Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

Two steps — that's all it takes to jump backward from the collapse of America to the Democratic Party. The step in between is the U.S. bishops; the biggest, most hidden enemy of the republic you never knew you had.

Call them the "America last" bishops. They are both the largest promoters of the Democratic Party agenda talking points and policy issues, as well as the largest recipients of government largesse.

Understand the connection?

The same group of leaders responsible for so much damage in the Church is, at the same time, the same group of men responsible for so much of the destruction of America.

Allow us to explain.

Aside from their utter and devastating silence on the destruction of the family caused by divorce and remarriage, abortion and contraception (again – all Democratic Party highlights), they have also promoted other major Marxist agenda items like abolishing the Second Amendment, destroying the nation's borders, pushing the phony narrative of man-made climate change and going along with the attack on freedom of religious speech. Might as well throw in the lockstep approach to the COVID lockdowns for good measure, not to mention refusing to even consider the questions surrounding the results of the 2020 vote.

They rushed Los Angeles Abp. Gómez's congratulatory note towards Biden's "win" so fast, it was biblical. So in three cases, they stay mum. On four items, they pull out the pom-poms.

Let's focus, shall we, on the four, mostly because the other three, and their complicity in them, have been so well-documented.

America is becoming less and less of a country every day. In fact, it's becoming difficult to even envision America as an actual country, as we once understood it. First, there is no country when there is no border. Yet the bishops have gone along with and gotten paid billions of dollars to help keep the border as nonexistent as possible.

It is largely official Catholic efforts that spirit illegals around the country by the millions and dump them in thousands of mostly conservative communities, upsetting the natural balance of life and straining local resources. They do it, of course, in the name of "charity," but they are really doing it for that fat wad of cash they get from D.C. year after year.

Half the U.S. bishops' annual budget comes from the Democratic Marxists who run the federal government. Let that sink in for a minute.

Moving on, when Cdl. Timothy Dolan and Cdl. Cupich and Cdl. Tobin all came out very recently in favor of Americans giving up their guns, essentially gutting the Second Amendment, it told you all you need to know.

First, each one of those men walks around with an armed escort or quickly has access to them. Yet they want you to hand in your guns.

Might as well just put a donkey in a chasuble, and we don't mean the donkey Our Lady rode or that Our Lord rode. Imagine the gall of American hierarchs telling Americans to abandon the Second Amendment. Let that sink in for a moment as well.

Then we shift to the ridiculous claim that man is causing changes in the climate when the only "consensus" on that subject is among scientists whose research is funded by the same government that pays them to reach that conclusion. If you reach any other conclusion, you're cut off from the "academic community."

It's exactly the same as when toothpaste manufacturers tell you 9 out of 10 dentists say blah blah blah, when those dentists were on expensive luxury vacations, junkets, paid for by the same toothpaste companies conducting the survey.

The 1 out of 10 dentists who didn't agree — well, he and his wife don't get invited to Fiji next year.

That "science" has been coopted as just another Marxist institution is pretty well established at this point, especially between 2020 and 2022. "Follow the science" means nothing more than "follow the money."

And of course, there is the growing assault on religious free speech, like what we covered yesterday going on in Michigan, that the bishops realize if they speak out against, the money dries up. But then again, that presupposes the bishops actually believe religion at all, much less Catholicism. So why would they speak up?

There is absolutely zero sunlight between the U.S. bishops and the great big blue donkey. They are indistinguishable.

But if you're a Marxist, it's a great investment: You get the blessing of the supposedly holy crowd on your anti-God agenda. And if you're a hireling bishop, you don't believe in the Church anyway, so why not cash in on your office?

We'd venture to say it's a marriage made in Heaven, but neither camp really believes in Heaven. The U.S. bishops need to lose their tax-exempt status. While they don't directly campaign for or against a particular candidate, they absolutely partake in partisan politics for one single party.

In election years, they are out there with their ridiculous mushmouth voter's guide, which says nothing. And in off years, they are continuing to work with the Party of Death to kill off America. The "America last" bishops, that's all they are. Silent on intrinsic evils; bullhorns and pom poms for all the rest.

It's time for a defund-the-bishops movement.

TRANSCRIPT

During the midterms in 2022, when the red wave almost entirely failed to materialize except in very isolated pockets, one of the remarkable shouldn't/wasn’t supposed-to-happen things is the flip of some states to more blue. Perhaps the biggest example of that is right here where Church Militant is headquartered: Michigan.

In one night, the entire state government went from a medium shade of purple to deep blue as the communist Democrats seized back control of the state legislature, affecting the much coveted "trifecta" — control of both chambers and the governorship. With the Gov. Gretchen "lockdown" Whitmer winning reelection — as well as her Marxist maven counterparts, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson — the Marxist Michigan monopoly is fully complete.

And as we predicted on election night (right here on this set), that was/is a big, giant danger to everything that faithful Catholics, as well as other people of goodwill, hold dear. True to form, the Marxists have introduced a bill into the state legislature, with the full support of the commie elites, that will destroy free speech of religious and political conservatives.

Of course, it's all under the guise of stamping out so-called hate speech. And we all know what that means: a euphemism for conservative speech. Any speech about truth that Marxists despise is labeled "hate," and under the proposed law, it will be punishable with fines, prison time or both. And before someone says, "That will never hold up in court. Just sue them," consider this. 

First, going to court, even in the case of a slam dunk like our ongoing case in Baltimore, is a tremendous drain on mental and financial resources. Having lived in lawsuit land now for the past two years, even a win (and Church Militant is so far 4-0) in court drains away valuable time from the mission. We are here to promote the Faith for the salvation of souls and help turn around the culture to whatever degree we can in terms of people's thinking.

We are not here to slug it out in court for years. Going to court may sound and look easy and almost automatic on TV or in movies, but I can assure you that it is nothing like reality, again, even when you win. Likewise, remember that the State, which is who would be being sued here, has almost limitless money and time to keep filing motion after motion after motion.

The commie bastards figured out long ago that it ain't their money. So they spend and spend and spend, aiming to win the war of attrition, and often times they do. Secondly, even in what looks like a slam dunk, there is no guarantee of a win. In a blue state like Michigan, an unfriendly judge or an unsympathetic jury can totally ignore justice and rule against you, setting up another round of years of appeal cases. So going to court is never a first option.

Turning to the actual legislation before the state legislature in Lansing, House Bill 4474, which has passed the House with a unanimous vote from Dems and, of course, four GOP turncoats, is trying to incorporate the word "harassment" into the definition of a hate crime. Under the First Amendment, there are some types of speech that have never been protected: child porn, slander and libel to name a few.

What Michigan Marxists in Lansing are attempting to do is add "hate" speech to that list and deem it "unprotected." And in defining "hate," it incorporates "harassment" into the definition of "intimidation." Remember, in their attempt to silence all opposition, Marxist Democrats equate hate speech with actual violence, drawing an imaginary connection between words and words that might inspire a loose cannon to commit violence.

It's doubtful if they even actually believe that, but the goal here is to get a sufficient number of people to believe it and vote accordingly. So under the proposed law, if you are out at a restaurant with a friend and say that you think the whole pronoun thing is stupid and you are overheard by a pronoun person and then they challenge you and you repeat your opinion a couple of times to them, the law would allow them to report you to the police for "intimidating" them — the definition of which, according to the new law, includes "harassment" — and you could be arrested and charged with a felony.

The penalty per occurrence laid out in the legislation is up to five years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both — per occurrence. It's clear where this is heading and what the motivation for it is. BLM or Antifa is not who this law is aimed at. You can be sure of that. Just like Biden's Department of Justice selectively enforces laws against conservatives, that same tactic is coming to a blue state near you. And here in Michigan, it is just a few steps away from becoming a reality.

The bill as it currently exists is expected to pass through the senate without any substantial wording change and be signed into law likely before the end of the summer by Gov. Whitmer. Unless normal protocol is excused from, it would become law January 1. And as we sit here today, there is nothing to suggest it won't become law. 

And here in Michigan, there is already a problem for conservatives, especially religious nonprofits such as Church Militant, the textbook example of a religious nonprofit operating here. A recent study called Faith and Freedom concluded that of all 50 states, Michigan is dead last in being friendly to such outfits. Alabama and Texas were at the top of the list. 

Marxists don't like God, religion, people of faith, traditional values or anything that challenges their stranglehold. So none of this can come as a surprise. But the speed and efficiency with which these folks move does still amaze. They've only had complete control of the state for less than six months, and already here we are. They don't pass these kinds of laws in order not to use them.

Here's another major point to consider: In order to normally challenge a law, you have to have what's considered "standing," meaning you have to show that you personally have been injured by the law. Since this is criminal law, that means, in effect, you would have to be arrested and charged and stand trial before you could challenge the law's unconstitutionality. So you would have the ongoing criminal case and the ongoing simultaneous constitutional case, and it's a virtual guarantee those would both take quite a while to conclude. 

And another layer they have built into is, regardless of how the criminal case would go, the law provides for the "offended party" to come after you for their civil rights being violated, which would be a whole separate case aimed, ultimately, at bankrupting you. It doesn't take a genius to discern the future on this one. There is increasing scrutiny of this as word gets around, but as we know from the past, that never makes them change their goals. It just makes them tweek their means of getting to those goals.

This law is coming to Michigan. Period. That is not in question. What is in question is the cost and process of challenging it, including at least one person having to be arrested and stand trial and face prison time to gain standing before a court.

And, of course, there is looming out there the very real possibility that along the way, various judges will agree that "hate" should in fact be added to the list of speech that is not protected. Michigan has suddenly become a very dangerous state for conservative religious speech.

Church Militant (a 501(c)4 corporation) is responsible for the content of this commentary.

TRANSCRIPT

When Church Militant broke the news over the weekend that the Vatican had ordered an investigation of Bp. Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, the Catholic social media world exploded, as it should have.

What other response should there be?

The Texas bishop has piled up scorn and private disdain from many of his brother bishops. Now that private disdain has bubbled over into the realm of public disdain, as he is now being "gone after" because of his orthodoxy and willingness to announce it.

He has deservedly earned the nickname "America's Bishop" for his simple manner of clear, direct speaking. And, of course, the hierarchy, as it is currently (and temporarily, we might add) composed, can never tolerate clarity.

They wrap themselves in the mantle of "charity" publicly, while privately, many of these men are the most uncharitable, vindictive, nasty human beings you could ever encounter. They are political-minded animals who seek not the good of souls and the thriving of the Church, but their continued leeching off the institution whose beauty they have traded away for enormous sums of government largesse.

The U.S. bishops are drowning in hundreds of millions of dollars every year handed to them by their government counterparts under the guise once again of "charity," as in funding so-called social justice programs (translation — promoting Democratic Party agenda items).

In reality, those programs and the enormous funding they receive are the cover for keeping the machinery of Catholic, Inc., well-oiled. And in that environment, two things can never be allowed to happen: (1) orthodoxy being preached and (2) being a political conservative.

Strickland ticks both boxes, so little wonder he has drawn the eye of Sauron. A vocal daring Catholic political conservative who also has a miter — that simply cannot be allowed. There's too much at risk for Catholic, Inc.

One of the great ironies in all this is the two-man team sent from the Vatican to "investigate." And for the record, let's be very clear, it is an "investigation," despite the blatantly hypocritical pretense that it is an "apostolic visit." Puh-lease.

If you count Judas an Apostle, then I suppose.

The lead in the two-man team was retired bishop Gerald Kicanas, a man who we called "notorious" in our initial article over the weekend. We didn't get into it all then, but now we will.

Kicanas was rector of Mundelein Seminary in Chicago from 1984 to 1995, much of that time under the even more notorious Cdl. Joseph Bernardin. During his time as rector, Kicanas was made aware from multiple seminarians that another seminarian by the name of Daniel McCormack was sexually harassing them, drinking with them frequently and, after getting them drunk, trying to sexually assault them.

While he was in seminary and in Mexico, he sexually abused two boys. It was later revealed in criminal court proceedings that two seminarians reported those assaults to Kicanas, who did nothing. Just as he had done nothing when it came to the various and frequent complaints by Mundelein seminarians about McCormack trying stuff in the showers as well as when they were drinking.

Kicanas gave the green light to McCormack's ordination in 1994, and shortly after that, McCormack became one of the most notorious priest sex-abusers in the country, racking up 23 formal complaints (who knows how many did not come forward), serving prison time for molesting five boys, and costing the archdiocese $12 million in settlements in civil proceedings.

McCormack was eventually convicted as well as defrocked and is now being sued civilly by many victims. Kicanas knew all this ahead of time and still gave his blessing to McCormick's being ordained. When the info came out about McCormack once the criminal case was underway, he gave an interview to a local Chicago paper, which asked him point blank about how he greenlit the ordination with all the seminarians coming to him telling him about McCormack.

Kicanas' answer? Wait for it: "I was more concerned with his drinking." We kid you not. This is the man who Rome sent to be the lead investigator to lower the boom — politely, of course, we're sure – on Bp. Strickland.

And for the record, Kicanas, who had been the vice president of the USCCB, came within a handful of votes of actually becoming president.

It was only a last-minute public relations blitz by faithful Catholics back in 2009 that derailed his victory. That's how Cdl. Dolan became president: He was the compromise candidate, who, after his win, went on to tell assembled media that "there is no crisis in the Church." His elevation to the presidency of the USCCB was because of the crisis in the Church.

Scheming, lying politicians who have figured out how to get money from Washington, D.C., while sacrificing the Church — that's what we have. Nothing less. And the sooner that reality gets embraced, the sooner we can do something.

When Church Militant repeatedly says the Church is a dumpster fire right now, we know what we're talking about. But likewise, we need to expand beyond the Strickland news for a bit here and understand there is much more behind the scenes here than is being admitted or even reported.

What many, many people tell us here at Church Militant is we have the ability to connect the dots for them, to point out the intersection, the overlap, of so many areas (call it the "Venn diagram" of the Church's corruption).

A large part of the corruption happens because of the bishops' unofficial involvement in politics. They continually push for the agenda of the Democratic Party, point by point, but carefully sidestep the prickly situation of being actually officially political. Catholic, Inc., can't jeopardize that precious 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax status.

The truth is you will never meet a more political group in your life than these men. It is this that Strickland has run afoul of. But, of course, Strickland is still alive, unlike Ven. Bp. Sheen who, in death, has run into the exact same buzzsaw of the U.S. bishops jamming up his canonization for pretty much the same reasons: being a political conservative patriot-minded citizen and preaching solid Catholic orthodoxy.

These leaders, they don't care; they'll come after you, dead or alive.

TRANSCRIPT

With the civilization in its death throes, many people start scrambling around looking for what we guess you could call "the easy out." 

And remember, when all that was going on, most of the empire had already been either directly converted to Catholicism or at least understood it was the State religion (and had been at that point for over a century). So we aren't exactly talking about a bunch of pagans here worshiping false gods.

In fact, so horrified and end-of-the-world crazy were they that St. Augustine sat down and penned his tremendous work The City of God, still one of the giant classics of Western civilization and, dare we say, human history. In that opus, he drew the sharp distinction between the city of God and the city of man.

The faithful belong to the city of God and simply dwell temporarily in the city of man. We are citizens of the heavenly city, and what happens in the earthly city should not be considered paramount, his counsel went. Empires and civilizations come and go, but the city of God remains.

Well, approximately 15 centuries later, with various empires having risen and fallen over those centuries, here we are again. And right on cue, the end-of-the-world crazies are at it again. In the Catholic world, it takes the form of almost gnostic prophecies from centuries earlier shoehorned into our contemporary days, and little-known apparitions and isolated mystics and so forth.

For those unfamiliar with it, or only in passing, in short, the rapture is the anti-biblical belief that before the end of the world, all those who have believed in Jesus will be sucked up from the earth and taken up to Heaven, and then all those "left behind" will have to deal with the calamity.

The idea has been around for a couple hundred years in Protestant circles, but because it has no basis in Scripture, unless you go to great pains to twist and distort Scripture, there are multiple contradictory beliefs within Protestantism about the rapture and what flows from it.

For example, there are huge discussions raging right now in more fundamentalist and some evangelical circles about how should a believer live his life based on which version of the rapture and millennialism and the tribulation is correct. And no, we aren't kidding you.

The question on my mind at this point is which eschatological position is correct. The answer to this question impacts everything about how a Christian ought to live his life in these wicked days. I'll explain. If post-millenialism is correct, the New World Order itself is a psyop. The elites are likely using the book of Revelation as a playbook to psyop the masses into hopelessness, and we both can and should overcome this evil.

If pre-millennialism is correct, then the next question I have is whether the rapture is pre-trib, mid-trib or post-trib. Each possibility carries significant implications for how a Christian should live his life in these final days.

Pre-tribulation or mid-tribulation rapture means our time is best spent witnessing the gospel to as many people as humanly possible right now (literally nothing else matters, in my opinion). Post-tribulation rapture would mean our time would be best spent witnessing the gospel, but also preparing to be cut off from the global economy and to have war waged against us. Big implications for parents, especially.

Which eschatological position is correct? Important to pray for clarity on this.

OK, did you get all that? Seriously, a large group of Protestants actually is consumed with all this nonsense. The last point, that it is important to pray for clarity on which eschatological position is correct, that is true, but it's already been answered.

None of that is correct.

It's all based on faulty and bad personal interpretations of Scripture — thank you, Martin Luther (who unleashed the ghouls from this Pandora's box). There's a reason that for 1,700 years or so, no one who called himself "Christian" ever even thought of all this, much less broke down into multiple contradictory positions about it.

Because it's not true. None of it is correct. The underlying assumption is itself wrong. Once again, we see the fault lines in the Protestant heresy — that there is no final authority when it comes to Scripture interpretation, and so this nonsense is the logical conclusion of that.

Luther blew up Scriptures and created an environment where any ramblings from any nutjob with a persuasive personality could be considered "learned" or "authoritative." Take the one point of the rapture, for example.

St. Paul uses the term as it related to a specific practice common in the ancient world: When a king, emperor, great general, or whatever, was returning to the city after a triumphal military campaign, some of the citizens would leave the city and go out to meet him and his army and escort them back into the city where the celebration would break out.

That movement out of the city to greet the victor and the return to the city was called, loosely translated, the "rapture."

We did an entire episode on this topic back in the day in our One True Faith series, which is normally a Premium show, but for this Vortex, we are offering it for free, by just clicking on the provided link. 

We have to be honest and say there is a "flavor" of this approach in some Catholic circles as well, although it's not specifically about the rapture. But these notions and concepts surround various prophecies and apparitions (some even unapproved) by folks who don't do a lot of critical thinking, meaning they don't "discern the spirits" very well.

Such is the byproduct, one of the many, of a crumbling civilization. Be sure not to be taken in by all this theo-hysteria and chasing about for signs and wonders. The best approach is always the authentically Catholic approach, as St. Augustine laid out.

And one last major point — perhaps the most important point — is pretty simple: Who cares if it's the end of the world or not? If it is, then it is, and there's nothing you or I can do about it. If it isn't, well, your world is going to end.

One way or the other, we are each going to be going to our judgment. That's what you should be concentrating on, not crazy anti-biblical ideas that have no power to save, because they are totally wrong.

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A woke civilization is no civilization at all; there is nothing civil about it, in fact. One of the central tenets of wokeism is that white males are the enemy because they are the oppressors. And who are the oppressed? The victims? Well, essentially, everyone else, more or less.

An oddball exception is made for elite white males. Think Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden and John Kerry, for example, who go along with the narrative publicly, but privately surrender nothing of their so-called white privilege. In fact, hypocrites like that, far from surrendering their influence, actually enhance their wealth and power in such an environment. So there is a strange set of rules governing all this.  

A few days ago, black Republican Sen. Tim Scott was talking about his distaste for wokism and the damage it causes. Right on cue, Obama attacked him, but the irony here is that Obama is half white, enjoying all the "privilege" of that half, while Scott is all black. Obama has three spacious mansions: Martha's Vineyard, Kalorama and a beachfront difficult-to-get-to property in Hawaii — not bad for making just 400K a year as president.

It seems whatever the rules are here in the land of the woke don't follow any organized pattern. Old, wealthy white males lecturing blacks or Hispanics about how they should rise up and seize control from old, wealthy white males? Wouldn't it be easier for the old, wealthy white males to just give up their wealth and then try and conjure a revolution? I mean, if they feel that strongly about it, that would be the easy solution.

But the reality is this has nothing at all to do with white males, per se. It's just that it's mostly white male fingerprints all over Western civilization. And since the object of their scorn is Western civilization and the Church that built it, they are fighting a phony war against white males — when the real war is against God and His Catholic Church. Western civilization is just something standing in the way.

They don't like Trump, for example, who is certainly no paragon of the morality that formed Western civilization, but compared to the current crop of leaders, he comes closest to that image and therefore must be destroyed. Sure, they don't like him because of the whole "drain the swamp" message and how it would upset their apple carts, but that, too, is not the real issue.

America, as it was once constituted, was at least a good stand-in for something good about Western civilization, and that Trump trumpets America and that understanding of it, well, that cannot be tolerated. MAGA undoes everything these woke mobsters have been working at destroying for decades. A resurgence of the former America simply cannot be allowed to happen.

The fingerprints of the woke mob are all over everything going wrong these days, all in the name of bringing down the white male civilization. It doesn't matter if it's sexual deviancy involving children or phony climate change or even women's sports; an oppressor class has to be pointed at and revolted against. And that class is always the same, which is why you see such an intersection of all the pretend victim classes around these issues.

It's fine, for example, for Gavin Newsom of California to eliminate gas-fueled vehicles in the next few years from his woke state. Fine for him, that is. He, likely, can afford the outrageous sum of cash you have to lay out to get one, not to mention that the battery craps out much faster than most realize, and to replace it costs essentially the same as just buying a new car.

And speaking of those batteries, they come from slave labor, like Nike shoes, in the world's poorest truly victimized classes. No woke love for those children doing the cobalt mining. And the production as well as charging of the batteries emits more poison into the environment than just tooling around in your old Chevy or Dodge.

But of course, it's that weird rule in wokeland that the rules don't have to really make sense and are not equally applied — the governing principle of wokism. The people ruling the kingdom of woke declare that their race, sex and power are the enemy and yet relinquish nothing of their own privilege. They develop proxy wars over issues like climate but do nothing themselves to actually "save the planet." Private jets are not exactly the cleanest emission-friendly means of transport.

All of this only makes sense when you view it through the single prism of what their real motive is: the overthrow of Catholicism as an ordered, governing system for civilization, complete with its moral code. The wealthy never suffer the consequences of their own actions. The rules they lay down for others do not apply to them, such is the insulating power of extreme wealth.

For example, does anyone think the very wealthy will suffer if America ends up in a war with China or some limited proxy skirmish? Almost half of Americans, according to a recent survey by Rasmussen, think war with China is in the near future. And while U.S. servicemen are being outfitted for the latest woke ideology and slipping into high heels, China is amassing quite the empire across the Pacific.

But the woke elite are only able to get away with all this — and by "all this" we mean, explicitly, destroying you and your families — because they are allowed to. They bank on most people being either stupid and buying into their claptrap or being indifferent and uninvolved. So far, for the most part, they've been right, which is why school boards call the cops on concerned parents and get away with it.

But like we saw with Bud Light and Target and the Dodgers, there does seem to be a pushback emerging here. That's a large contributor to Tucker's success on Twitter since FOX News dumped him.

Where will it go? How long will it last? What, if any, momentum will it sustain? Those are questions only God knows the answer to for now. What we do know is that some sort of pushback is developing. People are immigrating in record numbers from blue to red states; various products are being boycotted; the good guys seem to be rallying. 

Will this slow the woke crowd, or will it embolden them to become even more aggressive? The smart money, based on the past, is on them becoming even more aggressive. The only remaining mystery then will be how the good guys will respond.

TRANSCRIPT

If you were unable to catch our live stream of the actual event on Friday, we've pulled a few interview highlights we think are worth focusing on because they cover the gamut of the struggle we are in, both spiritual and temporal.

Up first, a bishop, the only bishop to appear at the event, at least publicly, Bp. Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, laid out the proper way to understand the struggle from a purely spiritual perspective. What too many Catholics really fail to understand is the decades-long, even centuries-long, assault that has been going on across a very broad front.

The institutions of Western civilization (all of them) didn't just come tumbling down overnight or even over the course of a few years. Our good friends at Tradition, Family and Property, have chronicled the meltdown as well as stood defiantly in the face of it at hundreds of events across the nation and the world. So it was a pleasure to catch up with them in Los Angeles.

On the cultural–political level, which is where the spiritual battlefield is, there are few folks who have their finger on the pulse of all this as well as Human Events' Jack Posobiec, a good friend of Church Militant's.

"Poso," as he's nicknamed, gets that media is one of the large culprits in the demise of the civilization, just as we do here at Church Militant. Both he and we are determined to stop the bleeding as much as possible.

Of course, the wreckage of the collapse is being inherited by the younger generations, the few of them who really do get what's going on. On that front, there are few among them who articulate the crisis better than John Doyle, a 20s-something who gives no quarter to the destroyers of civilization and will be one of our speakers at our annual Strength and Honor Men's Conference here in Detroit, the first weekend of August.

Click the link, men, to sign up and reserve your seats.

If those brief comments from all the above don't help clarify the nature and corresponding call of duty for men, then little else will.

Again, if you'd like to reserve your seats at our Strength and Honor Conference, please just click on the provided link.

TRANSCRIPT

Not to belabor the point about the noteworthy Catholic pushback against the Los Angeles Dodgers and their honoring of the blasphemous drag show nuns, but we need to still revel in all this for a moment or two.

Thousands of Catholics showed up at the prayer rally and procession to make our voices heard, as semi-official estimates put the number of Catholics at upwards of 5,000. What appears to have happened was that the Dodgers organization, which invited the group, disinvited them and then reinvited them, felt the heat and moved the honoring ceremony to almost one hour before the opening pitch.

As a result, the stadium was almost completely empty as the twisted sisters received their award — and some of the handful actually booed them. We heard from some of the speakers during Church Militant's livestream of the event, good Catholic men like Jesse Romero and John Yep (chief organizers), Jack Posobiec, and, of course, Bp. Strickland.

It was also an honor for me personally to address the crowd. However, it's important at a moment like this for the grassroots people who took time off work, traveled from some far-off places and were there to simply defend the Faith, it's important for you to hear from them. So we plunged into the crowd and asked quite a few of them, "Why are you here?"

It was a tremendous moment of Catholic solidarity and pushback against the woke crap and the bishops' refusal to stand up and defend the Faith.

TRANSCRIPT

I'm Michael Voris coming to you from the Catholic prayer presence outside Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium.

This controversy arose from the decision by the Dodgers to first invite, then disinvite and then re-invite the group known as the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" — a group that largely mocks Catholic women religious to gain attention for fundraising for various liberal causes.

But what many don't know is the background of this group. Where did they come from? When did they start? How did all this suddenly become a thing? Unsurprisingly, you have to go back not to L.A., but actually to San Francisco in the late 1960s and 1970s, where all sorts of outrageous groups were forming and roaming about trying to draw attention to gay causes.

Most of that activity originated and took place in a neighborhood area of San Francisco known as the "Castro District," which, ironically enough, had been a heavily populated Irish Catholic enclave until all this began.

In the late 1970s, three men arrived from Iowa City with actual nuns' habits they had tricked out of nuns at a convent there, saying, according to press reports, they were just borrowing them for a production of The Sound of Music.

Once in San Francisco, the men donned the habits, on Easter weekend no less, threw themselves into the morass of the Castro District, rose to prominence above the earlier groups and became established as the definitive group dedicated to mocking cultural and traditional values through denigration of mostly Catholic teaching.

In October 1980, they held their first formal fundraiser — a bingo game. An advance write-up in the San Francisco Chronicle immortalized their name as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

From there, it was "full-steam ahead."

As their numbers grew, as well as support in a rapidly culturally transforming San Francisco overall, they began making national headlines with plays and skits mocking religious leaders like Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant.

They protested heavily against Pope John Paul's visit to San Francisco in 1987, as well as Pope Benedict's visit to the United States.

Beginning in 1995, the group began an annual 13-stop pub crawl in San Francisco, specifically to mock the Stations of the Cross. It also sponsors what it calls a "Hunky Jesus" contest, wherein participants mock the Way of Sorrows by featuring muscular men carrying crosses through the streets and waving to the crowds.

The group's organizing structure is set up in extremely close parallel to a women's Catholic religious order, with an actual application process. Then, after acceptance, a six-month consultancy, a novitiate period where the group's history and purpose is taught, then an investiture ceremony where newbies are given habits, but not the full habit until they have passed through that stage and then make a public commitment to remain in the sisters for the rest of their lives. At that point, their clothing, habits and makeup are assumed in full.

No matter how you slice this and dice this, it is a precision strike against Catholicism. Much closer to their founding, they went to various Christian congregations to make their presence known, but in the passing of the years, they have focused their vile antics specifically on Catholicism almost exclusively.

Back in the 1990s, they actually used to attend regular Mass — in habit — at Holy Redeemer Parish in the Castro, and would even go up and receive Holy Communion.

It's telling to look at the string of archbishops at the time the blasphemous "order" began and expanded. When they arrived in San Francisco in 1979 and went very public in 1980, John Quinn was the archbishop. He was rumored himself to be homosexual or, at the very least, sympathetic.

He remained archbishop until 1995 — nearly 20 years — and it was under his reign and largely tepid response that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence not only established, but flourished, facing almost no pushback from Quinn for their horrid mockery of Catholicism.

He would occasionally release a statement, and that was about it. In 1995, he was replaced by Abp. William Levada, who soon was facing accusations of sex abuse cover-up and mishandling of numerous cases of teenage boys being abused by priests.

It was under both Quinn and Levada that the group would attend and often present themselves for Holy Communion at Holy Redeemer — again, with very little pushback from either prelate, although there was the very occasional statement.

In 2005, Abp. George Niederauer arrived from Salt Lake City, where he had been the only religious leader in the state to not oppose a pro-gay legislative slate in Utah. He too, once in San Francisco, offered nothing to speak of in terms of asserting Catholic teaching, and at the end of his tenure in 2012, the juggernaut of the group itself was now well ensconced. Over those years, the blasphemous, anti-Catholic hate group claimed 13 houses and 6 missions in multiple U.S. cities, including here in Los Angeles.

Around the globe, there are roughly 600 fully professed members in Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay, according to various press reports based on the group's claims.

Forty years ago, this was just a small group of many such groups who mocked religion and traditional values to gain attention and push their agendas. Now, 40 years later, they are the recognized, almost most-exclusive international group using outlandish mockery and blasphemy against the Church.

When the Dodgers invited and then re-invited them, it was ostensibly to honor them for contributing to the community for "good causes," flowing from their fundraising.

Given this history, perhaps now you can see what a truly pathetic response it has been from virtually all (not quite all, but mostly all) the U.S. bishops, most especially L.A. Abp. Gómez — to publicly distance themselves from the crowd of lay Catholics gathering here today, preferring, in his words, to engage in dialogue.

How about a little dialogue with the sheep out here, Your Excellencies? Every single time some big story happens in the Catholic world where the good of the faithful is at play, you can count on the overwhelming majority of bishops to simply turn tail and start blathering on about dialogue, a dialogue which, by the way, never happens.

Coming to you from the L.A. Dodger Catholic lay response on this Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, this is Michael Voris for Church Militant.

Michael addresses a crowd of 5,000 Catholics in Los Angeles following the Dodger's invite of drag queen "nuns" to their stadium for a so-called "pride night."

Today's Vortex features an episode of The One True Faith, where, in the spirit of Our Lord's Sacred Heart, Michael expounds upon the greatest love story ever told — Christ's love for the One True Church.