Father Chad Ripperger, perhaps the world’s most famous living exorcist following the 2016 death of Father Gabriel Amorth, has been in high demand in certain Catholic circles in recent years. He has made regular appearances on far-right Catholic YouTube shows and podcasts, granting interviews to reactionary public figures including Taylor Marshall and his former YouTube sidekick Tim Gordon, Doug Barry and Fr. Richard Heilman of “Grace Force,” John-Henry Westen of LifeSite News, and Bishop Joseph Strickland’s radio sidekick Terry Barber, where he offers anecdotes about what he has seen and heard during his encounters with the preternatural, including stories about the words and behavior of demons.

Fr. Ripperger is not merely a fringe traditionalist figure, however. He is also popular with more mainstream Catholic audiences. For example, a series of interviews of Ripperger with popular Catholic author and National Eucharistic Congress speaker Chris Stefanick is available for viewing on the Catholic streaming video service Formed, to which thousands of parishes subscribe, allowing their parishioners to access its content for free. These videos have also garnered large audiences on other platforms, including one that has nearly 900k views on YouTube.

Ripperger and Cardinal Raymond Burke headlined the “Call To Holiness Conference” in October 2023 at Assumption Grotto Church in Detroit, which (according to Cardinal Burke in the video) was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. In January of this year, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York rolled out the red carpet for Ripperger to deliver a talk from the ambo. Articles featuring glowing praise of Fr. Ripperger and Liber Christo (an affiliated organization that trains Catholics in “liberation ministry” to support exorcists) appear in Catholic newspapers such as the National Catholic Register.

Fr. Ripperger’s official media outlet is called Sensus Traditionis*, which includes a website and a YouTube channel where many of his homilies and talks are posted. Additionally, many more of his talks and sermons are uploaded across the internet by his fans and devotees. He is the author of many books on a wide range of subjects.

In his videos and podcasts Fr. Ripperger doesn’t tell many jokes or engage in banter with his hosts. He rarely changes his facial expression except to occasionally chuckle at his own stories. The same goes for his vocal inflection, which projects an unwavering air of confidence and authority. He responds to every question posed to him without flinching — giving the impression that he has expertise in every topic under the sun — whether the topic is biology, psychology, Harry Potter, yoga, theology, spirituality, witchcraft, medicine, history, sin, politics, or demonology.

And there’s no doubt that the last of these — demonology — is the source of Ripperger’s appeal to his audience. At the beginning of many of his interviews or during the course of his question-and-answer sessions, Ripperger is often asked a question along the lines of, “Is being an exorcist anything like the movies?” To which he will respond, slightly put off, that yes, he has seen everything they depict in the movies, but such occurrences only happen in seven percent of cases. He assures his audience that demons are boring, and what really interests him is the spiritual conversion of his subject or the intercession of Our Lady. He will then spend the rest of the interview talking all about what the demons do and what they tell him (“One time when I actually had Beelzebub on the ropes, I asked him, ‘Is that you doing that?’ … and he said, “Yeah that’s me.” Source.)

Origin Story

Fr. Chad Ripperger was born on October 11, 1964, in Casper, Wyoming. Ordained in 1997 for the traditionalist Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), in Nebraska, he left in 2012 to found the Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother (the Doloran Fathers) in the Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma, under Bishop Edward Slattery. Ripperger was asked to leave the diocese of Tulsa in September 2016, following the appointment of Bishop David Konderla in June 2016. Ripperger then moved to the Archdiocese of Denver, Colorado, where Archbishop Samuel Aquila instituted the society as a public association of the faithful.

The Doloran Fathers is described on its website as “a semi-contemplative society of priests who work in cooperation with the local bishop to provide the assistance to those in the most spiritual need.” Their primary ministry is exorcisms, which they exclusively perform under the pre-Vatican II rite. Last year the Dolorans produced a fundraising documentary in which the group’s four priest members discussed their work.

In addition to their activities in Denver, the society’s influence reaches far beyond the archdiocese. According to their website, their “diagnostic protocol” is used in 18 dioceses around the country. They offer training, retreats, and conferences, including a five-day workshop that will train priests to become exorcists for a $4,750 fee.

A history of bizarre statements

Despite the seriousness of his demeanor and the delicate nature of his ministry (“assistance to those in the most spiritual need”), Fr. Ripperger has a long history of controversial statements and claims, including but not limited to dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church. In January 2021, Adam Rasmussen wrote a response to a two-decade old essay by Ripperger, in which he critiques the priest’s treatment of “the Magisterium in an abstract, ideal way, as if it were two competing slates of propositions” — the old and the new, in which the older proposition inevitably takes precedence.

Ripperger’s interventions into politics have been sensational at times. 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.” He has been promoting a new prayer for the 2024 election as well, and his advice on how to vote has been shared widely as well.

Ripperger’s distortion of Catholic teachings and political activism are, sadly, not unique in the US Church. But 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. It is possible that Church leaders are unaware of his extremism because many of Fr. Ripperger’s controversial and offensive statements appear in audio and video format (and because his most outrageous content is often removed from the internet).

For this reason I have taken the time to transcribe the following quotes from Fr. Ripperger’s talks and interviews. I have saved the original audio in case Fr. Ripperger decides to remove it from the web. Some of the excerpts are fairly lengthy, in order to provide the relevant context.

“Making stuff up” about demons?

Last week, an apparent fan of Fr. Ripperger’s uploaded a video clip to X (formerly Twitter) of the priest presenting a hierarchy of the five demons directly under Satan, calling them the “five generals.” Several Catholics, including clergy and theologians, criticized his presentation as bizarre and foreign to Catholic theology and tradition.

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.”

Here is a transcription of the relevant portion of Ripperger’s talk (you can watch this video for fuller context):

“Underneath Satan, there are what we call the five generals. The five generals are the five demons that are immediately hierarchically underneath Satan, and they are the ones who execute his plans. … The first demon under him is Baal. Baal — now, Satan actually is the demon of impurity — but Baal is a demon of impurity. His principal function is to get cultures to succumb to impurity, primarily through fornication. …

The next three demons show up. The first is Asmodeus, he’s the demon of homosexuality in men. Then there’s the demon of Leviathan, which is the demon of homosexuality in [women], but of the masculine kind. (These are the women who are heavy on the heels, we would say.) Okay. Then, there is the spirit of Lilith, which is the more seductive form of female homosexuality. …

Baphomet is the fifth one, and he’s the demon of child sacrifice. Abortion.

In our culture, think of this: they shot down the fornication laws, and so they delivered us into the hands of Baal. Then they had Roe vs. Wade and delivered us into the hands of Baphomet. And then they allowed gay marriage, and so now our country, we’re politically in the hold of the top five demons in hell other than Satan. They delivered us into their hands. That’s where we’re at. An obligation to go and vote for those people who are going to uphold life.”

Bipolar disorder is actually demons?

Fr Ripperger often speaks on matters of science and mental health. He has also written extensively on these matters, such as in his 826-page tome on The Science of Mental Health. He also rejects evolution as “contrary to reason” and views empirical research with skepticism. One potentially harmful view he holds is his apparent belief that bipolar disorder is really demonic oppression (Source. Quoted excerpt begins around 26:00):

“There has not been a single solitary individual who has come to me that’s been diagnosed as bipolar that’s on meds that I haven’t been able to get completely off their meds and straightened out in three months if they do certain things.

Not one. And that is something that tells me — now there has been people that haven’t gotten straightened out, that’s because they didn’t do what I told them to do. But if, and what that’s a sign of is the fact that bipolar is actually a form of obsession, demonic obsession by the time it gets to the point where it’s diagnosable.

And basically it’s because a person’s leading 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.

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.”

This specific audio file was difficult to find because it was removed from Ripperger’s website. At first, I thought this claim about bipolar disorder might be a one-off because he often seems to make things up as he goes along. But then I came across a short clip from a different talk in which he again asserts that bipolar disorder is really “demonic obsession.” He says:

“Cases of bipolar are in fact cases of demonic obsession. I have always, every time I’ve listened to the explanation or the diagnostic from modern psychologists about a, um, bipolar, I just like, well, send the guy to an exorcist.

In other words, I’ve had phenomenally good success in actually using this blessing that the Church has in the old rite ritual — which drives out the demonic — on people who are bipolar. They actually get off their meds as a result of it. Which just affirms to me, and I think the explanation behind that is, it’s the fact that they’re usually doing something wrong to begin with, or something in their life has destabilized them emotionally or psychologically.”

This is a concerning belief, to say the least. Bipolar disorder is a well-documented mental health condition with extensive research supporting the effectiveness of medications and psychotherapy. By attributing it to demons and claiming that it is the result of the person “usually doing something wrong to begin with,” Ripperger dismisses the scientific understanding of mental health and discourages individuals from seeking appropriate medical treatment. His views could lead to dangerous outcomes, such as patients discontinuing their medication without medical supervision, potentially resulting in severe mood swings or relapse. Additionally, equating mental health conditions with demonic influence perpetuates stigma and misunderstanding. Ripperger’s views raise ethical concerns (to say the least) and potentially puts people at great risk.

Heterodox views about non-Catholics

Fr. Ripperger has many academic degrees in theology and philosophy and has been a priest for many years, but apparently he slept through the lecture on the Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. It seems he may have skipped the seminar on ecumenism as well.

In one recorded talk, he responds to questions submitted to him by members of the audience. Some of these questions dealt with non-Catholics and non-Christians, and many of his responses deviated dramatically from the teachings of the Church.

For example, at the beginning of a long-winded response to a question asking whether Protestants and Catholics worship the same God (seriously?) he flatly contradicts Nostra Aetate, saying:

“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.”

Note that the Church teaches, “The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth” (NA 3). This teaching is attributed to Pope St. Gregory VII who, notably, lived long before Vatican II.

Ripperger continues:

“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.”

He also contradicts the Church on whether it is permissible to pray with Protestants. He offers an emphatic “no”:

“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.”

Here Ripperger directly contradicts Pope St. John Paul II, who (like all recent popes) prayed with Protestants and other non-Catholic Christians on many occasions. In his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, he explicitly encouraged it, “When brothers and sisters who are not in perfect communion with one another come together to pray, the Second Vatican Council defines their prayer as the soul of the whole ecumenical movement. This prayer is ‘a very effective means of petitioning for the grace of unity, a genuine expression of the ties which even now bind Catholics to their separated brethren’” (UUS 21).

Perhaps Ripperger’s most egregiously heterodox statement on this subject was on how God views the prayers and religious practices of non-Catholics. He says:

“If you’re not in the Church any religious thing that you do — like baptize somebody — is actually offensive to God because it’s contrary to the fact that it was supposed to be done in union with those who have the rights over those elements of sanctification.”

This seems to be another explicit rejection of Nostra Aetate, which teaches, “Other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing ‘ways,’ comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions.” There’s more troubling content in the lecture, such as his condemnation of attending non-Catholic weddings and funerals, but I think the general point has been made.

Generational Curses

The above examples, as disturbing as they are, may not be the most potentially harmful and spiritually dangerous of Ripperger’s ideas. Central to his worldview and approach to the demonic is the notion of “generational curses” or “ancestral spirits” and the like.  This concept has no place in Catholic doctrine.

Fr. Rogelio Alcántara, a Mexican exorcist, describes generational spirits as the notion that “The evils that people suffer today (psychic, moral, social, spiritual, and corporal) have a cause in their ancestors. The current person would be like the last link in a chain through which the evils that come to him are passing.”

Researching the history of this concept and finding no evidence of it in Catholic tradition prior to the second half of the 20^th century, Fr. Alcantara came to discover that the theory “appeared for the first time among Protestants through pagan inspiration. A Protestant missionary, Kenneth McAll, is the one who gave the impulse to the practice of ‘healing’ the family tree. Eventually, it became a movement.”

It would enter Catholic circles through the Charismatic movement. Fr. Alcantara concluded that it is “a ‘novel doctrine,’ an invention, that represents a grave danger for those who want to accept divine revelation as presented to us by the Catholic Church.” He said that the Church rejects the idea of ancestral sin, “if by ancestral sin we mean the sin of ancestors that is transferred to the current generation, it does not exist, since the only sin that can be transmitted through generation is original sin.”

Yet Fr. Ripperger’s message is saturated with bizarre tales of generational spirits and demons passed down through family lines, races, places, and cultures. These demons can skip generations and they can possess and oppress the innocent and unwitting. But he has the protocols and prayers that can “root out” the unseen devils that have plagues families for centuries.

In one lecture, he says:

“There was a woman who brought me her child. The child was 10 months old. Little girl, cute little thing.

And it was one of the most beautiful little placid kids you’d met until the demon manifested. And then my nickname for it became Chucky the Doll. Literally, you couldn’t hold the thing. Because it would try and gouge your eyes out. It’s only 10 months old. It can’t even hardly move. I mean, it has no control of its motor function hardly. And yet, it’s trying to gouge your eyes out.

Okay. What we discovered, we think, through that process, is that through the father — who was a very good moral man. Actually, I think he was rather saintly. But we think it was passed to him, and then from him to the daughter, and then it skipped the daughter in the generations, but then it did end up in her daughter as a result of this.”

The point he seems to be making in that very confusing description of the family tree is that evil spirits can be passed down — almost arbitrarily — from family member to family member unwillingly. Even in cases such as this one, in which an evil spirit originating from a “rather saintly” grandfather (or great-grandfather — it’s unclear) can possess a baby girl, whom Fr. Ripperger casually calls “it” and “the thing” and “Chucky the Doll.”

In another part of the same talk, Fr Ripperger claims that such spirits “can also be over races. Now, this isn’t a bigoted statement. This is an observation of fact. And it doesn’t say a thing about the particular race, by the way, because every single race has one. For example, if you look at the Native American Indians, very often, not all of them, but very often, they’re actually beset by a specific spirit that was passed on within the native spirituality.”

Later on, he elaborates:

“Another one that we’ve seen is in relationship to Hispanics. Doesn’t say a thing about any Hispanic, because sometimes generational spirits actually skip a generation. … So, in the relationship with Hispanics, if there’s a connection to any type of Aztec or Mayan family lineage, in the sense of if there was something in which the, uh, The particular spirituality was kept alive within that lineage, even if it stops and the people become Catholic, that spirit can sometimes continue on.”

Apparently, according to Fr. Ripperger, Aztec or Mayan evil spirits can afflict people of Latin American heritage, and other spirits afflict Native Americans — even if their families adopted Christianity centuries ago. It would be interesting to know whether Ripperger ever suggests to his (mostly white) audiences that they might be unknowingly afflicted by demons associated with the Norse gods or the Roman pantheon.

This popular notion of generational spirits and curses deserves closer analysis and detailed criticism. But I must point out that the way Ripperger treats it with his sensational tales reeks of superstition and ghost stories woven to captivate his gullible audiences made of people with appetites for tall tales.

Deliverance Prayers Book

In his book Deliverance Prayers: For Use by the Laity, which carries an imprimatur from Archbishop Aquila, Ripperger leans heavily on the idea that countless invisible devils might be afflicting us at all times and must be cast out. It includes prayers with titles such as, “Prayer for Protection Against Curses, Harm and Accidents,” “Prayers for Breaking Curses of the Occult,” and “Prayer to Remove Generational Spirits.”

Sydney theologian Fr. Peter Joseph wrote a review of the dangerous ideas promoted in this book, of which he wrote, “There is an obsessiveness, nuttiness, and creepiness behind so many of the prayers, and what I regard as seriously defective in them.” He adds, “I believe that this prayer book will induce scrupulosity, obsessions, fears, intense worry, and possibly depression.”

Like Fr. Alcantara, Fr. Joseph challenges the notion that Deliverance Prayers is “traditional.” He writes, “Despite the claim of being traditional in the publisher’s name, Sensus Traditionis, this book, Deliverance Prayers, is definitely not traditional. One lay person, after looking through the book, instinctively reacted, ‘It’s cultish.’”

I have heard, anecdotally, of Catholic communities — lay and religious — that have taken up this book and made it central to their communal spiritual lives. Inevitably, these groups have been described to me as paranoid, apocalyptic, and superstitious.

Conclusion

In his review, Fr. Joseph writes, “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.” As arguably the most famous living exorcist in the world, Fr. Chad Ripperger is exhibit A in this trend.

There is so much more that could be said about Fr Ripperger, such as his views on COVID, vaccines, UFOs and vampires, Jordan Peterson, gender roles, Harry Potter, Pilates,[1] rock music, or the health benefits of tobacco (really). Nevertheless, I’ll stop here and ask a question.

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?

* Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Fr. Ripperger’s official media outlet is called “Sensus Fidelium” — another outlet that includes a website and a YouTube channel featuring Ripperger’s content. His official channel is called Sensus Traditionis.

Note:

[1] Although I have been unable to find an audio file in which Ripperger speaks directly about Pilates, I have catalogued several comments by his fans on message boards claiming that he has warned against Pilates because it often includes “postures” that are similar to those found in yoga.