"The priest has found an effective formula is to have a Mass said for any soul that seems to be disturbing a place and gently telling the soul, "Call to Jesus. Keep saying 'Jesus' over and over, until He comes.""
I will admit that this is probably the only thing in the whole article that I question. First, because I had never heard of using the Holy Mass to pray for souls that are "disturbing a specific place" (rather than praying for "the Faithful Departed/souls in Purgatory as a group) and I have expressed this a few times in this thread already. Second, I have never heard of saying the things that the priest says during Mass.
Having said that, I have a feeling that this sentence is worded strangely. Although it appears that what he is saying is said *at Mass* it may be that he does the two things in his "formula" separately (ie. both work). Also, regarding your concern that he is communicating with the dead, what about exorcisms? Didn't the apostles exorcise and doesn't that require speaking to the dead (while also praying to the Lord)?
I would want to know more about this part of the article. Unfortunately, this is where the article ended. I am willing to give this priest the benefit of the doubt, but I do wonder whether his actions are in accordance with Catholic teaching/practices.
“Also, regarding your concern that he is communicating with the dead, what about exorcisms? Didn’t the apostles exorcise and doesn’t that require speaking to the dead (while also praying to the Lord)?”
Regarding exorcisms, no I don’t think they require speaking to the dead, because exorcisms are focused on dispelling demonic spirits, not the dead. Perhaps there are some who are using exorcisms for “hauntings” and such, but I would consider any of those phenomena to be the work of demonic spirits anyway, and not the dead, simply because the dead are not free to come and go on earth. You’ll notice that Christ and the apostles were always “casting out demons” or “casting out spirits” and not “casting out ghosts”.
If we took the same prohibition on communicating with the dead and applied it to demonic spirits, then we’d have to ignore any angelic visitors as well, since we know demons masquerade as angels, and if we can’t communicate with them, we can’t test them to see what they are. I think that is where this gentleman went off track in the first place; he doesn’t seem to have been wary enough to test these spirits at all. He either took these spirits at their word, or relied on his own subjective feelings and decided to run with it.