Exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger: Possessed Politicians, Occult Activity, and Speaking to Satan Himself

**Tucker Carlson** (0:04)
Father, thank you so much for doing this.

**Father Chad Ripperger** (0:07)
Thank you for having me.

**Tucker Carlson** (0:07)
As a Protestant who grew up in Georgetown, in part where The Exorcist was filmed, I've been trained from birth to think of exorcism as something kooky that the Latin Church does for weird cultic reasons. Not at all mainstream Christianity. And then you go and read the New Testament.

**Father Chad Ripperger** (0:22)
That's right.

**Tucker Carlson** (0:23)
You realize that the first miracle that Jesus performs in the Gospel of Mark is casting out demons. And then he repeats that continuously and commissions the apostles to do the same. Casting out demons is not just this random thing. It is central to the Gospels.

**Father Chad Ripperger** (0:40)
That's right. 23% of the Gospels are actually about Christ dealing with demons. So this is why when people, you know, you're a Christian. It's unbelievable. How did I not know that? Yeah. Well, a lot of the Christians will just say, well, you know, I believe in God, but I don't necessarily believe in the devil. And you're like, well, do you believe in scripture? Well, yeah. Well, then how can you not believe that this is one of the primary missions of Christ was to to save us from them ultimately?

**Tucker Carlson** (1:04)
Well, when he sends the disciples, I mean, of course, this is your life. This is all so new to me. I'm just shocked by it. When he sends them out, it's like preach the good news and cast out demons.

**Father Chad Ripperger** (1:12)
Yes, that's right.

**Tucker Carlson** (1:13)
That's the mission.

**Father Chad Ripperger** (1:14)
That's right.

**Tucker Carlson** (1:15)
So I just before we get into what you've spent the last decades doing, casting out demons, how is it that the modern church, at least in the United States, at least the Protestant churches in the United States have so de-emphasized this to the point where it's disappeared?

**Father Chad Ripperger** (1:33)
I think there's a historical reason behind that. So if you, and it's not just here like in the United States, it's actually in the West in general, the Christian West specifically. And basically it had to do with the advent of psychology. So when psychology came on board, it became in vogue, especially in the 50s and in the 60s, to just think that all these people's problems were just purely psychological. I mean, there are psychological issues that very much look like that. But the fact is, is that, so they just started chalking it up. And that's one of the reasons why in the United States, before the 1960s, the number of diocese, that is the Catholic diocese that had an exorcist was fairly high. I mean, every major diocese would have one. But then it started to decline precisely based upon that thinking. But then over the course of time, they began to realize, well, look, there's certain things we're seeing that are not psychological. So they can't be explained in that way, and people needed the help. And so now the bishops are coming a little bit more up to speed in that regard.

**Tucker Carlson** (2:33)
Well, yeah, after 100 years of Freud, we still can't identify what schizophrenia is. It does make you realize, at the very least, there are things we don't understand that could very well be supernatural. So, that does make you wonder about the origins of psychology, though. I mean, if the net effect was to eliminate people's belief in something real, which is demonic possession, then...

**Father Chad Ripperger** (2:57)
Yeah. Well, I think that was only one aspect of it. I think that the real goal of a lot of the psychologists, which is in the literature, is that many of them are atheists, you know. They just didn't believe in God, and so they wanted to eliminate any concept of anything supernatural or what we call praetor naturals, which is the demons or praetor natural. They're not supernatural. God is the one that's supernatural, but we tend to talk that way, although sometimes people will just say supernatural, thinking about demons in that way, too.

**Tucker Carlson** (3:22)
Can you, for the ignorant like me, explain the difference between praetor natural and supernatural?

**Father Chad Ripperger** (3:26)
So supernatural is those things which are above anything that is created, and that pertains to God. Whereas praetor natural comes from the Latin word praetor and natura, which means aside from nature. So that would be things that are above what we experience as human beings in this world. But it's not supernatural, because it's not God. It's kind of in that in-between state, which is what the demons are. But they're still considered natural in the sense of they have a specific nature that God created them with, they're created beings, and that they actually have a natural law. They have all the, they're structured to think in certain patterns, in certain ways. So it's kind of a middle tier. But it's praetor natural. Supernatural would be something like being able to suspend the laws of nature. So demons can't cause miracles, for example. But they can cause things that, to us as human beings, are outside our normal experience. And so it looks miraculous, but it's actually not. It's something that they can do on their own.