The Heart of the Matter: Generational Spirits

Part 2 of 14 – This series of columns is based on the work of Fr. Chad Ripperger that analyzes the spirits of the past six generations and how those spirits have affected the Church.  We only ask that you consider whether his descriptions are true in a general sense, even if they do not describe you or people you know.

Fr. Chad Ripperger notes that “It does not take a doctorate in moral or spiritual theology to recognize that the Church and the world are in a particularly bad state, morally and spiritually.”  He then asks a key question that must be answered before we can address a solution to this situation: “How did we get here?”

As an exorcist, Fr. Ripperger is familiar with something called “generational spirits.”  Normally, this term applies to demons that trouble a family from one generation to another.  But, he notes, what can happen in a family can also happen to an entire generation within a nation or a culture. 

God assigns an angel to protect that generation and sometimes the angel is one who is given to help the generation overcome the problems it faces. But demons, by the permissive will of God, also afflict a generation. . . The purpose of this article is to examine the spiritual causes of how we got here by focusing on a rather narrow area of spiritual reality: demons, or more specifically, generational spirits. Not everyone in a particular generation will be affected by the particular generational spirit of that generation. . . . [E]ach of the last five generations has had a generational spirit, easily identifiable, which has afflicted it. Lastly, we will talk about the sixth generation, now being born, whose direction, if the sixth generational spirit gets its way, does not bode well. (all quotes taken from Latin Mass magazine, summer 2012)

The decline we are experiencing in the Church today is not going to be arrested by programs or activities.  There is a battle–a spiritual battle–that has been raging for five generations.  We need to learn once again how to put on the armor of God, as St. Paul exhorted the Ephesians believers in the first century.  He was well aware of the demonic dimension of our battle:

For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. (Ephesians 6:12)