{"id":53712,"date":"2022-05-16T08:54:06","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T12:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=53712"},"modified":"2022-05-17T19:25:36","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T23:25:36","slug":"fighting-the-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/fighting-the-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting The Devil"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Catholic Sun<\/a><\/span>:<\/em><\/p>\n

Ouija boards, s\u00e9ances, tarot cards and energy healing all have one thing in common: They serve as entry points for demonic activity.<\/p>\n

Wait. Demonic activity? Is that even a thing anymore?<\/p>\n

\u201cSatan is real. Trust me. I\u2019ve met him many times,\u201d said Fr. Jim Mattaliano, S.J., president of the Pope Leo XIII Institute and an Auxiliary of the International Association of Exorcists.<\/p>\n

Fr. Mattaliano and Fr. John Clote, the vice president of the institute, recently led a four-hour workshop for priests from the Diocese of Phoenix. \u201cBe Not Afraid: The Power of Your Priesthood to Heal the Afflicted,\u201d drew priests from throughout the diocese for a day of training on how to recognize Satanic influence and manifestations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe devil wants priests to believe that he doesn\u2019t exist because if he can get the shepherd the sheep become more vulnerable. As St. John Vianney famously said, \u2018A priest goes to Heaven or a priest goes to Hell with a thousand people behind,\u2019\u201d Fr. Clote told a packed conference hall.<\/p>\n

The primary concern of priests is the salvation of souls, Fr. Mattaliano reminded his brother priests. \u201cChrist\u2019s mandate to all of us includes liberation and freeing of souls from the devil\u2019s influence. You have been ordained and empowered to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, most men don\u2019t receive instruction and training in this area during their seminary years. In an interview with The Catholic Sun after the workshop, Fr. Clote zeroed in on the absence of this kind of instruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the last 60-plus years this material and training has been mostly absent from seminary and priestly formation,\u201d Fr. Clote said, adding that his work with the Pope Leo XIII Institute has helped make him and Fr. Mattaliano better priests.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s given us a real recognition of God\u2019s power and the power that He\u2019s given us in the priesthood to help people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The salvation of souls is the proper and predominant concern of the Roman Catholic priesthood and of each individual priest. That God-given help to liberate souls from the influence and power of Satan could be compared to a tool, Fr. Clote said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t pick up the hammer and the nail and the level and the plane and the saw, the house won\u2019t get built.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Fr. Mattaliano and Fr. Clote pointed to Deuteronomy 18:9-12, the biblical prohibition against witchcraft, divination, and other occult practices. People open themselves up to Satan\u2019s influence through involvement with these sorts of activities, but other entry points are more mundane: temptation and habitual sin, for example.<\/p>\n

Fr. John Nahrgang, Vicar for Evangelization for the Diocese of Phoenix, attended the workshop and concurred with that assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepetitive sin, especially mortal sin, is one of the ways that sin wounds us. It extinguishes sanctifying grace in the heart. When we sin, it can drive the protective power of grace away,\u201d Fr. Nahrgang said. \u201cIf you\u2019re involved in serious sin, when that protective grace is taken away, you\u2019re more vulnerable to cooperating with the enemy and you\u2019re vulnerable to spiritual attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there are the less obvious entry points for the devil: unforgiveness and wounds like trauma and abuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cForgiveness is much more powerful than we think and unforgiveness can be much more detrimental than we think to our spiritual life,\u201d Fr. Clote said. When we refuse to forgive, we end up carrying the spiritual weight of unforgiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many people carry around that unforgiveness, that resentment, that vengeance, that desire for that person to pay for that debt of justice, for that wound or abuse. We have to give that debt of justice to Our Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen someone comes into the confessional and says, \u2018Father, I have uncontrollable rage,\u2019 I say, \u2018Let\u2019s talk about that.\u2019 Or, \u2018Father, I cannot stop this particular habitual sin. There seems to be a block.\u2019 Are there times when people are just high-strung and have great passions? Of course. But what the devil does is, he\u2019ll take those elements of personality structure and he will inflame those, he will exacerbate them, and he will pour gasoline on the fire of that passion to make it explode even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

One more way people may unwittingly open the door to the devil is through tattoos. As ubiquitous as tattoos are these days, that might seem like a stretch to some. They would be wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to give the idea that every person walking around with a tattoo is cursed or something,\u201d Fr. Clote said. Within the $2 billion-dollar-a-year tattoo industry, however, are practitioners who are involved with the occult and who curse their ink.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the person then has that tattoo on their body, they have a cursed item literally on their skin. They carry it around everywhere,\u201d Fr. Clote said. There\u2019s a process of decommissioning tattoos which involves specific prayers from the Roman Ritual.<\/p>\n

Four kinds of demonic attacks<\/h3>\n

While one of Satan\u2019s admittedly preferred tactics is spreading doubt that he even exists, there\u2019s also a danger of perceiving a demon behind every bush. Some of the training during the workshop focused on helping priests discern which cases might be more related to a mental or physical health issue and which my truly be a case of the demonic.<\/p>\n

Information:\u00a0Pope Leo XIII Institute \u2013 Libertyville, IL (popeleo13institute.org)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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From the Catholic Sun: Ouija boards, s\u00e9ances, tarot cards and energy healing all have one thing in common: They serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-53712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-spiritual-warfare","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}