Has anyone ever met the exoricst/theologian Fr. Chad Ripperger?

[LastMinute]

I know in recent years, across youtube and other platforms, there’s been a boom of self-described Traditionalist Catholic (whether they are or not, i leave in your hands to decide, as i’ve born witness to a lot of debates surrounding individuals) commentators speaking about every topic you could think of.

Fr. Chad Ripperger, although definitely a traditionalist imho, seems quite measured both in his presentations and his analysis of the current state of the culture of Christianity - at least from what i’ve seen.

The whole exorcist sort of thing throws off my more… i guess you can say modernist Catholic friends, but I was just wondering if anyone on here has had a chance to speak with the man and make their own assessment up close.

 

[MNathaniel]

The whole exorcist sort of thing throws off my more… i guess you can say modernist Catholic friends, but I was just wondering if anyone on here has had a chance to speak with the man and make their own assessment up close.

I have no opinion on a man I’ve never met so I can’t contribute much to whatever discussion you’re looking for, just wanted to say I think it’s strange to frame the potentially-controversial thing about this priest as being his role as an exorcist.

Exorcism is a real thing, regardless of someone’s ‘Church politics’.

My impression is that any controversy over Fr. Ripperger is related to something other than the fact that he (like many many other priests) has been assigned the role of exorcist.

 

[johnz123]

Haven’t met the guy but he seems like a pretty cool guy. He’s definitely very traditionalist and conservative in his beliefs.

 

[MtnDwellar]

It’s one thing to evaluate someone’s public statements and quite another to ask for an assessment based upon personal interactions. Why would you think anonymous people would be qualified to assess a person or even tell the truth?

 

[JSRG]

Mostly what I know about him is that he gave a talk on Harry Potter where he made a bunch of flat-out wrong claims about it. (Trent Horn goes through it here–he starts addressing it midway through after some prefatory material) It’d be one thing if he were to make mistakes because he by his own admission was just going by what other people said, but he presents himself as an authority and then makes various unsubstantiated or false claims. It thus makes me wonder, if he can’t get this kind of stuff right, why I should trust him on anything else.

 

[LastMinute]

hmm… did not know that part.

I’ve heard conflicting things about him. He gets a little flack from a wing of the Church that wouldn’t frequent a place like CAF, and he gets a little flack from certain wings of the Traditionalist camp for things like: → 10 Problems in the Traditional Catholic Movement — Tumblar House Catholic Books

… where he critiques the issues of the Traditionalist movement, not as a person who dislikes Traditional Roman Catholicism, but rather as one who wishes to see it work and has a kind of “with friends like these, who needs enemies” observation.

Then again - not particularly uncommon in religion in general. I’ve seen folks claim to be Traditionalists and fight over the status of SSPX to whether or not the Chaldean Catholic Church (the branch descending from the Assyrian Church of the East) should have ever been let back into Communion with Rome (note: it has to do with the consecration of the Eucharist i believe, they don’t verbalize the words). Same with the other Wing - where Jesus Christ hovers somewhere between Beatnik poet and Proto-Marxist

but he presents himself as an authority and then makes various unsubstantiated or false claims. It thus makes me wonder, if he can’t get this kind of stuff right, why I should trust him on anything else.

And therein lies the sticking point. Thanks for the Trent Horn link. As you can guess, I haven’t quite made up my mind about Fr. Ripperger as of yet, but thanks for contributing.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

My impression is that any controversy over Fr. Ripperger is related to something other than the fact that he (like many many other priests) has been assigned the role of exorcist.

This to me is a correct impression. Simply being an exorcist, or even promoting deliverance prayers, isn’t anything controversial.

More controversial are things like

• he runs an order that moved from one diocese to another for reasons that aren’t totally clear, and some sources have reported he and his order were asked to leave the first diocese by the bishop there
• he has made statements to the effect that married women should not work outside the home
• he has made the aforementioned incorrect / overblown statements about the Harry Potter books
• he has recently made statements that Democrats are “possessed and in league with the devil” and has aligned himself with a group of priests that include Fr. Heilman and Fr. Altman, who have gotten very caught up with the 2020 election result and portraying it as a battle for the USA between good (Trump and Republicans) and evil (Biden and Democrats).

I have never met him in person. I have listened to some of his talks on Youtube that were less extreme and were more just presentations of traditional Church teachings, and found them interesting or helpful. However, his more extreme views are a turn-off for me.

 

[LastMinute]

Hmm.

Well regarding the Exorcist aspect, that portion seemed to bother people on another venue. As i said before, Modernist Catholics, so take that as you will.

• he runs an order that moved from one diocese to another for reasons that aren’t totally clear, and some sources have reported he and his order were asked to leave the first diocese by the bishop there

So i’ve been told that was due to a change in who was bishop of his diocese. The previous one was supportive of his order’s activities, the one who replaced him was not.

Although to be direct - i haven’t turned up much on the Doloran Fathers in general. Aside from a website and a few passing mentions, there isn’t much else i’ve been able to uncover.

• he has recently made statements that Democrats are “possessed and in league with the devil” and has aligned himself with a group of priests that include Fr. Heilman and Fr. Altman, who have gotten very caught up with the 2020 election result and portraying it as a battle for the USA between good (Trump and Republicans) and evil (Biden and Democrats).

hmmm…

This is even more surprising than the bit about Harry Potter and married women comment.

I’m very very uncertain about the current religious “eco-system” forming around social media. One the one hand i understand why that is the case (the death of CAF is in part due to the fact that the kids these days don’t really do Message Boards the same way they did back 10+ years ago), change with the times and go witht he crowd.

On the other - i can help but calculate the profit motive any social media personality has, regardless of their political, philosophical, or religious positions. Likes and Shares need to be generated or…you become a CAF dinosaur essentially.

But part of that is to be engaged in topics and or issues that stretch beyond one’s realm of expertise.

This bodes further research…

 

[Tis_Bearself]

One the one hand i understand why that is the case (the death of CAF is in part due to the fact that the kids these days don’t really do Message Boards the same way they did back 10+ years ago)

The death of CAF doesn’t have much to do with that. The target audience here isn’t trendy Internet kids. There’s also a very healthy number of Catholics interested in stable discussion forums and the ones from here are all in the process of migrating to other forums that suit their needs.

We have a whole other thread discussing why CAF is folding, so I won’t reiterate it here, except to say it’s basically high cost coupled with poor management.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

Most of all, I would have to congratulate him on having just the sort of name that I would expect an exorcist to have.

 

[JSRG]

LastMinute:

One the one hand i understand why that is the case (the death of CAF is in part due to the fact that the kids these days don’t really do Message Boards the same way they did back 10+ years ago)

The death of CAF doesn’t have much to do with that. The target audience here isn’t trendy Internet kids. There’s also a very healthy number of Catholics interested in stable discussion forums and the ones from here are all in the process of migrating to other forums that suit their needs.

We have a whole other thread discussing why CAF is folding, so I won’t reiterate it here, except to say it’s basically high cost coupled with poor management.

What thread is that?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

It’s here and there, but primarily this one:

The church will become small ...She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built [like CAF] Evangelization

The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members… –Pope Benedict XVI

Regarding reasons why the forums are shutting down, I tend to think Fauken hit the nail on the head in the third post, the one that got 25 likes.

It’s my understanding that the cost of running this forum the way it is currently set up (public, with moderators who are not forum members and are likely paid/ outsourced, and with large forum archives stored that go back years) was several thousand dollars a month. There were something like 65 regulars paying monthly Patron fees of 5 or 10 dollars each, so that likely brought in a few hundred dollars a month, far short of covering the monthly costs.

 

[lwest]

Are these things ‘controversial’ because you don’t personally agree with them? If he’s an exorcist, wouldn’t his opinion be worth listening to? He’s in the trenches with the devil. If he says something is spiritually dangerous, why wouldn’t you believe him? That’s kind of like poo-poohing what a Special Ops military guy has to say about an earthly conflict. After all, he should know. He’s seen things you haven’t seen. I’d trust the expertise of an exorcist over the personal opinion of a layperson. Sorry if that offends.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Sorry if that offends.

Why would I be “offended” by just another opinion? It’s not a big deal to me if you or anyone else support Fr. Ripperger. It’s no skin off my teeth, as my mother used to say. My opinion on him hasn’t changed over the last dozen discussions on this topic and I don’t expect anyone else’s to change either.

Mostly at this point I’m mildly amused by the fact that people seem to get wound up whenever a slightly negative word is said about Fr. Ripperger, even when one also says some positive things about him, like I did.

 

[lwest]

And I find it amusing that you would think I’m ‘wound up’ just because I voiced an opinion contrary to yours. Since we’ve both been entertained by this thread, I’d call it a win. But it does beg the question: If you don’t expect anyone else’s (opinion) to change and if other people’s opinions are of no concern to you, why post anything to begin with? What exactly is your goal when you post your opinion on Fr. R? (just curious…not ‘wound up’ in the least).

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The OP started a discussion on Fr. Ripperger and suggested that his being an exorcist was somehow offputting to some people. I and others pointed out that it’s not his being an exorcist that bothers Catholics we know, it’s his other extreme positions. Simple as that. We are engaging in balanced, reasonable, and civil discussion of a Catholic topic started by the OP.

I think if my post is read in context, that’s very clear. I’m sorry that you seem to be disturbed by my posts. . . . I will be muting now. Have a nice day.

 

[LastMinute]

The OP started a discussion on Fr. Ripperger and suggested that his being an exorcist was somehow offputting to some people. I and others pointed out that it’s not his being an exorcist that bothers Catholics we know, it’s his other extreme positions. Simple as that. We are engaging in balanced, reasonable, and civil discussion of a Catholic topic started by the OP.

As the OP of the thread - i concur with Tis. The point of this whole thread was for me to try and fill holes in my knowledge base as to why whenever his name gets mentioned, the wheels come off the rails so to speak. I know a little about the man, but everyone seems to have strong opinions on him.

 

[Johann_du_Toit]

He’s a very good priest. I have two of his books, Magisterial Authority and The Binding Force of Tradition, both of which I would highly recommend.

He’s very definitely a very strong Traditionalist but he is always respectful towards the Pope and Hierarchy, as it should be. He also rightly raised the point that Traditional Catholics should not adopt a “gnostic” attitude towards the rest of the Church, which sadly I have observed on many Traditionalist forums.

 

[LastMinute]

He’s a very good priest. I have two of his books, Magisterial Authority and The Binding Force of Tradition , both of which I would highly recommend.

Thanks for your comments - is there one you would suggest first to start on?

He also rightly raised the point that Traditional Catholics should not adopt a “gnostic” attitude towards the rest of the Church, which sadly I have observed on many Traditionalist forums.

I think in that regard, he’s pointing the Catholic version of a much larger of social phenomena that’s occurring in the Western world right now. I’ve seen the secular version of this mentality worming its way through every political ideology and interest group - which is not a particularly healthy thing for a society to hold itself together.

He’s very definitely a very strong Traditionalist but he is always respectful towards the Pope and Hierarchy, as it should be.

That kinda links to the Gnostic attitude issue - or as the old joke about an attitude “holier than the Pope,” is now actually becoming a real thing.

 

[Pyjamarama]

If you want to watch videos of an exorcist on youtube then a good idea is to listen to Father Vincent Lampert. Honestly this man oozes humility and very informative.