Monsignor Corrado Balducci:
The Deceived Roman Exorcist and Theologian

Adapted from Daniel O'Connor's book "Only Man Bears his Image" with permission.

“See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.” —Colossians 2:8

Monsignor Corrado Balducci is one of the most frequently cited Catholic names in support of belief in extraterrestrials. It is not difficult to see why. For those who still manage to cling to clericalism—supposing that any priest-theologian (particularly one who works in the Vatican) is a veritable mouthpiece for God—Balducci presents the perfect “proof” that Catholics can, or even should, believe in aliens.

This Italian theologian, who served on Vatican congregations and died in 2008, claims to have counted the pope as one of his friends, and had even served as an exorcist for the Diocese of Rome.

“If he believed in aliens, shouldn’t we also believe in them?”, today’s Catholic ET promoters say. The answer, of course, is a most emphatic no. Here as everywhere in ET promotion, one need only scratch the surface to see how loudly the diabolical delusion resounds. Msgr. Balducci did not merely speculate about abstract theological questions related to extraterrestrial intelligence. He unreservedly dove head-first into Ufology—with its occultism and all—and became a veritable celebrity (commonly appearing in both television episodes and documentary films) by declaring himself the Catholic Church’s “representative to the star peoples.”

Through his efforts over the course of many years, he became one of Ufology’s greatest champions in the 1990s and early 2000s. He openly, warmly, and repeatedly collaborated with charlatans and deceivers such as Dr. Steven Greer and Whitley Strieber—who were themselves beyond question either vexed by demons (e.g., Strieber) or facilitating dialogue with demons (e.g., Greer).

Instead of offering them any correction or solid Catholic guidance, he only confirmed these men in their delusions and sent them on their way treading the path to perdition and leading millions to the same fate. (To this day, many Ufologists—including these two—defer to Balducci’s influence on them to justify the evil teachings they promote in the ET Deception.)

Therefore, due to Balducci’s uniquely destructive legacy in contemporary “Catholic” ET promotion, a particularly careful analysis of his impact is here necessary over the course of a few sections. ***

In an interview from the year 2000 that was falsely billed by the media as a revelation that, now, “the Vatican endorses extraterrestrials!”, Balducci made various deeply misguided remarks to the Ufologist Paola Harris.

Ms. Harris is a woman who credits her fixation upon UFOs to watching the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which, she shares, “triggered in her an emotional response.” She has since gone down the proverbial rabbit hole of Ufology—even becoming a promoter of occult practices like “remote viewing.”

Harris co-authored a 2021 Ufology book (Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret) with Jacques Vallée, she considers herself an “exopolitician,” (i.e., one who will manage political relations with the aliens upon contact), and she advocates for (and even attended) Steven Greer’s demon-contacting sessions (i.e., his “CE5” events described in an earlier chapter).

Ms. Harris has relayed that she and Balducci “admired each other” and “often dined together, “sharing, of the Monsignor:

[Balducci] was optimistic and hopeful that we would have some kind of celestial ‘intervention’ [i.e., from aliens] and be saved from cataclysmic destruction[268]

Leaving aside the question of why a priest would often dine with a particular woman, we can see again that Balducci was not merely wrongheadedly arguing for the reconcilability of belief in aliens with Catholic teaching. He was far past that, and was placing his hopes for the world not in the triumph of Christ, but in some saving intervention from aliens. Ms. Harris claims that Balducci’s views in support of aliens

“represent the unofficial position of the Catholic Church.”[269]

This distortion no doubt arose from Balducci’s habit of overestimating his own importance and authority. In fact, Balducci had no more right to speak for the “position of the Catholic Church”—official or unofficial—than any priest. His status as a theologian and exorcist in Rome lends no Magisterial weight to his views. Whoever would seek to ascertain the proper Catholic position from the views of an individual priest would be better advised listening to Fr. Stanley Jaki or Fr. Thomas Weinandy—both contemporary theologians (one still living, and both of far greater renown and competence than Balducci)—who wisely taught the following:

“Behind these bravados about extraterrestrials you either see the strategy of the devil or you remain blind.” -Fr. Stanley Jaki[270]

“Intelligent aliens find no place within God’s eternal scheme...Jesus cosmically reigns supreme as man. He is not Lord of non-human aliens, for they do not exist ... while it may be fun to fantasize ... about the existence of aliens, such daydreaming, if it is deemed to be real, can wreak havoc on the Gospel, particularly to the primacy of Jesus as the cosmic incarnate Lord of all.”—Fr. Thomas Weinandy[271]

Tragically, instead of helping Ms. Harris to see the errancy of her life-destroying occult interests, Fr. Balducci only confirmed her in these diabolical ploys and encouraged her in this destructive path. As of this writing, Paola has only fallen deeper and deeper into those New Age, esoteric, occultist teachings that have always proven inseparable from Ufology—all while continuing to praise and defer to Balducci’s influence on her in this process.

Recall, from earlier chapters, that Whitley Strieber’s encounters with “aliens” are so baldly demonic that no discerning Christian aware of them could fail to recognize this. Balducci could have helped Strieber, too. Instead, as happens all too often today, this priest only confirmed that tormented soul in his agony and pushed him to continue treading the same self-destructive path of dialoguing with demons in disguise. As recounted by Dr. Brenda Denzler, in a book on Ufology: Abductee Whitley Strieber entered the fray to inform [an online UFO forum] that Balducci had given him a personal interview. Noting that Balducci was an exorcist for the Archdiocese of Rome, Strieber commented that the monsignor’s expertise in that field lent “authority” to his views on the question of whether the Visitors (as Strieber calls the aliens) are demons [i.e., Strieber & Balducci’s insistence the “Visitors” were not demons, but were truly aliens]... Strieber’s interview with the monsignor is appended to his book Confirmation (Strieber 1998).[272]

Reminiscent of the millions of Catholics who today insist they can continue contracepting or committing adultery “because a theologian priest told me I could,” Strieber regards himself as capable of refuting the very possibility that he is really being tormented by demons due to the supposed “authority” of Balducci’s personal words to him. Steven Greer has also remained deeply impacted by Balducci’s collaboration with him.

When Ms. Harris interviewed Dr. Greer, he brought up Balducci’s words to justify his own encouragement that we become “an ambassador to non-human life forms...[to] use meditation techniques and the contact techniques to be able to enter and experience Cosmic Mind and then remotely view, using Cosmic Mind.” Balducci even gave Steven Greer a personal interview, which the latter recalls frequently and included selections of in his 2013 book, Disclosure. In that interview, Balducci tells Greer:

A human person, according to my opinion, is like this: worse than we are, it cannot exist. We are the worst...Lower than [us], there isn’t anything... [Extraterrestrials] are probably so evolved that evil doesn’t even enter into [them] ...God in his wisdom wouldn’t have created only us...Don’t even think about it [ET/UFO sightings] being the devil. ...if they are better than we are, they are going to intervene, then they are going to help us...[273]

We will address Balducci’s fallacies shortly. First, we must observe that in the years since this interview—as we saw in an earlier chapter—Greer has gone on to deceive untold millions with a decidedly anti-Christian message based on belief in extraterrestrials. And he has done this with the backing of Balducci.

Claims like those above were not mere isolated comments. Balducci preached them to a global audience for many years. Elsewhere, he declared that:

[Aliens] must be much more evolved because the human species is the lowest rung on the ladder of spiritual development...I always wish to be the spokesman for these star peoples.[274]

Balducci demeans the human race; claiming it resides in “the lowest rung of spiritual evolution,” indicating not only a blasphemous disregard for supreme status of the humanity of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and the Catholic Church in general, but also a capitulation to the “synthesis of all heresies”—the theological Darwinism of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin.

He moreover promotes a false eschatology by longing for an intervention from the aliens to “save the world from cataclysm.” Balducci featured prominently in a popular 2006 Ufology documentary entitled Fastwalkers. Other major names in this film run the gamut of Ufology charlatans and occultists, including hoaxer George Adamski (via archival media), Dr. Steven Greer, Alfred Webre, Jim Marrs, (who were each interviewed directly), and others. The documentary begins, however, with a few pithy statements from some of its stars, including none other than Paola Harris herself, who declares—drawing, no doubt, from Balducci’s influence upon her—that the human race is “the virus of the universe,” lamenting that “nobody [extraterrestrials] really wants us out there.”

Later in the movie, she sits beside Msgr. Balducci, translating for him (he spoke in Italian), as he reiterates his usual arguments in support of ETs. This film pulls no punches in promoting even the most outlandish tenets of the diabolical ET Deception. Within this documentary, we are told that:

• Dozens of alien species have been with humanity “for millions of years,”
• Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not by the Wrath of God but by a UFO,
• “The greys” (the most popular form of “aliens”) were “authorized to form a Noah’s Ark with a full genetic DNA bank [of earth’s species] to re-planet centuries later after catastrophe,”
• The “U.S. Government has a joint program with aliens to upgrade our biological computers; to build better bodies to house our souls in future incarnations,”
• An “advanced alien species has long lived on earth and played quite an important role in the genetic engineering of humanity,”
• The aliens will “step in to keep us from blowing the hell out of ourselves [with nuclear bombs],” that aliens are “giving us a conditioning period so we can get a boost in the evolutionary ladder and become full class members of the intergalactic community,”
• Aliens are “interdimensional and can walk through walls, communicate telepathically, and engage in what looks like magic to us, but is only interdimensionality,”
• Aliens “give planets their life charter when they become able to support life because this is what they’ve been doing forever,” and this life charter “tells us who we are, what we are, how we came to be, and where we might end up going,” and
• There is an “intergalactic federation that could end all war, all starvation, all fossil fuel use, but is being covered up by the government.”

Ninety minutes of Antichristic claims such as these—interspersed with many other equally demonic ones—bring us to the conclusion of the film. Just as Ms. Harris was given one of the opening declarations of the film (defining humans as “the virus of the universe,”) so Msgr. Balducci is given one of its final words.

Moments before the documentary ends, Balducci yet again declares: I really believe that humanity is the lowest in the category of the evolutionary scale; with all the proof we have of the ecological problem, the war problem, the problem of choosing evil, this is my belief system.

Clearly, this is what Balducci desires to be his celebrity legacy: his dogmatic and repeated insistence (to his global audience), as a “certainty” that “cannot be doubted,” (as he said elsewhere) that the entire human race is a pathetically “unevolved” species in desperate need of cosmic intervention, not from God, but from “evolved aliens”—to save us from ourselves.

If this is not a diabolical deception, then nothing is. A defender of Balducci may point out that this film’s most extreme claims were not directly from Balducci’s own lips. That observation is cold comfort considering Balducci himself promotes outlandish and blasphemous ET-related beliefs, and, despite the popularity of this documentary and others he appeared in (along with the publications of many Ufology charlatans he collaborated with and encouraged for many years), Balducci lived for years after their release while apparently never issuing so much as a clarification, much less a rebuttal.

Three years before Fastwalkers, he appeared in a similarly problematic UFO documentary, the 2003 film Touched by an Alien, in which contactees recount, in precise detail, their encounters with demons (especially succubus and incubus demons), thinking them to be “aliens.” UFO Chronicles: Alien Science and Spirituality was a film released five years after Balducci’s death, and it includes more of the footage from his interview for the 2006 Fastwalkers movie.

There, we see and hear him say the following. (Note that Balducci is speaking Italian very quickly and bombastically, and his translator struggled at times. What follows is my best attempt at transcribing portions of the video.)

[Extraterrestrials] couldn’t be worse than we are because we are the worst on the scale of evolution; they would have to be more intelligent than we are... I am an expert in demonology; I wrote a book about the devil... I’m very well known, so I could go into the Secret Archive... I know the new Pope, I knew the old Pope, only I could go there... If I didn’t work in the Secretary of State in the Vatican, maybe they would have put my books on the index [of forbidden books][***************]... We must exclude COMPLETELY that extraterrestrials have ANYTHING to do with evil or the devil ... There are millions of worlds that are inhabited. If God created millions of stars that are even bigger than the star in our galaxy, we are dealing with infinite possibilities here. It’s NOT POSSIBLE that it’s just us. It CAN’T be just us on this planet ... I’m famous for books on demonology, so I can defend that Ufology has nothing to do with the devil ... Aliens are praying for us. We are the lowest in the category of the evolutionary scale ... The ecological problem, the war problem...

Here we see displayed not only Balducci’s fallacious reasoning (and a reiteration of his usual attacks on the pinnacle of God’s creation, the human nature), but also his remarkable hubris. He really believes that because he is an “expert,” he is above the Devil’s deceptions. He gestures that because he is “famous for books on demonology,” he can simply decree that Ufology “has nothing to do with the Devil,” and this makes it so.

He seems to have committed the chief sin all wise exorcists (but not all exorcists) know to avoid at all costs: thinking himself more intelligent than Satan, as if any Satanic ploy would automatically and immediately be perceived by him merely because of his credentials.

Alas, if there is one thing the demons would above all desire to see engendered within those who study them, it is pride. Balducci is far from the only theologian-exorcist in whom they have succeeded in this task. As a result of all this astounding arrogance, Balducci decided that it is “impossible” that there aren’t, therefore he filters everything else through this erroneous but dogmatic a priori stance. (Strangely, Balducci even admits why his outlandish promotion of the ET Deception was not clamped down on by the Vatican—namely, only because he had political power through his employment at the Vatican Secretariat of State.)

Yet another popular Ufology film, Watchers 7: Physical Evidence, was released in 2013, and it features both archival footage of Balducci (who died several years before its release) and testimonies from those who knew him. In the footage of Balducci from a popular Italian television episode from 1998, he declares:

“We can’t think any longer if [ETs] are true or false...real or fake... if we believe it or not. NO. ...[we can] say with assurance that the existence of these being is real. WE CAN’T HAVE ANY DOUBTS. [emphasis in original]”

As far as Balducci is concerned, we are not even allowed to doubt ETs are among us. Yet this is how a cult-leader (who knows the whole thing is a charade) speaks, not a sincere seeker of truth. Later in the film, the director interviews Jaime Maussan, “a very good friend of Balducci,” who confirms the Monsignor’s sentiments and shares how inspired he was to continue his Ufology pursuits thanks to Balducci.

Mr. Maussan is one of the most well-known charlatans in Ufology in Mexico. On dozens of separate occasions (during the period of his friendship with Balducci), he perpetrated blatant scams in claiming that aliens are among us. Even other Ufologists tend to regard him as a fraudster. For example, Ufologist Ryan Sprague compiled a list of 44 separate flagrant hoaxes promoted by Maussan over the decades, including [275] his assertion that an alien spaceship accompanied the Hale Bopp comet. Recall that this claim directly resulted in the mass-suicide of the Heaven’s Gate UFO cult, in which 39 people took their lives. (But that is just one of innumerable diabolical fruits of the ET promotion of men like Maussan and Balducci.)

One of Maussan’s more well-known deceptions was his 2017 presentation of five “alien bodies,” in a popular documentary released by Gaia, Inc., which were later exposed as mummified corpses of children. As of September 2023, he has again presented so-called “alien corpses,” this time to the Mexican Congress. Few, one hopes, will even be tempted to lend any credence to this deceiver’s latest ruse. It is unsurprising that Balducci and Maussan were “very good friends.” Both spent many years publicly proclaiming egregious errors, contrary to the Christian Faith, while pretending to be speaking in full accord with Catholic truth and castigating anyone who dared to so much as doubt that extraterrestrials were among us.

Balducci’s “Strong Delusion” and God’s Merciful Warning to the Faithful Today

“I’m afraid that the old theological heresies are nothing by comparison to the new ones, which the Astronomers want to introduce with their worlds ... the consequence of these will be much more perilous than the previous ones, and will introduce some very strange revolutions.”[276] — Gabriel Naudé. (†1653) (French Catholic scholar and librarian to Cardinal Barberini)

At this point, we must state the obvious, though offensive, truth. Balducci was clearly subject to significant diabolical deception; perhaps even from the very same demons he cast out of others. This is anything but beyond the pale. Recall that in his book, Hostage to the Devil, Fr. Malachi Martin himself relayed the (true) story of a 20th century Roman theologian-exorcist who became demonically possessed due to his belief in the teachings of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. And it is quite clear that de Chardin’s views heavily influenced Balducci; for it is precisely the latter’s insistence that humanity is “unevolved” that compels him to dogmatically insist aliens exist and are among us to save us.

Whoever would defer to Monsignor Balducci in arguing belief in aliens is reconcilable with Catholicism might as well defer to the condemned heretics, Giordano Bruno or Origen, in pretending to do the same. Such references do not support the legitimacy of ET belief—they refute it. The mere fact that, in some of his works, Balducci presents as an “orthodox Catholic,” does not in the least detract from this diagnosis. The Devil has used “orthodox Catholic” theologians before Balducci to advance his own agenda, and he will do the same with many more in the future. Assuredly, Balducci is not the only Rome-educated theologian and exorcist with a lengthy resume (which he constantly draws attention to) who is diabolically deceived on this issue. We must be on guard.

The true Magisterium will always be protected, but the Great Deception will be heralded, defended, and promoted by many lofty clerics in Rome and by many Rome-educated clergymen elsewhere.[†††††††††††††††]

What we have seen transpiring in the life and teachings of Msgr. Balducci, therefore, is in fact a merciful warning for us today. For we are thereby instructed to expect much more of the same in the coming times. Consider how otherwise unprepared the faithful might be for the Great Deception. If, practically overnight, groups of “orthodox Catholic” theologians began endorsing the notion that “more evolved aliens” are here to save us from cataclysm, this scenario would be exceedingly difficult for simple and faithful souls to deal with. “When has such a thing happened before?” they would ask. “How could such men as these—even ‘orthodox’ priest theologians—mislead me? That simply couldn’t be so! I suppose I must take their words as truth and heed the admonitions of these alien saviors.

If they were harmful, then Fr. ___ and Dr. ___ would not have told me otherwise.” Now, however, we do have an answer to those questions—it has happened. It happened with Msgr. Balducci. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.

If the ET Deception is the Great Deception itself—a likelihood becoming increasingly difficult to deny—then it could not be otherwise. That apocalyptic onslaught will—by definition—be much more difficult to overcome than preceding deceptions. It is guaranteed to delude many who were not likewise deluded by less apocalyptic machinations from Satan; including many who accurately denounced the Devil’s less eschatological attacks.

Whoever expects to survive the Great Deception merely by unreflectively trusting the same voices he has trusted on easier issues that have arisen is bound to succumb. Moreover, God allowed Balducci’s deception to transpire decades before the Great Deception itself such that the fruits of his own legacy can now be adequately discerned in hindsight by any sincere, if simple, Christian.

Such a believer need only look at what the Ufologists formed by Balducci—individuals such as Paola Harris, Steven Greer, Whitley Strieber, Jaime Maussan, etc.—are now claiming, to observe that, beyond doubt, their mission is a diabolical one. It is certainly not possible for any orthodox Catholic to observe the current works of these individuals and fail to recognize the evil permeating them. These are Balducci’s fruits.

What, then, can we trust? We can trust the Bible, Sacred Tradition (e.g., the consensus of the saints throughout the ages), and the true Magisterium; that is, the actual text of actual Magisterial documents—not merely personal opinions of Popes, or the speculations of men working for Vatican congregations.

“Put not your trust in princes,” Psalm 146 admonishes us, and this includes “princes of the Church.”

***

We will not, however, merely dismiss Balducci’s arguments on such accounts. Quite the contrary, it is important to recall and refute them; a task to which we now turn. Answering Balducci’s Fallacies:

“Demons Don’t Need Spacecraft, and Are Bound by God’s Will Anyway”

Let us now consider Balducci’s own argument for extraterrestrials. In an interview with Paola Harris, Msgr. Balducci stated:

Spiritualism and Ufology are two types of manifestations. In the evolutionary scale, I believe there is something between us and the angels ... We should exclude that angels use spaceships, because they are merely spiritual beings. They are wherever they want to be, and in the rare cases when they show themselves, they have no difficulty in assuming a visible form ... My conclusions come from my research in parapsychology and demonology... These things cannot be attributed to the “Devil.” He does not need UFOs. Even keeping their angelic nature, we shouldn’t think about the devils at all, because they are connected in their liberty to God in their extraordinary activity, and in that way they are unable to express their terrible and malefic hate for us. ... in Ufology, we know a phenomenon exists, and although we don’t know who these aliens ... are, it is possible that they are more evolved than Man is today. [277]

We should first consider Balducci’s claim that we “shouldn’t think about the devils at all” when it comes to “alien” encounters, because “Angels [don’t] use spaceships...[and the Devil] does not need UFOs.” This truism is not denied by anyone, therefore treating it as a premise is a straw man.

I believe I have read the arguments of every prominent author on this topic, and I have not come across a single one who is under the impression that “demons need UFOs.” How exactly Balducci concluded this is what they are claiming can only be explained either by intentional deceit or by total ignorance of the writings of those with whom he disagrees.

Obviously, demons do not need spaceships; the “UFOs” themselves are diabolical deceptions—they are precisely what the Fathers of the Church warned are prevalent in the atmosphere. Just as the demons have, for thousands of years, worn disguises in keeping with the prevailing Pagan myths of the cultures in which they appeared, so today they wear sci-fi disguises, as that is the prevailing contemporary Pagan myth. The demons never “need” any of the disguises they wear. They wear them because it is strategic for them to do so, and as highly intelligent creatures, they grasp this.

Balducci, therefore, is begging the question—employing circular reasoning—by assuming his conclusion in his own premises. He is assuming that UFOs are genuine physical craft in his very attempt to argue that they are genuine physical craft.

As we discussed extensively in Part Three, however, the argument that such physical craft exist is scientifically bankrupt, logically absurd, and devoid of a single shred of convincing evidence.

All this, even though the Ufologists have had over 76 years (since Roswell) to present evidence of these “alien craft” they insist have been buzzing our skies incessantly for decades. The case for the existence of physical ET-piloted UFOs is entirely laughable. Balducci’s next argument is that, since the demons are “connected in their liberty to God in their extraordinary activity,” we needn’t at all be concerned about diabolical deceptions.

By the Monsignor’s logic—which is simply a corollary to the heresy of Quietism —one might as well assume:

• Every apparition is authentic (when many are demonic in origin, and as such rigorous discernment is essential),
• Ouija Board usage is unproblematic (in fact, the demons regularly use these to ensnare those who dabble in them),
• Séances are not a danger (whereas they frequently result in dialogue with demons),
• Freemasonry should not be a concern (whereas countless Papal Encyclicals exhort the faithful to be on guard against the demonic deceptions it promotes),
• and on the list goes.

If we needn’t bother considering the possibility of the activity of demons in prevailing cultural trends, because “everything the demons can do is subject to God’s Will” (indeed it is!), then why bother avoiding or opposing any of these things?

The answer is clear, and while it evidently perplexes many a theologian, few serious if simple Christians are confused about it. The demons are indeed chained by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. But when we wander within the radius of that chain—perhaps through dabbling in the occult (which has always proven inextricable from Ufology), following Pagan myths (including belief in extraterrestrials), dialoguing with the demons (as Balducci’s colleague, Dr. Greer, facilitates), or treating anything but Christ messianistically (as Balducci himself appears to treat “ETs”)—then God’s permissive Will often allows the demons to wreak havoc in the life of the one who has done so.

There is a graver still fallacy inherent in Balducci’s argument here. For by claiming we needn’t be concerned about demonic delusions in accordance with the fact that these demons are bound by God’s Will, he has entirely ignored the prophecy in Scripture—certain to be fulfilled—that God’s Will is indeed going to allow a “Strong Delusion” to assault the world:

The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false... (2 Thessalonians 2:9-11)

Balducci’s ET-Inspired Manichean Blasphemy Against Human Nature

Another component of Msgr. Balducci’s argument for extraterrestrials builds on his exceedingly dim view of human nature—as noted, he repeatedly claims: ...[aliens] must be much more evolved because the human species is the lowest rung on the ladder of spiritual development... We have already seen how contrary this notion is to Catholic dogma. It is above all an attack on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. But, for example, it also violates what we know of the glories of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As covered in Part Two of this book, the Virgin is, according to Catholic Teaching, not only the greatest creature in the universe but also the greatest possible creature.

In other words, it is materially heretical to even hypothesize the existence of a greater creature than she. Yet she is just like us. To claim that her nature—which is nothing other than human nature—actually resides on the “lowest rung on the ladder of spiritual evolution” is blasphemous and heretical.

Balducci, however, takes this idea even further, insisting:

It is probable that there are other beings ... because there is too much discrepancy between human and angelic nature, of which we have the theological certainty. And since in man, the spirit is subordinate to matter, and since the Angels are alone spirit, it is probable that beings exist with very much less body and matter than we have.[278]

Here, Balducci betrays a fundamental confusion about the relationship between human nature and angelic nature. While it is true that, considered in and of itself, the purely spiritual existence of angelic nature surpasses the perfection of human nature, it is not true that this implies a gap in the Hierarchy of Creation.

To assert such a gap not only violates Catholic dogma on the Blessed Virgin (for it falsely implies that angels are above their own Queen), but it also contradicts 2,000 years of unanimous consensus of Sacred Tradition on the Hierarchy of Creation, which has always treated human and angelic nature as perfectly adjacent—coterminous.

It also violates even Old Testament Scriptural teaching—Divine Revelation from a time before God had fully revealed (via the Incarnation) just how glorious human nature really is. For we read, in the Psalms:

Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:5)

The translation above is from the RSVCE; if we consult the Douay-Rheims translation, we read that God has made man “little less than the angels.”

Whichever translation is deferred to, we see contradicted Balducci’s notion of such a large gap existing between men and angels that other categories of rational beings must exist in order to render creation’s hierarchy complete. In fact, not only does no gap exist, but even more significantly, there is substantial overlap.

Many human beings are far higher than many angels, notwithstanding the surpassing perfection of angelic nature. The Blessed Virgin, however, is not the only human being above the pure spirits. St. Joseph is certainly far above the angels—he, not any angel, is the Patron of the Universal Church and the Terror of Demons. Moreover, the Church teaches that he is the greatest saint (a term which includes angels) aside from his spouse (cf. Pope Leo XIII, Quamquam Pluries). This is true even though St. Joseph was not immaculately conceived. He is, therefore, “like us” in every way—including being of “common stock.”

Many saints, too, have risen far above many, if not all, angels. As is commonly known, a demon was once forced to reveal that if only two other men like St. John Vianney lived on earth at his time, the Devil’s Kingdom would have been destroyed.

The Catechism itself also makes clear that there is no gap between men and angels:

In the act of creation, God calls every being from nothingness into existence. “Crowned with glory and honor,” man is, after the angels, capable of acknowledging “how majestic is the name of the Lord in all the earth.” Even after losing through his sin his likeness to God, man remains an image of his Creator (§2566)

If man is—as the Church teaches—”after the angels,” then this means no other category of beings exist between the two, as such a placement would violate this element of the Magisterium.

There are no visible (physical/corporeal/incarnate) creatures whatsoever who are, as Balducci claims, “more spiritually evolved/developed.” Only the angels are above us. There are no exceptions.

St. Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church, taught:

“Man is the perfection of the universe.”

St. Irenaeus, Father and Doctor of the Church, taught that

“the glory of God is man fully alive.”

Clearly, such teachings as these (permeating Sacred Tradition and Magisterium) about human nature are irreconcilable with Balducci’s view that human nature is horribly ”unevolved.”

And it should not be difficult for any Christian to decide whether the saints or Msgr. Balducci (and his colleagues in Ufology) are the trustworthy ones. Why, then, does Balducci regard human nature so dimly? He answers that question explicitly: man, he claims, is so far below the angels because, in us, “spirit is subordinate to matter,” whereas the angels are pure spirit, and therefore, there should exist beings between angels and men in the hierarchy of creation who have “much less body and matter than we have.”

Here is where Balducci reveals that he is simply reinventing the third century’s Manichean Heresy, which held the dualistic view that “the good” is the spirit, and “the bad” is the material; therefore, growth in perfection consists in the spirit overriding and eliminating matter.

From this (avowedly anti-Christian) premise, Balducci’s conclusion appears consistent: man, being a truly incarnate creature, “must stand beneath innumerable other creatures, not pure spirit like the angels, but at least less ‘tied to this sinful matter’ like humans.”

The tragedy is that Balducci failed to ever see the heresy latent in the arguments he used to justify his ET belief. In fact, Balducci is essentially subscribing to teachings common in Islam and other Pagan religions regarding “jinn” or “genies”—creatures who (like us) could behave morally or immorally, but who are not fully corporeal like us but also not entirely spirit. Islam’s “jinn” are said to be intelligent creatures, usually invisible, but are not angels—they are like humans; they will eventually be judged by God and they may in the future choose to worship Him or not. Of course, there is no such thing as “jinn.” This is just another Pagan disguise—like extraterrestrials—that the demons use.

Traditionalist poet Charles Upton explained more of Balducci’s errors as follows:

Monsignor Balducci exhibits the effects of both an incomplete cosmology and a lack of “discernment of spirits.” Anyone who has read Dr. John Mack’s book Abduction, and who also both believes in demons and understands their nature, will be forced to conclude that the majority of the terrifying encounters he reports have to do with the demonic, and nothing else. Many of these encounters appear to be cases of vexation (physical attack) or obsession (mental attack) rather than full possession. And yet the fact that, as Dr. Mack informs us, many of the “entities” who end by abducting their adult victims began as “imaginary playmates” during the victims’ childhoods, is evidence that demonic possession is also a distinct possibility in some cases, as least insofar as we can define “familiar spirits” as “possessing” demons, not merely “obsessing” ones. If this exorcist for the Archdiocese of Rome had been able to survey thoroughly and dispassionately his Church’s archives relating to demonic activity, he would have seen that his description of the UFO aliens ... to maintain that any subtle but not fully spiritual being can be a guardian to humanity is a strictly pagan belief; according to traditional Catholic doctrine, our guardians are necessarily angels, not daimones. That a high-ranking Catholic exorcist was apparently unable to tell the difference between a guardian angel and a familiar spirit is one more glaring indication of the tragedy of ... certain Catholic exorcists who came into intimate contact with demons, not realizing that they now [after post-Vatican II changes to the exorcism Rite often] lacked the spiritual potency that would protect them from these beings, and also in view of the fact that Catholic doctrine has been rendered relatively vague and ambiguous since Vatican II, may have become deluded by them—if not actually possessed..[279] ***

While we have at this point adequately addressed both Balducci himself and the arguments he presents, it remains to consider one more attitude he has publicly espoused: his general dismissal of the diabolical (at least, in those contexts in which he finds acknowledging it inconvenient).

NOTE: We will, however, treat this matter in the corresponding Appendix, so that we can now move on to other topics. (Note: Msgr. Balducci also wrote a paper, delivered at a meeting in Rome of December 2002, which was signed June 8th, 2001, entitled Ufology and Theological Clarifications. However, as we have already addressed each argument he presents elsewhere in this book, we will not needlessly increase the length of this section by reiterating those answers.)

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