The EWTN News portal reports on the launch of a three-part docuseries titled “In Jesus’ Name,” produced by EWTN Studios and Cumberland Creative, which purports to offer an “inside look” at the rite of exorcism within the post-conciliar structures. The feature spotlights “Father” Dan Reehil of the “Diocese” of Nashville, “Father” Vincent Lampert of the “Archdiocese” of Indianapolis, and “Archbishop” Jeffrey Grob of Milwaukee, presented as authoritative figures demystifying the rite for a streaming audience on EWTN+. This spectacle is not a restoration of the Church’s power over the demonic but a televised legitimization of the paramasonic structure’s counterfeit ministry, stripping the Roman Ritual of its sacral terror and juridical efficacy to serve the narrative of the neo-church.
The Illegitimacy of the Ministers: Appointed by Usurpers, Devoid of Jurisdiction
The article presents Reehil, Lampert, and Grob as “appointed exorcists” and “theological experts.” From the perspective of integral Catholic theology, this claim is fundamentally void. Since the usurpation of the Holy See by Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) in 1958, the hierarchical chain of jurisdiction has been severed. The “bishops” who appoint these men—Grob in Milwaukee, the ordinaries of Nashville and Indianapolis—are manifest heretics adhering to the conciliar apostasy (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, the New Mass). As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice, a manifest heretic “by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” This principle applies a fortiori to bishops. Wernz and Vidal confirm in Ius Canonicum that by notorious heresy, a prelate is deprived ipso facto of jurisdiction “even before any declaratory sentence by the Church.”
Furthermore, the sacramental orders of these “priests” are gravely doubtful. The Paul VI ordinal of 1968, used for their ordination, altered the essential form and intention required for the priesthood, excising the language of the propitiatory sacrifice and the power to offer the Mass for the living and the dead. As Pope Pius XII warned in Sacramentum Ordinis (1947), the form must signify the grace effected. The new rite signifies a “presider” of a community meal, not a sacerdos offering the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary. Consequently, these men lack the character indelebilis of the priesthood and, ipso facto, the power to bind and loose demons in the name of Christ. Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code declares that an office becomes vacant by “public defection from the Catholic faith” without any declaration. The “exorcists” of the neo-church operate under a jurisdiction that does not exist, wielding a priesthood they likely do not possess. Their “authority” is a theatrical prop.
The New Rite of Exorcism: A Mutilated Form Stripped of Sacral Potency
The docuseries examines the “Catholic Church’s rite of exorcism,” but the rite practiced by these men is not the De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam of the Roman Ritual (1614, revised 1952), the only form guaranteed by the Church’s immutable tradition. It is the 1999/2004 rite promulgated by the antipope John Paul II, a product of the same conciliar revolution that produced the Novus Ordo Missae. This new rite excises the imperative formulas (Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus…), replaces the authoritative breath (insufflatio) and sign of the cross over the possessed with “prayers of deliverance” resembling Protestant “healing services,” and removes the explicit invocation of the saints and the reading of the Gospel In principio erat Verbum as a talisman of the Word Incarnate.
The article quotes Peter Gagnon, president of EWTN Studios, stating the goal is to “demystify the rite of exorcism and invite audiences to see how the Church responds to the presence of evil in an authoritative but compassionate and deeply human way.” This language betrays the Modernist heresy condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane Exitu: the reduction of the supernatural to the “human,” the “compassionate,” the “psychological.” The Roman Ritual is not “compassionate” to the demon; it is the verba Dei wielded by the minister Dei to torture the enemy of souls. To “demystify” is to profane. The lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of praying is the law of believing) dictates that a mutilated rite expresses a mutilated faith—a faith that no longer believes in the objective, juridical reality of demonic possession or the Church’s God-given power to expel it ex opere operantis Ecclesiae.
Linguistic Subversion: “Demystification,” “Compassion,” and the Erasure of the Sacred Terror
The linguistic level of the article reveals the naturalistic mentality of the conciliar sect. Terms like “docuseries,” “streaming on EWTN+,” “survivors of demonic oppression,” “personal testimonies,” and “expert insight” frame the spiritual combat as a therapeutic narrative. Reehil speaks of the devil making war on those who “keep God’s commands,” yet the “commands” he references are those of the conciliar religion: the Novus Ordo, the false ecumenism, the religious liberty condemned by Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos) and Pius IX (Quanta Cura, Syllabus Error 15, 77, 79).
The article notes Reehil’s advice: “the best thing you can do is have a very robust prayer life, have a deep relationship with Jesus Christ as a true disciple. And we use the same weapons. We use obedience to God, we use humility, we use purity, all the aspects of Our Lady would be the weapons we use in this battle.” This is vague, charismatic Protestantism masquerading as Catholicism. It omits the sine qua non of Catholic spiritual warfare: the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (the Traditional Latin Mass), the sacrament of Penance (with absolute integrity of confession and firm purpose of amendment), the Brown Scapular, the Rosary of St. Pius V (15 decades), fasting, and the invocation of St. Michael the Archangel (Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio). The “aspects of Our Lady” cited are sentimental abstractions, not the Totus Tuus of St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion, which demands slavery to Jesus through Mary. The Syllabus of Errors (Error 3, 4, 5) condemns the notion that human reason or “relationship” suffices without the objective mediation of the Church’s sacraments and sacramentals.
Anthropocentric Narrative: Testimony Over Truth, Experience Over Dogma
The series features “survivors of demonic oppression” and “personal testimonies.” This is the Modernist category of vital immanence condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 20, 25, 59, 60): “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God,” “Faith… is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities,” “Truth changes with man.” The article states the creators seek to “take exorcisms out of the sensational and instead provide an accurate view of how they are conducted and how people have found deliverance.” The focus on “how people have found deliverance” shifts the terminus of the rite from the gloria Dei and the restoration of the ordo iustitiae to the subjective experience of the victim. This is the “cult of man” denounced by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Here, the demonic is removed from the objective order of sin and grace and placed into the subjective order of “trauma” and “recovery.”
Pius XI taught that “Christ reigns in the minds of men… because He Himself is Truth, and men must draw truth from Him and accept it obediently.” The docuseries offers not Truth, but “content” for a subscription platform (EWTN+). The commercialization of the sacred—streaming the rites of the Church on a “Netflix for Catholics”—is simony in its modern guise. The Temple is made a house of merchandise (domus negotiationis), and the whip of cords is nowhere to be found.
The Marian Weaponry of the Neo-Church: Vague Devotion vs. The Rosary of St. Pius V
Reehil’s reference to “all the aspects of Our Lady would be the weapons we use” is a dog-whistle to the false Fatima narrative analyzed in the theological objections: “The mortifications of the children… bear the marks of Jansenist rigorism,” and “The name ‘Fatima’: a symbol of Christian-Islamic syncretism.” The neo-church’s “Our Lady” is the ecumenical construct of Lumen Gentium Chapter VIII, the “Mother of the Church” who unites Christians, Muslims, and pagans. The true weapon is the Rosary of the 15 Mysteries, given by Our Lady to St. Dominic, enforced by St. Pius V at Lepanto, and defended by Leo XIII in Supremi Apostolatus Officio (1883) and Octobri Mense (1891). The “Luminous Mysteries” of John Paul II (2002) are a novelty unknown to Tradition, an addition to the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin that violates the Quo Primum principle of liturgical immutability. The “exorcists” of the neo-church invoke a “Mary” who does not demand the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart by the Pope and all bishops in union with him (as the false Fatima narrative claims), but a “Mary” who presides over the “dialogue” of Assisi. This is idolatry.
Symptomatic of the Great Apostasy: Commercialized Spirituality on EWTN+
The release of “In Jesus’ Name” on October 28 (Vigil of Ss. Simon and Jude, feast of Christ the King in the 1925 calendar, though suppressed in 1969) for streaming on October 31 (Halloween, the vigil of All Saints, profaned by the world) is a calculated act of provocation. Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King “on the last Sunday of October… so that the annual celebrations… will be completed and augmented by the feast of Christ the King—and—before we celebrate the glory of All Saints, we will first praise and glorify Him who triumphs in all His Saints.” The conciliar sect moved the feast to the last Sunday of the liturgical year (November) to accommodate the eschatology of the “People of God” pilgrim church, severing the link between Christ’s temporal kingship and the Church Militant’s combat.
EWTN, founded by Mother Angelica (a figure of the charismatic renewal, not traditional Catholicism), has always been the propaganda arm of the “conservative” wing of the conciliar revolution. It legitimizes the usurpers (“popes” John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, Leo XIV) and the Novus Ordo. This docuseries is the latest product: a sanitized, binge-watchable version of spiritual warfare for a laity starved of the True Mass and the True Sacraments. It fulfills the prophecy of St. Paul: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers according to their own desires” (2 Tim 4:3). The “exorcists” are the “teachers”; the “streaming” is the heaping.
Conclusion: The Smoke of Satan in the Sanctuary of the Neo-Church
The article concludes with a call to subscribe to EWTN newsletters. This is the final signature of the enterprise: the merchandising of grace. The “rite of exorcism” presented is a simulacrum. Without a validly ordained priest, acting under a legitimate bishop in communion with a true Roman Pontiff, using the Roman Ritual in its integrity, the rite is an empty shell—a performance. The demons do not flee from “compassionate” dialogue or “robust prayer lives” of men who offer the “table of assembly” (1 Cor 10:21) instead of the Altar of Sacrifice. They flee from the Corpus Christi, the Sanguis Christi, the Sacerdos Alter Christus.
The faithful must flee these structures. “Go out from her, my people, that you may not partake in her sins, and that you may not receive of her plagues” (Apoc 18:4). The only true exorcism today is the rejection of the conciliar sect, the adherence to the Traditional Latin Mass and the pre-1958 Magisterium, and the recourse to those few bishops and priests who retain valid orders and jurisdiction (or supplied jurisdiction in necessity) to wield the authentic Roman Ritual. The “battle is real,” as Reehil says, but the generals of EWTN have surrendered the fortress. The smoke of Satan has indeed entered the Temple (Paul VI, June 29, 1972), and this docuseries is but another plume.
Source:
New EWTN docuseries offers inside look at the Catholic Church’s rite of exorcism (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 31.10.2026