Church Militant The Vortex Feed

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With the Democratic National Convention (which was more like a once-every-four-year meeting of the Soviet Politburo) blessedly come and gone, we can now look at all things official from the Party of Death. The communist Democrats did the main thing they actually gathered virtually to do — to nominate fake-Catholic Biden as their man.

They also tossed in fake African American Kamala Harris just to keep the theme of fake going. She ain't African American. And she knows nothing of the experience of "black America." But Harris isn't the focus today; Biden and his fellow commies are. There is no way any Catholic can vote for this ticket, die unrepentant of it and escape Hell.

To lend your support to these enemies of Christ is to cut yourself off from Him (and therefore from eternal salvation). Biden and the Democrats hate religion, for starters. They pay a tiny bit of lip service to it but, in practice, would completely nullify it in the process of overturning every right protected by the Constitution.

For example, the 2020 party platform says religious freedom is a "fundamental human right." Sounds good, right? Read on. It's a right that, however, cannot be used "as a cover for discrimination." There you have it. Your religion is fine as long as you don't try to actually practice it.

In 1993, sensing communist creep closing in on religion, the United States passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA"). It has been successful in preventing the government from forcing individuals and groups to violate their consciences with morally objectionable laws and regulations. 

So an adoption agency run by the Church is free to uphold its religious beliefs, for example, and not give children to homosexual couples for adoption. If a gay couple wants a child, there are plenty of other agencies they can go to.

RFRA, because it backs religious convictions, has been high on the target list for the communist Democrats for years. Last year, Kamala Harris introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to gut RFRA and force religious-minded people to go along with immoral laws and practices — or pay the price.

The bill lost because the commies don't have control of the Senate: That's the only reason. The entire communist Democratic Party has adopted an anti-God platform (and specifically an anti-Christian or, more acutely said, anti-Christ platform).

Yep. The 2020 Democratic Party is anti-Christ, which makes Joe Biden, their leader, a fake Catholic waging war against Christ. Jesus Christ is the truth. Personally. He said it of Himself: "I am the way, the truth and the life."

He's the truth, not some truth. He's not a person who says truth, but is truth itself. When He stood before Joe Biden's spiritual ancestor, Pontius Pilate, He said, "Anyone who hears the truth, hears My voice."

When Christ speaks, it is truth speaking — truth in vocal resonance. It's not what He says but that He says anything. Since He is truth, nothing can come from His mouth other than truth. There is nothing in the Communist Party platform other than lies — that which is opposed to truth.

Forcing consciences, mauling and murdering children in the womb, destroying families, eradicating the human spirit, the enslavement of labor, the glorification of unbridled sex, the celebration of perversion — everything this party supports is opposed to the divine (no matter how many homosexualist priests sashay onto center stage to pretend otherwise).

Biden had better hope — for the sake of his salvation — that the dementia is deep and has been around for a while. He long ago entered into a pact with the diabolical where he exchanged his soul for political power. That much is obvious. The circumstances of the pact are unimportant. Only the consequences are worth considering.

Biden hates Christ because he hates the truth. And what's worse, he pretends otherwise. At least the likes of Soros don't pretend. But then again, Soros and company don't need to deceive people in order to secure their votes.

In many ways, Biden is little else than the extension of a failed Catholic Church — a hierarchy that sold its own soul decades ago in exchange for mostly homosexual lust but also power and money. As the expression goes, "Garbage in, garbage out." What type of Catholic would these monstrous men in miters be capable of producing other than a Biden (an enemy of Christ)?

They long ago set themselves up as His enemy, and now affairs are simply playing out to their logical conclusion. Biden learned to become an enemy of Christ at the feet of so many bishops and clerics who perfected the practice.

Many of those men are now dead, and Biden is close. Maybe, somehow, all those perverted bishops and priests — perverted in a thousand ways — were all saved (as Bp. Barron assures us). After having lied to, deceived, raped, robbed, pillaged tens of millions of souls for their careers, they each suddenly had a deathbed conversion.

We can certainly desire that, but there is no reasonable hope of it because a reasonable hope is based on a reason. And just what would that reason be? Christ would want them to be saved, of course. But the reality is many of them would not want to be saved.

They would have cut themselves off from salvation — locked in their sin and unable to cooperate with whatever graces they may have received, even on their deathbeds. God does not force Himself on a soul; He does not force souls to go against their conscience.

That's what communist Democrats do. You know, the enemies of Christ. The ones who hate him — like their 2020 nominee.

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Given the times we live in at this moment — and, to be clear, the times you were specifically created for by Almighty God — a look back at the happenings of the wedding feast at Cana can be instructive.

It was a pretty big wedding, with important people (whoever they were). There were lots of guests, which is why there were servants. And there was a captain of the feast, so this was a big-deal wedding. Of course, Our Blessed Lord and some of His disciples were with Him, along with Our Lady.

She asks Him to perform His first miracle (and thus to reveal His divinity). He complies. But it's what He does and how He does it that is our point of reflection. He doesn't just change water into wine. He does something else first. A big-deal wedding always had a series of water jars for Jewish ceremonial rules and so forth.

Our Lord could have instantly filled them with wine, but He didn't. He first told the servants to fill them with water. Now consider that — a big wedding, lots of jars, much water, no plumbing, a lot of work.

Gallons and gallons of water would need to have been hauled from the town well: Servants schlepping back and forth in the heat of the day like a kind of bucket brigade. Why? Because Divinity desires that humanity be intimately involved in the work of salvation.

Our Lord could have, but He didn't. He chose to have men first exhaust themselves in the work proper to them — physical toiling in the material world. And St. John specifically records for us that they filled the jars with water to the brim, meaning they could not do one more thing.

They had done everything they could possibly do. They left it all on the field, to use the expression from sports. Then and only then does God say, "Thank you. Now step back and behold." It is the utmost grace to be chosen to participate with Christ in His salvation. 

No, He does not need you, but He wants you. We must do everything we can do so Our Blessed Lord can involve us in what is always His work. As the psalmist says, "For it is you who have accomplished all we have done." So what precisely is it we are to do in this time and space, given the particulars of our day?

First, we must recognize the reality on the ground. Just as Our Blessed Mother saw there was no wine, we must see and understand that authentic spirituality has been drained from the culture. America is, in many ways, a moral wasteland — laid waste by a Marxist push beginning with the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s.

That revolution had as its goal the destruction of the fabric of society — the family — and most importantly, the canceling of masculinity and paternity. With the natural order of society thus destroyed, the unnatural order could be imposed by the State.

And since the natural order flows from God (God as in Father), the unnatural order flows from the demonic, from Hell, which is kind of evident when you look at various cities in America today. They look like "little Hells." However imperfectly, there is a recognition on the part of Trump that this is a battle whose most important dimension is spiritual.

For the record, the other side essentially told God to take a hike. So here we are, faced with two visions of America — two courses, two roads to take with everything on the line. In the lead-up to the election, faithful Catholics (meaning you and us) must do everything we can to fill the jars with water to the brim — electioneering, talking, getting involved in the battle. No stone can be left unturned. We must fill the jars to the absolute brim.

What we are fighting for is the survival of a culture that allows a space for religion, for God. And while that would become a whole different battle as we advance the one true Faith (which should have been done decades ago), that simply will not be possible if the other side wins.

Marxist atheism must be dealt a fatal blow — right here, now, at this moment of history. This far and no farther. Now, to that end (with all we have to do in the material world), we are not just corporeal beings. We are a composite of spirit and body — material and immaterial. So we have a duty in both areas, in each realm.

This requires, demands actually, just as intense an effort on the spiritual plane. Church Militant is announcing its own 54-day Rosary Novena on behalf of the Church and the nation beginning on Tuesday, Sept. 8, the feast day of the birth of Our Blessed Mother.

As many of you know, the entire staff gathers together each weekday morning in our chapel at 8 a.m. ET to pray the Liturgy of the Hours and the Holy Rosary. Many of you join us for that. Beginning Tuesday, Sept. 8, we will be offering the Rosary first, straight-up, at 8 a.m. ET, for the following 54 days.

The Rosary is an especially powerful weapon against Satan because of precisely where your thoughts are directed — to the life of Our Blessed Lord, the Savior, and His mission to open up the path to salvation as recorded for us in the gospels. 

These meditations occur against the backdrop of the scriptural honor to the Queen of Heaven, who, as Scripture tells us, crushes his head. The Woman of Genesis was the instigator, as it were, of Christ's first miracle and is our source of appeal for more miracles.

And notice the use of the term "weapon." It is a weapon. It's like a spiritual Gatling gun reeling off bullet after bullet against the Devil. You know this already. What Church Militant is doing is trying to inspire you to join us, to take the pledge today to sign up and commend the life of the Church and the nation to the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven.

We sent out a small advance notice of this a couple days ago, and, in just a short period, 3,000 people made the pledge to pray with us every day, starting Tuesday, Sept. 8. So now we are making the invitation official and more far-reaching: Please click on the provided link and take the pledge!

Of course, not everyone will be able to pray with us live at 8 a.m. ET every weekday, but those of you who can are strongly encouraged to. But whether you pray with us live or on your own, please join with us spiritually. We are the Church Militant — that dynamic of the Church still engaged in the battle, and this battle is ferocious.

No matter how much water the servants brought to the jars at the wedding feast, only Heaven could make the water become wine. So we need to do both the material and the spiritual. Time for the big guns.

And, on top of it all, after all the attacks against various images and statues of Our Blessed Mother during the communist-inspired attacks, what a lovely birthday present to give our Mother and Queen — a promise to pray for her to crush the Serpent's head.

Remember, as all loyal sons and daughters of the Church know, Heaven is never outdone in generosity. Fight in both worlds — the material and the spiritual. Fight, Church Militant, fight.

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

My oh my — there is nothing formerly hidden that is not being revealed, is there? First, let's give credit where credit is due. It is Donald J. Trump who has caused this sea change in American politics (and all the ensuing fallout).

Mr. Trump goes to Washington and blows it up. As his daughter said last week while introducing him before his acceptance speech, "Washington didn't change Donald Trump. Donald Trump changed Washington." He certainly did change it. He made all the phonies expose themselves — no easy task that.

If you want to see the real face of your enemy then keep pushing their buttons until they blow up and become enraged. Well, that is exactly what the "button-pusher-in-chief" has done with the Marxists who used to be very sneaky and quiet hanging out in the shadows doing all their damage.

All the disguises have been dropped because Trump has become the supreme "troll," and his trolling has pushed the Marxists into an absolute, unhinged rage. And we're not just talking about the Nancys and Chucks and Jimmys of the world.

We're talking about all their aging Woodstock, boomer, hippie pals who — like a swarm of termites — have slowly and little by little eaten away at the foundations of not just America but also the Church. For decades, Marxist-minded, pro-homosexual, virtue-signaling, faith-hating men have been ordained to the Catholic priesthood and have busily gone about their demonic work of destroying people's faith.

They've destroyed it precisely by redirecting the thoughts of the laity from the things of Heaven to the things of earth. Substitute morality is what's going on. It has been going on for decades. Substitute morality is the practice of switching out the Cross for the feel-good actions that make you feel morally superior.

So, it's okay to, say, support abortion as long as you sign an online petition against climate change, or to vote for a child killer as long as you down deep — really down deep — support illegal immigration (just so long as illegal immigrants aren't in your neighborhood).

These social justice warriors, Marxists all, are swarming around the Catholic priesthood to a degree that is both revolting and astounding at the same time. Take, for example, Fr. Kenneth Boller, a Jesuit (of course he's a Jesuit) at the homosexual parish in Manhattan, St. Francis Xavier.

At a Mass last Sunday, this priest had the gall to inflict his Marxism and communism-inspired race-war creed on those at Mass. That's revolting. Not just because it's promoting class warfare but because the sacred is being profaned to advance the cause of Marxism.

And yes, if you were thinking, "What are pictures of George Floyd doing on the altar?" that's how bad this substitute morality has become — even substituting God for man, which, of course, is the point of Marxism. But the vomit spewing from Catholic sanctuaries doesn't end there in Manhattan. 

Let's shift to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where registered Democrat ("Party of Death") bishop Joseph Bambera promotes the downplaying of Catholic teaching in a number of areas in a number of ways. For example, Fr. John Polednak (who is an episcopal vicar and close with Bambera) deliberately mixes both sides of the abortion issue to arrive at that they are both wrong.

Uh, excuse us Father, but when it comes to slaughtering children in the womb, yes, it is that simple. And how dare you stand in the vestments of the high priest and sully His teaching by pretending that people who fight to defend the most innocent, defenseless of human beings don't really get it in the same way the child killers don't.

You (and many like you) are a filthy, rotten disgrace to the priesthood — as well as your bishop and others like him who are enemies of Christ. Have some damn integrity, and leave the Church in the body since you've already left it in the soul. 

It's men like you and your gay-friendly bishop who have destroyed this nation with your watered-down, middle-of-the-road, seamless-garment feces. That entire seamless-garment rot, the idea that all life issues have the same weight, was foisted onto the Church by a homopredator — satanic Cdl. Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.

And it continues to be poured into the minds of millions of Catholics by similar men like Chicago's latest cardinal, Blase Cupich, who, again, abuses his office by putting not having a job on the same level as being sliced into pieces and sucked out of the womb.

These men are devils in robes — every last one of them. And they are legion. Literally. Here's another one who at least has some degree of integrity to say what he actually means, which is that abortion is okay. Fr. Paul Garrity of Boston caused an uproar on social media when he posted that being pro-choice (AKA in favor of infant slaughter) is okay and that Catholics should vote for Joe Biden.

Only after the uproar was Cdl. Sean O'Malley forced to step in and slap him on the wrist and say priests have a duty to uphold the teachings of the Church for the laity. Duh. And if they don't, they should be excommunicated because they are Marxists. More to the point, however, they are in league with Satan because they promote the lie.

Telling a publicly pro-abortion priest he shouldn't say that on social media is like taking the knife out of the hand of a serial killer standing over a bloodied corpse and saying he shouldn't stab people but then letting him go. This spiritual insanity in the Church has got to be opposed in the most certain manner that it can.

These Marxist clerics have burrowed into the very marrow of the Church's bones, and they are everywhere destroying souls. In fact, destroying souls is their only purpose for existence. That's why they won't leave the Church. Their collars give them access to souls they otherwise would not have.

And that reality speaks volumes about the men who leave them in power, continuing to give them access to souls. What about these bishops and cardinals? At some point, it has to be concluded that they agree with their priests' actions and motives because they do nothing to stop the spiritual carnage.

And moreover, their refusal to act is not just a neutral action. It is a positive act of spiritual destruction. To not stop an evil you can prevent is to be complicit in that evil. These wicked clergymen are legion in the Church because this has been the plan all along: Quietly invade and tip the scales, and keep tipping the scales until they weigh in favor of Marxism.

Then, when the moment is right, strike. So far, they have been able to do much damage without revealing themselves. And then, along came Trump. The entire Marxist Left — in D.C. and the Church — collectively exploded, unmasking before they had originally planned.

Remember, there's no reason to go to open war when you can simply keep advancing and conquering everything in sight without firing a single shot. These diabolical clerics, these devil priests, have grabbed hold of nearly all the real estate the Church possesses. 

The resistance, authentic believers, have been pushed back and back and marginalized and demonized and surrounded as this pack of wolves moves in for the kill. And it was all possible because those wolves were disguised as sheep. Trump came along and ripped off their wool, revealing their fangs.

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

There is no doubt — no doubt whatsoever — that the very existence of America is on the line this coming November. For Catholics, most of whom have homogenized into a barely warmed-over pagan culture, this might not be on their radar.

It will, however, be front and center if the communist Democrats and their demonic duo of Biden and Harris win. The Marxist Democrats have all the pieces in place to topple whatever remaining vestiges of freedom and the so-called American dream remain.

Interestingly, among the various immigrant and credal populations that seized hold of the American dream were Catholics. They came to America by the millions during the influx of immigration around the Industrial Revolution and integrated better than any other group. As it turns out, they integrated too well.

After massive discrimination and killings and exploitation, they survived and eventually thrived. They fought off enormous hatred from the ruling Protestant class and made their way against pretty steep odds. Perhaps the single hallmark achievement of the Catholic struggle was Catholic education and, eventually, the crown jewel: the Catholic university. 

Until the Sexual Revolution of the Marxists in the 1960s, Catholic universities and colleges turned out leaders, visionaries, men and women who would be able to shape the course of history, informed by their Catholic faith. But that all changed almost overnight — almost overnight. 

While Fr. Theodore Hesburgh had lots of help in overthrowing Catholicism at Catholic schools, it was his personal efforts that served as catalyst to the whole movement. In 1967, Hesburgh pushed a document known as the "Land O' Lakes Statement" which destroyed the Faith on Catholic campuses all over the country.

The major author of the document was homopredator Theodore McCarrick — a man who seems to have had his fingers in every single effort to blow up the Church. Secular schools were doing the same, but those were secular, not Catholic.

Nonetheless, for the Marxists to make strides under the Catholic umbrella was a level of success even they had only hoped for. Generations of subversives were born of the Sexual Revolution — the only fertile aspect of that movement.

Millions of graduates were unleashed in the world of academia, science, the Church, the courts, government, business — all trained to destroy. And each year, their numbers increased, until today: They are in near-total control. Boardrooms all over the country have been taken over; human resources departments, senior management and so forth.

As the BLM protests and violence have engulfed certain American cities, giant businesses actually cheered them on and financed them. Look at the donors list of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. It reads like the Fortune 500: Amazon, Microsoft, Nabisco, Gatorade, Deckers and other large American firms.  

In his 2001 book, The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, Roger Kimball said those students from the 1960s (and following) have graduated, and they are now part of the government and large corporations, subverting Western culture from within.

That book is 20 years old. It's only gotten much worse. And to prove the point, many of you know that Church Militant got deplatformed by Vimeo (our video hosting service) earlier this year. Just this past weekend, we learned that Amazon has removed Church Militant as a recipient of charitable donations from their purchases.

So if you have been funneling a portion of your purchases to Church Militant through the "AmazonSmile" program, that is now over. If you are a faithful Catholic, you are being stood up and mowed down — even from within the Church.

For example, former Notre Dame Fighting Irish national championship coach Lou Holtz publicly castigated phony Catholic Joe Biden for his phony Catholicism. That, of course, brought down the ire of the emasculated president of Notre Dame, a weak excuse of a man — Fr. John Jenkins — who rushed to Biden's defense and torched Holtz for calling out the fake Catholic.

Holtz forgot to mention Fr. Jenkins as another fake Catholic. Jenkins said we should never judge the sincerity of someone's faith. But he did just that when he gave the university's highest award to Biden in 2016, the Laetare Medal, given to an American Catholic "whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church and enriched the heritage of humanity."

Yeah, that's Joe all over. As long as you made it past the abortionist's razor-blade vacuum-suction machine slicing you to ribbons, then you could be a witness to his genius upholding the ideals of the Church. Do any of these men realize they are on the road to Hell — to eternal damnation? Probably not. Not as long as Barron and company keep whispering in their ear they have a reasonable hope of being saved. (They don't.)

This entire crowd of anti-God and anti-American subversives keeps telling us America is evil and must be punished for our sins. Systemic racism is the rule of the day, multimillionaire athletes (most of whom are black) keep saying.

They make tens of millions of dollars for playing with a ball on a court or a field. And yet, somehow, they are discriminated against — deprived of the American dream. Fellas, shut up. All lives matter, especially the lives of the preborn. Most especially the lives of the preborn because they are the most defenseless.

In fact, what percentage of these black athletes, crying about violence towards blacks, have actually murdered their own children through abortion (thus directly attacking the lives of black Americans)? These athletes possess enormous fortunes, fortunes which provide them with lives of however much sex they want.

How many abuse women and then murder the black children in the wombs of those women? So please forgive us if we roll our eyes at your hypocrisy of holding your fists in the air and ignoring the blood running down your own arms.

This past August, Catholic attorney general William Barr laid out the plan of the Left in an interview with Mark Levin. So how is it that a faithful lay Catholic like Barr can see this and say it but Catholic bishops can't? Oh yeah, that simple little word: "Faithful." Most of the bishops are not, and the laity speaking the truth are.

It's just that simple. Remember, this revolution was embraced by Catholic colleges and universities across the nation during the Sexual Revolution. The bishops today, the heirs of the original wicked bishops, have done nothing to prevent the evil from spreading (and, in some notable cases, have worked to advance it).

As Our Blessed Lord said to the wicked religious leaders of His time, "How can any of you escape damnation?" Too many U.S. bishops are part of the Marxist plot to overthrow America because America must be taken off the board in order for them to achieve global dominance.

Yeah, this election is that important. It is, in fact, for all the marbles.

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We are now in the less-than-a-hundred-days-to-go time frame until Election Day, and we can be certain, given the great spiritual combat being waged at this point in the nation's history, this will be Heaven's election, not ours.

This simply means that it will either be the final mercy on the nation or its final judgment. Beginning with the spiritual battle, what is happening in the nation's major cities with killings and rioting and violence — where sacred images have also been attacked — is all the result of a country that gave itself over to lust at the tempting of the Marxist-inspired sexual revolution.

It took a while to work its way through the nation's system, but eventually, the consequences of shattered families have finally become manifest. Youths — especially males with no guidance from authentic men — are devolving into brutes and are left completely defenseless in the face of a Marxist education system taken control of by the former hippies of the 1960s.

The free-love generation has proven to be anything but free. Likewise, their ridiculous anti-Vietnam War protest of "Make Love Not War" has proven to be completely backwards. It is precisely because they concentrated so much on unbridled sex that war has come to the streets.

However the election goes, the result will not be possible without God permitting it. It's always, in the end, a spiritual battle. The only force on earth capable of holding off and advancing on evil is the Catholic Church. Every other thing is man-made. 

Man cannot battle and win against demons. It's not possible. Only through the Church and by the Church can evil be overcome — personally and collectively. So, if evil is advancing in the world, it means the Church is in full-blown retreat. And there is no doubt about that fact.

Speaking with various clergy from around the country, as we frequently do (many of them, in fact), it is clear that, among the faithful ones, there is a sense that the hierarchy has crossed some mysterious line and the Church cannot be turned around as long as many of these men are still in positions of authority.

Many of these wicked shepherds — past and present — are, in fact, directly responsible for the violence we see in the streets because they had the moral authority and spiritual power back in the day to choke this off at its source and did nothing. Only they could have prevented the dam from breaking, but they let it break. Even today, some of them continue to deliberately add water to the flood engulfing society.

There is a man running for president who claims to be Catholic yet is a disgrace to the Catholic faith. And the supposedly Catholic bishops sit silently in the face of this man and his murderous agenda. He kills children, supports contraception, officiates at homosexual "marriages," cavorts with communists, backs socialist and Marxist economic plans which will impoverish millions and is opposed to the protection of religious freedom.

A more anti-Catholic candidate you would be hard-pressed to imagine. And behind Joe Biden is an army of Marxists ready to let loose the scourge of full-blown Marxism on America. In truth, we've been approaching this tipping point for a number of decades now. All that remains to be seen is if the Marxists have been able to persuade 50% + 1% of Americans who vote that the country should become the "People's Socialist Republic of America."

Of course, the name "America" will eventually have to go because it refers to a white explorer (who was also Catholic). Given the near-total dominance the Marxists have now over both the media — and that includes Fox News — and the education system, it's hard to imagine that this will not be their moment.

If Heaven grants one more mercy, even if only for a faithful minority, it will be incumbent on that minority to do everything in its power to evangelize every soul possible, which of course will necessitate calling out the bishops for their evil.

Over the weekend, Fr. Frank Pavone — in a politely worded but nevertheless pull-no-punches public letter to the U.S. bishops — went after them for their hypocrisy in the political arena, hypocrisy which, for the record, stretches back decades. Their evil has been incremental, as evil almost always is, until it no longer needs to be.

Years ago, Nancy Pelosi should have been publicly excommunicated. So too Joe Biden, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Dick Durban, Tim Kaine and the whole lot of them — called out for the child-murdering heretics and apostates they are. But not only were they not, they were actually given places of honor by the Catholic establishment and its bishops.

Sacrilegious Holy Communion is common, almost as much as the silence — the sins of omission, which rise to the level of mortal sins when practiced by a bishop — and they create such scandal and surrender of faith.

Heck, even when statues of Catholic saints were being torn down, Bp. Barron had to be shamed all over social media into appearing at a prayer rally to defend a statue virtually in his backyard. At least shame had some effect on him. Others seem completely impervious to it.

The reason the election is so important is that if the Marxists win, they will establish a more formal system for the persecution of the Church, or specifically the faithful in the Church. The bishops themselves, seeing how cooperative they have been, can probably expect a pay raise.

The USCCB, the U.S. bishops' conference, is little else than a rubber stamp for socialism disguised as Catholicism. It has been since its establishment back in 1966 by Detroit cardinal John Dearden, who quickly brought in homosexual satanist Joseph Bernardin to help him in his overthrow of orthodoxy.

The pair were very successful. That duo, coupled with Theodore McCarrick, essentially wiped out the Faith in the United States with its sidelining of doctrine and promotion of so-called social justice. The more social-justice minded the Church became, the more bishops surrendered the promotion of the Faith until what we have been left with is what we have now — bishops kneeling to Marxism and not God.

So yes, many clergy we speak with are wondering what Nov. 3 will bring — a final moment of mercy or a judgment that might be the only way to begin the purification of the hierarchy.

The Marxists, if they get in power, will leave the useful-idiot bishops around for a while, but eventually, they will discard them (as tyrants always dispose of those who helped them gain power). 

That might be the only way to begin a restoration of the Church, in fact. Because it's clear to anyone with eyes to see that as long as the vast majority of these men are in authority, there will be no turn-around for the Church.

Leaders lacking supernatural faith can never aid the Church; they are, in fact, the sure route to its demise, as we can see all around us, even now.

When this gigantic struggle (the struggle between communism and Catholicism) in the United States was shaping up largely out of sight back in the middle decades of the 20th century, there really was a window where the Faith could have come to dominate the public square. Archbishop Fulton Sheen knew it. He used to rail against the commies because he realized the danger they posed to the family, the Church and the State. 

He was gaining popularity at the same time Sen. Joe McCarthy was warning about communism in Washington and Hollywood. Both of them were spot on. By the early 1970s — maybe earlier — Bp. Sheen realized that the bishops were a lost cause, and so he made his famous comments about the laity needing to save the Church, not the bishops.

Perhaps he did not realize, at least fully, just how incompetent Catholics were when it came to the Faith, even then. The Catholic school system, and especially the Jesuit higher education apparatus (as well as Theodore Hesburgh at Notre Dame), were already well down the road in their plans to destabilize the Church by polluting the minds of future generations of Catholics, many of whom today hold important political offices as well as ecclesiastical ones.

There is much going on in this election. Everything is coming to a head — decades of efforts by Marxists, perversions by prelates of every rank and stripe. This one really is for all the marbles. Every single faithful Catholic has got to be all-in, and then whatever Heaven permits, we must cooperate with.

But since we don't know the outcome as we sit here 97 days out, and we cannot read the mind of God in this specific regard, then we are duty bound to fight against evil in the Church and the State to the best of our ability leading up to Nov. 3. We just don't know what form that fight will take after Nov. 3.

TRANSCRIPT

If there is one thing about conservatives that is far and away the most grating, it is their refusal to understand, come to terms with or believe the truth about the Left. The truth is, they want you dead. Period.

They may let you slide — for a while — as long as you keep your mouth shut, but opening it is a sure ticket to extinction. Now, you won't be facing the gallows immediately; it will come gradually at first. And as evidence, we already see that. Various people lose their jobs, have their social media accounts de-platformed, get doxxed, have their yard signs ripped down and a host of other things.

Then — on a larger scale — we face the riots, threats from politicians, being described as deplorable and so forth. Corporate America has completely bought into the Left's narrative, and it's not just because of business concerns. Many corporate chieftains and captains of commerce in board rooms all over America actually agree with the Left's narrative.

Little by little (and sometimes a lot by a lot), conservatives are being relegated to the proverbial ghetto, marginalized and demonized. And in some ways, this is their own fault. There's something weird in the DNA of many conservatives — and this certainly includes orthodox Catholics — where they simply refuse to recognize danger and admit the full reality of what is happening.

It's hard to nail down. Is it an unwillingness to come to terms with evil — as in it's hard for them to understand that someone else can really be that evil — and since they can't conceive of it themselves, they think it can't be true? That is supremely naïve.

Or is it that they just don't want to face reality because they are unwilling to leave their little comfortable life on Maple Drive out in the suburbs and to stop going to Mass at St. Suburbia with Fr. Gay? Are they simply scared?

Or is there an inherent wimp-factor in conservatives? Are they are so "reserved" that they just don't want to look at the big picture and see how all the dots connect? Again, bad call.

The political and theological Left are terrorists, straight-up terrorists. And if you offer one peep of resistance to their identity politics or identity religion, they want you rubbed out. You are sitting across the table from people who want you dead.

Why? Because for them, all this insanity is their identity. It's personal. You holding a different view from them about their homosexuality, for example (or whatever), they internalize as a condemnation of them as people. They have exploited the victim label so well, they have actually come to believe it. 

These types of people do not believe in God or the afterlife. All situations — in their minds — must be settled here on earth, because there is no next life. So they get passionate, serious and even vicious.

Conservatives, on the other hand, adopt an inexcusable stance of, "Well, it's okay, God will take care of it all. Sure it's bad, but hey, there's always Heaven." That is a coward's cop-out.  

And, as a marker, they sure wouldn't be satisfied if someone broke into their house threatening their children at gunpoint and somehow they managed to call 911 and heard from the dispatcher, "We'll be out eventually, maybe, but it's okay — God will smooth it all out in the end. Good luck."

That attitude fosters an extremely uncharitable approach of indifference. After all, if God is going to take care of it (eventually), then there is nothing to really worry about, right? It's unfathomable that any believing Catholic could look at the corruption in the hierarchy and not have his blood boiling.

Yet, millions still go on about life as though none of this is that big of a deal. Sure, it's saddening, but as soon as the headlines have passed in a day or two, it's back to life as normal. These corrupt bishops have far greater regard for your wallet than they do your soul. And yet too many Catholics either don't understand that or remain unmoved by it.

And then there are the ones who fall back on piety, somehow thinking to ever say a word about a cleric is horrible. Was it horrible for the Boston Globe to expose the raping of altar boys and the subsequent cover-up by the dozens and dozens of members of the U.S. hierarchy?

In times past, when the Church was in need of great reform, it was accomplished by people who realized that reform was needed and then set about to reform Her. They got down into the trenches and slugged it out. Yes, they prayed and strove to increase in sanctity. That was the fuel for their efforts. But they did the work.

And oftentimes that meant calling out the crooked shepherds. But they did the work. They did not pretend it was something God would do and then absolve themselves — excuse themselves from the fight for justice. Yet this is precisely the approach so many political conservatives take, right along with self-described orthodox Catholics.

God will handle it, or someone else should do something. But when it comes to accepting the reality and rolling up your sleeves and getting in the game, nope. A Fox News poll last week revealed that 77% of Republicans believed the current political climate made it unsafe for them to express their views and beliefs: That's three out of four.

The country is in the peril it is now precisely because conservatives let it get to this. They've apparently not taken to heart that freedom and liberty must be fought for in every generation: They are not automatic, and neither are they guaranteed.

The Left — Marxists at the end of the day — want you gone, erased from history, as surely as those statues they are constantly tearing down. You will either bow to the gods of the State, or you will die. What a sad commentary, in the end — that all of this could have been prevented if only conservatives had not gotten so comfortable that they believed they could ignore reality.

But reality isn't like that. Either you deal with it or it will deal with you. That's true in politics and most especially true in the spiritual realm.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Every Democratic leader in the country should be immediately arrested and imprisoned for the nightmare they put America through these past six months over the Wuhan virus. Very quietly (with no fanfare, no press releases, no long interviews on any major media outlets), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated their charts on their homepage.

And pay close attention to the timing of this update by the CDC, which will become clear in a moment. About 10 days ago, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was going to be investigating governors that forced Wuhan patients into nursing homes.

That would include Gov. Cuomo in New York and Gov. Whitmer here in Michigan. Thousands and thousands of patients were officially recorded as having died from the disease in those homes. And then — lo and behold — the CDC very quietly, just a couple days after the DOJ announcement, updated its COVID death numbers to greatly reduce those who died solely from COVID.

What they updated it to is the truth at last. The truth that reveals this entire Wuhan debacle was another planned effort to get Trump. Look at this (again, right on the CDC website for the whole world to see): Of the roughly 170,000 deaths in the United States from the China virus, only 6%, about 1 in 20, were strictly from the virus.

The other 19 out of 20 occurred if and when some other disease was already present; in fact, there was often more than one disease. On average, 2.6 other serious ailments were present besides the Wuhan virus that brought about death, according to the CDC.

People died who had severe respiratory illnesses or liver failure or severe cases of diabetes, renal failure and so forth. The CDC provides a pretty comprehensive list, in fact, of all the other health issues that needed to be present on top of Wuhan to die from it.

But the question is, if someone already had severe diabetes and renal failure and respiratory illness, and then they caught Wuhan, is it accurate to say they died from Wuhan?

So what's really going on here? We all know. These Marxist monsters were not only willing — but actually complicit — in destroying the greatest economy in the history of the world just to make sure Trump did not get reelected.

"Russia, Russia!" didn't work. Ukraine didn't work. Impeachment didn't work. His personal taxes didn't work. Stormy Daniels didn't work. Nothing worked against Donald "Make America Great Again" Trump. Nothing. Ah, but if the Marxists could develop a way to destroy the economy, that would be their ticket.

Then they could not only destroy the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans and run up the national debt by trillions more — but, but, but — they could then say it's really all Trump's fault because he didn't prepare correctly.

There's no way to know (big picture now), at least right now, if the Marxist Democrats actually conspired with the Marxist Chinese in the development and release of the virus in the first place. But given their level of evil (remember, they kill children by the tens of millions), why not?

Why couldn't this be some gigantic masterplan cooked up by the Marxists in Washington, D.C. and the Marxists in Beijing? Heck, given the coziness of the Beijing Marxists and the D.C. swamp Marxists with the Vatican, you can't dismiss the possibility that the evil homopredator McCarrick doesn't have his finger in all this.

Remember, Church Militant was the first to uncover last year that McCarrick was communist-trained at an indoctrination center in St. Gallen, Switzerland; he was a man who had secret offshore accounts, according to our sources, funded by the Kremlin.

Let's face it, to bring about global domination would require a global effort. World domination, the stated goal of Marxism, doesn't just happen all by itself. But since we can't know any of that definitively, at least not yet, let's lay it aside.

What we do know is that no sooner had the Wuhan appeared than the entire Left saw and seized an opportunity for their own political gain. They brought the economy to a standstill. They locked down the country, state by state. And their Marxist media allies trumpeted the narrative.

Stay home. Don't breathe. Never come outside again. Give people "free" money for the next year. Shut down the schools. Close up everything. Leave no stone unturned. The virus must be eradicated from every cellar, every chimney, every mailbox in America.

No one is safe: People will die by the millions. Tens of millions. There was and still is no end of the hysteria. Every day, the COVID News Network, CNN, is right there with what amounts to a fake body count (rather, actually is a fake body count because no distinction is made between those who died from the virus and those who died from a combination of many things).

Ninety-four percent of people listed as dying from Wuhan actually died from Wuhan and three other diseases acting in combination with each other. To skip over that inconvenient fact should result in complicit media being arrested and put on trial and then imprisoned for the rest of their natural-born days.

They abused their power, their "journalistic" freedom so wickedly that they brought about enormous suffering — and even death — to untold numbers of Americans. They caused suicides, mental illnesses, drug and alcohol addiction and people's failure to seek medical help for fear of being near a hospital. 

And all along, the Democrats and their media pals lied to you, deceived you, drove you to near panic — all for the sole purpose of getting Trump. They drummed up and manufactured a "scamdemic" and made you pay the cost. None of them were touched by the consequences of their own evil — just tens of millions of others.

Let this sink in: Only 6% actually died directly from Wuhan. Six percent. That's approximately 10,000 people. Tragic, of course, but a small number (relatively speaking). The other 160,000 died from a combination of multiple diseases; Wuhan was just one in the mix.

You've been lied to by the Democrats and the media. Many of your lives have been destroyed, your businesses wiped out, your families left under crushing economic conditions. There is no end to the evil the Democrats will inflict on anyone to accomplish their goal. 

They would gun you down in the streets if they thought it would help, and that is precisely what they will do if they win in November. This party, at least the leadership, is not composed of Americans. They are straight-up communists who want America destroyed.

And, for the Catholics listening to this, remember: Many of the U.S. hierarchy (the bishops and their staffs) are dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. They have no supernatural faith. They don't believe. They protect homopredator clergy. They lie to you, take your money, give no care whatsoever about the eternal destiny of you or your family.

They are straight-up Marxists who disguise themselves as social justice warriors supposedly caring for the poor. They are in league with Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and all the rest of them. That's why they never condemn them, never speak a word against them, give them the Sacred Body and Blood of Our Lord — adding sacrilege to their list of crimes.

This is a giant ideological conspiracy — if not an actual one. It is a Marxist effort to defeat Trump at all costs, even faking a pandemic. The 10,000 Americans who've died directly from Wuhan doesn't even crack the top 10 on the list of causes of death each year in America.

According to the CDC, the top 10 causes of death in America are as follows:

Five times the number of people died from committing suicide than those who died directly from Wuhan. America, you've been had; brother, have you been had! In the calculation of the Marxists, including those in the Church, America is the last obstacle on the world stage to global domination. And Trump is the central figure espousing American greatness.

He has to go so America can be taken off the board and the era of godless Marxism can begin. The Democrats are in on this. The media is in on this. The Obama holdovers in the deep state are in on this. Black Lives Matter is in on this. Antifa is in on this. Too many bishops and clergy are in on this. 

And they are all Marxists. Wake up, America, wake up. And for you duped Catholics who have allowed yourselves to be taken in by these crooked men in miters in league with all this, denied Mass and the sacraments and the normal spiritual life, you need to rise up and rise up now.

The election is two months away. Remember all of this. Remember in November.

TRANSCRIPT

As you know, Church Militant is always helping you understand the connections between the culture and the Church, the crossover between both worlds. Those two worlds parallel each other in many ways — they're practically mirrors. And, theologically, it makes sense. As Bp. Sheen used to say, the world is the theater of redemption: It's where the great spiritual war rages.

So as we look out on all of this, we see something happening in each arena. There is a great realignment occurring, in the Church and in the culture. In many ways, the old labels, which used to categorize things neatly, no longer apply. Consider, for example, "conservative" and "liberal." There's so much confusion over those classifications — especially liberal — that no one really knows what they mean.

The old labels are so ineffective at describing the new realities that, oftentimes, you find adjectives popping up in front of them which pretty much redefine them. So the old word is used, but there is a totally different meaning behind the word.

For example, there aren't just plain old Republicans anymore. But now there are actual Republicans and then there are RINO Republicans — Republicans in name only. Notice, to bring up the point of the crossover between culture and State, we also no longer have just Catholics, but "CINOs": Catholics in name only.

And, of course, we have not just Catholics but "cafeteria Catholics." All these adjectives are now necessary because the terms no longer mean what they used to mean. All of this redefining is going on because there is, underneath it all, a massive realignment going on — in the culture and the Church.

In the political world, Donald Trump has become the symbol of all that, not to mention also a precipitating cause. Tens of millions of Americans were beginning to sense a political shift, a new paradigm emerging where they, as individuals, no longer mattered. 

They sensed correctly that the world they knew was being buried under a mountain of globalist Marxism. In the Church, faithful Catholics likewise sensed a major shift happening. They couldn't put a finger on it, but they knew something was up, something was off.

So they began realigning themselves, leaving the Church of Nice and hunting out the actual Faith. It's like a Catholic version of the Walkaway movement that is rippling through the Democratic Party — a movement of Democrats who have woken up and realized the party no longer represents them. And so they are walking away from it.

There is a huge ideological shift, an enormous immigration, a mass migration where people are seeking out like-minded individuals and associating themselves with them. It's all over social media. It's all over politics. It's all over the Church. It's all over the place.

People are choosing sides, and in that choosing up sides, some people are waking up and realizing that the folks they thought they had a lot in common with, they really didn't. So they cut ties and are establishing new ones. 

Now, some people find this upsetting. They bemoan the division, they lament the lack of unity. Frankly, that's a stupid response. There can be unity only if it's a unity around truth. In fact, this entire realignment is about the truth.  Some waking up to it, others wanting to destroy it.

But truth is the cause. When truth is present, there are only two responses. It is either embraced or raged against. The Marxist Left, up until the arrival of Donald Trump, was able to keep the truth of its agenda under wraps, to conceal the truth.

But now, it's all out there. Nothing is hidden. And people are making choices. And that's a good thing. Even on the side of evil, it's good to know who's who. For Catholics and other Christian denominations — remember, this is how things will be at the end of the world. Truth will cause one great, final realignment — and it will be final. 

TRANSCRIPT

One thing which typically characterizes more-conservative-type people is an unwillingness to charge into battle. In almost every instance you recall, the more aggressive side is the liberals, the Marxists, the godless — all of the above.

They have a tenacity and zeal which is commendable, even if it is woefully misdirected. Bishop Sheen used to say, "Communists have no truth and all zeal. Catholics have all truth and no zeal." His words were right then and are still right today.

Evil is determined. Goodness takes naps. Until my dying day, I will never comprehend this laziness or over-caution on the part of so many who claim to be on the side of good, yet refuse to go to war when war is called for. Even a surface-skimming of the gospels reveals this truth encapsulated by Sheen. 

The Pharisees were not going to stop until they had Our Lord killed. Period. Their zeal was directed at His death. In our own day and circumstances, the same holds true. The bad guys want you dead. There is no compromising with them. There is no dialogue. They will not stop until you are eradicated from the earth. 

Yet a hallmark trait of "good" people is the utter failure to grasp this truth. Wimpy Catholics or Republicans or political conservatives and loads of others simply refuse to either accept or understand this, and as a result, they bring a knife to a gunfight and get steamrolled.

Evil advances because it is allowed to by men who do not stand up and oppose it — which, by the way, may be the cause of many "good" people's damnation.

"Sins of omission," they are called. This is why when we see rare examples of good people actually taking a stand — of drawing a line in the sand and saying this far and no farther — it makes news. When Catholic Nick Sandman, the Covington, Kentucky boy, stood up to the Marxist media monster and sued the pants off them (and by them, we mean CNN, Washington Post and a bunch of others), it was major news.

Those propaganda tyrants didn't give a rip about who they had to destroy to keep advancing their evil, even if it was a teenage kid. Well, Nick is now swimming in tens of millions of dollars in lawsuit-settlement money, and truth won. It took a while — it usually does — but truth won.

When good people fight back with truth, sooner or later, one way or another, victory is theirs. It may take a while, a long while — maybe years, maybe decades — but hang in there, because truth wins. In fact, the entire Catholic faith is based on that single truth: On the last day, there will be a final reckoning; justice will prevail.

And, contrary to the stupidity of the claim that we have a reasonable hope all men are saved (thanks Bp. Barron), the Incarnate Eternal Logos says the elect will ascend to Heaven and the damned will descend into Hell. So again, when good men fight back against injustice, when the bully on the playground finally gets his long-deserved punch in the face, it's a beautiful thing.

Such a case is now unfolding in the seat of the destruction of the Faith in America, the archdiocese of Detroit. Church Militant has kept very close tabs (and has done blow-by-blow reporting) on the case of Fr. Eduard Perrone — even since before it became public, when a source told us what was unfolding.

Fr. Perrone, you will recall, was defamed and attacked by his own archdiocese based on a lie they knew was a lie (because they are the ones who created it). The lie was that he had sodomized a former altar boy decades earlier. That was not true; there was not a shred of truth to it.

It was manufactured out of thin air by a hateful monsignor by the name of Michael Bugarin — who is the right-hand man of Abp. Allen Vigneron, who gives his blessing to this cleric to go around and destroy good priests. Involved in the fabrication of the lie was a woman the archdiocese had contracted privately, Nancy LePage.

LePage is a sheriff's deputy for Macomb County and a parishioner of Bugarin's. Together they bullied and berated the supposed victim and tried to get him to say something that never happened. All that is in the court documents. It's not even a point that can be contested, although Vigneron and his crooked team of clergy and high-priced attorneys keep doing so.

A few weeks back, Fr. Perrone won a defamation case against LePage — an arbitration panel concluded she had lied. She did. But Fr. Perrone's case was directly against her. Bugarin was not the subject. She was. It's generally considered not good form for one priest to publicly, civilly sue another.

Well, good form or not, the other day, Fr. Perrone dropped the bomb and officially sued Msgr. Michael Bugarin for his lies, his defamation. That's pretty historic and brave. Why? Because, since Fr. Perrone was removed as a result of Bugarin's lies, he has a canon law case in the works, trying to get his active priesthood restored.

Suing the archbishop's chief culprit will likely ensure he never sees the inside of a sanctuary publicly again. It is a vindictive lot, this crowd. In fact, this crowd (meaning Vigneron and his little legal and his public relations teams) has essentially lied to the public in statement after statement by carefully wordsmithing and word-crafting public statements. 

They are very good at that. We here at Church Militant have, in fact, been one of their many targets, so we have first-hand knowledge of just how deceitful Vigneron and his gang are. In the case of Fr. Perrone and his canon law case, the duplicitous archbishop and his crooked cronies want the public to think that a certain process is being followed.

According to the original statement from Vigneron last summer when the news was released by them, "A further determination on the matter now falls to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which reviews all cases involving the sexual abuse of minors." 

This is how these monsters roll. They say statements that in the abstract are true, but arrange them in such a way so as to lead you to a certain conclusion — but your conclusion is wrong. And they know you will reach that conclusion, which is why they word it the way they do.

In his specific case, yes, the CDF does review all cases and make a determination. But what Vigneron is not telling you is that he never sent the case to the CDF. Over a year later and it's still sitting on his desk. That's deceitful. In fact, Abp. Vigneron, you are doing the work of the Devil. 

Loyal sons of the Church, including bishops, do not traffic in deceit and certainly do not do so with the intent of destroying a good man's reputation. But you and your chancery vermin have made an art form out of this. You willfully deceive the laity; you spend enormous sums of the laity's money on the most expensive legal firm in the state to hide the truth from coming out in open court.

You fight tooth and nail with one filing after another to prevent yourself and your fellow criminals from having to be deposed. There is, in fact, no gutter you will not stoop to in order to cover up the truth. And yet you cry on camera on a clergy conference call about how much the archdiocese is falling apart on your watch and has to fire people because it has no money.

Of course, that's a lie as well, and you know it. The archdiocese has an investment portfolio — an endowment of hundreds of millions of dollars that you keep secret from the laity — even while trying to squeeze a couple hundred million more out of them. Liar.

But to stoop so low as to let this case — built on a pack of lies — to go on, to pretend to the public by suggesting that Rome will settle it when Rome doesn't even know about it in any meaningful manner: It's demonic what you're doing. A few months ago, fed up with your lies, Fr. Perrone's former parishioners actually filed suit against you for defrauding them of their donation money.

And now this innocent priest has taken your right-hand man (and by extension, you) to court for defamation. And, at the end of the day, make no mistake about this, Bugarin and LePage may have been the inventors of the lie, but it is the archbishop himself who propagates it.

He is the responsible party here. Yeah you, archbishop. Why don't you release a summary financial statement on how much money you have paid to your lying legal team of Bodman men who know the truth of the matter and yet continue to cash in on the donations of innocent, unsuspecting Catholics in the pews?

Well, perhaps one driving reason is you wouldn't be able to get on conference calls and blubber away to your priests about how poor the archdiocese is. Not when your attorneys are lining their pockets doing your bidding trying to destroy a good man, a good priest.

Of course, Vigneron had no problem pulling down a couple of million dollars from the coronavirus government-money deal and then firing staff anyway, furloughing others and making still others take pay cuts. These are not honest men, folks. They are very, very good at deceiving you. 

Next up, in short order, "Bugs" (as he is known around the archdiocese, for obvious reasons) Bugarin will have to be deposed. Not before, however, Vigneron's lawyers try to get the case thrown out of court, hiding behind separation of Church and State.

But this case has nothing to do with that. Does a priest surrender his civil rights — his constitutional rights to seek justice and clear his good name in the face of being defamed by his own archbishop — just because he has a collar? But that's what the Bodman gang will have to argue: Your honor, this is an internal Church matter and the State has no jurisdiction.

Well, that may have been true — until Bugs hopped on the phone with Associated Press before the case became public and shot off his big mouth and then published (meaning made public) its statement they knew was based on a lie.

And it may also have been true until Bugarin got in touch with the public authorities (the state attorney general's office) and asked for an investigation from an outfit paid for by public tax dollars. By the way, the Michigan attorney general passed on the case because there was nothing there. State police did their investigation and concluded that this is a big nothing burger.

There is nothing — absolutely nothing — about this case that restricts it to some "internal Church matter." Vigneron's men spoke with the press prior to anything being public. Vigneron's men issued a public statement they knew was a lie. Vigneron's men made deceptive statements in that public statement. Vigneron's men went to a public agency and reported their lie.

None of that is private, internal Church affairs. But Vigneron is now boxed into a corner. He has to argue that —because failing that, Bugarin has to take an oath and risk perjury during a deposition, and the diabolical chancery will fight tooth and nail to try and prevent that from happening.

These men are liars — straight-up liars. So it's good to watch them begin to twist in the wind, like they've done to so many others with their deceptions. Vigneron is the vice president of the U.S. bishops' conference, and that means, customarily, he's next in line to become president of that useless body.

As this case proceeds, there are more and more eyes that will begin looking at it because its profile is increasing. A priest is publicly suing a chancery official in open court to get back his good name. The archbishop is in on it and has been all along. The archbishop is being sued by the priest's parish for fraud.

Welcome to the Church of Nice folks. When men in robes give up the actual Faith, this is what you get.

Those who wish to donate to Fr. Perrone's legal defense fund may do so at the following address:

Perrone Defense Fund

Fr Perrone is meeting all the cost of his defense himself. Please make checks payable to Fr. Eduard Perrone and place "Fr. Perrone Legal Defense Fund" in the memo line.

TRANSCRIPT

Please remember to join us in our Church Militant 54-day Rosary Novena for the upcoming election. That's every weekday at 8 a.m. ET.

A very troublesome situation is developing within conservative Catholic circles: It's this stupidity of constantly presenting petitions for you to sign.

Understand: Petitions accomplish absolutely nothing. Well, they do bolster the email list of the outfit asking you to sign them. They'll use that list later to send you donation requests.

But as far as anything else, they are absolutely worthless. You end up on an email donation list, and the person the petition is about completely ignores it. For example, let's say the Marxist Left gang sent around a petition to their whole gang saying, "Sign this to get Michael Voris to stop talking about homosexuality in the Catholic clergy."

Let's go even further and say a million lefties signed it, and then it was sent to us here at Church Militant. Do you think for one instant it would have any impact here on what we do? Likewise, when some Catholic organization blasts out a plea to "Quick, sign this petition to let Bp. Whoever know whatever," do you really think Bp. Whoever gives a rip?

If he gave a rip, he wouldn't have done whatever the petition is about in the first place. But here's the even-more-problematic issue. Signing a petition makes a person feel like they've actually done something, when, in reality, all they've done is bolster the email list of the sponsoring outfit.

Good Catholics get all outraged, click on a petition and then walk away, again feeling as though they told that guy off. Wrong! Petitions are gimmicks to get your email. Period. If you actually want to do something, then actually do something.

For example, let's turn our guns to the horrible situation in La Crosse, Wisconsin where the bishop there — William Callahan — threw the brave Fr. James Altman under the bus for preaching the truth on social media videos about the evils of the Democratic Party.

Instead of offering some stupid, do-nothing petition, Fr. James Martin, who is as slick as they come, put out his own social media post telling individual people to pick up the phone and email the bishop directly to punish Fr. Altman.

It worked spectacularly. Callahan, every bit a part of the machinery of the U.S. hierarchy and a party man, instantly caved to the pressure from the Left, whipped up by Martin. Notice, however, Martin did not tell his Marxist followers to sign a petition.

He told them to actually do something that would bear fruit. Martin doesn't need an expansive email list so he can keep hitting people up for donations to feather his own nest. Nor does he even pretend that an email list is worth anything. They aren't.

The difference between the Marxists and faithful Catholics is faithful Catholics don't understand how the game is played. The Marxists do, and they are dang good at it.

Some Catholic outfits look like they are accomplishing something, when, in reality, they couldn't hold a candle to the efforts of the Marxist. Petitions aren't worth the space they take up on a website. But, returning to the Bp. Callahan situation, LaCrosse got inundated with calls and emails from Jimmy's gang.

Meanwhile, some Catholic petition-pushers got a bunch of new emails for later fundraising. How exactly was Fr. Altman helped by that? And more to the point, which side was more effective about exercising its muscle? It's actually disingenuous to look at horrible situations in the Church as an opportunity to expand your email list, pretending that people being hoodwinked are actually accomplishing something.

Nothing is being accomplished. And all you have to do is look at the Fr. Altman situation. James Martin knew exactly how to play this, and he did so perfectly. He knew bishops are sensitive to public opinion about them. So he put out the word to flood the bishop with strong messages about discrimination and judgment and tone and all that garbage.

And of course, predictably, Callahan folded like a house of cards, weak man that he is. And actually, saying "weak bishop" is redundant. Fr. Altman would have been far better served and defended if faithful Catholics would have been ringing the bishop's phone off the hook cheering Fr. Altman, telling the bishop his priest needs to be promoted and praised and held up as an example.

But faithful Catholics not only don't think like this, they also are susceptible to being led down the garden path thinking they have done something by clicking a worthless online petition. This is not meaningful Catholic engagement by any measure. Want to know why we are constantly losing — why we get mowed down every single time an issue arises? Because we are way too soft and malleable.

We don't really understand the devotion and intensity needed to fight back and actually score a win here and there. And, I've got to say it, some Catholic outfits contribute to this weak-minded, short-sighted approach because their first concern is growing their own email list. That's not right.

And not only is it not right, it's also counterproductive. It actually hurts the cause because the petitions do nothing they purport to do. Fr. Altman's cause was not helped by some petition. It moved the needle not one iota. Nor will it.

If you really want to do something, really want to attempt to move the needle, then get up off your couch and call the chancery. Write a letter to the bishop. Round up other like-minded Catholics around you. Join the Church Militant Resistance group in your diocese. Go to the Cathedral and protest the evils going on. Meet privately with priests in the diocese who actually know what's going on and where the bodies are buried.

Expose the scandal. Form a protest aimed at getting the bishop to release the financials of the diocese. Ask how much collection money is paid to attorneys. How much does the communications director make? How much money is in the endowment?

But see, every one of those activities actually requires doing something. It takes work, sometimes hard work. You have to spend time. You have to change your life. You have to get into it with other people.

In short, you have to do everything the Marxist Left does. Get out of this braindead mindset that the Left can create pandemonium in the streets and the Church and all you have to do is spend three seconds clicking on a petition. Get in the fight or drop out. But don't play the comfortable middle thinking you've done something. You've done not a thing for the cause.