High profile Catholics, including Matt Walsh, speculate on Extraterrestrials
Can Catholics safely believe in aliens?

As "Disclosure Day" approaches, extraterrestrials are in the news, movies, documentaries, books, and government "transparency" files. It's reminiscent of the COVID media blitz.

Catholic media personalities are no exception

Even as Matt Walsh expressed disappointment in the "grainy" government UFO files, he said "I've been a UFO believer for so long." ^a In another video he admonished doubters:

...conservatives tend to be more religious … [they] think they can't believe [in aliens] because it would call their faith into question. There is nothing... out there in the universe... that would call your faith into question… The Bible ... [is] focused what is happening here [on earth]… you can be open minded. ^b

Catholic authors who promote ETs, such as Jimmy Akin (Catholic Answers), Fr. Robert Spitzer (EWTN), and Vatican scientist Brother Guy Consolmagno, have been on the podcast circuit. TAN Publishing is promoting the late Paul Thigpen's attempt to normalize alien belief in Catholicism.^c Journalist Robert Duncan promoted ETs on Catholic News Service (CNS).

Podcasters Lila Rose, Trent Horn and Chris Stefanick platformed ET promoters, with no opposing interviews. Fr. Mike Schmitz, and traditionally minded Brian Holdsworth correctly warned us not to become distracted with UFO's, while simultaneously floating the faulty rationale that there could be other biological lifeforms in this "big" universe.

Matt Fradd interviewed Jimmy Akin and the late Paul Thigpen. It was over 4 hours of unbridled ET promotion. After an avalanche of comments requesting balance, Matt invited Daniel O'Connor to present an opposing view, but then apparently ghosted him. Daniel responded with "who spooked Matt Fradd?," which went viral.

ET promoting "Catholic" YouTube videos have exceeded 2,000,000 views, with millions more on other platforms.

LGBT friendly Archbishop McElroy of Washington, fired a 20 year veteran exorcist, for simply suggesting UFOs are diabolical activity. EWTN News reported the story as if the exorcist was at fault. Clearly, like COVID, and LGBT politics, dissent is not permitted.

Catholic Inc. doesn't seem to understand that belief in extraterrestrials turns Catholic Dogma into rubble. ⁵

During the Arian Heresy, half the Church and bishops went bad. Cardinal Henry Newman said the lay faithful held the Church together during that crisis. That hour appears to have arrived again.

ET belief is a gateway drug into the New Age

Gifted apologetic legend, Jimmy Akin, is a good example of where the ET rabbit hole leads. On Pints with Aquinas, he speculated about sacramental marriage between aliens and humans, if humans can have sex with aliens.⁶ Then he defended Freemasonry, which is condemned by the Vatican.⁷ Now he's teaching psychic studies at Rhine. ⁸ His Mysterious World increasingly and carelessly dives into phenomenon the Vatican warned us about in 2003:

New Age Spirituality is… spiritual narcissism or pseudo-mysticism … strange and exotic beings … extraterrestrials … psychic powers and occult… ⁹

When Matt Fradd asked how alien belief could be reconciled with Mary's elevated position in Heaven, Jimmy Akin mused:

Well, if there are other mothers of Jesus out there, they wouldn't be as high as our Mary.

Wait! Aren't aliens supposed to be "superior" to humans?

Jimmy says:

"It's not always demons… if UAPs¹⁰ ... blow up and leave fragments of metal and stuff, we need to go with the premise that they are physical objects." ¹¹

There is no such evidence. Fr. Ripperger, an exorcist, asserts demons are capable of all documented exotic "UAP" activity.

Wherever there is deep seated belief in aliens, there follows a whole parade of darkness and other occult practices.

We're being groomed for a pseudo-religion

The argument for non-rational micro life on other planets, is a wedge issue, like incest and rape in the abortion debate. The micro life discussion always ends up being about UFO visitations to earth, "because the Church hasn't ruled on ETs, don't ya know!" Strangely, these alien visitors are always humanoid looking, between 4-8 feet tall. Why not the size of a bacteria or the moon? Because ET promoters have made aliens in their own image.

The mainstream pseudo-religion that this is fueling, teaches us:

• Aliens provide a "science-based" spirituality of love and peace, which absorbs "divisive and archaic" world religions.
• Aliens are superior; they taught Jesus to bend the laws of physics and gurus how to open their chakras.
• Humans can communicate with ETs via CE5 meditation. ¹ (guess who receives the call?)
• The Bible is outdated. ²
• ET deniers are uneducated; they don't "follow the science." (pseudo-science)
• Conspicuously absent are Jesus' words "I am The Way, the Life and the Truth, no one comes to the Father except through me. ³ Repent and be saved. "⁴

After 75 years of propaganda, secular society is primed for this deception which 2 Thessalonians 2:11 may be warning us about. The foundational texts for all non-Christian religions either promote or allow for belief in aliens, including Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Mainstream Christian protestant denominations are open to aliens, while Mormons and 7th Day Adventists promote ET belief.

Catholicism and pockets of Evangelical Christianity represent the last line of defence against belief in aliens.

Catholics don't need a new Vatican proclamation on ETs

We have:

• The Bible
• Early Church Fathers
• Magisterium
• Sensus Fidelium

Cover to cover, the Bible is about marriage. ¹² It starts with the marriage of Adam and Eve, and it ends with the Church as "the Bride," ¹³ "the wife of the lamb." ¹⁴ In the middle, we have the Song of Solomon, which is an analogy of God's unique love affair and intimacy with us. It would be inconsistent with God’s nature to describe his relationship to his Church as monogamous marriage, and require our marriages to be monogamous, ¹⁵ only to be discovered as a polygamist on "disclosure day."

If ET promoters try to counter this by saying aliens are part of this Church, then why doesn't the Bible ask us to pray for our “step-brothers,” and why are ET advocates lobbying to add “cosmos” to “Thy Will be done on earth …” ¹⁶

The Bible doens't tell us to pray for extraterrestrials (or to them). Instead, it warns us that, as we approach the Apocalypse, there will be a Great Deception. ¹⁷

For over 1800 years, popes, bishops, priests, saints, and laity unanimously held that all incarnate rational creatures are humans, descended from Adam and Eve; ¹⁸ a little lower than angels, ¹⁹ with no creature in between. ²⁰ This Sensus Fidelium was Christological, which makes it an infallible doctrine. ²¹

With 266 popes, and over 11,000 saints, we don't have one positive ET statement. ²² Conversely, Pope Pius II, ²³ Pope St. Zachary, ²⁴ St. Augustine, ²⁵ St. Thomas Aquinas, ²⁶ St. Philastrius, ²⁷ and more condemned "other worlds, other men." These haven't been "corrected" by Rome.

Alien redemption theories with responses

When pressed, ET promoters bounce from weak theory to weak theory, with little commitment to any of them. They say things like "I don't know, it could be this, or this..." It's as if they think theologically lazy Catholics will buckle under the sheer number explanations they provide.

Catholic doctrine and/or dogma rules out belief in aliens

• Christ the King will come "soon."
• When he comes to earth, time will end for the entire material universe. ³⁷
• Mary, a human, is "Queen of the Universe." ³⁸
• The universe is destined for and addressed to man. ³⁹
• God created everything for man, ⁴⁰ entrusted all of creation to humans. ⁴¹
• Man has "dominion over all creatures." ⁴²
• The one Holy Spirit is the "soul" of the one Holy Church. ⁴³

The entire story of salvation is completely centred on humans on earth, which is why most deep seated believers in aliens have abandoned the Bible as "anthropocentric," and have characterized dogma as what Fr. Richard Rhor calls "small." There is just no way to reconcile belief in aliens with Catholicism. Neither can belief in aliens be reconciled with science, which is why it is best described as a religion.

The Vatican New Age document rightly groups belief in extraterrestrials with the occult and other dangerous New Age practices. ⁴⁴ Let’s heed the Catholic Church's warning.

By David MacDonald with adaptations from "Only Man Bears His Image by Daniel O'Connor, with permission.

I contacted Catholic Answers May 2024. Apologist Tom Nash responded: "There is no Catholic position on the existence of aliens, as such. Whether life exists on other planets is a scientific, not a theological, question." A request for escalation went unanswered.

Notes

• a Matt Walsh Show, May 18, 2026
• b Matt Walsh Show, June 6, 2023
• c Thigpen, Paul. Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith: Are We Alone in the Universe with God and the Angels? Gastonia, NC: TAN Books, 2022.
• 1 CE5 stands for Close encounters of the 5th kind, popularized by Dr. Steven Greer (1990s). Practitioners gather in dark, quiet environments—often stargazing.
• 2 ET advocate, Fr. Richard Rohr.
• 3 Jn 14:6
• 4 Mk 1:15
• 5 ET advocates Fr. Richard Rohr's assertion
• 6 Pints with Aquinas interview with Jimmy Akin. (Freemasonry and UFOs)
• 7 The magisterium condemns Freemasonry in In eminenti apostolatu, Pope Clement XII (1738), Humanum Genus Pope Leo XIII (1884), Declaratio de associationibus massonici, Pope John Paul II (1983)
• 8 Formally called parapsychology. The Rhine Institute is a school of the paranormal "bridging science with spirituality." The New Age on full display. https://www.rhineedu.org/
• 9 Vatican pastoral document, JESUS CHRIST THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE, A Christian reflection on the “New Age”, Section 3.2, released 2003.
• 10 Or UFO
• 11 Catholic Answers podcast, What Happened in the Lost Years of Jesus? (Weird Questions) time 3:47 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWC-9qhKChg
• 12 Adam and Eve, Song of Solomon, Jesus' discourses, Revelation, etc.
• 13 Rev 22:17
• 14 Rev 21:9
• 15 Mt 19, Lk 16:18
• 16 Mat 6:10
• 17 2 Thes 2:11
• 18 Summa Theologiae I q.29 a.1, Catechism §356, Humani Generis, para. 26 (Catholic Dogma)
• 19 Psm 8:5
• 20 Fourth Lateran Council (1215)
• 21 Lumen Gentium 12: “The whole body of the faithful … cannot err in matters of belief when, from the bishops down to the last of the faithful, they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.”
• 22 An ET advocate claimed JPII did but there is no evidence of that. It was a story promoted by an ET promoter within the Church., as is the story about Padre Pio, which was made up by an ET promoter., Fr. Corrado Balducci.
• 23 Pius II, Cum sicut accepimus (14 Nov. 1459), proposition 3
• 24 Boniface’s correspondence, Epistola 80
• 25 City of God. Book XI, Chapter 5
• 26 Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Question 47, Article 3 (“Whether there is only one world?”)
• 27 St. Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia †397 A.D.
• 28 Rom 5:12-21, 1 Cor 15:22
• 29 Rom 5:12–21, 1 Cor 15:22, Adam is generally considered redeemed in Catholic theology.
• 30 1 Cor 3:15
• 31 John 1:29, 1 John 2:2
• 32 Mk 16:15
• 33 Second Council of Constantinople, 533 A.D. The Anathemas Against Origen. §7
• 34 Jn 3:16
• 35 Col 1:3-4,15-19. They claim John 1:1 is about universal cosmic energy (chi, prana, etc.)
• 36 Rev. 12:4, 12:9
• 37 Rev 21:1, Mat 24:29
• 38 Lumen Gentium (1964), Ad Caeli Reginam, Oct 11, 1954
• 39 GAUDIUM ET SPES §3, Catechism §299
• 40 Catechism §358
• 41 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church §451. It is authentic Magisterium (§80)
• 42 Eucharistic Prayer IV, Part of the Mass, the Church's highest prayer.
• 43 Catechism 813
• 44 JESUS CHRIST THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE, A Christian reflection on the “New Age”, Section 3.2, released 2003

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