Although the madness hasn't fully reached Hungary where the opposition speaks of the gender issue dismissively, I am noting a plainly anti-religious tone in their discourse, the chief culprit being the DK led by Gyurcsány, an absurd figure who would be comic if he wasn't actively harmful to Hungarian political life.
It all starts with disdain, contempt and hostility toward religion, the ultimate bearer of tradition and law. That's the first step. Calling the phenomenon demonic isn't an overreaction.
Oddly, on the surface Communism was not about radical individualism but its opposite: the collective, the community, the group, all of which is based on the family unit. But communists tried to recreate a brand new all-encompassing global family composed of a transformed mankind, and in order to do that, the original family had to be melted away. Call it a preformative contradiction, although irrelevant to logic. The point is to create wedges and weak points in a structure meant to be demolished in its entirety, whether now or later.
It all starts with religion, the best indicator of one's predisposition toward traditions.
Hell is at our side every day, misleading, deceiving, tempting us. That is the war we have to fight.
Rod, your story about the chair impresses me as nothing more than plain old metal fatigue on a bolt that may have been been poorly installed. I've had that happen a time or two.
Why do the demons always do things that communicate no clear message, and could happen for other reasons? Why not pick up a pen and just tell you?
I'm being slightly snarky, but as someone with one foot in belief and two in critical rationalism, I'm genuinely curious how a believer answers that question.
A bold and brave commentary! I am reminded of CS Lewis' observation (in "The Problem of Pain") that evil does not exist independently of good, but is defined as the corruption of the good. Thus evil preys on marriages, and especially children. And yes it enters in where God has been cast out. I have seen evil firsthand as a criminal defense attorney. It possesses a malice that naive secularists will find unpalatable, in due course. This evil has taken over our government, in violation of the Establishment clause: https://johnklar.substack.com/p/woke-theocracy-dominates-america
Usually I feel so powerless after reading about all this stuff, but today I feel encouraged to do as your article says and spread what is true, good, and beautiful in my circle of influence no matter how small it may be. Thanks Rod for the important work you do. I will be praying for your protection.
Yes, and Yes again. One of the most painful and frustrating things for me in recent years has been noticing just how many people I’ve known since youth really don’t see it: the influx into American reality of evil powers—tangible, glaringly obvious, and virtually announcing themselves as such. Yet they don’t see it. They keep living as if what is happening is just a matter of trends, more or less similar to the shifts in musical styles or fashions from the ‘70s to the ‘80s. But it is obviously not just trends. I know these are people smart enough to see that the things being cheered (hormone blockers for kids, abortion as a celebratory act) are in practical terms *destructive*, willfully, even gleefully so, yet they refuse to move on to the obvious question: What’s driving this?
I’ve no doubt myself. The vomiting on and desecration of the sacred that began decades ago and that now, as Trueman underlines, is merely a matter of repeated *gesture*, has ended by creating a vacuum, and it’s clear what is rushing in to occupy that vacuum. Demons. Grinning, indefatiguable demons.
"...this is not really a vacuum at all, but the replacement of truth, beauty, and goodness — of holiness and of meaning — with lies, ugliness, evil, sacrilege, and nihilism"
Some years ago I had the privilege of being on the organizing committee of an event featuring the late Sir Roger Scruton as keynote speaker. Driving him to the airport afterward, I asked him what accounted for the coarsening and abstraction of the visual arts, particularly painting, in the 20th century.
I expected the learned professor and author of many works on beauty and aesthetics would have a involved answer. It was just the two of us and we had time. Perhaps he'd note the psychic trauma of WWI giving rise to German Expressionism or how advances in photography rendered representational art redundant or some such. No.
Instead he offered a two word reply. The manner and conviction with which he thrust the words through his teeth stuck with me as much as its brevity: "Deliberate desecration".
"An exorcist friend told me later that the enemy simply wanted to let me know that he was present, and that I was on his territory..."
"Last year, an exorcist in Rome told me, about our time, that we should not be surprised by the demonic manifesting so strongly. The spirit world cannot tolerate a vacuum."
"To befoul the innocence of children is one of the most “sacred” things those who worship evil can do. This is why the clerical child sex abuse scandal was so diabolical — literally so. It turned God, symbolically, into a monster, and defiled the souls and bodies of innocent children. It is diabolical whenever it happens, and whoever does it, but for ordained priests of God to do these things is the ultimate evil."
But then Rod can't (yet) bring himself to close the circle...
"Understand me clearly: the point here is NOT that “the Catholic Church is evil”
followed immediately with:
"the point is that for some reason, the spiritual warfare is intensifying in that place."
I would submit that the "some reason" you're looking for is that the Catholic Church, particularly the leadership, and specifically Pope Francis himself, are in fact intentionally and purposefully capital "E" Evil. They have intentionally created the spiritual vacuum that your exorcist friend mentions knowing that the demonic will surge to fill it.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you don't keep calling it an eagle. Especially when they don't even bother to hide it that well*:
The Pope addresses his audience from the mouth of a snake. In front of a sculpture claimed to be of Jesus in front of a nuclear blast but which looks a helluva (heh) lot more like Lucifer rising out of Hell with an army of minions behind him. I mean, are you kidding me?
If people tell you who they are, you should believe them. The Catholic Church as an institution has been thoroughly and totally corrupted by Satan with the direct assistance of it's leadership.
The corruption started with the split in 1054. It was pretty good play by the Evil One. The Roman Catholic Church was allowed to flourish and to become this great pillar of the West that Rod and others don't want to let go of for nearly a thousand years. All the better to create maximum chaos and destruction when Satan's emissaries in the person of Pope Francis and the rest of the Lavender Mafia complete the spiritual rug pull on the faithful that's happening now.
Yes, billions of souls were saved for Christ through the Roman Catholic Church over the last centuries. I'm not going to deny their salvation or the salvation of any current Catholic who is able to maintain their faith in spite of what the Catholic Church is being revealed to be. Satan doesn't mind those losses. He's engaged in an eternal war with God. He can play the long game. The coming total collapse of Roman Catholicism and the accompanying damnation of billions who completely lose their faith in the wake of the collapse will be a great victory for him.
Those of you who've been around Rod's various comment sections for awhile thought my belief and advocacy for the National Divorce was my most extreme... eccentricity. That was just an appetizer.
* It appears that somebody is trying to hide the obvious when it comes to the Snake Room, at least from casual investigators. If you just go to the Wikipedia link for the Paul VI Audience Hall, there's no mention of the controversies over its design. More importantly, there are no pictures in the gallery showing how it's obviously a snake's head or close-ups of the 3-D Heavy Metal album cover that adorns the altar.
Speaking of evil, when Tucker Carlson said "But when the Treasury secretary stands up and says, “You know what you can do to help the economy? Get an abortion.”" he was lying. That's not what she said. What she said was that "eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades." There is a significant difference between the two. A few seconds' research would have shown the truth, but Mr. Carlson (among others) has long had a knack for misquoting deliberately in order to gin up the base. And that is evil, too.
Dear Rod, when confronted with the presence of the devil, always remember the sound words of Sir Thomas More: “The devil, that proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.” And Luther: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” And it's true. Evil grows the more frightened you are of its power. But if you can mock it, make fun of it, laugh at it, it shrinks remarkably. I know. I've done it.
Funny you should publish this article today. I along with approximately 130 other Catholic and Anglican clergy completed the training course for exorcists this week at the Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum in Rome. I am one of two Episcopalians present amongst the Catholic clergy from around the world. What you write about the reach of the diabolical in Western culture was confirmed by the Catholic church's senior exorcists. You should consider attending the course next year as it will round out your views hearing about the theology, and practice and experiences of exorcists. I can send you the agenda should you like.
Although the madness hasn't fully reached Hungary where the opposition speaks of the gender issue dismissively, I am noting a plainly anti-religious tone in their discourse, the chief culprit being the DK led by Gyurcsány, an absurd figure who would be comic if he wasn't actively harmful to Hungarian political life.
It all starts with disdain, contempt and hostility toward religion, the ultimate bearer of tradition and law. That's the first step. Calling the phenomenon demonic isn't an overreaction.
Oddly, on the surface Communism was not about radical individualism but its opposite: the collective, the community, the group, all of which is based on the family unit. But communists tried to recreate a brand new all-encompassing global family composed of a transformed mankind, and in order to do that, the original family had to be melted away. Call it a preformative contradiction, although irrelevant to logic. The point is to create wedges and weak points in a structure meant to be demolished in its entirety, whether now or later.
It all starts with religion, the best indicator of one's predisposition toward traditions.
Rod,
Great writing. Did you have an event, moment in the past when you regognized the grave seriousness of this evil?
For me little things but when my elderly parents defended the lifesyle choice of a sibling. Jaw drop from me. My wakeup that.
Hell is at our side every day, misleading, deceiving, tempting us. That is the war we have to fight.
Rod, your story about the chair impresses me as nothing more than plain old metal fatigue on a bolt that may have been been poorly installed. I've had that happen a time or two.
Why do the demons always do things that communicate no clear message, and could happen for other reasons? Why not pick up a pen and just tell you?
I'm being slightly snarky, but as someone with one foot in belief and two in critical rationalism, I'm genuinely curious how a believer answers that question.
A bold and brave commentary! I am reminded of CS Lewis' observation (in "The Problem of Pain") that evil does not exist independently of good, but is defined as the corruption of the good. Thus evil preys on marriages, and especially children. And yes it enters in where God has been cast out. I have seen evil firsthand as a criminal defense attorney. It possesses a malice that naive secularists will find unpalatable, in due course. This evil has taken over our government, in violation of the Establishment clause: https://johnklar.substack.com/p/woke-theocracy-dominates-america
Usually I feel so powerless after reading about all this stuff, but today I feel encouraged to do as your article says and spread what is true, good, and beautiful in my circle of influence no matter how small it may be. Thanks Rod for the important work you do. I will be praying for your protection.
Yes, and Yes again. One of the most painful and frustrating things for me in recent years has been noticing just how many people I’ve known since youth really don’t see it: the influx into American reality of evil powers—tangible, glaringly obvious, and virtually announcing themselves as such. Yet they don’t see it. They keep living as if what is happening is just a matter of trends, more or less similar to the shifts in musical styles or fashions from the ‘70s to the ‘80s. But it is obviously not just trends. I know these are people smart enough to see that the things being cheered (hormone blockers for kids, abortion as a celebratory act) are in practical terms *destructive*, willfully, even gleefully so, yet they refuse to move on to the obvious question: What’s driving this?
I’ve no doubt myself. The vomiting on and desecration of the sacred that began decades ago and that now, as Trueman underlines, is merely a matter of repeated *gesture*, has ended by creating a vacuum, and it’s clear what is rushing in to occupy that vacuum. Demons. Grinning, indefatiguable demons.
"...this is not really a vacuum at all, but the replacement of truth, beauty, and goodness — of holiness and of meaning — with lies, ugliness, evil, sacrilege, and nihilism"
Some years ago I had the privilege of being on the organizing committee of an event featuring the late Sir Roger Scruton as keynote speaker. Driving him to the airport afterward, I asked him what accounted for the coarsening and abstraction of the visual arts, particularly painting, in the 20th century.
I expected the learned professor and author of many works on beauty and aesthetics would have a involved answer. It was just the two of us and we had time. Perhaps he'd note the psychic trauma of WWI giving rise to German Expressionism or how advances in photography rendered representational art redundant or some such. No.
Instead he offered a two word reply. The manner and conviction with which he thrust the words through his teeth stuck with me as much as its brevity: "Deliberate desecration".
Well, let's see...
"Just this past January, when I was in Rome..."
"An exorcist friend told me later that the enemy simply wanted to let me know that he was present, and that I was on his territory..."
"Last year, an exorcist in Rome told me, about our time, that we should not be surprised by the demonic manifesting so strongly. The spirit world cannot tolerate a vacuum."
"To befoul the innocence of children is one of the most “sacred” things those who worship evil can do. This is why the clerical child sex abuse scandal was so diabolical — literally so. It turned God, symbolically, into a monster, and defiled the souls and bodies of innocent children. It is diabolical whenever it happens, and whoever does it, but for ordained priests of God to do these things is the ultimate evil."
But then Rod can't (yet) bring himself to close the circle...
"Understand me clearly: the point here is NOT that “the Catholic Church is evil”
followed immediately with:
"the point is that for some reason, the spiritual warfare is intensifying in that place."
I would submit that the "some reason" you're looking for is that the Catholic Church, particularly the leadership, and specifically Pope Francis himself, are in fact intentionally and purposefully capital "E" Evil. They have intentionally created the spiritual vacuum that your exorcist friend mentions knowing that the demonic will surge to fill it.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you don't keep calling it an eagle. Especially when they don't even bother to hide it that well*:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/vatican-snake-room
The Pope addresses his audience from the mouth of a snake. In front of a sculpture claimed to be of Jesus in front of a nuclear blast but which looks a helluva (heh) lot more like Lucifer rising out of Hell with an army of minions behind him. I mean, are you kidding me?
If people tell you who they are, you should believe them. The Catholic Church as an institution has been thoroughly and totally corrupted by Satan with the direct assistance of it's leadership.
The corruption started with the split in 1054. It was pretty good play by the Evil One. The Roman Catholic Church was allowed to flourish and to become this great pillar of the West that Rod and others don't want to let go of for nearly a thousand years. All the better to create maximum chaos and destruction when Satan's emissaries in the person of Pope Francis and the rest of the Lavender Mafia complete the spiritual rug pull on the faithful that's happening now.
Yes, billions of souls were saved for Christ through the Roman Catholic Church over the last centuries. I'm not going to deny their salvation or the salvation of any current Catholic who is able to maintain their faith in spite of what the Catholic Church is being revealed to be. Satan doesn't mind those losses. He's engaged in an eternal war with God. He can play the long game. The coming total collapse of Roman Catholicism and the accompanying damnation of billions who completely lose their faith in the wake of the collapse will be a great victory for him.
Those of you who've been around Rod's various comment sections for awhile thought my belief and advocacy for the National Divorce was my most extreme... eccentricity. That was just an appetizer.
* It appears that somebody is trying to hide the obvious when it comes to the Snake Room, at least from casual investigators. If you just go to the Wikipedia link for the Paul VI Audience Hall, there's no mention of the controversies over its design. More importantly, there are no pictures in the gallery showing how it's obviously a snake's head or close-ups of the 3-D Heavy Metal album cover that adorns the altar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_VI_Audience_Hall
Speaking of evil, when Tucker Carlson said "But when the Treasury secretary stands up and says, “You know what you can do to help the economy? Get an abortion.”" he was lying. That's not what she said. What she said was that "eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades." There is a significant difference between the two. A few seconds' research would have shown the truth, but Mr. Carlson (among others) has long had a knack for misquoting deliberately in order to gin up the base. And that is evil, too.
Dear Rod, when confronted with the presence of the devil, always remember the sound words of Sir Thomas More: “The devil, that proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.” And Luther: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” And it's true. Evil grows the more frightened you are of its power. But if you can mock it, make fun of it, laugh at it, it shrinks remarkably. I know. I've done it.
Funny you should publish this article today. I along with approximately 130 other Catholic and Anglican clergy completed the training course for exorcists this week at the Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum in Rome. I am one of two Episcopalians present amongst the Catholic clergy from around the world. What you write about the reach of the diabolical in Western culture was confirmed by the Catholic church's senior exorcists. You should consider attending the course next year as it will round out your views hearing about the theology, and practice and experiences of exorcists. I can send you the agenda should you like.