My Struggle as Editor of OnePeterFive, Part V: The Darkness Takes Me Alive

Mr Flanders continues his series of autobiographical essays on his struggles against what he refers to as the Antichrist Technocracy of the internet.

From One Peter Five

By Timothy Flanders, MA

Part I: My Soul was Crushed by the Matrix… and then I took over OnePeterFive

Part II: Disembodied Antichrist Community: Good out of Evil?

Part III: What this Non-Profit Did for Me

Part IV: “Orthobros” & the Subtlety of the Fallen Angels Online

My Struggle as Editor of OnePeterFive

Or: Mary Against the Antichrist Technocracy

By 2019, I had released my first article at OnePeterFive (against Eastern Orthodoxy) and launched our family apostolate Meaning of Catholic, in an attempt to spread good information about the Faith for the sake of souls. I knew the internet was evil, so I created the Internet Promise.

1. I will never speak a word on the Internet that is not in accord with truth and charity: truth, in that every word will accord with the thing as it is (as far as I know), and charity, in that it wills the good of my brother for the sake of God. As it is written, Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it on the day of judgment (Matt. xii. 36).
2. I will always accept and welcome correction. As it is written, The way of life, to him that observeth correction: but he that forsaketh reproofs, goeth astray (Prov. x. 17).
3. I will never say a dishonorable word regarding any superior whether ecclesiastical, natural or political: honor, as a witnessing to the excellence of an office (II-II q103 a1). As it is written, The prince of thy people thou shalt not curse (Ex. xxii. 28).
4. If I am constrained by truth and charity to speak of evil among my superiors, I will do so only out of necessity-that is, when the faith is endangered-while maintaining due honor to the office according to the Scripture, An ancient man rebuke not, but entreat him as a father (I Tim. v. 1).
5. I will never say anything profane or vulgar, as it is written, But now put you also all away: anger, indignation, malice, blasphemy, filthy speech out of your mouth (Col. iii. 8).

I tried to follow this promise, but the demons were far more subtle than I realised. If I’m really being honest, I’m consumed with pride, and I shouldn’t be on the internet. I like knowing things. I like telling others what is true or not. I like being liked and people thinking I’m something.

And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man’s religion is vain (Ja. i. 26).

I wouldn’t be here online unless I believed it was the Lord’s will to do what I’m doing (Bergamo’s text on humility is what forced me to do it.) My spiritual father told me to look for ways to grow in humility not by praying for humility, but by asking for humiliations. So let me try that right now, for my own soul’s salvation:

A few years ago I was on a podcast commenting on something I didn’t really know much about.

At some point in this show, one of the hosts asked me a question about German. I do not know German, but I answered the question like I knew the answer (I didn’t). Then my German translator friend in the live chat corrected me. Why on earth did I act like I knew anything when I didn’t?

Instead, I sinned against truth because of an idol of pride. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. vii. 24-25).

Then, earlier this year, on May 8th, the day Pope Leo was elected, I was so excited on a podcast that I couldn’t stop talking (my religion is vain), and again I sinned. I shared a rumour about Pope Leo that I thought would make me go “trending” so I shared it – but this was only a rumour, and it was a sin of detraction against the Holy Father, that I knew nothing about. (I later learned more of the truth of this matter from a dear friend.)

The background of Prevost in Peru

I could’ve bridled by tongue, but I didn’t. Instead, I sinned against truth because of an idol of pride. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. vii. 24-25).

I ask you, dear reader, to forgive me. And I ask the OnePeterFive Confraternity to pray for me. Because now I will tell you how the darkness consumed me as editor of OnePeterFive.

Back to July 2021

I was talking to a good friend recently and he said he noticed that after he got married, the spiritual attacks of the demons got worse. It seems that when a man gains more influence and responsibility over more souls than his own soul, the fallen angels start to swarm, trying to make that man fall so that he can influence more souls for evil instead of influencing them for good.

In the summer of 2021, as I said in part I, I was already spiritually exhausted by the internet. But it seemed that it was the Lord’s will to take over OnePeterFive from Steve Skojec when Crisis Publications offered me the job.

So I quit my office day job and became the new editor of OnePeterFive in July of 2021.

That same July, on the Feast of Our Lady of Carmel, Traditionis Custodes was promulgated.

When TC hit, I wasn’t too troubled. I had weathered the storm of Eastern Orthodoxy, and I was content to be with Rome until my last breath – no matter who was the Pope or what he did. I had spent years struggling with Orthodoxy and historical questions about tons of bad Popes.

OK, I thought, I guess Pope Francis is a bad pope. No big deal, historically speaking. Every 250 Years the Church Faces Certain Destruction.

But almost immediately, the darkness got worse. I lost sleep for months tormented in my conscience about running OnePeterFive – I want to tell the truth, but I don’t want to provoke anyone to hate the Holy Father. I want to be charitable – but I don’t want to “sugar coat” the ugly reality of sin and corruption.

I took counsel with two trustworthy priests – they helped ease my conscience about this. They said to me: the scandal is on Pope Francis’s side. Telling the truth about him – in a respectful way – is all you can do. You can do your best to not provoke anyone to hate him.

But all you can do is all you can do.

But for me, the darkness continued. I didn’t bridle my tongue. I sinned against truth and I enjoyed the dopamine burst of my words going “trending” or whatever.

I started getting depressed. It wasn’t the Vatican corruption – that wasn’t all that bad (the Pope wasn’t leading an army into Naples while fathering children, so it was bad, but our forefathers shed their blood for corrupt Popes, so it never really bothered me).[1] There was something about the virtual reality of the internet or the constant bickering of Christians that got to me.

Or maybe it was just the job.

I talked to wise people – I realised I just literally needed to spend more time in prayer, or I was going to die emotionally and spiritually. I had to religiously unplug from my phone at 5pm each day and all day on Sunday, or else my brain would explode.

I strove and strove and did my best but I was still getting swallowed by darkness.

I’m melancholic by temperament, so I’m prone to sadness and depression. But I hadn’t really struggled with depression since high school. But after I took over OnePeterFive, I started to struggle with periods of depression that made it hard to do the work. Sometimes I had to just sleep for a few hours instead of working. This is what depression does to people. Maybe you’ve felt this too, under the Church crisis.

This went on for a few years. I tried my best, with God’s help and by your prayers, asking our patrons of OnePeterFive to help me. At some point I started privately asking prayers of all our “Trad Godfathers” – those great men who are not canonised (yet?): Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand, JRR and Edith Tolkien, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Archbishop Lefebvre. But I also asked all the modern Popes for help from heaven: from Servant of God Pius VII to Pope St. John Paul II. (I understand the concern of about modern canonisations, but I wasn’t going to quibble about that – I was in darkness and needed help.)

Rescued by Mary

Thanks be to God – Our Lady intervened.

Finally, I picked up a copy of Dan Burke’s Spiritual Warfare and Discernment of Spirits.

The critical text that changed everything for me

This text went through the 14 rules of St. Ignatius and discussed them in detail. I knew these rules, but I really hadn’t looked at them for a good decade. I realised I needed to put these into practice.

When I did that, something began to shift for the better. In particular, rules 4-6 applied to me:

RULE 4 SE 317 Spiritual Desolation. I call desolation what is entirely the opposite of what is described in the third rule, as darkness of soul, turmoil of spirit, inclination to what is low and earthly, restlessness rising from many disturbances and temptations which lead to want of faith, want of hope, want of love. The soul is wholly slothful, tepid, sad, and separated, as it were, from its Creator and Lord. For just as consolation is the opposite of desolation, so the thoughts that spring from consolation are the opposite of those that spring from desolation.

RULE 5 SE 318 In time of desolation we should never make any change, but remain firm and constant in the resolution and decision which guided us the day before the desolation, or in the decision to which we adhered in the preceding consolation. For just as in consolation the good spirit guides and counsels us, so in desolation the evil spirit guides and counsels. Following his counsels we can never find the way to a right decision.

RULE 6 SE 319 Though in desolation we must never change our former resolutions, it will be very advantageous to intensify our activity against the desolation. We can insist more upon prayer, upon meditation, and on much examination of ourselves. We can make an effort in a suitable way to do some penance.

When I started to fight through it, the dark fog of depression began to slowly lift. That’s when I realised it was a trick of the devil all along. The fallen angels were just playing with me. And because I had gained more influence in becoming an editor, the fallen angels wanted a piece of me all the more. These rules really saved my heart from spinning in circles spiritually and emotionally, or worse. It was the breakthrough I needed to get into a work-life balance at OnePeterFive which allowed me to do this job because it is God’s will for me, with the strength He provides, by the prayers of our patrons.

And then earlier this year, Our Lady took me in her arms for real.

In September 2024, I had prayed a Novena to Our Lady of Sorrows. The fruit of that Novena did not come until Holy Week of 2025.

That’s when I prayed the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows for the first time.

Our Lady of Sorrows

Years ago I heard a talk by Fr. Ripperger explaining that Our Lady of Sorrows can give you self-knowledge. He says in Deliverance Prayers for the Laity that the daily Dolorosary (i.e. the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows) was particularly effective against the demons. Hence Fr. Ripperger founded his exorcist priestly fraternity, the Dolorans, under this specific patronage.

Immediately, when I prayed the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows for the first time in Holy Week of 2025, I received one of the greatest graces of my life.

What was this grace?

Self-knowledge.

And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed (Lk. ii. 35).

Mary revealed my heart to me – some small part of it anyway. And I realised I was an idolater. Remember that quote from St. John Climacus? Let’s have it again, because it’s solid gold:

He whose will and desire in conversation is to establish his own opinion, even though what he says is true, should recognize that he is sick with the devil’s disease.

Our Lady showed me that deep in my heart, I was worshipping idols, not the Lord. And the fallen angels were leading me to this idolatry through the internet. How?

The word “idolatry” is εἰδωλολατρία which means to pay λατρεία (the worship due to God alone) to an εἴδωλον.

An εἴδωλον is an idol, but it’s much more than just a statue of Artemis Ephesia. The term was used by the Greeks to refer to an epistemological reality – we apprehend reality and it creates an idea (Greek: εἴδωλον) which is implanted in our intellect. We then reference this εἴδωλον in order to reference reality.

Idolatry is the worship of false ideas about reality.

Ever since Christ was enthroned in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the idols have crumbled. Why did His Majesty cleanse the temple? Because τὴν πλεονεξίαν ἐστὶν εἰδωλολατρία (Col. iii. 5) – greed is idolatry. The Anointed King cleansed His temple from the new and subtle idols of greed.

But the fallen angels strove and strove to erect their idols once again: the heresies, Muhammadanism, the Protestant “looter’s revolt,” the goddess Libertas in the New York harbour.

And in Holy Week of this calendar year, Our Lady of Sorrows opened up to me some of the depth of idolatry in my heart.

The internet was pressuring me to worship the idol of my ideas and then rewarding my brain with serotonin.

The internet was pressuring me to worship the idol of my ideas and then rewarding my brain with serotonin.

The internet was pressuring me to worship the idol of my ideas and then rewarding my brain with serotonin.

How diabolical is that?

Now I finally understood the true evil of the internet. It was much worse than I thought.

I was serving these idols, and the fallen angels held me captive in their darkness as a result. The virtual reality of the internet provided me with dopamine bursts when I worshipped the idols of my ideas. But these pleasures were short lived, and soon the snake of depression sunk me back into its grip.

When we go back to the spiritual rules of St. Ignatius, we can see that at root, it is about removing the idols from your mind. Removing the bad ideas about God and the Devil. Consider this potent truth:

RULE 9 SE 322 The principal reasons why we suffer from desolation are three: The first is because we have been tepid and slothful or negligent in our exercises of piety, and so through our own fault spiritual consolation has been taken away from us. The second reason is because God wishes to try us, to see how much we are worth, and how much we will advance in His service and praise when left without the generous reward of consolations and signal favors. The third reason is because God wishes to give us a true knowledge and understanding of ourselves, so that we may have an intimate perception of the fact that it is not within our power to acquire and attain great devotion, intense love, tears, or any other spiritual consolation; but that all this is the gift and grace of God our Lord. God does not wish us to build on the property of another, to rise up in spirit in a certain pride and vainglory and attribute to ourselves the devotion and other effects of spiritual consolation.

The fallen angels poured into my heart all this sorrow, desolation and depression, because I was serving my idols, but as soon as St. Ignatius and Our Lady freed my mind from these idols (or least revealed that they were there in my heart), and I knew the truth, I could fight with the truth of the Holy Cross.

Nowadays when I hit that brick wall of desolation, I pull up the Rules and just read them through. They’re so short and potent.

And now I cannot begin my day anymore without the Seven Sorrows Chaplet. Only then can I face the fallen angels and their Internet Matrix Beast with the confidence of a Knight of the Immaculata.

When the intellect knows the truth, the heart returns to rest and peace. Even when the desolation is overwhelming the heart, the truth can help us fight through it until God gives us His mercy. And this is the great truth Mary revealed to me through her Seven Sorrows, opening my heart to see my own idolatry.

What is it about this devotion that makes the demons tremble? At first, I just felt the divine power of God through Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart.

But there’s just something about contact with her heart that destroys all idols and brings you to your knees before God’s reality. This is what I need to work on these screens, combatting the false light of Lucifer and the designs of his fallen angels.

Since you’ve come to the end of my story, I thank you for reading. Let this all be for her greater glory under the patronage of her Immaculate Conception. Please invoke our patrons on my behalf and on behalf of OnePeterFive. Please join the Confraternity so that we can keep this online journal free for all.

[1] Who was the pope when St. Thomas More got his head chopped off for the Papacy? Look it up.