[In my September 18 article on Fr. Chad Ripperger’s “bizarre and dangerous views,” I quoted from a 2021 review of Fr. Ripperger’s “Deliverance Prayers” book by the esteemed Australian theologian Fr. Peter Joseph, which was posted in audio format on YouTube by the Conventual Sisters of St Dominic. With Fr. Joseph’s permission, we now publish his article in text format on Where Peter Is. — ML]
In recent years, there has been a rise in diabolical activity, and also a revival of the Catholic doctrines on the devil and exorcism and so on. In the 1960-70s, belief in the existence of the devil was often simply dismissed as untenable and mocked as naïve. The return, however, has not always been healthy or balanced. A number of exorcists have “told their story” and gone around the world to give talks on exorcism and associated things. I think that promoting that subject with international speakers is not healthy; and it is not good, as some have done, to tell lurid stories and give graphic accounts of what most people do not need to know in detail. Young people, especially, can easily be led into a preoccupation with the devil and the occult.
That leads me to the book, Deliverance Prayers – For Use by the Laity (Sensus Traditionis Press, 2018).
The author/compiler of this book is Fr Chad Ripperger – who is now an exorcist and has started an institute of priests who are exorcists. I fear that Fr Ripperger has become obsessed with the devil and is now attributing all sorts of things to evil spirits. One belief that Fr Ripperger has adopted in recent years (which he never mentioned in earlier years) is that of “healing your family tree” and “generational curses/spirits.” These ideas are the basis for some of the phrases in this prayer book, and indeed for some of the prayers. (In 2002, I wrote for an Australian journal AD2000 on the falsity of this idea).
The Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship’s Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001) has a pertinent passage:
217. Popular devotion to the Holy Angels, which is legitimate and good, can, however, also give rise to possible deviations:
- when, as sometimes can happen, the faithful are taken by the idea that the world is subject to demiurgical struggles, or an incessant battle between good and evil spirits, or Angels and daemons, in which man is left at the mercy of superior forces and over which he is helpless; such cosmologies bear little relation to the true Gospel vision of the struggle to overcome the Devil, which requires moral commitment, a fundamental option for the Gospel, humility and prayer;
- when the daily events of life, which have nothing or little to do with our progressive maturing on the journey towards Christ are read schematically or simplistically, indeed childishly, so as to ascribe all setbacks to the Devil and all success to the Guardian Angels. The practice of assigning names to the Holy Angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture.
There is an obsessiveness, nuttiness, and creepiness behind so many of the prayers, and what I regard as seriously defective in them: defective by excess.
St. Matthew 6:7-8 has the classic text on how to pray, and how not to pray. Jesus said, “When you pray, do not babble like the pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Leaving aside the standard traditional prayers in it, my comments are directed at the many newly composed prayers, prolix in the extreme. Behind them are notions exactly contrary to Our Lord’s advice: “My heavenly Father does not know what I need – so I must explain it to Him in detail, using many words. If I do not ask Him for protection from every possible type of evil and name them specifically, then I might be open to attack from something I forgot to mention.” Some of the prayers, in their desire to be comprehensive, are laughable.
I believe that this prayer book will induce scrupulosity, obsessions, fears, intense worry, and possibly depression. Over my years as a priest, I have been able to get some (not all) people away from obsessions when they take my advice and read more positive things such as a life of Christ or lives of the saints, or something on the practice of Christian life and virtues.
I have read many prayer books from a variety of different authors & centuries & countries: not one has been devoted to prayers against the devil or related topics at such length as this book. In all the writings of St Augustine, for example, he mentions the devil occasionally and realistically, but he does not go on and on about protecting yourself from the devil and the other demons and black magic and curses, and so on, ad nauseam. The same is true of St Thomas Aquinas, and other great masters of prayer such as St Teresa of Jesus (of Avila) and St Alphonsus Liguori.
Despite the claim of being “Traditional” in the publisher’s name (‘Sensus Traditionis’) – this book Deliverance Prayers is definitely not traditional.
One layperson, after looking through the book, instinctively reacted: “It’s cultish.” That sums it up.
That brings me to the issue of the nihil obstat. I believe this book does contain false doctrine in its phrases about generational spirits (page 25). (My AD2000 article explains how this is not Catholic doctrine).
I also believe that the theological censor can refuse approval to a book which is calculated to mislead or is unhealthy or seriously unbalanced. Truth is not just in individual propositions, taken in isolation. Truth and orthodoxy are also put to the test by judging a work as a whole. A “Life of Christ” may be submitted to a theological censor and contain no false proposition, when each sentence is taken in isolation – but if it is merely a humanistic presentation of a good man called Jesus who loved people and cared for the poor and the exploited, and nothing more, then it must not receive a nihil obstat. The script of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar could not get a nihil obstat – regardless of the speeches and songs’ orthodoxy (even if that were proved) – as long it finishes with His death as the end of the story!
To express it more concisely: Deliverance Prayers contains false spirituality, and contradicts the Sermon on the Mount about how to pray. Not one of the great canonized teachers of prayer ever prayed like it or taught anyone to do so.
Image: Adobe Stock. By mariiaplo.
Fr. Peter Joseph, born in Wagga Wagga, Australia, was ordained a priest in 1992. He is currently parish priest at St Mel’s parish in Sydney. He has a licentiate from the Pontifical Urban University, Rome, and a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. He has taught dogmatic theology at Vianney College seminary, Wagga Wagga; the Catholic Institute of Sydney; and the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne. He is the editor of an updated version of Archbishop Sheehan’s Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine (Baronius Press, U.K.). He is a theological censor for the Archdiocese of Sydney.
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