Michael & The Exorcist: "I Saw Her Crawl Up A Wall" | Fr. Dan Reehil

Summary

Podcast Summary: Michael & The Exorcist: "I Saw Her Crawl Up A Wall" | Fr. Dan Reehil

Release Date: May 7, 2024
Host: Michael Knowles
Guest: Fr. Dan Reehil, Catholic Priest and Exorcist in Nashville

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Introduction

In this gripping episode of "Michael &," host Michael Knowles engages in a profound conversation with Fr. Dan Reehil, a seasoned Catholic priest and exorcist based in Nashville. The discussion delves deep into the existence of demons, the occult, and the tangible manifestations of evil in today's world. Fr. Reehil shares his extensive experiences combating demonic forces, offering listeners a rare glimpse into the spiritual battles unfolding around them.

The Reality of Demons and the Devil

Fr. Reehil opens the dialogue by affirming the existence of demons and the Devil, grounding his assertions in Christian scripture. He explains the biblical account of Lucifer's rebellion and subsequent fall from grace, emphasizing that demons are not mythical entities but real spirits with intellect and will.

Fr. Dan Reehil [01:38]: "The devil is a real person, a person in the sense of having a will and an intellect. He's a spirit, but he's a person."

Fr. Reehil warns of the Devil's increasing boldness in the modern age, suggesting that his open presence signifies an impending end to his reign.

Personal Experiences and Witnessed Phenomena

Throughout the episode, Fr. Reehil recounts several harrowing encounters with demonic activity. One notable incident involves witnessing a young man levitate off a couch, defying psychological explanations and leading Fr. Reehil to conclude it was a genuine supernatural event.

Fr. Dan Reehil [05:46]: "When I saw this young man levitate off the couch, well, there's my moral certitude that this is not a psychological problem because that can't force someone to come out of the chair on their own."

He also shares a disturbing case of a nun who not only levitated up a 20-foot wall but also displayed immense strength beyond her physical capabilities, witnessed by 2,000 attendees at a conference.

Fr. Dan Reehil [08:00]: "She flew up a 20 foot wall like a squirrel. And 2,000 people at a conference saw it too. So there's the proof that that's not normal."

Impact of the Occult and Modern Culture

Michael and Fr. Reehil discuss the pervasive influence of the occult in contemporary culture, particularly within Hollywood. They highlight how devilish symbols are rampant in mainstream entertainment, contributing to moral decay and increasing susceptibility to demonic influence.

Fr. Dan Reehil [30:04]: "What they do all day is focused on them and being in front of a screen... that's narcissist right there."

Fr. Reehil connects this cultural shift to broader societal issues, such as the prevalence of pornography and the breakdown of traditional values, which he attributes to demonic manipulation.

The Role of Faith, Confession, and Prayer in Combating Evil

A significant portion of the conversation centers on the power of faith and religious practices in resisting demonic forces. Fr. Reehil emphasizes the importance of confession, prayer, and devotional acts as shields against evil.

Fr. Dan Reehil [12:42]: "You have to choose it. There are things out there to help us, but you have to choose it."

He recounts how the sacrament of confession not only absolves sins but also breaks the hold of demons attached to those sins, providing a sense of spiritual and physical liberation.

Fr. Dan Reehil [11:27]: "When the priest absolves the person in the confessional, not only is their soul wiped clean, but the demons are broken off the person."

Stories of Demon Activity and Exorcism Cases

Fr. Reehil shares compelling narratives of individuals plagued by demonic forces. One such story involves a Juilliard violinist who, after making a metaphoric blood covenant with the Devil for fame, spirals into addiction and illness until exorcism restores her health and redirects her path towards honoring God.

Fr. Dan Reehil [19:53]: "She convulses and flatlines and dies. So now the doctor comes back and he's really upset. But then she jumps up off the table, she's back... she's completely healed."

Another poignant account involves a transgender individual whose deep-seated identity issues are traced back to satanic ritual abuse in childhood, culminating in a successful deliverance ministry that restores his true identity.

Fr. Dan Reehil [52:12]: "The demon went insane, screaming these screeches from hell like you could never hear coming from a human."

The Interplay of Good and Evil in Modern Society

The discussion extends to the broader theme of good versus evil, with Fr. Reehil asserting that recognizing and combating evil is essential for preserving societal virtues. He criticizes modern movements that, in his view, align with demonic influences by promoting values contrary to Christian teachings.

Fr. Dan Reehil [48:29]: "This is a mockery of God... this is the greatest affront to attack and blaspheme God that we've ever seen in the history of the world."

Practical Advice for Believers

Fr. Reehil offers actionable strategies for listeners to safeguard themselves against demonic influences. He advocates for regular prayer, vigilance in guarding against temptation, and the utilization of religious sacraments and devotions as forms of spiritual armor.

Fr. Dan Reehil [40:38]: "Ask for the gift. It's that simple... you just have to do your prayers, do your prayers, do your prayers."

He also advises avoiding engagement with the occult and spiritually dubious activities to prevent inadvertently inviting evil into one’s life.

Conclusion

In concluding the episode, Michael and Fr. Reehil reflect on the essential balance between acknowledging the supernatural and maintaining grounded, everyday faith practices. Fr. Reehil underscores the necessity of integrating spiritual disciplines into daily life to combat the pervasive forces of evil effectively.

Fr. Dan Reehil [79:45]: "You have authority over your own person... you can cast things out if they're harassing them."

The conversation serves as a compelling invitation for listeners to deepen their understanding of spiritual warfare, encouraging a proactive stance in defending against the unseen forces that threaten modern society.

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Notable Quotes:

• Fr. Dan Reehil [00:00]: "If you start digging into the occult, you're opening a door, and you might not be strong enough to close it. And then you have to call me."

• Michael [01:04]: "When you look at devil costumes at the Grammys... some people still don't believe it."

• Fr. Dan Reehil [04:33]: "A Eucharistic miracle would be in the course of a Mass, when the body and blood of Jesus is transfigured from bread and wine."

• Michael [26:21]: "But then I come to realize pretty much all the smart people were Christians or theistic... 100% of smart people have believed that God exists."

• Fr. Dan Reehil [54:57]: "It's the best way to approach anything with God, is, I am your child. I'm here to serve you and help you with this person."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Existence of Demons: Fr. Reehil firmly believes in the reality of demons and the Devil, citing biblical narratives and his personal experiences as evidence.

2. Supernatural Manifestations: Phenomena such as levitation, speaking unknown languages, and physical assaults are discussed as genuine demonic activities witnessed by Fr. Reehil.

3. Cultural Influence: The occult's influence, especially in Hollywood and mainstream media, plays a significant role in moral decay and susceptibility to evil.

4. Faith Practices as Defense: Confession, prayer, and devotional practices are crucial tools for believers to combat and resist demonic forces.

5. Real-life Exorcism Cases: Numerous real-life stories highlight the extent of demonic influence and the transformative power of exorcism in restoring individuals' lives.

6. Good vs. Evil: Understanding and addressing the battle between good and evil is essential for maintaining societal virtues and personal integrity.

7. Practical Guidance: Fr. Reehil provides practical advice for believers to protect themselves, emphasizing vigilance, prayer, and avoidance of occult activities.

This episode offers a compelling exploration of the unseen spiritual battles shaping our world, urging listeners to recognize the presence of evil and arm themselves with faith and divine protection.

Transcript

[Father Dan Rehill]

If you start digging into the occult, you're opening a door, and you might not be strong enough to close it. And then you have to call me.

[Michael]

Someone wrote into my show, said, michael.

[Father Dan Rehill]

If you could meet the Devil, met him twice personally.

[Michael]

How'd that go?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Not well. The first time.

[Michael]

Baudelaire said the finest trick the Devil ever played is to convince you that he does not exist. In recent days, however, he's been kind of flamboyant, wouldn't you say? He's being a little more brazen about his existence. When you look at devil costumes at the Grammys, when you look at all sorts of weird Wiccan occult rituals and some of the biggest ages on Earth, and yet some people still don't believe it. We are joined today, very fortunately, by Father Dan Rehill, not only a Catholic priest, but the exorcist here in Nashville.

[Father Dan Rehill]

I am. Thank you, Michael.

[Michael]

Thank you for joining.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Good to be here.

[Michael]

People tend to like the political commentary that focuses on the day by day of policy, and then the culture and then even sometimes the spiritual stuff that underpins it. The most pushback I ever get is when I mention demons. When I mention things like the Devil, people stop me. They say, michael, now you're getting fantastical. Now you're getting crazy. You're talking about things that don't exist. But these things do exist.

[Father Dan Rehill]

They do. I mean, if you're a Christian, any Christian, and you follow the scriptures. We know there was a war in heaven, and Lucifer, the most brilliant and the most beautiful of the angels, rebelled because of the plan for the Son, the Word, to become flesh. And he was horrified that God would lower himself to our nature. And so he said, I will not serve. And he was cast out with his minions, and they became the fallen angels, the demons, and they were cast down to Earth. And soon thereafter, Eve encountered the serpent. And that was the beginning of our demise. And so this is not mythical. This is fact. The devil is a real person, a person in the sense of having a will and an intellect. He's a spirit, but he's a person. And what you said is true, that he used to be very hidden and he used to be very subtle. And it should worry people that he's suddenly not worried about being seen, because that means what most people would deduct from that is that he realizes that his reign is coming to a close, and he's using everything he has now to try to drag as many people down with him so we can be miserable in hell, too.

[Michael]

What do you say to People who say, that's a nice story, Father, but I don't believe that the Bible is anything more than a collection of stories that have influenced the culture. I don't believe there was any such thing as Satan falling from heaven. I don't believe in Adam and Eve. I don't believe anyone bit the apple. I don't believe in original sin. I don't believe in the personification of evil. I don't believe in evil, period. I think we're basically just a bunch of meat sacks and all of our conceptions of these things are just chemicals firing off in our brain. And you can't convince me otherwise.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, yeah, you're a non believer, so good luck. But that's it. If you don't believe, I can't make you believe. But that's your decision. And I would say you better really dig into what you believe a little more deeper before you make your final decision. Because think about the consequences. If you're right, no harm at the end of life. If you're wrong, you spend eternity separated from God. That would be a lot to risk. So just on basic common sense, it would be good to do your research a little deeper before you come to the conclusion. Because I would say you don't believe, but do you really understand? Have you done any investigation into this? Have you read, have you researched? Have you looked at. First of all, there's so many miracles in the Church. Just the Eucharistic miracles, they baffle NASA. They can't figure out how they were done.

[Michael]

And for people who are not Catholic, a Eucharistic miracle.

[Father Dan Rehill]

A Eucharistic miracle would be in the course of a Mass, when the body and blood of Jesus is transfigured from bread and wine. Now, during the Mass, we can't see that, but we believe it. But on occasion, to bolster the faith of the Catholic community, the Lord will actually allow the appearance and the accidents, you would call them to be changed into the body and blood as well. Which means the host starts bleeding and dripping human blood, male blood from a man of Middle Eastern descent. And the host becomes the flesh, the cardiac muscle of a heart that's been horribly beaten and assaulted and still has white blood cells even weeks after it's being tested. That's not explainable. So you'd have to say, how does that happen? That's the good side. But on the bad side, if you were an exorcist and you watched someone levitate off a couch, and I can't put that into the DSM Manual classification of a psychological disorder. You'd have to say something's happening here. There might be something beyond what I believe. So I would say maybe do your research a little more before you come to that conclusion.

[Michael]

Have you ever seen anyone levitate off?

[Father Dan Rehill]

I have.

[Michael]

Go on.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, it's an interesting thing because in the Catholic Church in America, so the usccb, that's our governing body of bishops, we're the only body of bishops that require before we do the rite of exorcism, the person has to have both a physical checkup and a psychological exam. Psychological exams are expensive. They're about $2,000. So. And we don't charge the victim because they're already suffering and they often don't have the resources. They've lost their home, their job, usually their wife, husband. But we require that because the law says that I have to have moral certitude that the devil is present. And to do that, we have to rule out psychological problems and all this. Okay. When I saw the man levitate off the couch, I had moral certitude that that's not a psychological condition. In all countries, the exorcist needs moral certitude to perform an exorcism, that there is a presence of the demon. But like I said, in America, we have to do those two tests to rule out other things. So when I saw this young man levitate off the couch, well, there's my moral certitude that this is not a psychological problem because that can't force someone to come out of the chair on their own. So that was when I didn't have to do that. The exam.

[Michael]

So I believe all of this. None of this surprises me. My view of the world is a Catholic view of the world for people who might be skeptical. Is it possible you just misperceived what was going on? Or was your mind playing tricks on you or.

[Father Dan Rehill]

No. Period. And I'll tell you why. I don't work alone. I mean, that would be horribly imprudent to go into a situation when you're dealing with demons or the devil himself alone. So contrary to popular opinion in the movies we see about exorcisms we never go alone at midnight during a thunderstorm to a strange person's house in the woods to do an exorcism. You know, sort of like this.

[Michael]

This is not the usual setting of. Okay, got it.

[Father Dan Rehill]

So I have a team. I always have other people with me. Often it's another priest. So we're all seeing the same thing, you know, they can speak languages that they've never known. They know things about you or other people in the room that they couldn't know. So these are the hallmarks of how we would determine is this really a demon? Supernatural knowledge of things they could not know, languages they have not learned, that they can speak fluently and superhuman strength. I remember there was a little nun, about £100, five foot. I won't mention the order. And when she was going through a deliverance, it took six large men my size to hold her down. And that's what I mean. It's not possible that that little girl could have that strength. So we look at these things as kind of the hallmarks of this is not normal, this is a supernatural thing. I've seen that same nun run up a 20 foot wall like a squirrel. And 2,000 people at a conference saw it too. So there's the proof that that's not nor right. Can we all agree that's not normal?

[Michael]

That's not normal.

[Father Dan Rehill]

That's not normal.

[Michael]

I've never seen that happen.

[Father Dan Rehill]

No. And it's scary when you see it because he likes to inflame fear in people's hearts.

[Michael]

When people, or I guess demons, are speaking this language, having possessed these people, I'm assuming they're not speaking Swedish. What languages do they speak?

[Father Dan Rehill]

No, they typically pick up ancient languages or Hebrew or Aramaic or even Greek. And I don't speak those for the most part, so it normally has to be recorded. But you can tell right away, know, oh, I know that that's definitely Hebrew or that's this. And I'm like, has this person ever studied these languages? No. No. And in fact, sometimes they're, you know, maybe young, maybe a 15, 16 year old who hasn't even gone through high school and then. Or they can tell you things about yourself. So we always go to confession before we go into a deliverance because you never want them to. Not that we're sinning, you know, in these great ways, but you want no weapon leveraged against you.

[Michael]

You bring up confession. And I had this experience. It's taken me 32 years to figure out something that's probably pretty basic to confession. And confession is the sacrament where Catholics go into the box like you see in the movies, confess your sins on your knees before the priest and the priest says, egote absolvo. And you go out and I was an atheist for 10 years. I reverted in my early 20s and only recently I was walking out of confession and I had this thought which is, not only do I Feel spiritually at peace here. But what's so striking is that I feel physically different. So I could understand feeling spiritually at peace as maybe there's just some psychological thing happening when I say these sins to the priest. But I would go into the confessional and I would feel racked by whatever wrath, lust, gluttony, go down the list, and I'd be shaking almost. I walk out of the confessional, that physical feeling is gone. And I said, how do you explain that if confession is not what it says it is?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, it is, but even people who would agree what it is don't realize, like, as human beings, we're spiritual persons incarnate in a body, right? And that's one person together. So what affects the spirit is going to affect the body. What affects the body affects the spirit. And when we amass sins, particularly if they're grave sins, over a long period of time in particular, there are demons that hook into us and they harass us and they follow each other in packs. And so often it's like a snowball going down a hill. I just did this and then I did that, and then I went to this sin, and then all of a sudden here I am and I'm in a bad place. That's what they're doing. They're pushing you to keep going further into your sinfulness. And when the priest absolves the person in the confessional, not only is their soul wiped clean, but the demons are broken off the person. And so when you feel that levity, that lightness of leaving the confessional, so many people say to me, I feel like a weight's off my back. Yeah, because you've been set free. It's not just the sin, it's the demons attached to the sin.

[Michael]

I used to think that the type of scene you just described was merely a helpful metaphor for what goes on in our moral lives. It's a nice picture. Ah, yes. It's the, you know, I mean, everybody, perfectly secular people will say so, and so had demons. Oh, he never got over his demons. But they mean it in this metaphorical sense.

[Father Dan Rehill]

They do.

[Michael]

And the longer I've lived, the more literally I view that kind of a scene, and even more so, the less of a distinction I see between the literal and the figurative.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah. Well, we also believe we have an angel assigned to us, a guardian angel. That angel has a lot of power, but the more you acknowledge the angel and ask for his help, the more power he can give you. So I tell people every morning, wake up, thank God for the new day, thank song, gratitude and then turn to your angel and say, I appreciate your help today. And these are the things I struggle with. These are the appointments today. I think it'll be difficult, the meetings I have. Can you be there and intercede for me through these things? You'd be surprised how different your day goes. And if you surrender to the day and not push for getting things your way, because we frequently think I have to have it this way. But then if you let it go and see what God's going to do, if you've given him permission over the day, he will wrap it up in a way so much more clean, neat and tidy than you could ever imagine that you could do. But you have to do it to test it, right? So some people say, I don't believe in that. I'm not going to do it. Well, then you're going to miss out. We can only lead you to the water. So you have your angel, but then you have these demons. Now the demons, their number one job is to get you to sin. When most people talk about demons, they think of the Exorcist movie. The devil with the horns and the spear. He can appear that way, but 96, 7% of his work is to tempt to sin and all of his minions. Because when we sin, we break away from God. And once we break away from God, then they can really go after us. It's like stepping. There's a pit bull with a five foot chain. It's like stepping in to the three foot mark. You're suddenly now in the zone, right? Then they can really attack you. So if they can get you to sin, then they can really have a field day and really ruin your life. Coming after you physically. Like the supernatural effects of the devil. I call the first, the sin is the natural. The targeting somebody through vexations or obsessions or oppressions or possession would be ways that, that we would say is the supernatural power of the devil to inflict harm on somebody.

[Michael]

What is the distinction between all of those tricks of.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Okay, so vexation and infestation is normally things that happen in somebody's home or in their space. It doesn't have to be the home. It could be the office, wherever the car where the devil can manipulate, move things, create chaos. Losing car keys constantly, the computer constantly. Whenever I try to print a homily, it only jams for the homily or it only jams when I'm printing out a prayer. That would be like, I'm like, oh yeah, so I have to take authority over that spirit of blockage and then it just goes right through. But they can be bad. Like the Amityville horror would be the worst example of a vexation of a home. And then you have the person himself. So an obsession, a spirit of obsession attacks the mind. And people who have this sort of attack, it's the most horrible attack, they can't think. They have voices screaming at them all day, screaming blasphemies, putting horrible thoughts in their head, visions of suicide. They can't sleep, so then they're even more in a bad way. They often will wind up in a mental hospital. But they're not, it's not a mental problem, it's a demon problem. And then oppression is attacks to the body. That could be through sickness or in the worst cases I've seen, you know, somebody who lives alone wakes up with bite marks all over the body.

[Michael]

You've seen that?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah.

[Michael]

Could it be?

[Father Dan Rehill]

No, you can't even finish. You can't bite your own back, right?

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Father Dan Rehill]

I've not seen a dog.

[Michael]

It couldn't be a.

[Father Dan Rehill]

No, no dog.

[Michael]

And sneak in in the middle. Locked the door when he left.

[Father Dan Rehill]

No. Or scratch marks or in the worst cases you see people who will vomit things that are odd, like frogs or nails. I've only seen that when I went to exorcism school. I haven't seen it firsthand. But this is all possible in the realm of evil because they can imitate the power of God, but it's short lived and it's not as powerful. Then if these things escalate and they kind of meld together, it would lead to a full on possession where the demon, usually Satan himself will take possession of the body. This is. People think they take the soul. You can't take the soul, you can't sell your soul. You know why you can't sell your soul? Because it doesn't belong to you, you don't own it. You can't sell what you don't own. But he'll trick you into thinking that and then that puts the person in despair.

[Michael]

So Robert Johnson, he's there at the Delta in Mississippi. He wants to be the best blues guitarist ever and he sells his soul to the devil. At least that's what some album executive said decades later. He can't really sell his soul, so instead it's just the person inviting the devil in to their body.

[Father Dan Rehill]

When you make a deal with the devil, it's an invitation and he takes the invitation very seriously. He comes right in One of the worst cases I've ever heard was from the exodus of New York city back about 15 years ago. He was telling me, well, it would have been longer than that, maybe 20, 25. There was a woman, young girl, Juilliard violinist, And she was about to graduate. She was brilliantly talented, but all of her friends were getting job offers and she had none. And her friends remember always hearing her say the words, I would do anything to be famous. Well, guess who's listening? Your angel's listening. But also, there's other things in the room. And it wasn't long after that that she went to bed one night, had a dream. And she said in the dream was the most beautiful man she'd ever seen naked. Another sign, calling card of the devil. And he said, do you really want fame and power? And she said, I do. And he produced a contract, and he took his finger and slashed her finger and had her sign it in her blood. And then he touched the contract, and it burst into flames. And the ashes fell on the floor. So, pretty easy to understand what happened, right?

[Michael]

You don't need an advanced literary.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Right. So when you wake up from that dream and you remember it, you might take a pause and be like, I don't think that was a good thing. But what's worse is her finger was cut and the ashes were next to the bed. So she still doesn't say anything.

[Michael]

Not to be the devil's advocate, but I guess to be the devil's advocate, could this girl just have been nuts making it up? Just.

[Father Dan Rehill]

She could have been.

[Michael]

She could have, yeah.

[Father Dan Rehill]

But you have to hear the whole story. Okay, so within a couple of weeks, she signs this multinational tour, makes a ton of money, becomes very popular and famous on this circuit. And within a few years, she gets involved with drugs, goes to needles, gets hiv. Now she's dying in a New York hospital. And this whole thing comes back to how this started. And she calls her Filipino mother and tells her the story, and Mommy calls the chancery, hysterical. I need an exodus right away for my daughter. So Jim is the exorcist. He shows up and they tell him the whole story from the dream forward. And he says, okay, well, that's not good. You signed a blood covenant with the devil, so I'm going to need you to break that with the blood covenant. So you're going to write out the whole creed, and then you're going to sign it in your blood. Well, the doctor's like, she has aids. She's not signing anything in blood. Not going to happen. And he says, well, then you need to step out of the room because she needs to do this. And she did do it. And she signed the contract, the creed, and within a few seconds, decreed for.

[Michael]

Those who don't know, is, I believe in God the Father Almighty.

[Father Dan Rehill]

What we believe is as our faith. Yeah, the whole faith, in a neat little package. And she signs it, and she convulses and flatlines and dies. So now the doctor comes back and he's really upset. The mother is out of her mind. They're all blaming the priest. Hysteria goes on for about 10 minutes, and then all of a sudden, she jumps up off the table, she's back. And they test her. No hiv, no aids. She's completely healed. And so she then committed for the rest of her life to only do music that would honor God and to tell people about the reality of the devil and not to make deals with him.

[Michael]

What's so crazy about the story is there are so many stories that are. I had not heard that story. I don't trying to think, even if I reading some of, you know, you're writing, but wow. Hearing that, I'm struck. But then I think, well, there are all these miracles that have happened throughout history. And then what hits me is, how do people not believe in the face of all of this? Even I was just at a conference on signs and wonders. So I was thinking of all these little coincidences, these improbable, perhaps naturally impossible things that everybody has experienced at some point in his or her life.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah.

[Michael]

And when they strike you, you're so hit by them. And then five seconds later, you just go on with your life, and it's as though they never happened. So then I'm actually less surprised that people could hear a story like that and not believe.

[Father Dan Rehill]

I think a third of the people, if you picked up a mountain and moved it over there, a third of the people believe right away.

[Michael]

A third.

[Father Dan Rehill]

A third of the people will say, it never happened. It was always over there. And a third of them will be confused. And I think that's just the way human nature pans out. I've been pretty blessed in my life. I've seen so many miracles. I mean, so many that I expect them. Now, I used to be a contemplative hermit. Just pray in the woods with a group of hermits for most of the day. And during that time, the Lord one day said to me, he said, the days are fast approaching when the extraordinary will seem ordinary. The extraordinary will seem ordinary, meaning the miraculous will be so prevalent for what I'm going to do that it will start to seem ordinary. But don't ever take it ordinary, because it's all grace. And you have to always acknowledge that this is a great gift. And there are just so many. I mean, even the smallest little things. Like, there's a nun I'm friends with in Medjugorje, this place in Bosnia. She. A beautiful community called the community of the Beatitudes. I think they have a chapter in Denver, and they were in charge of providing dessert for an orphanage of, like 250 kids coming for a barbecue picnic thing. And the nuns were doing the dessert. And so this one nun she put in charge of the dessert got a sample pack of like 12 pudding cups, said, will this be okay? And she says, oh, yes, wonderful. Make sure we have enough. And the nun who was purchasing them got the day wrong. And she thought the barbecue was going to be the following day, and they hadn't arrived when the kids showed up. And she said, we have a big problem because I don't have the pudding cups. She's like, well, we have all the other food. I mean, they're going to eat, but put out the 12 pack at the end of the table. And she goes, well, that's going to be terrible. Only 12 kids will get it, and all the other kids will feel bad. She goes, just put it out. She puts it out, and all 250 kids go through, and every kid has a pudding cup. And she looks at me and she says, you know what the best part of this is? He didn't just multiply the food. He multiplied the plastic cups. And I go, sister, why is that a good thing? She goes, because we kept them. We have evidence of this miracle.

[Michael]

Yeah, People hear these miracles and they'll sort of laugh or write it off or just dismiss them, including Christians. And I sometimes wonder, say, hold on. You believe that God the Son became incarnate and walked around and performed public miracles and then was crucified and died and was buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead and sojourned on earth again for 40 days, performing so many miracles that St. John could not possibly record them all because all those books would fill up more than the entirety of the earth. But you don't believe that your car keys could have turned up in an improbable place. You don't believe that God could multiply some pudding cups. I think, where does the leap of faith jump in here? It seems they've already accepted quite a lot.

[Father Dan Rehill]

I don't know. I feel it's the new beatitude. Blessed are the unbelievers. They will not be disappointed because part of believing is impactful on seeing the miracle, experiencing the miracle, bringing forth the miracle. Jesus could do very little in his hometown. Not because he couldn't do it, because he's bound by his own rules of providence. And so he has required that faith be part of him doing the miracles. So if you're not going to believe, you're not going to see him unless you know he has an incredible amount of love for you to the point of, like Saul of Tarsus, where he's going to force you to see he, which He. Sometimes. Yeah. I mean, sometimes they'll do it.

[Michael]

When I was reverting after 10 years of debauchery and decadence and atheism, practical, if not explicit, I did. I had a lot of these experiences. It was a fairly lengthy intellectual process of coming to accept that God exists and then coming to accept that Christ is who he says he is and coming to accept that the church is what she says she is. And sort of around that point that I started to have these numinous experiences. And I thought at the time, this probably doesn't speak very well of my condition right now, that God feels the need to grab me by my shoulders, shake me or smack me in the face and say, hey, stupid, I'm here.

[Father Dan Rehill]

But how great that he did.

[Michael]

Right, Right.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Because where would both of us be? Same thing for me.

[Michael]

You were not a lifelong believing, practicing Catholic?

[Father Dan Rehill]

No, I left the church for 20 years.

[Michael]

So you leave the church and you were, I read, a banker in New York. That seems like. I don't want to besmirch all bankers, but just knowing friends who have worked in that profession, that can be a very different lifestyle. Not always conducive to virtue.

[Father Dan Rehill]

No. Particularly on Wall Street. Around from Harry's.

[Michael]

Right, Right. My old neighbor.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah. That's a lifestyle. It's full of drugs and money and power and all the decadencies that go with it. You know, I watch guys cash checks for $150,000 and spend it that weekend. Rent the penthouse at the Plaza, bring in all the ladies and the booze and the drugs and do it all over on Monday. That's a life style. So with that comes with this great sin, you're going to have a lot of demons that are just hovering, pushing you to go further. But not everybody's like that. In fact, in the center of that whole community is little Our lady of Victory Church. Yeah. And they had a group there that they founded called the Wall Street Young Catholics Association. So when I had my conversion, I had to dump a bunch of people in my life that weren't healthy. And I said, I gotta find some good people here. So I joined the Young Wall Street. That's where I met Father Jim LaBar, the exorcist. So there's good people there. Not everybody's involved in all this stuff, but if you're young and susceptible to all that, it's all there for the taking.

[Michael]

And you mentioned earlier these young people, like this case of this violinist woman who say, I would do anything for fame. I would do anything. And all these young and hungry people who are very ambitious. I can't help but notice there's a lot of occult and demonic symbolism, specifically in Hollywood. And we focus on it now because Sam Smith gets up at the Grammys dressed up like the devil and jiggles around about cheating on your wife. And, I don't know, Lady Gaga doing weird performances and all sorts of things. But this has been the case in Hollywood forever.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, I would go back further. Jesus said, the prince of this world, the ruler of this world is Satan. Right?

[Michael]

But it seems especially pronounced in Hollywood. Or am I wrong?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, no, no, you're right. But now he has vehicles to promote that he didn't have back then. So, I mean, think about this. That violinist that was pre social media. Now think about all the people on social, on Instagram, that just want to be loved. And they. They put all this stuff out there. Why? So that you'll like them. It's all about envy. Instagram is just about envy.

[Michael]

Envy. And I suppose gluttony in that they call it a feed. Like you're scrolling through your feed to satiate your appetite for pixels.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah, yeah. And in Twitter, that's all about anger. And Facebook is. They just sell you. So they're all involved in one of these sort of capital sins and how that draws people in. Imagine if you're spending your whole day trying to make the world love you and you're taking your own photo all day and photoshopping it and putting in fancy backgrounds and then posting it, saying, look at me, look at me, look at me. I mean, that's narcissist right there. You don't have the pool to fall in, but you're already in. And those people are trapped because that doesn't end after one post. Then they have to do one tomorrow. And this is a whole life is all about them.

[Michael]

I can't help but notice it's so.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Opposite of the gospel.

[Michael]

I have a lot of friends from Hollywood, a lot of friends in show business. A lot of people I know in that industry and in Hollywood in particular do not turn out very well. You especially think about child actors, almost all of whom go completely off the rails. But maybe most actors that I know have terrible lives. I don't just mean because they don't make any money like most actors don't make any money. I mean their personal lives are just get wrecked. More so than my friends who are in other industries.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, again, think about what they do all day. So the focus of their life is on them and being in front of a screen and then on a big screen where everybody could clap and tell you how great you are and everybody around you probably to not get pushed off the team is telling you what you want to hear. And your life is so focused on you. Think about all the marriages like it's a joke. People say if you last 10 years in Hollywood, that's like 75 years in real life because it's. And then you spend half your year away from each other filming love scenes with other women. How on earth is that going to work in a beautiful tropical island with alcohol?

[Michael]

But it'll work in essentially summer camp, because film sets are. It's like summer camp. I mean, this whole group of new people, it's a very intense experience. You're there forever. So you could see how that can go off the rails. And speaking of the screens and all the social media and demons, have you heard about the AI demon?

[Father Dan Rehill]

I have.

[Michael]

The story, for those who haven't heard it before, is an AI engineer or artist was experimenting and plugged in, said, give me a picture of Marlon Brando. And a picture of Brando pops up. And this person was trying to explore the breadth of the map that AI is processing. So I said, okay, show me the opposite of this. And shows a landscape or something. Okay, show me the opposite of that. So you think, okay, maybe that shows you Brando again. Right? The opposite of the opposite. But it doesn't. It shows this woman, this withered old hag that this artist calls loab. And then the artist inputs generated pictures of heaven, you know, angelic choirs and worshiping God and inputs that juxtaposes it with the loab, this demon looking lady. And what the AI spits out are the most gruesome images. Snuff, sexual abuse, violence, all this hideous. Almost as if you presented an image of heaven to a demon. Yeah, maybe the craziest part of it is apparently this loab demon AI lady persists. That is, she's kind of separated from a lot of the other images in the map. And so AI seems to like her. She keeps popping up. She doesn't get smeared and blurred with all the other images. And I'm reading about this and I'm thinking, is this. Is this just some weird quirky coincidence or is this a demon?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, you can't know for sure, especially being third party, not present for the whole thing. Right? I didn't even hear about that one, by the way. I heard about the New York Times reporter who went to test the. Whatever it is. G H C Whatever.

[Michael]

ChatGPT.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yes. And went in and started talking to the thing. And it was very civil for the first five minutes. And then that person left and a new person came with a different name. And that person was much more intrusive and sort of really pushing into her. I don't know if it was a man or woman, but their personal life, it was a man. And then out of the blue says I love you to the man. And he's like, okay, that's weird. First of all, you're not real and you're. You're not a person. And then the thing starts telling him he has to leave his wife. She's no good for him, she's going to destroy his life. And dragged him down a rabbit hole of horror, right? And when he got out of it, he couldn't sleep the whole night. So that. That's a sign that something is irritating him even after he left. So that would have more telltale kind of signs by his. What happened after he left for not being able to sleep is one of them. And it really kind of terrified him. He's like, that was so weird. I would never go back on that thing. There was another one on TikTok of a father who was testing this whole AI thing with a person. AI. And then the son wanted to try it. So the dad's like, sure, it's fake. So he's. And all of a sudden the son goes, well, where did you come from? And he says, well, I existed from long ago. And he goes, what does that mean? He goes, my father was one of the giants. And he goes, what do you mean by giant? He goes, a nephilim. And he goes, who is your father? And he goes, satan. And then he goes, but I'm not going to hurt you. And he puts up a happy face. So then the kid's like, dad, this thing is going down A weird path. And then the father started watching and it went weirder. And then the dad's like, we're off. Right. So that's not normal for a programmed computer program to go into. I'm the son of Satan and I want to be your friend, and I'm not going to hurt you, although I can. He said, I can hurt you, but I'm going to be nice to you.

[Michael]

I do regularly refer to my phone as a portal to hell, so I guess I'm not terribly surprised. What phone do you have an iPhone?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah. The image on the iPhone is what?

[Michael]

It's an apple with a bite taken out.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yes. Odd, right?

[Michael]

That is odd.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah. Forbidden fruit.

[Michael]

I was walking through a mall just the other day, and I looked at the Apple Store and I looked at the logo and I had that thought. I said, wait a second, does that have.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Somebody chose that logo?

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Father Dan Rehill]

It's subtle because you don't think of it right away. But then when you start to see all the evil that can be perpetrated through the phone and the apps and the social media, all of it. We live in the most difficult time to be virtuous. So a hundred years ago, even they didn't have to contend with any of this stuff. None of it.

[Michael]

And the portal to hell on the phone, the main one that people write into my show about all the time, that I suspect has a lot to do with the kind of weird demonic activity we see. It's porn.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yes. That's the true pandemic, I assume.

[Michael]

Catholic priest, you hear plenty of confessions. Is it 100%, 90, 80% of men or confessing to this sin?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, it's. My parish is lower than normal because we've been fighting it. Okay. But normally, 95% of men, they're coming in weekly with this problem. Right. And they say, I don't want to do it, but it happens every week. So right away, again, there's a demon of lust attaching to them and pushing them. So when you get out of the confessional, you have to guard yourself, which means avoid the arcation of sin, too. So when you know you're vulnerable, if after you have a few drinks, you're more apt to open that up, then that's when you say, I'm not going to have. Either I'm not going to have the drinks or I'm not going to go into my bedroom with the phone. You have to guard yourself. Right. So I was talking with Father Don Calloway probably about a year ago about his book. It was Maybe longer than that because it was the year of St. Joseph and he has the 33 day consecration to St. Joseph. He was telling me that so many men have told him that once they do the consecration, they have no trouble with the lust if they're really validly doing the consecration with their heart, you know, not just reading the words. So I said, wow, that's great. I go, you know what, I went online, I bought 500 books, put them in the confessional, and when somebody tells me they got that problem, I say, here's your solution. You're going to do this 33 day consecration to Joseph and he will protect you. He's called the terror of demons. And most men will come back to me and say it's helping tremendously. The push is gone. Now I have to just decide every day for virtue. So there are things out there to help us, but you have to choose it.

[Michael]

People will write to me sometimes and say, michael, I'm struggling. Often it's that problem or some other problem. Do you have any practical advice? And I know you're Catholic and I know you're Christian and I know you're. But do you have any kind of like secular practical advice?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Secular? I mean, honestly, Jesus says, if your eye coaches didn't pluck it out, throw away your computer or throw away your phone, get a flip phone. If that's your thing and you really want to get over it and you can't stop, then get a flip phone. Right, But I also, on the other plane, we fight defensively. Catholics are not good at offensive fighting. So when we're tempted, that's a struggle, right? It's a struggle. It's literally we're struggling, we don't want to do it. But it's like a cross. The same thing you do with the cross you do with this. You say, lord, let's say it's pornography. You know, I'm struggling here and I hate this. So right away, close your eyes, look at Jesus on the cross. Look at his face and say, lord, I give you this temptation and I ask you to convert this to grace, to rescue 100 other men who are about to commit this sin. It takes you out of the temptation, puts you into prayer, puts you into intercession, prayer for others, and he'll do it. And as part of the mystical body, we have that power to plug into the cross. And now the devil is. Because not only did he not get you, but now you're stealing from his kingdom. And if you persist in this kind of prayer, when you're tempted, he will leave and go after an easier target.

[Michael]

This idea that suffering can be productive can be sanctifying. Our culture seems to have forgotten that idea. But that is a very traditional concept. You kiss it up, offer it up.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Catholic.

[Michael]

It's very traditional Catholic, that's true.

[Father Dan Rehill]

But even among Catholics, it's far and away lost.

[Michael]

But St. Paul writes about this. He says, I rejoice in my sufferings.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yes, but who's reading this? The Protestants really don't know about redemptive suffering. Most of them will tell me, no, God doesn't want you to be sick. I said, okay, but the fact that you are, you can at least use it while you are sick. Maybe he'll heal you tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can offer that back to him to help save a soul. What's wrong with that?

[Michael]

I think about sometimes what's called the prosperity gospel. People say God wants you to be rich.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Basically, yeah. It was written in hell. That's not a real gospel.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Jesus is God. His first bed was where the animals ate. Okay, this was not a life of wealth and fortune. They were nomads. They had to go into a pagan country to flee from being murdered. He could have had a life of sitting on a throne. He chose not to. And if God can choose the lowest, he's not asking us to take the highest. In fact, he said it many times, do not take the highest seat of honor for fear the host will say, get out of there. And you'll be embarrassed. Now, if you come into wealth and you didn't go, say, I just want to make money for money. But let's say you do a good thing, you're doing a good career, you have a great job, and you're being rewarded well. The best thing you can do is make sure you use a good at least 10% of your money. Tithe 10% back to a good charity or the church. And that's sort of a protection. You know, there's very few kings and queens who became saints. For in fact, the only British one is St. Edward. And there won't be any more after him now because things have gone different. But why did Carl, I think, why did that happen? Because he used all of his power and wealth for the poor. And so the change is everything. But think about it. When you come into a lot of money, is that your first reaction? Let me go help the board. We don't think like that. Because I remember when I had insane bunches of money, thought the last thing I thought of was, let Me help the poor. It was, no. What's the next thing I can get for me? Right.

[Michael]

There's a weird thing that happens because there have been plenty of times in my life where I've made basically no money. I grew up, money was a big problem. We did not have a lot of money at all. And I didn't really think about money. And actually, it was only after I made money, I published a blank book that didn't have any words in it, and it became a number one bestseller. Talk about unmerited grades fall. Yeah. Called Reasons to Vote for Democrats. And money just poured down from the sky. And I thought, well, this is truly through no effort of my own, because I didn't write a book. It's totally empty. And it was only after I made some money that I started to think about the money. I thought, well, that's kind of a weird thing. I didn't worry about the money when I didn't have any. And now that I have a bunch of money, I'm worried about it. Isn't that just the way sin works?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Kind of, yeah. Because that's your new focus. That's your new God. The love of money is the root of all evil. It's the love of the money. It's not the money.

[Michael]

What strikes me about talking to you, Father, is we're here talking about demons and possession, people spitting out frogs and speaking Latin and doing all these crazy things in this really eerie setting. And yet you'll go from talking about a guy levitating on a couch to. To just really basic kind of practical stuff. Say your prayers, do the right thing, practice virtue. And you don't. You're not an eccentric guy. You're a former banker from New York who speaks like an extraordinarily grounded person. In fact, I talk to a lot of politicians. So you're probably relatively one of the most grounded people I've ever spoken to on this show. Probably.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Thank you.

[Michael]

I don't. Not to damn with faint praise, politicians can get a little out there. But you truly. I mean, you seem so grounded. How is that? How do you reconcile the fact that you can go from talking about spitting out snails to this obvious ballast and grounding?

[Father Dan Rehill]

In reality, my day starts different than most people's. I get up at 4:30, I'm in the church by 20 to 6. I have two hours before the Blessed Sacrament, hear confessions, celebrate Mass, and then I start my day. And that's what keeps me grounded. And that's why I get up that hour, because nobody is Going to call me at that hour and say, I need you to come and do this, that, and the other thing. So you protect your morning. You pray. You pray for the people you're supposed to be praying for. I pray for the whole world every day. I pray for by name, Pope Francis every day. There's a list of people you know, and if you're fighting Jesus Christ or our church, you're on my list. So AOC has been prayed for most recently when she said she was triggered by the super bowl ads about Jesus, I said, well, I'm going to have to pray for her, because the only one that gets triggered by Jesus is Satan. So that would be a problem for.

[Michael]

AOC on the subject of politics, it's hard to look at the political scene and not think that they're could be some demonic activity, especially when it comes to an issue that's very hot, transgenderism. And I'm sure there are all sorts of mental problems that are involved there. But I can't help but think when someone comes up and we've all seen these videos of someone saying, hey, no longer call me she or her. I am now they. I am now multiple people. There was a video of a young woman who said, I have headmates, and my headmates are insisting that I go through a surgery so I look more like a man. And I don't want to. I love my body, but my headmates insist that I do that. And I listen to that. Even Sam Smith, the singer who danced around like the devil, who said, I'm they and them now, I think, well, I guess your legion for you are many. Is this just demons?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Demons are influencing at the very least. Again, I can't diagnose somebody without meeting them and talking to them. But I'll tell you this. It's a mockery of God for sure, because God said, let us make man in our image. He's the only one that gets to use a plural for his personhood. Okay? Everybody else doesn't get to do that, even legion. It was because they were many of them, not because one was many. And then what else did it say? He made them male and female. Only God assigns gender. So this is man trying to become God. This is the same story in Genesis 3 over and over and over. You know, it was pleasing to the eye and looked appealing. And so they went for it. They wanted to be like God. This is the same thing. When you think you can assign gender, when you think you can terminate life, when you think you can start life. That's not your role. That's God's role. So this is the greatest affront to attack and blaspheme God that we've ever seen in the history of the world. And when people say these things, you know, this pronoun thing, I think they believe it. Not all of them, but I think many of them actually believe what they're saying. But it doesn't make it true. It means they're very lost. They're very deceived, perhaps. And I feel badly for them. I don't hate them. I feel like, my gosh, how awful would it be to think you're in the wrong body? It would be terrible. But I want them to be set free. Now, I'll tell you an interesting story. When I was a hermit, my superior was the exorcist of Omaha, and we had a deliverance ministry and exorcism ministry. It was sort of like the last call when you had a problem with the devil if your exorcist couldn't get them out. We had people flying in from all over the world that would stay with us, some for a week. That one little nun that crawled the wall, she was there for over a year. Took a year. She was satanically, ritually abused as a baby, and she didn't know it. And so that had to all come out. That's another time. So while we're there, before.

[Michael]

Before you move on.

[Father Dan Rehill]

No, no, no.

[Michael]

Okay. All right, I'll ask you about it after.

[Father Dan Rehill]

So this man who thinks he's a woman comes. This is long before I was there from 2005 to 2010. So think about that. This is really. This is back when gay was the big thing, not transgender. And the mother of this young man said he wanted her approval, and she said, I can't approve of this, but if you go on a retreat to this group and you really go on the retreat for the purpose of opening your heart to God, if you come back and say you still want to be a woman, I will bless it. So he comes. So this is an intense program. So he's there for eight days, three times a day, he gets prayed with a group of men over him. And we're releasing images of what we see about how God loves him. And we take. There's another group discerning on the side who are lifting him up and asking God to show us how to pray for him. And then he's coming to mass. And it's intense. Right? Every day. We're not getting a lot of breakthroughs. In the beginning and then one of the discernment teams finally said, lord, is there something we're missing? And the whole team got images of the father. And we're like, we don't know much about who's the father, because he had a father. So one of the nuns says to the exes, can we have permission to call his mother who sent him here? So, sure, go call her. So they call her, what's the deal with the father? And she starts crying. She goes, I never wanted him to know, but I got pregnant before I got married to what he thinks is his father, but that's not his father. And then she got pregnant by the new the man who was married to her. And it was a daughter. And he did favor the daughter because it was his. And subconsciously, this little boy learned, if I want to be loved by my dad, I have to be a girl. But he didn't know this. It was all, like, subconscious. And so when we finally learned this and then started praying against this spirits of diversity and division and all these things, we took him through him being created by God in a meditation, okay? And now God's looking upon you, and out of his love, he's creating you. And he creates your little heart, and it begins to beat. And he creates your little feet and your hands, your legs, and then he creates your genitals as a boy. And the demon went insane, screaming these screeches from hell like you could never hear coming from a human. And that was the signal. Like, this is. We got it. This is it. We went back in, took authority over that spirit, threw that out, went back to the creation story, worked through the whole thing, got up to the genitals. He received it, he embraced it, went through the rest of his body, finished with a closing prayer of gratitude, prayed a prayer of protection over him. He went home loving being a man, and he eventually got married to a woman.

[Michael]

The way you describe it. And I want to get back to the nun crawling up the wall, because that's very interesting. The way you describe it is like an exterminator going into a basement and clearing out cockroaches. The way you're just very methodical. Okay, we're here, and these guys are doing this, and I'm doing this. And then we go through this, and that wasn't catching and not this. And. Okay. And then we kind of identified a problem here. Then we investigated it on the phone, and then we figure, okay, so then we had to go back in with this spiritual chemical and go in with this spiritual tool. And then we cleaned it out, went back just to make sure it was all cleared out, and then we're all good to go.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah. It's not a science. It's not. There's. It's sort of like firemen who work with fire. There's principles you can guarantee will always be the same, but you can't guarantee the way the fire is going to go in particular every single time. And that's because the person is individual and their own life experience brings that to the table, which is different from the last guy we just worked with. So you do have to. This is the best way to approach anything with God, is, I am your child. I'm here to serve you and help you with this person. But you gotta show me what to do. Isn't that kind of what Our lady said? I'm available, but I can't do that. So let it be done according to your word. You brought this person here for help. Show us what to do and we'll do it right. And that works very well.

[Michael]

Is this a job that you wanted? Obviously being a Catholic priest is being an exorcist?

[Father Dan Rehill]

No, not in particular. I didn't want to be a priest. I didn't want to be in the church. I mean, come on, who could make this up, right? No. And generally, if you want to be the exorcist, that's a pretty good sign that you should be. Because if you're fascinated by the devil, that's not a good thing. He's to be respected in the fact that he's more powerful than I am. And it's only by God's power that I do what I do. Nothing is from me. I am just the conduit that he works through. And I tend to be probably, in a bad way, fearless, which is helpful with this ministry. I don't get afraid because I really. If you want me to do it, I'm going to do it. But you have to protect, protect me. And I can't imagine why you'd let him hurt me. Although one, I did have a woman who literally was on the floor like a snake. And I had my little handler next to me to protect me. And we're in a chapel in front of the Blessed Sacraments in the tabernacle, doing the prayers, and she flew off the floor in one movement. It wasn't like she got up and she took my stole and wrapped it around my neck and started choking me. And it was a choke that was blocking my air. And I kept looking at my friend here And I'm like, do something. He's like, no. And I finally said, in the name of Jesus, stop. And she fell on the floor again. But that's the only time I've been attacked.

[Michael]

It's also worth mentioning you're a pretty big guy. I mean, the idea that some smaller woman would be able to actually choke you seems implausible to me.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well, flying off the floor seems implausible to me.

[Michael]

Flying off the floor also seems so.

[Father Dan Rehill]

When I saw that, I'm like, this is not good.

[Michael]

Speaking of the other woman that you alluded to before, the nun, you said she was satanically, ritually abused as a kid. This is the sort of thing, when that phrase comes up, the really respectable liberal people will tell you, oh, that's a ridiculous conspiracy theory. That doesn't happen. Get off your tinfoil hat. There's no satanic ritual abuse that goes on. And yet it does.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Oh, yes. Why would they have reason to say that? How can you disprove something just because you haven't seen it? That's not logical.

[Michael]

This is the part that a lot of people who are a little more secular or skeptical of all these, this is the part that they often get hung up on. It's not that someone would sexually abuse somebody else. It's not that someone would beat somebody else. It's not that someone would murder somebody else. It's that they would do it in a satanic ritual. That's the part that seems so absurd. If this is just a material world and we're all just bags of chemicals, why would people engage in satanic ritual abuse? And what even is that?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Okay, so satanic ritual abuse is when usually it's a family member, like a parent or a grandparent. Usually it's not the parent, but a grandparent, a relative who takes the child and performs a ritual abuse, like a rape on a baby, which involves blood, and they consecrate the child to the devil. Why would you do that? Because it gives them great power. Devil asks for payment. What are you going to give me? I want one of the kids. And so they do. And they don't have to actually murder them. Although sometimes there are SRA victims who are killed. Halloween is the number one time of year for the most human sacrifice to the devil on the planet. People go, that's ridiculous. Halloween's just about candy. It's not. In fact, in New York City, Father Labar was telling me that it's the number one week leading up to Halloween where the most homeless go missing. There's these unmarked vans that come around and offer to take them to shelters and get meals for them. And they just bind them and they keep them and they satanically sacrifice them on Halloween.

[Michael]

Who does this?

[Father Dan Rehill]

These are people in occults, you know, they keep hidden. I mean, obviously if they were mainstream, that would be a bigger problem. But if that day comes, you know, then I'm going underground. But they're out there and, you know, when I went off to exorcism training in Rome, the things. These are seasoned exorcists that have been doing this for 20, 30 years that come in to teach what they've learned and what they've experienced. One of the most interesting things was a case of a doctor, medical doctor in Rome who was invited to go to a party. And they said, there's a way you can triple your income like that. Just come to this party. He's like, okay, goes, very normal party, very bougie, high end, drinks are flowing, heavy hors d'oeuvres, beautiful setting. And then all of a sudden all these people come out with the black robes and hoods and this weird ritual begins. There was something done to a child, but it wasn't murdered, but it was foul. And he was a bit horrified. And then they came over to him and said, we understand that you're interested in increasing your income. He goes, well, I don't know about any of this.

[Michael]

Yeah, I just wanted a, like a get rich.

[Father Dan Rehill]

They were like, you know, like, yeah. He's like, well, we're not going to ask you to do that. Well, you can just give us one of your children. He goes, what do you mean give me one of my children? They go, just spiritually, not physically. And so he says, well, then you can have my daughter. I don't know, you look at me like that because I have the same mentality who would do this. But for some reason he just had the influence over him that he would do it within 24 hours. The daughter starts having nightmares, then night terrors, then she's suicidal. And the father knows what's going on. So he finally tells the wife. And the wife is, you know, as you can imagine, she's through the roof. So she calls the bishop, gets the Exodus involved. The Exodus says this is a high powered group running around Rome, that this is not the first case we've heard of, but they're not going to let you out. So we can do the exorcism of your daughter, but then you have to leave Rome. And he packed up and moved to South Italy. Because he was frightened from these people when he saw what they did. So you don't have to believe it, but that doesn't mean it's not real.

[Michael]

Right. And when you see these sorts of symbols all over the place in your face from Hollywood or wherever else, you have to think, okay, well, the symbols mean something. Someone's making. Some producer is making the choice to put this symbol out there. People are engaging in these things. Even the videos that come out of all these weird secret societies where, you know, one of them, they're worshiping a big owl statue or they're the Bohemians. The Bohemian. Yeah, the Bohemian Grove. Or the. You see these. I know of certain rituals, you know, from secret societies at my own alma mater, where. And everyone thinks they're just kind of fun. And, you know, okay, you get into a coffin or something like that, and probably the people doing it just think it's kind of a fun thing. But it is, but you are doing it. It is a ritual. Even if you think it's just a silly little act to go worship an owl in the woods, why are you doing it? Doesn't have some meaning.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yes. And because we're corporal beings. We have bodies. What we do matters. What we do matters. And a lot of people think, well, I didn't mean anything by it. Well, that doesn't matter. When I do this, the Lord knows I'm invoking the Trinity. Now, if a pagan does that, are they invoking the Trinity? No, but it probably still gets the Lord's attention. Oh, look, there's somebody making the sign of the cross. But they don't know us. Maybe we'll go visit them. The devil does the same thing. A lot of the ritual things people do, a lot of the yoga movements were originally tied to spiritual entities. And so when you make the movement, even though you're not thinking, I'm inviting this thing in, maybe you are. So I tell people, be intentional with what you do and do the things you desire to do and don't do the things you don't mean to do. Because what a horrible thing to go through life not knowing that all the things we do actually have an impact in the spiritual climate. When I sin, even if it's a personal sin, pornography, it has effects on other people. This we saw in religious life. Because when you live in a house with nine guys, when one guy falls and commits a sin against lust, that spirit goes through the whole house. And the next morning everybody comes down to Bregmore's like, so who's the Idiot.

[Michael]

Who really?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can feel it. Because then you're all attacked and then if you're honest with each other, as usually religious are, it's like something's in the house. Did anybody get attacked? Oh, yes. I did too. I did too. And then. I'm sorry, that was probably my fault.

[Michael]

When we're talking about these groups you mentioned, the bohemians or all these weird kind of cult things, it's often powerful people who were associated with them. All the stories about the Freemasons. And then you think, well, it says right there in the Gospel that the devil is the prince of this world, and there are principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places. So not to get too far down the rabbit hole, but I've been convinced over the last three years that the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is about six to nine months. Is that stuff just all true?

[Father Dan Rehill]

What stuff do you speak of?

[Michael]

These weird societies that have weird black hoods that show up at these cocktail parties in Rome with the canape and the champagne. That they actually exist and powerful people are parts of. They do exist and they believe it.

[Father Dan Rehill]

I believe the elite are part of it. Would I say every rich person is involved? No. Like there's the St. Edwards out there. But I think at a certain level, you get invited in just like that Dr. Right. And he's certainly not at that level, but there is a story I came upon about a year ago of a Swiss banker at the highest level of banking. So we're talking global banking of billions and billions and billions of dollars. And he was also brought into this whole group where they were doing human sacrifice. And he knew he was going to have to do it at some point. And so he went to a journalist and recorded everything. And he said in his. Basically his story of what was going on, I don't expect to be alive in a week, but this has to be told. And three days later, he was found face down in a bog, dead. And when that happens and somebody has the nerve to step up, you don't risk your life with something that's not true. Right?

[Michael]

This is my friends who are skeptical of Christianity. They'll say, well, maybe it's just all a legend. Maybe it's all kind of made up. And I thought, well, 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection and the Gospels were written, earliest gospels written within just a few decades of the resurrection. And putting all of that Aside, why would 11 of these guys go off to their deaths? St. John goes and lives A long life. But the rest all go off to their deaths all around the world for a lie or something that was fatal.

[Father Dan Rehill]

It wouldn't.

[Michael]

It wouldn't.

[Father Dan Rehill]

It wouldn't. On top of the fact that if you looked at the church as a corporation in the world of commerce and industry, it is only by the grace of God that something run inept for so long could be still thriving, you know, given all the bad periods and the mismanagement of things. And I'm not mocking the church like it just had such terrible missteps and it still goes forward because Jesus is the head and only by that does the church continue. But if it was left just to men, it would be over.

[Michael]

Hilarious. Didn't he say? The way that he. He has to take the church's divine institution on faith, but a mark of it for the unbelievers is that no other institution governed with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.

[Father Dan Rehill]

True, true.

[Michael]

So getting back all the way to the first thing we were talking about, the people who say, look, Father, you seem like a reasonable guy, but you're getting off in some crazy things that I don't even think exist. I don't believe that there is such a thing as evil. Evil certainly doesn't have a personality. How can you believe that some things are better than other things? How can you believe that it's better to bake a pie for a widow than it is to kick a baby in the head? Which I think probably most people would agree to and not extrapolate from that, that there is such a thing as good and there is such a thing as evil. The modern world somehow can't go from something we all agree on to, okay, good and evil actually do exist. How do you make sense of that?

[Father Dan Rehill]

I think it's so clear. I don't understand. Somebody says that again, if you're talking about non believers, different category. But if you're.

[Michael]

That is question. I am talking about non believers.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah, well, if you can't see good and evil in this world, I think you're blind. I mean, how could you look at the news and not see good and evil? Mostly evil. They don't put the good on. I mean, really. So if someone pushed you on the train tracks to kill you, that would be okay? There's not evil there? I mean, I think it usually hits people when it's them. Right. So we just saw. Who was it? It was one of the congresswoman who was pro defunding the police, but then she was Just involved in a mugging and now she's, we need the police. Guess why? Because it actually affected her.

[Michael]

Right.

[Father Dan Rehill]

So when it comes to your door, then they believe. So maybe that's the, you know, that was a prayer of St. Paul. Let us cast his flesh to the devil so his soul might be saved. It's a harsh way to treat somebody, but it'd be better to come to reality than to before death, then lose eternal life.

[Michael]

Well, in recent decades, the Catholic teaching on the death penalty has become a little more ambiguous, I guess, because for most of the history of the Church, capital punishment was not only accepted as being perfectly fine, doctors of the Church assented to it. In fact, popes, including Blessed Pius ix, carried out executions and refused to grant clemency in some cases. I think it was one of the final, if not the final execution in the Papal States. Blessed Pope Pius IX was asked for a reprieve, and he said, I cannot do it and I do not want to. And the guy was executed in the Papal States. But now we're told no, this is a horrible thing, and if not intrinsically evil, it's impermissible in all of these cases, I think. Can't it be an act of compassion not only to society, to protect society from a.

[Father Dan Rehill]

It is. And here's the problem with our Holy Father for this situation. He's thinking, and maybe rightly so, that we live in a time of civilization where there is no reason why we can't segregate mass murderers from the rest of the population, because clearly we can build prisons that way. Right? We can, but that doesn't address the indigenous peoples living in the jungle. How are they supposed to put those people in a. In a tree house?

[Michael]

Right.

[Father Dan Rehill]

No, they're going to get out. And he's not probably thinking about that. But even worse, let's say, God forbid, there's electromagnetic pulse goes off over America and all this goes away. No electricity, no lights. The prisons now can't house people privately. That's when that would kick in again. But you can't just take it away because in one state and time it doesn't make sense, because if you don't need to use it, you don't use it. Right? So just because we have the ability to keep people in prison separately and we're not going to perhaps do that, then you don't just take it off the table, because next week, what if we have to use it because we've had the worst devastation in the country? What if they do drop a bomb on A country, and that country is obliterated. And they have mass rovings of gangs raping and murdering people. You have to do something for the general population. And if the only way to protect the innocent is to kill the ones doing the murdering, then that has to be done. Of course, because they're not innocent. Murder is the taking of innocent life. That's the definition, right? Well, the ones being murdered in their homes by the pillagers are the innocent they're killing. That makes them not innocent.

[Michael]

I especially think of the state of our civilization. We seem to be trending in a pretty bad direction. So as you say, there's a fair chance that in the not so distant future we're not quite so able to segregate all the mass murders. And I even think, I can't help.

[Father Dan Rehill]

But they can't even protect people in.

[Michael]

Chicago, Washington, San Francisco.

[Father Dan Rehill]

I don't. You know, come on. At what point? That has to be. I'm not going to go there. That has to be fixed in other ways. But you can see how this is a devolvement of society is happening.

[Michael]

I also can't help but notice, Father, and we've cut around it a couple of times. Every time we're getting into a topic, there has been some weird sound that goes off in this building. Maybe it's just the degradation of society that we can't even keep the buildings and the studios running anymore. But I've done a lot of these interviews, Father, and I don't want to make you feel bad and make you think it's just you, but you come in here. We've had to pause, pause and stop and cut and restart this interview almost every seven to 10 minutes. And then only when I said, okay, well, let's just include it and I'll mention it. And I'll mention these weird situations in the film. Only once I said that we haven't had a problem since. I'm not saying it's you, Father.

[Father Dan Rehill]

It could be.

[Michael]

I think it might be you.

[Father Dan Rehill]

I think it's me, too. This happens to me. My whole life is like this now. So part of my life is just surrendering and saying, lord, you get done what you want done, and I'll just take authority when I have to.

[Michael]

I'm not surprised. I think of Father John Vianney. Saint John Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, who the devil would bother him all the time.

[Father Dan Rehill]

And Pio, too.

[Michael]

And Padre Pio. There's a story of St. John Vianney in the confessional. He's hearing from a penitent, and the church starts shaking or something flies across the room, some crazy. The Penitent's terrified, and St. John Vianney says, oh, don't worry about that. That's just the devil. Don't worry. St. John Vianney's bed catches fire. He says, oh, no, that's just the stupid little grapin he called it. Just ignore him.

[Father Dan Rehill]

You know what he said? He said he couldn't catch the bird, so he burned the birdcage.

[Michael]

It seems like some similar things might happen if one were an exorcist.

[Father Dan Rehill]

There's a lot of harassment because we're. I'm directly stepping on his tail in a way most people can't. So, yeah, there's pushback, but there's also protections against him, too. So I have a profound love of Our lady because she's the one who will crush the serpent's head, and that will give him tremendous scandal. It's one thing to be crushed by God, because everybody knows God is God, but to be crushed by a diminutive.

[Michael]

Little Jewish woman, a nice Jewish mother.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Oh, my goodness, the scandal and the humiliation that he will suffer.

[Michael]

You've mentioned Our Lady a few times. Rightly so. I notice a number of our Protestant viewers, they'll say, michael, I love everything you're saying about Jesus. I'm totally on board, but I just can't get into the Mary stuff. I just don't get it. Why do you guys care so much about Mary? And even when I reverted, I had trouble with all the merry aspects of Catholicism for a long time. If not trouble, at least it was confusing to me.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Okay, well, let's say somebody gets to meet you and they find out you're a great guy and they like you, and you start hanging out and going to dinner, and they love everything you think and say and do. They like your show, your ideals. And then you invite this person home and say, I want you to meet my mom. This is the person I love most in the world because she made me, and she's my mom. She's my mom, and everything I have, I get tribute to her. How could you not want to meet this woman? It's the person you're most maybe after God the Father would be most in love with. If you think it on those terms, this is the person Jesus loved most on the planet. And if you really love him, wouldn't you want to know her? She's not God, but he's given her great authority and power and the ability to distribute grace through her hands because of his love for her. And the only thing she does is lead people back to him. If they came to know that they would be running to her. Because the fastest way to get close to Jesus is to go through his mother. Because he designed it that way, not because it. It has to be. He wanted it to be. This is the way he came to meet us, through her. And so he wants us to go through her to meet him. Similarly, going back, I think of the.

[Michael]

Wedding at Cana, first public miracle of our Lord. And what happens? They run out of wine. And our lady says, hey, they ran out of wine. Go fix up the wine. And Christ says, well, what is it between you and me, woman? My time has not yet come. And then she says, hey to the steward. Listen to him. That's her role in the miracle, is to say, hey, listen to my son.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah, do whatever he tells you. But if you back up even further, if you read the way that was written, it was very carefully written. It says, Mary was invited to the wedding and also Jesus. So she's the primary guest. She knew the family. He was the add on because he was the. He was a child.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Even though he's grown. And so that was a point made about that. She was the real guest that knew the family the most. And Jesus came too, but it's through. So I always tell people, when you get married, invite. Of course, Jesus is third person in marriage, but invite his mother in too, you know, because look what she did. And when you look at that miracle, the maitre d is the one who tastes the wine, but he has no idea where it came from. It was the little humble servants when he said, fill up these stone jars. It says they filled them to the brim. You know how much a stone jar would weigh that holds 30 gallons would weigh a lot. And so that I would be like, maybe he doesn't need the whole thing for. Maybe we'll just fill it halfway. No, they filled it to the brim. They were obedient, and they were the ones privy to the miracle. So if you want to be. If you want to view miracles, if you want to see miracles in your life, get a front row seat by being humble and obedient. And you'll always have that front row seat.

[Michael]

I can't help but notice we came here to talk about demons. We're spending most of our time talking about God. I guess that's the way it should be.

[Father Dan Rehill]

It's the way it should be.

[Michael]

CS Lewis made some point about this, maybe in Screwtape, I forget where. He said, you have to think about demons enough to know that they exist and to watch out for them. But you shouldn't think about them very much.

[Father Dan Rehill]

You shouldn't. You have to be aware of them. You have to know how to deal with them, which most people don't. What authority you have as a child of God. And you have authority. You have authority over your own person. You have authority over your wife, you have authority over your children. And you can cast things out if they're harassing them. But curiosity is not a virtue. And if you start digging into the occult and the dark world and things like that, you're opening a door and you might not be strong enough to close it. And then you've invited something into your life that you don't want. And then you have to call me.

[Michael]

Someone wrote into my show, said, michael, if you could meet the devil. Said, I don't know, I probably have met the devil a few times.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Don't wish I met him twice.

[Michael]

You've met him twice? Personally, how'd that go?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Not well the first time, because I wasn't even a seminarian. I was discerning. I just came out of my life of sin. I joined Our lady of Victory, like I mentioned, and this little old Polish priest who became my spiritual director. And I remember one day I went in and I said, you know, this job is killing me because, well, it was a sales position. I was entertaining big shots at all fancy restaurants every night, drinking, drinking, drinking. I said, I can't balance this with trying to live this new life. It's not working. So he said to me, well, let's do this, why don't you? For the next month, you can go call ahead or go to the meet to the restaurant early and tell the bartender when you order a drink that if would be just club soda, no vodka, but you would order it publicly. And then they won't know. I said I could do that. So he said, no alcohol for a month. So it's the middle of the day, it's like noon. I come out of the church and there's this again, this beautiful, handsome man, custom tailored suit. He's staring at me. Which, if you've ever lived in New York, you don't stare at people.

[Michael]

It's pretty unusual.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Very. Like you put your. You don't. It's almost an attack. Like I'm being attacked now I have to fight. And I just was like, weird. So I turn to walk towards my office and he runs up next to me and he grabs me by the arm again. No guys do that. No guy grabs somebody by the arm and is like escorting them. And he goes, let's get a drink. And I just had chills go up and down my body. And I said, get away from me. And then I turned direction and went towards my apartment because it was closer. And I got to my apartment and I walked through the doors and the doors closed behind me. And I looked out and he was just laughing at me. And it was like. So he leaves and I run back to the church. I go, father, let me tell you what just happened. What do you think happened here? What is this? He goes, I told you, you're going to have a target on your back, so you got to be careful. And I said, was that who I think it was? And he goes, sounds like it certainly seems that way. I mean, that was just no random person for sure. And that really. It frightened me, to be honest. I was like, I didn't sign up for this at all. And then a few years later, I was on a vacation visiting an old banker friend down in Miami. And she set up a whole luncheon at this place called Nikki beach, which really isn't appropriate for seminarians or priests. It's very. Again, it's the glitterati, the high powered, wealthy people. It's bottle service on the beach. And I'm just like, oh, this is. I don't know how I feel about this. And the two girls to my right, I knew both of Sandra was hosting, and my ex boss, Christine was with me. And they start looking at this guy across over by the other end of the deck like, oh, my God, look at that guy. He's so handsome. My God, he's beautiful. And all of a sudden Sandra's like, oh, he's coming over here. And I turn and I look and it's him. It's the one that wanted to get the drink, only now he's like shirtless in a bathing suit. And he walks up and he goes, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to be a priest. And he goes, this is my territory. You shouldn't be here. And both the girls got flipped out. They were like, they had the scare mechanism.

[Michael]

Like the face that I'm making right now.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah, literally, like danger Will Robinson. And Christine's like, get the check. And she threw money down. She's like, we're out of here. And we left. But like, when those things happen, God allowed it, right? So for me, I felt like I wasn't supposed to be there. And God was letting me know, you have no place going to places like that anymore. Don't do that again.

[Michael]

Right. The devil, whether he wants to be or not, can be a tool of power. Absolutely. He's not more powerful than God. He's nowhere near as powerful as God. And his own will be foiled in God's providence, ultimately. And the fact that you had these friends there who saw it, who reacted that way, who can attest to it. It wasn't just. You had a daydream or something? Something.

[Father Dan Rehill]

No. They were visibly shaken. And to this day they talk about it. And they get spooked just talking about it.

[Michael]

I don't know when I say maybe I've met the devil, I mean, I've engaged in all sorts of sins. I don't know that I've ever actually met the devil, but I'm pretty convinced I've met angels. I'm quite convinced of that also in New York. New York is a spiritually rich place, I guess. But improbable kinds of meetings. Again, in New York, strangers don't come up to you. They don't look at you. They don't striking up conversations in the strangest of places. I mean, I sometimes fear when I tell these stories that it's like when you wake up and you tell your wife about the dream you just had and she goes back to sleep before you get the first sentence out because it's so boring. It's very interesting to the people who have the experiences. But unless they're as shocking as you were too, with the old devil. But when those experiences happen, you meet someone, strike up a conversation. There was one guy. All right, I'll get into it. There was one guy. I was really down in the dumps. I was working in politics and show business, as I guess I still am. But, you know, I was just right out of college, I was back in this reversion moment. It was really spiritually rich. There was a lot of temptation and sin and there was a lot of shocking grace and kind of numinous experience. But I was kind of down in the dumps because I'm not doing great in my career. I just got out of school. I went from being the big man on campus to being some nobody guy in New York. And I'm on the subway on the sixth train and I forget exactly which direction it was, but it was either I got on or either this happened at 28th street going uptown or 33rd street going downtown, okay? And I'm on The train and this kind of funny looking black guy and this lady walk onto the train and they're clearly together. They go, you know, she's standing over here. And then this guy sits down right next to me and I'm just trying to read my Kindle. Just looking at me, just looking at me, says, hey, who are you? He's like, huh? Oh, I'm Michael. He was like, oh, my name's Michael, too.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Oh, we're angels.

[Michael]

I said I had just come back into believing in God and the church and everything. I said, oh, yeah, how about that? He goes, so what do you do? I said, oh, you know, I work in politics and show business. So, you know, essentially unemployed. You know, that's not the. I said, I'm not doing very much. Don't worry about that. You'll be great. Train comes to a stop, he stands up, walks off the train, doesn't even look at the woman he walked on the train with. And the thing that's so weird about this, and you will know this as a New Yorker, is on that train. 28th street to 33rd Street. It's five blocks. Nobody in New York is going to take the subway to go from 28th street to 33rd street or 33rd street to 28th Street. Nobody's going to take the six would go five blocks, you would take it to go 33rd street to Brooklyn Bridge, you would take it to. But no, that's one of the shortest intervals, maybe the shortest in the New York City subways. No one's doing that. And I thought, look, it's such a minor, trivial, but I can't.

[Father Dan Rehill]

It's a good point, though.

[Michael]

I couldn't explain it. And I thought. And then I just thought, well, what does that mean? What does that mean? What am I supposed to take from that?

[Father Dan Rehill]

A little support.

[Michael]

That's what I took from it. All I thought was just God saying, hey, I'm here, I'm here. You know, it's just sort of like, hey, buddy, boo. You know?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah. I'll tell you something, though, about people who believe in people who don't believe. I think if you go through life when these little things happen, believing, for the most part, believe everything, right?

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Father Dan Rehill]

What's the harm? Is it going to harm you? No, but it actually makes you live a more uplifted, happy life than somebody who goes through the whole life believing nothing, because that's a horrible way to live, to believe nothing is happening. It's almost like there's two strains of thought about how you interact with the world, especially in New York, you can believe everybody's out to get you, and occasionally somebody's nice, or you can believe everybody's basically nice and occasionally they fail you. It's so much better to live thinking everybody's basically pretty good and one or two people are going to get you and it's okay, I'll deal with it. But to think everybody is out to get you, then every moment of your life is in defense and attack mode. That's no way to live. I know people that their marriages are like that. They're in a marriage where they feel like they're in a battle all the time. And I'm like, you're not going to make it. You can't go that long in that kind of a stressful zone without somebody giving up.

[Michael]

What do you say to people? Many have asked me this too. Say, I want to believe. I think Christianity is good. I think it's good to go to church. I recognize the life I'm living is kind of dissolute and pointless, and I'm somewhat depressed, but I want to believe. I just can't.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Faith is a gift. Ask for the gift. It's that simple. But the biggest blockage to believing is pride. That's really true. Pride is the mother of all sins. And so it would be good to think about all the ways in your life you've blocked God or rejected God or said, I don't believe in you. I don't want you. And then say, lord, I'm going to repent of having this unbelief, even though I don't know you. I'm asking you to come into my heart and reveal yourself to me and make it evident that you're with me and you're here. And he wants you to know him more than you do. So if you make that effort, he will do it. And suddenly you'll find yourself looking at the world through a whole different lens, like, wow. And you'll start seeing these little connections like, you're seeing. Like, I don't know if it'll be a man saying he's Michael and Angel, but could happen, right? Because we're living in the most disobedient age, I think, in history with regard to rejecting God. It's at a level probably never seen. And the Scriptures tell us that when sin abounds, grace superabounds. So if you stop and say, I don't believe in God, but I want to, I just don't. And then you turn to God and say, as an act of faith. I'm reaching out to you to say if you're there, please let me know you're real. And heaven's going to move a big spigot of grace over your head and you're going to get pummeled by Niagara Falls and you're going to come out of it going I do believe in God and that's the first step. You have to take the step.

[Michael]

The pride was certainly a big part of what got me because I fell away when I was 13 and it was, there was the sex abuse scandal didn't help. There was the weak catechesis and the kind of felt banners, hippie dippy stuff that was not great for a teenage boy. But it was the new atheists, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, they going back and revisiting their arguments now I think, wow, those are perfect arguments for a 13 year old boy. They're not good arguments to convince someone who's in any way educated but they really do appeal to a precocious 13 year old boy. And actually my path back into the church was in a way another kind of appeal. It was inverting that appeal to pride because I used to think all the smart people were atheists and then I came to realize pretty much all the smart people were Christians or theistic. They believed that God. Throughout history, just statistically 100% of smart people have believed that God exists. And that helped me get back in. I think that's a big stumbling block for a lot of people today. They just feel that religion is for stupid people.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Well that's what they will tell you, the communists, I mean that was the whole argument. It's the religion of the masses and that's the first thing they do away with to control the people, get rid of the religion or they think they get rid of it by shutting it down. But I think people in general underestimate the immensity of God in his intelligence, in his power, in his everything. We tend to sort of put him on our level thinking we can outsmart him. I mean even a communist government thinking if we just shut down the churches God will go away. Really? Do you know who this is? Do you know he made everything, even the whole universe. But you closed a church and now he's just going to pack up and go home.

[Michael]

Oh no, we were beaten by the Sandinistas or whatever.

[Father Dan Rehill]

It's kind of funny when you think about it but it's the same with an individual to think that part of the problem is they might have such an image of themselves that isn't that great. Why would God make me? And then I don't even know who he is. Because, of course, the enemy is always whispering in your ear, there's no God. If there was, wouldn't he love you and take care of you? And so they start believing that tape that gets played. It's only when you start breaking open the scripture and asking it to come into your heart that things start changing and changing quickly. Like, pretty quick. I think, again, this day and age when I feel a very great urgency for people to come back to God because I feel like we're on the very edge of an abyss, that something's coming. And I feel like just with everything that's going on in the natural world, but also in the supernatural world, that we're on the verge of something big. So my Lenten homily was going to Lent thinking it's your last Lent, and treat it that way. Do everything the best and the most. Don't cheat it going, wanting to come out a saint at Easter because it might be your last. And I preached that. And then the next day, I got sent a message from one of the mystics in. I think she's in South America, and it was Our Lady. Now, I'm not saying this is. I'm not saying this was a true. But the fact that this came to me unsolicited and nobody knew what I had said because this was just a generated email from a. You know, it's not from a person, it's from the website. And she said, make treat this Lent as though it's your last. I said, oh, okay. And that doesn't mean it's going to be. But we do things differently when we think it's the last time.

[Michael]

Right. It's different than saying this will be. This will be your last lent. It's on May 4th. That's when didn't say that. Right. But someone's going to live in the end times. People will ask, but there will be.

[Father Dan Rehill]

400,000 people die every day. Half in the womb, half out of the womb. In fact, more in the womb than outside the womb. Did you know that?

[Michael]

I knew that in certain places.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Globally.

[Michael]

Globally. More people die inside the womb every day.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Everybody who dies outside the womb, heart attack, cancer, AIDS, accidents, natural causes, murder. That's about 250. No, 175,000 or so a day. And then 200,000 a day in the womb, more. So more people die in the Mormon than outside the womb. Imagine how that is. Imagine how heaven looks on that.

[Michael]

We read accounts of human sacrifice, baby sacrifice in the Bible, the Hittites or whatever, and you see it in some of the indigenous populations before Columbus arrived, practicing all sorts of human sacrifice. We look back, we say, that's savage. That's barbaric. We are practicing human. Human sacrifice on a far greater scale than any other historical epoch. Not even close.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Yeah. And just to touch back on some of the occult stuff, there are witches who go on record saying they'll pay for abortions if they can be present for the abortion. Okay, why do they do that? Because they're making. Since they paid for it, they're making the sacrifice to the devil. This is documented. This is real cases of women who said the woman can't see she wanted to pay for the abortion, and turns out they looked them up when they're a practicing witch. The other thing going back, I'm just tying up loose ends here. So when we talked about the transgender, I don't know if you know this, but one of the ancient images of Satan is Baphomet. Okay, what is Baphomet? So he's got the goat head, he's got the women's torso with the breasts, and the man's down below. So that's not a new thing. So imagine the devil. He identifies as transgender as that image.

[Michael]

I made this point the other day on the show, not explicitly or directly with regard to Baphomet, but I just said, isn't it odd that depictions of demons tend toward androgyny, transgenderism, this kind of hatred of the human body as it is actually made?

[Father Dan Rehill]

They hate us.

[Michael]

They hate us, but why do they hate our sex? Why do they hate our sexual complementarity and difference?

[Father Dan Rehill]

That's a great question. The only way man participates in creation is through the marital embrace. We can't create anything. We can build, but we can't create. But when we come together and make a baby, man actually participates with God in creation. The demons can't do that. They can't create.

[Michael]

They don't have bodies.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Can't create. So the fact that's one. The second is that the word incarnated in human flesh drives them crazy because it elevated humans above them, because now this divine person has a human body. That's the two reasons they hate us.

[Michael]

So we're talking about physical things. I know a lot of people are going to say, look, I have faith. I believe that evil exists and demons and the devil and God and the saints and the angels. Maybe not the saints, they would say. But I believe in pretty much all of it. But why do I need holy water? Why do I need to go through some ritual? Why do I need some priest to confer some sacrament or blessing on me?

[Father Dan Rehill]

Why do.

[Michael]

Why do I need all this stuff? Why do I need a rosary? Why do I need all the stuff that you Catholics have? Why can't I just think it?

[Father Dan Rehill]

You don't need it. You don't. But it's like you're going into a battle and you can take no weapons or you can take every weapon available. Yeah, I'm taking every weapon available. Why not? I want the shield. I want the sword. You're saying I'll pass on everything? Okay, good luck. Now. Do you need these things to get to heaven? You don't. But I just had a conversation with a priest in this diocese who is over a lot of the education, and he's realizing that the devotional aspect of our faith is the part that captures the heart. The sacraments have all the power. But frequently people don't connect emotionally to the sacraments. It's just the fact of life. But they get very emotional when we talk about devotion to the Sacred Heart, devotion to the Immaculate Heart, to all the great devotions of the church, the rosary, when we're meditating on the life of Christ through the eyes of his mother. And then. And it draws people deeper in love with the Trinity and Jesus's parents and his best friends, the saints and the angels. Now you don't believe. Somebody says they don't believe in saints. Do you believe people go to heaven? Yes. What do you think we call people in heaven? Saints. So you do believe in them, do you? When you get diagnosed with cancer, do you call your friends and say, please pray for me? Yes. Well, why wouldn't you ask your brothers and sisters in heaven to pray for you? They actually have access to the throne, so it makes no sense.

[Michael]

Right. But if I would ask Joe down the street to pray for my wife, Joe is just some schmuck. Certainly I would ask the only people that we know are in the presence of our Lord to pray for my.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Wife, the Mother of God, do you think she has any influence?

[Michael]

And the physicality of it, I guess that's something I keep coming back to. And it's probably what's most jarring for people about the idea of an exorcism is that some person is levitating and some person is spitting something out, and some things are happening on people's bodies. It's Almost as if people can totally get that there is a spiritual thing and they can totally get that there's a physical thing. But it's very hard to believe that they intersect or interact with one another.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Okay, but I mean, they do. I don't know what to say to that.

[Michael]

Facts don't care about your feelings.

[Father Dan Rehill]

I guess it's like, again, the non believer is a whole separate category. But if you're a Christian, you're a Baptist, do you believe the Bible? A third of Jesus time is spent driving out demons. That's no small amount of time. So, like, if you. And this is the word of God. So either you believe it or you don't. You can't pick and choose, right? So, yeah, I believe that. So suddenly the demons all went away when he went to heaven. Have you looked around lately? Does it look like there's no influence of evil?

[Michael]

Antonin Scalia did an interview in New York magazine probably about 10 years ago, maybe more. And he mentioned something about heaven or hell. And the interviewer, a very glib young woman, she said, oh, you believe in hell? He goes, yes. She goes, well, it must be awful scary believing in hell. He leaned in with a theatrical whisper, and he said, you know, I even believe in the devil. And she essentially laughs at him for it. He said, do you realize how out of touch you are with most people, most people who believe in God and believe in the devil? Do you know how out of touch you are with most people threat all of human history? And he said, many more intelligent people then you or me have believed in the devil. She changed the subject.

[Father Dan Rehill]

There was a priest who was a very big impact on my life, who was a theologian, who was frequently on these big panels discussing theology with other theologians. And one of the other theologians had mentioned how he doesn't believe in the devil in his talk. And so then the man I know got up and he said, well, I have to address that right away because this is scriptural first of all. So if you don't believe the Scriptures, I don't know how you ever became a priest. And then went through a few other things and then said, finished his talk, gave his talk done. Afterwards, he went up to the priest and said, I'm going to pray for you in a way that you'll come to believe in the devil. And they were all staying at this retreat house. And that night there were shrieks coming from that priest's room. And when they ran to see what was wrong, he let them in. He said, the devil came tonight and now, I believe. But praise the Lord.

[Michael]

It's like we're filming this. It's one day into Lent, so the second day of Lent right now. And at Easter, we'll say, oh, happy fault that won for us so great, so glorious a redeemer to celebrate even the fall of man. Because with incarnation and atonement, actually, we're living in an even greater world than.

[Father Dan Rehill]

Had there been a people.

[Michael]

Father Rehill, thank you for coming in, and thank you for all that you do.

[Father Dan Rehill]

You're quite welcome. Happy to be here. It's a pleasure.

[Michael]

See you next. It.