What are demons and what can they do to me?

The Speaker’s Background in Systematic Theology and Angelic Studies

All right. Hello.

Am I supposed to say hi back?

Here I've got Christopher Carr.

Chris, do you want to introduce yourself just a bit? I'm so excited to host you today.

Right.

Dr. Christopher Carr, I am an assistant professor of religious studies at Misericordia University, which is in northeastern Pennsylvania, about ten miles outside Dallas, Pennsylvania, which is near Wilkes-Barre.

Nobody knows about Dallas, Pennsylvania. I got my training at Marquette University. Before that, I taught at Caldwell College, which is in North Jersey, and I'm basically a jack-of-all-trades on the systematic side.

You know, there are lots of different sub-disciplines in theology with biblical studies, historical theology, morals, and systematics, which is studying doctrine and how it all interrelates with other doctrines.

That tends to be my area, and I dabble in a little history, too.

That's interesting. I wasn't really aware of what systematics were, but it's good to know you kind of understand how they all interact together.

They'd better, but since we can't all be experts in everything, you know, a lot of those other fields require languages. Now, in theory, mine would require some French and German because of all the theologians that France and Germany produced.

Though I do know people who know a lot of Polish because Pope John Paul II. If you are in historical theology, you'll need a lot of Latin, and obviously for biblical theology, either Greek or Hebrew.

So you don't speak, you can't read the Aramaic texts?

I might be able to recognize that it is Aramaic, but that might be as far as I'm able to go, and I assure you my French and German are purely cosmetic.

Same.

Well, I'm really excited to talk with you today. Do you mind just like briefing a little bit about your angelic studies? I know we'll get into it a little bit, but really that's the reason I wanted to talk with you about the subject today, which is going to focus around demons, but you have a specialty in this that makes you really particular as a guest that I'm really excited to kind of glean that expertise from.

All right. Well, I am NOT the most expert of experts, but I over the course of my studies, I've had occasion to meet exorcists, and you know, I gather information from them anecdotally about the sorts of things that they've had to, people they've had to work on, and experiences that they've had.

Sorry to interrupt, but how do you casually meet an exorcist?

Well, first of all, you start by walking around in theological circles, and that way you meet a lot of clergy, and then odds are you're going to bump into one who's done deliverance ministry of some kind.

Now, it's a little, I don't know if it means you've got to get lucky, but by and large, the rule is if you are in deliverance ministry, which I am NOT, by the way, you don't advertise the fact that you're in deliverance ministry, because if the word gets out, then people who really are devotees of Satan and the bad guys, they can then know who to target, and there is such a thing as retaliation, and you don't want to be part of that.

Oh my gosh. And it's also important for the privacy of the individual who's suffering. I mean, if everybody knows that, you know, Father Joe out there is the diocesan exorcist, and you see him arrive unexpectedly at your neighbor's house, you know, that'll start people talking, and when people talk, it mushrooms, you know, and all sorts of things.

So in order to protect the privacy of the person involved, and to protect the exorcist and anybody who happens to be on his team, it's important to keep this under the radar.

Is this like a.

Regardless of confidentiality, and people keeping it secret? Are you saying that, you know, it's pretty common for people to kind of go into the deliverance ministry? Or is it pretty intense?

It's actually very common to be interested in it. Okay. But just because you're interested in it does not mean you have the right mindset to do it, because a lot of our interest in purely spiritual matters is what I might call prurient interest.

You know, it's interest for the paranormalcy of it all. It's, you know, it's exciting. It's supernatural. It's why we go watch scary movies.

But,.

You know,.

The people who are.

Needing deliverance ministry are really people who are, in fact, suffering. And you don't go there for the manifestations. You don't go there in order to experience something. In fact, you may or you may not.

The point is to relieve the individual of an attachment that really is messing up their life, sometimes in very serious ways. So you have to get the mindset of just like, all right, I'm not here to see or experience something out of the ordinary.

You have a much more important purpose in getting involved in this stuff. And I would say that people who just have the prurient interests either find out what deliverance ministry entails in terms of the training and the sorts of work that's involved, so they become disinterested in that, or they're weeded out.

I mean, some people want to get the training just to learn more, I suppose. But the people who are in a position to train other people are a little bit more sober about it.

I imagine it's a pretty intense training to be able to handle a manifestation.

Yeah,.

Not happily, since I don't do deliverance ministry. I've been immune from such things. I know people who are in it, and they have reported things. But when they report things, it's kind of a matter of fact.

You know, the temperature dropped in the room. Okay, even though it's 80 degrees outside or something. You know, it's just, I guess when it happens, it just happens. But the important thing is for it to just happen once, and then not be the result of you somehow becoming attached, which then requires some deliverance on your own part.

So you're in these circles, you run into people that are within the deliverance ministry. Do these conversations really kind of show up? I'm trying to say, like, is this happening in the back rooms of people that are suffering from attachments?

Or do you feel like these people that are within the deliverance ministry kind of walk around in the world today, and they see these attachments in common place, you know, much more frequently? Like, I know this is not at all related, but like a medium.

You know, you walk into a grocery store, and you're like, whoa, is it the same way for somebody within that ministry?

All right, there's a lot of things there. First of all, people in deliverance ministry generally will not talk about it unless it's with somebody they can trust. I mean, again, if they talk about deliverance ministry, they're basically outing themselves.

So they need to make sure it stays within a tight circle of, I don't want to say trained professionals, but you know, people who are serious about the work. Most people, I imagine, who are in deliverance ministry, now, I just want to broaden this out a bit now.

Bear in mind, we're talking from within a Catholic context here.

The.

Exorcist has to be a priest. The exorcist has to be a priest that's not only trained, but has received license to be the exorcist from the bishop. If the priest doesn't receive license from the bishop to perform the rite of exorcism, there's only so much a priest can do.

Now, priests can do way more than laity can. So there are minor exorcisms built into the old rite of baptism, let's say. You know, and any priest can do that. Any priest can go to your house and bless the house and clear it out of any infestations.

So that's all common practice. The important thing is that the bishop has the authority to then deputize a priest to do the rite of exorcism, and without that authority,.

The.

Rite won't be effective, and the priest is acting out of bounds, which means he can be targeted.

Now,.

There are lots of other things I could go off there, but I just want to say something about deliverance ministry now in the Catholic Church. While it is true that only a priest can conduct exorcisms and say command prayers generally, lay persons are involved, and they generally form part of a team that the exorcist uses when somebody, when a case, we're talking about a person who claims to be suffering some sort of affliction.

You know, the polite term is to call them a case. And the lay persons can provide some basic spiritual direction for such an individual so that the priest isn't spread too thin. Because remember, an exorcist is a pastor somewhere, and you know how it is, especially in my diocese.

You don't know this because I'm Pennsylvania, and you are totally not. You know, we've got 110-something parishes. We've got 90-something priests, and within 10 years, we're going to be down to 60-something priests.

So,.

Already the priests are spread way too thin to be pastor of one church or maybe a combination of churches, and then having to go and do deliverance ministry on top of that. So, in order for the priest to not go absolutely crazy or get burnt out, lay persons can assist, and what the lay persons would generally do is provide first-level kinds of triage to get the person who's claiming to have some sort of spiritual affliction to start, I mean, obviously, this person, the prayer team individuals, will be in connection with the exorcist.

They will not be acting independently, but there are some basic things you can do, because demonic affliction works on a continuum. So, if a lay person has been designated by the exorcist to interview a potential case, then that lay person can, you know, do a conducting interview, ask some questions, you know, background exposure to seances.

Is it a family member or is it any lay person? It would have to be a.

Specific lay person within the diocese that has also received some sort of deliverance ministry training, and the lay person would then advise this individual, this case, that yes, they will be in contact with the exorcist about, you know, who they are and the information that they gather, but the lay person would then also say, all right, look, you need to attend Mass every Sunday.

You probably have to go to confession, if not every week, at least every month, and there are steps that you can follow, and then that person has to do whatever that protocol is for 30 days and then report back, and then they can determine how to proceed from there.

And finally, I would say, while there are lay persons who are on deliverance teams who are just schmucks like me, and I'm not on a team, I'm just a schmuck without being on a team, there actually are people with certain gifts where they can sort of discern whether there is a certain kind of spirit or discern how a particular bad spirit may have come into a person's life, you know, they can be kind of sensitive that way.

Obviously, not everybody has that sort of gift, and I think if a person is aware that they do, then they would actually have to go through some discernment process to make sure that their gift isn't being used against them, and then, of course, they have to continue to lead a holy life so that the gift can actually still be a benefit to other people.

So, yeah, just being on a deliverance team doesn't give you, like, you know, psychic powers or something, and you walk around the grocery store, and you see demons attached to some person walking down the aisle.

That's not a thing. At least it's not for me, so.

Maybe.

So, I think I may have covered everything that you had in your broad question. Anything I leave out?

Blanketed question. Could you give an example of someone's gifts being used against them?

Well, it's...

Maybe that was a bit strong, but if a person has a kind of gift that makes them, as I say, a little bit more sensitive to spiritual realities, bad spirits always pose as good spirits. You know, that's how they chuck people in.

That's pretty much always their entryway.

Yeah, I mean, on occasion, it won't be so nice, but I mean, that's the way temptation works.

By nice, you mean, like, non-threatening? You mean, like, quiet? Or is it, like, it's posing as an angel?

Yeah, it's usually posing either as an angel, pose, and now we're talking about demon now, demon posing as an angel, which is not difficult for a demon to do, because technically they are angels. They're just fallen angels.

They could pose as the soul of a dead person you want to contact. So, if you're using a Ouija board or going to a séance or something. The basic rule of thumb is that's not the way you communicate with spirits, which is restricted to prayer.

So, if you do have such a gift, it's likely the demon would just try to fool you.

The Lord’s Prayer and the Problem with Paraphrase Bibles

In order, I mean, we're going to get into this in a bit, and so I'm happy to jump into kind of the first section of this podcast, because this is great, but how, why they're fooling you, you know, I just kind of want to stick with that and what their intention is kind of going from there, but I'm going to put a pin in that.

We can come back to the intentions of demons and what they want and why they want that, but what I really want to jump into now is the verse of the Bible, and today I really want to understand, in my version of the Bible, his name is Mob.

Maybe in King James, it's Legion, but essentially in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, when Jesus is getting off a boat in Capernaum, he comes upon a madman in a cemetery who is convulsing. He's foaming at the mouth.

He's just kind of known as the guy wandering around in the cemetery. No chains can hold him down. The kind of, the town's just like letting him be, as far as the scripture. I'll read Luke 8, 26 to 39.

Please go ahead, but can you tell me which translation you're using?

I'll use the message, because it is so...

Oh, the message!

Oh, God.

Okay.

All right.

You can edit this part out if you want to, but I want to say something about the fine Eugene Peterson of now happy memory, because I do believe he passed away about two or three years ago.

This is good.

Oh, yeah. You're going to love this. It is a kind of a paraphrase. A paraphrase of the Bible. And he takes, I would say, inordinate liberties with the actual text, because most any other version or translation of the Bible you will use, there is a certain level of conscientiousness with trying to stick with something that's more or less word for word from the original Greek or Hebrew.

And so, I think this would actually be a very important sidebar.

Let us...

So, you've got your message there right in front of you, right?

I wasn't going to read my message. I was going to read from whatever Google popped up, but we can keep going with this message.

Actually, I think you should, since I have a little bit of an axe to grind on the message. Let me see. So, go ahead and open up your screen there. I've got my book.

Yes.

All right.

I think if you go to the Lord's Prayer in Matthew, which is Matthew 5 or 6. 6, starting at verse 7. So, Matthew 6, starting at verse 7, I think.

Yep.

Just go ahead and read it through the end of the prayer.

I'm already seeing this mistake of mine.

Well, you know what?

This is, in a way, not a mistake.

Okay.

Because here at our university's campus ministry, and they put out little Lenten reflection booklets, they use the message. And I think the idea is that, oh, you know, if they read something that's actually a word for word translation from the original Hebrew, they're not going to be into that, you know?

This is literally why I'm here today. It's because I'm not into it.

And it's all right for certain of your private devotions. So, again, I am not here to throw Eugene Peterson under the bus, at least in his entirety. But if you want to conduct a Bible study as opposed to prayerful reading, something closer to a word for word translation, I think, is really important.

Because with Eugene Peterson, you're going to have a bunch of English words that you can't match to the Greek literally at all.

That's really good. Because I feel like I am doing, you know, that's probably why. I'm doing Bible mindful devotions, kind of how you put it. And the message version of the Bible, great. Very edible, very understood.

I get it. But the reason we're here today on this podcast is really, what is the exact translation? Because there's a reason they used exactly those words, and the message isn't getting us there. So this is perfect for our first podcast.

I'm so glad we're talking about this.

All right.

Well, tell you what, shall I just go ahead and read mine first, and then you can share what the message says to your faithful audience out there?

Are we still talking about Matthew 6?

Yeah.

Yeah. Why don't we read the Lord's Prayer in your version, and then we'll read it in my version to show the differences.

Okay.

Now, I have a paragraph that begins at verse 7, so I'll start there. And I'll do 7 through 14.

Okay.

All right. That's what Jesus is saying here. And in praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Pray then like this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Says the same verse, 7 to 14. The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer ignorant. They are full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God.

Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply like this. Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are.

Set the world right. Do what's best. As above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals.

Oh, boy.

Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the devil. You're in charge. You can do anything you want. You're a blazing beauty. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Okay, well, on that note, let's read Luke 8 in your version.

There's literally no way to get to the actual Greek from that particular version of it. And I'll just say this, because I know this is a sidebar. The three square meals, that is probably the most egregious thing he did in the Lord's Prayer, because the daily bread, and even that, the way we usually translate it in English kind of hides what the Greek word is, which is epiousion.

And ousion is the Greek word for nature, and epi is a prefix, which means kind of above that. So it's, yeah, daily bread, but it's really supernatural bread.

Whoa.

Can you say that again?

Yeah, so ousia in Greek means nature, like the substance, the wetness of a thing. And epi means kind of above or over. So like episkopos, another Greek word, so skopos, site, epi, over. So when we get episkopos from that word, which is where we get bishop, episkopal, so that is an individual who has oversight in terms of authority over the Christian community.

So here, this word is epiousion, which has more of a sense of supernatural, over nature. And for a Catholic like myself, that is pointing directly to the Eucharist. Now, even the word daily doesn't really do it justice, but you're not going to get three square meals a day and get you to epiousion.

At least daily bread, at least you can find, oh, what is the actual word for daily? Because one word is trying to match one word. So there's a lot that gets lost, I'm afraid, in Mr. Peterson's version of things.

Wow, you're such a good guest, I'm so glad you're here.

Well, we shall see now.

So that's why it's like mob, he's calling it mob, it's always legion. I don't even know what the Greek word is, I have to look that up.

All right, so where are we, Luke?

Okay, so, yeah, there's, why don't we actually do. Luke 8, 26 to 39, and I have the NIV version here.

That's good.

All right, we'll go with that one then. So Luke 8, 26 to 39, the verses, so they're talking about Jesus and his disciples. They sailed from the region of Gerensetsis, which is across the lake from Galilee.

When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time, this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but lived in the tombs. And when he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, What do you want from me, Jesus, son of the Most High God?

I beg you, don't torture me. For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot to be kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.

Jesus asked him, What is your name? So at this point, Jesus is holding the demon, like he's separated the demon from the man at this point?

I think what's probably happened there is that the demon has manifested in this man. So it's not like the demon is standing outside him as a separate shapeless form. Usually if you are communicating with a demon through a possessed person, the possessed person is the go-between.

And the person, basically the demon is speaking using the body of the possessed person.

Okay, so Jesus asked him, What is your name?

And the person, but the demon in the person, said, Legion, he replied, because many demons had gone into him, and they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the abyss. When they say abyss, because it's capitalized, it's a proper noun, they mean hell?

Mm-hmm, yes.

So why wouldn't they want to go back to hell? Isn't that their home?

It's terrible. It's even terrible for them. That's why they don't want to go back. I mean, oh yeah, it's awful. So why would a demon be unhappy in hell? Well, first of all, all relationships in hell are based on power, raw exercise of power.

Even if demons would cooperate with each other, as apparently they sort of have been, if they're all sort of stuff, you know, they have jurisdiction over this guy's body, they really don't really get along, because it's still sort of a coercive cooperation.

So hell is a place where all those relationships based on power are experienced in a raw form. And I expect that these demons were somewhat lower on the totem pole, which means they're going there to suffer at the hands of the demons who are mightier than they are, so it can't be pleasant, number one, for that.

Second, I would imagine that hell is a place where even the demons are much more cognizant of their separation from God, their hatred of God, their despair at not being able to perform the functions that God made them for.

It's, you know, they suffer too. And hell is where they, you know, if they're possessing somebody, they have a certain kind of respite, I guess you could say, while they are somewhat not still in hell.

But once they're in hell in a sort of a complete sense, yeah, they can't alleviate their suffering anymore.

So them leaving hell to come on earth, they can't just hang out on earth. They have to come and possess somebody. And that is kind of like their refuge from being in hell.

Oh, they can attach themselves to places and animals. I mean, there have been cases where, again, this is reported cases, nothing I have seen. I'm just reporting stuff here.

Do you have people with first-hand accounts?

That's right. That's right. Or from, you know, books that you can easily purchase.

Right.

I mean, Father Gabriel Amorth, about whom the movie was recently made.

Yeah. The Pope's Exorcist.

Yeah. Yeah. Though I don't know. I heard that wasn't quite as good as the other Exorcist movie that came out.

I can't. I can't even watch the trailer. It was so scary.

Yeah. What is it? Conversations with a. I forget what it was. Anyway, it didn't have big name stars, I don't think. That one I heard from reliable sources was much more authentic.

Which one?

The non-Gabriel Amorth one. So the one that doesn't feature. I can't even think of these actors' names.

Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson.

The guy from Gladiator.

Yeah. Russell Crowe? Was it Russell Crowe?

Russell Crowe. There it is.

So you're saying that one's better, the Russell Crowe one?

No, no, the other one.

Oh, okay. Good to know.

Yeah. But the books that Father Amorth had written. An Exorcist Tells a Story, Exorcist Tells More Stories. He's got at least one or two others. He sprinkles those books with anecdotes from his ministry.

And I believe one of them was. Yeah, there was. There was a dog in somebody's house. And I can't remember if the demon had been attached to the building first. But somehow it was in the dog. And the dog was basically suicidal.

It was just running out into the street. And so the family tried to prevent the dog from doing that. But eventually the dog succeeded. And that might not have. You know, the demon's not going out there to kill the animal necessarily.

Hard to say, I suppose. You know, but that was the only way the animal, I guess, could cope.

And we'll see that a little bit later in this book. The animals tell the demons.

Yep.

So a couple follow-up questions you might laugh at. One, not so funny, is. Is that the only reaction a dog or an animal or a pig would have to a demon possessing them? Do you think there's ever a chance that maybe, let's say, a demon-possessed horse.

I'm just making up an example. A demon-possessed horse now has malintentions to hurt the riders. Or do you think that horse is going to always just physically want to end this possession because it's so insufferable.

It's so horrible. Or do you think, you know, the demon can really control the intention of the animal?

All right. I'm way out in left field on this one.

Okay. All right.

With respect to demonic influence on animals. All right. So a father of Morth or another exorcist who is, you know, from whom I'm drawing that account. That's legit. That's legit. And you're right. It does comport with what we have here with the herd of swine.

Okay.

So if we're talking about demonic affliction on animals, some animals are actually more sensitive to spirits than we are. So if there is like a haunted house.

Right.

Which usually means that there is some spirit there that shouldn't be there. The animal will, you know, if it's a cat, arch its back and run out of the room. Or the dog might slink away in fear. And we're just like, what's going on?

You know, I don't see anything. Some of those animals are a little bit, for whatever reason, are able to sort of pick up on other presences in the room. And if they can tell, given the heebie-jeebies, they will get out of there.

So an animal can just, for self-preservation's sake, leave the room. There is also, however, a case that I remember reading in a book written by a psychiatrist who was skeptical about demonic possession.

But then over the course of his professional work, encountered more than one occasion where normal means of therapy and medicines just did not help the person at all. And then, you know, required spiritual intervention.

Now, this psychiatrist was somebody who then became a little bit more interested in deliverance ministry and began to know his local exorcist. And this is important for an exorcist to have access to these medical professionals, because a lot of behavior that people might exhibit from demonic affliction really does have a natural cause.

So demonic affliction can result in hallucinations, can result in insomnia, can result in other maladies, which normally would accompany depression or manic depression or psychosis or something. So it's important to have medical professionals around, because the first thing you want to do before, you know, conducting spiritual relief on somebody is to give them an opportunity for natural solutions first.

And that seems to be the way to go. You determine whether or not this is naturally caused and naturally treatable. And if it isn't, then you go ahead and impose upon the time of people who are in deliverance ministry.

But if somebody is possessed, but you've got doctors in there, you know, kind of eliminating other sources, does that put the doctor then in risk? Does that put them at risk?

Oh, I don't know. Not necessarily. You know, the doctor is doing his due diligence as a professional to try to ascertain whether or not this person can be treated by the normal medical procedures that are available.

That seems to be all right.

The demon would more so just be like, I'm going to let this doctor kind of take his temperature, but I'm not going to now. This doctor hasn't opened his soul up for me to kind of jump into.

Yeah, because the demon knows it's kind of futile. However, this is why I brought the story in this particular psychiatrist book, and I'll have to look it up and tell you what this is maybe after we're done, because I don't have it off the top of my head.

He was asked by his exorcist friend to interview a young lady, and he agreed to do it. And the appointment was supposed to be the following morning, and the psychiatrist has two cats. And the cats are great buddies, you know, I don't think they're siblings, but they're getting along great.

And the night prior to that interview, they had an all-out, you know, drawn-blood fight between them. And they had to separate them and put them in different rooms, and it was just like, what is wrong with these cats?

They're just going psychotic on us. Well, the next morning, all right, cats are probably still in their separate rooms. The doorbell rings, and the psychiatrist goes down, and there is the priest with this young lady.

And the first thing the young lady says is, how do you like those cats last night?

Who is this lady?

She was somebody who was kind of a witch.

What?

What's going on?

This is crazy.

She did something on her own to just kind of mess with the psychiatrist's cats. And the cats aren't possessed or anything, but they were under some sort of influence, which was temporary and it never happened again.