The Exorcist Files - Dreaming and Prophecy, Recovering From The Occult and Forgiving Yourself

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Father Martins offers some wisdom on forgiving yourself, how to discern what is prophetic vs demonic, and what steps to take to remove the influence of the occult in one's past.Thank you to our sponsors!Casper Sleep- Remember: The day always ends well with Casper. Right now save up to 20% on mattresses when you go to Casper.com OneSkin- Get 15% off OneSkin with the code EXFILES at https://www.oneskin.co/EXFILESDose- Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to dosedaily.co/EXFILES or enter EXFILES to get 35% off your first subscription. Your body does so much for you—let's do something for it.Cowboy Colostrum- limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order, just head to https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/EXFILES and use code EXFILES at checkout. That’s 25% off when you use codeEXFILES.Sign up for the Vault here to get Dramatic Episodes a day early- exorcistfiles.supercast.comGrab a copy of Father's Book- FatherCarlosMartins.comFollow us on Instagram- @exorcistfiles @theBetheaSign Up For Our Newsletter- Exorcistfiles.tvSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans, and the ancient Jews dropped down measurement ropes to see where the bottom of that cave was. And it was bottomless. And so for this reason, they called it the gates of hell. This is the place. This is the devil's front door, if you will. Jesus goes, rings the front door, and he says to Peter, the gates of hell will never prevail against my church. He is declaring war on hell. He was a disciple of the devil, frankly. And, you know, this spirit presented himself as St. Michael the Archangel. That's how he identified himself. It demanded increasingly elaborate submissions. When the devil comes, he never comes to you and says, look, I am Satan and I want your destruction. He never does that. Because if he did, you would recoil. You would run away. But what he does is he demands something that costs you dearly and gives you a promise of something that you want. Of course, he doesn't deliver. I mean, he gives you crumbs, but then all of a sudden you're so deep into it, you don't know how to get out.

Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, the show that keeps you supernaturally guessing and always keeping you in pursuit of blessing. I'm your co-host, Ryan Bithay, and with me is the Padre with the Heavenly Cadre, Father Carlos Barton's. Father, thanks for being here. You're welcome, Ryan. Good to be here. Amazing. I see your bookshelf grows every episode with more tomes of potent knowledge. Last time I asked you, there was a bunch of fiction books.

You said no, but it looks great. You have a great new background there, Father. Thank you very much. Yeah, worked hard to build it up. I haven't read all the books, but I've read at least some of just about all of them. Well, Father, speaking of books, I do see a few empty slots on that bookshelf. Any recommendations for anyone who might have some empty shelf space on their bookshelf? Any books that come to mind that you think, wow, no library is complete without a copy of this?

Well, gosh, no library is complete without a copy of the Exorcist's files. So, folks, if you do not have one or two, one can always use a spare to give away to a friend in a pinch. And, you know, good smart people always keep some gifts on hand because you never know when you need one. and that would be a great spare gift to have one hand. That's right. Okay. Father, should I get one for each room of the house? Just so I don't have to worry about, you know, leaving it in the other room,

have one in the kitchen for cooking, you know, one in my room for a night time eating? I think you should have two for every room in the house because you might be sitting on one side of the room. And it can be a lot of work to get up and go walk to the other side of the room to get it. So you need one within arms length. That's right, folks. Grab one, two, three, four, maybe even five copies of Father's book, wherever you get your fine exorcist books. But before we start the show, we do have an update.

And so Father is going to share some personal news with y'all. Yeah. So, friends, I wish to thank all of you who prayed for my godson, Henry. Henry did pass. He passed away on September 11th. I, you know, on this past week, I celebrated his funeral. One of the hardest things I ever did in my life. And it was an honor.

but it was also very, very difficult. You know, it's a sad occasion that brings all of your family together. He was a very young man. He's 35 years old and has two very young children. His son, the day before he died on September 10th, started junior kindergarten as a four-year-old. So I would be grateful for two things, friends, if you would pray for the propose of Henry Soll. And pray for the consolation of his poor widow, who now is raising these two children alone and all the difficulties that that entails. Henry was the, obviously, it was the provider of the family.

He had a very good job. And so now things are, things are going to be tougher. So if you would pray, her name is Christy Ann. And for her children, I would be most grateful. And of course, for Henry Soul. you so much. Father, thank you so much for the update and be so sorry for your loss and for Henry's family. And with that, we are going to get to some questions from our beloved vault members. Vault members, thank you so much for supporting the show. You help make this possible. So, why don't

we start here? We have a question, Father, I've recently started OCIA and I told the priest just recently about my past involvement in the occult organization, the OTO, that was founded by Alistair Crowley. It's been over 35 years since I've practiced any of it. And just this morning, I had a meeting with him in his office where he prayed over me and the certificate of one of my initiations. He gave me some holy water to use on any of the objects. I still have left to cleanse them before burning them. What prayers should I use to cleanse those things?

And what should I do with the metal items that aren't burnable? interesting and relevant question that came in as we're talking about where to a long ago yeah uh so you know what what would i do uh i i might pray the st michael the archangel prayer uh and uh and and and as i throw the objects in the fire i might be praying a hail mary uh and then i might polish it up when i'm done everything within our father as an act of thanksgiving uh but but it doesn't have to be elaborate or i mean or you can you can just choose a prayer from the heart as well. But as long as you are prayerful, if you have an attitude of prayer, I think you're fine. You know, like there isn't a kind of set formula that you have to follow.

I think the, I think the destruction is really good. I think the sprinkling them with holy water that he gave you before destroying them is really good, because what that does is it removes the jurisdiction of the enemy from them. And then it destroys them so they can't be used in this kingdom anymore. Right. It's, you know, what the devil touches and uses is good to be destroyed. Okay. Amen.

Hello, Father Martins. You've discussed forgiving others in previous episodes, but I would love your thoughts, however similar, on forgiving oneself. A friend of mine is haunted by past sin, and he's told me several times now that the lingering shame has a halting effect on his closeness with Christ. How do you advise forgiving yourself of wrongdoing and dealing with the internal fallout? Thank you, you and Ryan and crew for this ministry. I have not missed an episode since the beginning.

Okay. Well, forgiveness is the quintessential Christian act. So Jesus Christ is the mercy and forgiveness of God. And I'll state that in a different way. The mercy and forgiveness of God. is so great it is a person and that person's name is Jesus Christ. So that is the highest Christian virtue par excellence. And to imitate, well, to forgive is to imitate Christ, is to imitate that the eternal word of God, right? There's nothing greater that you can do than imitate the eternal

word of God. So obviously he exhorts us to forgive. And that also includes ourselves because it is possible for us to view ourselves as our enemy. And in fact, it's quite common. So, you know, he says forgive your enemies. And so if you view yourself as your own enemy, well, of course, you would be included in those for whom he demands you forgive. And so look, it's no different than forgiving someone else. It's an act of the will. Don't look for a feeling. You may be disgusted about yourself.

You may be disgusted about what you did. And forgiving yourself isn't going to necessarily change those feelings, at least not right away. That change will come in time. but forgiveness is a decision. It's an act of the will. It's not a feeling. So you say in the name of Jesus, I forgive myself for having done

and then you list those things, which you hold against yourself, right? After having listed those things and after having forgiving yourself, I release myself from the debt that I owe me and I give it to you, Lord Jesus, and I ask you to make good on that debt. So it's a funny dichotomy because you are both the detour and the deti.

You're both the thief and the one who was robbed when you have an issue that needs you to forgive yourself. Right. But it is possible to be in that state. You may have made decisions so terrible that you robbed yourself of your happiness, your peace of mind, your sense of dignity. You know, and you've implanted shame within yourself. Well, God knows exactly how to work with that. And he can do it if you turn it over to him. And by forgiving yourself, you're unleashing Christ within you.

So I'm not talking about thinking optimistically. Well, you know, things will work themselves out. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about making the decision to consciously forgive yourself and using words, right? So making the pronouncement. And so what you're doing then is scratching out the legal claims that you would have over yourself legal claims, which the devil can use and manipulate to his own advantage if he wants to, because you're doing an act of injustice, and in that act he gains. So you turn the dead over to Jesus and you

invite him into the wounds. Now, like I said, your feelings won't magically disappear. But over time, you keep renewing that act. Every time those feelings come up and that anguish comes up and that bitterness against, you know, that self-bitterness comes up, you turn to that self-bitterness and you say, no, I don't want you. I've already rejected you. Lord, I just renew that, this act of forgiveness right now with myself. You know, I forgive myself for having to an A, B, C, D. Lord, I, I, I, I, I, I release myself from the debt. I hold against myself. I turn it to you.

I ask you to make good on it. And I ask you to give me a blessing and what I need instead. I want to turn a new life. I want to be the person now that you want me to be. And I'll tell you this. The fact that you've done evil and the fact that you've reformed and allowed Christ to transform you, your holiness at the end of the day will be greater than if you had never done the evil act itself.

it will be greater because you have embraced God's plan and God's remedy for yourself. You have said yes to God while being in a state of sin, while being somebody who is in need of Christ's grace. And that's the very purpose for which he came to earth. He didn't came to call the righteous.

He came to call sinners. And so you said yes to him. You said yes to that, to that intelligence. And so your place at the end of the day, your ontological place, like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the worth of your soul will be greater valued after having forgiven yourself than if you had never done the sin to begin with. Now, the first time I saw the Godfather and I heard the phrase, it's time to go to the mattresses, I was like, wow, that makes total sense. if everyone just got some sleep, perhaps they could have avoided all the violence and problems, but they didn't. And let me tell you, if you're not sleeping well, you're also going to have some problems. Mattresses are a big deal, and I want to tell you about Casper. Casper's mattresses are built

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I first want to thank you for helping me in the process of my conversion. I'm actually a former assemblies of God seminarian who has recently become Anglican seminarian and is greatly because of theology from the Exorcist files. I've tried to become Catholic, but I am still struggling with submitting to the bishop of Rome, exclamation point. Anyways, a question I did want to ask, what is Christ's role in the Eucharist? And is there a better explanation for its ontology than the Aristotelian explanation? Okay. Get that philosophy going here.

Wow. The philosophy is there. So look, gosh, I have a lot of Anglican friends whom I deeply respect and admire. but I just I just got to I just got to point out that you picked an interesting guy and that's the most polite way that I can put it. You picked an interesting guy to follow. Henry the 8th in my mind is one of the greatest Christian scoundrels who ever lived. You have trouble submitting to the Bishop of Rome. but you embraced a religion founded by a murderous king.

And, you know, I was once, I was at a dinner with a Catholic archbishop. He was an apostolic nuncio. He was a Vatican ambassador to a country. And he said, you know, we were just ruminating. about different things. And he said, you know, Luther had a theology. But Henry didn't. You know, so, so you left assemblies of God

and you joined a religion whose founder was a murderer. You know, like there's that, there's that, you know, kind of that, that famous rhyme with regard to Henry and his wives. You know, he married, he had six wives, right? Divorced, beheaded, died. divorced, beheaded, survived. That's the fate of those six wives. First one was divorced.

Second one was beheaded. Third one died. Fourth one was divorced. Fifth one was beheaded. Sixth one survived. I mean, how would you like to be King Henry the 8th on Judgment Day? Standing before the Lord and having that on your soul? So, I mean, I think you,

I just, I just, I'm puzzled. I mean, boy, you, you, you have trouble to submitting to the Pope. You sure pick the right place to go to. So, look, your question, though, is about the Aristotelian categories and their explanatory power of the Eucharist. And is there something, is there a way, is there a method that has better explanatory power? So I just want to be clear to the audience. It's not an Aristotelian explanation the Catholic Church embraces to explain the Eucharist, but it uses Aristotelian language, albeit slightly modified.

So it's using his philosophical categories to explain a theological reality. So Aristotle in his genius, and Aristotle is a certain, a candidate for the greatest mind that ever lived. His explanatory power of reality is absolutely astounding. When I encountered it in university, it changed my life. When I encountered the four causes, when I encountered his distinction between act and potency, the 10 categories, which is what we're talking about right now, when you understand what he is doing, you have an access to the innards of reality that you never had before.

And the explanatory power that's available to you, the scalpel and the scissors that it gives you to dissect reality and understand it is simply astounding. So he came up with something called the 10 categories, which what he discovered is there are 10 ways about,

there are 10 different kinds of things of things that you can talk about anything. Apples, horses, even mathematical concepts. They break down into 10 categories, he called them. And those categories are substance and nine accidents. Nine properties and substance. So what's substance? A substance is that which exists in itself.

and not in another. So a property exists in a substance, but never by itself. Right. So the properties of your own body, the color of your hair, the position in which you're standing, the age that you are, what choices you've exercised in your life, what potentialities are ahead of you, all of those are properties. But what is not a property, what is substance, is you. You yourself, you exist as an independent existing entity.

Whereas the properties are part of you, but they exist in you. And apart from you, they cease to exist. Okay. So what Thomas Aquinas did in his genius? I mean, so the only man that, in my opinion, my estimation, would be more intelligent than even Aristotle was Thomas Aquinas. And Thomas Aquinas, what he did was he took the Aristotelian concept of the categories, and he applied it to the Eucharist. And the Eucharist is the only substance. So it begins as a substance of bread and wine at the start of the Eucharistic liturgy.

And there's a transubstantiation that occurs such that all the accidents remain. The nine accidents are the whiteness. of the host, the shape, its weight, the position that it's in, and so forth. All of those remain the same, but substance changes. And Thomas noted this is the only reality in the universe in which this happens, such that, you know, all of its, all of the properties of the bread and wine remain. Even the ability or the property within the wine prior to consecration to get you drunk, that remains. If you consume enough of the precious blood, so the wine, after having gone consecration,

you will still, there's no alcohol in the precious blood. But the effects of drunkenness are still present because they form part of the, of the accidents, which remain untouched. And so is the explanation and Aristotelian explanation? Absolutely not. But it does use Aristotelian language because we cannot give an explanation of anything

apart from language. This is the limitation of human beings. Now, is the Aristotelian is the tomistic explanation of the Eucharist using Aristotelian language, the only possible explanation for the Eucharist, not necessarily, not necessarily, but there has been no other offered, which encapsulates the divine reality that has been believed for 2,000 years by the Catholic and Orthodox churches. There just is no other category. There's no other. There's no other. explain it to it. There's no other explanation that has been put forward that embraces the constant

and unchanging faith in the church. All right, Father, I'm a revert to the faith. I was baptized as a child that was fully confirmed three years ago in my 50s. I came back to the Catholic faith in 2023. I love capital L-O-V-E confession. I've had wonderful experiences with every priest with whom I've ever given confession, both general and my usual monthly or biweekly confession. The thing, though, that bothers me the most is, for want of a better word, I was pagan for 20 years, practicing new age nonsense. I've confessed this. The problem is, is that I exposed my only child to that nonsense. I truly feel like I may have opened a very bad door. Now that my child as an adult, I feel very bad about my choices in the past. Is this the sin of doubting the Holy Spirit and its work? I do feel

that Jesus Christ has forgiven my sins, but I can see and feel the effects of my sins. I cannot quote, share the good news because my adult child is vehemently anti-Christian. I'm grateful my adult child allows me in their life, and I only try to communicate my faith through my actions now. So I guess my question is, I feel like I may have opened a door by way of new age and yoga, and does that mean my adult child now has a revulsion to the faith because of that? What prayers, penance, or things could I do to potentially help my adult child who is resistant to the faith? Yeah. Well, okay, gosh, you know, many, many folks are in a position like you. And in your case, you embraced false religion, false spirituality. And, you know, for others, it's, you know, they were a bad parent in

different ways. They, they beat their children. They were alcoholics. They, you know, some, like just some other failure. But look, you've made a decision and you've encountered the joy of the faith, the glory, the happiness. You just make sure that your son or daughter, you know, whoever, whoever it is, I don't think the question, I was looking for a sex, but I don't think a sex was mentioned. So whatever, whatever, you just allow your child to see that happiness and that joy. But undertake now as a kind of as a as a second parenting stage now that you enter into, a sacrificial dimension of parenting where you implore God to bring down grace upon your son, your daughter, to bring about that person's conversion. So what could you do? Well, go to daily

mass. Make that a special intention every day at mass. If you can, can't go to daily mass, pray a daily rosary, you know, without fail for that. You can bring in other intentions besides, but you can, you can make that, the primary intention of that action. You go to adoration once a week or, or, you know, for a little bit every day. I have a good friend who goes to adoration for at least an hour a day. He just finds his, His day is not complete unless he does that. And, you know, I converted in front of the Eucharist during adoration. So all of these things, and whatever prayers you decide, done with a spirit, an intercessory spirit,

and with a sense of you're now entering into a second parenting period, where it's it's now mediated through heaven. You're imploring heaven to be generous upon your child so that your child undergoes the conversion that you've undergone. But you know what? Have the faith that heaven will bring that about because look what happened to you. It certainly came about.

Your conversion came about. And you've now grown to love the church. You've tasted the fruit of the sacraments. And that's exactly the freedom. that people experience. When they undergo, like that feeling of freedom, like that, you know, grace, it's impossible to physically feel grace. You can experience its effects, though.

You know, the peace of mind that all of a sudden is there, the proper order that wasn't there before, that is there now, the anxiety that is gone. You know, so grace in and of itself is an invisible reality. but it affects your physicality and reorders it. And that can be felt. So pray for the same thing to happen to your child. Right. Now I will add my prayers to yours.

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I have felt the presence of evil in the room. One time when encountering a family member with some challenges and rebellion within their family, does that mean that someone is possessed or that a demon is actually just present in the room and God wants me to notice? I've prayed for my family, the individual ever since. Why does God sometimes give us the feeling of an evil presence? And obviously we've addressed this on the show quite a bit, but, Father, your thoughts on that gut feeling if you think something or someone is just radiating evil? Well, certainly if it's if it is of the Lord, then it's a call to prayer.

It's a call to to incarnate grace and to bring that up out through the prayers that you, that you, that you, that you pray, that you utter, that you, that you invoke in that situation. Why does God specifically do that? I mean, this is, of course, on the supposition that the devil isn't just vexing you in and of himself. But if it is the Lord, you would have been prompted to pray anyway. So if you don't find yourself reacting in that way, that would give me pause. That would, well, how do we know then that this is of the Lord? The Lord is already prompting you in a certain direction. If that direction isn't there, then maybe it isn't the Lord.

Or maybe you're not hearing or disposing yourself to God in a proper way. I would just have you reflect on what is happening when you experience such as sensation. But certainly, if God is alerting you to a reality, if he's giving you a discernment, discernment means knowledge. And if he's giving you some special and particular knowledge that is implanted in you supernaturally, he's calling you to engage in a supernatural activity vis-a-vis prayer. All righty. Hello, Father. One thing has always stood out in the back of my mind, specifically Matthew 1618, the last part where the Lord says, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. It's always seemed to be interpreted as an active action of the gates of hell,

as in a metaphor for the enemy trying to overcome the church and her teachings. The part that I find really interesting is the fact that gates are usually defensive structures. Nobody attacks with gates, though it would be funny to watch someone try. I can't help but think about possibly interpreting it as a defensive posture, where the kingdom and the church are assaulting hell and we win, where this interpretation goes from there, is up for grabs. Any thoughts on this, Father? That's exactly the proper interpretation. The church is the one attacking.

Hell's gates are closed trying to keep the church out. And the church is assaulting those gates, and the gates will not prevail. The church will prevail and destroy those gates. That is exactly what the Lord is saying. That is the proper and 2,000-year-old interpretation of that scripture. And where the Lord said that was at the cave of Banayas, at Caesarea Philippi, which is a cave that went deep into the earth, and it brought forth, it kind of barfed out, pardon the expression, copious amounts of water.

In fact, it was the main spring in those days. it was the main source of water that that that that that um fed into the jordan um so today there's just a trickle of water that comes out i've been there uh but that cave was called the gates of hell in the ancient world so the lord took the apostles to the gates of hell the place even in his day known as the gates of hell so it was the place of of paganism and ritual abute, ritual bestiality, acts of bestiality were done at that place. And so for that reason, and, well, I mean, the reason why it was called the gates of hell is the depth of the cave.

So the cave is kind of horizontal to the ground, but then it takes a turn down. And they would drop down in the ancient world, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans, and the ancient Jews, dropped down measurement ropes to see where the bottom of that cave was. And it was bottomless. Like all of the instrumentation that they had in the ancient world. You know, it was the only cave, at least the only one that the knowledge of which has survived to this day that had no bottom. And so for this reason, they called it the Gates of Hell. Now, with that name, all that the ancient cultic, mystic religions,

mystic kind of, well, the bestial sects and so forth would gather around there because the place had a specialness to it. This is the place. This is the devil's front door, if you will. Jesus goes, rings the front door, and he says to Peter, the gates of hell will never prevail against my church. So it's a provocative act by Jesus Christ against the devil. It's a very masculine act.

He is declaring war on hell. And he's saying all of hell's defenses, we often think of hell as the one attacking. The church is the one that is going to attack and cause hell to succumb. All right. Here's an interesting one, Father. Father, big fan of the show. That's not interesting. That just makes sense.

My whole life I've been able to dream of my own future. I can't control it or will it. It just happens. I'm able to see the events unfold in real time. Sometimes they're far in the future and some with a day or two and realize during said event, I dreamed this literally frame for frame like a movie. My question is, I know God lives outside of space and time, but why am I able to do this or given these dreams?

Sometimes it feels like a gift and other times I feel like it might be a curse. It at times feels like I'm just following the script or at times feels like I'm just getting a heads up. Not sure if you've encountered this with anyone before. So it sounds like, to paraphrase, sounds like the questioner is saying that they're having dreams of things that they believe are actually coming to pass and getting potential glimpses of their future. So, Father, obviously, we don't know if they're a Christian or not, but it sounds like from the writing, they are. Yeah. Okay, look, there's a couple things there that stick out to me. The fact you said that you're able to experience it in real time, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Because when we say we experience something in real time, we're actually at the event. But there's a foreknowledge of the event or like a kind of a living through the experience twice over. Nevertheless, I think what you mean is you experience duration, you experience time when you dream about the event. And then you live that same experience of time during the event. I think that's what you mean. And if this is the case, and it's not obvious to you, that there's a giftedness here, that God wants to do something to build up his church. And I think you're correct in calling it a curse in the sense that I don't see this a being of God. Like there's no obvious benefit to the kingdom to have you have this.

So on the supposition that you actually did previously dream about this or previously experience the prior experience, and not just when you live the actual experience, that your brain is doing something that is giving you that deja vu experience. Maybe there's a deja vu chemical, for lack of a better word, that's released, that is giving you a sense, hey, I've experienced this before

when in fact you didn't. I think we've all had deja vu experiences. I mean, it's been a number of years since I had one, but I did have them before. I wouldn't say a ton of them, but a handful anyway in my life. More so when I was a child in my 50s now, I couldn't tell you the last time I had one.

But I think the first thing to be aware of is, is there actual a spatial distance between the prior experience or the sense of the prior experience and the actual experience? Are you certain of that? Because if you're not certain of that, then it could be just something that's happening chemically in you.

So there's nothing out of the ordinary. There's nothing supernatural at play here. If there is that distance from those two events, so if there is an actual dreaming or an actual kind of living out of an experience, and then down the road at some point in the future a day or two, even, you know, an hour later or a year later, whatever, if then there is the actual living out of that experience that calls to mind, that prior experience,

then I think what you need to do is say to the Lord, Lord, I submit this to you. If this is of you, I need you to purify it. I need you to cleanse it. I need you to inform me why I'm having this. why you want this, why you want me to experience this. If this is not of you, I want you to take it away and I never want it again. And my hunch is, if this really was a deja-boo experience, in other words, there was a prior and a post experience, the latter experience validating the prior one, then my hunch is that you're going to have other people in your family who have also had this, siblings, parents, grandparents, that there's something in the generations. And if that is the case, 10 to 1, I think it is demonic. 10 to 1, I think it's

spiritual residue from some form of occultism through the generations. In fact, we're going to have an episode on the Exorcist Files that addresses this very thing. So, So stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, I think what the right course of action for you is submitted to the Lord and say to him, if this is not of you, I don't want it. And I ask you to take it from me. And from me and from anyone else in my family who suffers from it. We've been doing a little segment.

And by doing a little segment, I mean, this is the second time. But you know on the show, we do love to celebrate the lives of those incredible Christians that have come before us. Last time we talked about St. Joseph Cooperino. We're kind of doing some of Father's favorite saints. And since the new season is launching on the feast day of St. Bartololongo, we thought we'd give you a little primer. And interestingly, Father, I was with a few Catholic friends of mine.

And I mentioned Bartolongo, and they actually didn't know who he was. And they're actually fairly well read. Do you find that he is a lesser known saint? Or how popular is he? Yeah, he's not very popular. I mean, he certainly is not a St. Joseph or St. Francis of Assisi. But to exorcists, I mean, there isn't an exorcist alive who doesn't know him. We use his relics and exorcism to great effect.

He really is, you know, he was a disciple of the devil, frankly, who converted and who found sainthood. And he did great apostolic works while he was alive after his conversion. And so much so that he earned a person. place in glory. And the church has recognized that. So he has had, he had a miracle attributed to his intercession that brought about his beatification. And a second miracle after that beatification that brought about his candidization. You know, his holiness is, is objective. It has to be objective because the process for getting those miracles vetted by the Holy See is the most rigorous

process on earth. It takes years and years and years. I mean, there is really no investigation like it. The investigation for canonization is so rigorously thorough that, I mean, if you've passed it, you have had to have had the vote of so many individuals whose job it is to poke holes in the theory. And of course, the final hurdle is the Pope makes a judgment on the foregoing, on all the data that is presented to them. So it is an exercise of that ordinary magisterium of the Pope, whereby no one can be uncannadized. So your name is inserted in the liturgy of the church. The church prays what it believes, and it believes what it prays.

So that act is irreformable. Well, Father, I want you to know, if you're ever up for St. Hood, and somehow I'm a doctor voting on one of those miracles, I'm going to be totally unbiased. I'm not going to factor in all the time we work together. I just want you know, I'm going to vote where the data goes, okay? Okay. Glad to hear it. Well, tell us a little bit about St. Bartol Longo. Who was he? And why is he particularly relevant to for our show? Yeah. So he was born in the 1800s. And so Italy at that time, intellectually speaking, was a real mess. So there was a, like a tremendous rise in secularism that occurred, such that societies like the Freemasons really enveloped the intellectual

elite. And so what happened is there was a collapse of the Catholic worldview. And this collapse affected Bartolo Longo in an acute way. So he was from the area of Italy called Naples, which is a couple hours drive from Rome. And what happened is he joined university, and at university, he encountered the secularist worldview and completely lost his faith. Now, this is exactly what's happening today in universities. So students go to school and their worldview is attacked. So the categories that they have by which they live life, by which they judge goodness, by which they make moral judgments, all those pillars are attacked. And so they come out of university radicalized and completely un-American, unobjective, mean. You know,

So leftist. So what's happening today is exactly what happened in Bartolo's time. Now, what happened then is he abandoned his Catholic worldview because of the, it couldn't, it couldn't survive the challenges that were presented to him. And so what he did then is he turned to occultism. And so what's interesting to point out is he hadn't ceased to be interested. in the supernatural. But having rejected Christianity, he went looking for the supernatural elsewhere.

And so along with the collapse of the Christian worldview at the time, among the intellectual elites, among the university settings, in particular in Naples, you had a rise of spiritualism. So seances, medium, visiting mediums, making contact with the dead and so forth. So there would be practices involving magnetism, spiritual, spirit communication, Ouija boards, tarot cards, all that kind of junk. All of that, all of that rose. It became very fashionable to connect with that. And so the belief was that, well, the supernatural exists is just that Christian.

Christianity took away the truth and the fun stuff and replaced it with mythology. And so he began attending seances and became deeply involved. His father died when he was relatively young. And in his biographies, his biographies report that he had a deep desire to make contact with his father. And this was one of the reasons why he turned to spiritualism, because it offered seances, it offered the possibility of communicating with his deceased father. And so what happened is sometime around 1864, he had a kind of mystical experience within a seance, and it turned him deeply into it.

So there was simultaneously some humiliating experience. that went along with. This is the way he described it, but at the same time, it left a deep impression upon him such that he wanted more. So how you reconcile those two things, I have no idea, but this is how he described it. So he underwent an initiation to be a kind of practitioner of these kinds of events. And this became the basis of him being a priest of the the spiritist, the occultist group. This is, this is why he's often referred to as a satanic priest. He didn't literally practice Satanism. What he did was he practiced occultism and was known as a priest of the spiritualist occultist group. What happened then is a systematic destruction of his

health in person. So the spirit that he was following demanded increased increased devotion, expressed through rigorous fasting, rigorous penances. And this spirit presented himself as St. Michael the Archangel. That's how he identified himself. And it demanded this entity,

purporting to be Michael the Archangel, demanded increasingly elaborate submissions. So severe prayers, severe fasts. and required the spirit required its name to be written on all of his papers and notations and things so he wanted adoration and blind obedience

and so this is really important to note because when the devil comes he never comes to you and says look I am Satan and I want your destruction he never does that because if he did you would recoil you would run away.

So, but what he does is he demands something that costs you dearly and gives you a promise of something that you want. Of course, he doesn't deliver. I mean, he gives you crumbs. But then all of a sudden, you're so deep into it, you don't know how to get out. Right. So to follow Satan, to follow the devotion that he lays out for you, which is really a trap, it's not a devotion, it's a, it's a, it's an attempt to destroy you. To follow him in that is, is, is, is really a, a suicidal act.

So it, it, what, what he found is he suffered profoundly in his mental and physical state. He became incredibly severely ill. And he just suffered a deterioration of this person in every way. So, All of a sudden, you know, so the irony presents itself. And this is an irony that heavens, everybody who's involved with the occult, soon finds out. So he went to occultism because it promised him knowledge, power, and access to the supernatural, but would it produce with slavery? He went looking for illumination, and then he found himself in darkness. He went looking for freedom from Christianity, then found himself in complete bondage.

He went looking for supernatural knowledge, and he found himself utterly and completely confused. He discovered a priest who began to walk with him, who began to talk with him, who began to say to him, like, look, you're on a path of destruction here. the very thing that you rejected in Christianity is a thing that brings about your healing and will bring about your salvation if you let it. Because every choice that you've made has done nothing but make you a nervous wreck, make you ill, make you thin, make you on the verge of death and on the verge of losing your mind. So friend, what have you got to lose? Why don't you turn to the Lord? And he did. And he still despaired of his salvation.

He thought, I've done so many evil things. I've gone exactly and precisely where the Lord tells us not to go in the scriptures with regard to occultism. And then he discovered the promises that Our Lady makes to those who promote the rosary. So there's the promises of Our Lady. So these can be found everywhere all over the Internet. And this is an ancient tradition that was revealed by our lady who yourself through the ages. And it's been affirmed by the church. It's been, you know, they are, they're 15 beautiful promises. And so he became aware of those. And the commitment that our

lady will not allow somebody who, who promotes her rosary to suffer eternally. And so he thought, well, if I, if I become a promoter of the rosary, I will receive the grace I need to be saved. And that's what he wanted. He knew that salvation came from Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. But there was a kind of intercession that Our Lady, the greatest of all saints and the mother of God who at Cana prevailed upon God's plans and caused him to revise his plans out of devotion and favor to his own holy mother. He turned to her. And his salvation is exactly what came about. He just developed a profound apostolic spirit.

But more than that, she brought him the health that he desired. And he eventually married. He married as an older man already. And he and his wife promoted and founded and promoted the shrine of the Holy Rosary at Pompeii, which is one of the suburbs of Naples. And so it's, you know, that's the fourth irony in all of this, that the very place where he lost his faith is the very place where he founded and then became an apostle for God. And, you know, here we are 170 years later. And we're talking about the man.

And we're honoring him. And the church has honored him and raised him to the glory of the altars. What's kind of the take-home message about the life of Bartolonga? What would be an encouragement you would want listeners to walk away from with this, with his life? Well, certainly I think one thing about the life of St. Bartolo is the fact that he had the humility to acknowledge that he was wrong. And many folks have everything except that humility. They just refuse to embrace it. They refused to accept that they were wrong. They write themselves off, which is itself an act of pride. it's not humble when you write yourself up that's not humility that's a false humility because if our lord wants you say and you deny him what he wants that's called pride so in you judging yourself and saying you know what i'm too far gone i just you know salvation does apply to me what what you're saying is

i'm god and so and you you cannot excuse yourself of that accusation simply by saying or by thinking you know, I'm just acknowledging the truth and in humility, that there's nothing humble about that. You're refusing to give God what he wants. And that crime is worse than any other crime that you may have done. Because what you were doing there is playing God. That's what you're doing. You're saying to Almighty God, I know what you want and I'm not going to give it to you. No. I mean, dress it up however you wish, change the terms and the lingo, however you, that's the basic. basic reality that's going on there. And, you know, Bartolo showed us the way around that. But so I wonder if he didn't have a fear of the Lord and because of that fear, he didn't go to him

directly. He went to the Blessed Mother. Kind of just a, just as in parallel what happened at Cana. And then she went to work. She went in this corner like she always does to anybody who asked her for help, like any saint, but especially the mother of God. Like At Cana, she prevailed upon her son who had said, you know, you're asking me to be involved, but this is not my time. It's not my time. But he had asked in the midst of that, he said, what is this to you that I need to be concerned about this? So, so yes, this is not my time. But tell me, why is this such a concern for you? And she answered him by turning to the servants and saying, whatever he tells you to do, you do. That was her answer. And of course, that's at the stage for the first miracle of the

eternal word of God. And it was brought about by the intercession of his holy mother. And so Bartolo took a strength in that. He took a peace in that. And that's the path that he went. And, you know, heavens, it turned him into a saint. Way to go, Bartolo. Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed that. that is a little bit of our celebration of the St. Bartololongo, and so be sure to tune in on his feast day October 5th when we drop our season opener. The last question, and this one is addressed to, Father, do you know what your rap name would be? If you are a rapper, do you know what your name would be? I don't. MC grammar.

MC grammar. There we go. Okay, it's grammar time. And on the grammar time note, We have a questioner. A vault member wants to know once again why all the demons are referred to as he's, even though some of them sound very feminine. So, yeah, good question. Demons don't have sex, but they do have gender. Just like God does not have a sex, but he does have a gender. And he's identified himself as male. And the devil and his angels are identified as male. males as well by way of gender, not by way of sex. In other words, like, they don't have genitalia.

They don't have bodies, after all. How could they have genitalia? But they are referred to in Revelation by God as males, as having male gender. So that's what I do. That's what I continue. So, you know, some of my colleagues don't. They call it it. They call them it.

You know, I just follow what Revelation says. and that's how I tackle it and address it. Some of them do sound female, but some of them also sound like swine. Some of them sound like cattle or goats, bleeding. It doesn't mean that they're literally goats. It doesn't mean that they're swine or cattle. I just, you know, their behavior doesn't change the fact that they have a masculine identity. Right.

And you have other names for them too, right, that we can't repeat on the show because they're mean, right? Well, I mean, one of the things I call them bastards because they fit the definition, right? They have no father, right? They have a creator, but no father. You and I, by virtue of our baptism, we have a father. By virtue of our baptism, we were, you know, God became our father, Christ, our Savior, the Holy Spirit of sanctifier, and so forth.

But they are bastards because they are neither begotten nor a daughter. adopted, right? The son, God the Son, was begotten. You and I were adopted by virtue of the baptism onto God. The demons have neither such reality. So by definition, they are bastards. So it's an insult, obviously, but it's an insult rooted in the truth, and the truth is exorcistic. So to call them what they are is an exorcistic act. So maybe this is a little too, Esoterp, but when Jesus refers to the Pharisees as your father is the devil, would we be these demons then technically adopted by Satan in the sense that as their leader? Well, so I think what our Lord is saying there is the fact that they are consciously and willingly lying.

And the devil being the father of lies has become their father in a sense. And so he is describing the reality of their lifestyle being a conjecture, being a reflection of the spiritual reality, the spiritual adoption that they've had of the father-aligned as their own father, as the one to whom they're devoted to, rather than the God of truth, the God of Israel. Okay. All right. Vault members, thank you so much for your support. and other vault members, please feel free, submit your questions. We will get to as many as we can. We're getting really close to the release of season three.

Thank you so much for your patience, folks. And remember, vault members get the dramatic episodes a full day early. So you can know, actually, you can be like that questioner who wrote in and we'll know the future. But it won't be because of a curse. It'll be because you actually got the episode before everyone else. But they won't know that, right? So definitely subscribe to the vault. if you want to get the dramatic case file a day early and the rest as well,

make sure to get a copy of Father Martin's book and tell all your friends about the return of the dramatic episodes. We know how much you love the interviews, but we also know you love the dramatic episodes that much more. So Father Martins, thank you for joining us. We know it's late. Appreciate your time and God bless everyone. All right. God bless you all.