For the Wounded

 

Never been wounded? This post isn’t for you. Real people are invited to stay.

Today I recommend, for your comfort and enlightenment, a series of talks by Father Chad Ripperger, on healing spiritual and psychological wounds. Father Ripperger, the author of Dominion, is a scholar in the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Thomist, and a veteran exorcist for the Roman Catholic Church. A handy combination, he maintains, since he finds demons to be Thomistic in their thinking and, more importantly, in the laws that the Lord places them, and us, under.

Who was Saint Thomas Aquinas? He was a Dominican monk and theologian who lived from 1225 to 1274 and wrote the Summa Theologica (“Summary of Theology”), fusing Aristotle, scripture, and the early Christian Fathers. His work requires training to appreciate, the vocabulary is deceptively familiar to us, but with technical facets a modern student would never appreciate on their own. Fortunately, father is gifted in presenting Thomistic concepts to modern audiences.

We are under continual spiritual attack from our own institutions and culture. Right down to the universal dismissal of the spiritual, and for when that fails, the promotion of modern spiritualism. My first real exposure to modern experientialist spiritualism came when a medium, a proud, enthusiastic explorer of the hidden world of the occult, in total ignorance summoned a demon in my presence. I credit them both with the death of any skepticism I might have had. (For more on the dark absurdities of modern spiritualism, I recommend starting with Robert H. Bennett’s book, Afraid.) In a world where so many dark forces are rubbing salt into so many wounds for the detriment of all (but themselves, or so they think), these talks can serve as an important curative.

Finally, brethren, be strengthened in the Lord and in the might of his power. Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore, take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day and to stand in all things perfect.
— Ephesians 6:10-13

Have a blessed Lord’s Day, and may His peace be with you.

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  1. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    Thank you so much.  

    • #1
  2. Mark Alexander Inactive
    Mark Alexander
    @MarkAlexander

    There is St Augustine and St.Thomas Aquinas. Is there a third?

    • #2
  3. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Mark Alexander (View Comment):

    There is St Augustine and St.Thomas Aquinas. Is there a third?

    St. Athanasius (on the Incarnation)

    • #3
  4. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Sisyphus: My first real exposure to modern experientialist spiritualism came when a medium, a proud, enthusiastic explorer of the hidden world of the occult, in total ignorance summoned a demon in my presence.

    Oh, do tell! Sounds like a post.

    I absolutely believe we’re in the throes of a major spiritual battle and the demons are all around us and are hard at work, although I’ve never had the experience you’ve had. What’s happening to children — their innocence stolen, their minds and bodies distorted if not mutilated — is especially disturbing. Not to mention the plague, (coming) famine, fires and floods. . . It’s downright biblical. Into the desert with us.

    • #4
  5. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Sisyphus: My first real exposure to modern experientialist spiritualism came when a medium, a proud, enthusiastic explorer of the hidden world of the occult, in total ignorance summoned a demon in my presence.

    Oh, do tell! Sounds like a post.

    I absolutely believe we’re in the throes of a major spiritual battle and the demons are all around us and are hard at work, although I’ve never had the experience you’ve had. What’s happening to children — their innocence stolen, their minds and bodies distorted if not mutilated — is especially disturbing. Not to mention the plague, (coming) famine, fires and floods. . . It’s downright biblical. Into the desert with us.

    I re-read Father Elijah by Michael D O’Brien every few years or if I feel compelled to read it. I just finished it, and it is a good lesson each time – I have so many pages dog-eared. I am very surprised at how immersed and popular all things “new age” are present in current culture, and average people (especially youth) have no idea what they’re dealing with.

    • #5
  6. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Sisyphus: My first real exposure to modern experientialist spiritualism came when a medium, a proud, enthusiastic explorer of the hidden world of the occult, in total ignorance summoned a demon in my presence.

    Oh, do tell! Sounds like a post.

    I absolutely believe we’re in the throes of a major spiritual battle and the demons are all around us and are hard at work, although I’ve never had the experience you’ve had. What’s happening to children — their innocence stolen, their minds and bodies distorted if not mutilated — is especially disturbing. Not to mention the plague, (coming) famine, fires and floods. . . It’s downright biblical. Into the desert with us.

    Told properly, it is a little long for a Ricochet post, I’m afraid. Suffice it to say that I found myself under attack by a demon while I was in college, and the experience gave experimentalist little me an opportunity to confirm the presence and, despite being a homeless Christian at the time and through a very unlikely chain of events, I was able to recall the formula for a deliverance prayer and use one. By the way, we all have a big brother who will answer with perfect efficiency if we call in faith. The medium, who was such a sensitive that he was totally clueless to the nature of what he had summoned or the resulting attack, testified to the state of the demon as the attack progressed. 

    And I have shared the story enough to know better than to expect a positive reception. People who have received from authority all their lives that that First Century world of the Gospels was just explaining mental illness in First Century and mythologizing are not prepared for the truth, that that First Century Gospel worldview is the revealed truth of the living God, the Ancient of Days, that Bennett has scientifically studied pagan societies that embrace the demonic in I Am Not Afraid, and that the Gospels encounter both the demonic and mental illness and treats them separately. That 19th Century Germans could imagine a herd of pigs jumping off a cliff into the sea to be a symptom of schizophrenia or a psychotic break is amusing, but nobody should ever have taken them seriously.

    I recommend Father Ripperger’s Deliverance Prayers for Use by the Laity. it came some decades late for the occasion above but includes useful prayers for orthodox Christians. Beware of just finding priestly prayers and using those, ordained priests have authority that others do not, and many of those prayers exercise that authority. They might appear to work, but the demons can use our usurpation of authority to retaliate against us in very nasty ways.

    I don’t know that anyone I have ever shared the story with changed their minds about the occult. I still share with the faithful in hopes of fortifying them in their faith. 

    • #6
  7. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Sisyphus: My first real exposure to modern experientialist spiritualism came when a medium, a proud, enthusiastic explorer of the hidden world of the occult, in total ignorance summoned a demon in my presence.

    Oh, do tell! Sounds like a post.

    I absolutely believe we’re in the throes of a major spiritual battle and the demons are all around us and are hard at work, although I’ve never had the experience you’ve had. What’s happening to children — their innocence stolen, their minds and bodies distorted if not mutilated — is especially disturbing. Not to mention the plague, (coming) famine, fires and floods. . . It’s downright biblical. Into the desert with us.

    I re-read Father Elijah by Michael D O’Brien every few years or if I feel compelled to read it. I just finished it, and it is a good lesson each time – I have so many pages dog-eared. I am very surprised at how immersed and popular all things “new age” are present in current culture, and average people (especially youth) have no idea what they’re dealing with.

    I picked that book up just last week. Moving it to the top of the stack now.

    • #7
  8. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Sisyphus (View Comment):
    Told properly, it is a little long for a Ricochet post

    Two or three posts?

    • #8
  9. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Mark Alexander (View Comment):

    There is St Augustine and St.Thomas Aquinas. Is there a third?

    Do they all have to have “A” names or will any doctor of the Church do? There are 37 to date.

    • #9
  10. Scott Wilmot Member
    Scott Wilmot
    @ScottWilmot

    Sisyphus: We are under continual spiritual attack from our own institutions and culture.

    Yes. Just look to Pachamama worship at the Vatican and the demon bowl placed on the altar at St. Peter’s. And the infiltration of sodomites into the Vatican hierarchy (along with so many bishops in the USA – is Uncle Ted still alive and kicking?).

    I battle this with a daily Rosary.

    • #10
  11. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Thomas Aquinas lived in a world where totalitarian practices flourished.

    Most people never traveled more than 30 miles from their birth place.

    Their lives were defined by the rules and regulations and strictures of the local nobility and kings, as well as the overwhelming The Holy Mother Church.

    Now we modern folk have re-entered a totalitarian world. It is not the same as the one that Aquinas endured. But rather it is “same thing only different.”

    In 2020, many of us we were not allowed to leave our homes unless we had a good reason. (Luckily needing food and/or meds was one excuse allowing some of us  us out.)

    We had to worship not the Church of the Roman Catholic Empire, but the Church of Big Pharma, where rules were made willy-nilly in spite of lacking any sort of common sense or even continuity.

    The Pharma Industry’s trolls in the “regulatory agencies” received such perks as job bonuses. In the case of Anthony Fauci — a one million $  award from Israel, for his speaking Truth to Power to the deplorable Donald Trump.

    Meanwhile normally sensible, hard working people were fined left &right for keeping their gyms open, their cafes up and running. By doing that, their income stream was steady and their employees relatively sheltered from the fiscal despair of COVID lockdowns . That fiscal despair drove  suicide rates  to be 3 times higher than COVID deaths in some places & occupations. 

    But the fines accumulated and it meant that some of the businesses closed down anyway.

    Meanwhile the gangsters running this scheme are still in charge. And those who have  bowed out now confess to myriads of sins and crimes, for which no punishment will be had in the near future.

    There is not even the hope of excommunication from society for the Faucis, Gates, and Birx’s of our despotic world. None of them will be standing barefoot in the heat wave or the coming winter’s  snow, sack cloths draped about their bottoms, as they recite a litany of “Our Father’s” and “Hail Mary’s” as penance.

    Instead our futures look increasingly like they will be decided by The Red Chinese-run WHO, which just the other day decided  Monkey Pox was a new pandemic against which more totalitarian decrees must be issued & obeyed.

    I  truly wonder what an Aquinas would write re: this state of affairs. Unlike his world, where the Bible was the only actual book most people knew of, our modern societies hold a plethora of books, magazines, web sites & hundreds of TV channels & radio outlets to supply us with “news.” But the message across most news outlets is regurgitated pulp, often consisting of 30 second sound bytes that do not differ across one platform to the other by so much as a single  adjective.

    The court system is so broken, it might as well be a sham court run by a semi-literate king and one or two of his advisers.

     

     

    • #11
  12. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Examining this graphic shows us the demonic forces at work  and the success they have garnered over the last 15 years:

     

    • #12
  13. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    Scott Wilmot (View Comment):

    Sisyphus: We are under continual spiritual attack from our own institutions and culture.

    Yes. Just look to Pachamama worship at the Vatican and the demon bowl placed on the altar at St. Peter’s. And the infiltration of sodomites into the Vatican hierarchy (along with so many bishops in the USA – is Uncle Ted still alive and kicking?).

    I battle this with a daily Rosary.

    Last I heard creepy, laicized Uncle Ted McCarrick, architect of the infamous Vatican-CCP agreement, after he was summoned from the wilderness by bosom buddy Pope Francis, and serial abuser of seminarians was hiding upstairs in a DC area house hoping the reporters outside would go away. Meanwhile, his bosom buddy Cardinal Cupich is making headlines banning the traditional Latin mass, banning the saying of the Hail Mary and the Saint Michael prayer after mass, and rumors that a high profile job crushing piety worldwide is being lined up for him at the Vatican. And he has assured seminarians and the world that the church abuse scandals are old news and firmly in the rear view mirror, and that any concerns they may have indicate poor discernment.

    Now, in his defense, please bear in mind that Mary is commonly credited with being destined to “crush the head of the serpent” and Michael the Archangel is called on in this particular prayer to “cast into hell Satan and all of the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Now, Cupich is a sensitive guy and these attacks on his closest fiends were bound to have repercussions sooner or later. As for the Latin Mass, he has a disorder that he is very concerned about where he bursts into flames whenever the host is transubstantiated in the Latin Rite. Not that there is any substantial difference from the Novus Ordo mass, I am assured. Freaky.

    • #13
  14. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Sisyphus (View Comment):

    Scott Wilmot (View Comment):

    Sisyphus: We are under continual spiritual attack from our own institutions and culture.

    Yes. Just look to Pachamama worship at the Vatican and the demon bowl placed on the altar at St. Peter’s. And the infiltration of sodomites into the Vatican hierarchy (along with so many bishops in the USA – is Uncle Ted still alive and kicking?).

    I battle this with a daily Rosary.

    Last I heard creepy, laicized Uncle Ted McCarrick, architect of the infamous Vatican-CCP agreement, after he was summoned from the wilderness by bosom buddy Pope Francis, and serial abuser of seminarians was hiding upstairs in a DC area house hoping the reporters outside would go away. Meanwhile, his bosom buddy Cardinal Cupich is making headlines banning the traditional Latin mass, banning the saying of the Hail Mary and the Saint Michael prayer after mass, and rumors that a high profile job crushing piety worldwide is being lined up for him at the Vatican. And he has assured seminarians and the world that the church abuse scandals are old news and firmly in the rear view mirror, and that any concerns they may have indicate poor discernment.

    Now, in his defense, please bear in mind that Mary is commonly credited with being destined to “crush the head of the serpent” and Michael the Archangel is called on in this particular prayer to “cast into hell Satan and all of the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Now, Cupich is a sensitive guy and these attacks on his closest fiends were bound to have repercussions sooner or later. As for the Latin Mass, he has a disorder that he is very concerned about where he bursts into flames whenever the host is transubstantiated in the Latin Rite. Not that there is any substantial difference from the Novus Ordo mass, I am assured. Freaky.

    This entire topic is a treasure and I thank you for having the wisdom to post it.

    Father Ripperger is a spectacular teacher and without you introducing him, I would never have known of him.

     

     

    • #14
  15. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    If you stick with the whole set, Father Ripperger does have a couple of comments on the state of the church and the risks to spiritual and psychological health of dwelling too much on those things and not enough on the deposit of faith and our own spiritual path. The rosary has the virtue of addressing both without allowing/forcing the supplicant to obsess on the tawdry details of corrupt clergy. I find it useful sometimes to read biographies that include ghosts of corrupt clergymen past, Avignon popes and triple popes. I also meditate on the judgment they inevitably face and pray for their repentance and His mercy. And how, after that long, lurid history Vatican I put the Papacy on a high altar before being interrupted by a war that would see the wholesale slaughter of French clergy and religious. Was that just possibly a sign? But now I am way over my head, and my real concern is putting my daily prayers in better order. I still have not found a prayer for the intent of clergy that I like. Will it make a difference? Even worth a tinker’s damn? Only He knows. Can I, in good conscience, continue to leave one out? I know good clergy and, just as I often ask for their prayers, they often ask for mine. So I’ll do that now rather than continuing to sink my efforts into that vast abyss, the Internet.

    • #15
  16. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    This entire topic is a treasure and I thank you for having the wisdom to post it.

    Father Ripperger is a spectacular teacher and without you introducing him, I would never have known of him.

    I am surrounded by people pushed to the edge. By the economic instability, by the supply chain insanity, by the bald-faced lying by the media and big tech and the deep state and all the rest. It is traumatic. It has become a worldwide Maoist struggle session. I think Father Ripperger gives us tools here to deal with the spiritual aspects. That, for example, just because the law protects the sexualization, sterilization, and maiming of children does not mean it is not an atrocity worthy of the Nazis.

    We each need to address these things where we are. Obsessing less on the chessboard and attending meticulously to our home, our family, our congregation, and our workplace first. I find these talks useful for that. I return to them every few months.

    There is also a lot more of Father Ripperger out there, but I do not recommend diving into the occult whole hog to anybody. Nor does Father Ripperger. I recently re-engaged with someone who was very important to me in high school. She shared that she had suffered from insomnia from her early teens into middle age because of the Exorcist movie. She never even saw the movie, just the fact that there might be unseen demons lurking destroyed her comfort. Never mentioned it at the time.

    These guys can get into their visceral face offs with Satan and Ba’al and Judas (who is about as ill-suited to the evil spirit life-style as he was the Apostolic life-style) and the rest, but their curative is to find a place of orthodox Christian worship, catechize, commune at least weekly, and pray.

    One of the points Father Ripperger makes is that trauma, physical or psychological, is an opening for the demonic. Not because we earned it in any way, whatsoever, but because shock leaves us disordered and vulnerable. Just like a pick pocket or a burglar, they can turn trauma into an opportunity. If you can’t sleep because you fear the boogies, that weakens you some more, you become more disordered.

    Father’s response to the target of demonic attack when they move something across the room or play with the lights? Ignore it. They do these things for effect, to scare you, to increase your personal level of disorder. They’ve spent their energies to get a rise out of you. My friend’s obsession played into their game. And obsession is one of their main modes of attack. So if you catch yourself obsessing over something, reassess.

    Remember that God is on your side, that he is infinitely more powerful than the boogies, and that they can only do what he allows them to do. Go to church.

    • #16
  17. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Sisyphus (View Comment):
    Go to church.

    Amen.

    • #17
  18. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    And I found a prayer for priests to add to my daily routine.

    Prayer for Priests

    by St. Therese of the Child Jesus

    O Jesus, Eternal Priest,
    keep all your priests within the shelter of your Sacred Heart, where none may harm them.
    Keep unstained their anointed hands which daily touch your Sacred Body.
    Keep unsullied their lips purpled with your Precious Blood.
    Keep pure and unearthly their hearts sealed with the sublime marks of your glorious priesthood.
    Let your holy love surround them and shield them from the world’s contagion.
    Bless their labors with abundant fruit, and may the souls to whom they have ministered be here below their joy and consolation and in Heaven their beautiful and everlasting crown.
    Amen.

    I have no idea who St. Therese of the Child Jesus is. Every time I turn around I bump into a different St. Therese. But I like this sample of her work very much.

    • #18
  19. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Sisyphus (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    This entire topic is a treasure and I thank you for having the wisdom to post it.

    Father Ripperger is a spectacular teacher and without you introducing him, I would never have known of him.

    I am surrounded by people pushed to the edge. By the economic instability, by the supply chain insanity, by the bald-faced lying by the media and big tech and the deep state and all the rest. It is traumatic. It has become a worldwide Maoist struggle session. I think Father Ripperger gives us tools here to deal with the spiritual aspects. That, for example, just because the law protects the sexualization, sterilization, and maiming of children does not mean it is still an atrocity worthy of the Nazis.

    We each need to address these things where we are. Obsessing less on the chessboard and attending meticulously to our home, our family, our congregation, and our workplace first. I find these talks useful for that. I return to them every few months.

    SNIP

    One of the points Father Ripperger makes is that trauma, physical or psychological, is an opening for the demonic. Not because we earned it in any way, whatsoever, but because shock leaves us disordered and vulnerable. Just like a pick pocket or a burglar, they can turn trauma into an opportunity. If you can’t sleep because you fear the boogies, that weakens you some more, you become more disordered.

    Father’s response to the target of demonic attack when they move something across the room or play with the lights? Ignore it. They do these things for effect, to scare you, to increase your personal level of disorder. They’ve spent their energies to get a rise out of you. My friend’s obsession played into their game. And obsession is one of their main modes of attack. So if you catch yourself obsessing over something, reassess.

    Remember that God is on your side, that he is infinitely more powerful than the boogies, and that they can only do what he allows them to do. Go to church.

    I noticed  one major omission in Ripperger’s presentation that I feel he should have focused on: although he mentions our wounds can set us up for the demonic, one of the more common themes of people who have experienced deep wounds is that of abandoning their faith in God. (If there is a God why would I be singled out for such suffering?)

    So at the very time when involvement with God should lighten the person’s load, that door to the Divine is shut closed.

    This seems to happen a lot in those who are traumatized by a family member, but no one in the family or community believes them. (Ex: a pre-teen who is abused by the grandfather, and is derided by anyone she attempts to discuss this criminal matter with, so then the abuse continues.)

    • #19
  20. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    I noticed  one major omission in Ripperger’s presentation that I feel he should have focused on: although he mentions our wounds can set us up for the demonic, one of the more common themes of people who have experienced deep wounds is that of abandoning their faith in God. (If there is a God why would I be singled out for such suffering?)

    So at the very time when involvement with God should lighten the person’s load, that door to the Divine is shut closed.

    This seems to happen a lot in those who are traumatized by a family member, but no one in the family or community believes them. (Ex: a pre-teen who is abused by the grandfather, and is derided by anyone she attempts to discuss this criminal matter with, so then the abuse continues.)

    He has never been a puppeteer God. When He gave us free will He made these things possible, but He is not the one who does them. Now explain that to the child who has just been raped. Or the demonic one that assigns the perpetrator a new parish with fresh victims when “awkwardness” develops. These fools either deny the existence of demons or worship them outright. While wearing His uniform. Jesus warned us of this. All I can do for that child is assure him that his God is just, and that all such will face His judgment. And then pray with him, if he will, and for him, if he consents. And remind him that God’s will for him is peace and love forever, not anything that this monster has done.

    Father Ripperger tells another story, about the moment that he truly felt terror of his God. A demon had involved father’s mother in a retaliation, and taunted him with it. With full license of his bishop, and therefore authority over this exorcism, he asked the Almighty to torture the demon in a way and to a degree that he had never been tortured before. And He did.

    That is the God these fools, these monsters, will meet in the end. I cannot top that, I have felt the hatred and rage of a fallen demon seeking to batter me into terror and submission. By the long and complicated workings of the Holy Spirit I was given the key to defeat my attacker. They and their servants are my enemies, to the end of the age and forevermore. And I thank Him for making me so.

    • #20
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