Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

Unless you are a pretty faithful Catholic, you've probably never heard that on May 17, 1846, the bishops of the United States had proclaimed Mary — under the title of her Immaculate Conception — the principal patroness of the whole country. Of course, those were bishops who pretty much believed the Faith and actually believed in things divine. Today, not so much. 

For evidence, when was the last time you heard that little factoid — that America was placed under the protection of Our Blessed Mother under the title of the Immaculate Conception? Interesting point: The declaration by the American bishops was almost a decade before the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which would happen in 1854. 

That's noteworthy because it shows the dedication and faith of the U.S. hierarchy from back then. This brings up the obvious question — where is that faith now among the hierarchy? In fact, the Americas have had an intimacy with the Blessed Virgin since the very beginning. Christopher Columbus' flagship bore her name (the "Santa Maria"), and Columbus' crew sang the Salve Regina each night in her honor.

The Spanish and French missionaries who accompanied the explorers introduced a devotion to Our Lady that has remained to this day in many communities, with untold numbers of towns and villages being named after her. The devotion of Mexicans to her image as Our Lady of Guadalupe is world-renowned. 

In short, ever since the Catholic faith was brought to this hemisphere, it has been deeply bound up with the Mother of God, which, of course, is how it should be. It was only the military conquest of Protestant British troops over those French and Spanish troops that dampened this, but just a bit. The Catholic Church was in this hemisphere more than a century before the Protestants arrived with their hatred of the Queen of Heaven.

You could easily make the case, in fact, that if it had not been for those Protestant Puritans and subsequent Protestants arriving in Plymouth and Jamestown, the world would be a very different place. America, for example, would likely not be on the precipice of a Marxist revolution.

Theological errors were introduced into the Americas through Protestants, and when the military forces supporting those theological errors conquered, so too did the errors. Catholic influence and thought were beaten back and supplanted by Protestant error. It took a while — a couple of centuries, in fact — but the inevitable happened. 

Protestant morality, which has been a mix of Catholic morality and protestant error, began to change and evolve. First, Protestants allowed for divorce, then contraception, followed by abortion and same-sex "marriage" and now, transgenderism and so forth.

Wherever Protestant error dominates, the truth will be sidelined. But the consequences of truth being sidelined do not remain sidelined. Those consequences pour into the streets, the institutions, the minds, the intellects and the wills of a nation and, slowly at first (but gaining traction as time goes by), begin to be felt everywhere.

It's like poison slipping into the body. It's subtle at first but eventually deadly. And here we are today in a country that is still — even under the protection, the patronage of the Blessed Mother (under Her title, "the Immaculate Conception") — on the brink of dissolution.

It is for this reason that Catholics in America must rediscover our roots, specifically those in the Blessed Virgin. The U.S. bishops in 1846 were, perhaps, more prophetic than they realized. At the same moment they were dedicating America to Our Lady, Karl Marx was in Germany formulating and writing the Communist Manifesto.

And here we are today: Politically conservative Americans are in a fight to the death with Marxists on our own soil, a soil over which she (Our Lady) is the patroness. And how far have things gone since that time? Many of the bishops today are Marxist at heart, and the class warfare Marx so longed for is actually playing out in the Church against the backdrop of a U.S. presidential election — an election the likes of which we have never witnessed before.

All over America, groups of faithful Catholics — orthodox Catholics — are calling out the Marxism-embracing evil of the clergy, especially that of the hierarchy. Case in point — in the diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, a group of ardent Catholics will be hosting Church Militant as part of their "Roman Catholic Revival" (fittingly enough on the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mother's body and soul into Heaven).

I will be giving a day-long presentation entitled "The Heart of the Matter: Defending Catholic Truth and Beauty." For details and to sign up, please click on the provided link. That's next weekend, so there's still time to sign up.

Catholics, for the most part, have lost any sense of their identity because crooked leaders have robbed them of it. You see this reflected in politics where a holy people, a royal priesthood, would never choose to support child murder or be indifferent to it. But as poll after poll and election after election (and so forth) show, the Catholic voice has been essentially nullified, as roughly half support these evils (while the other half oppose them).

That is not by accident. It's been part of the plan since the communist invasion of the Church's seminaries and chanceries. The Church had to be removed as the dominant obstacle to the Marxist conquest, and what better way to remove it than to penetrate it and subvert it? But remember, America is still under the patronage of the Mother of God, and it is now to her we must appeal.

Perhaps it is not a desperate appeal, but certainly urgent. We hope you will consider attending the event. This group of Catholics sponsoring the event love the Church and want the preservation of the nation. It's no exaggeration to say we are at one minute before midnight, and — as troubling as that is — remember, we have been assured and the serpent has been promised, "She will crush your head."

We need to join ourselves to that victory. Thank you in advance, and we hope to see you in Crookston.

TRANSCRIPT

Talk about what's old is new again. No matter what is happening in the Church these days, much of it seems to go back to Vatican II — the 21st ecumenical council (held from 1962–1965) — supposedly to equip the Church to deal more effectively in evangelizing the modern world.

If that was the goal (and we say "if" at least as it relates to some council participants), the only thing that can be said is that the council was a total flop, failing spectacularly on every score. Post Vatican II, the Church is in full-blown retreat and in many cases has been subverted all over the West by the heresy of modernism.

Whether this can be pinned directly on Vatican II or simply the oft-mentioned "spirit of Vatican II" is still hotly debated. But we do know that you would have to search high and low to find a greater collapse of the Church — in such a short period of time — anywhere in history.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Pope Pius X warned of what he properly saw as an invasion of the Church by the spirit of modernism (what he correctly defined as the "synthesis of all heresies" — the saint's own words). The Church had weathered centuries of assorted heresies, dissent, schisms and so forth.

But this one, warned the great pope, was a Category 5 hurricane of heresy the likes of which the Church had never seen before. He was spot on. What this heresy claimed was the clergy — but not just claimed them. It claimed them on such a scale as to boggle the mind.

The treachery on the part of heretic bishops and priests in numerous countries has become full-blown in the decades since Vatican II, establishing what amounts to a parallel Church among the faithful. More and more Catholics are coming to realize this as they look around the destruction and are sick to death of hearing all about a "new springtime" of the Church.

That will come, no doubt, one way or the other. But if anyone thinks we are in the midst of that now, that person probably lives in a state that has legalized pot. Likewise, there is a growing consensus among the faithful — meaning those Catholics who actually believe the teachings of the Church (as opposed to those who think they are just nice preachings).

This growing consensus recognizes, first and foremost, the desperate lack of supernatural faith among the bishops and clergy. Too many of the ordained and consecrated class clearly do not believe what the Church teaches, not who the Church is.

Their lack of faith is reflected in their disregard for the sacraments (especially the Blessed Sacrament) and in their disgust for any reverence in the Liturgy, for the mission of the Church, for care for the souls of the faithful, for the devotional life, for vocations to the priesthood, for education and catechesis, you name it. Many of the bishops are not Catholic in any meaningful manner.

But the clamoring of the faithful — which is growing louder — is now threatening to grab headlines in the Church. It's all the rage on social media, and the bishops may be beginning to realize that their carefully constructed facade is starting to break down.

This may have been the reason they trotted out Bp. Robert Barron (a poster bishop for the Church of Nice if there ever was one) to start defending the council and its impact. In what surely will go down as the biggest comic line in 2,000 years of Church history, Barron referred to himself as a "traditionalist" in his defense of Vatican II's implosion.

Let's be charitable and just say that Barron clearly has no idea what Tradition is. His modernist-minded cronies, like Cdl. Dolan, like to parade Barron around as if he is the next Fulton J. Sheen.

As a politician once-quipped, "I knew Bp. Sheen; I served Mass for him — Bp. Barron, you're no Bp. Sheen." Barron is the epitome of style over substance, which is why someone probably started getting nervous in Church of Nice headquarters and got some money ponied up to have Barron front a Vatican II video to say "everything's all good."

No, it's not "all good" — not by a longshot. The Church that Sheen preached bears practically no resemblance to what Barron and his modernist "almost no one is damned" gang preach.

Vatican II never said to have Holy Communion in the hands, dump the organ and bring in guitars, flood the seminaries with perverted men, kill Latin, face the people, hold hands during the Our Father, show up in your flip flops and board shorts and everything that the Church has devolved into.

All of these innovations were injected into the Church by faithless loser bishops like John Dearden here in Detroit (who got the ball rolling) as well as his right-hand man, Chicago cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who was pals with Theodore McCarrick.

There is no way on earth Barron can defend the current state of the Church without implicitly defending these evil men (who actively recruited gay men into their seminaries as just one prong of a multi-pronged attack against the Church).

A perverse theology emerged in these post-conciliar decades, one that deplores the Church's teachings and somehow — remarkably — says that what's wrong with the Church is that Vatican II hasn't been implemented enough. We kid you not — enough!

Most bishops and priests today do not believe the Church is the sole means of salvation, that without the Church there is no salvation. They don't even believe in the inherent dignity of their own sacred offices and duties. And if they do, they sure have a very strange way of showing it.

The apostles were sent into the world to convert it to the Church. The bishops are the successors of the apostles, but somehow, somewhere, the mission to convert the world got garbled and is now "promote gay sex and downplay the Faith." The current condition of the Church is why faithful Catholics have such a difficult time pointing to even one faithful bishop in the country.

Even those few who actually do believe the Faith entirely are like little mice as opposed to the lions their sacred offices and duties demand them to be. Any man who is a bishop — a very public office — who thinks for one minute that his salvation will be secured because he privately (sitting alone in his office) believes the Faith, will have a rude awakening when he opens his eyes on the next world and is hauled in front of the Chief Shepherd.

Seminarians Church Militant talks to, as well as priests from around the country, all tell us that the faithful are being deceived. Most of their clergy do not believe the Faith — or at best they have some perverted notion of it. According to insiders who know how the chanceries work, who know how the politics are played, where the bodies are buried, where the money is going, who the players are — all of it is a giant scam carried on to preserve their positions of power and pretended prestige.

Ten years from now, with or without a President Biden Marxist attack against the Church, it will not look the same. The rot is so bad, the men with influence so evil, that it cannot remain this way for too much longer. Vatican II may have slowly begun to bring all of this out into the public view, but it did not cause it, even though some of the ambiguity of the documents may have been easily weaponized by heretics, schismatics and dissenters.

Just like the original hippies from the 1960s took control of the universities as they aged, the "hippie clergy" of the 1960s eventually took control of the Church (at least here on earth) as they aged.

The debate over Vatican II, as warranted as it may be, is not the real debate. The real debate is the lack of supernatural faith among the bishops and their attempts to tell you there's nothing to be worried about.

TRANSCRIPT

For a number of years, Church Militant has been highlighting the parallel between the evils in the State and the evils in the Church. It's not only D.C. that has a swamp; it's not only D.C. that has a "deep state." Those phenomena are also present in the Church.

The swamp is the status quo, both in D.C. and the Church. There are people, in both, who have privileged positions and who benefit personally by keeping the status quo. In D.C., it comes in the forms of defense contracts, for example, and massive lobbying firms and an entire network of business as usual (because what's counted as "usual" is the personal aggrandizement of so many individuals).

These people live off other people — namely, taxpayers — yet keep themselves aloof from the peasants whose taxes finance their cushy lives. The peasantry may finance the cocktail parties, but they are most definitely not allowed in. Switching over now to the Church's swamp — the hierarchy and their designated privileged class of theologians, professors and chancery leaders — they comprise the "swamp" of the Church.

Exactly as their political counterparts, members of the Church swamp live off of other people (in this case, the faithful), yet they too keep themselves aloof from the "peasantry." It's just that this peasantry also has Rosaries as well as faith, which the swamp creatures of the Church do not have.

The realities of the swamp are such that there is a lot of crossover, almost comprising one giant swamp. Whenever the privileged classes of either Church or State need to cooperate, they do.

That's why they often sound as if they are related — because they are. This cooperation of evil (and that is precisely what it is) goes back to the trial of Our Blessed Lord before Pilate. When the Jewish leaders tell Pilate they want Jesus killed, he tells them to do it themselves. And then the religious swamp engages the State swamp and tells Pilate that Roman law forbids them from putting a man to death: The State would have to order it.

A masterpiece of cooperation there. We know the rest of what happened: Pilate went out and delivered Him up to their wishes. We say all that by way of underscoring that the betrayal we see on the part of leaders, especially religious leaders, can not come as any surprise. They sold out the Son of God; don't ever consider yourself "out of reach." Nothing is too great a price to keep the swamp from being drained.

Looking at the State swamp, what do we see? Trump comes along and exposes it all, puts appointees in place who expose it all (like Attorney General William Barr) and the swamp goes nuts.

Trump must be defeated at all costs — the destruction of the economy, the media manipulating the masses, fake information about the Wuhan virus, "Giant Tech" censoring any conservative Trump allies, the mask panic, shutting down schools, impoverishing tens of millions of workers, driving the deficit into the stratosphere, anarchy in the streets — no price is too high to pay to get Trump.

But over in the Church swamp, all of the above is equally at play — keeping the panic alive in the parishes, masks, restricting attendance, forbidding Holy Communion on the tongue, bishops kneeling to Black Lives Matter, statement after statement on racism — all meant to fuel the fury of the swamp to get Trump.

The swamp creatures in the Church and D.C. care nothing about the people or souls in their care; they only care about themselves. Period. What's curious about all of it is how the swamp contradicts itself left and right.

The Marxist media lies about the riots being "peaceful protests" as cities are being burned to the ground. The "Defund the Police" movement gains traction while murders and violent crime figures skyrocket across the country.

NBA teams and members of other professional sports leagues, along with apparel manufacturers, all kneel at the drop of a hat (or, more specifically, the first note of the national anthem) yet care nothing for the humans in the Chinese communist sweatshops laboring for pennies making what they profit enormously from.

The swamp goes on nonstop about the right to free speech of the protestors, but let doctors come forward and speak about America being lied to and free speech suddenly becomes something to be censored and over which careers are ended.

The operations within the Church are exactly the same — go along with the demands or you are disobedient; you are a troublemaker. Rarely does any bishop challenge the State (although there are exceptions). Some even impose further restrictions than the State (like Detroit archbishop Allen Vigneron, who requires masks at Mass even though the notorious governor Gretchen Whitmer does not require them at religious services).

Chicago cardinal Blase Cupich even wears a mask while offering Mass: Anything to keep the hysteria right in front of people's faces. Never let the panic subside. It must last until election day. Cardinal Tobin of Newark, New Jersey has his own moratorium on in-person attendance at Mass.

Remember when all this was just to "flatten the curve"? You haven't heard that in months. No one thought the virus was going away and that no one would get infected if we locked down. The idea was to just make sure hospitals were not overwhelmed. Well, we largely crossed that bridge weeks ago. But sensing the political advantage for fear, panic and hysteria aimed at "getting Trump," the swamp creatures all moved the goalpost.

Now, there cannot be one single shred of the virus anywhere in the universe. Everyone must mask up and stay ten miles away from any other human being, unless you're rioting and burning down police buildings and federal courts — the Wuhan virus knows those people are righteous and skips over contaminating them. But for the rest of us, every last germ must be hunted down and destroyed because "Americans are dying," right?

But, because of the lockdown, Americans are dying because of the lockdown from suicide, lack of medical care, addiction and so forth. Those lives don't matter — just like all black lives don't matter to the Left, just some. Black babies being aborted, black police officers being killed by rioters — those lives don't matter.

Prior to Wuhan, there was no way Joe Biden was going to win. Now the swamp has Trump right where they want him. And do not think for a minute that many of the U.S. bishops are not deeply tied into all this. In some cases, they are leading the charge. The swamp must be preserved at all costs: That's what the deep state and the deep Church do. They preserve the swamp.

TRANSCRIPT

When everything is all boiled down, the entire world is a clash between Catholicism and atheism, nothing else — Heaven and Hell. All other religions are false because they are man-made and eventually splinter and disintegrate. Atheism is, of course, the diabolical deception that there is no God.

All other religions eventually lead to atheism. They take some circuitous routes to get there perhaps, and some arrive sooner than later; but one way or another, they evolve, splinter and disintegrate. All that remains is Catholicism because only Catholicism has the necessary staying power because of who its founder is, the Eternal Logos.

The Catholic faith exudes power, strength, glory, beauty and majesty. As such, it reflects its Savior. Those spiritual qualities spill over into the material world. They imbue the material order. They depart the realm of the eternal and find a voice in the temporal.

Those spiritual qualities are the foundations of what built a civilization directed toward the one true God, fashioned from the violence of the Roman Empire and the barbarian hordes. Consider the glory of what you just saw and heard: It's all Catholic, every bit of it.

The music, the architecture, the art, the stained glass (and not just the final form of each, but the entire civilization that could give birth to that), man's gradual subduing of nature to show forth the glory of nature's Creator — through all made and ordered to the glory of God, man is at his most magnificent, revealing the divine image in which he was made.

If that is what it sounds like when fallen man directs his talents to God, what does it sound like in Heaven when saved man joins with the angels? The damned will be forever deprived of that beauty, and damned is precisely what the diabolical has planned for every one of us — the very thing Western civilization was born to fight against.

This November, this is what's at stake — a civilization born from Catholicism. One side favors mayhem, destruction, violence, death and, more to the point, a marring of beauty and goodness. They look on innocent life and see it as worthless, to be disposed of if it stands in the way of their sexual gratification. They reject all things divine.

They follow the precepts of the diabolical. They lie, deceive, manipulate, hate the good and truth. They want Western civilization destroyed so they can get at the force behind that civilization, underpinning that civilization — the Catholic Church. Now true, many leaders in the Church are already on the dark side, but it's not them they're after.

Frankly, it's you. See, in your heart and soul, you carry the seeds of a rebirth of that same civilization because of the accompanying theology and philosophy. We view man as made in the image and likeness of God because He is so created. That image of God we each carry confers a dignity — in all men — that cannot be trampled by anyone.

Even if applied imperfectly, this is expressed in the U.S. Constitution, that government does not bestow rights; rather, rights come from the Creator and the government protects them and safeguards them, but they have their origin in God, not the State.

But see, there is a spiritual battle underlying all this. Satan wants the Church destroyed and has stepped up his attacks over the past centuries. In order to get to the artist, he had to go through the art. So all the gifts to man given by Holy Mother Church have been twisted and malformed and are now being used against Her.

Universities have become centers for destroying minds, not enlightening them. Hospitals are becoming centers for destroying bodies. Truth has been relegated to opinion, and in some cases, nonexistence. Satan uses the political realm to accomplish his goals, just as he uses every other realm to the same end. Hell hates beauty. It hates truth. It detests love. 

Anything that is reflective of beauty, truth and charity finds its origin in the Divine, and this is why Hell so agitates against it. On the surface, the fight is about worldviews. At its heart, it is a battle over goodness and truth. Pray for the country and those within the Church who have helped create the corruption of minds and souls. We are on the precipice, and Catholic civilization is worth defending.

TRANSCRIPT

Sometimes you just have to say things like they are, so here we go. Politics in America is all about sex — nothing else. And the 2020 election is all about sex, hands down. The radical Left (which is just another term for Marxists) cares nothing for their pretend causes; they only care about sex.

In their view, government is all about protecting their "right" to have sex with whomever they want, whenever they want and how often they want. Calling them the "sexual Left" is not a stretch — or even the "lustful Left." In fact, it's perfect. 

Now, for clarity, the elites at the very top, running the show, their motive is not sex. Their motive is just raw power, but they have weaponized the sexual revolution of the 1960s to advance their cause.

They've taken in enormous segments of the population — even political "conservatives" — convincing them that consensual sex is private, is nothing but a personal choice and is no one else's business.

This is why you see such unflinching support for homosexuality for example (so-called gay rights) among otherwise "conservative" Americans. It's why you often see Republicans defending pornography as "free speech."

Once you unleash the demons of lust on a population, you begin to shake and rattle the foundations of a civilization, and sooner or later, it comes tumbling down. Why? Because with widespread adoption of the notion that consensual sex is private and personal, you give permission for it to become untethered from its moorings in marriage.

That begins the breakdown of the family, which results in the eventual meltdown of the culture. The passions of man are not neutral. They rage and battle against the will and the intellect. Giving the passions permission to take the lead and make the intellect subservient to them is a sure road to disaster, as we see all around us.

Sixty million aborted children, tens of millions of fatherless children, households ripped to pieces, pornography rotting young minds — mostly male — the list is seemingly endless. Young people shacked up, playing house (until they get bored) is instilling a lack of any commitment that reaches into every corner of the culture.

Then there is the "knock-on" anger of a generation growing up deprived of a true home of mom and dad. Every last bit of this plays directly into the hands of Marxism, which would much prefer to have a nation commit suicide than have to fight a bloody war.

All the riots, all the politics — all of it is about sex. That's why Black Lives Matter was founded by lesbians. That's why there is a race to the bottom in both political parties to embrace all things gay. When the Left's leaders go on about guns, climate change, love of illegal immigrants and the poor, education or the death penalty, don't believe them.

They don't really believe guns are bad: They have their own armed security. They don't really believe in man-made climate change: They fly private jets and drive gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and limousines. They don't really believe illegal immigration is about justice: They employ immigrants as gardeners and maids at less-than-minimum-wage rates.

They don't care about the poor: Their policies keep the poor trapped in poverty. They don't really believe in quality education: They constantly reject school choice for children most in need. They aren't really opposed to the death penalty: They execute a million children a year in the womb.

These issues and others are nothing more than class-warfare issues meant to polarize the nation and keep them in political power so they can tighten their grip on the country. The leaders' aim is to keep their buddies in power so that the sexual revolution can continue to roll along. Nothing else.

So, it's curious that so many Catholic bishops, their staffs, their pastors, their parish employees, their religious instructors — all of them — are so silent on all this. In truth, many of the above are actually members of the sexual Left. They despise the Church and its teachings, teachings they are baptized to proclaim.

They believe in the mission of the revolutionaries, which is why they stay so silent about the consequent evil. It's why they never speak of sexual evil but instead prattle on about the topics on that list we mentioned — guns, climate change, illegal immigration, poverty, education, the death penalty.

And among the clergy — especially the bishops — don't you discount their own personal participation in the homosexual agenda. Don't be so quick to dismiss the evil of thousands of altar boys being raped and covered up by them and their gay clergy buddies.

They are ordained and consecrated, true. They are not false shepherds in that manner. But they are false in what they teach and most especially what they do not teach. While politicians and media types and judges and college professors were locking down their part of the culture in advancing the sexual revolution, so too the clergy were busy in their own arena — despoiling the authentic Faith.

They stole — not once, but twice — from the faithful, robbing them of their material wealth by the billions (given in sincerity to advance the Faith) and also robbing their souls by depriving them of what was, by right, theirs — the truth. Why do so few Catholics today believe the Faith, ignore the reality of Hell and walk away from the Church? It's because these wicked leaders set about to create this outcome.

Marxism cannot succeed in the face of muscular Catholicism. So Catholicism — rightly preached, understood and practiced — needed to be wiped out. What neither they nor their diabolical father counted on was the emergence of a faithful troop of Catholics who not only know the truth of the teachings, but fight like Heaven to proclaim it, especially at the crooked bishops.

Back in the early days of this apostolate, long before we knew how evil much of the hierarchy had become, all we were doing was teaching the Faith on our program, The One True Faith. We bought time on local stations and aired it twice each week on Sundays. But the archdiocese of Detroit's gay mafia quickly set about to destroy us. We heard the whispers, had a few people who supported us inside the chancery tell us what was being said, the proclamations that were being made, the official orders being given to Detroit priests to ban us from everything.

All we were doing was teaching the Faith, nothing more. At the time, we were naïve enough to not realize there was more that had to be done. I spoke with a friendly priest at the Sacred Heart Seminary while I was studying for my STB and cried on his shoulder, saying that I didn't understand all the venom being spewed at us.

His answer: "Michael, you need to understand. For 40 years these men have spent their careers trying to confuse the people. And as they approach retirement, along comes this young guy on TV explaining what the Faith really is." It was that simple. With that background, I'd like to invite all of you to sign up and become Premium members and to begin watching our One True Faith series.

We have loads of programs with multiple episodes, but this show — the first one we did — is the one that brought the Detroit archdiocese down on us. It wasn't because we were railing against the evil bishops, not then because we didn't know.

All we did was teach the Faith in plain, simple terms — out of the vast storehouse of the Church's own saints and heroes and theologians and doctors and fathers. Then we put it on local TV, and the Detroit clergy (the bad ones) went apoplectic. There are 112 episodes stretched over eight seasons, with a couple of bonus episodes where we talk about the angels, Hell, Our Blessed Mother, the Eucharist, Purgatory, redemptive suffering, grace and the Church Herself.

You can just start with the first, "St. Michael and the Angels," and make your way through the entire 100+ episodes. See the beauty many of us were deprived of. It's straightforward because, frankly, we don't know how to be any other way, and also because it's how the Faith is best explained — simple and to the point.

This is the Faith that converted the Roman Empire, built Western civilization and spread across the globe, inspiring artists and musicians — but more importantly, producing martyrs and saints, announcing the good news of salvation. If you watch Vortex, you know the style. But here is the Vortex style before there was a Vortex and when the topic was all theology, all th+e time.

So please, sign up today, it's only ten dollars a month, and given the dismal state the Church has fallen into, there has never been a more important time to know, study and share the Faith. Thank you in advance, and we'll see you on the Premium channel. 

TRANSCRIPT

Last week, Church Militant conducted a poll of faithful Catholics about their personal experiences regarding RCIA — the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. First, the poll isn't formal with a margin of error and all that. Nonetheless, it did have a very good response rate of almost 2,400 people.

So here are the findings. First, 82% said they knew at least one person who had come into the Catholic Church through RCIA, and more than half of them said they knew four or more who had done the RCIA program and become Catholic. So far, so good — loads of new Catholics — but that's where the good news screeches to a halt.

Over half (55%) told Church Militant they personally know RCIA Catholics who no longer practice the Faith. Even more disturbingly, of those who left the Church, over half (53%) did so within just two years. In summary, half of those who responded to the poll know at least one person, often more, who came into the Church through RCIA and then left the Church within two years. Two years!

That is a blinding failure of catechesis. And when you consider that this is the official, Church-sanctioned, usual way — complete with the local bishop's blessing — of bringing new members into the Church, it's even worse. In fact, it's horrendous.

But not only are Church leaders having a serious problem attracting and keeping new converts, they are also having a lot of difficulty retaining those already baptized. They are leaving faster than they can be replenished. In business terms, the Church is in a deficit-spending mode.

Given that hard-edged reality, you would think the bishops would be deeply concerned and scrambling about to stop the outflow — but no. It appears the response is more like telling those leaving, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." Given the corruption that has befallen the hierarchy as a whole, none of this can be surprising. 

Why would anyone looking for supernatural faith and what it has to offer be attracted to the Church in these days? Or, better stated, why would anyone look at the institutional Church the way it is presented and feel any attraction? Bishops run money-making organizations while betraying the teachings, either directly or indirectly.

They persecute good priests, promote wicked ones and are intent on further emasculating the priesthood, if that's even possible. They are intent on "managing the decline" (that's what they call it behind closed doors). About 10 years ago, when Church Militant began paying close attention to the numbers, we predicted that within 5–10 years you would begin to see an actual drop, in real terms, of U.S. Catholics.

Well, it's now been 10 years, and that has come to pass. After reaching a high of 81 million self-identified Catholics 15 years ago in 2005, the number has dropped to just 72 million. That's a falling off of 12% in just 15 years. Soon, this decline will no longer be "manageable."

For many years, the U.S. Catholic population was roughly 24% of the overall population of the country. Today, it's about 21%. As older Catholics (who are the ones most likely to remain in the Church and still go to Mass) die off in the next 10 years, the Church will shrivel up to almost nothing. By 2030, the overall Catholic population of the United States will likely drop to around 15%. 

Last year, the percentage of Catholics in the United States actually fell behind the percentage of the overall population saying they have no religion. In sum, there are more Americans who now profess no religion than there are Catholics — a first and a margin that present trends show will continue to increase. 

The decline is fast becoming a catastrophe. No matter which demographic marker you look at, the picture is the same. For example, the Church in the United States had more parishes when John F. Kennedy was president then it has now.

And expect that number to only get worse, as diocese after diocese is in the process of slashing parishes left, right and center. Not until the closures are complete will a diocese typically update its numbers with a recount, but when the dust settles, it will not be good.

The Faith used to be spread through three major avenues — the family, the parish and the school. In many situations, those are just no longer viable options. Catholic marriages have dropped 70% since 1970, more than suggesting that the future of the Catholic family is pretty bleak.

Parishes we have covered, and when all the dust has settled, its a safe bet (given the lack of Catholic families to fill them) that the current 16,000+ parishes will be well below 10,000 by 2030.

As for schools, most of them (whether grammar, middle school, high school or college) haven't taught the Faith in decades. In fact, a strong argument could be made that the corruption of the teaching orders was the precipitating factor in all of this.

The laity, in many ways, is now in a situation where they will have to begin to fend for themselves. Fortunately, the internet has stepped in to fill some of the vacuum created by the collapse of the institutional and cultural structures. 

Church Militant is humbled and excited to say that we were one of the very first faithful Catholic apostolates to recognize this and respond to the coming storm, and we responded with video — videos which have been viewed going on 60 million times and counting, blessed be God.

We've been in this work on the internet, bringing solid teaching in video format to millions, longer than anyone else in the Catholic world. Back in 2008, for example, you couldn't post a video on YouTube longer than 10 minutes, as incredible as that sounds. That was just 12 short years ago.

The technology and bandwidth just wasn't there to support it. Nonetheless, we took 10-minute clips from our flag show — The One True Faith — and began loading them onto the platform. One of our mentors, Fr. Pablo Straub (God rest his soul) said to us, as you may know, "You must bring Christ to the internet." And that was essentially before the internet was actually video-friendly.

Connection speeds were painfully slow; people's computers were slow. It took forever to upload for us and to download for you. But we kept at it, confident that as we trudged through all this, things would get better technologically — which of course they did.

Over many years, we have produced thousands of episodes of catechesis, apologetics, Church history and historical investigations into Freemasonry, homosexuality, contraception and all the betrayals of the Church from within.

The list is so long, we often forget. But we want to invite you to become a Premium member of Church Militant and begin diving into either the Faith or back into the Faith.

It's just $10 a month and is well worth the investment, especially given the shrinking of the Church. With oftentimes dodgy preaching, horrible catechesis, failing RCIA and religiously failing schools, there is no better time to turn to an authentic source for Catholic truth.

Church Militant was the first Catholic apostolate to do what we do, and now others are following suit — which we regard as a compliment. Thanks, guys. And while the Church in America has been officially shrinking for years, Church Militant has been growing and growing, with many Catholics aware that something is seriously wrong and turning to new sources.

We are happy to have been blessed to stand in this space first. We are committed to being used to save souls. Nothing else we do here is more important. And given the times, there couldn't be a more important time than now to hunker down and embrace the Faith.

So please, sign up for a Premium membership today and begin exploring our Premium programming: We haven't left a Catholic stone unturned. And we keep adding to it, practically daily.

Thank you in advance for your support, and remember, we'll hold the door open for you to come in, not let it hit you on the way out.

TRANSCRIPT

The only thing you need to remember this November is that the U.S. presidential race is a battle between two mega forces: Catholicism and communism. Catholicism built Western civilization. Communism's goal is to tear it down on the way to creating a religion-free world ruled by a small cadre of elites.

That's it — all you need to know. Everything else is detail. That's not to say the details aren't important — they are. The details are, in fact, how we got here. So for those interested in going beyond the summary, here we go.

It begins with the Queen of Heaven's dire warning that Russia, on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, would spread her errors throughout the world. So important was this warning that it was accompanied by the most spectacularly visible miracle short of the Resurrection — the sun dancing in the sky, witnessed by 70,000 people who thought the world was coming to an end.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communists had been successful in planting time bombs throughout the West, in both cultural institutions as well as the Church. It matters little that they wouldn't be around to watch them explode. Their effect is just as devastating as if the Soviet Union were still intact. And besides, their heirs are getting a front-row seat to the spectacle. 

This election is like a proxy war between the authentic Church and worldwide communism, although it takes a discerning eye to see that looking at Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And there are some pretty strange twists at play; for example, Donald Trump, the non-Catholic, is a better standard-bearer (although certainly not perfect) for Catholicism than Joe Biden.

And that, at first, seems off because Biden is the baptized Catholic. But if you peel back that thin layer of superficial faith and political-speech slogans, you'll actually see a communist. Biden is a communist posing as a Catholic. In that regard, he's not unlike many Catholic politicians of his generation.

Nancy Pelosi, for example, is as "fake Catholic" as they come. And for the record, did you catch her politically motivated canonization of Congressman John Lewis? Whatever you can say about Lewis' civil rights record, what you can't say is that he upheld the dignity of all black lives — just the ones most expedient for his career.

Yet there was his corpse in its coffin on Capitol Hill with kiss-up, phony-Catholic Pelosi and fellow traveler "Commie Joe" lauding Lewis, making religious platitudes about his greatness. Lewis was in the U.S. House for 33 years, and during those decades, Lewis voted in favor of abortion 52 times, never once in support of life.

In those same 33 years, approximately 30 million children were hacked to death in their mothers' wombs and sucked out through a vacuum cleaner with an attachment that has little razor blades on the tip. Given the high rate of abortions on black babies, approaching 30%, that means Lewis was complicit in the murder of nearly 9 million black babies.

Yet there were Joe and Nancy, offering incense over his rotting corpse — asserting his salvation was assured. But see, abortion is key to the commie agenda. Anything that destroys the family is sanctioned and promoted by them, and what could possibly be more destructive of the family than not allowing the next generation to emerge from the womb, alive that is, as opposed to in pieces?

But hey, Black Lives Matter, right Joe? Commie Joe is the dream candidate for commie Catholic clerics. He talks a good game about being Catholic. He hits all the right notes in the Church of Nice hymnal. He takes all the non-essential Church teachings and flips them on to the top of the heap, treating them like irreproachable dogma.

Immigration policy and the weather (which is all so-called climate change is) are not infallible teachings of the Church. But abortion, contraception, homosexual acts (to name a few) actually are. They also happen to be necessary in the communist plan for global domination, stylishly referred to as simply "globalism."

That term is about as close to the truth as communists will ever come. Yet, in the face of all this truth, the Catholic vote is still considered a toss-up — especially in important battleground states. Catholics have been so dumbed down by gay and communist bishops and clergy for the past 50+ years, they look at Joe and see a Catholic instead of the communist he is.

He wants to outlaw conventional automobiles, destroy the fossil fuel industry, make millions of otherwise regular, working Americans completely dependent on the federal government. The man is a straight-up commie, which is why he and Bernie are now thick as thieves (literal thieves, by the way).

The elites who created Joe know all this: They just don't want you to know about it. And that's because they are all commies as well. In fairness, Joe (unlike Theodore McCarrick) probably didn't start off his career as a commie.

But he sure evolved into one when it was convenient. And the reason he and his bishop buddies (who allow him to present himself as St. Joseph) are so easily able to fool so many Catholics is because Catholics don't know their Faith. Likewise, they know next to nothing about the false church set up right in their midst by communism-loving bishops.

They don't know the true Faith, so they can't recognize the fake faith. The only hope of tipping the scales back — at least enough — is for committed Catholics to learn about all of this (the actual Faith as well as what has happened) and explain it to any Catholic who will give them an ear.

At Church Militant, we have been pounding this drum for more than a decade and have dedicated literally tens of thousands of man-hours to producing programming that explains all of this — the actual Faith and the plan to destroy it.

There are too many programs to list, but suffice it to say there are hundreds, with thousands of hours of material available for your viewing. It's why we are constantly urging you to become a premium member, like we are now. 

We couldn't imagine a more pressing, urgent need for all Catholics to sign up and find out what they do not know. Everything we do here, every last ounce of our efforts, is geared toward educating you on the Faith and how traitors have attacked it. Too many of these men in miters have lied to you, ordained wicked men to pastor over you, allowed evil to grow unchecked in your families and parishes.

Those who did not actively pursue this agenda have sat back passively and sinned by omission, allowing it to happen. And now their Catholic Frankenstein is one election away from the White House. We urge you to become as involved as you possibly can in reaching out to fellow Catholics and explaining this to them.

But first, you need to know it — as much as you possibly can. That's what you get for your $10 a month, an unmatched volume of information and catechesis — the truth and how it was betrayed. Your $10 also goes towards keeping us going in bringing free programming to people, free programming like The Vortex, for example.

We have produced almost 3,000 episodes of The Vortex over the years, and every single one has been completely free. And while it's free to everyone to watch, it's not free to produce. Your Premium offering goes to this effort as well.

This is true for our daily headlines and the multiple articles we produce each day. As the old saying goes, "Information is king." 

The commie traitors in the Church — clergy and politicians — have known this for decades, which is why they embarked on such a massive misinformation campaign all those years ago. Please join us in our effort to do whatever we can to make a difference in this war. 

In the end, it all boils down to souls. And even a single soul has infinite value to Almighty God.

Please click on the link and become a Premium subscriber today, and then watch the shows, learn and get there and do everything you can do to roll back the misinformation and lies that Commie Joe and his Judas bishop and clergy buddies have propagated. Heaven doesn't need us to do this, to accomplish this, but Heaven wants us to.

Heaven desires we be involved in the work of salvation. That requires knowing the truth and sharing it with others. Thank you in advance.

TRANSCRIPT

Campaign 2020 has got to go down as one of the most strange-yet-noteworthy elections in practically all of the country's history. It's strange for the same reason it's also noteworthy: America is, at long last, having to face, head-on, what we could call its "God problem."

On the one side are amassed the political forces of atheism — the anti-God crowd. Most of them are honest enough at least to admit that. Party leaders, on the other hand, still give religion a tiny bit of lip service, but if you look just below the surface, it's a deflection meant to ensnare a few gullible, low-information voters.

So at their convention, it was a hit-or-miss proposition if the phrase "under God" would be recited or dropped each night during the Pledge of Allegiance.

The one side consists of straight-up anti-God Marxists (led by a phony Catholic). Check that box. So on the other side, it would be neat if you could simply say, "We are the God forces" — a kind of political version of God's army. It would be good, but it wouldn't be accurate.

There is, to be certain, a vague sense of religiosity, of understanding that morality and virtue and so forth are on the ballot much more than they have ever been. There are discussions about America needing to return to God, discussions which have been heard for years but are much more amplified this election.

In fact, tens of thousands of yard signs that say "Jesus 2020" are being produced and shipped all over the country. The old lines that "They are flying off the shelves" and "We can't keep them in stock" are swirling around, creating the newest political phenomenon in an already strange campaign.

So, at first glance, this appears good. What self-respecting Christian would disagree with the need for Christ to be the center of our political (and thus national) life? But there's a snake coiled up under the table here, and it's been there a long time, waiting to strike. This election is its moment.

"Jesus" means different things to different supposed followers. And America, as a nation, was established to allow this to be the case. Whatever you want to believe and ascribe to religion, you can — the correctness or incorrectness of your opinion be damned. What matters is that I can believe. What I believe and hold dear and sacred is unimportant.

And what's more, it's none of the government's business. "Religious liberty," it's called in principle, and "separation of Church and State" is what it is termed in practice. But Houston, we have a problem. This governing principle denies truth. It makes religion become a matter of personal opinion.

Creeds may be believed. But the substances of the creeds are wrong, not to mention contradictory. This is why, on the "God side" of politics, there is such discord. For example, many Trump supporters are all down with the gay agenda; they have no problem whatsoever with same-sex "marriage" and so forth.

But inside the same camp are those who are not down with it — at all. Yet they are all backing the same candidate, who himself appears to be at least indifferent to it. The morality of homosexuality seldom comes up as a topic, or perhaps, better stated, seldom is allowed to be brought up on the God side. That would not be politically prudent.

And besides, my Jesus is okay with it, even if your Jesus isn't. The same is true with a host of moral or religious topics — yes, even including abortion, and yes, on the God side. There is no lockstep uniformity in God's army regarding abortion. It's all over the map.

Sure, it's certainly more pro-life or anti-abortion compared to the Marxist side (which definitely is uniform and lockstep on this). But comparing yourself to a party that believes in and wants to codify infanticide is a pretty low bar. The Democrat-Marxists are so low, it's impossible to be lower. It's hard to fall off the gutter.

The combination of solid Marxist unity on the anti-God side and lack of unity on the God side is precisely what has allowed the Marxists to bring their revolution to your streets, your front doors. So the question needs to be asked: Why doesn't God's side have unity? The answer is that, from the very beginning, an error was accepted into the political fabric — the error that people are free to believe whatever they want about God, and that somewhere down the road, this wasn't going to present a massive problem in how society orders itself.

As we said, the snake is coiled up under the table. Eventually, sooner or later, it's going to bite you. The old political logic that people vote "according to their wallets" is actually true, not on its own. People vote according to their beliefs in the supernatural — according to whether they believe or not.

That's why the clearest predictor of how a person will vote is how he understands or accepts the things of eternity. Those who don't vote Democrat; those who do vote Republican. But look at this for a moment: The "God or religion don't matter" crowd; for them, it's a simple, straight-up choice. There's not a lot of gray.

But on the God side, gray is king. There is no solid basis — no firm foundation — from which to view the universe and understand your place in it. Religious pluralism is what has brought America to the point of collapse, perhaps even to the point of civil war in some form.

In this, the U.S. bishops have been complicit for decades. They've been content to sit back and talk about ecumenism and getting along with our "separated brothers and sisters." What they've not done is present the truth; they've swept it under the rug or kicked the can down the road, take your pick.

They've spent so many years — decades — trying to get along, trying to get a seat at the table, to be accepted that they've sacrificed everything of the Faith. They've given up and handed over the divine truths of the Catholic faith.

And it's even worse: They don't even believe privately that Catholicism is the one true Faith. They'd laugh you out of the room if you broached that subject, that truth. What's important is that we all get along, we all coexist, we all pray together when we can, we all "worship" together when we can, we join common forces in this cause or that.

And every step of the way, Catholics give up a little bit of themselves — here and there, bit by bit until, well, the Faith no longer exists (or doesn't matter). After all, we're all Christian right? This watering down, the great dilution, is what has allowed the likes of James Martin to become, in practice, the pope of America.

The Faith has been substituted for the lie that "All creeds hold equal weight." They don't. They never have, and they never will. Catholics were hoodwinked by a bunch of misguided, weak men in miters back in the day (who were so desperate to get along that they went along with the dismantling of the Church).

The idea of evangelizing and converting what was at one time "Protestant America" was abandoned in pretty short order. Some historical figures in the Church tried, to be certain (Abp. Sheen being perhaps the most notable or visible), but without a collective effort, it was bound to fail.

More than struggling to get to Heaven, what was important was fellowship on the road to Hell. And so, now the nation has descended into a kind of political Hell and engages in the politics of Hell. So, sure, yard signs promoting Jesus 2020 are cool and all that, for what they're worth.

But if people who claim to be followers of Christ don't nail down who Jesus is objectively and what He specifically taught and come to a clear understanding of which religion He personally established, then none of it really matters.

"Jesus" is too elastic in America; that's why everyone who wants to can claim Him for their cause or side. In the end, it's true — it all comes down to atheism vs. Catholicism. There are no other "sides." It's complete non-truth vs. fullness of truth. And that's how truth rolls. A half-truth is still a full lie.

If Trump wins, Catholics who actually believe — not the bishops, not the dissidents, but actual Catholics — have got a massive row to hoe, decades of errors and lies to begin undoing. Sadly (for Catholics at least), the errors and lies they will have to fight are the ones they've heard from their own pulpits for decades.

America is on the brink because of the failure of the Catholic hierarchy to fight when the fight would have been much easier. Trump winning will only be the opening salvo in the real fight that needs to be fought.

TRANSCRIPT

Church Militant is responsible for the content of this commentary.

Well, it's Aug. 26, which means exactly two years have gone by — as of yesterday — since Abp. Viganò released his nuclear-bomb testimony that former cardinal Theodore McCarrick was known far and wide throughout the Church to be a homopredator. 

In fact, he himself had personal knowledge that even Pope Francis knew all about McCarrick's serial sexual abuse of seminarians and still elevated him to be a personal attaché to China to hammer out a deal that would flatten the Church in the communist nation as well get the Vatican $2 billion a year from the commies (if economists' investigations are accurate). 

Got it? The Pope knew! He knew! That was the entire point of Vigano's testimony. But there was more. McCarrick was protected by a gang of gay clerics who all profited personally from his evil. McCarrick was destroying vocations, had destroyed young men willing to give their lives to Christ and His Church, had already destroyed the lives and psyches of other victims — most notably James Grein.

This was known up and down the hierarchy — not every last detail, but certainly enough. And then, when it all started coming out, those involved in protecting McCarrick lied to such a filthy, disgusting degree that it would make Satan blush. Donald Wuerl, Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy, Kevin Farrell — Farrell even got promoted by Francis to the highest levels of the Church in the Vatican.

All of them (and many more) are part of a vast homosexual-clergy network intent on covering up and going into damage-control mode. And that they did, like the mafia they all are (with an expertise that would make their drug-dealing counterparts want to take copious notes).

As the months dragged on — beginning in that summer of shame in 2018 — people wanted to know how this all happened. How had McCarrick gotten away with this for so long? Why did no one come forward and turn him in? Why was it that secret settlement payments were being made and no one brought it to light — no bishop, no chancery personnel, no one?

Exactly what kind of culture had the bishops created that a monster like this could do what he did and no one felt the obligation to God or a massive string of young men to reveal the truth? Then the bishops gathered in November in Baltimore — reportedly intent on asking some of those questions.

But the funny thing was, many of the men who knew the answers, those who had helped cover up for McCarrick, were the very men (the senior clergy) sitting in that room. They knew, as later documents and further testimonies would reveal. Indeed, they knew.

Then just as the meeting was gaveled to order, the homosexualist cardinal Blase Cupich grabbed the microphone and told his brother bishops that the pope's just-delivered orders to cease this entire discussion should be followed. No more discussion. And that was that. The room and the media were stunned. A cone of silence had been imposed by Pope Francis and enforced by Cupich.

Clearly, he had traded away his soul to advance the cover-up for his own personal benefit. In some ways, from the perspective of a cover-up, it was a masterstroke. Just as the furnace was heating up, just as the media glare was being focused like a powerful laser beam, Cupich and Pope Francis pulled the plug.

There would be no discussion, no answers, no debate, no questioning. Nothing. Speak and Cupich would chop your head off. All would be clarified at a conference — a sex summit in Rome early in 2019 — Cupich announced. And in the area of strange coincidence, who would you guess presided over the sex summit?

Of course, a cardinal who owed his career to the homopredator: Blase Cupich. He got his position as archbishop of Chicago because of McCarrick pushing for him. It's a filthy cesspool — beyond a swamp. In fact, calling it a swamp is an insult to swamps.

In between the November bishop meeting and the end of the year, Cdl. O'Malley of Boston said a Vatican report on the whole affair would be released very soon. Then Cupich told us it would be out by the early part of the year. A couple of weeks ago, Cdl. Timothy Dolan had a secret call with his clergy and told them the McCarrick report would be out before the end of this month.

Tick tock, Your Eminence, tick tock. So now we are faced with the two-year anniversary of Viganò's testimony and are still waiting for a report that would implicate most of the senior hierarchy in the United States, not to mention major players in the Vatican. How can they release the truth? They'd all be arrested, or worse.

Remember, they protected a child molester and a destroyer of souls. Donald Wuerl replacing the monster in D.C. was no accident. He'd done his own fine job in this area while in Pittsburgh. Others were complicit with him. They all have their own skeletons, their own massive sins, their own ongoing guilt.

And that's the key here. Their scandal is still continuing. Every day that passes — every single day — is another indictment against them. They lie by cover-up every day. They deny justice to the victims every day. They weaken the faith of the laity every day. Their crimes and sins are blazing the trail for them into eternity every day.

They have no intention of ever revealing the truth. The truth is not in them. They don't even know what it is anymore. How could a group of morally corrupt thieves and liars ever do anything except continue lying and covering up? It's their nature, or it has become their nature. 

So Dolan is the latest in the cardinal club to announce (sort of) that the McCarrick report is on the way — just around the corner. Justice will be done. All shall be revealed. Consider the guilt of the men involved in this. Consider the enormity of their sins — ongoing, unrepented from.

And then ask yourself if what Bp. Barron blathers on about — us having a reasonable hope all men are saved — rings true to you. Perhaps the reason the bishops are so down with Barron's theological weirdness is because they hope it's true. Considering where they all are right now, they better hope he's right. But then, where would be the justice in that?

Where's the report, Holy Father? Where is the McCarrick report?

Church Militant is responsible for the content of this commentary. 

TRANSCRIPT

Sometimes, in these crazy days in the Church, a story happens that really disturbs, shocks and is revealing of the chaos — all at the same time. One such story occurred this weekend here in the archdiocese of Detroit (but really has been unfolding over the course of decades; it just became public this weekend).

In short, a deacon in a suburban parish, St. Anastasia, Dcn. Mark Springer, was invalidly baptizing people from 1986 until 1999 — 13 years! Doctrinally and theologically, that means anyone baptized by him was not able to validly receive any of the other sacraments over the course of their lives because baptism is required for any other sacraments that follow. And that includes ordination to the priesthood. 

So when Fr. Matthew Hood happened to be watching some old family videos of his baptism, he noticed the deacon did not use the correct words (which means he himself had not been validly baptized). This means he had not validly received any of the other sacraments either — including being ordained to the priesthood.

This means most of the sacraments he performed after his non-ordination were also invalid (his Masses, his absolutions in confession and so forth). Father Hood did the right thing immediately. He contacted the archdiocese, told them all about it and his situation was rectified.

He was validly baptized, made his first Holy Communion, was confirmed, ordained a deacon and then a priest. He is good to go. But between Fr. Hood (who had been non-ordained about three years ago) and the scurrilous Dcn. Mark Springer (who took it upon himself to simply change the words because he liked them better), the number of souls in this archdiocese who were impacted for decades — and still are — is too difficult to calculate.

Invalid marriages, confessions, Masses, last rites and so forth: It's beyond staggering. It is so bad that Detroit archbishop Allen Vigneron had to issue a public statement admitting the tragedy. In it, he names the deacon and the parish (St. Anatasia).

He also names the affected parishes where the young and innocent Fr. Hood had been present in his early non-priesthood years, blessedly shortened only by his viewing of an old family video. Vigneron even had to release a much lengthier note to his own clergy — and even had a conference call with all of them yesterday to answer their many questions. 

See, the knock-on effect of this is huge. There's simply no reasonable way to discover how many people are impacted and still continue to be. To his credit, Vigneron is making the shameful incident public to alert people so that if they are touched by this, they can rectify their own situations.

Precisely what the faithful do not need to hear right now is that an archdiocese can't keep guard over renegade ministers of the sacraments. This situation went on for 13 years and raises a truckload of questions. Was Springer the only deacon in the archdiocese so horribly trained in seminary that he felt he could freelance his way through sacraments? What about any of the priests likewise trained? How far back did the poor training go? 

Are there any other invalidly ordained priests in Detroit not confecting the Eucharist, not actually absolving sins in confession, perhaps not validly witnessing marriages and not actually administering last rites?

The story actually resulted in a very sad social media meme demonstrating the depth of the scandal for the faithful: A dying Catholic asks a priest for proof of his valid ordination before administering last rites. Many things we cover here at Church Militant (as you know) also have another aspect to them. And when it comes to bishops and their chancery staff, they cover up the even-more-disturbing parts.

Here's the part neither Vigneron nor his staff are telling you about this. Remember, the statement to both the other clergy and the public makes it appear as though this all came to light when now-validly-ordained Fr. Hood was watching an old family video. That's only partially true. That is when it came to light for him.

But the archdiocese had known about this for years before Fr. Hood approached them. How does Church Militant know this? Because around 2006 or 2007, we received a phone call from someone who we considered an extremely reliable source.

It turns out they were more spot-on than even we knew at the time. They told us — in short — that there were various discussions going on at the chancery that they had heard about (but not been privy to themselves, directly) that invalid baptisms were being performed in a suburban parish. 

They didn't know who the chancery officials were who knew; nor did they know what parish (and possibly parishes); nor did they know if it was a deacon or priest. But they knew the overriding story. Church Militant tried to discover more, but with just that little bit of very general information (and, of course, a chancery which covers up with the best of them), there was nowhere else to go to verify it.

Bottom line: This scandal was known by at least some chancery officials years ago — at least as far back as the 2006–2007 timeframe, and perhaps longer. Nothing was done. As far as anyone knows, this goes back at least three archbishops, and there's no way — it's simply not possible — that tens of thousands of souls have not been adversely affected. 

We're talking about something going on 35 years here. Thirty-five years for an archdiocese to figure out how to simply lock down the sacraments so the faithful have a certain assurance. They can't even guarantee the proper administration of the sacraments. Then there's the even-more-disturbing fact that some people in the chancery covered all this up for years.

In fact, the proof is in the pudding because, had Fr. Hood not come forward and created a "public" moment, the faithful still would not know what some in the chancery had been keeping under wraps for years. We don't know who the personnel were who knew about this — and neither does the archbishop — who while, yes, doing the right thing in a limited and narrow way, has made no mention one way or the other of any internal investigation as to how the calamity occurred.

Are the faithful not owed that much? It's being painted as a kind of singular, renegade deacon. But we have no idea if that's the case. In fact, why would it be? Given the gay-porn-video-viewing nights that were official every Wednesday evening in the seminary here in Detroit — yes you heard that correctly — gay porn, once a week, mandatory as part of a so-called human-sexuality class, it stands to reason (with satanic filth going on in the training) that Dcn. Springer is not some isolated case.

Given that chancery personnel would cover this up for at least a decade, it seems more likely that there are others. Here's the reality: many of the priests around the country as well as here in Detroit were poorly formed — malformed actually — in seminary over the course of decades.

Detroit was a leading force in all this but was by no means alone in churning out bad clerics — some of whom are now actual bishops. Heck, we even need to ask if some of these men are actual bishops. Yes, because this is that serious and far-reaching.

They can't even guarantee the proper (meaning "valid") administration of the sacraments. Think about that for a moment. Why and how has it gotten this bad? That, sadly, is an easy answer, because as we've been saying for many years here at Church Militant, many of the men wearing miters and collars do not believe the Faith. 

There is a dimension to this whole sordid mess of it being a combination of innocence and ignorance on the part of many involved — Fr. Hood not the least. That also includes the thousands — tens of thousands (who knows really, except God Himself?) — of those who thought they were receiving the sacraments validly and did not. 

Of course, God does not hold that against them. He is bound to the sacraments, not by the sacraments. But underlying the dynamic of ignorance and innocence, there is also the dynamic of malfeasance and wickedness, of horrible training, of cover-up, of losing the further trust of the faithful.

Where is the investigation into how this could happen in the first place? Which chancery personnel knew of it? How many other men ordained to the priesthood or diaconate also received invalid orders? Where is that investigation? We're talking about the sacraments here! 

And what of the doubts now placed in the minds of the faithful — their expanding concerns as they think more about all this? All of that has been placed there precisely by a renegade faculty at the seminary and scoundrel clergy at the chancery.

However He carries that out, God provides for the faithful, certainly. But that does not let the crooked clergy here off the hook. Once again, the faithful have been lied to and deceived; fed double-dealing, misleading, incomplete information.

Vigneron did the right thing but has not completed what he needs to do; he needs to root all this out — meaning the individuals who knew about this and whatever priests are among them need to be excommunicated and defrocked. He needs to find out who was on the seminary staff and faculty in those days (which, by the way, includes him) and get to the bottom of everything.

It's not enough — nowhere near enough — to merely correct Fr. Hood's situation and put out an "APB" for anyone else who might be impacted. That's just for starters. There are evil, malicious people (clergy) in this diocese and Vigneron allows them to remain in place.

He's only got a couple of years and a few months left, and he should spend the rest of his time here rooting all this out, not persecuting Fr. Edward Perrone based on testimony from a pack of lies from a sheriff's deputy and Msgr. Michael Bugarin.

He should also stop pushing his infantile, Protestant "ALPHA" program as some cure-all for evangelization problems in the archdiocese.

Evangelization? Seriously? You have a deacon (and who knows how many others) invalidly administering the sacraments, and it's been going on for so long that it's become generational. As far as we know, Vigneron knew nothing about this, but that's just as far as we know.

We do know he knows that he has many unfaithful clergy — pro-gay, pro-contraception, anti-Church-teaching and so on (the whole usual gamut). He lets these men stay in place, administering the sacraments (although perhaps not validly, no one really knows), preaching Sunday after Sunday, perverting the minds of the faithful. Allowing sacrilegious Holy Communions non-stop, not instructing his priests to tell people not to approach if they are in a state of serious sin. The list goes on and on. 

And, of course, the question arises elsewhere: If it happened in Detroit, why couldn't it happen elsewhere? In the rush to destroy the Church by this modernist crowd, they didn't even pretend to do things right. Some people — some clergy in that chancery — knew what was going on, let it happen anyway and let it continue to happen.

In 2009, when Timothy Dolan was elected head of the U.S. bishops, he responded to a question asked by a reporter about what he might change in the conference. He gave one of the most brain-dead, politically correct answers in the annals of the Church (either brain-dead or a flat-out lie).

He said he didn't intend to change anything. "It's not like there's a crisis," he said with a straight face. The U.S. hierarchy is a joke. They are sex abuse cover artists; malformers of seminarians; liars to the faithful; thieves; weak, emasculated men; and now, add to the list men who can't even perform the most basic task their office demands of them — the proper administration of the sacraments.

Yep, there's no crisis. But thankfully, as Bp. Barron keeps reminding us all, good thing we have a reasonable hope that all men are saved.

Whatever.