Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

A few years back, I was visiting with a noted archbishop in his office about the dire state of the Church and, consequently, the world. I asked him if he and other bishops of his mind huddled up regularly, called each other, got together, formed organizations with each other, sat on each other's boards of directors and so forth. He looked at me somewhat puzzled, and I said, "Well, your enemies in the episcopate do that!"

He answered me back and said, "Well, no. We don't. Conservatives tend to conserve." And that right there is a perfect sum up of everything wrong in the Church (as well as the world) when it comes to the so-called "good guys." 

"Conservatives" — whatever that empty term has now come to mean — are delusional. They fail to either understand or admit that their enemies play for keeps and want us dead. There seems to be this "Marquess of Queensberry Rules" approach to the political and mostly spiritual battle raging around us, like politeness should rule the day. But what is spoken of as politeness and "charity" is really just a mask covering cowardice. It's an unwillingness to go to war and not do what needs to be done.

There is something, some disease, in the psychology of people who self-identify as "conservative," be it politics or the Church, and most especially in the Church, because they get to baptize their softness and portray themselves as religious and above the fray — true Catholic gentlemen. Hogwash! Maybe in some dystopian, Victorian, turn of the last century, front parlor, genteel setting in their minds they can think that way, but unfortunately for them (and us), the world is not tracking with that.

But this problem of the "soft" approach is not new. Take, for example, this historical passage from 1871:

What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn.

In short, so-called conservatives always give in. They don't fight; they don't even really resist. At first, they protest a little bit, here or there. But in the end, they always give in. We see this in politics constantly, for example. You never hear the Left complaining and scratching their heads over a liberal Supreme Court justice suddenly flipping and becoming conservative. That gate only swings one way.

But in the Church, it's even more pronounced. So much so that there's a long-standing joke among priests that part of the consecration rite for being made bishop includes the removal of the man's spine. 

The world is not even. It tilts toward evil, gravitates toward it. The inclination of man is always toward the selfish act. Even if that is overcome here or there, any victory is almost always short-lived. This is the fundamental reality that "conservatives" seem to either not grasp or refuse to admit: Good people have to climb uphill; bad people get to run down.

So the idea that you just hold your ground is a losing proposition to begin with in the face of an enemy attacking. Playing defense always loses. Sooner or later, the forces storm and overcome the castle; they do breach the walls. This is why Our Blessed Lord positioned His Church to be on the offensive, not sit back and conserve. Conserve what, exactly? A losing position?

When He handed Peter the keys of the Kingdom after saying he would build His Church — notice by the way, Church, not Churches, one Church, His Church — He then said that the "gates of Hell would not prevail against it." That was a command from the Divine general for His army to attack. It was Hell that assumed the defensive posture of sitting behind its gates. The Son of God had come into the world to bring a full-on assault to the kingdom of darkness.

Of these two kingdoms, only one would win; only one could win. Borrowing a line from old westerns, there's not enough room in this town for both of us. So on the attack they went — the Apostles, their disciples, the next generation and so forth. They converted an empire, not because they "conserved" but because they attacked. They spent 500 years converting the barbarians and the next few hundred fashioning Western civilization.

None of this was done with a "conservative" mindset, just the opposite, in fact. But then came the next few centuries, and the warriors grew fat and lazy. Built their own castles and hunkered down in them. We know the rest of the story, and today, we are led, both in culture and most especially the Church, by "conservatives." Dear God, spare us from conservatives.

This mindset needs to be broken. Saint Paul was not a conservative. None of the Apostles were "conservative." Our Lord was absolutely not a conservative. We can conserve everything we want once evil is defeated. But as long as we are here, conservatism is a sure loser. Lose the "polite" attitude. It's for delusional sissies. Your enemy wants you dead. They want your heads on pikes and your children enslaved.

Conservative means "coward," an unwillingness to confront what needs to be confronted, and not just confronted but attacked and defeated. That's how the Left acts. It's why they are always winning and conservatives, far from conserving anything, are always in retreat. Stop conceding; stop compromising; stop all of it. Isn't it clear by now that it's a losing strategy? Heck, it's not even a strategy. 

The good guys suffer from much, beginning with hapless leaders. Unless the rank and file rise up and demand accountability, you might as well just support sex changes for your children, giving up gas stoves in your house, getting your booster every six months and everything else the Left crams down your throat. The idea of being "conservative" has got to be jettisoned from the lexicon of the People of God.

TRANSCRIPT

In its continuing effort to supposedly save the planet and people's lives, the Party of Death now has its eyes trained squarely on the gas stoves in Americans' homes.

It was such an over-the-top claim that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission immediately had to backpedal and issue a follow-up statement — eerily reminiscent of Obama telling the country to calm down about Obamacare — saying that if you like your gas stove, you can keep your gas stove.

About one-third of the 40 million U.S. homes use gas stoves, and in an effort to get rid of them, Democrats built massive tax credits into their so-called Inflation Reduction Act last year. Switch to electric, and they'll give you $840 of other people's money to do so!

The apparent "reasoning" is that a medical study was released saying gas stoves pose a health threat, especially to children. By that reasoning, the Marxists should ban abortion. They claim that the major threat is nitrogen dioxide poisoning the environment, right along with all that carbon, and people need to be protected.

AOC, of course, got in on the act, going on social media to once again tout the moral supremacy of her Green New Deal and how the planet must be saved at all costs.

Whatever perhaps legitimate claims might be made about a possible health threat a gas stove may present, this whole drama highlights, yet again, the Biden administration and his whole party's obsession with saving the planet.

Speaking of Biden, one particularly humorous social media post profiled Jill Biden cooking on the family's gas stovetop. And, of course, the responses zeroed in on the question of whether the FBI would be raiding the house, not in search of classified documents, but to rip out the stove.

The Dems pretended deep concern about the environment has never really been about the environment per se. It's been about population reduction, and this entire charade stretches back decades.

There is a prevailing thought on the Left that there are just too many people on the planet — period. Despite their best efforts to push abortion and contraception, which have been extremely successful, they still aren't satisfied. Too many people remain — period. The reproductive rate has got to come down more, and some people may have to be eliminated.

Think of it as a worldwide eugenics program, not necessarily aimed at a specific race but, rather, the overall headcount of the human race.

This stretches all the way back to that stellar decade of the 1960s when what's called the Club of Rome was founded. CR is essentially a think tank for elites who invent problems and then create solutions to those problems that impact everyone, except themselves and their other global elitists. Think Jill Biden's stove or John Kerry's private jets, and you get the picture: Rules for thee but not for me.

In 1972, in close timing with the "there are too many people" hysteria then emerging, the Club of Rome published a little-known, but extremely influential, work entitled The Limits to Growth. Again, the emphasis was that there are just too many people on the planet.

While that line of reasoning became popular among academics and lawmakers, it never really caught on for Main Street — not enough to support any giant legislation to actively reduce the number of people anyway. So a shift in approach began to be emphasized. The chatter about too many people changed to "the planet is in crisis and there are now major health risks to everyone."

So governments around the world and their allies in academia and the media all started talking not about too many people but global warming, melting icebergs and so forth. When all those dire predictions failed to actually materialize, then the emphasis shifted again, this time from global warming to just the more benign-sounding "climate change."

Climate change has become a much more useful slogan than global warming because essentially anything that happens with the weather can be used as a propaganda tool to advance legislation or policy to control the weather. A big Hurricane? Climate change. A drought? Climate change. Floods? Climate change. A really cold winter or cold spell? Climate change. 

"Save the planet" is a much easier sell than "don't have children and reduce the existing population." 

While it was already well ensconced in public discourse, "climate change" as policy talk really took off under Obama. He tried to push his "cap and trade" initiative, for example, which would have allowed only a certain amount of carbon credits per U.S. manufacturer.

If a company ran out of credits, it could trade something with other companies in exchange for theirs. All done in the name of science, of course. The Party of Death has been "following the science" and insisting that "we're all in this together" for quite a while now. They've got it down. 

A Catholic ear immediately hears the enormous issue with all this. The entire thing is based on errant philosophy masquerading as science. Sound familiar? As usual, when dealing with death merchants and snake-oil salesmen, there is always much more at work behind the scenes than the propaganda being presented.

A dozen years ago, Church Militant produced an in-depth look at all this in one of our Faith-Based Investigations entitled Global Warming Unmasked. We highly suggest you view it if you haven't. Just click on the provided link. We put hundreds of man-hours of research into this production, so it is extensive.

One thing we've noticed when we go back here and look at our earlier productions is just how relevant they are today — even more so, in fact. 

Congressional Democrats and their globalist allies want fewer humans on the planet. The leaders have been very explicit about that. And they use every means possible: abortion, contraception, climate change, whatever it takes. They sit on Capitol Hill and other capitals around the world passing laws and instituting policies to do just that. It's a very involved, multi-layered strategy, but it has that goal in mind.

Everything they do keeps the population living in a constant state of fear so they can capitalize on that fear to pass their laws. Is your gas stove a major piece of the puzzle? Likely not, but it keeps the "you're going to die" and "the planet is going to die" narrative firmly in front of you.

When evil-minded people get control, power is the name of the game, not you. You, in fact, are the enemy who must be overcome by trickery and propaganda.

TRANSCRIPT

The diabolical hates humanity. We begin with that premise, that truth. There's a lot of theology in that statement, and if you'd like to delve more into that, we highly recommend watching the first episode of the very first program we ever produced here all the way back in 2006: The One True Faith: St. Michael and the Angels.  It's available to premium members. Just click on the provided link to sign up.

Now, you need to understand the great spiritual battle playing in the background in order to understand the specific policies and legislation being pursued on the surface. The driving force behind the narrative is the claim that there are too many people on earth. We touched on this yesterday.

"Overpopulation" has been a major talking point of the Left for decades. It's also a driving force — although spoken of in more quiet terms — in the social justice corridors of the Church.

Its why they just sort of look the other way when it comes to "managing" U.S. government money — hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars — while partnering with pro-contraception, and, in some cases, pro-abortion NGOs in Third World nations, as well as here even at home.

A major doctrine of the entire New World Order is this single point: We need to get rid of all these people!

Just one of the frontmen for all this yahoo is Paul Ehrlich, who kicked it all off in the public's mind with his published lies, which were bound in a book called The Population Bomb. Back in the day, the argument was more finely tuned. It said that if we don't reduce the population drastically, hundreds of millions will starve to death.

Today, it's morphed into: "If we don't control the weather and fight man-made climate change, hundreds of millions will die from rising oceans, fire, floods, hurricanes, heat, cold, you name it." That errant opinion is not only shared by but also pronounced by modernists like the newly created Cdl. Robert McElroy of San Diego, who actually says that climate change kills more people every year than abortion.

Abortion kills close to 50 million babies every year, and that's by low estimates. For modernists in the Church and Marxists in the culture, babies are the enemy.

In a recent sit-down interview with his Marxist media allies, Ehrlich was allowed to just lie through his teeth, unchallenged on CBS News' 60 Minutes. But Ehrlich has been on his anti-humanity, too many people rant going back decades. Every major gloom-and-doom prediction he has made has proven untrue. Yet because he was among the first to promote the anti-people narrative, he has found exalted status.

Satan himself couldn't have said that any better: "Children suck. Enjoy your leisure. Don't reproduce. If you have to, keep it to one. Socially shame those who actually have children." You get the idea: "From even before conception, life is to be battled against. If you do, by chance, become pregnant, consider killing the child. If the child is born, get fixed so you don't conceive anymore. The planet can't handle it!" 

What's disturbing about all this is that the hierarchy has brought into all of it. They routinely speak in terms of man-made climate change being a real thing. There are multiple programs they support and push with your money to keep "climate change" in front of you. It's impossible for the people of God to be insufficiently scared and nerve-racked, don't you know?

So there's the Climate Change Justice and Health Initiative. There's the Environmental Justice Program. There's the Catholic Youth Climate Change Program — because you can't keep a revolution going without a sufficient number of brainwashed young people. And, of course, where would we be without the Catholic Climate Covenant?

Well, pretty much the same place we'd be without the Inter Community Peace and Justice Center with its Climate Change Resources. These bishop bureaucracies stretch on as far as the eye can see. Congress ain't got nothing on the bishops when it comes to these complicated, overlapping, redundant, byzantine offices and departments — paid for with other people's money.

The Left loves all this going on in the Church because it "baptizes" their work and gives it a sufficient veneer of piety and religiosity, but it's actually being used to undermine and destroy religion. The entire man-made climate change narrative arose from the exact same place by the exact same people who brought us every other lie for the past century.

The only difference is that, way back, the bishops would oppose those lies. Today, they either back or are indifferent to them. Either way, it's the same result. Catholics, by and large, have drunk the Kool-Aid on climate change being caused by man. It isn't.

But the narrative must continue to be propagated so that the globalists behind the instituting of the new world order can continue to herd the scared sheep to give up rights and freedoms. It's just really too bad that among those globalists are various churchmen who should be fighting for you — not spending your money to fool you.

TRANSCRIPT

The current crisis humanity finds itself in is so multifaceted that normal people can feel overwhelmed just trying to know all the necessary information — much less trying to process it. That's why the Church Militant team does so much of the hunting and gathering and processing for you.

We don't know everything, obviously, but we certainly know a lot more than most. And we are able to process it all because we screen all of this through the necessary filter of spiritual war. 

There's a certain philosophy a person has to use when looking at the world. Either everything that happens over very long periods of time is purely happenstance or coincidence, or there is an intelligence behind it all directing various things and ensuring work begun in one generation carries over not just to the next — but to the next 10.

Human history builds on itself. And while the process is surrounded somewhat in mystery, it's clear that there does, in fact, exist a plan. The plan must allow for the foibles of human free will, but even free will choices are not so unpredictable all the time that they couldn't be incorporated into a plan.

In Christianity, the plan is referred to as "salvation history" and takes specifically into account the will of God — both active and passive — as well as the actions of the diabolical in trying to combat that plan. In the world today, we see vast amounts of evidence of a diabolical plan unfolding, meant to interrupt or thwart salvation history.

Trevor Loudon is a world-respected author and researcher who has been studying these kinds of issues in large and great detail for many years. 

Loudon starts with the prototype: Satan. As Saul Alinsky said in the introduction to his infamous work Rules for Radicals,  "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical ... known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer."

We know from the Scriptures (in Genesis) that Satan has children, spiritual offspring who do his will. The Son of God, for example, explicitly went after the Pharisees when he said to them, "Your father is the Devil because you do your father's will."

Satan doesn't have reign and power over man — not directly, not normally. Obviously, possession is a different matter. But he can't make you do something, despite the 1970s joke line "the Devil made me do it." What he can do is influence a person to do evil and give way to temptation and sin. And if he is going to interrupt salvation history and try to limit it, he must accomplish this through human agency.

One of the most important ways that he can do this is through the power of the State, so he directly involves himself in the operations of political institutions. Within the political and cultural sphere, there must arise an effort by men of goodwill, embracing ultimate truth as their motivation, to begin to put certain practices in place to curb corruption and the influence of the diabolical.

In the end, nothing can be achieved without pushing back, fighting and taking up arms. Not for nothing does St. Paul cast the spiritual war in terms of battle. "Put on the armor of God," he commands the Ephesians. Saint Augustine, one of the greatest Fathers of the Church, once famously said, "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you."

If you'd like to watch the entire interview with Loudon, which is well worth it, please click on the provided link just below. And if you'd like to read more from this well-respected authority, please go to his website, trevorloudon.com, where you can peruse his impressive list of works dedicated to revealing the diabolical plan on the granular level.

TRANSCRIPT

When the last Congress — controlled by Democrats — passed into law funding for 87,000 new IRS agents, it set off a firestorm of protests and political firebombs. It became a major talking point on the 2022 midterm campaign trail and helped propel the Grand Old Party to take control of the U.S. House.

Correspondingly, it became the very first piece of legislation passed by the GOP-controlled House last week. After his grueling battle to become speaker, Kevin McCarthy gleefully tweeted out: "House Republicans just voted unanimously to repeal the Democrats' army of 87,000 IRS agents. This was our very first act of the new Congress, because government should work for you, not against you."

The bill is dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and even if by some political miracle it passed there, Biden would never sign it. You have to control both the House of Congress and the White House to effectively get anything done — but it plays well on Main Street.

In fact, sitting safely behind the barricade of "we are in the minority in Washington," some Republicans have even gone on record saying, "Forget the 87,000 agents; just abolish the IRS completely." And in the immediate aftermath of securing enough votes to pass the "anti-87,000 new agents" bill, the stalwart Republican Freedom Caucus members introduced a bill to not just dump the new agents and not just the IRS itself — but the entire system of federal income tax.

Additionally, the bill gets rid of the death, gift and payroll taxes, and it would replace the current tax code with a national consumption tax, meaning you only pay federal tax when you actually purchase something. So sales taxes would go up, perhaps dramatically, but you would keep almost every penny you make. There would be virtually no need any longer to distinguish between gross pay and net (take-home) pay. You earned it, you keep it.

Without getting into the particulars of how that would work, what it would mean for the federal budget, the effects on the economy and all that (and "all that" is quite a lot), let's look at the notion of taxing income (the fruits of your labor) as a moral concept.

There has always been a stench of immorality around taxing the fruits of your labor. And given the massively Byzantine tax code the United States has, it also seems unfair, meaning unjust — an offense against the virtue of justice — that the very wealthy, including politicians, are able to skirt around much of this.

It has, throughout all of human history, been the case that the more money you have, the more options you have to lower or even completely avoid taxes. It may be the case that the only two things in life that are certain are taxes and death. But for the massively wealthy, some can cross taxes off that list.

Why should it be OK for a government to tax the fruits of your labor? After all, you work for it, oftentimes long and hard, sometimes two or three jobs just to keep it together. And when you consider the irresponsible and immoral ways in which politicians write checks from your bank accounts, this doubles the pain for many.

Why, for example, should the district be able to hand over a half-billion a year to Planned Parenthood? Well, under the current system, they can, and they do. Why should other countries get money — again, gained from the fruits of your labor — to secure their borders when our own borders are essentially nonexistent (unless you're trying to legally enter the country)?

There will always be tiers of wealth. Some people are more industrious than others — talent, opportunity, determination, brain power, all that — and no matter what communists say, it will never be the case that society is level. People aren't equal; they aren't the same. To treat people as though they are and develop a governmental ruling system around that false notion is beyond stupid.

"Tax the rich" has become the battle cry of many of the rich in Congress, which should tell you how disingenuous all that is. If Nancy Pelosi wants to pay more in her income taxes based on income made from insider knowledge, there's not a thing stopping her from adding an extra zero to her check to the IRS once a year — as if she actually pays in the first place. It'd be cool to look at her 1040s. Joe Biden once infamously said, "It is patriotic to pay your taxes," as he was reportedly getting huge amounts of money from Hunter's dealings (off the books).

For many reasons, being taxed on the fruits of your labor is simply immoral. It's unevenly applied and simply determined and imposed by people who decided it should be so. It's not to say income tax is not legal; it is. The 16th Amendment made it so. But the legality of something does not ensure its morality. Slavery and abortion are two prime American examples, and federal income and payroll taxes should be added to that category.

In the Left's continuing march to destroy the family, one of the primary tools it uses is economics. Families are often deprived of the ability to make certain decisions simply because of economics, but while that will always be the case (because some things are unavoidable), it should not be the case that the government is able to arbitrarily further constrict those decisions.

Yet it happens every single day. The need for double incomes, meaning both parents have to work and thus delay having children, for example, is just one issue that comes to mind. Without enormous sacrifices or somewhat unique circumstances, one income today usually proves insufficient. When you add together all taxes (income, payroll, gas, sales, real estate, utility and so forth), the average family today loses nearly half its income.

While some taxation is obviously required, is it really half of everything a family brings home? Is shifting taxes to a family's choice of what and when to buy something, presuming an increased sales tax, really some horrible idea? It would greatly increase the impetus for savings and create, at least in some people, a greater financial discipline because one would immediately feel the tax pinch of buying something instead of just having money quietly and regularly drained from you.

On a moral level, is this not a social justice issue? Short of killing children in the womb, is not taking a large portion of the fruits of someone's labor a deeply moral issue? It's certainly more important than the phony narrative of man-made climate change, which is now used as a ruse to take even more money from families and workers.

One of the reasons taxes are so high now is partly due to a cyclical reality. The aim of the Marxists in the U.S. government has always been to break down the family because it makes more people dependent on them (the government). It's part of a larger power grab by politicians: They discourage families by unjust taxation, which leads to fewer families and the human needs supplied by those families. Then the government steps in and "provides" those needs, which, of course, means the need for increased spending, prompting higher taxes.

The federal tax system is a means to transform society from one where the basic building block is the family to one where the government is. It may not have started that way when Abraham Lincoln imposed the first income tax to fund the Civil War — which was repealed, by the way, a few years after the war — but it has certainly transformed into that now.

Worldwide communism, with its anti-family, anti-God foundation, wasn't a thing in the world in the 1860s; it was just then being formulated by Karl Marx. But it certainly is now, and draining wealth from the average citizen and redirecting it into the hands of a powerful few, who are becoming more powerful, is a key component of that plan. House Republicans will likely pass the "abolish the IRS and federal tax" act, knowing it has no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate. So is this just political theater and yet another fundraising tool like opposition to Obamacare was, or is there some actual principle being stood on here?

But here's a thought and where some true colors may be revealed: There will come a time when the annual federal budget will have to be passed, and when that time arrives, the shoe will be on the other foot. The GOP-led House must pass the budget or everything stops. We're not talking about increasing the federal debt ceiling; we're talking about legislation that actually funds the government. It will be interesting to see how House Republicans behave.

The middle-class American family is being demolished, and federal taxes are part of all that. Will they force the issue? Will the U.S. bishops, always pounding the drum for Democrats' social justice issues, take a stand on this social justice issue?

As America continues its descent into the abyss, it's clear that some drastic measures must be taken — transformational steps — to roll back what Marxism has been able to achieve even here in the United States. Marxism's goal is world domination, and that includes not just economics but the dignity of man himself. At its core, it is an aggressive spiritual cancer, which must be opposed. Economics is just one of its chosen weapons, one arrow in its quiver. Here would be a chance to slow it down.

TRANSCRIPT 

It is just a real-world truism that team evil simply has more weapons at their disposal than the good guys. There's just no getting around that. They'll lie, cheat, steal, kill and resort to anything that works in their favor. Their mission is to demolish what is good and holy so as to build up the kingdom of their father, the Devil.

Not for nothing do we have the expression, "Good guys finish last." But beyond tactics, they also have a built-in advantage: the will and skill to actually use their weapons to their advantage. Referring to the dishonest steward in Luke's gospel, Our Blessed Lord touches on this very point, saying, "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." (Luke 16:8)

Team evil and the children of light both recognize that they have a mission to build up and establish their respective kingdoms, each one for their respective father. Followers of Christ pray for this multiple times a day: "Thy kingdom come." But where it seems these two camps diverge is in the understanding and willingness to engage in the necessary step before construction — and that is demolition.

Neither Catholic Christians nor team evil are moving about in the world in a vacuum. Each side has built up something of its own kingdom — not completed, of course, but nonetheless in various stages of completion. Team evil long ago, however, understood that in the construction of the Kingdom of Hell, the Kingdom of Heaven would have to be demolished. That concept is almost completely lost on the children of light. Demolition is necessary. The path must be cleared for construction to begin.

The Early Church understood this and, over the first few centuries, demolished the Roman Empire. Once demolished, Catholic Western civilization could emerge, and construction began in great earnest. Among the greatest architectural feats in human history bear witness to this, as enormous cathedrals built to the glory of God and the establishment of the kingdom rose up all over the Catholic world, bearing testimony, in a material sense, to the underlying spiritual reality which gave birth to them.

A pagan kingdom had been demolished to make way for the construction of the Kingdom of Heaven. What seems to be lacking today — indeed, for the last (roughly) six to seven centuries in the Church (with rare exceptions) — is any real grasp of this dynamic: You must demolish in order to build.

Spiritual war does not happen in a vacuum, nor is it static. We are not engaged in a zero-sum game. These two kingdoms cannot coexist, even if that stupid bumper sticker plastered on cars everywhere calls for it. That bumper sticker itself is part of the war propaganda of team evil. There really is only one weapon the good guys possess, and that is truth.

It is the most dangerous weapon in the arsenal, so in one sense, it is the only one needed. But if it isn't deployed, if it just sits in the munitions supply house, then who cares? Team evil's weapons are all knockoffs of the truth. A lie depends on the existence of truth in the first place. Theft depends on the truthful order of things. Killing is completely dependent on the truth of life. Every single battle is ultimately a battle over truth.

Team evil completely understands that their kingdom (the kingdom of Satan) cannot be completed as long as truth exists, so they set out in everything they do to demolish truth. Unfortunately, the good guys don't seem to have grasped this absolutely basic concept.

It is correct, to a degree, that truth is its own defense — but only to a degree. Yes, in the abstract, truth is more powerful. It always upsets the lie and shows it. But people don't live their lives in the abstract, in the murky ether of theory and the ivory tower of egghead argumentation. People live their lives in practice, and it is here where team evil makes such gigantic strides. The old saying goes, "An army moves on its stomach" — a recognition that it needs food (nutrition) to complete its mission.

The same is true in the spiritual war. Team evil seeks to deprive the good guys of truth and expends all its energy to cut off those supply lines. It cannot directly attack truth because truth is simply too powerful a weapon. So its extraordinarily successful strategy has been to undermine truth — to sublimate it to other things, like passions, emotions and, above all, feelings.

We humans, as we all know, are a complicated, tangled-up mess of intellect, feelings, life experiences, wounded psychologies and a host of other ingredients. Most of the time, most people have all this jumbled up together and haven't established things in the right order — meaning the order which corresponds to truth.

This is where team evil is able to move in for the kill — and does. Human beings are built by God for truth. We know this is correct from everyday life. However, because of our fallen state, we are afraid of what the truth will cause in our daily lives. So when truth gets too close, we pull back because we instinctively know we have to change.

It is that fear, that reluctance, that team evil capitalizes on, which is precisely why the good guys must deploy truth as the most powerful weapon on the battlefield. There is objective truth — truth that stands on its own, no matter how many deny it. And truth, like light, permeates everything — every single aspect of our being — our minds, our wills, our actions, our worldview. As the psalm says, it's like the sun moving across the sky; nothing escapes its burning heat. (Psalm 19:6)

But too few of the good guys are comfortable dealing with this weapon and, therefore, refuse to deploy it, at least to its full power. They don't educate themselves enough; they don't delve enough into the realm of philosophy, for example. Team evil has made such strides because it distorts truth and espouses errant philosophy that, on the surface (absent critical thought), seems correct — even to some children of light.

There are multiple ways in which these distortions are deployed, and one is through the corruption of language. Words have definitions — that which points to the reality behind the word. But if you keep the word while changing the meaning, people can be fooled. "Gender-affirming care," for example, is team evil's operating term to suggest that a child's gender can be surgically altered to correspond with the feeling in his head.

First, human beings don't have a gender; we have a sex. And there are only two: male and female. Nouns in some languages have "gender," which then correspond to adjectives and so forth. But it is necessary for those on team evil to deny these truths, even to the point of absurdity, such as when Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, during her nomination, had to say out loud that she didn't know what a woman is. She couldn't offer a definition.

She was being asked by a woman. She herself is a woman. And yet the concept of "woman" is completely lost on her. Not really, but lies do that. They back you into a corner, and the most ridiculous stuff has to come out of your mouth to keep the lie alive. It is the duty of the children of light to engage in truth wars, to throw truth bombs at every turn, to whatever degree they can and whatever the circumstances allow.

Team evil doesn't keep scoring victory after victory because they are successful with their lies, but rather because the children of light refuse or hesitate to whip out the most powerful weapon in the war and actually deploy it and use it. One day, once the kingdom of good has been sufficiently demolished and team evil has advanced very far, truth will reassert itself — it always does — by some intrepid military types who are comfortable in using it and have been properly trained to do so.

Truth, because it is ultimately Christ Himself, wins hands down, no doubt. What's important is to make sure that we, as individuals, will participate in that ultimate victory. And that is dependent on how much we engage with truth in this life, for the good of souls. Saint Paul tells the Galatians, "And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9)

And again, St. James extols us, "Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. For when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him." (James 1:12) No one is guaranteed victory because of what's in his head or his heart alone. Victory comes through the actual fight in the real world.

TRANSCRIPT

Open borders. Closed borders. It truly is a grab bag when it comes to the question of immigration — legal and especially illegal. Let's begin with China, which recently announced that it's become much more "family friendly." Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China became extremely violent toward the idea of children, instituting its savage one-child policy along with forced abortion as the enforcement mechanism.

Sidebar — Joe Biden, the "devout Catholic," never had a problem with that and was instrumental in gaining the Chinese the much-coveted "most-favored-nation trade status" during his time in the U.S. Senate.

Over the ensuing decades, the Chinese communists relented somewhat, occasionally rolling back some aspects of the one-child, forced-abortion policy. But as the decades wore on, the commies in charge realized that killing your future generations didn't make for good long-term prosperity.

So this year, in a complete about-face, the child-killing commies in Beijing are now encouraging couples to have babies and are even talking about expanding child health care. Who'd have thought even a few years ago that commies in China would understand how bad abortion is before American political leaders?

The whole murderous mindset began back in the mid- to late-'70s as the myth of overpopulation was becoming entrenched around the world. The Chinese communist solution to poverty was simply to kill the poor, much like American foreign policy has been since Obama and now on steroids under Biden.

But when the economic toll of killing off your future generations begins to be realized — well, emergency overdrive measures are deployed. All of a sudden, in countries around the world, governments are pro-child in an effort to increase their populations — imagine that.

But despite its 180-degree turnaround, China has made very clear it will not be opening its borders to immigration as part of the strategy to bolster its lopsided demographics. Bringing in foreigners en masse is not seen as a viable option to solve its problems — so says Beijing.

Shifting now to Washington, it seems just the opposite approach is in favor. That is, kill your native-born future generations and "fix" the population problem through nothing but immigration, especially illegal immigration. Consider what the Marxist Democrats have done in the district; they supported, in virtual complete lockstep, denying health care to babies who survive abortion. Minus one Democrat, it was unanimous. This, of course, on top of the bill they passed last term — when they were in control — to enshrine abortion up to and beyond birth as the law of the land.

The Democrats are abortion crazy. But they are also illegal-immigration crazy. Biden has only been in the Oval Office for almost two years, and estimates are between three and five million illegals have walked across the southern border. Add those numbers to the estimated 12–15 million already in the United States (and those are lowball estimates) and there is a sizable illegal population in the United States — beginning to approach 10% of the entire population.

But there is a Catholic angle to this whole story. In near complete defiance and distortion of Catholic teaching, the U.S. bishops not only continue to defend the Party of Death with their silence and permission for the murderers to receive the sacraments, but they also get hundreds of millions each year from these same child murderers to wipe out the nation's borders.

On abortion and illegal immigration, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more warped application of Church teaching than that followed by the U.S. hierarchy. Such are the effects of Freemason modernism. The Chinese communists are actually further developed on this than the U.S. bishops.

On the question of destroying the borders under the guise of "being Christian," the U.S. bishops not only get huge amounts of money from the district each year to handle and process these millions of illegals, but they also get to inflate their own numbers. The major countries where illegal immigrants are flooding across from are Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Seventy-two percent of Mexicans are Catholic; 60% of Cubans are Catholic; for Nicaragua, it's 73% and Venezuela is 98%.

More than 75% of illegals coming into the United States are Catholic to some degree, meaning the overwhelming number of the total illegal population in the United States is Catholic. Millions of people sitting in Catholic churches each week are illegal immigrants. What does that do to the head count of U.S. Catholics published each year by the bishops? It presents a false picture, that's what.

While there's no real way to determine the exact number of how many illegals comprise the official head count of Catholics, some basic assumptions can be made to arrive at some decent guesstimate. There are approximately 20 million illegals in the United States and roughly three-quarters are Catholic, about 15 million. Assuming about half attend Mass and are somehow counted in the bishops' numbers, we get roughly 7.5 million Catholics (on the rolls) who are in the country illegally.

Additionally, we also know that the percentage of white Catholics, largely from European stock, has been in a free fall for decades and shows no sign of changing course. So what this all translates to is this: There is an asterisk next to the claim that the Catholic Church is the largest religion in the country — not exactly. There's also a big caveat when we talk about the percentage of Catholics in the United States relative to the entire population — also not presented accurately.

Let's start with the second one first. Catholics number about 62 million in the United States, according to the bishops, which translates to about one in five Americans. That roughly 21% number means it's the largest single religion in the country.

But if you suck out roughly seven million from that total because they are not actual citizens, the overall percentage drops to just 16%. The conclusion of the math here is very easy. Illegal immigration is keeping the bishops' numbers artificially high. The real percentage is something much lower than the statistics being published.

This also points to the reality that if illegal immigration were not a thing, at least in the massive numbers that it is, the Catholic Church in the United States would have long ago slipped from its exalted status as the single largest religious body in the country to second place, and, depending on how you count some Protestant denominations, perhaps even third.

Christianity in general in the United States is on a downward spiral, but leading the race to the bottom is the Catholic Church. Artificially inflating enrollment numbers by including people who are not citizens cannot continue to mask this reality. Church leadership lost its way here in the United States decades ago, and current leaders simply have no answer for this.

Obviously, in the end, it's not strictly a numbers game. That said, numbers do occupy a place of importance. They do reveal some things, perhaps not perfectly — but they aren't nothing. And when they shore up and match up with other data, then an overall picture can begin to come into focus.

European-descendent Catholics are leaving the Church (have been for generations now). The Church is becoming increasingly Hispanic, roughly 40% overall. And while those trends continue, the one the bishops will not talk about is the increasing dependence on illegal immigration to keep the numbers and ranking artificially propped up. Overall, in fact, there is very little you could label as "success" that the bishops could point to.

Their politics are bound up with an image of their grandfathers' Democratic party, which hasn't existed for 60 years. They feed way too much at the trough of federal tax dollars. Most don't seem to either know or believe the Faith and, to whatever degree they might, are ineffective at communicating it.

It's interesting that the Chinese commies have grasped that they were marching down the wrong road and decided to turn around. It's even more interesting that the U.S. bishops have not. Talk about weird!

TRANSCRIPT

As the globalist Marxist forces, currently gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum, continue to point to their lust for power, it's clear as a bell they are betting on people being stupid. They aren't taking over the world with guns and bullets and bombs and wars. They are seizing control of minds.

As far back as the mid- to late-1970s, the idiocy pouring out of American colleges and universities was labeled "political correctness" (PC). PC was the advance team for "wokeness." What began on the blackboards, faculty lounges and classrooms of the ivory tower gang soon spilled into the streets and corporate boardrooms all over the country. It truly was the poisoning of the American mind, first becoming visible on college campuses.

In his massively successful bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, professor Allan Bloom laid out his case about the toxic atmosphere seizing control of academia and its consequences. The subtitle to his classic says it all: "How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students." Poisoning the intellect of a culture is not an overnight endeavor; it is, in fact, a multigenerational assault.

It's an all-out blitz on everything previous generations held as sacred. So a tidy recipe has to be concocted that both destroys what went before and replaces what went before with something new. Enter the media.

While college students, many of whom moved on to become political and industry leaders, were being indoctrinated in Marxist values, the general population had to be prepared to accept — had to be primed to embrace — radical notions as not really that radical. So the news and entertainment media got to work.

There has always been a streak of anti-establishmentism in journalistic circles. Indeed, keeping a check on authority is the main reason journalism exists. Authority should be viewed with a suspicious eye simply because it is the authority. So the news media already had the preexisting DNA to be useful in overthrowing the old order.

As college students, fresh off their Marxist training and diplomas in hand from prestigious universities and schools of journalism, began tipping the scales in numbers, news "coverage" began shifting. In the attempt to destroy the old order, sympathetic notes had to be struck — meaning victims had to be created to show the inherent unfairness of the establishment and the consequent need to overthrow it.

What colleges and the media bet on — went all in on — was the ignorance and stupidity of the masses. It was a well-placed bet. Very few people fall into the category of critical thinkers — those who ask deep, probing questions to arrive at the actual truth.

Most — as is expressed in the kick-butt movie Gladiator — are quite happy with "bread and circuses." As long as they can be distracted by leisure, fun and handouts of some sort or another, they can easily be led. After all, there are only 24 hours in a day for each person, and if most of those hours can be consumed with trivial stuff as well as the basics of just ordinary life, talk about a winning combination for taking control.

While the entertainment media was expanding and largely corrupting minds by stealing time from critical thought, the news media was corrupting minds by presenting a distorted reality. News media presentations always came down to nothing more than feelings. In my own news career, we were constantly told to ask almost anyone we interviewed on anything: "How does that make you feel?" Not, "What are your thoughts on this or that," but, "What are your feelings?" The great ignorant masses fell for it hook, line and sinker — and still do.

On this 50th anniversary weekend of Roe, for example, think about how all this came to be. A pregnant woman was presented in the media as a victim. She should have "rights." The big, bad, mean government is crushing her — destroying her life and any chances for "bettering" herself. Back in the day, there was nothing short of a cavalcade of these stories flooding newspapers and TV outlets: story after endless story of victim women, heroic doctors — tears galore, feelings as far as the eye could see.

In the maelstrom of distortions and half-truths, what was forgotten and cast aside was the very heart of the issue — the life in the womb. But you never got to see an interview with him. He didn't get to cry. He was never portrayed as the victim; his rights were never discussed. Ignorant, unthinking masses embraced the "victimhood" of the pregnant woman constantly pushed by the news media.

Of course, the entertainment media presented its own version in movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Cider House Rules and even the incredibly popular CBS TV sitcom Maude, which aired a two-part special one month before Roe was handed down, casting abortion as an "emotional" decision.

The influence of media today is so dominant that even Elon Musk can't resist talking about it: "Why did American media go from questioning the State and 'speaking truth to power' to doing their bidding?" The answer to that question is actually pretty simple. The concept of truth — objective correctness and error — no longer exists.

Thanks to the collusion between academia and media, students are now conditioned to obey authority, not question it. And the reason they can't question it is because they no longer really possess the requisite skill set to do so. They can't think; they just emote. They emote and then attach ridiculous talking points to their emotions to try and support them in some intellectual-sounding way. They fail miserably.

The same is true in the most important of all disciplines: theology and philosophy. Differences in theology absolutely matter when contradictory things are being proposed. And a person must possess some skill at critical thinking to comprehend in the first place that various positions are contradictory. That some points here or there happen to align does not make unimportant the essential points that are in contradiction.

We see this within Christianity, in Catholic teaching versus the enormously wide range of Protestant positions. There are way too many contradictions to simply walk away and assert, "Well, we have lots of things in common." Not really, not where the rubber hits the road.

Politicians, for example, from all sides, each assert we are all American. I believe in the Constitution, blah blah — all the while, no, they don't. Are there overlaps of belief in those competing political views? Of course there are. That doesn't excuse someone from papering over the actual differences and pretending they don't matter. They do — because in politics, people's material lives are affected by those differences.

In theology and philosophy, people's eternal destinies are affected by those differences. But society has been conditioned to believe that truth (as a concept) is now determined by your feelings. Therefore, differences don't really matter all that much. Everything is basically the same. Why can't we all just get along?

Academia and media have not only brought this about, but they each continue to sustain it. They keep betting  — and winning — on stupid. America's problems are spiritual, and the spiritual realm is what plays out in the material order. A crisis in the world is visible because there is first a crisis in the soul.

TRANSCRIPT

Just before we begin, we'd like to say "thank you" to everyone who has contributed to our End of the Year Campaign as well as invite those of you who have not yet done so to please click on the provided link.

As you know, Church Militant reports on affairs in the Church that damage souls and cripple the spread of the gospel message, and we do it like few others. It costs a lot to run this operation, so your donations are necessary and much appreciated.

And in keeping with that type of reporting, Church Militant has been made aware of what one person with knowledge described as a "giant slush fund" for the U.S. bishops. It appears to pass as an insurance company called Catholic Mutual, headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, in a $9-million building that doesn't seem to have many workers (at least judging from the parking lot during regular working hours).

It is an insurance company. In fact, it is a massive insurance company. But on its website — and here's the really weird twist — Catholic Mutual says plainly, "As part of the Catholic Church, Catholic Mutual is the leading provider of property, liability and employee-benefit coverage ... currently serving 134 dioceses and archdioceses and 200 Catholic religious orders."

There are some strange things here. For example, the line that Catholic Mutual is "part of the Catholic Church" is a little vague. It's actually yes and no. It's true that bishops of the Church run the insurance agency. Church Militant has learned it's actually listed as its own church, but there doesn't appear to be any specific, direct tie to the Church.

Furthermore, how can an insurance company really be "Catholic" — just because bishops set it up? It is a corporation and only associated with the Church because of the bishops. And because it is a business, it should be able to have its finances examined. But because the bishops set it up, it is free from all scrutiny.

What is known is that enormous — "outrageous" was the word used by some clergy Church Militant spoke to — monthly premiums are paid by individual parishes, and they are not allowed to shop on the open market. The bishops force their parishes to pay into this insurance pool.

And moreover, in recent years, as the premiums have increased, the deductibles have also actually increased, as reported to Church Militant by various pastors. That's not how insurance (of any kind) works. The higher you pay for your monthly premium, the lower your deductible is supposed to be. You don't have both go up.

But Catholic Mutual is completely free from any oversight or scrutiny because of the hierarchy's machinations. Thousands of parishes are forced to pay thousands and thousands of dollars every month into this insurance company. Years go by, quite often, before any parish ever makes a claim, especially with higher-than-should-be deductibles.

In addition, multiple religious orders are paying monthly premiums. Catholic Mutual has published that 134 dioceses and archdioceses are members. That figure represents thousands of parishes of the nation's roughly 16 thousand. Factor in all the religious orders also paying monthly premiums, and it becomes pretty clear that a massive amount of money is pouring into the bishops' insurance coffers every month — likely in excess of $50 million, every month. 

That's a huge amount of money just accumulating in that building. More than half a billion each year, and Catholic Mutual has been around for decades. Which, if any, of these funds are ever paid out? Who keeps track of them? Where's the oversight? In what and how are they invested?

This is absolutely insane. A body of men — the bishops — who lied to the faithful for decades about gay clergy raping teenage boys, and now deliberately bankrupting themselves to avoid payouts, is sitting on billions and billions of dollars, completely free from scrutiny because they claim to be religious. This is as immoral as hell.

Not a Catholic in America should give a penny to anything related to the corrupt, establishment Church. These men are beyond corrupt. They have access to, likely, billions of dollars and never breathe a word about it to anyone. We have no idea what this is being used for. We do know we've never seen a homeless bishop and certainly not a starving one.

Virtually no Catholic in America knows about this, and yet there it is. Why should bishops not have to explain this? They are constantly fleecing the flock, and yet over there, on the side, they have a giant slush fund that you can bet your bottom dollar is being used, at least in part, for immoral activity. These men are immoral and have access to virtually unlimited amounts of cash. That is a deadly combination. They need to open the books, immediately.

Using this group, priests are forced to pay for their car insurance, parish premiums, health insurance, all of it. The bishops will not allow parishes to shop around for lower rates, so what you're dealing with here is forced monopoly. And remember, the money pastors have to pay to the bishops' slush fund is your money.

And moreover, what's to stop a bishop or diocese from laundering hundreds of millions through this outfit? The answer is, absolutely nothing — especially if they are all in on it. "Slush fund" doesn't come close to describing what's going on here. In fact, you've got to wonder why the IRS hasn't descended on Catholic Mutual and said to open the books. This is a multi-billion-dollar insurance company posing as a church, nothing more.

For years now, Church Militant has been saying that the hierarchy is an international gay crime syndicate. The "gay" part has pretty much been established. The "criminal" part is likewise well established. Well, here is the "syndicate" part. You need to start demanding answers, and that means priests as well as the laity. Stop giving these liars and thieves anything. Let them dip into their multi-billion-dollar slush fund.

TRANSCRIPT

Catholic hymns — meaning sacred songs — are wonderful teaching aids. Deep truths are translated into simple lyrics and transmitted to meditative rhythms.

For example, the beautiful hymn "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is a huge favorite. Every line is pregnant with deep theology, but one verse, in particular, has a very revealing line.

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The world (creation) is ordered by God, and it's not just ordered but ordered mightily. The power of the Holy Trinity transcends all creation and keeps it in existence — keeping it in right relation to Him, to Itself and to each other.

The breath of the Holy Spirit permeates all life and blows its life into everything, making us partakers in the divine life — echoing that we are made in the image and likeness of God. God the Holy Spirit keeps all immersed in the mighty order established by the Creator.

However, when man used his God-given free will to transgress and go astray, God did not abandon him. He sent a Savior, ordained in the divine mind from all eternity, to take us back from the power and rule of Satan. The entirety of Catholic life is summed up in this truth, as well as this verse.

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What we anticipate here in Advent and celebrate at Christmas is the very truth that we are saved from Satan's power if we only embrace salvation. This is the good news.

Man's natural destiny is damnation; he is unable to save himself. But God's love for man — even to the point of sending his own Son as our Savior — is indeed a cause of comfort as well as joy.

The good news is just that: God Himself injected Himself into our demolished world that had become the dominion of Satan and opened up a door or a window by which we could escape his power.

God Himself had to do this. This is the glory of the Faith, the reason for existence. Remember all this as Advent winds down, and Christmas begins to dawn. And, yes, feel free to leave a comment about our Church Militant trio.