In Defense of Fr. Ripperger

Mike Lewis, founder of the website Where Peter Is, has taken a swipe at exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger. But “taking a swipe” is actually too soft a term when one considers that Mike Lewis didn’t merely challenge certain things Fr. Ripperger has said or written. Throughout his 4,000-word screed, Lewis accuses Fr. Ripperger of making “bizarre” statements that “dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church.” He even accuses Fr. Ripperger of making statements that are “contrary to Catholic Tradition, doctrine, and theology.” What he offers up as evidence are cherry-picked quotations from various speeches—often leaving off pertinent context—never once supplying any direct evidence to substantiate his very serious charges.  

Lewis peppers his article with derogatory accusations, calling Fr. Ripperger things like “a fringe traditionalist figure.” But while such ad hominems are not libelous in themselves, statements like “Fr. Ripperger has a long history of controversial statements and claims, including but not limited to dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church” could be. It’s one thing to challenge the things someone says, and it is quite another to directly accuse them of what is tantamount to heresy.  

Under the heading “A History of Bizarre Statements,” Lewis claims something that is completely untrue, stating it as if it were the truth. He made no attempt to contact Fr. Ripperger to obtain a clarification or to ascertain the truthfulness of his claims—he simply asserted his interpretation of the facts as fact. Lewis wrote:

Following the 2020 election, Marissa Nichols wrote about how members of her Catholic homeschool community were circulating a “Prayer of Command” composed by Fr. Ripperger, who urged that Catholics recite it, asking “Jesus Christ to break any curses, hexes, or spells and send them back to where they came from” in order to “Stop the Steal.” (emphasis added)

I reached out to Fr. Ripperger to ask if he urged Catholics to recite the “Prayer of Command” he composed and if he encouraged the use of the prayer to “stop the steal.” This is what Fr. Ripperger wrote in return:

I wrote a prayer by that title as it is in my Deliverance prayers but they modified it and I never said to say it to stop the steal. I never sent out that “memo.” It was a case of telephone: one person said to pray this prayer from Fr. Ripperger and then it morphed into me saying to say the prayer/Other people were saying that. I wrote a separate prayer (attached) which just tells people to say a prayer for the integrity of the election.

In essence, Mike Lewis took an email written by someone else and attributed its contents and its intentions to Fr. Ripperger. Had he reached out to Fr. Ripperger to confirm the situation prior to publishing, he likely would have received the same response. But instead, Lewis rushed to publish without verifying his claims; and immediately after stating this blatant falsehood, Lewis all but accused Fr. Ripperger of heresy: “Fr. Ripperger has made other statements that are not only contrary to Catholic tradition, doctrine, and theology, but which threaten spiritual and physical harm to the vulnerable people who look to him as a religious authority” (emphasis added).

The Church defines heresy as: “the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith.” Such matters which must be believed include Church doctrines, so for Lewis to claim that Fr. Ripperger is making statements contrary to doctrine, he is accusing him of spreading heretical ideas. Subsequent to this, Lewis never points out any specific doctrine, tradition, or theological teaching which he believes Fr. Ripperger to have contradicted—he merely relies upon inference and suggestion to substantiate this claim.

In the next section, “‘Making Stuff Up’ About Demons?” Lewis refers to a video clip of Fr. Ripperger talking about the hierarchical structure of Hell. Here, Lewis quoted a criticism from Fr. Matthew Schneider, who asserted that Fr. Ripperger is “making stuff up from nowhere” about the hierarchy of Hell:

According to one of these priest-theologians, Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC, Fr. Ripperger’s teachings on demon hierarchy appear to deviate from traditional views, which often either depict demons as chaotic without a clear hierarchy or align them with the seven deadly sins. He wrote of Fr. Ripperger’s claims in this video, “As far as I can tell, he’s making stuff up from nowhere.”

From here, Lewis quoted extensively from Fr. Ripperger’s talk, wherein he explained the authority of demons over others. If anyone is deviating from the traditional views of the hierarchy, it is Fr. Schneider (as well as Lewis, hiding behind Fr. Schneider’s comments). St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the first part of the Summa Theologica an answer to question 109, “The Ordering of the Bad Angels:”

On 1 Corinthians 15:24 the gloss says: “While the world lasts, angels will preside over angels, men over men, and demons over demons.”

I answer that, Since action follows the nature of a thing, where natures are subordinate, actions also must be subordinate to each other. Thus it is in corporeal things, for as the inferior bodies by natural order are below the heavenly bodies, their actions and movements are subject to the actions and movements of the heavenly bodies. Now it is plain from what we have said (Article 1), that the demons are by natural order subject to others; and hence their actions are subject to the action of those above them, and this is what we mean by precedence—that the action of the subject should be under the action of the prelate. So the very natural disposition of the demons requires that there should be authority among them. This agrees too with Divine wisdom, which leaves nothing inordinate, which “reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly” (Wisdom 8:1).

Had Lewis simply turned to Aquinas on the matter, he would have understood that what Fr. Ripperger said is indeed a part of the Church’s theological tradition and teaching. Rather, this is supposed to stand as one of Lewis’ examples of Fr. Ripperger contradicting “Catholic tradition, doctrine, and theology.” This is now the second time Lewis failed to do even a baseline level of research.

The next section in Lewis’ article is titled, “Bipolar disorder is actually demons?” Here—after his non sequitur rebuff that Fr. Ripperger “rejects evolution as ‘contrary to reason’”—Lewis accuses Fr. Ripperger of a “potentially harmful view…that bipolar disorder is really demonic oppression.” In this section of Lewis’ article is a rather deceitful and intellectually dishonest edit in the citing of what Fr. Ripperger actually said. 

Fr. Ripperger is quoted at length regarding his personal interactions with people who had been previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder, wherein he explains that those he has seen who have been diagnosed as bipolar he was able to “straighten out” after a few weeks or months of a certain prayer regimen. Fr. Ripperger attributes much of the bipolar diagnosis to a contradiction in the life of the patient and says that a demon can latch onto the contradiction and exacerbate the matter. He said:

Because a person’s leading a contradiction, or some kind of contradiction in a person’s life. It’s going like this, the contradiction just keeps driving their psychology to more extremes. And eventually it comes to a point where the demons insert themselves in the process and it becomes really extreme.

Lewis then dishonestly truncates what Fr. Ripperger said by making it appear he is claiming that bipolar disorder is only a manifestation of demonic involvement. This is the portion he quoted:

It’s called manic and depressive state. And the person has no control over it. Well, usually that can be broken fairly quickly. Usually they’re off their meds in three weeks. They’re usually normal, straightened out, feel normal after about two or three months. What does this mean? Every form of mental illness can be caused by demons.

But this is the rest of what Fr. Ripperger said, which Mike Lewis conveniently left off, giving the impression that Fr. Ripperger is claiming that mental illness is only caused by demons:

Not every one is, and sometimes making the distinction between them is extremely hard, but there are certain patterns that you see as an exorcist that tell you when something is in fact psychological or demonic. If it’s psychological, it will either be physiologically based or it will be triggered by certain objects or events. If its demonic, it will have no correspondence to anything whatsoever.

In other words, Fr. Ripperger is recognizing that there are mental illnesses that are purely psychological (and he reasserts this fact many, many times in his other talks), but as an exorcist he is explaining that demons are able to so torment a soul and that they can either cause psychological damage or they can influence a person in such a way that they exhibit symptoms that appear to be a mental illness. And just as Mike Lewis may be aghast at the suggestion that a psychological disorder could be considered to be a demonic manifestation, it is equally dangerous for Lewis to dismiss the possibility that a demonic manifestation may be masquerading as a psychological illness. 

Fr. Ripperger, in many of his talks, is very quick to say that the majority of cases brought to him are filtered out through the psychological evaluation process. In other words, what people bring to him as a potential case of demonic activity is being properly diagnosed as of psychological and not paranormal origins. For example, in this 2022 interview with Dr. Taylor Marshall, Fr. Ripperger said, “They [demons] can mimic or cause every psychological illness. Doesn’t mean every psychological illness is—in fact a majority of them are not—caused by demons. But they can do that.”  

Finding explanatory clips such as this is not difficult, as they are quite plentiful, but Lewis leaves them out either because he is a lazy reporter who doesn’t thoroughly investigate his subject, or because they would undermine his accusations against Fr. Ripperger.

Under the heading, “Heterodox views about non-Catholics,” Lewis makes a poor attempt to paint Fr. Ripperger as a renegade Traditionalist who rejects the “Church’s teachings” on false religions and heretical sects. Once again providing highly selective quotations, Lewis cites Fr. Ripperger’s answer to the question “Do Protestants and Catholics worship the same God?” This is the quote in full, but the portion in bold is the only part cited by Lewis:

I’m going to give you a two-fold answer. Colloquially, and even in the church, anybody who subscribes to the Trinity and the Incarnation is generally referred to as a Christian. Okay. Generally. However, if you’re talking about following the religion that Christ himself established, technically speaking they’re not. That the term, “Christian,” would be synonymous with “Catholic.” But, obviously we use that colloquially in different ways. Do we worship the same God as them? St. Thomas says, in his Summa Contra Gentiles, he says that a single deviation from an attribute of God, in belief, results in the person not worshiping the same God as we do. This means, basically what that means is, for example, even though it says it in Vatican II, not a solid theologian before Vatican II would have ever had said that the Muslims worship the same God that we do. In fact, St. Thomas very clearly shows how their deviation from understanding of God’s mercy and how God works and the fact that God is Triune, they don’t believe that, and as a result they do not worship the same God we do. What he says is, they worship their own idea of God. A big difference. Now, this is not indicative just of the Muslims. This can also be true even of the Protestants, if they do not, you know, if they don’t believe in certain attributes of God that the Catholics believe. But it can also be, it’s also true, even of Catholics, right? There are certain Catholics—you know, when you hear people say things like, you know, “well, I think God is so merciful that everyone’s going to be saved.” Well, God’s also infinitely just. How’s that work in the equation? St. Thomas says that when people deviate from the Catholic understanding of God, what they end up doing is worshiping their own idea of him; their own opinion rather than Him.  

Lewis leaves off the citation of St. Thomas Aquinas and attempts to pit Fr. Ripperger himself against the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate. But Fr. Ripperger’s citation of St. Thomas Aquinas—while briefly summarized—is properly stated. In the Summa Contra Gentiles (Book 1), Chapter 35 is clearly titled, “That Many Names Said of God Are Not Synonyms.” In this chapter, St. Thomas punctually disqualifies all false names attributed to God, wherein he wrote: “although names said of God signify the same reality, they are yet not synonyms because they do not signify the same notion.” In the Summa Theologica [Second Part of the Second Part, Q. 10, Art. 3], St. Thomas wrote precisely what Fr. Ripperger said of those forming false opinions of God. Answering the question “Whether Unbelief is the Greatest Sin,” St. Thomas wrote:

Man is more than ever separated from God by unbelief, because he has not even true knowledge of God: and by false knowledge of God, man does not approach Him, but is severed from Him. Nor is it possible for one who has a false opinion of God, to know Him in any way at all, because the object of his opinion is not God.

So, what Lewis has done is give the impression that Fr. Ripperger went out on a limb and openly challenged Nostra Aetate, when in fact what Fr. Ripperger did was properly cite St. Thomas Aquinas. But Lewis wasn’t finished. Going back to a previous point in the presentation, he attempted once again to paint Fr. Ripperger as a renegade Traditionalist, rejecting some unspecified Church teaching regarding the question of Catholics praying with Protestants. 

In two non-sequential quotations, Lewis provided cherry-picked statements that give the impression that Fr. Ripperger is speaking on his own authority to say that the Church forbids Catholics from praying with Protestants. Lewis said that Fr. Ripperger “contradicted the Church on whether it is permissible to pray with Protestants. He offers an emphatic ‘no.’” Here, he quotes Fr. Ripperger as having said:

You have to pray for them. You can talk to them about the faith, etc. You can pray independently of them, etc. But you can’t pray with them. The second part of it is, by the way, if you pray with them, one of the psychological dynamics you’re going to be dealing with is the fact that in their mind, you could be confirming them that it’s okay that they remain in their order because you’re praying with them.

What he left off is that Fr. Ripperger was talking about how to convert Protestants via prayer. His statement immediately prior to what Lewis quoted is:

So, how can we convert them? You pray for them, not with them. The other things is, about converting people, there’s a very good trick that you can use to convert somebody. There’s a positive and a negative. The positive side is that you have to get the grace for their conversion so…”

But that’s not all Lewis left off. The entire answer Fr. Ripperger gave to the question about praying with Protestants was built on the perennial teaching of the Church through the Holy Office, which has given a definitive answer to this very question. As an easy reference, Fr. Ripperger cited an article written by Craig Allan, published in the Advent/Christmas issue of Latin Mass Magazine. 

The article provided over 60 citations from the 1907 Collectanea of ​​the Holy Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, or Decrees and Instructions Rewritten for the Apostolic Missions. From these citations, it is absolutely clear that under usual circumstances it is absolutely forbidden for Catholics to pray with or engage in any kind of worship with non-Catholics. While there are certain circumstances in which a Catholic can receive permission for passive participation (such as being an observer at a funeral or a wedding) in a non-Catholic service, the exceptions do not make the rule. And the Holy Office is very clear. From the article:

The Holy Office therefore observed that the Council of Carthage forbade praying and singing (psallendum) with heretics. The Supreme Congregation stated that participation in schismatic and heretic worship is “universally prohibited by natural and divine law...[from which] no one has the power to dispense...[and with respect to this participation] nothing excuses.” Those who so participate must seek absolution in the sacrament of penance.

This teaching was echoed in Canon 1258 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which stated:

§1. It is not licit for the faithful by any manner to assist actively or to have a part in the sacred [rites] of non-Catholics.

§ 2. Passive or merely material presence can be tolerated for the sake of honour or civil office, for grave reason approved by the Bishop in case of doubt, at the funerals, weddings, and similar solemnities of non-Catholics, provided danger of perversion and scandal is absent.

Pope Pius XI reinforced this teaching in his1928 encyclical, Mortalium Animos. In it, he wrote:

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. (10)

Incidentally, with regard to the specific charge that Fr. Ripperger contradicted Church teaching as found in Nostra Aetate, in the Preliminary Note that Paul VI ordered to be inserted into the text of Lumen Gentium, the conciliar Theological Commission declared: “In view of the conciliar practice and pastoral purpose of the present Council, the sacred Synod defines matters of faith and morals as binding on the Church only when the Synod itself openly declares so.” [Addenda to Lumen Gentium, Explanatory Note of the Theological Commission, in Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., The Documents of Vatican II (New York: America Press, 1966), pp. 97-98.] 

In fact, Mike Lewis falls directly into the error identified by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who said in a speech to the bishops of Chile in 1988:

The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest. 

Thus, Fr. Ripperger is upholding the pre-Vatican II authoritative teaching of the Church on prayer with non-Catholics, exactly as Pope Paul VI himself instructed bishops and theologians to do at Vatican II.

The point is that Mike Lewis is attempting to paint Fr. Ripperger as one who is rejecting the teaching of the Church when all Fr. Ripperger is doing is pointing to the Church’s perennial and universal teachings. That his citations are in apparent conflict with some modern statements made by authorities within the Church is not Fr. Ripperger’s problem to solve; he is merely repeating what the universal teaching of the Church has always been.

Finally, at the end of the article, Mike Lewis said of Fr. Ripperger, “central to his worldview and approach to the demonic is the notion of ‘generational curses’ or ‘ancestral spirits’ and the like.” While the question of generational curses is a relatively new concept, there is nothing in the notion itself which is counter to philosophy, theology, or Catholic teachings on metaphysics. Relying exclusively on one source to attack Fr. Ripperger’s writings and lectures on generational curses, Lewis merely pits one priest’s writings against another’s on a topic that has no particular doctrine attached to it. In other words, Lewis is simply taking a side in a theological debate that has not been settled by the Church. Of course, he did this earlier in the article by pointing out that Fr. Ripperger rejected the theologically-contended notion of evolution—another matter that has yet to be definitively settled by the Church—in a bid to mark him as “anti-science.”

Much of the rest of Lewis’ concerns have to do with the stories Fr. Ripperger has related regarding his own personal experiences. His pearl-clutching criticism of an exorcist’s personal anecdotes are nothing but a fatuous swipe at a prayer book for spiritual combat—which holds an imprimatur, while his own website does not. And while he publishes articles supportive of the homo-heretic James Martin, S.J.—never once referring to him with derogatory terms like “disturbed” or “heterodox,” or questions why he is a priest in good standing—Lewis closed with this inflammatory question about Fr. Ripperger:

Why is this clearly disturbed man—one who is obsessed with conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, and who holds heterodox views of the Catholic faith—allowed to remain a priest in good standing, let alone have an international platform to spread his dangerous views?

Had Mike Lewis written his article merely as a critique of Fr. Ripperger’s positions, providing what he believed to be concerning statements and juxtaposing those with official teachings of the Church, that would be one thing. Instead, Lewis engaged in the foulest form of calumny, libelously defaming Fr. Ripperger with accusations of infidelity to Church teaching and false allegations.

It’s sad that such a response to Mike Lewis even had to be written, but given his slapdash approach to Catholic teaching, his deceitfully cherry-picked statements from Fr. Ripperger’s talks, and his outright accusations of infidelity to Catholic teaching and Tradition, the record had to be corrected. Justice would also demand that Mike Lewis retract his defamatory article and refrain from calumniating Fr. Ripperger any further.