we've seen the Olympics.

We saw Easter, what, I think a year and a half ago, where the letterhead from the White House was

Transgender Day happened to fall on Easter, but they put little Easter bunnies in the letterhead.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

You saw Notre Dame catch fire in

France.

I mean, there's just the Epstein stuff, the P.

Diddy stuff, the artist, what's her name?

Bromovich.

Yeah, Bromovich.

I mean, it's all around us.

And I'm paying attention.

I just keep seeing it over and over and over and over again.

And you see

the decline in people going to church.

And

it makes it real.

And then on top of that, it really sparks my interest in spiritual warfare.

And because i now i know it's real yeah whereas before i was like you know i don't know about

stuff but but now i'm i'm tuned in and i'm paying attention yeah the the the

the enemy uses a they have a sacred calendar too they're more ritualistic and precise in their ritual than we are we get sloppy they do everything sinestro to the left certain colors you know what colors black and red specifically

You know.

There's certain days, moons, stars, equinox.

These things all have cosmic significance.

Think about the day that

the terror attack in Israel

when

they went in on what do they called ultralights.

Remember that?

Was it last year, two years ago?

They ultralighted in and slaughtered a bunch of people at a music festival?

Did anybody catch the date?

That was the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, celebrating the Christians' defeat at Lepanto

when they defeated the Muslims at Lepanto and kept Europe Christian.

Remember that?

The Battle of Lepanto.

They outnumbered three to one.

And the Christians defeated them.

And the Pope declared to the whole world to start praying the Rosary.

That's where we get the title, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Victory.

It's celebrated in October.

And so that was coincidence.

I don't know.

We say in our business, there's no coincidences.

I believe that, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, one of the things is...

Do you feel like it's picking up?

Yeah.

I think it's just what's interesting is they're becoming more bold.

You know, they're just becoming more, and they feel more emboldened.

They have more political cover, so to speak.

And so, yeah, they're just getting more bold about it and they're getting more open about it.

And, you know, the good thing is, One of the things that we say is evil militates to absurdity.

And so like when we're dealing with cases, a person will go along, but the demon and his bloodlust will drive them to most absurd things.

Like the seal, that poor guy that transgendered for a while, heartbreaking.

Who is this?

The guy that, there was a seal that came, that you had on here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Beck.

Yeah, yeah.

He transgendered for a while, right?

But the demon militates to absurdity.

At some point, he looked at himself in the mirror and said, I'll do this, but I won't do that.

This is absurd.

I have to stop.

And so even though the demon pushes to these absurdities, extreme things in that and his blood and his bloodlust to just destroy us, people wake up and go,

what was I thinking?

I mean, they had,

for him to do that, he had all these external voices that were pushing him to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And internal voices.

And internal voices.

I mean, you know, if you go back to that interview, that

he never wanted to be a woman.

He was

extremely abusive upbringing, sexual trauma,

physical abuse, verbal abuse.

And so, you know,

when Chris, when he was in therapy after he left the SEAL teams and was riding with the Hell's Angels and doing cocaine and beating the shit out of people, all this stuff, you know, and he started wanting to get better, he went to therapy and he had brought that up that when I was a child, I would put on my sister's clothes, not because I wanted to be a a woman, but because I didn't want to be me, because I was the only one in the family that got the shit kicked out of me constantly and was sexually abused.

And so it was,

for him to do that was not,

he didn't want to be a woman.

He just didn't want to be him.

He wanted to, you know, and he had brought that up in therapy.

And then the therapist

planted the seed in his head.

you know, and then all these other external forces with the love bombing and the

trans community.

and all there was a lot that went into that you know and that was that was outside of his own mind but at some point he said he reckon it was so ridiculous

he recognized i can't do this anymore well he came to christ yeah but i think i think culturally what happens in individuals like him and we see it in many other cases

Culturally, the demons that were playing his hand, and when you got Tucker Carlson talking about

getting attacked by demons, when you've got mainstream media figures like you and others that are because evil is becoming so apparent, you can't watch the Olympics and go, that's weird.

The P.

Diddy,

that's all part of it.

I mean, how, how, so.

That was ritualistic.

You had to give your man card in

to get into, it's accepted into that circle.

I don't know

a whole lot about the diddy stuff.

I've been waiting for the kind of verdict to come out.

And then, then, you know, then it came out.

And he got like, what?

Soliciting a prostitute.

Yeah.

Some minor charge.

But,

and we can dive into that in just a second.

And Epstein killed himself, too.

Did you hear that?

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Too soon?

I mean,

I think he was allowed to kill himself.

I think he was.

I think this was Frankie Five Angels.

Yeah.

Remember Frankie Five Angels from The Godfather?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Take care of yourself and we'll take care of your family.

Otherwise, yeah.

So, I mean,

you have to break it down in layman's terms for me.

What is going on?

Why is it amplified at this specific moment in time?

How high does, I mean, I don't even know where to start, but that's why you're here.

I want to learn about this.

And so, you know, what is happening?

Because what it seems like to me is

all of the elites, the political parties, nations,

I mean, all of the

people that have major influence in the world, actors, actresses, I mean, all the

political types, world leaders.

I mean,

it seems like it's coming down from the very top of

worldly

people.

Yeah.

How high does it go?

I suspect it goes pretty high.

I mean, I'm still,

you know,

boots on the ground type.

And so,

but when you see things like the Bohemian Grove and you see things, Bromovich and her connection with the Clintons,

you know, there's more to it than meets the eye.

I'm not, I'm not going full

you know, conspiracy theory on everything, but I think we have to be aware that,

there are certain families that have been practicing this for centuries.

There's a lot of people that just dabble and they're jumping into this because it's popular or chic and whatever, or you can get power from it.

But then there's others that have been doing it for a long time.

And this is, these are, you know, we've been,

this is why we need

Christian men and women to live their faith.

We need exorcists.

I mean, how does it get introduced?

I mean, first.

How is it spread through so many elites?

I mean, where is it introduced?

Do you hit a certain level and then the people on that level financially or

just a certain level of fame?

I mean, is it introduced by colleagues or well, Beyoncé?

She admits

that she said she changed something takes over her when she performs.

You know,

others have made, you know, they've made pacts, you know.

There's always going to be those individuals that are willing to do that, you know.

Why would they do it, though?

Power?

Why do they think they're going to get power?

I mean, if they don't think that they get power from God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, why do they think they're going to get power from Satan?

or Baal or Moloch?

Because they will.

What kind of power?

Wealth, prestige political power

i mean he is the prince of this world so so you know there are those that will are willing to you know what he's looking for is and the language that he often uses is you have what it takes i mean i so you have what it takes to sell your soul in exchange for something earthly i'm trying i'm trying what i'm trying to like what where's the presentation like if you do this then you're going to get this power or like where's the sign or the voice you know like like you had talked about in the car wreck you know, that's a, to me, that's, that, that's not a coincidence that the Bible and the gold crucifix or cross was in plain sight of, I mean, this sounds like it's the first thing you saw.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

When you came to and kind of woke up.

And so how is this?

How is this demonic influence introduced in people's lives?

And how do they know that they're going to get power from

certain sacrifices or acts or whatever it may be.

Yeah.

Is it the voice of Satan?

No, I think there's an underpractitioners out there that are doing it.

I mean, that's just, that's the reality.

And so they come to him.

They come to him and they.

And they find them?

Is it like

a missionary operation, but on the other side?

I think so.

I mean, I said a priest, I had a priest just email me and said, hey,

I got this lady.

She was urinating

outside of our church.

And we ran her off, you know.

And so we've had that at one of the churches that I go to.

And

this church that this priest is, they do.

I think they do 10,000 confessions a year.

I mean, this is a powerhouse church.

And so the Satanists will have initiation rituals that you have to do certain things.

Co-urinate in front of a church, desecrate

a church as part of your initiation before you're allowed in.

So they have their own rituals.

They have their own way in.

How they recruit, I don't know.

Have you seen it?

What's that?

Have you seen anybody

that's been approached or do you know anybody that's been approached?

Yeah, we had a lady not long ago.

went to a priest, brought him a consecrated host and said,

this was stolen from a church.

They use it.

My boyfriend, I'm living with this guy, and they use it in their ritual and desecrate it.

And I felt really bad.

I was Catholic, and I wanted to give it back to you.

If he finds out that I stole it, he'll kill me.

So, yeah, they're out there.

You know,

let's go into the artist.

What's going on with her?

Yeah,

you know, it's

this is all symbolic

Rituals,

you know,

I try not to do too much reading and writing about those people.

I try to focus on souls, you know.

But yeah, so she, she, um, I mean, part remember, part of the email leak, the so-called Russian email leak, was Podesta's brother was on that list, you know, of, are you coming to the show, you know?

And it's written off as art, but it's not a satanic, very satanic.

What is the point of the the art?

Because most people,

I shouldn't say, I could go to an everyday American and

spout her name off.

Probably the majority of people, I know the majority.

I didn't know who the hell she was until my editor, Darren, started putting the stuff in front of me.

And I was like, what is this shit?

And then he goes on about who's buying her paintings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's, well, it's liturgical.

It's ritualistic and liturgical.

You wonder why I like to go to Latin Mass.

Everything that is done is a mockery.

Everything that they do is a mockery of the Catholic faith at one level.

I mean she did that.

She did that painting for Prince Charles, right?

Yeah.

And it was it was it was it was the devil, correct?

Yeah.

And then they'll have, you know, cakes the shape of bodies or so-called, you know, and they would,

but what is it?

This is my body.

The words we hear at the consecration of the mass: this is my body.

So it's a mind.

Did you say that again?

Cakes

in the shapes of bodies.

Yeah.

So it's, you know, and then they would eat that and she would lay out and they would do, you know, they have all this other stuff.

I'd rather not go into the details.

Why not?

Talk about Christ.

Well, I think this stuff's important.

Yeah.

People need to know that it's that it's as real as all the images in here.

It's as real.

We just can't see see it.

That's the problem.

You can't see it.

Can we go into it?

Are you willing to go into it?

Well, to the extent that I have knowledge of it, you know, I mean,

I'm a Cav Scout and God's army is all, you know.

But there's some dark forces out there that we have to be aware of it.

What about the Diddy stuff?

Yeah, I mean, that's another one.

I mean,

ritualistic,

sexual, bisexual,

you know, not unlike the Dionysian rituals.

If you want in.

That's what you got to do.

That's what you got to do.

You know,

one of the actors, what was it, one of the actors that played, who was Iron Man's assistant?

Oh, man.

You know what I'm talking about?

No.

Anyway, on that movie, the very first actor that

played

his assistant guy ended up, I don't know, I'm not a, I don't watch much of movies, but he recently came out and said he was invited one of those and said, you got to turn on your man card.

That's the rule.

If you want to join that, if you want to join the rest of it, you know.

So what's the point?

Is it to take their dignity?

Well, power, control.

Yeah.

Is it a blackmail thing?

I think so.

Some of that too.

Yeah.

Just like there's always a blackmail thing, I think.

But again, thirst for power,

you have what it takes.

I mean, there's just, I mean,

it just seems like it's running rampant and

it's being amplified right now.

I mean, even all these TikTok accounts, there's that satanic cult that's having

teenage girls cut themselves, kill themselves, swallow razor blades.

Yeah.

Put things in themselves.

I mean, it's, it's, and they fall into that trap.

And then, you know, once they have one image, then it, then it keeps going farther, and they keep having them do more and more and more until they're.

Yeah, like the Nexi.

You've seen about that stuff, that guy, that guy.

And Rainier was his name, that Nexium called, same stuff.

It's just repurposed differently and fashioned, you know, differently.

Why do you think that the

spiritual war is being amplified right now?

Why do you think that

this what do you call it?

The side of Satan, the darks, what do you call it?

I think it's just the spiritual combat is just becoming more open.

Like any

combat, sometimes it's more open and sometimes it's more covert.

Sometimes you're,

you know, sometimes it's you guys and sometimes it's the tanks.

And so sometimes it's more covert and sometimes it's more overt.

So I think we're just living in a time where it's just out in the open and I guess the devil feels free enough to talk about it and be open about it and

try to convince us

that things are that bad, but I think it should drive us to pray.

You know,

I was reading, St.

Cyprian

in 300 AD, under a time of intense persecution, he said,

prayer,

fasting,

fasting,

vigils, and prayer in common, these are our armaments.

These are the spiritual weapons and defenses that we have against evil.

You know, 300, at a time of living, the church was under intense persecution.

Prayers in common, vigils and fasting.

And

most Christians don't know how to fast.

You know,

we don't know what fasting is.

We don't do it.

But I've been in session and

the demon says,

nobody's fasting in here.

And everybody's like,

he's right.

That's how we do battle against him.

We battle back with our bodies, fasting, prayer, vigils, spending time in prayer, not just checking the block.

So yeah,

it's a battle.

But we have to learn how to fight with the ancient weapons.

Do you feel the end is near?

No.

No.

No.

I don't want to get out that easy.

Yeah.

Now, there was a vision.

Pope Leo XIII.

I think it's interesting that the new pope is Leo XIV, but Pope Leo XIII had a vision of hell and

Satan being granted 100 years to attack the church.

And so that, and that was in, I think, 1913.

So we're at the end of that, you know.

He was given, granted 100 years to go after the church, apparently, if you believe this, Pope Leo XIII.

And that's where we get the St.

Michael prayer prayer and part of the prayer that's embedded into the rite of exorcism that was written after that.

And this is why Catholics up until the modern time would say the St.

Michael prayer at the end of Mass.

At the end of Latin Mass, we always say the St.

Michael prayer.

So I think we're just kind of living perhaps at the end of that time of purification and testing of the church.

But I don't know if it's,

I'm not a doomsday guy, you know.

I think for me, I'm going to get up tomorrow and do everything I do every morning.

Get my Bible out, read, do my prayers, take care of.

I'm a doomsday guy.

Yeah.

Stop reading the news.

You'll feel better.

Yeah.

Well, it's hard when it's in your face.

You have to.

It's your business.

You have to stay on top of it, but you have to just make sure it doesn't consume you.

And,

you know, spend, you know, I remember Zig Ziglar said, remember Zig Ziegler, the motivational speaker, he said, I read the newspaper every day and the Bible every day so I can see what both sides are up to.

So I think it's good that

reading a little bit of scriptures every day, spending time in prayer, meditating on scripture, praying your rosary.

I gave you about as manly of a rosary as you're going to get, Ranger Bead Rosary, praying the rosary every day.

And so that when you do start reading about all the dark stuff in the news, you can understand, okay, I've read the Bible start to finish.

And in the end, I see we win.

You know, like football season's coming up, you know.

Of course, I went to Notre Dame.

I'm a Notre Dame fan.

I remember last year, I forget what game it was.

I was out somewhere, and I recorded it, but I had heard that we won.

And

it was like, man, it was a close game.

And it sure didn't look like we were going to win.

But I was just kicking back, eating some popcorn and kind of enjoying the game because I knew the Irish are going to win today.

I already know the answer.

So when I didn't know the answer, if I didn't know they win,

it's your team, man.

You're going to get excited and you're going to hope they win.

But that's how we need to be as Christians.

We know Christ is, Christ wins in the end.

We know that.

We just need to just grind it out.

You know, like I remember I told you the story of

the Marine was going to my SF buddy.

I had a buddy, retired colonel.

And he was asking, how do I get through Q-Course?

How do I get through this?

How do I get through this phase?

And finally, my buddy told him, here's how you get to Q-Course.

Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, keep walking.

So

that's the role.

That's our job as

men and and women, Christians, we just keep our head down, keep your mouth shut, just keep walking.

I got another question.

Yes, sir.

You said keep your mouth shut.

Yeah.

Why would you keep your mouth shut?

Wouldn't aren't, aren't we as Christians or Catholics supposed to call out evil when we see it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, he was talking about,

you know, when you're going through Q course or you're going through your guys'.

I understand what he's talking about.

You're not going to, you keep your mouth shut because the more you complain, the worse it's going to get.

Just don't cause any trouble.

I'm not saying you don't do that.

No, we have to speak out.

You know, I think there's a famous story about St.

Francis de Sales, or St.

Francis of Assisi.

And

I hear this quoted a lot.

Preach the gospel at all times, but when necessary, use words.

And I think we're at the time where it's necessary to use words.

So what you're doing and what others are doing, what I'm trying to do is

to arm people, to help people to learn how to fight back against all the darkness that's affecting the rebellion that's hitting families, you know, good families, Christian families.

And

so, yeah, I'm not saying you keep your mouth shut.

I think I'm not saying that at all.

But I mean just, what I mean is just, you just grind it out.

You have to just grind it out.

And if God calls you and gives you a position like you have to shine a light of truth, then do it.

And

if not, be faithful wherever God calls you to be faithful and just work it right there.

You know, not everybody, you know, think about it.

There's two saints in the Catholic Church who are patrons of foreign missions.

One of them is St.

Francis

Xavier.

They said he baptized, I forget, I mean, something like he would baptize thousands a day.

He went to foreign missions in China and other places.

He went all over the world.

And the other one is St.

Therese, another Carmelite from the Carmelite scapular, St.

Therese of the Sioux.

She was about 15 years old when she went into the monastery as a nun.

She died when she was around 21 or 22.

She developed a theology or spirituality called the little way.

And she was of offering every small little thing up for

souls, for priests, for missionaries.

And she became a saint and a doctor of the church co-patron or patroness with St.

Francis Xavier of foreign missions.

There's people out there that go to work, doing missionary work, and you're doing missionary work on a different level,

but they're doing missionary work and then there's those that are doing it behind the scenes quietly, praying, offering up small things.

It's Martha and Mary, you know.

Martha, you know, you know, the story of Martha and Mary.

Mary sits at the feet of Jesus and Martha, her sister, says, hey, I'm doing all the cooking.

I'm doing all the work, all the serving.

Make my sister come help me.

Jesus says, you're worrying about too many things.

Your sister has chosen the better part.

And so there's those that live the contemplative life, that live a quiet life of prayer.

Not everybody can be Sean Ryan,

but you can do just as much, if not more, just through prayer and small little things, small little sacrifices.

That's what St.

Teres kind of taught us as well.

So whatever God calls you to do, just kind of work in that realm.

Whatever he calls you to do, you fight at that level.

So another question, I mean,

you say

whatever God calls you to do, but at the same time, if we rewind, you know, our conversation about an hour, we're talking about, you know,

discernment in the demons will put things into your head.

So, how do you decipher, yeah, how do you discern what that call is?

Yeah, every, you know,

um,

prayer.

Um, I mean, you can hardly know what God is saying if you don't spend time in prayer.

So, spending time in prayer, quiet, and I mean, not just vocal prayer, you know, that prayer book I gave you, wear that out, but

also quiet prayer, meditating on scriptures,

spending time in the Bible and meditation,

starting to learn to discern the voice of God.

You know, after my initial conversion,

you know, I had one other experience and it just, from that point on, it was like God was hanging with me every day.

Butterfly kisses, you know, I mean, it was, I was like, wow, if this is Christianity.

I'm in.

You know what I mean?

You know, I love you.

No, I love you more.

No, I love you more.

You know, in the early new conversion, it's like, no, you're the best.

No, you're the best.

You know, and just like when you're first married, you're like, you're all touching and you got to hold hands and everywhere together.

We have to touch.

And then that goes away.

God says, you have to start to learn to hear my voice.

And you start to really search me out.

And so he pulls back.

It doesn't mean he's any further away.

He's just, we're not as

sensorily awareness of it.

You know, like you're 444.

I've heard you talk about that.

He'll pull that back.

Now it's just like he's just doing something

because that's what it's going to take to keep you connected and keep you awake.

And eventually maybe just pull that away.

Do you think a demon would use 444 against me?

He could.

And that's where you got to be careful.

If you put too much

emphasis on

I have to hear this, you know, and we've all done it.

God, if you want me to do this,

make my phone ring in the next three minutes.

Make the car, next car that drives by, if it's blue, then I know you want me to do this.

And sometimes, you know, he doesn't work that way.

He doesn't negotiate with terrorists, so to speak.

So yeah, he can use it against you if he knows that

you're too,

the demon can use it against you if you're not careful.

So you have to learn to discern.

And, okay.

It's kind of open but cautious and look at the fruit.

If it's going to drive you, you know,

the things that you know, the fruit of prayer, and this would be St.

John of the Cross, who's a doctor of the Catholic Church,

and the fruit of even of spiritual darkness, but the fruit of prayer.

Am I increasing in virtue?

Am I increasing in my ability to carry the cross?

Am I increasing in

my awareness of how offensive sin is?

Am I growing in my vocation?

Am I becoming a better father, husband, wife, mother?

You know, this is the kind of fruit of prayer.

And if you know these things are kind of the fruit of

your prayer, and if God gives you some of the good stuff and affirmation,

rejoice.

And if he pulls it away, okay.

So I understand that, but then there's, and just I just won't, for the record, I don't worship the number 444.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

I don't ask.

I can't say that I don't ask for signs, but

I'm just trying to pay attention.

Exactly.

And so when you're talking about, you know, does this help me carry the cross more?

I just want to give you an example.

This has nothing to do with 444, but I've talked about this several times.

I did this interview earlier this year with this

Colleen Georgescu, who was running for president of Romania, and then he got painted into being a Russian asset.

And

he was winning the election, and then they just kicked him off and

was being harassed.

I think he may have been arrested.

A little rusty on it.

Anyways,

maybe it was a Russian asset.

Maybe he wasn't.

I don't think he was.

But on the way to that interview,

I was like, shit, man,

I hope I'm doing the right thing.

And I had written this tweet out real quick that said, the truth is like a lion.

Set it free and it'll defend itself.

That came from Adam, by the way.

But he's the the one that told me that.

It's stuck with me ever since.

Tweeted that out.

I'm having like this internal, you know, debacle.

Like, am I doing the right thing?

Like, I feel like I'm doing the right thing, but I don't know.

I don't know.

But all I know is I feel like I'm supposed to give this man a voice because no media would touch him.

Nobody would, nobody was talking about it.

Turn the corner and this woman walks around the corner.

I mean, this is like minutes after I did, after I tweeted that out.

And this woman comes around the corner with this huge

sequence sparkly lion head on her shirt.

And that, like, you know, I don't know how interviewing Colleen Georgescu helps me carry the cross.

I just see a man who

got shafted in an election and

they went after him.

And I said, well, if nobody else is going to give this guy a voice, then I'm going to give this guy a voice.

I don't know if I'm doing the right thing.

I feel like I'm doing the right thing.

Boom.

That's the sign that I needed to let me know I'm doing the right thing.

And does that make any sense?

Yeah.

And so I don't think there's anything in scripture.

And I don't know.

I've not,

I've picked through the Bible.

I've read a lot of the gospels.

A lot of it doesn't make sense to me.

You know, I,

I, I try to learn from

discussion and things like I'm doing right now rather than the Bible because it just paints more questions.

I'm just being honest.

Yeah, yeah.

It's confusing to me.

I don't understand a lot of what I read.

And so this is how I learn by talking to people like you or Father Dan Rehill or Lee Strobel or John Burke.

And I learn a lot that way.

But

all you guys say the same thing.

Does it help?

I don't see how that strengthens me as a Christian.

I just feel like I'm doing the right thing.

And then

I get some

sign like the lion's head.

Yeah, yeah.

So how do I, I think it's just.

Maybe that wasn't.

Maybe that was just a coincidence.

I don't believe in coincidences either.

Yeah, no.

It's just, it's, again, it's like

how many times have you kicked a door in?

And you get to the door and it's like, I want to wait.

Let's try a different entryway.

So you have to kind of trust your instincts as well.

Don't demand a sign.

Like in the scriptures, God tells Israelites, you people, unless you have, Jesus says, unless you have signs and wonders, you won't believe.

And that's, you know, when the signs and wonders become an obstacle to your belief,

then you've got to be careful.

But, I mean, to me, it sounds like God's messing with you a little bit, letting you have a little, he's having a little fun with you.

Yeah, I mean, it's not like I'm waiting for the green light, like we're getting ready to go on a raid or jump out of a Hilo or what you airplane or whatever.

It's just, it's just when I'm in the, when I'm having those, and when I'm confused, am I doing the right thing?

Yeah.

You know, and I'm not,

I mean, sometimes I might ask for a sign.

I mean,

I mean,

people do that shit all the time.

It's like, oh, are we supposed to have this house?

Give us a sign.

I think that stuff's bullshit

because that's just a, that's just a,

it's a,

it's just a, it's a fucking thing.

It's not, yeah.

It's like, I really don't think God gives a shit if I live in that house or the other house or that house.

I don't think he really cares.

So I'm not really, I'm looking, I'm not looking for a sign if I, if I'm,

to buy a home or a car

or

get a big deal or anything like that.

I never, I never do that.

But, but I do it when I'm having

when I'm having troubles, like which I know where my values are but I don't know if this align

am I making any sense yeah yeah no for sure and I think I think

open but cautious knowing that

the the demon can walk you down into a kill zone too but at the same time

there's something pure about a childlike faith and trust in God you know and Those things come and go.

I would be lying to you, say, if I didn't have those things happen in my life as well.

But as long as it's not, I won't, I don't believe unless it's, you made the decision to do it and then you got an affirmation versus I'm going to, I'm waiting for God to tell me.

He's not going to work that way.

He's going to let you do it.

But, you know, those little things, he's going to send your way on occasion just to go, yeah.

You know,

you know, I was traveling not long ago.

And, you know, traveling is no fun and you're tired.

I was sitting

in the regular seat and

must be traveling more than usual because I've been getting some upgrades, which is kind of a nice thing, you know.

And so

the flight attendant comes back, excuse me,

you have an upgrade, but you like to go to first class.

I was like,

well, if you have to, you know.

So I walk up there, like, I said a picture of George Jefferson.

You know, he used to walk George Jefferson.

I said, this isn't me walking up to first class, you know.

And so

was that the Lord saying, hey, man, spread it out a little bit.

I appreciate the work you're doing.

Or was it just American Airlines saying, hey, man, you've done a lot of miles this year, and here's a free upgrade.

Or was it both?

I don't know.

But I accepted it, Lord.

Hey, either way, thank you, Lord.

And if you're sitting in the back and the guy next to you is snoring and smelly and bumping and man spreading next to you, Lord, thank you anyway.

But yeah, sometimes, you know, especially when you're in critical times, you know, when you're in these critical moments like you are,

he's going to to shower you with some of this stuff.

He's going to give you the Reese's pieces to kind of walk you in, you know, which is very beautiful.

So just be open and cautious and kind of run it by again, run it by your wife because

they've got senses that

they see the world in a different way, you know.

Let's take a quick break.

Once we get back, we'll get into some exorcisms.

Okay.

Perfect.

Perfect.

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All right, we're back from the break.

We're getting ready to get into some exorcism stuff.

So how did you get into

exorcisms?

Yeah, so I was,

I was just, just started, just got accepted for my doctoral work.

So after my conversion years ago, I just had a thirst for, just a thirst for God.

And so I started, I got a master's degree.

After my conversion experiences,

I couldn't read enough of scripture.

So I just fell in love with scripture.

So I just started reading the Bible, reading, and I realized I got to get more of a foundation.

So I got a master's degree in theology.

And then I was just reading about the Bible.

I'm going to read the Bible.

So then I ran into this priest who just died this year.

He's a good man.

And

he was going blind.

So I went to his apartment every Friday and he said Mass.

And he said, I'll teach you Greek.

And so he said, you want to learn Greek?

I'll teach you how to learn Greek.

I'll teach you Greek.

And so

we start working on it.

And I was really struggling.

And, you know, I went to Catholic school my whole life.

I went to Notre Dame.

I had a master's degree in theology.

And I was really struggling with learning Greek.

And he goes, well, because you want to read the Bible, you got to learn Greek.

And so I'm doing it part-time and trying to teach myself when I'm not there.

And he's tutoring me.

And he says, hey, man, I realize it's my fault that you're struggling.

And I said, and I was like, oh man, what a nice guy, you know, what a bro.

You know, he's taking the hit for me.

I'm just struggling.

He goes, yeah, it's my fault.

I've grossly overestimated your academic background and intellectual capacity.

I was like,

I love you, man.

And so he said, we're going to throw this crap out.

We're trying this modern book.

He said, we're going to learn it my way.

We started learning ancient, you know, ancient Greek.

And then we moved into Old Testament.

And then by the time we got to the New Testament, it's almost like compared to, say,

Aristotle, the New Testament is like, see Dick Run, you know, see Jane Run.

So I spent several years learning Greek.

And then in a couple of years, just, I still just read every day just to keep it fresh, read scriptures, just read the Bible in Greek, just to keep it.

And it's amazing.

Again, like the nuances, God pursues us, but it's not just following like a shadow.

I mean, mean, he's in hot pursuit of us.

You know, the words that are used, when St.

Luke says

that we are the ministers of God, right, in the opening of St.

Luke's gospel, the word he uses under-oarsman, you know, like a gallow slave.

This is what the ministers of God are.

I mean, there's just so much richness in the words of scripture in the Greek.

And so I spent some years really trying to master that.

And then I just had this, you know, sometimes, like we were talking about the 444, God sometimes nags us until we at least,

hey, all right, I'll do it.

And sometimes

he'll teach us through repetition.

You know,

you'll read a scripture versus what's good about doing, reading the scriptures every day, even if it's just reading the proverbs, one proverb a day for the day.

You start

thinking with scriptural language and then you read the scripture and then you look at the billboard and there's a billboard with that exact scripture.

And then somebody walks by and it's on their t-shirt, you know.

And so God just kind of encourages us through repetition.

And, you know, again, you just have to be cautious because the enemy knows if we need that and God pulls it back, the enemy can kind of step in and try to mimic God.

But, but

God is really oftentimes does what he's doing, you know, you talked about too, like Tim Tebow.

I mean, how do you deny that?

I mean, it's, you know, I don't know how you deny that.

He's just he's just encouraging him to keep doing what he's doing, you know?

And so

anyway, it's it's so I just love scripture.

So I was just, but at the same time, sometimes God just pounds you, you know.

Can you went through the 444 thing like we just did downstairs?

I didn't know any of that stuff.

What did you say?

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I was thinking about that because I was listening to, I think, the Strobel, Lee Strobel, and you were talking about the 444.

So numbers have,

especially to the Jews, numbers have sacred, there's sacred meaning and the biblical numbers have significance.

And Jesus does this.

He says, do you remember when they were sometime, I think it was in Mark's gospel, he says, they were arguing and

Jesus corrected them and they thought he was mad because they didn't bring bread.

Okay.

And Jesus says, guys,

when we were with the 4,000,

how many loaves were left over?

You know,

they said seven.

when we were with the five thousand how many were left over twelve do you still not get it

you know and they're like no

you know but when Jesus multiplied the loaves for the four thousands he's in Gentile territory the number four

represents the four

four

corners the four directional corners right the four corners of the earth, the fourfold gospel

in Gentile territory with seven loaves left over, right?

And so the seven represents the covenant.

The number seven in Hebrew means to covenant oneself.

God rested on the seventh day.

He rested and covenanted himself with humanity.

And so now in Gentile territory, the four, the gospel is going to be brought to the four corners of the earth, to the Gentile territory, right?

Through the seven of the new covenant, the seven sacraments of the church, etc.

So you can see the symbolic of the numbers.

And then the five, five always represents the law, the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.

How many were left over?

The 12.

There were 12 baskets left over.

12, 12, the 12

tribes of Israel, the 12 patriarchs, and now the 12 apostles.

Just in Revelation, you see the 12.

12 and 12 as well.

These numbers have symbolic meaning.

In the opening of Matthew's gospel, they list off from the beginning Jesus' genealogy, and then there was

13 generations.

Let me see.

I don't want to misquote scripture.

So at the end, in Jesus' genealogy in Matthew, let me pull it up.

Thus, the total number of generations from Abraham to David is 14 generations.

David to

Babylonian exile, 14 generations.

Babylonian exile to the Messiah, 14 generations.

So you have

the number David, each letter in Hebrew has its own numeric equivalent.

So there's no vowels in Hebrew.

So you have D,

V, D, the five, D is five, V is four, and D is five, the number 14.

So you have 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations, or six sevens.

And now,

Matthew is

a Jewish listener would go,

dude, spot on.

You know,

I get it.

Now we're starting the seventh seven, the perfect, the new covenant, the seventh seven, David, the Messiah from the, you know, the new David, the new Messiah coming from,

you know, is now enacting the new covenant for humanity.

And so four,

four represents the four corners of the earth, the four gospels.

Four times three is twelve.

Three, of course, represents the Trinity, wholeness, perfection.

and then 12, the 12 tribes, and now the 12 apostles.

So I try not to analyze this stuff, but sometimes there's no coincidences.

So like I said, I think

if it's true, you keep getting this 444, the Lord is saying,

you're going to somehow help me in some way, even in the secular world, to bring the fourfold gospel to the four corners of the earth so people will believe in the three persons of one God

and the 12 tribes of the 12 apostles and to bring them into the church somehow i don't know that's just a little mid-rash on that but very internal but those numbers mean they they they have symbolic there's symbolic meaning you know

there's you know and and uh

yeah anyway so how did you get into exorcisms were you cast did you insert yourself yeah any anybody we have one disqualifier you know and that is if you volunteer for this you're automatically disqualified you know People have come to us, hey, can I get involved?

There's, there's, there's a kind of a famous guy who's been reaching out recently to, hey, can I get on your team?

And like, if you're asking, you're disqualified 100% because

you got to be an idiot, you know, to do this.

So it's something, again, that you're called, it's something that you're called to.

Either

in my experience, you've either prayed to God, teach me the truth, use me,

make me holy.

and

we're going into spiritual combat this close with the enemy you you're gonna learn the truth you're gonna grow in holiness or you're gonna get taken to the woodshed until you do and you're gonna and and the Lord's gonna use you in in some way to help to bring souls out from the grip of darkness so so I had learned Greek and I had this nagging hey just get your PhD and I was like I can't get a PhD, man.

That's not

practical, you know.

And so I said, well, I'll just apply.

And I was in, at that time, I was going through some kind of a rough patch and some spiritual darkness.

And I just wasn't, I was still praying every day.

And, but I just, I said, all right, fine.

I don't even think this is you, but I'm going to fill it out and send it off.

So I found this program in England and

I was able to do it part-time.

And

they accepted me.

Okay.

So, so I just, I just got accepted.

And then we had an exorcist exorcist, a friend of mine,

who was asked by our bishop to be a diocesan mandated exorcist, which is a special...

To be an exorcist, technically, you have to have a mandate.

And

that's a Latin word, from a Latin word, it means a commissioning.

It also ties into being sent, a biblical term, and to be sent as an apostolos

means you carry as a commission the authority of the one who sent you.

It isn't like the domino's pizza guy that comes to collect the bill.

When you're sent,

this goes back to a Hebrew concept called the silia is the Hebrew word, but the Greek is apostolos.

To be sent is to be, the decisions you make are binding to the one who sent you and to the one to whom you sent.

This is why.

the demon recognizes, especially when it's an an ordained, when it's a mandated exorcist, the demon is bound there and

must oblige in some way.

He must obey the commands of the exorcist.

And so anyway, my good friend was asked to be an exorcist and he's like, hey man, you're ex-military.

Would you come?

I'm like, yeah, father, but I'm getting to start my doctoral work and I'm going to be pretty busy, but I'll come.

So this guy, Kyle Clement, is Father Ripper's right-hand man.

He shows up.

At the time, he was rocking the ZZ Top beard,

and he stands up, kind of casual clothes.

And I was like, and he said, this is Kyle.

He's from Texas.

And I was like,

Texas?

what the heck is this guy going to know?

You know, Texas with the beard.

And he starts laying out theology like I've never seen.

And, you know, I had just finished my master's degree and studying the progression to spiritual perfection.

There's nine grades roughly of prayer, beginning with vocal prayer all the way to a mystical union prayer like we talked about, Padre Pio.

And there's gradations.

There's three main ways.

And inside of those, there's gradations of prayer that you progress along.

And he's laying out the nine steps to progression to possession and what it looks like.

And

I realized that it was a complete diabolical inversion of what God's planned for us.

St.

Paul says, I am possessed by Christ.

He wants to be fully possessed.

He wants us to be totally alive in Christ, him completely possessing us.

And the demon is trying to work to the opposite.

So the lights just start going on in my head.

And then the priest uh says okay

anybody that wants to leave but we're going to bring someone in we're going to pray for them and do a minor exorcism and if you want to leave you can leave you know we're going to take a little break and then everybody bails so it's just me and a couple crazy guys you know and my you know my friend's like And he was, I mean, he wasn't an athlete.

And, you know, he was a good guy, smart guy,

well-educated, but he never played sports or anything.

And he'd never been punched in the face.

And, you know, so he's like, hey, are you going to go?

I'm like, nah, no, Father, I'm going to stick around, you know, for sure.

If you're, you know, I'm from Ohio, man, if you're in a fight, I guess I'm in it too, you know, it's just the way I am.

So he starts praying, and it was like,

you know, the first time for me, you know, for you, it's probably strapping up or, you know, the air starts to rarefy.

and your senses just start to focus in.

To me, it's that first initial,

once I start hearing the rotors, you go into a a different place you know and the air just started to rarefy and i was expecting hollywood i was expecting something far different and what i saw was it was liturgical it was beautiful it was powerful it was the weight of the church the authority of the church weighing down against the kingdom of darkness and uh so that was the first time that i saw anything special and then it's like oh that's not so bad and then oh okay well we have this other case and so we started you know, started doing cases.

At the time, we were doing two or three

sessions a week, different, you know, minor and minor exorcism, which is deliverance, and then solemn session, which is a little more rare.

So we started, and the case started, you know,

once the demon knows you're set up in a diocese, he will flood you.

flood you with cases psychological cases crazy people people that don't need help you know if he can he'll, you know, you're a human.

How many rounds did you carry at one time when you went in?

It's always different.

But

six mags.

Yeah.

So there's a limit how much you can carry.

So at some point, it's not like Hollywood.

You're not John Wick, you know.

You run out of ammo.

And

so he'll try to get you to just deplete all your assets, all your ammo if he can.

So you have to have a pro.

We developed a process with Father Ripker for that.

But we started getting tons of cases, tons of cases.

What are the nine, you said there's nine stages to possession?

Well, there's three primary.

So you have ordinary and extraordinary

diabolic activity.

The ordinary activity is temptation, the stuff that we deal with all the time.

Until probably 30 minutes after I'm dead, I'm still going to.

I'm still going to be tempted by that cherry pie or whatever.

What kind of temptation?

What's that?

What kind of temptation?

diabolic temptation I was joking about cherry pie I like cherry pie but you know I mean so temptation is the ordinary and it you know

part of being being in the spiritual life part of being a Christian is dealing with temptation a temptation to anything name it anger lust

infidelity

impurity

theft whatever the demon is going to constantly whittle away that's the ordinary the analogy that i use um is you remember in Vietnam they would set up, I don't know if you guys still did, but they would set up the wire.

They would string claymore minds around, you know.

And so the wire represents kind of the interiority of self.

And the temptation, the demon's still outside the wire.

And then you've got increasing levels of extraordinary diabolic activity.

And it's oppression.

obsession, and then possession.

And each one of those has marked signs, three marked signs of movement towards a full-blown possession.

But the ordinary

is temptation, and the extraordinary is oppression, obsession, possession.

And

it becomes, it begins,

oppression level is normally along in temporal goods,

relationships, finances, you know, vehicles, and temporal things.

And then as it grows down the spectrum, it becomes more interior, and the demon becomes more present to the person

as he takes more ground.

They surrender more ground.

It's very much like

trench warfare in many ways.

As the demon takes more ground, he becomes more interior and more present to them.

They become, you know, just like

the church lady, you know, you have a conversion experience and

suddenly you're helping out the church, you're telling everybody about it, like, man, God did all these great things for me, and you're broadcasting and telling everybody.

And the opposite, you're doing the opposite.

You know, you're putting up, and if you're Catholic anyway, you're putting up pictures of the Our Lady of Guadalupe and a crucifix over here.

And, you know, you've got Saint Benedict over here, whatever.

There, they're starting to take down any religious objects.

They're putting up more secular stuff.

They're starting to broadcast.

They're doubting.

God, you know, so you start to see this inversion.

And then spiritual obsession,

the demon starts moving in.

He's starting setting up.

He's starting to control things a lot more

increasingly.

And possession, again, as I mentioned earlier, it's very rare.

But

it's done when, if he doesn't have to, he's not going to for the most part.

And so, yeah, so obsession is

more common.

than possession.

And the danger of not ferreting out the psychological, people got to understand is that a psychological obsession, psychological obsession, can open you to a spiritual oppression or even spiritual obsession, just to a psychological obsession, because the demon feeds off that.

He takes advantage of that psychological obsession, whether it's addiction or pornography, or I'm not saying if you're addicted to pornography, you're possessed, but any psychological obsession.

can open, expose, you're just vulnerable.

You've got a whole flank that's wide open and nobody's covering it.

How do they get in?

You know, a couple of things.

One is wounds, trauma.

Another is, you know, the demon...

Physical trauma?

Psychological trauma.

Psychological trauma.

Psychological trauma.

Yeah, psychological trauma.

They feed off those wounds, their vulnerabilities.

And,

of course, the demon enters through sin.

And as I put it in the book, the demon enters through sin, but he holds in heresies, believe it or not.

Even in false beliefs, he can hold on those heresies.

We always see that.

But it's usually some psychological trauma and or sin,

especially grave sin, even that, especially

the really wicked sins in our experience, we've seen that

as diabolic accompaniment.

What is that?

This is a demon present.

What's an extreme sin?

Incest,

sexual trauma, sexual abuse, rape,

that sort of thing.

What is the, I mean, what is the demon's goal?

Take you to hell.

But there's lots of sinners.

Why do they pick these specific people?

I mean,

what are some of the people that we were talking about?

Abramovich.

I mean, is she possessed?

Or...

Well, I mean, I think if you're working specifically specifically in that field, you're probably uncontestedly possessed, yeah.

But

they're working on all of us.

You know,

Father Morth, I think I mentioned earlier, the demon told him,

if you could see our numbers, we would darken the sun.

You know, my name is Legion, for we are many.

So

they're just constantly whittling away, whittling away, working at it to perception.

That's why I think you ought to watch Nefarius because you start to see diabolic psychology, the way he whittles away, what he's looking for, the vulnerabilities he's looking at.

But

he has no rights.

That's what he's going to say.

I have a right to you.

No, you don't.

If you're baptized by right, your soul belongs to Jesus Christ.

That's it.

But he takes permissions.

You know,

if you give him permissions to behaviors, he'll take that.

And that would be his entry point.

That makes sense?

kind of.

Yeah.

By giving him permissions, you mean by

your actions.

Acting on temptation.

Yeah.

Sinful behavior.

Yeah.

What are some of the things that you've seen during exorcisms?

You saw levitation, correct?

Yeah,

one of the first cases we had was,

well, yeah.

levitation all but

tips of the toes and the finger tip I mean physically impossible you know to elevate as if there was a rope pulling everything off the ground except for tips of the fingers and tips of the toes you've seen that yeah

how did that feel

um

you know you're just so focused on mission you're not thinking about it you're just praying you're doing your job you know

but yeah

i've seen a the priest starts praying and the lady sitting in a folding chair in the room about this size one bounce slides all the way from this wall to that wall

wow yeah

and I was just like you know just like you you got you're cool you know what I mean you're a seal I was a helicopter pilot you know you flew with a lot of guys and no matter what happens they're always cool so on the outside I'm always like

You know, just doing none of these shakeless.

On the inside, I was like, dude, you got to do that again.

That was wow.

Yeah.

but I mean I joke I joke but yeah it's some of the stuff it's just fan it's just

wow

what are they saying when you're performing the exorcism the the the yeah sometimes possessed person yeah when we talk about what the demon's saying or manifestation what happens is the demon appropriates the senses of the person

um

and so they take again the demon properly speaking possesses the body and they appropriate their senses sight hearing you know they're very they traffic in the the senses.

Some are sensitive to different things.

You know, I can't tell you how many times, you can't hear it, but I've got Gregorian chant going right now.

I can't tell you how many times I would do an intake and they'd say, can you turn that music off?

I'm like, what music?

You know, it's coming out of your pants, your jacket.

I'm like,

and I'll crank it up.

You mean this?

And I'll crank it up real loud.

No, I'm not going to turn that off.

Well, it's aggravating something inside of me.

Like, wow, okay,

I'm not turning it off.

You know,

I've seen it one time,

for example, music,

Gregorian chant, which is the chant of monks, okay, Catholic monks, Benedictine monks, praying

ancient prayers.

You know, Gregorian chant goes back to the 500s, you know, Gregory the Great is when it kind of started.

So maybe, maybe 600.

And so

the priest says, okay,

let's basically get the party started, you know.

So

I have the Todayum, which is an ancient Gregorian chant.

Today I am La Damas, we praise you, God.

And it's the chant of the choirs of angels chanting before the throne of God.

Okay.

And so

I just hold it up.

And as soon as the demon was kind of stoic, and as soon as he hears the Gregorian chant, immediately starts manifesting, and then the priest jumps in and does the exorcism.

And then the next week I thought, I want to be smart, because I'm a smart guy, you know.

So I played something else,

the DSE Ray, they prayed on Good Friday, the Day of Wrath.

So I want to play that one as being a smart guy.

So I just held that up, and

the demon just went like this and looked at me

and just looked at Father and nothing happened.

So I was like, man,

I wonder what happened.

So I look on the iTunes.

The first one was chanted by the Gregorian, I mean, the Benedictine months of Santo Domingo de los Silos

in Spain.

And then the second one was the Westminster Choir of Laypeople.

So the demon knew it's not just the words or the sound, it's where it's coming from, the heart of the church, the monastic heart of the church of chant.

The demon could tell the difference.

Wow.

Pretty incredible.

You know, so that, so they're trafficking the senses, you know.

What do you do when you have a possessed person levitating?

Oh, the priest stops it.

Stops what?

Yeah.

The exorcism?

No, he just, hey, stopped that.

Yeah.

How long does it take?

Usually an hour and a half.

Sometimes I've been in there three hours.

you know, but different, other times I've seen other guys.

Like

I read it somewhere in the Catholic news about a couple years ago, a lady manifested at Mass and three priests grabbed her, took her to a chapel and prayed over her for nine hours straight or something.

But that doesn't help.

It's just going to light stuff up.

You're just going to use a lot,

you're going to blow through a lot of brass.

But yeah, they're not.

Generally speaking, they're not going to be ready for that.

So, you know,

an hour and a half until they're done.

Can you describe the worst one you've ever seen in detail?

yes and no.

I mean,

levitation, the manifestations are terrible.

The most the most glorious things are the conversions and the holiness that they grow in.

But levitation,

somebody,

the body turns into a spider and tries to climb up a wall backwards.

You've seen that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But

those are fairly rare.

You know, they happen.

And

but

the more the really the most beautiful thing is to see the

power of the priesthood,

the power of the church, the power of Christ,

the power of the sacrament of confession.

You know, this.

This is,

that's the most amazing thing to see, you know.

What is it like?

What's that leaves?

Where does it go?

There's different understandings of what happens.

But normally when the priest commands, he sends them back to hell.

And they receive firmly punishment for that.

That's why they, one of the reasons they resist so

fiercely, you know.

But.

Yeah.

But what's interesting is

through these tremendous, crazy manifestations, what's even more beautiful is to see

how usually by the end, these people are the holiest people in the room because they've suffered so much.

And they'll suffer a terrible session and get up and say, okay, when are we doing it again?

And so

the power of

the sacraments growing in holiness and it's incredible to see.

Yeah.

And the power of the mystical body, it's hard to understand

unless you've really seen it.

If you grew up Catholic, you kind of understand it.

Litany of Saints and these other things.

But seeing, you know, what really opened my eyes at the beginning was

part of the rite of exorcism is a litany of saints.

And most priests use the Latin, you know, there's three sacred languages, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

And those were

those are partly because what Christ when when in John's Gospel, when Jesus was crucified, they put Jesus Christ king of the Jews, and they put it in, Pilate put it in those three languages.

And the Latin language is the language of the Roman Catholic Church, and so that's the official language.

So the ritual, the old ritual in Latin is more powerful.

It's more efficacious even.

The Latin language, it's more pleasing to God.

because it's the liturgical language of the church.

So

I was the first, since I knew some Latin, I was the scribe and I was just marking down, I didn't know what I was looking for, I was just watching my very first, and I'm going through and I'm just writing down which saints lighted up.

And

each one of those kind of gives you an indication of where he's holding, you know, where he's holding.

Because

God sends help from the mystical body, an emesis, if you will.

It's kind of an interesting phenomenon.

how he sends in, just like, you know, you're 444 and you start to see things and God's sending you help help some way to kind of track, make sure you're tracking, he also, he'll send certain saints over to kind of cycle in and to do battle with you and kind of help you.

What do their eyes look like?

Usually dark, rolled back, like a dog's eyes.

Rolled back all the way up.

Sometimes all the way up.

Everyone's different, though.

Oftentimes they'll block the hearing,

you know, so you can't.

So, they won't know, you know,

but not just not just like this, but but not physically, but shut it down, shut it down, shut the sense down, yeah.

And the priest just says, like Jesus to the deaf person, Ephatha from scripture, be opened.

And it opens, I command you to open her ears, I command you to be quiet.

Does the demon always reveal who its name?

Yes.

In the rite of exorcism, it says

the priest can ask, he asks,

what is your day of departure?

What is your name?

And so the demon will give the name, but he may not.

It might be

something,

it might be a hand symbol.

It might be a name that you,

you know,

3,000-year-old Ugaritic name,

but he gave you the name.

He did what he asked him, so don't ask me again.

It's not my problem that you don't speak.

ancient Ugaritic languages, so sorry, but I gave you the name.

So

do you see the same demon over and over?

Kinda.

After a while you start to see kind of the same, for sure the same patterns.

Yeah.

I mean the name.

Yes and no.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are there any names that

carry more weight than others?

Well, yeah.

Just like in the military, you've got gradations of, you know.

Is there ever ever a time where it says its name and you guys look at each other like, oh, shit?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you know, no, you're looking stoic and cool, but you're like, yeah.

But at the same time, you see.

What is the name?

Well, Baal, Beelzebub.

So they'll reveal themselves as Baal or

Moloch or something like that.

Yeah, they will.

Sometimes.

But, you know, like

sometimes there'll be a resistance, you know, at first, but the priest just pounds and pounds and pounds.

What other kind of questions do you ask them?

What is your entry point?

What is your date of departure?

What do you mean by entry point?

How'd you get here?

What do they say?

I don't know, different things.

She's a whore.

Whatever.

They'll say, they'll answer it some way.

But

usually, again,

the veracity quotient isn't super high.

They're bound when a priest is asking these questions, particularly an mandated exorcist, because he has the full authority of the bishop.

That's why it's the danger to claim to be an exorcist and you're not an exorcist.

Because you have to have,

it's not just a piece of paper.

Your bishop is giving you the mandated authority, his authority.

And so the exorcist, I mean, it's incredible, but yeah,

they'll flock to his parish.

You can have an exorcist, and he can be in the remotest country parish, and possessed people just start showing up over there for some reason.

I don't know why.

I don't know why.

I just wanted to come see you.

What about the date of departure?

What does that mean?

The date that they're going to leave the body?

Yeah, it's in the right of exorcism.

You can command that.

It doesn't give you the year, it just gives you the date.

I'm going to leave on the Assumption of Mary, August 15th.

What year?

I don't have to tell you that.

The demons are legalistic.

They're lawyers from hell.

Yeah.

We had this priest once, a friend of mine, actually.

And you talked about the, I mean, why do I need a priest?

Again, what I've seen, the priest just doing this,

just the anointed hands.

It says here in, let me see,

Exodus 28.

And he's when Aaron

God says, with these you shall clothe your brother Aaron, talking to Moses, and his sons, ordain them, and consecrate them as my priest.

And

the Greek and Latin says, one says,

fill their hands, and one says, anoint their hands.

So a priest's hands are anointed.

When a priest is ordained, his hands are anointed.

And so

that is a powerful gesture.

Like we had the one, the spider case, the priest did this, and it just stopped it.

It was just like, it was just like spraying bullets.

So

they recognized this is a gesture of authority.

The hand, if you look up right hand or hand, as biblical symbolism that represents authority.

So the priest's hands are anointed.

They have a unique authority.

That's why when the priest impose hands, when the anointing of the sick or the priest lays hands in blessing,

that's a sacred gesture.

The demon recognizes those hands as anointed.

I've seen it.

I've seen it, just the imposition of the hands by the priest.

So this one guy,

the priest in his diocese got taken out, removed and got screwed up,

got taken out of the priesthood.

So the bishop says, they're on retreat and he says, hey,

Father so-and-so, would you consider being the mandated exorcist?

And here's this guy that was the rock star of the diocese just got taken out, obliterated, you know,

and no longer a priest.

And he's like, I don't know, Your Excellency, let me pray about it.

They're on retreat in a desert retreat house.

They're walking.

He's going for a walk.

He's in the middle of the desert.

There's some sage bushes, but there's no trees.

There's no buildings.

He's just walking.

And he's praying about this.

And you talk about

the realism of the scriptures, you know.

I mean, I'm writing a book on a chapter on the Garrison Demoniac.

And the first time in 30 years, I got Javelina, wild pigs showing up on the farm.

You know, like, really?

I start praying primitive prayers, they go away.

So this guy's out there, he's thinking about it, he's praying about it.

He's by himself and he's a half a mile from any structure or anything.

He's just walking.

There's a mother priest out here walking.

And

he tells me, he says, yeah, I was just walking and

I look up and I hear something.

I see the bushes moving.

And

he said, all of a sudden, this wild boar, the Javelina, they're big, you know,

120, 150, 180 pounds.

They're big.

They can get pretty big.

He said, it just comes right, I see the,

you know, here comes pumba, you know what I mean?

But an angry pumba.

And he turns and he starts dead running at this priest at a dead run, you know.

about 30 yards away.

He's looking, looks around.

There's nowhere, there's no trees, nowhere to run.

And now he's at 20 yards.

Now he's about 15 yards away, and the hairs, you can see the hair sticking up on his back.

He puts his feet under him.

He puts his hands out.

He says, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to stop.

He screams it.

I mean,

he's get the adrenaline dump.

You know what I mean?

I command you in the name of Jesus to stop.

That thing's about five yards away, slides to a stop right at his feet.

Huffing, huffing, you know.

And he says, I am a priest of the living God.

And I command you to stop.

And as soon as he said that, I'm a priest of the living God.

Meanwhile, another priest was running over to try to help.

He said, I'm a priest of the living God.

It is not I who command you.

It is Jesus Christ who commands you.

And as soon as he said that, this wild boar, standing on all fours,

bent his front knees.

and kneeling in front of this guy, this priest.

Another priest comes over, freaking out, take his picture.

I don't have the picture.

I wish I did or put it up.

It would be an amazing picture.

I don't want to ask him for it, but amazing picture.

So

now he said, I command you to leave.

Thing pops up, hair goes back down on his back, kind of trots off like boomba.

Wow.

Yeah.

So in the cosmic realm,

they see it differently.

you know just like when you had i didn't have the cool stuff the red the red color is on your night goggles you know we had the green nvgs PVS6s.

So one was heat and one of them's light, right?

You guys had the heat.

Either way, the demon looks and he sees the heat signature put out and he recognizes the priesthood.

It's powerful.

So

when the priest says, I forgive you.

Do you think there's a gate?

Do you think there are gateways into the spiritual realm like

psychedelics?

Yeah, I think it can be.

I've heard of people using psychedelics during exorcisms.

Yeah.

I've done psychedelics.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it's somewhat popular in the veteran community for TBI and PTSD.

So, you know, in scriptures,

when it uses the word

just as a cautionary note, you have to just be careful because you're opening up.

You're going into that realm.

you know, into

a different plane of existence,

supra sensual or subconscious or supra-conscious place.

So you have to be very careful because

that's an angelic realm.

A couple places in scripture,

twice in Revelation, one in Galatians, it talks about denouncing sorcery.

And the word used for sorcery, the Greek word is pharmakia.

We get the word pharmaceuticals.

So induced...

induced highs,

chemically induced highs, can be, and if you, particularly ritualistically, it can be dangerous.

You just

be careful with it.

Yeah, you got to be careful with it.

Do you think it is, so it's a it's a

potentially a gateway into an angelic realm.

Yeah.

What is an angelic realm?

Well, it's into a bit of a preternatural realm.

You know, it's super central.

sensual.

You're not fully engaged willfully.

So your faculties aren't fully engaged and

your body isn't fully engaged.

So even when you're

going into surgery,

we recommend what we call the anointing of the sick and getting the anointing of the sick before getting into surgery for the same kind of reason.

You're entering into that realm.

You know, that's a spiritual realm on a spiritual plane, if you will.

So you have to just be very careful of that.

I know it's done some good for people, but

I'm not convinced it doesn't cause more problems than it closes, opens more doors than it opens.

And again, I'm coming from

a very narrow radical perspective on it.

And so I get asked this quite a bit from Catholic psychologists.

What do they think?

What do I think about it?

Because I know it works.

You know, I hear a lot about legalities in spiritual warfare, and I don't understand them.

I don't understand

why

God would allow a demon to possess somebody.

But then there's this whole legal aspect that I keep hearing about that I have

little to no understanding of at all.

Well, two things.

One is...

The short answer on why does God allow the demon to afflict us.

St.

Bonaventure, who's a doctor of the church, one of our big saints, says that God allows it for four reasons.

One of them is to punish sin.

And so sometimes when God allows possession, he honors our free will.

So to punish sin, to rebuke the sinner,

to educate us, because

if guys didn't shoot back at you, you wouldn't have been as good of a seal.

It's one thing to go out there and shoot blanks and play laser tag.

But

once it goes live, you realize, whoa.

yeah.

First time I hit boots on the ground and I realized, wait a minute, those guys have anti-aircraft weapons and those guys, yeah, they shoot back.

You know, so God sometimes allows the demon to afflict us, to educate us.

And then finally, Bonaventure says,

to glorify him.

So

when we're afflicted and we conquer the devil, whatever temptation it is, whatever it is, God is glorified.

And what does glorify mean?

To glorify the Greek doxa, it means to manifest or exhibit the divine attributes, the beauty of God, the faithfulness of God,

the power of God,

the divinity,

the authority of God.

So God allows it for that.

And oftentimes it's for the punishment of sin.

God allows us to live under the consequences of our own behaviors, our own free choices.

That's the thing.

If you found out,

you've got a beautiful wife and you found out

that

she was actually being chemically altered to love you.

She was given a magic potion to love you.

You'd be like, wait a minute.

I want you to love me for me.

I don't want you to love me because I'm forcing you or something, chemically forcing you.

So God wants us to freely love Him.

And so He allows the demon, we live in the consequences, just like Israel.

Oh,

you want to worship the false gods?

Fine.

Then I'll let you be enslaved to them.

I'll let you live under their enslavement.

They can be your sancho.

So So

on the legalist side,

in Revelation chapter 12, it says that Satan stands before the throne of God day and night accusing the brethren.

So one of his titles is the accuser.

It's a legal term, you know,

like a prosecuting attorney.

The diabolos, diabolos, to cast between, to slander, to accuse.

That's what the very name means.

And so

he's very strictly bound by the natural law that he was created under, the demon is, the angels are.

I mean, to understand, there's guys out there calling themselves demonologists.

And, you know, in our tradition, the Catholic tradition,

Bonaventure, St.

Thomas Aquinas, Dionysius the Aeropragite, there's a rich tradition of angelology or understanding of angels.

And so St.

Thomas Aquinas, one of the great doctors of our church, says that each angel is his own species.

So

I always want to ask these guys that say, I'm a demonologist, I'll say, well, can you pick a species that you're an expert in?

Because how many billions of humans have there been, or millions or billions?

You know, if we know that there's a guardian angel for every human, how many billions of angels, and if a third of them fell, how many species are there?

So

they're each created with their own natural law, if you will.

We have a natural law, right?

They have their own natural law that they're created under, and they're bound by that, strictly bound.

But at the same time,

the demon's on a very...

Here's what St.

John Vianney, another saint of the church says, the demon is like a dog on an eight-foot chain.

Remember Foghorn, Leghorn, you know?

And

you're not going to get bit unless you walk inside that eight foot.

Once in a while, God will kick us in just to make us battle a little bit to grow in virtue, to grow in holiness.

And sometimes, you know, and how do we do that?

He exposes a vice that we're working on, and then

we have to do the opposite.

We do counterbattery with the opposite virtue.

Winning and losing, you know, virtue and vice, they're just repeated habits.

And so the demon, it says in Revelation 12, is the accuser of the brethren, accusing day and night.

What's he accusing us of?

God, he went to the strip club.

He did this.

He did that.

He's on my team.

He abandoned his post, and now he's been wearing my jersey.

He's been taking my phone calls.

So he's accusing us of all these things that we've willfully surrendered ourselves and sin to him.

And so God allows him to afflict us.

But he has no rights.

He can only say, he'll claim to have, I have a right to this soul.

No, you don't.

This soul belongs by right to God.

It was baptized.

That's the power of baptism.

The soul belongs to Jesus Christ.

The power of baptism.

So the demon, so what attracts him to us is anything that militates against the,

that is against the indelible mark of baptism.

You and I were talking about the Lord here, and we handle this down there.

We got some good Christian men down there, and we decide, man, what sounds good tonight?

Buffalo wings sound good.

Well, let's go down to Hooters.

They got the best wings in town.

He's going to catch that pattern break.

He's going to see that.

That's what's going to draw him to to us.

He's going to say, they gave me permission.

They came into my territory.

So that's part of it.

So do they play by God's rules or 100%.

And if they're afflicting us, everything the demon does, everything he's done is 100%

under God's will.

God is forcing it.

You know, this isn't like, remember the Van Halen video, Hot for Teacher?

I'm sorry, I'm aging myself.

And I'm telling you about my rock and roll days.

But yeah.

so in this video,

the teacher, you know, hot for teacher, anyway, it's like a school classroom and there's no teacher in the class, there's no teacher there, or it's a substitute teacher, and the kids are just going wild, you know, because the main teacher is not there and it's just mayhem.

And that's what the demon wants us to believe is that, hey, man, we're running the show, but they're not.

Everything the demon does,

God is allowing it.

Even if a manifestation, if God allows a manifestation, it's always for a salvific reason.

Always.

Like Like this case, the lady crawled up like a spider,

started crawling up a wall.

That priest was a brand new priest, just been ordained like a month prior.

And this was a case of possession in our diocese.

And she was going to mass and just

saw this priest and just manifested.

The demon just manifested.

But why?

It wasn't, you know, it was a salvific reason.

So the priest asked me.

So

I talked him into how to shut down.

Just like, you know, you're in in a firefight,

there's a time to fight and there's a time not to fight.

You know what I mean?

There's a time to shut it down.

What did Chesty Puller say?

We don't retreat.

We just attack from a different direction.

So you have to shut down a manifestation.

So I walked him through how to shut it down.

And afterwards, we were just kind of debriefing.

He's like, man, why did that happen?

I said, well, there's a salvific reason.

I don't know.

Probably to either try to scare you.

Or maybe to show you your brand new priest.

Maybe God is allowing it to show you when you do this,

it's like you punch the demon in the face.

He wants you to see your dignity, your innate dignity, your ontological dignity at the level of being who you are, conform to Christ.

I don't know.

But if there's a manifestation, it's for a reason, salvific reason.

God is 100% in control every single time.

That's the lie that the demon wants us to think.

That he's over here, it's equal and opposite force.

No.

No way.

What are some of the other localities?

Well,

it's funny.

When I was writing the book, Father asked me, hey, we got to put, we started, here's the thing.

We started with,

we have a four-phase protocol, Father Ripberger does.

And so the first phase is a prayer disc.

We need to talk about that too.

But the second phase is a deep dive.

Really, it's a deep dive,

how to uncover where you've given permission to the demon to do a good, deep, deep confession.

because one good confession is worth 100 exorcisms, says Father Amorth.

And we started with

there was a

little how to make a good confession that's in a lot of the back of the churches by the Fathers of Mercy.

So we had a case where

a young woman, well, she was 26 and at age 16, she was date raped.

And so

10 years later,

she had a,

by that time, completely, you know, hated God, suicidal ideation, same-sex ideation,

thoughts of self-harm.

And her parents were like, can we help her?

I'm like, yeah, let's, I'm working on, we're working on this protocol.

So we're going to work, I'm going to work her through a good confession.

And there was a priest, and she didn't even live in our city.

I was just, we're just going to help out these friends, you know, with the authority of our, our, of our exorcist.

And so I said, there's a priest over here in your diocese, but before we, that I know is, I didn't tell her this, but but I'm like, yeah, this guy does exorcism.

So I didn't tell her.

I just said, hey, when you get ready, I'll send you over to this guy.

So we start meeting, and I'm just going through the Ten Commandments and then how to make a good confession.

We start meeting.

Meanwhile, her parents, her mom, her dad, her dad is starting to engage in the faith.

I mean, her siblings and their spouses, grandparents, everybody's praying our prayer regimen.

And what we find too is that the demon responds to the imposition of order as much as to the prayers themselves, just imposing order.

And part of the order is the dad engaging himself and being the spiritual leader.

So he starts, everybody starts praying.

They're doing this prayer discipline.

It's very rigorous.

And then about six weeks in,

she had a spiritual obsession,

obsession.

I mean, she was on the path to possession.

I mean, she was miserable because of this traumatic event at age 16.

So about six weeks in, eight weeks, we're meeting once a week on Zoom.

And I said, I think you're ready.

Go to confession.

And we'll talk about maybe prayer later.

And the backside I knew, this guy, man, this guy's a, he's a hammer.

He'll take care of it, this priest.

So she knocks on the door, because we had shared cases back and forth in this other city.

And

yes, I am here to see Father so-and-so.

And the receptionist says, oh, he's on a sabbatical.

He'll be gone for six months.

Crap.

And she said, well, Father so-and-so is here and he's visiting.

You can see him.

And she goes, well, okay.

So she goes to confession after 10 years, deep traumatic event, after six or eight weeks of the family praying, set prayers, fasting, media fast,

and just goes to confession to just some guy, Father Miscellaneous, you know, Father so-and-so at St.

Miscellaneous Church.

And she's delivered through a good confession and a good preparation of an obsession-level

demon like that.

And that was part of God's way of just kind of affirming that we're on the right path.

And so Father Rippiger and Kyle, I said, hey, we got to put a book together.

Can you help us?

And so I had finished my doctorate by then.

I'm like, yeah, let me put something together.

And I was like praying about this.

I was like, man, let me think about this.

So I was going to clean the garage hours that time of the year, you know, and I found my old army box and my old flight log.

And then there was my Ranger handbook, you know.

And so I lift it up, not for the weak or faint of heart.

Like, I was having these memories.

I remember back in my Ranger days.

And yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I opened it up and there's Rogers Rules, right?

Rangers still memorize these.

I had to memorize them, you know.

The first,

you're familiar with Rogers Rules for Rangers?

Yeah, yeah.

So there's, there's rules, Rogers, standing orders, and Roger's rules.

And like, one rule is don't forget nothing.

You know, and I put that in the book, and the editor sends it back.

You sure it's don't forget anything?

I'm like, no, it's don't forget nothing.

You know, wait till they

wait till you can see them

and then fire on them and then finish them with your hatchet.

You know, little rules of guerrilla warfare.

So, I'm just reading my old handbook,

and I was like, Man,

spiritual warfare is guerrilla warfare, it's not conventional warfare.

You know,

I think in my cavalry perspective,

just like we smashed the Iraqis in the face with tanks, and there's no way they can compete.

No way.

You know, I had a guy, I had guys

that were hitting T-62s and T-72s that could even, our optics, they were hitting them before they could even see our tanks.

I mean,

our optics,

our ballistics...

had a better depth reach than their optics.

I mean, so what did they do?

They regroup, they take the uniforms off, they blend into the crowd, they start doing what they did when you had to go in.

So, the enemy's kind of doing that in the modern world.

And so, that's why I started realizing, you know, I think spiritual warfare is guerrilla warfare.

And then, so I'm looking at Roger's rules for rangers, and what's his first rule?

Every ranger is bound by the rules and articles of war.

So, even guerrilla warfare is there's certain rules and rules of engagement that

have to be followed.

And so, in our experience, the demon's going to yield or not yield for three things.

Are you familiar with Father Mike Schmidt?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know a Catholic woman from my mom to my daughter and everybody in between, they love Father Mike Schmidt for some reason, right?

Maybe because he's good looking, right?

So whenever I'm at conferences, I'll say, hey, what's that guy, that one priest that does the Bible in a year?

And all the women go, Father Mike Smith.

My mom talks about Father Mike Schmidt, you know?

So

the demon's going to yield or not yield for three things.

And it's not because Father Mike Schmidt is good looking.

It has nothing to do with that.

It had nothing to do with PhD or my Greek or lack of Greek or whatever.

He's going to yield.

He's going to ask three questions.

Does this person have the requisite authority over the person, the place, or the object?

He doesn't have that authority.

He doesn't have to yield.

And authority isn't based on charism.

You and I walk down the street in uniform.

Let's say we flash back and we're walking down in uniform.

What was your final rank?

E5.

You were in E5.

How many deployments?

Two deployments.

Two deployments, E5,

spooky special ops stuff.

One deployment, E3, captain.

Right?

You got a lot more combat experience than I do.

We walk down the street.

Where do you walk?

To my left and to my rear.

That doesn't mean I'm a better soldier than you.

It doesn't mean I have more merit than you.

Just means I have the rank in you.

So we walk down post or base, whatever you call it.

And we've got two groups coming to each other.

We're sizing up the guy to the outside.

The guy to the outside knows who has the salute who.

Because there's an authority structure there in place, not based on merit.

It's based upon a ranking system.

So do you have the requisite authority of the person to place the object?

As a husband and father, you have authority over your wife.

and over her body.

She has authority over your body by merit of the marital debt.

The two become one flesh.

So the demon has no right to your body.

He has no right to her body.

And you also have a dual authority as head of household over your wife as spiritual head.

And then your authority and hers shares in your authority over the children.

The demon has no right to your children or your temporal goods.

So he's going to ask, does this guy have the requisite authority of the person in place of the object?

That's the first rule.

The second is,

what is the merit?

of the petitioner?

Is this person in a state of grace?

If you're not in a state of grace, and and by state of grace, as a Catholic, we mean you've gone to confession, you're going to Mass,

and you have

no grave sin on your souls that you know of.

If you're not in a state of grace, you could have authority, and you still get taken to the woodshed

because

you're now not under the protection of the state of grace.

That's your armor, your shield, your virtue in the state of grace is your protection in combat.

And then the third thing he's going to ask

is specifically, what is he asking?

Specificity in prayer is important, you know.

So

being specific in the prayer, but those are the three things that the demon yields or not yields on.

And it sounds legalistic, but it all is working under the rules of engagement that God that God has established.

Wow.

What should I be asking you that I haven't asked yet?

Yeah.

I don't know.

What's for lunch?

I'm I'm kidding.

Who is Father Ripping here?

He is a priest.

He was with the fraternity of St.

Peter.

He's one of the most learned men I know.

He's got six advanced and ecclesial degrees, extremely brilliant man, but he's also grew up on a ranch, very down-to-earth outdoorsman,

just a regular guy like us.

And

he had a call.

several years ago to to start a religious order of priests that all they do is exorcisms.

What happened was

his specialty is in St.

Thomas Aquinas and

what he called timistic psychology, but basically how we understand the human person,

the psychological, how we are as humans vis-à-vis our relationship with God.

And so the local exorcist kept asking him questions, specific questions, philosophical questions, and he finally said, well, why do you keep asking these questions?

He said, well,

quite frankly, the way you explain St.

Thomas is how the demon sees us.

And so he started doing more,

he was assisting and then he started doing more exorcisms and then eventually received this call to start this group.

And that's what he's doing.

He lives in Denver.

And they have a group of three or four guys.

One of them is a veteran.

He's a good dude.

That's all they do is exorcism.

And these guys...

The Society of Our Most Sorrowful Mother is the name of the organization or their order.

And generally speaking, they get the worst of the worst.

If an exorcist can't,

if they just go sideways and they can't do it locally, you can only get over there if a bishop recommends you, you know, and they'll transfer that authority over to

their bishop and father that he works under.

So that's what he does.

He's probably the most learned,

experienced exorcist in the world.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Is it true that the Catholic Church was trying to do away with exorcisms?

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah, and

whether they were trying to do it, actually,

it is true and it still is true.

It's still true.

In some places, I was in Germany.

You know, Germany is a disaster.

I don't know if you know that or not.

Oh, yeah, I know.

Disaster.

Pretty much all of Europe is.

Yeah, all of Europe.

But Germany is the tip of the spear of disaster.

So I was meeting with an auxiliary bishop there.

And we've got teams over there working and training those guys and

a couple of priests.

And so I met with one bishop and actually it was interesting.

They're like, only three of you guys can come.

Like, what do you mean?

They said, no, we're going to this guy's private residence, okay?

And they said, only three, because if people are watching, if there's more than three, they're going to start asking questions.

I mean, it's unbelievable

how communism,

that...

that communism that came from the East.

It's unbelievable.

You know, in East, old Eastern Europe, the first thing they did when the Soviets came in was track down and hunt down and kill the priest.

You know, to this day, that part of Germany has

2% to 3%, 3% max are Christian in that part of Germany.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, I didn't either.

It's amazing.

I mean, they just destroyed the church over there.

So this bishop says,

We walk into the room, and I don't speak German.

He doesn't speak English.

We're like two fighters sizing each other up, you know.

And so I got a translator.

And so at the time,

no, Benedict was retired.

He had stepped down, but he was still alive.

And so I started talking about Benedict and Benedict's theology.

And Ratzinger was his name, Cardinal Ratzinger.

And as soon as I mentioned Ratzinger that I liked him, he smiled and he warmed up and he realized, okay, I'm talking to a friendly here.

So we sit down and he asked me, what should I do?

I said, well, what I would do, is get all your priests together.

How do I stop the evil in my diocese?

And I said, well, I would get all your priests together.

I would do an exorcism of your, you as the bishop exercise your diocese, and all the priests at that same time pray it with you and then consecrate your diocese to the Virgin Mary because she provides a layer of protection.

Like, no, like you can't believe, you can't believe.

We can get into that next.

And he started laughing.

And I said, what do you mean?

What's funny?

He said, yeah, you're right.

That would work.

He said, but exorcisms are illegal in Germany.

They're illegal?

Illegal.

Yeah, they're forbidden by the church and they're not allowed to be performed.

Why?

It's a complicated thing.

I mean, it's like saying it's illegal to have,

you know, SEAL teams are illegal.

And if you can have SEAL teams, but they're not allowed to carry arms.

You know, you got to carry Nerf guns.

I mean, you know, they're taking out one of the greatest weapons in combat.

So part of it's spiritual.

Part of it was of a botched exorcism from the 70s, the exorcism of Emily Rose

that went sideways and got involved in the courts, and the church got sued because of what happened.

And so, part of it is

recent history, and part of it is just the uber rationalist, rationalist mentality of the Germans, you know,

that we don't need that.

But in the

biography of Father Gabriel Lamorth,

he was a I mean,

pioneer in exorcism in the 80s, and nobody was doing it.

I mean, we may have had 12 or 15 or 17 or something in this country at that time.

They just didn't believe in the devil.

He was talking to a cardinal, trying to convince him why we need more exorcists.

And the cardinal said, exorcist, exorcism, you believe in the devil?

Show me a book that will show to me the proof of the devil.

And Father Morth says, this is talking to a cardinal in Rome.

he said i have a good one that i think will at least tell you about the reality of the devil you learn everything you need to know about the devil he goes yeah what is it called he said it's called the gospels

the bible you're going to learn everything you need to know about the devil i mean but there was a there was a time in the church that it was very common i mean if if it were if you were in academia

we don't believe in the devil anymore that's just a

That's just an old superstitious medieval piety stuff.

We don't believe that anymore.

It's just evil in our hearts that don't allow us to share more and

to

become better citizens, globally sensitive people.

The devil is not a person per se.

It's just the evil in our own hearts that rise up and keep us from being more loving and sharing to each other.

That was kind of the mentality

in many circles.

It wasn't just Catholicism.

It was some of the mainstream Protestant as well.

I'm sure

you'll have others say the same thing.

And so Brother Morth kind of brought it in

and brought it,

made it popular.

And so then it started spreading the International Association of Exorcists, and they started training and

working.

The Pope Leo Institute here in the U.S., I worked over there,

used to teach over there for a while.

And now I'm working just with Father Rapa Group.

But yeah, there was a lot of people who didn't believe.

But the first time you see it, you know, you can't unsee it.

Yeah.

I think one question that I think a lot of people ask is, what attracts the demon to us?

You know, besides sin, trauma, unresolved trauma.

You know, when I say unresolved, I mean,

you know,

you've seen guys that have experienced trauma, and they're some of the strongest Christians that you know.

And other guys, they just go off the res.

And what is it?

I don't know.

I mean, so the Christian one,

you can interior, take that trauma and link it with Christ's suffering.

They can link that trauma and let it be purified with

faith.

And then if you don't, it just becomes self-destructive, you know.

But so that's one.

But

I was just, actually, I was just reading this a couple weeks ago.

We talk about

what we call psychological compatibility with the demon, which is a very interesting phenomenon that we see in the field.

It's like...

Like you remember cops, the show cops?

And cops, they'll have a call to a house of abuse, domestic abuse, and they show up, cops show up, and the guy's jackets all, his shirt's all ripped and he's got his white beater on and he's got scratches.

She's got a black eye and their hair's all jacked up and the room is trashed.

Cops are coming to take the guy away and she says, oh, no, don't take him.

I love him.

It was my fault.

He's my baby daddy.

Don't take him away from me, you know?

Because there's this psychological...

compatibility between the abuser and the abused.

There's some strange psychological connection taking place, unholy.

So

what's happening in that realm is happening in the diabolic realm.

And so we create, we have our psychological vulnerabilities that the demon enmeshes with us psychologically.

So I was just reading St.

Augustine, who was writing in,

I think, 450 AD, St.

Augustine.

And he was addressing this.

And he said, there's three things basically that creates this enmeshment psychologically that attracts the demon.

And he customizes our temptations.

Yours are different than mine.

Your experiences are different than mine.

I watched the 4th of July, like I said, and

I saw MLR.

I just had slight memories of MLRS flying, shooting other people watching and having a good time.

So my memories are different.

So he customizes our temptations according to our own experiences.

But three things he says.

One

is

an unholy curiosity that can do it.

That's why I don't like talking about the devil, because you can create an unholy curiosity.

If you go looking for the devil, you'll find him.

Some of these people doing these satanic things,

let them do the thing, just keep praying.

So an unholy curiosity about spiritual things or other things.

The second is

a

heightened psychological obsession or high emotionality is another one that, you know, that inconstancy in emotions is something that attracts.

And then finally, he says is a

deadly sin, or how does he call it?

He calls it like an habituated sin that we get,

no, it's a deadly enslavement, he calls it.

And he's talking about enslavement to vice and to

sin.

We went on a deer hunt.

I heard you killed your first deer?

Yeah, I killed my first deer this year.

You did too?

Yeah.

First time.

Isn't that an amazing experience?

It's awesome.

Yeah,

I was the guy I put in every year.

I never drew.

If I drew, I wouldn't see anything.

If I saw something, it was so far away, I'm a crappy shot.

So I finally got one.

It was fantastic.

And

now, some of the places we've hunted are big ranches, and

the ranchers let us go out there and ranch, you know,

and hunt.

And sometimes they'll ask you to, and the ranchers do it themselves.

They'll hunt coyotes.

Are you familiar with that

the coyotes are they're they're top predators they they decimate the big game they'll they'll wait till the

till the uh

the calf is they'll wait till the cow is giving birth and at the at that moment of birth when they're most vulnerable they'll come in and they'll swarm and attack and i mean they're just vicious little you know predators and so hunters will go out with the

you know,

you can download an app on your phone,

a predator app it's called, and it projects the sound of a dying rabbit or a wounded chicken or a wounded puppy and the demon will come rushing i mean the demon the the

coyote come running in i mean i've had guys with that they'll come run in and you've got i mean usually they'll take a an ar but they'll have to carry a sidearm because sometimes they come in so fast they're bloodthirst because they're attracted by the wounded prey you know

And in many ways, that's the way the demon is.

When we're projecting that woundedness, that psychological trauma, they're like, oh,

I'm your huckleberry.

I'll fill that gap for you.

You know, they sense that vulnerability.

So that's why prayer works on that emotional constant.

Surrender to the Lord, small sacrifices, growing in virtue.

All these things do battle and militate.

Like I said, the most amazing thing is seeing how the demon responds to the imposition of order as much as to the prayers.

So it isn't just, I need this superpower, prayer, spiritual warfare.

It's just imposing order in your life, having discipline, praying every day,

closing back sometimes on the media, social media.

I know you have to do it for your work, but pulling back sometimes, you know, and fasting, even from that, small acts of fasting.

This is imposing set times of prayer, very powerful to set the stage.

What else can we do to prevent

obsession?

like that.

Yeah.

What advice do you have for individuals and families?

Yeah, I think what comes to mind is Mother Teresa said, you want to save the world?

Go home and love your family.

You know, and I think that's just beautiful brevity,

brevity of the saints, they say.

I think one, being aware that the battle is taking place, but not

you know, and again, and it says in Maccabees, and Judas and his brothers waged war, joy, waged the Lord's war joyfully.

So being joyful, knowing that the Lord's going to work this out, but recognizing that we're in a combat, we're in spiritual combat, but learning the rules of engagement, learning how to fight the fight, growing in holiness, growing in virtue.

You know, this is how we fight them off.

This is our shield.

And for me,

As a Catholic, I can just tell you my experience with

my devotion.

I mean, I went to Notre Dame.

Obviously, she was hovering around me most of my life and

finding the rosary in the middle of the desert.

We were the furthest unit forward.

How could there have been something even further than us?

A metal finger rosary in the middle of the desert as I prayed.

What do I do?

She's always been close to me.

I'm very devoted to our lady.

And again, it goes back to something we've believed.

the Blessed Virgin Mary, the prophecy of Genesis 3.15.

Her preservation,

her preservation from any stain of original sin, the Immaculate Conception preserves her.

The uniqueness of her role as the mother of God.

She provides protection for us in a way.

You know, I've heard the demon say in session, the father would be doing a litany or calling on her help, and the demon will say, oh, her.

Every time you call her, she comes.

She wraps her mantle around you.

And knowing that.

you know, that she is a 12-star general, if you will, because of her uniqueness and the Catholic Church tradition, tradition, her uniqueness.

And I can tell you when she shows up, it's game over.

Game over in combat.

Unbelievable, like nobody else.

Like you can't imagine.

And so the uniqueness of her role as preserved from the stain of original sin.

It makes sense if St.

Paul says, well, the Hebrews says, if you want to believe, Paul wrote it, which I kind of do, but Jesus is like us in all ways except sin.

And

he had to inherit a sinless nature.

So he that will conquer sin wouldn't be under sin.

He had to inherit a perfect sinless nature.

And how did he inherit his sinless nature?

From the Virgin Mary, who was preserved from the stain of original sin to pass on a sinless human nature to him.

So she was preserved to pass on a sinless nature to him.

And so she has

zero stain of sin and therefore completely outside the stretches of the demon.

And so she has a power like you cannot understand.

And so I always say,

having devotion to the Blessed Mother, I know it's hard for some people to hear it.

For me, this is, it's just as part of who I am.

So I'm not going to, you know, this is just my faith.

But it's like our tanks, you know, you remember that our tanks had reactive armor.

Are you familiar with that?

Yeah.

So it's like the armor that

it doesn't.

It doesn't stop you from getting hit.

It just explodes out.

So it keeps the rounds from penetrating.

So that special devotion to her and just what I've seen in session, see how powerful she works to help her as mother of her children.

I think it's just been profound for me and it's been for my own spiritual life like reactive armor, protective armor that keeps me.

It doesn't mean I don't get hit.

It just means you bang your head around a little bit and you go, crap,

that hurt, but did you die?

You know?

Yeah.

Well, Dr.

Snyder, I think that is a

perfect way to end it.

And

so one more thing.

You want to end it with a prayer?

Yeah, let's pray.

All right.

Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Amen.

Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Thank you, Sean.

Thank you.

Seriously.

Appreciate it.

It was an honor, and I learned more than I bargained for.

So I appreciate it.

And I hope to see you again.

Hope to see you again.

Hang on, brother.

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