The Exorcist Files - The Shroud in Exorcism, Demons Stealing The Host, and Resisting Evil

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

Father Martins answers questions on the Shroud of Turin, Demons stealing consecrated hosts and how to resist evil. Thank you to our sponsors!Graza- Get the Trio today! Head to graza.co/exfiles for 10% off the trio!Heaven Meets Earth- an amazing new podcast documenting miracles and answered prayers. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome back to The Exorcist Files. It is your second favorite co-host currently talking to you today, Ryan Bitha, and here with me is probably your first favorite co-host. I'm the Ed McMahon to his Johnny Carson. Father Martins, how we doing? Doing great, Ryan. God bless you. God bless everyone listening.

Is that accurate, Father? Am I the Ed McMahon of the show? You're almost. He was sort of a John the Baptist character, right? He was to point towards Johnny Carson, right? Was that his theological role? You could say that, sure. Let's go with that.

Oh, man. Well, folks, we know people love the Q&A's and love the questions, and there's no shortage of things to learn. So we're grateful to have Father Barton's here. Let's get into some spiritual warfare, because we know that's what the fans want. All right, so Father, and we've mentioned the Shrout of Turin in a few different episodes. And basically, distilling down this listener's question, they're asking, why would it not be a church policy or attempt to try and use the Shrout of Turin in all exorcisms? it seems like Christ himself is always casting out the demon as he did in the gospel. So just in the bigger picture, would the shroud of turn be a silver bullet for lack of a better term

and more powerful than other relics, potentially? Your thoughts on that? Yeah. So good question. The shroud of turin is not a silver bullet. There are no silver bullets. And I've said this many, many, many, many times. I've said it on the show.

I've written it in my book. I've given it in interviews. There is one exorcist, and that is Jesus Christ. the rest of us are as agents. And we will use different tools that reflect the power, the goodness, and the victory of Christ. We use crucifixes, holy images, relics, holy water, sacramentals, the right of exorcism. We use the communion of the saints, all of this to achieve these purposes. Just like a soldier in a war will use many weapons to defeat the enemy, right?

And we use them. And to the extent that they are useful, we use them a whole lot. But there is no one single weapon in the area of exorcism that is the catch-all. It is kind of the one weapon to rule them all, so to speak. So why don't I use the Shrad of Turin relic in every single exorcism? Because no relic is equally efficacious in every single case. I just know this from experience. And at that particular time that I used the relic of the Shradd

of Turin, it had been long lost within an archives, and it was discovered. It was in the process of being scientifically verified, and I was involved in that process. And it was in the midst of that process when I was traveling with it coming from that process, coming one of the times when we were using that relic to analyze and to get scientific data from it, that I pulled it out in the course of an exorcism, essentially on a lark. I mean, I did have the thought. as I was boarding the plan, hmm, I'm heading to an exorcism. I'm going to use this. By the time I got to the exorcism, to be honest, I largely had forgotten about it, but I was reminded of it there, and I pulled it out and oh my goodness, it was a visceral reaction. So the point is that God had a plan.

God had a plan and was executing it, and I was simply an agent. I mean, the thought of all this wasn't something I concocted, but it was rather that God had lined up all these circumstances to come about because he wanted to accomplish multiple purposes with regard to this relic, this exorcism case, etc. Father, we have another question that's come in about the veil of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I'll have to admit, I'm a little ignorant of this. Is that a well-known relic? It is a very well-known relic. The veil of the Blessed Mother, which is from ancient, times venerated in Rome. It was brought from Palestine by St. Jerome, the Church Father, where it had been venerated since her assumption. The Orthodox believe that at the conclusion

of our lady's life here on earth, that there was this astounding event, which Catholics call the assumption where she was taken body and soul into heaven. Her belongings remained on earth, or at least some of those belongings, one of them being the veil, the head covering. And this was kept in Palestine until the time of St. Jerome in the 4th century. Jerome had a lot of power because he was the personal secretary to Pope Damasus. And for the safekeeping of the veil, he brought it to Rome along with the mantle or the cloak of St. Joseph. And these were placed in his parish church, which is St. Anastasia in Rome, which is just a couple miles from St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. and they have been venerated in Rome ever since.

They are among the most treasured relics in all of Christendom. We have also in France a garment that is often referred to as the veil of our lady at Shatt. It is not a veil in the sense that it is not a head covering. It is what is called the holy blouse or the holy tunic. The reliquary is stamped with those very words. words, sunk the tunica, the holy blouse. So different garment, but also believed to have belonged to Our Lady. And there are others besides. And certainly these relics are amongst the most treasured in Christendom. Have they been divided over the centuries? Yes, but very,

very rarely. And many of those relics that people possess that they believe to be a part of the veil are not a direct part of the veil. They would be a cloth that has been touched to the veil that maybe was used for years, decades perhaps, to wrap it, and then they take that cloth and they cut it up because they touched the original. I also know that there are relic marked relics of the veil that have been given out. Well, that is part of the veil, quote unquote, that covers a statue at the House of Loretto in Loretto, Italy. The House of Loretto is the upper part of the home of St. Joachim and Anne and the Blessed Mother, the house in which the Blessed Mother grew up in Nazareth.

It was dismantled and transported to Italy by a family called the Angeli family. So why did they do that? because it was inside that house that the incarnation happened. And so it was reestablished. It was rebuilt. Part of the tradition is that it was miraculously transported by angels. Whether it was miraculous or not, it was transported by angels because that family's name was Anjali, which means angels. So whether it was supernatural angels or humans named angels, the home was transported.

it. And there's no question archaeologically that this is a home from the Middle East. And in fact, in Nazareth, where you have today the basilica of the Annunciation, the upper part of that home is missing. What is there is just the lower part. So the upper part being in Italy, regardless, there's a statue of the Blessed Mother kept there, and they place a veil on its head. Once in a while, they remove that veil, they put a new one on there, and they cut that veil, and they give it out as sacramentals or as quote-unquote relics. Many of the relics of the veil of the Blessed Mother that are extant to the church, and they are very rare, are of these secondary cloths touched to a greater relic. But the greater relic does exist. I've used fragments of it with an exorcism. I've seen the original. It is a

very powerful relic that the devil hates because he hates the Blessed Mother. Another question. Father Martins, I'm fascinated by the use of Holy Water in the ministry. Previously, I thought that Holy Water just as an object of superstition, now I faithfully bless myself each time I exit the church. I am confused, though, however, why do those in league with the devil are possessed by the devil not have the same extreme reactions to the Eucharist? Why is that the Eucharist has been taken and used at Black Mass

seemingly about harming the enemy? And I will say upon one of my first visits to a Catholic church, I was surprised, and I had heard about this, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, that there were people watching to ensure that the Eucharist was consumed, and this church said that they had had people try to abscond away with consecrated hosts, I actually found myself wondering the same thing. If someone was in league with the devil,

wouldn't they have an adverse reaction to something as powerful as the Eucharist? Well, absolutely. Yes. So someone who is possessed is going to want to avoid receiving the Eucharist at all cost. Does it happen? It does happen, and I've seen it happen. But it is something the devil doesn't want. If it's happening,

then he's already lost much of his power or he hasn't gained the kind of power that he desires. But look, the fact that relics are used at black masses, the fact that relics are taken away stolen from masses from liturgies, this is not the devil's doing that. These are his agents doing that. So the devils are not coming into contact with them per se, but merely his agents. the devil's not factoring into that equation, so to speak. He's allowing his minions to do it, and he stays at a safe distance away. So there's always a kind of medium of safety by which he operates, that he places in between himself and the danger, in this case, the Blessed Eucharist, which of course is the greatest physical weapon we have on earth because there's nothing holier.

is the answer then the enemy is giving them a temporary reprieve. So while they're stealing Eucharist, he's not present when that person is stealing it. Just by a law of the holiness, he couldn't be that close to it. Not without causing him injury, correct? All right, so father, here's an interesting question that came in. Listener says, I understand angels do not receive Holy Communion. As St. Maximilian Colby said, if angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason. Holy Communion. After thinking on this, I decided to begin in inviting my guardian angel to join me in the communion line in the hopes that they would receive at least some blessing grace from joining me in the line. Is this an acceptable practice? My garden angel works so hard to get me into heaven. Surely is a way of thanking them and growing close to them, I can at least offer a little bit of heaven to them. What do you think, Father? Is this a well-intentioned but erroneous practice? Or is there any semblance of truth here? I think that's a wonderful practice. You're cultivating a relationship, and that's exactly what we should do. That the Lord is, given us all a gift of a guardian angel, and that angel is working relentlessly to try to get us

into heaven to keep us out of danger. Cultivating a relationship is a good and holy thing. And a practice like that, I think, is magnificent, where you're asking God, you know, God, share some of the grace of this sacrament, of my reception of the sacrament with my angel, share some of the delight. There are ways in which we do go too far in, seeking or trying to cultivate a relationship with our guardian angel. Like, for example, one of the things that we ought not to do is to name them or to ask them for their name. Why? Because that practice attempts to artificially insert something into that relationship that was never meant to be there. We're not meant to know the name of the guardian angel of your guardian angel or mine. You may have a sense,

you may have a desire, but it is beneath the dignity of the angel for you to impose a name or to take a quote unquote name that came to you in prayer and say, oh, well, then that must be it. Names and angels are closely guarded things, and that is present throughout all of Scripture. That's a domain that we are not to tread on. And I think we need to be respectful of that, and that has been the word of the church throughout the centuries, that we leave them that anonymity. Just refer to them as my guardian angel. Okay. And Father, actually, this is just a personal question for me, because as you were speaking,

I thought of Colossians 218 and reading from the new revised standard Catholic edition, it says, do not let anyone disqualify you insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling in visions puffed up without cause and by human way of thinking. where does cultivation turn into worship? You mentioned names. Any other thoughts on that, Father? Yeah, I guess trying to take their mysterious nature and trying to undo the mystery.

And to find the precise scenes of that, I think is going to be difficult. But I think it is a wonderful thing to acknowledge that you have a guardian angel, that he is there, that he is there for you, that he's always at your side. that he's a gift from God, that he does have a personality, although the majority of that personality is going to be mysterious.

And I think that you cultivate that relationship verbally and in love through prayer and maybe even in kind gestures that I'm going to go into a kind act for somebody in Thanksgiving for the times that you have protected me and exerted your ministry for me. So as an act of Thanksgiving, and we do this with one another, like I once received a gift from a couple that I witnessed their marriage vows, they made a donation to a pro-life organization in my honor. I felt wonderful over that. So this would be a similar kind of thing.

You can do things in honor of your guardian angel. You can perform an act of love, an act of charity, an act of goodness in some direction, and offer it up in honor of your guardian angel. These are wonderful things to do. But to try to take them out of the realm of mystery, this is where we start killing the very plant that we're trying to transpot into somewhere else. You're killing the nature of the thing that you're trying to honor. This is a complicated one, which we've touched on in other episodes, specifically on forgiveness, et cetera, but maybe you can give us some quick thoughts in the gospel

of Matthew when it says, do not resist the one who is evil. We had a listener ask a fairly extreme example, but should I then allow someone to continue to abuse me? Obviously, I don't think they mean that. I think they're asking just rhetorically, but when it says, do not resist the one who is evil, maybe you could give us some thoughts on that, and then maybe how that translates into civil disobedience and broadly speaking, how Christians are to operate in a fallen world

when there is evil everywhere. Yeah. That quote, do not resist an evil person, do not resist one who is evil, et cetera, et cetera, is part of the sermon on the Mount. It's from Matthew 539. The context of it, this is, of course, part of the famous teaching of Jesus, turn the other cheek. So Christ is absolutely not saying don't resist evil. Look at Christ's life. It was one giant resistance of evil. It was a giant resistance. So Christ allowed evil to betray him, to put him on a cross, and to take his life,

all for the context, though, of victory. So evil never had the upper hand. So Christ is not saying and never says to his disciples, let evil just walk all over you because you are nothing, because you're not worth defending against evil. What are you saying in this context? is to not react against evil. He is changing the thinking of an eye for an eye, that for his disciples, that retaliation is not going to be a thing. You can respond to evil, but you're not going to react to evil. And so he's not changing the word of God, even though the word of God said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. What he is saying is, he is, he is clarifying the divine teaching that is in the Word of God, because keep in mind,

and the Old Testament, yes, it's the Word of God, absolutely, but it is mediated through the vision, the understanding, the temperament, the prophecy of a prophet. There's an inexactness to it at times. There's an imprecision that is reflected there. A precision that comes through time, like as time goes on, what happens to all of that? Well, it disappears because the teaching of God becomes clearer over time. Then all of a sudden, my God, you have the second person of the Trinity in the flesh coming, and now there's no mediation.

He is the word of God. It's not mediated now through a man, but it is the very word of the God man. And so there's an absolute precision and clarity. And so what Jesus is doing here is modifying that teaching of an eye for, and a tooth for a tooth. If somebody strikes you, okay, offer him your other cheek as a sign that, you know what, my kingdom is not of this world. So, okay, you do evil against me, fine. But obviously, like, if there was great harm done, if somebody is coming at you with a dagger or a sword, Jesus isn't saying, run at them headlong and just say, yeah, drive me through, stab me through.

Like, nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus is not saying make yourself vulnerable to evil. But he is saying evil does not control you and should not control you. Minor injustices. These should be going in one ear of yours and out the other. These minor events of evil where people are coming at you and attacking you and costing you. They should be rolling off you like water off a duck's back. But he is not saying run into them headlong. And he is not saying put yourself into danger.

You know, I personally, this is something I struggle with. or just wrestle with because a lot of Christ's teachings are really hard, like, you know, pick up your cross and actually go further. If they ask you to go a mile, you go two miles, right? Give them everything if they ask for something. And of course, we know the nature of God, and he doesn't want his children to suffer needlessly. It seems like on the spectrum, Christ is much more about deferring and I don't say let people walking on you, right? But when in doubt, it seems like Christians are supposed to concede more. Am I wrong in that, Father? They are supposed to exert a patience that the world does not possess. That is true. A patience

rooted in love for the sake of the conversion of the other, but they are not supposed to be dormants. That is beneath the dignity of a Christian, to be a doormat. If you truly are in danger, the Christian response, even though we are commanded to forgive our offender, is not to make yourself vulnerable to harm. The Christian response is get yourself out of danger, all the while forgiving those who seek to harm you. That's a Christian response. Amen.

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God bless you. Father, we actually had a question come in. This came in, I think about a year and a half ago, and I thought this was an interesting one. Perhaps you could, one, summarize, what is the view of contraception? I know that's something that's not universally agreed upon between Catholics and Protestants,

but could you explain the Catholic position on contraception, including all forms, whether it's family planning or a vasectomy, et cetera? And then the spicier question was for an individual who had a vasectomy and was not Catholic at the time, but has since converted to Catholicism, what is the best appropriate step for them to take based on your reading of it all? So these are good questions. You know, what I'm going to say is going to be deeply personal to many people. And not everybody will agree with me, but I'm going to give you what is the truth that I am

convinced of. The truth as reflected in the Catholic Church, it is a truth that I gave my life to, that I converted to follow because I was convinced of it as truth. And the purpose of me giving the answers and speaking the way that I will is to basically reflect the truth as Jesus Christ has given it. That is my intention here. And I know we're going to be talking about, other things, vasectomies. And I know that a lot of people out there have had vasectomies, and I don't want people to be shamed. That is not my intention. But I want people to be liberated by the truth. And you're my answer. Christ is the great redeemer. Christ is your friend. He has come to achieve reconciliation between the sinner and his father. And let us take Christ and his offer

and the way that he offers it and come to a point of reconciliation with him, with his will. Because in his will is our peace. God created us as sexual beings. So there's a unitive dimension within us, and that reflects the unitive dimension of the Trinity itself. God, at the most fundamental level of his identity, is a community of persons. And God has mirrored that community,

the ability to create community, create life. And God has mirrored that community within our physical bodies where we can create life and participate in this act of creating that is unique to God, but we participate in it. So it is part of God's plan that this occurs. And it is his plan that it occurs within marriage, that our sexual faculties are used, properly speaking, only in the context of marriage, because that solidifies and protects offspring. It provides a stability to the relationship and so forth. And marriage is lifelong and permanent until death. That is the Catholic Church's understanding of God's plan with regard to our sexual faculties.

Controception introduces a barrier to the level of intimacy there. It essentially reduces the sexual act from an act of love to an act of mutual masturbation. That's at heart, what contraception is. And a vasectomy is a species. It's a type of contraception that, again, reduces the act to an act of masturbation. So for that reason, the Catholic Church is against it. Now, with regard to somebody having that reversed, whether, as in the case of the question, the situation was, hey, the person wasn't Catholic before, now the person is Catholic, or let's say the person was Catholic, and had a vasectomy done and is now convinced of the moral error, does the Catholic Church insist on a reversal of it? And the answer is, surprisingly to many people, no. It doesn't insist on a

reversal. It doesn't forbid the reversal. It doesn't insist on. Why? Because good gosh, to reverse a vasectomy is a lot more complicated than obtaining a vasectomy. If astectomy can be obtained in a doctor's office with local anesthetic. It requires a much more extensive surgery to reverse a vasectomy. And in fact, I knew a priest. He's now passed on. But he had been married in his life prior to being a priest. And then his wife was no longer living. And he had had in the time of his marriage of a vasectomy. And then when he got a call to the priesthood, so he was already in his late 40s, when that happened and he was ordained in his 50s, he had this compunction that I need to reverse this, even though he was never going to use his sex organs for procreation ever again, but he just

felt this need to reverse this more wrong. And so he did it. And so he said it was a lot more a dramatic and effect physiologically with regard to swelling and recovery and so forth, having that second surgery as opposed to the first one. But, you know, in some contraception, we believe, is a grave moral evil. It introduces a barrier to the intimacy, a barrier that God never intended there to be. It reduces the act to something else. So the sexual act exists for three purposes, for procreation, for unity and intimacy between the spouses, and a mirror by which we reflect the life of the Trinity within it. So it's a sign. There's a sign value of it. And so to introduce contraception in it is a destruction to all three. So you're saying the only thing more dramatic than

our episodes is reversal of a vasectomy father? Sure. Sounds painful. But as far as family planning, I know a lot of Christians will use apps or whatever to try and use the cycle and to try and, you know, plan ahead. Is that something that the church would say is also contraception, or is that just trying to be smart about what God has given you? No, if you're using the natural methods implanted by nature, which means implanted by God within the human body within the human cycle, that there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with desiring to space births. Although I will say that even natural family planning or natural methods of birth control can be used with a contrast conceptive mentality. In other words, if there is a desire to never reflect the life of the

Trinity with regard to children, like, well, we're just going to avoid children as much as possible. That's really going against the command of God, who multiple times in Scripture said be fruitful and multiply. So at a certain point, we have to either decide we're going to obey that commandment or not. And those who engage in contraception have made their decision or engage in natural family planning with a contraceptive mentality. You know, up until about 100 years ago, every single Christian church was unanimous in condemning contraception, right?

So every single Christian church. So if all of a sudden something changes, you can, that has been the, that has been, there forever. So it'd been there for 1900 years, all of a sudden in the 2000s year, boom, there's a change. You can bet that is not an action of the Holy Spirit. You can bet because we were promised the Holy Spirit that he would guide us to all truth. And how is it possible that with this guarantee of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit that the church can exist for 1900 years going in a certain direction, teaching it a certain direction, believing and practicing any certain direction, and all of a sudden discover that it was wrong. It's just simply impossible.

It's impossible. The same with abortion. And frankly, the same with divorce. Like marriage, as practiced by the Christian church, was dissolvable only by death until really, essentially, the Reformation. I mean, there was always such a thing as an annulment where, by the essential conditions of marriage were discovered to not exist on the day of the marriage, on the day of the marriage. Whatever happens after really is irrelevant. But an annulment was a conclusion of an investigation of the conditions that make a marriage valid. That always existed because investigations have always existed.

And you can believe that there are certain conditions for a contract, which marriage is at heart. is it as a contract between two people, and then come to discover that, wait, certain conditions essential to that contract's validity were missing. Once that's proved, okay, well, look, then there is no contract. But where there is a contract, it's ratified. Boom, just the way it is. Now, these are difficult teachings of the faith. Nobody ever said, Christ never said that this is going to be laughs and giggles. He said, take up your cross and follow me, just as he did. just as his father laid across on his shoulders and he had to carry it. And Jesus wasn't the boss.

If you ever have any doubt about that, read anything in the gospel of John, where, you know, John really zeroes in on this relationship between God, the father, and his son. And note the docility of the son with regard to the action of the father. I can do nothing of my own. I do what I see my father doing. The son has no will of his own. His will is to do the will of his father. I mean, he is constantly emphasizing, underlining, double underlining, yellow highlighting,

I am not the boss. My father is the boss. I've come to do his will. And then he turns to his disciples and I impose my will upon you. If you dare to be my disciple, this is what I expect. And it's a take it or leave at moment. Anytime we exert, we exercise a moral choice. we're in that place again.

It's a take it or leave up moment. We either choose to obey or not. Okay. Interesting question here, father. It says, this might be a strange question. How do I go about giving a Gregorian mass to children sacrificed in my family line? Context here, many years ago, I had some DNA testing done due to an ongoing health crisis. And in that test, there was an ancestral matchup with ancient remains around the world. It came back with matches with toddlers sacrificed in Central America in the Mayan ruin

and Haitian site. I didn't know that sites could test that specifically, but assuming that's true, I don't know with certainty which line of the family it's from, but I do believe that my maternal line, there have been lots of child sacrifice. They don't have the details. I wonder if this is a family curse and I would like to eradicate it and is this mass the way to do it or how I would even frame it for children that may have been sacrificed. Thank you for your time. That's a wild one. So, father, do what you will with that. Okay, so Gregorian masses are a set a series of 30 masses done 30 days in a row for some deceased person, for one single person, for one soul.

It comes from the time of Pope Gregory the Great, where there was a monk that died and the monastery offered 30 consecutive masses on the 30th day. The soul of that monk came and said, I have been freed by these masses that have been devoutly offered for me for 30 days. And so this practice is an ancient one in the church. It is highly regulated by the church. To call a series of Gregorian Mass, it must be offered for one single person. It must be offered for 30 days consecutively.

All right. Now, most priests can't offer Gregorian masses. Why? Well, because they're parish priests and they have responsibilities in their parish churches because people have an intention that they'll offer for Mass. And besides that, once a week, a parish priest is bound to offer mass for the people of God. So we often have to resort to missionary priests because they're not parish priests. They have the freedom to be able to offer masses for 30 days straight for one particular intention.

But there are other masses. I call them Malabin masses. A great many other people do. They would be essentially the same thing. 30 masses offered over 30 days, but you can combine the intentions. They might be for all people in your family line. They might be all babies that may have been sacrificed or for all the curses in your family line. So generally speaking, there's nothing forbidding such an intention. We don't call it a Gregorian Mass because a Gregorian Mass is specifically for one deceased person, but you can have the series offered for any other intention, which

can be an amalgamation of intentions or needs. So how do you go about doing that? Well, you can seek out on the internet, different entities. You can send an email to the show here. I can try my best at matching you up with priests that I know that might be able to offer that. It's not the easiest thing to bring it about, but we can certainly try to make that happen. It is customary to offer a priest, a stipend when he offers a mass, and generally that's around $20 to $30.

For a series of Gregorian masses, generally speaking, what I have seen, the usual offering for those 30 days is something in the neighborhood of $800. If you can't afford it, I don't know a single priest that would reject it. But these missionary priests also rely on that income to support themselves. So it isn't the case that missionary priests can do this type of work without remuneration. because most of them rely on this on which to survive. All right, so, Father Martins, you describe demons as constantly observing

and instantaneous or nearly instantaneous assessment of consequences, results from all possible paths. Sounds a lot like quantum computing or theory. I'm not an expert on this. I just hear things. But does this at all point towards the idea of us living in a computer simulation? If true, would quantum AI be indistinguishable from demons

since both constantly watch and try to influence, this is definitely a broader discussion. So I think to help distill the question from the listener, maybe two parts. Father, one, have you ever given any thought? I mean, obviously you're a Catholic priest, so I'm sure you're going to reject simulation theory, but maybe there's some parallels with our current existence

and how would you even know. But secondly, we do get a lot of questions about AI, et cetera, and could demons manipulate AI and its abilities? There is some eschatological concerns about AI being, infiltrated by demons and then humans actually looking to it with reverence in such a way that they do start to worship it, you know, maybe not explicitly, but implicitly. Okay. So first of all, the experience of the demons, because of the nature of their intellect, it's not a simulation. Demons don't process the way computers do. Angels don't engage in process.

They don't. All their knowledge is intuitive and instantaneous. No matter how complicated it is, it's immediate. A computer, a human, they have to reason. So we compile data. We use that data to derive other data. Angels don't function like this. So there's a conflation of us taking one reality in the physical realm, in the human realm, and try to extrapolate that into the angelic, which is just not the case.

Now, demons do screw up. They do mess up, and they mess up because their nature's, are broken, just like human natures are broken. Like an athlete, an amazing athlete, refined athlete, can be running along and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, nobody knows why his leg moves in one crazy direction, like one muscle just goes awry and does something and breaks the gate of his running and slows him down enough that he loses the race, a race that he should have won. And nobody knows what happened. It was never in the intention of the mind of the runner to have this happen, but somehow just some process happened in his body. Well, that's a mark of the fallen

world. That's a presence of the fall that's there. That also happens in moral choices, where sometimes we blurt out something nasty to somebody that we really didn't have any intention. And we look at ourselves and we're embarrassed like, man, where did that come from? Demons also experience that type of reality. So they are amazing. They are accomplished. They are polished. But they have the natures of demons, which means they are broken. And this is a reality that the angels don't have to face, but only demons. I know we get AI questions all the time, but I was in the airport, and I ran into a gentleman who came up and said, hey, are you Ryan Bethay? He recognized my voice from the flight, which was very interesting. But he said, hey, tell Father Martins. I agree with 99.9% of everything

he says, but AI, I think he underestimates its danger. I work on it from a development standpoint. point. And I do think it could hold implications as far as being abused by the enemy to trick people, et cetera. So any further thoughts on that? I wouldn't disagree with that at all. Anything can be manipulated. That mirror on the wall can, that painting can in the antique shop, that goat's head that the weird artist constructed, the knife in your hand, the laptop sitting on the desk over there. All of these things can be manipulated by evil. And they are. So I don't know what would give him the idea that demons can't manipulate AI, but it would be exactly that. It would be a manipulation. In other words, there's nothing intrinsically evil about AI. It's a tool. Just like there's nothing intrinsically

evil about a gun or a knife. What would make it evil is their intended use. Yeah, I think with this gentleman, he was thinking more from a, you know, like, there's several camps on this. One is like AI will never be able to really get to the human level of creativity because it's not operating in the Mago Day, and it's too complicated. And then others are saying, hey, maybe that's true right now, but it's getting progressively better and better. And so I think he's saying there's a world we may dwell into, that AI may be so advanced and so interesting,

it could alter our perceptions of reality. Because, you know, this is part of the Internet problem, is what will we be able to discern what is true when AI can replicate everything exactly? Right. I agree with that, where it can blur the line between the imagination and reality. I absolutely agree with that.

Will we ever get to? to a place where we have like the holodeck on Star Trek. Well, I don't know. That remains to be seen. Maybe, you know, the holodeck, there was a physical component to it where, you know, people in the holodeck, they would program the computer to create a certain reality and that reality would be manifest in front of them, like a living version of Albert Einstein, for example. We may never get to that level, but we may not need to. We could perhaps develop a simulation level at the level of neuroconsciousness where that is kind of affected in the brain nonetheless. I don't know. I'm not denying that. I just think that in the end, AI is always going to remain a tool, a tool that can be misused by

evil, but if it's being misused by evil, there's a human at play who is being employed to misuse it. All right. Actually, I'm going to just throw in this one last one, just because this came up a couple times. We get this question a lot, and I want to just talk about it again because it routinely pops up in our inbox. But Father, could you speak a little bit about Luke 949, which is that famous verse where the apostles see other people casting out demons, and they're not with the OG troop? And Christ says, look, they're not against you, so they're for you. And this is the broader conversation. We have a lot of Protestant listeners here. And I think we have a lot of listeners who are surprised that you have said on the show,

hey, anyone baptized in Christ, you don't have to be a Catholic to cast out demons, and there are two different discussions here, whether God can use anyone to liberate someone, and then what is the best practice? So could you just maybe address some high-level thoughts there for our audience who are sometimes surprised that we feature folks who have done deliverance as Protestants?

Yeah, sure. So exactly that. By virtue of our baptism, we have been given the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. God the Father has been given to us as our Father, Jesus Christ has become our Savior. And we know from His teachings that he has given his disciples the ability to cast out demons. So you living a good moral life, you being a good Christian, you praying a good Our Father, you walking down the street living morally and uprightly, you are casting out demons just through those actions.

even though you're not doing anything directly exorcistic, your very being, your mode of living is itself exorcistic. Now, there are ways in which we can be directly exorcistic in casting out demons, and we encounter that. Look, St. Catherine of Siena had an extraordinary gift of exorcism. Was she an exorcist? Well, not a church commissioned one because she wasn't a priest. But nevertheless, she is described by the Catholic Church as one of the most gifted exorcists of all time. So there is something more to the story. And that more is part of that is also given in Luke 949, when someone is seen driving out demons in the name of Jesus.

So there's another disciple. And that other disciple is not in the communion as the apostles sought in that moment. and Christ's answer to their indignation at this reality is leave them alone. And so we just have to accept that. This is the decision of the Son of God. As the in-house heretic here, this to me seems just very similar to you don't need to be Catholic to have a gift of healing or hospitality or administration. And God can essentially use whom he will use and that I get a little testy sometimes when I see people really. react strongly because we've had guests on the show. I referenced Tammy Comer often and you and I both

know her and the extraordinary gifts, particularly with hearing God's voice. And you've said in many cases that in an exorcism room, you care less about some of the theology and more about are they baptizing Christ and can they hear God's voice well and you want all the firepower and God's going to give gifts to whom he wants to give gifts, right? That is correct. That's absolutely it. And so it's God's plan to incarnate himself within his people, and it's his plan in that incarnation to bring about his kingdom. That's the way he wants it. We may want it to look in a particular way, in a particular manner, but if he has a different one, guess who's going to come out on top? He's the boss. We're not. And so, look, anybody who has

a real authentic gift of exorcism, of healing and deliverance rooted in Christ, but, you know, by all means use it. Use it. If it's effective, use it. As long as it's rooted in Christ, use it. Don't be stupid about it. Don't flaunt it. Exercise it with humility. But I would say that if you have a gift of healing. If you have a gift of teaching, if you have a gift of craftsmanship, a gift of music, put your gifts in the service of one another. That's what we're commanded to do by Paul. There you go. Better call Paul. All right. Well, I think that's all the time we have today. We've got to get father out there, he's got other things to do. So thank you so much for joining us. Listeners, thanks for writing in. We really appreciate it. We've got more cases for season two that we've

been working on, headed your way. Again, I say this all the time, and it's because it's true, but it bears repeating. We are working on these cases, and they take a lot of time. It is an enormous amount of work. We do not release dramatic episodes every week, so please keep leaving those comments, and I will keep responding to them. So folks, thank you so much for listening. We so appreciate your support. Thank you for all our vault, subscriber members as well. And God bless all of you. Father, thank you so much for joining us. Okay, great. Thanks. God bless you all.