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(LifeSiteNews) — On this episode of The John Henry Westen Show, exorcist Father Chad Ripperger joins me once again to discuss how to protect yourself and your family from demonic influence, the great exorcism power of bishops, and more.

I asked Fr. Ripperger about how we should engage in battling demons, namely the top three rules of engagement, especially for fathers as heads of households.

“First and foremost,” the exorcist explained, “just lead a normal Catholic life. And by normal, I mean getting to confession, getting to Mass on Sundays and all the holy days of obligation, but getting to confession on a regular basis, receiving the sacraments, and doing your prayers, which the Church has all said.”

Ripperger then explained that simply living a good Catholic life in itself will keep you protected, adding that this is also one of the ways fathers can inoculate their children by instilling in them a true love for the Catholic faith.  

“The second one is, I call it, staying in your lane, the authority structure of who has rights and who doesn’t to give commands. It’s infused in [demons’] minds. They have absolute clarity about it, so they know exactly what the demarcation are regarding who has authority and who doesn’t,” he said.

The priest described how he always tells people to stay in their lane and not go praying over others. “You can pray for other people, and you can ask our Lord to help people if they just think they’re under diabolic attack. But don’t be praying, trying to command the demons to leave them if you don’t have authority.”

The last rule of engagement Fr. Ripperger highlighted was maintaining discipline in your spiritual life. “There has to be some area of your spiritual life where you’re practicing self-denial every single day in the practice of it. And, if they do that consistently, then we find they’re, generally speaking, immune from diabolic influence. In fact, what we have found is that about 80 percent, not including possession so much, but in lower forms of diabolic influence, we’ve noticed that about 80 percent of [diabolic influences] evaporate once people just develop basic interior discipline in their spiritual life.”

Then I asked the exorcist to expand on parents’ authority over their children and their ability to command demons to leave them alone. Ripperger explained that this is part of the natural law because children are born to their parents, giving parents the right to determine some aspects of their children’s lives, namely to provide and protect.

“So the providence of protection is both material in the sense that, for example, the father has the right to protect his children from, say, an intruder in the house, but he also, therefore, has a right to protect them spiritually. And so the father actually has the right to command the demons, to leave his children alone because he has authority,” he said.

A bit later in the episode, I asked Fr. Ripperger to explain the exorcism powers bishops hold, noting that, strictly speaking, all priests are exorcists. He expanded on this, explaining that clergy receive that power as soon as they become deacons in the New Rite, and actually receive the order of exorcists in the Old Rite.

But, the priest noted, “even if you receive the order of exorcist, you can’t employ it because the Church has bound that power. And so, the priest, even he can do minor exorcisms. So, for example, he could just, you know, impose hands on somebody’s head and mentally command the demon to leave the person or something like that. But to do solemn exorcisms, he has to have permission from his local bishop because the bishop is the exorcist of the diocese, and then he can delegate it to the priest.”

I followed up by asking Ripperger if the bishop specifically has more power over exorcism, to which he said that is correct.

“Because he has the fullness of the priesthood, and also because of the fact that he has jurisdiction over his diocese, the power that he exercises due to his authority as the bishop is far more extensive than it is to a priest,” he explained. “One time, I asked a bishop to impose hands on this one woman, and he did. And she said when he put his hands on her head and started praying to drive the demon out, she said the pain that she experienced, which is basically the pain that the demon is experiencing because the person is experiencing the same pain, she said was worse than childbirth.”

“That type of thing doesn’t happen in relationship to myself. So this is an indicator that the [bishops’] power is much more extensive.”

Watch or listen to my full interview to hear more from Fr. Ripperger.

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