Ep 193 - 6 Open Doors Demons Use Against Men (And How to Close Them Today)

James Caldwell: This is the Manly Catholic, the podcast that calls you out of the shadows and into the fight. Here we forge men into warriors for Christ, husbands, fathers and leaders who refuse to kneel to the modern world's lies. No more passivity, no more excuses, no more lukewarm faith. This is your battle cry, your call to arms. The time for weakness is over. It's time to fight. Welcome to the Manly Catholic. Let's get to work. Hello all, welcome back to another episode of the Manly Catholic. This is James, your host, and tonight we have part four of our seven part spiritual warfare series. Tonight we're talking about open doors, guarding against demonic entry in spiritual warfare. We shift from weapons to open doors, the permissions that men grant the enemy through negligence or sin. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, the Christian life demands that we labor as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, fighting not with carnal arms, but with spiritual ones, mighty to God unto the pulling down of fortifications, destroying councils. Mortal sin severs grace, unforgiveness hardens the heart, sexual disorder defiles the temple, and domestic or generational neglect invites oppression. The church's magisterium urges open doors to grace, not closure to sinners, yet demands that we close breaches ourselves. That's why we urge all men to step into the breach. Drawing from the Catechism Aquinas and papal exhortations, let's examine these doctrinally and close them decisively. But as always, men, spiritual warfare, I think is very appropriate that we begin with the St. Michael prayer. Begin them with Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him. humbly pray into thou Prince of the heavenly host by the power of God cast in hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. Same to the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. So I'm going to go over six different ⁓ doorways or portals or entry points for demons. So the first one is mortal sin. So moral sin severs grace and grants the enemy a foothold. So the gravest portal, like I said, is mortal sin. Also probably the easiest way for Satan and or his demons to affect you. Many accounts of exorcists state that they are consistently seeking the doorway to find out how the demons attached to that person's life or especially when it comes to possession, if they were able to possess that person through a mortal sin. Is there unconfessed mortal sin? The catechism defines moral sin specifically when he says for a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met. Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent. So those are the three. So grave matter, committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent. This results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell. So if we die in a state of mortal sin, we are damned for hell. But what is grave matter exactly? So St. Augustine says that ⁓ grave matter is something said, done, or desired contrary to the eternal law or a thought word or deed contrary to the eternal law as a voluntary act. Grave matter is specified by the 10 commandments corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and your mother. The gravity of sins is more or less great. Murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged. Violence against parents isn't self graver than violence against a stranger. Something to keep in mind as well. So it's almost like a hierarchy of sin. Like obviously murdering is worse than, you know, like stealing or, or telling a lie. Okay. By this, the church teaches that some acts are always grave while others involve a degree of lightness. Okay, so like abortion is a big topic, obviously, in our day and age here in 2026, especially in the United States. So an abortion actually is an automatic excommunication as well. If a Catholic commits that or participates in the participation in an abortion. So Aquinas also explains that spiritual warfare targets the flesh, the world and the devil, where unrepentant grave sin hands leverage over to Satan and his demons. Remember, as always, that our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. This is why confession is essential. Confession to a priest is an essential part of the sacrament of penance. All mortal sins must be recounted by them in confession. Absolution restores grace, evicting the enemy. Think of it as restoring your relationship with God. When you commit a mortal sin, you deliberately separate yourself from God, damning your soul to hell if you do not repent. Men, tolerating grave matter with deliberate consent frequent confessions closes that door, which is the foundation for all soldiers of Christ. We have to go to confession and we have to make sure that we are not committing moral sin. Again, moral sin involves grave matter, which is something that is said done or desired contrary to the eternal law or thought word or deed contrary to the eternal law as a voluntary act. So grave matter with full knowledge and deliberate consent. Huge entry point. Satan is demons that get a foothold in your life. Second, might be a little unsurprising, is unforgiveness. So, hardening your heart against mercy. It's a very quiet, of simmering, lethal injection, so to speak, of how demons can get involved as well. It's a deliberate barrier to grace. There was an exorcist, actually several exorcists, I've heard them say this, that noticed during sessions, demons would cling to resentment in the afflicted person. They would provoke memories of abuse, betrayal, humiliation, and the unforgiveness becomes a point of leverage. Oftentimes people who have suffered abuse especially have the hardest time forgiving actually themselves, even more so than their attacker or their abuser, because they feel shame, they feel unworthy, they feel... that they are ugly or that they are undesirable. And these are all lies, of course, that the demon tries to leverage against the person. You know, I remember one account of an exorcist who, again, one of the entry points was through abuse. And the demon basically, how the exorcist recalled it was basically during an exorcist session, sometimes the exorcist is talking to the person, sometimes it's talking to the demon. But what happens is when they would kind of switch, so to speak, when the demon would leave, It would leave images of the abuse and the same feelings that the person had. It would be confounded like a hundred times. Right? So if they felt a little bit shame, a little bit of guilt, it was just, you know, that much more intense. So it's a very difficult time to are a very strong grasp. guess you could say that the demon has on this person as they're going through the exorcist and getting the demon out of their life. So of course, this is all lies that that Satan and the demon say. The catechism affirms a boundless mercy that is offered by Christ. There is no offense, however serious that the church cannot forgive Christ, of course, who died for all men desires that in his church, the gates of forgiveness should always be open. Yet nursing resentment, of course, will block this. If we withhold pardon, we resist God's flow of grace. Christ teaching is not poetic exaggeration. If you do not forgive others, neither will your father forgive you. Pretty straightforward. unforgiveness, course, hardens the heart. When the heart hardens, grace encounters resistance. God can't get through if he does not have an open heart to get to. You can pray the rosary daily and still be spiritually agitated if you're a nursing hatred. Forgiveness does not excuse evil, of course. That's something that is a very common misconception in our day and age. If you forgive someone, you are basically saying what they did was okay. That is not it at all. It relinquishes vengeance to God. It's basically saying God you take care of it and we know of course that God is a just God. It's saying, Lord, you judge, I release this anger, this hatred, I give justice to you. If there are some that you refuse to forgive, that refusal is not strength, but that is actually an open door. Aquinas warns of every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, including pride-fueled grudges. Pope Francis also said, Avoid closed doors to those who long for God's forgiveness. Please let us open those doors and accept it. Unforgiveness sees interior territory as demons exploit hardened hearts. Forgiveness relinquishes judgment to God and restores charity. Okay, so one is mortal sin. Two, unforgiveness. Number three, third open door, you will. ⁓ Sexual sin and deliberate pleasure. Deliberate pleasure. Defiling temple. our temple is, or I'm sorry, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Sexual disorder wounds profoundly as body and soul unite in the temple of the Holy Spirit. Aquinas deems deliberate pressure in bad thoughts. Consent to lustful pleasure without the act, is a mortal sin. The consent by which it accepted the pleasure will be the first route. Thus mortal sin begins there. Whatever a man does because of consent to such pleasure, the whole thing is a mortal sin. Fornication and adultery are explicitly mortal. Fornicators and adulterers, God will judge, as it says in Hebrews. Neither fornicators nor adulterers shall possess the kingdom of God. It also says that in 1 Corinthians. Habitual lust erodes mastery and breeds secrecy. Aquinas said on Ephesians and warfare, first check carnal desires, a bridling the loins through temperance, a girt with truth. Radical steps avoid occasions, accountability, and confession, of course. obedience and not fear. other words, all that being said, exorcists frequently note the connection between sexual immorality and intensified spiritual oppression. The body is not separate from the soul. Sexual sin wounds deeply because it involves the whole person. Father Gabriel Morrith, who was a long-time exorcist in Rome, observed that pornography and sexual perversion were common threads in cases of oppression, not because temptation equals possession, but because repeated grave sexual sin disorients the person and weakens resistance. So lust isolates, it breeds secrecy, it erodes self mastery. Then the enemy of course thrives in secrecy. If you're battling pornography, you cannot remain silent. You must get help with that. Confession, accountability, removal of access. Radical steps are not extremism, they are wisdom. Better to lose convenience than lose freedom. Man, this is especially true with, with, with us in this day and age with all the free access to pornography, even soft porn on pretty much any social media site, you might not, you're not even looking for it. An ad pops up. You might like this. No, going to the gym. Gosh, I cannot believe I had to text one of my guys. I'm doing XS 90 right now. And I text one of my friends. It's like, please pray for me. There's just these girls who literally just have a sports bra and like booty shorts on. And it's like, I'm trying to work out here, you know, and it's, everywhere. Our culture is so fatuated with it and it's almost become numb to it that all this is just kind of second nature for everyone. But so pornography, masturbation, all these are grave mortal sin and something that men, have to become self masters. And I know father Dom gave When he has young men, especially who are struggling with this, he tells them you, need to fight. You need to fight back like a lion. Right? So he always tells people, okay, so let's try to go to confession. want you here every week, Saturday, 3pm confession every single week, and then slowly build that resistance. Now, are you frequently in the sacraments, adoration, confession, ⁓ reception of Holy Communion? Do you have a brotherhood? Do you have a partner? Are you, know, do you have to get rid of your phone? If it isn't that bad, do you have to get rid of your laptop? Again, these measures are not extreme if it saves your soul, gentlemen, because that is what we're after. We're trying to get to heaven. coffee and prayer. It's the perfect blend. Mystic Monk Coffee isn't just another cup of coffee. It's handcrafted by the Carmelite monks of Wyoming, roasted with care and infused with prayer. Whether you're starting your morning or fueling your day, Mystic Monk Coffee has you covered. It offers rich, bold flavors that are as divine as their mission. By choosing Mystic Monk, you're not just enjoying exceptional coffee, but you're supporting a community of monks dedicated to their work, to prayer, and to the church. It's coffee with a cause. So what are you waiting for? Visit mysticmonkcoffee.com and experience the brew that's feeling faith and flavor. All right. Number four, spiritual neglect and the home and your daily life. So homes and habits become contested if they are disorder. Remember Satan loves chaos. You are the head of the household men. You represent your family. If your personal life is chaotic or you're not rightfully fulfilling your duty, the spiritual realm takes notice. Think of Adam in the garden. It always goes back to Adam. Doesn't it? He neglected his duty and allowed Satan in. Aquinas says that weapons pull down fortifications of pride and counsel against God. Neglect invites the men. Pope Francis ⁓ decries closed doors of our selfishness and difference within our ecclesial communities. Screens foster vice. Absent sacred images, these weaken our resolve. An exorcist once remarked that homes saturated with occult imagery, violent entertainment, Inhibitual blasphemy often felt spiritually heavy even before formal investigation began. Your home, of course, is the domestic church. What enters through your screens? What music shapes the atmosphere? What symbols hang on your walls? This is not superstition, guys. This is formation, and it does really matter. Do you have sacred images up? Do you have holy water? Do you surround it with prayer? Are you playing Gregorian chant? A father who just shrugs at spiritual disorder cannot be surprised. when peace erodes. Authority is not loud, but it is consistent. Guys, you have to be super loud and obnoxious about this, but you are in charge of what enters your house. Are your kids playing violent video games? grand theft auto, I'm out. That was the violent video game back in my day. I don't know what the violent ones are nowadays, but what are you guys watching on TV? Even if it's just you, are you watching shows and movies that are not? holy and uplifting. mean, I remember, gosh, in college, I was watching Game of Thrones. Talk about a show that is just filled with perversion. And my justification as a man was like, well, I'm just watching because I really liked the battles. Yeah, like Jon Snow feeding the white walkers. You know, that was the excuse in my head, but it was not fulfilling at all. It was full of debauchery and, and, and sex scenes and things like that. And it was not filling at all. I would never watch that nowadays. Thank, praise me to God. Maybe I'm growing a little bit because all this causes disorder. If we are not rightly ordering what comes into our house, what is displayed in our home? How, what are we are praying as a man of the household? All this matters and someone takes notice. five, generational and habitual vulnerabilities. I'm actually going to have Dr. Dan Schneider on, ⁓ probably in the next couple of months, he wrote a book on generational. Curses and basically the whole idea of I'm do sins carry from one generation to the next So I'm going to deep dive into it, but I do want to mention it here Because repeated great repeated grave sin across generations and trenches habits demanding vigilance in order to combat that combat this right you often see here too of fathers or or mothers who maybe you had a poor father figure in their life or poor mother figure in their life and they kind of declare that I am I'm going to be different, totally different. I'm going to stop this habitual sin of alcoholism or pornography or whatever the case might be. They say the buck stops with me. I'm not going to carry that on through my family line. It stops with me. So something along those lines as well. So we have to fight errors and tyrants plotting against God. Generational patterns that mirror this. Again, kind of having, well, my father did this and his father did this and down, down, down, things like that. So people who did not grow up in religious Families also have certainly family practices that can invite demonic activity. Obviously occult practices or if you know that your family has been involved in Freemasonry, that's a huge red flag as well. But you have to remember too, the church does not teach inherited guilt for ancestral sin. But exorcists do acknowledge that there are patterns. If generations are marked by addiction, violence, occult practice, or grave immorality, those patterns can shape behavior and sometimes spiritual vulnerability. Father Epker has explained that while personal guilt is individual, repeated grapes in across generations can create entrenched habits and consequences that require deliberate renunciation. For example, in his book, Deliverance, Prayers for Use by the Lady, he has a whole section on Freemasonry and renouncing the curses and the oaths that maybe your past generations have committed within the Freemason movement. And this is to, you know, stoke fear in you at all, but it's... about being intentional and closing all doors. Again, this is about closing doors in order to fight the spiritual battle. Number five or six, what am I on? Number six, the occult. This is the last one. So the occult are obviously invitations in disguise. There's one pattern that Exodus repeat more than any other. This is probably one of the main ones besides immortal sin. It is occult activity. Father Ripperger has stated plenty of the vast majority of cases that he has seen encounter that he has encountered I should say involved some sort of occult practice even if years earlier it does actually invite demons to enter and when we say occult we must be precise right so astrology, tarot readings, ouija boards, mediums, energy healing, rooted in non-christian spirituality, curses, attempting to contact the dead, yes yoga. can play, I know it's very unpopular, yoga is very dangerous. Any sort of the Eastern medicine, like I think it's reiki, I could be wrong on that. But uses like energy fields and things like that can be very sketchy. ⁓ Yoga, the reason yoga is very dangerous is that a lot of the poses that ⁓ yoga uses is actually, ⁓ how do put this? ⁓ poses use, ⁓ to like worship the Hindu gods essentially. And I think it was father Rehill or maybe it even father Lampert basically said, even if your intention is not there, demons do not care. If you are basically simulating certain yoga poses and things like that. ⁓ even if quote unquote, the practice or the practitioner that is, you know, taking you through the poses like, this is just good form of exercise, things like that. If they're not invoking these Hindu gods, so to speak, demons don't care. They are very legalistic. You have to remember that. And even a little bit of permission is technically permission. So the church condemns all these acts, not because she's fearful, but because they seek knowledge or power apart from God. So Father Mortha accounts a case that began with something small. It was a teenager that played with a Ouija board at a sleepover, or a woman consulting a fortune teller during a period of vulnerability. a man dabbling in ritual magic out of intellectual curiosity. He's recounting all of these cases as well. And years later, they had to seek help because the devil really introduces himself with horns or being very big and scary, he introduces himself as curiosity. Another case I did, or a case I did, a case that was on the exorcist files with Father Carlos Martins, it was a... woman who went down to New Orleans with a couple girlfriends, were, just had like a ladies trip or something. And it was like two in the morning, they had a few drinks and they decided to do a palm reading with one of their friends. And immediately that was a doorway to have someone, to have a demon come in and basically take over this woman's life. And again, it's sometimes it's... right away, a lot of times it's years later, they don't even realize it. So again, all these things that go contrary to church teaching, be careful. Why do some people get affected and other people's don't? Who knows? Only in God's providence do we know. So in Acts 19 as well in the Bible, when Ephesians converted, they burned all their occult books publicly. They did not keep them for nostalgia or anything, they completely got rid of them. So if you have had relatives give you a Ouija board because I thought it was harmless or spell books or something like that. Make sure you get rid of those immediately because you do not want to open yourself up to the demonic. So how do we close these? Right? So none of this I'm saying is in order to scare you or to over dramatize anything, of course, but this is a reality, right? Part one was that we are in a battle. ⁓ whether we want to recognize it or not, we are in a battle and these things are real and we have to recognize that. So how do we Close this. Okay, it begins with you, first of all, recognizing this. First of all, if you haven't been to confession in a while, go to confession right away if you are Catholic. If you're not Catholic, become Catholic. There's another one. And any immoral relationships that you're in, right? If you are participating in fornication, sex outside of marriage, stop that immediately. If you're living with your boyfriend or girlfriend, stop that immediately. If you're in a homosexual relationship, stop that immediately. If you have any occult objects, destroy those. If you have any unforgiveness in your life, forgive. Begin regular sacramental practice. Go back to church. Go back to confession. Like I said, go to mass more frequently. Get involved in the Bible study. Have brothers or sisters that you can rely on and who will pray for you during these times. St. Peter says that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion. But he doesn't say that we need to panic because of this, but that again is the reality. Resist him. Be firm in your faith. Because Christ is Lord and the devil is just a creature. So are his demons, they are created. God is the only being that has not been created. But creatures, especially demons, can exploit negligence. They are extremely intelligent. Do not underestimate them. So your challenge tonight, is to walk yourself, do an examine tonight, walk yourself through your life honestly and ask yourself, is there a grave sin that you are tolerating? Is there a cult involvement that you have minimized? Is there bitterness that you are holding on to? Is there sexual disorder that you justify? Are you using contraception in your marriage? Have you had a vasectomy? Do you need to get that reversed? Because that is a moral sin. Is your home spiritually neglected? Choose one door and close it concretely and firmly. Don't let the demons back in. Because in every credible account from the Church's long battle against darkness, the same principle stands. The enemy cannot remain where grace is chosen decisively. Weapons matter, but doors matter just as much. In the next episode, we're gonna speak about fortifying your family so that your home becomes stable ground rather than contested territory. Before we end, think we should end with prayer to Saint Joseph, the Terror of Demons. Let us begin in the of Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Saint Joseph, Terror of Demons, cast your solemn gaze upon the devil and all his minions and protect us with your mighty staff. You fled through the night to avoid the devil's wicked designs. Now with the power of God, smite the demons as they flee from you. Grant special protection. We pray for children, fathers, families, and the dying. By God's grace, no demon dares approach while you're near. So we beg of you, always be near to us. Amen. Amen. Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you all so much for listening to another episode of the Manly Catholic. Until next time, when we go dive into part five of our spiritual warfare series, go out there and be a saint. Brothers, thank you for listening, but do not let this end here. If this episode stirred something inside of you, do not keep it to yourself. Share it with a brother who needs to hear it, a man who is tired, a man who's drifting. a man who's under attack and does not even know it. This podcast exists because the battle is real and souls are at stake. If this work has helped you, please support the channel so we can keep fighting. Your support will help ignite the mission to keep us going. We need your help, brothers. I know you will come through for us. Pray for us because we need it as well. The enemy does not rest and neither can we. Now go and live this. Be a saint, not tomorrow, but today. Choose the hard thing, reject sin, get back up. Go to confession, pray your rosary, love your family, and carry your cross without complaining.