Mike Lewis, founder of the website Where Peter Is, has taken a swipe at exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger. But “taking a swipe” is actually too soft a term when one considers that Mike Lewis didn’t merely challenge certain things Fr. Ripperger has said or written. Throughout his 4,000-word screed, Lewis accuses Fr. Ripperger of making “bizarre” statements that “dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church.” He even accuses Fr. Ripperger of making statements that are “contrary to Catholic Tradition, doctrine, and theology.” What he offers up as evidence are cherry-picked quotations from various speeches—often leaving off pertinent context—never once supplying any direct evidence to substantiate his very serious charges.
Lewis peppers his article with derogatory accusations, calling Fr. Ripperger things like “a fringe traditionalist figure.” But while such ad hominems are not libelous in themselves, statements like “Fr. Ripperger has a long history of controversial statements and claims, including but not limited to dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church” could be. It’s one thing to challenge the things someone says, and it is quite another to directly accuse them of what is tantamount to heresy.
Under the heading “A History of Bizarre Statements,” Lewis claims something that is completely untrue, stating it as if it were the truth. He made no attempt to contact Fr. Ripperger to obtain a clarification or to ascertain the truthfulness of his claims—he simply asserted his interpretation of the facts as fact. Lewis wrote:
Following the 2020 election, Marissa Nichols wrote about how members of her Catholic homeschool community were circulating a “Prayer of Command” composed by Fr. Ripperger, who urged that Catholics recite it, asking “Jesus Christ to break any curses, hexes, or spells and send them back to where they came from” in order to “Stop the Steal.” (emphasis added)
I reached out to Fr. Ripperger to ask if he urged Catholics to recite the “Prayer of Command” he composed and if he encouraged the use of the prayer to “stop the steal.” This is what Fr. Ripperger wrote in return:
I wrote a prayer by that title as it is in my Deliverance prayers but they modified it and I never said to say it to stop the steal. I never sent out that “memo.” It was a case of telephone: one person said to pray this prayer from Fr. Ripperger and then it morphed into me saying to say the prayer/Other people were saying that. I wrote a separate prayer (attached) which just tells people to say a prayer for the integrity of the election.
In essence, Mike Lewis took an email written by someone else and attributed its contents and its intentions to Fr. Ripperger. Had he reached out to Fr. Ripperger to confirm the situation prior to publishing, he likely would have received the same response. But instead, Lewis rushed to publish without verifying his claims; and immediately after stating this blatant falsehood, Lewis all but accused Fr. Ripperger of heresy: “Fr. Ripperger has made other statements that are not only contrary to Catholic tradition, doctrine, and theology, but which threaten spiritual and physical harm to the vulnerable people who look to him as a religious authority” (emphasis added).
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