Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

This special report is coming to you from the diocese of Saginaw, Michigan, where a high-ranking priest is facing criminal charges involving sexual assault. The priest is Fr. Robert DeLand, the 71-year-old judicial vicar for the diocese who was arrested and arraigned on separate charges of sexual assault at the end of February. DeLand was stationed at St. Agnes Parish in Freeland near to the local high school. Church Militant went to his Saginaw condo to speak with him, but he refused to appear on camera.

DeLand has now been banned from these Freeland schools he used to visit nearly every day, prosecutors say, in order to groom youths, he would meet in the hallways for future sexual relationships and assaults by giving them sums of money. Ironically, in a homily he gave the week before he was arrested, he spoke to parishioners about what he termed his "passion for youth." The next week, at the same parish, Bp. Joseph Cistone would be apologizing to parishioners.

By all accounts, when he was on the grooming trips or other public appearances, he was always charming and affable but in private, professional associates say he was very different.

Mary Woods: I go to the ambo, the Church is full, and he begins screaming, "What are you doing?"

Church Militant spoke with former house cleaners of his who not only say he was ill-tempered and condescending to them but who also witnessed evidence of regular homosexual activity on the part of the priest, who was the head of the diocese's marriage tribunal.

Marlene Bethune: I opened up the door, and it was darkened, and I looked and I looked again, and there was a naked man in his bed.

Peggy Schambeck: But I thought to myself, why is this young man here? I'm cleaning today, I thought it was very odd. And then I heard him ask this young man, "Do you think you could come over later? And maybe help me move some things around?" And right away the young man said, "No, Father, I can't, I have to help my Mom and Dad, I can't." I thought, if he's doing something with these young people, this young man he needs to be saved, you know, go home to your family.

The case of Fr. DeLand has opened up a can of worms for the diocese and Bp. Joseph Cistone. Police report they are now receiving not only more accusations against DeLand but other diocesan priests as well whom witnesses and victims say are also homosexual, leading double lives and assaulting still more young men from behind their collars.

Mark Gaertner, Asst. Prosecuting Attorney: We're going to follow the evidence where it takes us, wherever it goes, we're going to follow it. The elected prosecutor here, Mr. John Mccolgan, has stated, "We're going to leave no stone unturned."

Assistant Prosecutor Mark Gaertner has been prosecuting cases for decades, and he says he finds this case in particular disgusting because of how DeLand stalked and groomed his future victims, abusing the trust they placed in him.

Mark Gaertner, Asst. Prosecuting Attorney: A lot of text messages, a lot of emailing, a lot of phone conversations, a lot of personal contact, and it was the grooming aspect.

The problem facing the diocese and Bp. Joseph Cistone is different from the situation he faced as auxiliary bishop in Philadelphia where a grand jury found he supervised destroying evidence in a case of multiple priests who were sexually abusing minors, a case which sent a Philadelphia monsignor to prison. Investigators say in this case, DeLand avoided sexually assaulting minors but rather groomed his victims in their youth and waited to engage in sex with them and assault them if necessary once they were no longer minors.

The question the diocese will have to answer is how much about DeLand did they know beforehand and under the leadership of Cistone who has a history of not cooperating with law enforcement in such cases? Will he hand over the files?

Mark Gaertner, Asst. Prosecuting Attorney: We have ways of getting the info, if they don't want to cooperate, we have ways of helping them cooperate, and we'll certainly utilize those skills.

On the question of how much the diocese knew immediately following DeLand's arrest, they at first issued a statement saying there had been no previous indications of criminal or immoral sexual behavior. But a few days later, they issued a contradicting statement that said upon further review, they had found history — history which DeLand had denied.

The idea that the diocese knew nothing about his homosexual activity doesn't sit well with former housekeepers.

Marlene: I reported it, but nothing ever happened. I was talking to some of the staff in the office about the circumstance, but it never went beyond that.

The diocese and Bp. Cistone will have a very difficult time saying they never knew anything about DeLand's homosexual past. The principal of a local Catholic school had actually written a book detailing the homosexual dealings about Fr. DeLand and his grooming of youths. In the book published in 2011, Listen to the Echo: Truth and Justice Betrayed, the principal, Dennis James Haut, provides details of DeLand who he called DeLong in the book, providing alcohol to underage teen boys, being with them on ski trips and so forth. This was a case of everyone who knew DeLand, knew about the book.

So far, there are two separate cases against DeLand with assorted counts, one involving him sexually accosting a 21-year-old male and the most recent case involving a 17 year old whom police and prosecutors wired up after he came to them saying DeLand had grabbed him in private areas. That sting operation happened here at his off-church property condo he kept for himself as a private location, investigators charge, to come onto young men. But given the number of calls and tips coming in, and not just about DeLand, investigators are expecting the file to grow exponentially. And that means a growing headache and PR trainwreck for the diocese and Cistone.

Already, the 17 year old being represented by Jeffrey Fieger's law firm has filed a federal civil suit alleging that the diocese knew about the danger DeLand posed and was negligent in protecting young men from his homosexual predation. Church Militant reached out to the diocese through email and received no answer to our request for a comment from the bishop about the federal civil suit so we went to the chancery to ask in person. After a few minutes of being told no one was in the office, the communications people were out for the rest of the day and the bishop and his secretary were nowhere to be found, they finally sent the janitor out to scold us for contacting various diocesan personnel looking for answers.

Tim Muter: One, I don't know anything about a federal lawsuit.

Michale Voris: Well, here it is.

Tim Muter: Means nothing to me.

Michael Voris: Alright, well who are you?

Tim Muter: I'm the facility director.

Michael Voris: They sent out the facility director, as opposed to the communications person who should be answering this?

Tim Muter: The communications person's not here.

Michale Voris: Really, well they don't answer messages, they don't return phone calls, they don't answer emails.

Tim Muter: I can't help that, all I can tell you is you're not coming in, so, there's no need to be here.

Michael Voris: Well, there is a need to be here 'cause we're looking for some answers, this isn't private information, this is public information.

Tim Muter: I'll give you a piece of public information.

Michael Voris: OK.

Tim Muter: No, not on record.

That all of this would happen here in Saginaw comes as no surprise to church insiders. The bishop here used to be gay-friendly Kenneth Untener who during his 3-year stint as rector at St. John's seminary for the archdiocese of Detroit actually required seminarians to watch homosexual pornographic movies using the excuse that it was all for a class on human sexuality. Untener was supported in his pro-gay activity by his friend, the modernist Detroit Auxiliary Bp. Thomas Gumbleton, a longtime advocate for homosexuality and vicar general of the archdiocese of Detroit and point man for the wildly liberal Cdl. John Dearden who ruled the church in Detroit for over 20 years.

Longtime observers note that the gay mafia so influential in the Detroit clergy advanced tremendously under the combination of Dearden, Gumbleton and Untener. When Untener was promoted to bishop in 1980 and sent to Saginaw, faithful Catholics here say the gay-clerical mafia had a strong ally and ran wild just as had happened in Detroit, an hour or so down the road. Critics of Untener say he learned how to promote and advance homosexual clerics into key positions from his days in the archdiocese of Detroit where for decades homosexuality among priests was almost a guarantee of career advancement and many of the current senior clergy in Detroit have benefited from that.

To this day, the archdiocese of Detroit under Abp. Allen Vigneron is still home to the world's oldest Dignity Mass, a group of Catholic gays lobbying for a change in church teaching. When news of the dignity Mass broke back in the early 1990s, Communications Director Ned McGrath repeatedly lied and stonewalled about its presence at a Detroit parish as outlined in a Catholic World Report expose. Public scrutiny eventually forced the weekly Sunday Mass to be moved to a local Catholic college run by liberal nuns with the presence of the Dignity Mass even being protested by faithful Catholics in 2012, but Abp. Vigneron has allowed it to continue, fearing he would upset his homosexual, senior clergy. Longtime observers of all this say the homosexual clergy problem was especially prevalent in Detroit from the 1970s through the early 2000s which then spread it to other dioceses around the state and the country as gay men or gay-friendly men were made bishops and sent to infect other dioceses promoting fellow homosexuals.

This case against high-ranking cleric Fr. Robert DeLand may prove to be much more than just a single case that could bring down the diocese and Bp. Cistone financially and possibly criminally. It is shaping up to be the case that threatens to expose the entire infestation of homosexual clerics in various dioceses throughout Michigan with all roads leading back to the archdiocese of Detroit.

Related:

TRANSCRIPT

This Vortex is coming to you from our sixth annual Retreat at Sea off the Pacific coast where, beginning Friday evening, we started experiencing some rocky seas off the northern California and Oregon coastline, which sent a few folks scurrying below to reach for the motion sickness meds. Prior to that, the group had disembarked in San Francisco for the day. We had Mass at the recently reopened and renovated National Shrine of St. Francis — definitely worth the visit if you are ever in the City by the Bay during your travels. From there, we headed up to Napa Valley for a splendid afternoon, despite the rainy conditions at the Duncan family vineyard right in the heart of the valley where we enjoyed lunch and sampled some of the local crop — fermented of course.

Of course, the heart of the Retreat at Sea is prayer — the Rosary, Benediction, Liturgy of the Hours, and of course the highest form of prayer, daily Mass. Then there are the conferences, 10 in all, and the theme for this year's conferences was "The Glories of the Faith," chosen especially for Easter week. Along the way, we were hearing that a good number of people were simply unaware of some of what we were talking about either in the homilies or the conferences about various Church teachings, as well as for example, the Liturgy of the Hours. We heard what we hear quite a bit: "I've never heard any of this before."

So, we altered the schedule somewhat and had what was essentially a remedial session on the state of the Church and the vast changes that have occurred and become routine in the past 50 years and how those changes have severely altered Catholic self-identity. Quite a number of people were flat out amazed when we presented to them a brief history of how many Churchmen have tried behind the scenes to damage the faith of the people — how the Modernist heresy had made such inroads into the faith; how Catholic seminaries and universities had become hotbeds for theological revolution; how Catholic devotional life had dwindled down to barely a flicker. They had next to no idea about the changes in the liturgy that had opened the door for multiple abuses, all of which had combined to dummy down the glories of the Faith. All of this has gone on for so long now, multiple generations, that it has just become accepted as normal.

They had no idea — had never heard — that Vatican II had never called for the priest to face the people, to abandon Latin, to stand and receive Holy Communion in the hand, to get rid of the organ and sacred music and replace them with protestantized sappy songs played on guitar. They had been duped, all those years ago, by Churchmen who greatly desired to change the Church and Churchmen today, who desire to stamp out whatever last vestiges of traditional Catholicism they can find.

The funny thing, however, is that today it is traditional, authentic Catholicism that is on the ascent as this giant facade of phony Catholicism begins to crumble to pieces as is fitting. And we aren't talking about just the Latin Mass but more precisely about a better understanding and knowledge of the authentic faith. More and more Catholics are coming to understand that what they see each Sunday in their parishes is not the authentic faith but a cheap knock-off with only the barest essential elements of the Faith present. More are beginning to realize instinctively that they are not being fed, there is little to no reverence, the Mass is treated as more like a performance than the sacrifice that it is and most especially that they have been duped.

Even among the young, a movement is afoot. They are either leaving the Church of Nice because they have been completely blinded to the need for the holy in their lives or for those who are aware they too are leaving and finding that spiritual nourishment in parishes that do live and profess the authentic faith. In either case, because there are no young to speak of, the Church of Nice in just a few short years will be populated by nothing but aging hippy Catholics nearing death. In fact, in a large number of locales that is already the story. What few numbers of Catholics who have remained faithful are deserting the Church of Nice whenever possible and if not in body, certainly in spirit. They are turning to the internet to discover through various faithful Catholic sources that they have been lied to for generations.

Church Militant is blessed and grateful to be one of those sources exposing the great lie. One of the reasons we hold this Retreat at Sea each year is to give a little refuge to faithful Catholics and create an environment where like-minded Catholics can get together and find joy in each other's presence. What was even a surprise to us was that even here on the Retreat at Sea, there were so many who did not fully appreciate the amount of water the Barque of Peter had taken on these past 50 years. They were very grateful for discovering the truth of the matter, and as one retreatant said, it has been a life-changing experience.

Blessed be God. Coming to you from aboard the somewhat rocky sixth annual Retreat at Sea.

TRANSCRIPT

We were going to let pass this year's treacherous St Patrick's Day Parade in New York until the Catholic League's Bill Donohue decided to issue a statement making himself seem all high and mighty, no doubt to drum up some more donations by taking advantage of the ignorant and unsuspecting donors he has. In his statement, he points to John Lahey, a longtime member of the parade committee and blasts him for secularizing the parade.

OK, fair enough, that's true. But he also paints himself as the noble victim of this secularization because he was double-crossed when he had agreed to supporting the presence of active homosexuals in the parade in exchange for a pro-life presence as well. Lo and behold if the parade committee members in support of sodomy didn't do just that, telling poor Bill, at first, his pro-life group could march if he agreed to the gays marching as well, then double-crossing him and allowing only the gays to march.

Now, Bill is running around and whining, portraying these men as being responsible for the gayification of the parade but without breathing a word about the real culprit, Cdl. Timothy Dolan, who has enough gays of his own in his chancery to hold their own hours-long parade down Fifth Avenue. Yes, whiney Bill is complaining that he made a deal with the devil and that the devil double-crossed him. The problem is he is not painting the full picture for you. He lays all the blame at the feet of Lahey and never breathes a word about Dolan, the cardinal who pushed for all this behind the scenes in 2015 because he made a backroom deal with fake-Catholic Governor Andrew Cuomo that if he appeared to soften opposition to homosexuality, then the state would pump much-needed funds into his collapsing Catholic school system. Surprise, surprise, Dolan went all gay and Cuomo and company double-crossed him. Now, Dolan is left with nothing except photo ops with the lying, child killing, sodomy loving, fake-Catholic governor where Cuomo looks somewhat respectable and Dolan looks, well ... but see, noble victim, whiny Bill Donohue leaves all this out of his press release of persecution. He originally backed the cardinal's anti-Catholic, politically-motivated decision until he got screwed over — then and only then did he get all sanctimonious. If he had been allowed to have his pro-life group march, he wouldn't be writing any of this hypocritical tripe about the parade being secularized.

You'll recall this moment back in 2015 when Church Militant approached His Laughingness at the start of the parade with a serious question about the scandal he was causing by pushing and cheering for the presence of active homosexuals in the parade. Immediately following, he had his communications director, Joe Zwilling, call out the thugs and forcibly remove us. But Donohue can't get into all that.  Actually, he can't get into any of that. To do so would be to draw the "Eye of Sauron," meaning Dolan, known by his clergy as "Chuckles," and he would lose his tidy little financial arrangement of pretending to defend Catholic sensibilities in the public square while cashing in on his blarney.

Maybe Chuckles used to care about the Faith. Maybe hypocritical Bill used to as well. But right now,  they are both double-crossed losers whose Irish blarney schtick has not only denigrated them in the eyes of the general public and made them even more irrelevant than they already were but also a pair made for each other, sharing responsibility in the larger picture of the demise of the Catholicism in the public square.

Sleep with the devil fellas, and it's not going to work out well for you.

Click here to watch the latest Mic'd Up

TRANSCRIPT

Does anyone have a real coherent explanation why the Left absolutely hates — H.A.T.E.S. — President Donald Trump? It's a burning uncontrolled rage consuming their very souls. They get up every morning wishing that he not only die but that it be slow, excruciating and unmatched in the annals of human history. And you know, you kind of get the feeling that that wouldn't be good enough for them. Even when he is carrying out policies that were actually the stated goals of Democratic administrations like Clinton and Obama, if Trump does it or tries to implement it, their heads explode.

Why does the Left hate him so much? Then on the other side of the coin, you have another phenomenon that mystifies the Left. Religious-minded people tend to like Trump — yes, the philandering, swashbuckling, ego-driven, N.Y. billionaire with the big mouth and bigger Twitter account is practically adored by church-going, quiet, humble, Bible-reading parents of families nestled all over America's heartland country. Why, how, could religious-minded people lift such a man into the highest office in the land? It's an answer that bears listening to — the bottom line, it's all about God. And it's precisely because it is all about God that the Left cannot understand.

The Left doesn't believe in God. They don't really believe in anything, but the idea of a supreme being who commands a moral code be lived is a bridge too far for the licentious Left. Yet, it is exactly why the Left is so puzzled over the embrace of Trump by the religious-minded voter. How could they possibly embrace such a man? A man who, they say, has lived in complete contradiction to the very virtues religious people espouse his whole life. What they just don't get is it's never been about the man, but about his view of America, which embraces the notion that the country is founded on principles — moral principles — which say the life of a nation must be oriented toward nature's God.

It is admittedly a little strange that it would be Donald Trump who would be their champion but, hey, that's the reality and the Left just hasn't wrapped their pea brains around this. He promised change — change back to an earlier, better understanding of what America once was, and change of that kind, a cultural sea change, is always going to be disruptive.

What you just saw was a brief clip from our all-new Mic'd Up, new and improved, a whole different format from before where we talk to very knowledgeable, interesting people about our current times and how it all impacts your faith. Behind the scenes, we've been working on the show for a time now, getting it up to speed with the newest technology, designing the set, developing the best format, following every detail.

Since President Trump is such a cultural lightning rod, and the culture wars really are just a facet of the larger spiritual war, we thought it would be good to zero in on his presidency, just past its first-year mark, and look at his America vs. the Left's America. If you recall, practically half of everyone who voted for Trump said the U.S. Supreme Court was either the single most important issue for them or very near the top of their list. Of course, all that has massive ramifications for not just you but your families, your children and their children.

Already, we have two generations who have been born into and grown up in a society where child killing is just accepted, along with promiscuity, pornography and so forth. Soon, if things don't change, this generation, in their young years now, will grow up in a world where same-sex so-called marriage is every bit as normal as killing your child in the womb has become. Trump stands for everything that the Left absolutely loathes, and they loathe him even when he sort of agrees with them on this issue or that. Where's all this going?

Tune into Mic'd Up tomorrow and watch the premiere of the all-new and improved Mic'd Up, one of our Premium programs, but we're making the first few of them available to everyone for free so you can get a little flavor of what you'll be missing if you don't eventually become a Premium member. So look for the debut, starting tomorrow right here on Church Militant — our topic tomorrow, Trump and the Left and its impact on Catholics.

Enjoy this revealing interview

TRANSCRIPT

The greatest lie in the Church these days is that salvation is nearly automatic. The Son of God Himself denies this lie and falsehood and even stresses that the opposite is, in fact, the case. Salvation is offered to everyone, true, but only very few accept the offer, and as a result, most are damned. That offer, the ability to respond and accept the invitation to eternal life, that is the mercy of God. But for those who do not accept the invitation, which means to change their lives and live according to His precepts, the fires of Hell await, meaning the justice of God.

A soul will either experience the mercy of God in this life, cooperate with it and enjoy it to its fullness in the next or a soul will reject God and experience His justice. He Himself says so. So startled, shocked, astonished, dismayed, astounded by this hard truth were the Apostles that on hearing Our Blessed Lord talk about all that is necessary for salvation, Peter himself exclaimed, "Then Lord, who can be saved" — an accurate assessment and response to what the Incarnated Eternal Logos was teaching. Yet today, all we hear in the Church is everyone goes to Heaven, and if it isn't said directly, it is presented deliberately in such a way so as to give that impression.

We, here, at Church Militant have one concern — the salvation of souls, period. We reject and refuse to go along with the universalism that has polluted catechesis and preaching and policy in the Church by various Judas bishops or coward bishops. We stand firmly on the side of St. Paul who, understanding the words of Our Blessed Lord, quite clearly said in very plain language, "Work out your salvation in fear and trembling."

What in Hades do the modernists in the Church, the Church of Nice, the universalist crowd, think that line means? We take it for exactly what it says and means, which is why we strongly urge you, plead with you, to tell your friends and loved ones who may even be "practicing" Catholics but are oblivious to all this, tell them to tune into ChurchMilitant.com. We know what we talk about is often hard to hear — that a bunch of people don't like the message or even the weak excuse of "tone."

If they think our tone is off-putting and offensive, then they should read the Doctors of the Church, the Scripture and most especially the words of Our Divine Savior Himself. The abyss — that so many in the Church are falling into daily — needs to be the first and foremost concern of our lives while we still have them here on earth. You will not find a single saint in the history of the Church, all 2,000 years of that sacred history, whose primary concern, whose burning passion, was anything but the salvation of souls. You cannot claim to love God, to want to be with Him, to live in Him, if your primary concern is not what His was which was salvation.

He came to earth to open a path to the Father through Him and His Church which he established on Blessed Peter — that is the mercy of God. Reject that mercy and we earn His justice. We have hundreds of people that we know of who come up to us at conferences, send emails, respond in the comments under The Vortex or articles that Church Militant was instrumental in their coming to or coming back to the Church — and those are just the ones we are aware of.

That is the prayer we make here every day, multiple times a day, "Lord Jesus, use us to save souls." Those of you who pray with us for either Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer each weekday will recognize that prayer. Getting ourselves and as many as possible to Heaven is the only meaning of life that there is.

Please tell your friends to watch Church Militant and hear the Faith presented in a way they probably haven't heard in 50 years. Everyone does not go to Heaven. In fact, most are damned. Can you think of anything more urgent?

TRANSCRIPT

This Vortex comes to you from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on the last leg and disembarkation point of our sixth annual Retreat at Sea. The Catholic Church in Canada, like so many other places in the West, is contracting. And when it comes to the history of the Church here, it is somewhat unique owing to what amounts to almost two different heritages: one, Catholic in the East in French Quebec and, the other, largely Protestant in the English-speaking provinces.

It was during what is termed the "Quiet Revolution" in the 1960s in Quebec where things started heading south for the Church. The situation has never improved for the Church in the past 50 years, and now demographics are catching up to Canada's single, largest religion. A few factors are eating away at the Faith here. First, atheism has more than doubled across the country in the wake of the Quiet Revolution. In the 1970s, roughly six percent of the national population claimed to be atheists. Today, it's 13 percent. Secondly, Christianity, in general, is taking large hits owing to a shift in immigration. This has already greatly impacted Protestant congregations here, who used to rely on a steady supply line of immigrants from Protestant European countries to keep up their numbers. But there are less Europeans arriving on these shores today and more Asians and South Americans in their place. That has directly hit the Protestants in a large way, but it's having a less visible but negative impact on the Catholic Church as well.

For starters, the only group of Asian Catholics who arrive in any significant numbers are from the Philippines, but the Faith in the Philippines is beginning to show obvious signs of becoming less Catholic, so the newly arriving immigrants are not as Catholic as their European counterparts were a century earlier. Secondly, this is also true for South Americans, again historically Catholic but considerably less so than in years gone by.

Owing to U.S. government foreign policy in the 1980s, Protestantism has expanded greatly in South America and taken a heavy toll on the Catholic Church there. Consequently, South American Catholics, like Filipino Catholics, tend to be less fired about their faith than European immigrants have been in generations past. What this boils down to is simple. Protestants in Canada have already taken huge hits in their numbers and will continue to. But the numbers for Catholics, while on the surface are better, are hiding the fact that the Catholic Church is also set for a serious meltdown — a meltdown that is already visible in things such as Mass attendance and will soon become more visible in raw numbers. Another factor is that many Asian immigrants, which include Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists, tend to be more like Catholic immigrants from the previous century and hold onto their faith. There really isn't what could be considered a "Christian culture" to convert to and blend into anymore.

The eroding of Christianity here in Canada has been a slowly developing process over the past half-century and is increasing as time goes by. The Church's numbers here in Canada, even with a sizable percentage of immigrants from the Philippines and South America, are still shrinking, just not as obvious as Protestants. Add to this the growing number of adherents to non-Christian faiths and the increasing number of atheists, and the future looks bleak for Canadian Catholicism.

It would be intellectually dishonest to not say that much of the Church's problem here in Canada is of her own doing. From the infamous, immoral Winnipeg Statement of 1968, where the nation's bishops rejected out of hand the Church's teaching on birth control, to the rampant modernism that has been allowed to run wild throughout the nation's parishes and religious houses, it would not be unfair or inaccurate to say that in many ways Church leadership here in Canada has dug its own grave.

The Canadian Catholic Church is home, after all, to the likes of Gregory Baum, an excommunicated priest who was heavily influential in the meltdown of the Faith, here, and then who later turned out to be a closeted homosexual, who had a gay lover for decades and publicly admitted that shortly before his death late last year — that he kept his homosexuality under wraps because he knew he wouldn't be able to work his evil if he was out about his life.

Many Catholics in Canada will tell you that Mass at their parish is little more than a joke, with some liturgies making Mass at the average parish in the United States look downright reverent. In a further discouragement, a look down the road reveals that for Canada's roughly 13 million Catholics, there are only about, get this, 400 seminarians throughout the whole country, making its ratio of laity to seminarians among the lowest in the world.

When the Catholic Church — which once enjoyed a place of preeminence in a country with a sizable population like Canada — gives up the Faith, it takes some time for that reality to wind its way through the culture. But that is what can be seen unfolding now in the face of great threats to the Faith like relativism, individualism, smaller families, affluence, materialism, consumerism and lack of community. The bad fruits of what has been sown in the Church, here,for the past half-century are now becoming evident. And what's more, there doesn't appear to be any decisive plan on the part of the nation's hierarchy to address the situation.

Many Canadian Catholics are of a mindset where they are just waiting for the last one to leave to turn out the lights. Even though the Catholic population of Canada is much smaller than in the United States, the problems here take on a greater magnitude because of the smaller Catholic population and that allows much less room for error. One of two outcomes will reveal itself in the next few years here. Either there will be some miraculous turnaround — of which at the moment there is nothing in sight — or the Catholic Church will begin to dramatically disappear like the Protestants have already begun to do.

And for Americans, what is happening, here, is a just a smaller example of the problems facing the Church in the United States. Canada may go out with a whimper, America may go out with a bang, but the real tragedy is that none of this had to happen.

Contraception is evil. It leads to abortion

TRANSCRIPT

Last year, the birth rate for America dipped to its lowest level since records started to be kept more than a century earlier. Last year's record low actually shattered the earlier record low of the previous year, declining far more than experts had anticipated. No doubt about it, Americans are having fewer children.

Last week when big-box store giant Toys "R" Us announced it was going belly up, the company pointed at various causes like internet sales etc. But one of the reasons cited by the giant is not getting a lot of attention in the secular press:

The decrease of birth rates in countries where we operate could negatively affect our business. Most of our end-customers are newborns and children, and as a result, our revenue is dependent on the birth rates in countries where we operate. In recent years, many countries' birth rates have dropped or stagnated. ...  A continued and significant decline in the number of newborns and children in these countries could have a material, adverse effect on our operating results.

That statement was from a year earlier — prophetic in its prediction. The Washington Post even did some research and drew a direct correlation between Toys "R" Us' declining revenues and the declining birth rate over the last 12 years.

Then there is the Planned Parenthood aspect of this. Toys "R" Us used to donate to the Susan G. Komen Foundation which are allies of Planned Parenthood. It would be a stretch to conclude that this single factor caused the death of Toys "R" Us. Yet the logic of the underlying principle is still spot on. The mindset at Toys "R" Us was that it was okay to follow a course of supporting groups which actively engage in killing your future customers. Talk about a blind spot owing to ideology —  well!

Let's transition then, shall we, from the world of "Toys, Inc." to "Church, Inc." shall we? The U.S. bishops seem to have the same business plan as Toys "R" Us. Over at Bishops "R" Us headquarters, otherwise known as the USCCB, the leaders have simply missed all the signs of the impending collapse — even as the collapse is in full swing. Why? For the same reason or reasons that the brain trust at Toys "R" Us missed the signs. They are both dedicated to a business model that does not work, are not mindful of their "customers" and are so married to an ideology that it is killing their customers — one physically, the other spiritually.

It's akin to the National Education Association's support of abortion and then complaining when there aren't enough kids in the schools. The entire Church in the West is in disintegration mode, simply fading away with every passing year as the old die and the young leave. They pander to the young with simpering conferences and silly music and splashy light and laser-show Masses. They get them to sway and swing and wave their arms around in environments of overheated emotion, and they do all of this instead of teaching them! The brain trust over at Bishops "R" Us are hipping and cooling themselves right out of business with the youth who are the future and driving "Catholicism, Inc." right out of business.

It's perhaps fitting that we have this analogy between toys and Church leaders treating people like children. Because of the poor formation so many bishops received as seminarians and priests as Pope Benedict famously pointed out, their catechesis has been reduced to gimmicks and marketing strategies. Kind of like Toys "R" Us was doing for the past year or so once the handwriting was on the wall that they were heading into America's history books.

The bishops need to immediately abandon the reckless course they have taken the Church with their daft liturgies and insulting theatrics and non-stop appeal to emotions. It doesn't appeal to the young. The old think it's all stupid, and those who really get mad about it either suffer through it while reducing their donations or just find a Latin Mass parish. How is all this different in principle from how Toys "R" Us conducted business?

They completely dropped the ball on understanding their customer base. They failed to understand that their customers were going elsewhere. They had an old, tired business model that hadn't stayed relevant. Their products were not substantially different from any other toy place. Which is to say in summary, they didn't differentiate themselves from the competition. So given the old business model, people went elsewhere. And that's what's happening right now. The Bishops "R" Us customer base is leaving, and the company is going out of business. And all the jig-a-ma-jazz flash and trash, feel-good theology of encounter is not going to bring 'em in. They moved on.

Give 'em what they are looking for which is substance, not some cheap Protestant import that breaks at the first use. Look around you, Your Excellencies. The only place you see future growth with young Catholics is in traditional settings. Aside from that, hang up your going-out-of-business signs and unload the remaining inventory for dirt cheap prices. In fact, you'll be lucky if you can give it away for free. And all of this because you were married to an ideology doomed to failure from the start.

Pray for our bishops faithful Catholics. The end is approaching.

TRANSCRIPT

The old saying goes, "Politics makes strange bedfellows." Well, that certainly proved to be the case a few days back when one of the bedfellows actually got out of the bed. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, having done everything he could for the better part of his time in New York to kiss up to the ruling elites of the Democratic Party — the purveyors of abortion and sodomy, of the destruction of the family, the very ones who keep Planned Parenthood and its evils legal and financed — those same Democrats, Dolan dumped on for leaving Catholics behind. As one commenter put it, "Well, good morning sunshine! Are you seriously only realizing this now?" — an excellent comment for not only its straightforwardness but also its insight.

That the cardinal archbishop of New York would, just the other week, be arriving at this conclusion is stupefying. Where on earth has he been for the past 45 years? Near the end of his op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, he says, "The party that once embraced Catholics, now slams the door on us." Seriously? Now? Now, slams the door on us? Wasn't the cardinal party to a federal lawsuit with the Obama administration forcing Catholic agencies to dispense and pay for birth control? Did he not read the suit? Is he unaware that it is Dems who are called the party of death? Does he not know that they are the main reason Planned Parenthood gets half a billion dollars of taxpayer money every year?

The Democrats have been anti-God, anti-Catholic, anti-life since about the time Dolan was ordained. Was he so married to nostalgic thoughts of his grandmother, who he mentions in the article as saying, "Don't trust Republicans" that it has taken him his entire adult life to know who the enemy is? Well, now's a fine time to be finding it out. And let's be clear here, the enemy is the anti-God, anti-life philosophy embraced by the Democratic Party. You would figure he sort of got that when he got booed by delegates for leading the prayer at the Democratic Party Convention in 2012. How could someone be so obtuse in his sizing up of the realities of the day — cultural and political life in America?

He seems genuinely stunned that the Democrats are pro-abortion, mentioning a soon-to-be law in New York state expanding abortion even more, even to the point of it being legal to leave alone a baby which survives abortion, just laying on the table to die. Shocker! Really? The party of death is in favor of death? Say it isn't so, Your Eminence. It's hard to imagine a more tone-deaf perception of political and cultural reality.

His Eminence cites Protestant minister "without a congregation" the Reverend Jesse Jackson. By the way, just exactly how does he make his money to live on? He doesn't actually do anything, hasn’t for decades, but we digress. Dolan cites him as an example of a Democrat who used to be pro-life. On that score, former pro-lifers turned child killers, Dolan could speak all day — Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, the list just goes on and on. In fact, it's very interesting that the cardinal should point to Jesse Jackson because the question naturally arises when he turned in favor of child murder did His Eminence wonder about his Democratic, poor-loving, protecting-the-innocent credentials? How about when Al Gore "converted" or Ted Kennedy, a Catholic no less, who completely savaged Judge Robert Bork, specifically over the issue of abortion?

One by one, these leaders of the Democratic Party flipped to being in favor of child slaughter so they could hold onto their political power — modern-day Herods with the blood of tens of millions of children on their hands and the vast majority of them, the lion's share, Democrats. This went on all through the 1970s and 1980s. How is it that practically every Catholic with a pulse knew that the Democratic Party had become completely alien to its former Catholic base yet Dolan and a large number of other bishops were completely clueless about it?

The sea change among the Democrats from supposedly caring about the downtrodden to actually killing them was so phenomenal, so visible, so plain for the whole world to see that it split American politics to this day. Yet, somehow the bishops couldn't get a grasp on it. It's preposterous to think as His Eminence asserts that only now — his word — now is he and presumably others just coming to recognize this. Where have you been for what is essentially your entire adult life? That the Democrats have been opposed to Catholic morality on the single most important issue of our day has been the axis on which the totality of the political and culture wars have orbited for half a century. Did he not notice that good Catholic, pro-lifer Bob Casey, governor of Pennsylvania, was not allowed to address Bill Clinton's 1992 Democratic Party Convention, specifically owing to his pro-life views? It's mind-boggling, so much so that it would take a fool to believe that this is only news now.

What's changed is not the reality but that Dolan is having to come to terms with the fact that he got played and not just played but made an absolute fool of by not just Democrats but fake Catholic Democrats in the person of Andrew Cuomo and his cohort. He made a secret backroom deal with those devils to not oppose gay marriage in exchange for Catholic school funding. So, he gladly supported the moral evil of active homosexuality and gay marriage in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, even parading around in the front of it as grand marshal. How the Democrats must have been howling with delight at that sight. But then after casting the pearls of the Church before swine, they ground them up and turned on him, first, by not giving him his 30 pieces of silver for his schools and now ramming through the state legislature a bill to extend the statute of limitations on how long someone can sue the Church for homosexual-clergy-sex abuse. That so infuriated Dolan that he actually made a surprise, unannounced visit to Albany to beg lawmakers not to extend it, begging the question, how many more claims are out there which the cardinal knows or suspects? The whole scene is pathetic really with a lesson to be learned.

The U.S. hierarchy has been played for too long precisely because the players knew which levers to pull — appeals to their egos for power, influence, cocktail party invitations, with all the chichi — even kicking it up every now and then? "Be a prelate of the people, Your Eminence," the Democrats said, "Don't be preachy. Care for the poor. Be social justice warriors. We'll back you," until that is the facade of social justice and blather about caring for the poor is no longer needed and the Democrats have engineered education and the culture to ensure that they are the ones who will get enough votes to steer the ship of America. And they've done it quite well by making suckers out Catholic leaders who have been all too willing to be manipulated, rationalizing that it's all good, and we are helping the poor by getting Democrats elected.

How they managed to keep convincing themselves of that, year after year, as each year a million child corpses flushed through the city sewers under their cathedrals and parishes is a question that will probably only be answered on the Last Day. Pray for our leaders faithful Catholics. Include them in your Rosaries every day that they may be awakened to their responsibilities to undo the evil they have helped bring about.