(LifeSiteNews) — After the story emerged of Charlie and Erika Kirk allegedly asking a priest friend to pray over Charlie when they learned that witches had been paid to curse him, LifeSiteNews reached out to a renowned exorcist, Father Chad Ripperger, to shed light on the role that the witches’ curses may have played in Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Witches were hired by the radical feminist media site, Jezebel, via the website Etsy to hex Kirk in late August. Jezebel then published its now-deleted story about its hiring of the witches on Monday, September 8, and Charlie Kirk was killed by a sniper’s bullet just two days later.
LifeSiteNews: As an exorcist, please comment on the reality of witches in our midst.
Fr. Chad Ripperger: Paying for curses to be done by witches has been around for more than a decade in modern American life online but it has been around for centuries elsewhere. There are essentially 3 levels of witches.
The first is the low level witches; these are people who engage in witchcraft in a dabbling manner or without any proficiency. They sometimes make it known that they are witches and sometimes they don’t.
The second are mid-level witches who have some proficiency and know certain rituals and curses and engage in them, sometimes for money, but often for personal gain or to hurt others. These also will sometimes make themselves known as you see with advertising on Etsy and other places.
These first two levels generally do not have a lot of success in bringing about the effects of their rituals, since (a) it is up to God to determine if He will permit the effect and (b) their level of proficiency is such that it is not very high so it tends to be less effective.
The third level are those who are highly proficient, very knowledgeable about the history of rituals, incantations and other forms of witchcraft, sometimes coming through generational lines stemming all the way back the 16th century and their knowledge in this area is, at times, almost at the same level as a seasoned exorcist.
These witches know that if one does a curse, one can become subject to the curse that she casts, as so these level of people tend not to get involved in doing cursing for hire.
They tend to use their witchcraft to manipulate various events, people or circumstances as a form of empowerment or personal gain, as a general rule. They are such that they know that the types of things they do in their rituals can land them in jail or suffer publicly and personally.
As a result, they tend to be truly “occult”, that is, hidden, and one would often not even know they are a witch, as they tend to people in respectable positions in society, their community or neighborhood.
Is it valid to draw a direct connection between the curses placed on Charlie and his murder?
Everything they do is subject to the permissive will of God, so the efficacy of their rituals tends to vary based upon God’s permission but also God’s protection of the individual based upon His Will for the person, the good of souls as well as prayers of protection said by the person or others.
Also, there is the reality that people can choose to do evil on their own with little to no involvement of the demonic, even something as horrific as killing someone.
Demons can, if empowered by others and God permitting it, influence individuals to make decisions by moving the person emotionally and afflicting the person with temptations and affecting the person’s perspective on reality where the person makes the judgment and decision to do something very evil.
So it is possible that someone who curses an individual could empower the demons to then execute a plan or process of afflicting someone to do something evil against the person cursed, let alone afflict directly the person cursed.
However, due to the fact that there is a lack of proficiency with most of these rituals and given that God often blocks it for the good of the one who would be cursed, either out of His pure will or out of an answer to a prayer of protection, it simply is not possible to have certitude that the curse was the cause of specific events.
Even when demons talk in solemn exorcism about curses that have been levied, one must be very cautious to give it any credence since they are prone to trying to get the exorcist to waste time on something that is not real or to make themselves look more powerful than they are.
So while the demons could very well have been empowered to move Charlie Kirk’s killer or manipulate circumstances to make it easier or possible for him to do the evil of his own choice, nevertheless, we can never have certitude of the degree or actuality of demonic influence in the situation, despite how evil it was.
Only at the final judgment, will we have certitude of these kinds of matters, but one should take steps to protect oneself regardless.
What is the lesson we should learn from this?
There are two primary lessons to be measured about how much influence demons can have; they may or may not have influence; the position that says they have no influence is naive and the one that says it is certainly caused by the demons is credulous.
The second lesson is to make sure one is in the state of grace (one’s primary means of protection against curses), living a full Catholic sacramental life, praying regularly and also consecrating one’s protection to Our Lady and asking Christ to keep you, if you are person of import, protected from any curses.
