Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

We reported in yesterday's Vortex on the legal hellhole the archdiocese of Baltimore has fallen into, owing to a flood of 600 lawsuits over sexual predation of minors.

It is very likely that, in short order, Abp. William Lori will file for bankruptcy protection for his archdiocese — the first diocese established in America.

Aside from the symbolic blow such a move would be to the Church in the United States — joining 30 other dioceses in filing for bankruptcy for the same reason — there is an entirely overlooked aspect to all this as well.

It isn't just minors that have been sexually assaulted, although those cases are the ones that make headlines because of the victims' ages.

There are also vulnerable adults — especially seminarians who have been and are assaulted by homopredator clergy.

Recall that most of Theodore McCarrick's victims were not minors, although significantly some were, but were mostly seminarians at his Jersey Shore beach house — and then this went on for years.

Charges and accusations just like this have plagued seminaries and their faculties for decades now, up to and including the prestigious bishop factory in Rome: the North American College.

Most of the time, corrupt leaders circle the wagons and get rid of the whistle-blower seminarians and then return to business as usual.

One such leader who is accused of this is the Baltimore archbishop, William Lori, the chaplain of the Knights of Columbus who, by the way, has yet to release any statement on the Maryland attorney general's report proving Lori kept predators and cover-up personnel in place.

He knew what had happened and participated in the cover-up. For that alone, if he doesn't resign, he should be removed by Pope Francis.

But touching on this other point of covering up sexual harassment of seminarians under his charge, joining us on set today is Church Militant producer and reporter Nick Wylie with some details. Thanks for coming on, Nick.

Nick, you've been looking deeply into the case of a seminarian — whose name we are not going to reveal — who documented years of sexual harassment at the seminary and which, according to his family, Lori ignored, swept under the rug and then kicked him out.

We have the entire file on this case right here — correspondence between Lori and the family, for example. Tell us more.

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While the sexual assault of minors is heinous, absolutely, it is so despicable that other types of victims are often overlooked — such as seminarians.

The Catholic laity need to wake up and realize that, for many of the senior clergy in the United States, this is just standard operating procedure.

We will be following the Baltimore case with close scrutiny as events continue to unfold.

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With the recent announcement by the diocese of Oakland, California, that it too would now join the growing list of bankrupt dioceses in the United States, the number now stands at 30 out of approximately 180. That's more than 15% of all dioceses in the country. However, there is a monster case, a very likely bankruptcy that is sitting out there in the wings, very likely to be filed sooner rather than later.

Church Militant broke the news a couple of weeks ago of the release of the state of Maryland attorney general's report nailing the archdiocese of Baltimore in its complicity in covering up hundreds of sex abuse cases. Baltimore is massively important because of its symbolic value to the Church here in the United States, being the first diocese erected in the new nation and therefore having pride of place.

For the past few decades, the archdiocese, it turns out, has been a cesspool of cover-up, secret payouts, shifting and/or hiding culprit clergy and doling out huge sums of parshioners' money to lawyers to keep it all under wraps. Church Militant has been all over this story for quite some time now, even before the A.G. report, and joining me on set for this Vortex is our producer/reporter Nick Wylie, who has been looking deeply into all this for us. 

To watch our discussion with Nick, please click on the video for today's Vortex. 

Archbishop Lori is part of the senior clergy class in the United States, those clerics who rose to the rank of bishop after having been essentially malformed in seminary in the late 1960s through the mid-1970s. They chose the path of "corporate" Church instead of the faithful Church, and now, after decades, it's coming back to plague them and the faithful in their final years. Quite the legacy.

Archbishop Lori just turned 72, and he will very soon be joining the ranks of that entire group moving off the scene. The fact that all of them will spend their remaining months huddled more with attorneys than the faithful says everything you need to know.

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In case you haven't heard, the U.S. bishops launched a national Eucharistic revival campaign, which will culminate next summer (July, specifically) in Indianapolis. They are concerned now, not decades ago, with a decided lack of belief in the real presence of Our Blessed Lord in the Eucharist. Recent polls continue to show most Catholics either don't know that teaching or do know it and reject it.

That's what 60 years of talking about social justice and moving the tabernacle out of the center and having old ladies in their finest jeans and T-shirts distribute Holy Communion accomplishes. It's also what allowing hundreds and, over the years, thousands of supposedly Catholic politicians who support killing children to receive does. Why believe something when practically everyone, including the leaders, doesn't?

Let's get into the plan of the bishops a little bit here for perspective, a plan being billed as the reigniting of belief in the Eucharist. Remember, this whole thing came up because faithful Catholics were demanding the bishops do something and take a stand and stop allowing Joe Biden, as well as many others, to receive Holy Communion.

That was the entire impetus for this entire initiative. It came about at the November 2021 bishops' meeting, a meeting where the entire media was looking to see if they would indeed forbid him and Nancy and all the rest. Of course, they didn't. What they did instead was dream up this whole thing with a gigantic price tag of tens of millions as a way to placate the masses, the mob with torches and pitchforks.

Since the meeting, one of the bishops even stood up and said it was scandalous (his word) to try and raise that kind of money for this. The bishops and their teams have since scaled back a bit. However, a clamor has begun among the faithful that the cost to attend in Indy next summer is simply out of touch.

It's hundreds of dollars for a full ticket for admission, and that does not take into account any travel, food and hotel for those who are not nearby. The average family would drop between one and two thousand dollars to attend the weekend, and that reality, in these days of Bidenomics, is giving great pause. They're planning on 80 thousand attendees from around the country. But with that anticipated layout, it's pretty definite the national revival will be largely regional. 

So the whole event is something of a mystery, born out of a desire to quell the angry mob, put up some front (however ineffective) to combat Biden's sacrilege, throw together an initial budget of almost 30 million, then scale that back and then charge families hundreds and hundreds of dollars simply to get in the doors.

It's way too costly, nowhere near robust enough and still watered down, so it's insufficient. And when everyone goes home from Indy, Joe Biden will still be receiving. So really, what's the point?

There are just too many mixed signals: "Look, we really believe this!" Well, yeah, but not enough to prevent sacrilege. Not enough to actually obey canon 212, which says people like Biden are not allowed to receive, but the bishops just ignore that. So to whatever degree they believe, it's pretty darn clear it's not enough.

Nothing will change at the parish level, which is where it needs to happen. Tabernacles won't be moved back. Communion in the hand will stay in place. Biden will still be admitted. So-called Eucharistic ministers will still swarm the sanctuary. So what's the point?

This is the proverbial "fix by committee" what could be done much more simply and cost effectively. For example, years and years ago, Church Militant had already clued into the crisis of belief in the Real Presence. And no, it didn't take a genius to figure it out. It just took working eyeballs.

That's why the single most produced programming topic we cover, all the way back to our inception in 2006, has been the Eucharist. The fourth season of The One True Faith is all that — 13 hours. We have an entire 6-hour apologetics class on it and multiple Vortex episodes out of the nearly four thousand we have produced.

And then, to go even further, we produced this documentary a couple of years ago, complete with its own booklet. And we also produced this really important collection called Where Did the Bible Come From? to stress the importance of the scriptural foundation of all Catholic teaching. 

So we aren't saying don't go to the bishops' Indy revival next summer. But we realize from reading hundreds of comments that most simply cannot afford it. What we are saying is whether you attend or not, this combo package is certainly going to bolster your knowledge and faith in the Real Presence. That's the entire reason we spent over a hundred hours producing them both. So please click on the provided link to place your order today.

TRANSCRIPT

As you might imagine, given the work we do here at Church Militant (thanks to your continuing support for it), we come across lots of people of goodwill who simply haven't heard the glory of Catholicism expounded in any meaningful way.

Every now and then, we run into spurts, if you will, where we are heavily engaged in multiple offline conversations with poorly catechized Catholics or goodwill Protestants. We are in one of those spurts right now, as I and others here are spending an unusual amount of time, compared to normal, speaking with such folks over private dinners, emails, phone calls and even "DMing" on Twitter.

And blessed be God for the opportunity to be engaged like this.

It's evangelization in the trenches — much like we imagine would have been the case in the early days of the Church and various periods throughout the past 2,000 years. We're sharing these behind-the-scenes, away-from-the-cameras scenarios with you for one reason: to help you with such activity in your own lives.

And here is a major tip: Get straight to the Eucharist first, closely followed by Scripture. All the other stuff — statues, "worshiping" Mary, confessing to a priest — while certainly worthy of discussion, can easily become distractions to the major, central theme of the Church, the Holy Eucharist, because every single other thing or topic in the Church rises or falls on this single truth. Either that it's actually the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, or it is not.

As the teaching goes, the Eucharist, the real presence of Jesus Christ, hidden under the appearance of bread and wine, is both the source and summit of the Faith.

So if I may, allow me to walk you through a conversation I recently had over dinner with a Protestant, a nice young chap of obvious goodwill who simply wants to know the truth. We began in the Scripture realm, and I asked him to venture a guess as to why John's Gospel is so profoundly deep and soars to the great theological heights that it does.

He said something along the lines of "because John was the beloved disciple." Well, true enough, as far as that goes. But why, I asked him, was John the beloved disciple, and not the others; and the answer relates directly to why his Gospel is so much more profound, even from its very first sentence ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God").

He admitted not knowing, so I said, "John was the beloved disciple because, from all eternity, the Blessed Trinity chose him to be the guardian of the Mother of God after Our Lord's Ascension."

He took her into his home, as commissioned to him by Our Lord from the Cross, and during her years with him, it was Mary who would have been offering her insights into the life and truth of Our Lord, her baby Boy, telling them to him like no other creature possibly could.

In essence, then, John's Gospel, in a certain sense, is the Gospel of Mary. He was thunderstruck at that revelation and confessed that as a Protestant, he had never really considered Mary in any way beyond giving birth to Jesus.

Then he added, but it makes perfect sense, his observation: Who could have known Him better than His own mother? And she would have talked about Him more intimately to John than anyone else could have.

Stepping out of the storyline for a moment, men of goodwill always grasp and respond to the truth; they just need someone to tell them. Hint, hint.

By this time, dinner had arrived, and we dove into the food and then, using John's Gospel, dove into the Eucharistic discourse in chapter six where, at the synagogue in Capernaum, Christ made salvation dependent on eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood.

Then we pivoted to the point of how the Eucharist itself relates to the resurrection of our bodies on the Last Day. Recall that Our Lord said near the end of His teaching there that "he who eats My Body and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I will raise him up on the Last day."

How are these related, we discussed. Because that is Jesus' actual glorified flesh, His DNA, it mingles with our DNA and it becomes a living physical aspect of our bodies. The DNA of God Himself resides in our very bones, literally — not symbolically, not as a spiritual thing, but as an actual, physical presence.

When we go down into the graves and await the resurrection, our DNA mingled with the DNA of God is lying there dormant, awaiting the trumpet blast from the angel, drawing history to its end. Mediate on that thought for just a moment: "He who eats My Body and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I will raise him up on the Last Day."

In life and death, as St. Paul tells us, we are the Lord's, even in the grave, because, remember, the grave is just a temporary holding cell: "O death, where is thy sting; O grave, where is thy victory?"

The Eucharist serves as preparation for the resurrection — even in the grave. For as Our Lord said, "I will not leave you orphans." Not in any sense are we ever left as orphans.

So we wrapped up dinner and said our goodbyes for now. The next day I heard from a friend who was there that the young chap said after hearing Catholic glory at full speed, "Have you ever experienced what it's like to have your entire concept of cosmology recomposed in one conversation?"

That is the raw, naked power and glory of the Catholic faith let loose to embrace a soul in search of truth and understanding. This is not the first conversation I've personally had with men of goodwill on this specific topic. And every time, the reaction is the same — total awe. "I've never heard anything like this before" is what another fellow said to me a couple of weeks ago.

So we would like to take this moment to encourage you, strongly, to pursue these lines of conversation with people you know or who come into your orbit.

That said, one thing we hear quite often is, "I don't know enough to get really deep into this." Fair enough. We all know that much of the hierarchy simply abandoned the glory of the Faith and teaching it decades ago, so that is more than understandable.

That's why Church Militant has not only produced two excellent resources for you: our first documentary, God's Lamb, as well as our Where Did the Bible Come From? collection; but we are offering you a package deal on these double resources, a combo buy at just $40.

There's more than just the actual video. The Bible collection, for example, also comes with a book offering more detail on the history of the Bible, along with this pull-out timeline showing the historical development as it relates to world history.

And the God's Lamb DVD also comes with its own booklet to better follow along with the actual video. Normally, these two items cost $70 together.

But our recent inexperience talking with various people has put into our heads that these are the things people need to hear when talking about the Faith, so we have essentially cut the price in half and are making the entire combination available to you for the reduced price.

Get these offerings, watch them, study them, internalize them — just like we did. No one here at Church Militant was born with this knowledge; we have to invest huge amounts of time and study to learn all this.

We've taken all that effort and collapsed it into these videos and supports to make it as easy for you as possible. You can view all of this in just about two or three hours and highlight what helps you further in the books and the timeline.

So we strongly encourage you to take advantage of this and learn about the Eucharist and Scripture in a way you probably have not heard or been taught before. But remember, you are doing this for the sake of others. As the Ethiopian eunuch said to Philip the deacon, "How can I understand the scriptures if no one explains them?"

We have a duty, an obligation, to learn and then evangelize. We make these available to you for that very purpose. Please click on the provided link to buy your discounted dual set today.

TRANSCRIPT

Americans love their major league sports, as well as the big-time college extravaganzas. Inevitably, the athletes themselves, with sometimes almost superhuman displays of grace and skill, become idols (extremely wealthy idols), with the best among them getting even more money from endorsement deals than their actual sports contracts.

They live in a rarefied air that most people can't even imagine and will never have any kind of experience of. They become trendsetters, legends and superstars who get paid millions, tens of millions, to appear on a cereal box or drive a certain vehicle. As much as it is possible, they are treated as gods among us.

Which raises the question of these dominant males, this celebrated alpha class, why are they so conspicuously quiet in the face of the woke agenda?

On a recent episode of our Church Militant Mic'd Up program, host Dave Gordon explored this whole conundrum of celebrity athletes bowing to wokeness with guest John Doyle, a young, bright Catholic social media voice who pulls no punches.

No one can really be surprised that the institution of sports, like so many other institutions in America, has been invaded and overrun by the woke mob. What is, however, surprising is the degree to which even the superstars among superstars simply go along with it.

Sports, athletic competition among mostly males, is as old as human history. The urge to compete — and not just compete but win, to vanquish, to conquer your opponent and drive him from the annals of recorded history — is practically inborn with men. While that does overstate it, somewhat, underlying all that is the virtue of hard work and discipline paying off.

Giving it everything you have, not just in sports but in whatever endeavor, and busting your tail and dedicating yourself to truth and justice and vanquishing whatever opponent or demon you have — all of it has a spiritual dimension to it.

Entire movie plots are built around this theme: Think Rudy, for example — a plucky young guy with no athletic ability determined to play football at the best college football team in the nation, Notre Dame, and succeeds. Even Notre Dame haters can plug into the underlying story and celebrate as he's carried off the field to the strains of the "Notre Dame Victory March."

Winning as the consequence of hard work and tireless, nonstop, even lonely effort, in fact, is the bedrock of the Catholic life. Even St. Paul compared meriting Heaven to winning the race and achieving the victor's crown. Sports imparts spiritual truths. But lately, spiritual truths have been kicked off the field, and sports has become an end in itself, as young Doyle notes so well.

This giant shift among U.S. males to no longer stand for truth, and even substitute consequential for inconsequential things of earth, is happening not only off the field in the stands but in the locker rooms and the post-game interviews.

The failure to confront evil is ravaging the culture, wiping out generations of everything that built the culture. Soon, says Doyle, it will all implode, as nature will correct course. Good men, not cowards, will have to seize that moment.

We invite you to watch the entire episode of Mic'd Up, which is one of our longest-running shows here at Church Militant.

We produce regular episodes of Mic'd Up, and enjoy bringing you these thought-provoking Catholic conversations and interviews with some of the brightest minds in the Catholic world. 

Don't miss it. 

TRANSCRIPT

There are fewer things in the Church more revolting to listen to or see than woke bishops. They are just the latest evolution in the class of men who began as social justice warriors and simply morphed into the next phase.

Take, for example, the archbishop of San Antonio, Texas, Gustavo García-Siller, a poster boy for the woke crap we see everywhere. And before we get into specifics about him, consider that all of these terms are nothing other than dog whistles for communism: woke, social justice, socialism, equity and any other substitute word that comes to mind. It's communism, plain and simple.

And communists create and use and deploy every imaginable weapon they can in their attempt to gain global domination. It's done through a combination of seizing on naturally occurring events, like the weather, and then insisting that global domination must be exerted to gain control of the climate.

Then there are the other types of events that have actually been engineered by them and then immediately exploited — things like street violence, illegal immigration and decrying a lack of gun control.

And since the communists control the major media outlets, they have almost complete control of the narrative, labeling anything that exposes them as "disinformation," which, of course, must then be censored. The major media outlets are all liars and are the major component, the single driving force that makes the destruction of a nation possible.

Turning now, specifically, to the case of the archbishop of San Antonio, the past few days have been troubling for the state of Texas with mass shootings. The media, of course, are pumping out headlines that "white supremacy" is at fault, despite the fact that one of the killers is a four-time deported Mexican national.

But, of course, that doesn't matter to the media or, apparently, the archbishop. For García-Siller, the culprit is the guns, not the illegal immigrants and potential gang members gunning down white people.

Over the weekend, in one 24-hour window, García-Siller tweeted 14 tweets decrying a lack of gun control, blaming guns, not the person holding and firing the guns, for all the violence and killing.

At one point, in likely his most revealing tweet, he said, "Who approves guns and therefore killings? Who? Who? We have had enough! For some, it is not! There are some that do not mind. May our political leaders do something to improve the killing today. Let us ask them: How are you stopping killing today? How?"

Aside from the patent absurdity of his comment, it's also massively insulting. The association of those who simply approve of guns with an approval of killing? Seriously? So in this nut job's mind, if you approve of (and presumably own) guns, you therefore automatically approve of mass shootings and killings? What? He underscores his madness, doubling down on it and saying, "There are some who do not mind."

Hey, bishop, get this through your woke skull: Law-abiding, tax-paying citizens who have guns are not the reason for mass shootings. Woke policies that you support, cloaking them in religiosity, are the reason. Americans have had guns since forever — and lots of them. They don't go around shooting people in malls and blowing away innocent bystanders and victims. Wake up.

Either the archbishop is a moron, or he's so emotional over the obvious tragic shootings, or he is part of the problem — a willing participant in the ideology that has brought America to its knees. How come mass shootings have increased so much? Because there are more guns?

No! It's because there are more fanatics being created by woke policies. Some of them are legal; others are illegal. If you seriously want to end the violence and killings where guns are being used, archbishop, then you would agree to policies that reduce the number of fanatics, not the number of guns.

The Nashville shootings, for example. That wasn't some nice white American with a gun. It was a wild-eyed transactivist who wrote a lengthy manifesto about hating Christianity — a manifesto that law enforcement refuses to release because they're still "investigating."

And of course, the media, as part of "operation cover-up," has completely moved on. In virtually every one of these cases of mass shooting, the killers turn out to be either illegal or violent criminals that prosecutors refused to prosecute or deviants so sick in their political beliefs that they justify mass killings. It's never some normal dude with a family just making a living.

Yet these are who García-Siller demonizes as part of the problem. The murderous fanatics who are actually doing the shootings are created by woke policies because communism does not care about people; it cares about power and control. That a bishop in the Church refuses to see this and goes on continually coming out in favor of more wokeness tells you everything you need to know about the state of the world.

García-Siller, who is so concerned with justice, is also the same bishop who kicked a small group of faithful nuns out of his archdiocese as revenge for losing a battle in Rome over control of the parish where they had been stationed for nine years and collecting donations to build a convent and monastery. To finance themselves, the good sisters embarked on a soap-making business — terrific smelling soaps that we sell in our Church Militant store to help them.

They were well on their way to establishing their monastery on a donated piece of land of 300 acres, which they gave us a tour of, until archbishop "justice" ripped the rug out from under them and ordered them out of his archdiocese — again, because he's so into justice and concern for victims.

We scrolled back quite a ways on his Twitter page and could not find a single tweet decrying abortion — which claims thousands of victims every day — and certainly not 14 in a single 24-hour window. So if you are a baby or a sweet little nun, to hell with you. If you are an honest citizen who poses no threat of going on a mass shooting spree, to hell with you too.

Ah, but if you are a wokester who wants to get rid of guns in an effort to help usher in communism, then, by all means, step to the front of the line, and we will mourn together at the current level of injustice. Beware these woke bishops, every one of them, and that includes their brother bishops who remain silent about their propaganda.

A new enemy is on the horizon, and it's more powerful than any the United States has ever faced. In today's Vortex, which aired in January 2021, Michael spoke with author Trevor Loudon about the greatest foreign threat to the United States — communist China.

Today's Vortex looks back nearly 15 years ago to 2008, when then-Sen. Joe Biden began his crusade against the Church's teaching on abortion. Year after year, his phony Catholic rhetoric began permeating Catholic culture. And few, if any, dared call him out on it. Michael Voris did.

Today's Vortex aired on Oct. 13, 2017. It highlights a demonic reality becoming ever present in today's social climate. The Church has changed in ways that can't be reversed for centuries to come. Michael describes it as a near extinction.

Today's Vortex features a look back to January 2013, following the Vatican's efforts to recoup the losses inflicted upon the Church by secularists and cultural Marxists. Today, the Church's failure to promote Catholic identity has come to a head — proving its damage-control efforts have, unfortunately, failed.

The article to which Michael refers is Vatican Preparing a Manual to Help Priests Celebrate Mass, published by Zenit on January 16, 2013.