Church Militant The Vortex Feed

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As the culture and Church continue crumbling around us, it's important to make sure you tune in to (plug in to) a reliable source for your news.

But no organization bringing you truthful takes on the news operates in the ether, out "there."

Such an organization in the Catholic world is completely dependent on the people bringing you the news — that they are completely faithful.

They can't be supportive of schism or heresy or anything of the like. That's why it's important for you to know who is bringing you the news.

Here at Church Militant, we have an incredible group of producers and reporters with degrees in theology, lots of experience and proper training in actual journalism (not just point-of-view pieces).

Bottom line: If it isn't rooted solidly in actual Catholicism, you can be easily misled.

Recently we gathered a group of Church Militant reporters and produced a roundtable with them, so you can get to know them better. Here are some portions of that Church Militant reporter roundtable.

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If you'd like to watch the whole jam session, please click on the provided link. It's critical you know the backgrounds and faithfulness to authentic Catholicism of those who bring you Catholic news.

Again, just click on the link — we think you'll really enjoy it.

On Feb. 13, 2004, Fr. John Minkler was called into a private meeting with Bp. Howard Hubbard in the diocese of Albany, New York. Two days later, Minkler was dead. In this first-ever, in-depth investigation into the death of the whistleblower priest, Christine Niles tries to answer the question, What happened to Fr. Minkler?

Support for Special Projects comes from the general fund of Saint Michael's Media. Donations made via this form will be used for general expenses, including Special Projects.

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He's headquartered in the scandal-plagued diocese of Scranton, and every show he produces is completely no holds barred.

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The host is Paul Ciaccia, an extremely dedicated and faithful Catholic, who is sick to death of the corruption and cover-up and lack of accountability of the U.S. bishops.

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When Vatican II charged the laity with taking up the business of evangelization, the Council Fathers may have said more than they knew at the time.

It's clear now that way too many bishops simply do not believe the Faith, so the work of catechesis and evangelization has largely fallen to the faithful, and many of them, many of us, are demanding the truth be proclaimed — not politically correct, woke garbage.

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If you would like to see the entire interview with The Angry Catholic and me, please just click on the provided link. It is well worth the watch — trust us.

Click here to read the letter

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In a story this explosive, credibility and integrity are everything. To that point, full disclosure: I have personally known Fr. Pavone since our overlapping days at St. Joseph's Seminary in New York, known as Dunwoodie back in the late 1980s. He was every bit committed to the cause of life then as he is now.

We have been in touch multiple times over the many years we have known each other, and this time is no different. I spoke with Father, Sunday (late morning), and we spoke for about 40 minutes. He was not evasive or nontransparent. Every question I put to him, he answered directly. Transparency is the heart of the claim here.

Catholic News Agency, which seems woefully unaware of journalistic standards, has still not, as of this recording, published the letter. Church Militant has — it's right there, available by clicking on the link. Yet CNA, in a major breach of journalistic professionalism, sent an email to Fr. Pavone asking for his response to a letter he had not seen nor was even aware of. In the news world, you just do not do that.

It's a breach of every ethical standard to essentially blackmail someone to respond to something about him that the person has not seen, and — very important here —  that you will not show him. This leads to the much larger question of credibility and corruption, and the lack of justice and just plain old fairness, which is now standard in the Church. Bishops will not answer questions. The Catholic media who obey them don't play by the ethical rules, and no one gets to question the bishops or their lackeys or their tactics.

It's immoral to operate like this because it causes scandal. Catholic News Agency was duty-bound to publish the letter if they had it in their possession. They should have, at the very least, shared it with Fr. Pavone when asking for his response — but they didn't.

Catholic News Agency's slipshod article never raised the obvious question that if the congregation kicked Pavone out of the priesthood on Nov. 9, why did Apostolic Nuncio Christophe Pierre wait more than a month to inform the bishops of the United States? Why did he not inform Fr. Pavone first or at least close to the same time? Why was the letter transmitted to CNA before Fr. Pavone even knew about it?

If CNA couldn't publish the letter because it was given on condition of anonymity, then it doesn't get to "talk about it" and then run a story on it and provide absolutely no context or proof or support. And you don't ambush the subject of the letter without showing it to him.

Father Pavone told me he was shocked at the possibility because he had been told since the date of the letter (again, Nov. 9), that "very high" — his words — authorities in the Vatican were speaking personally with Pope Francis about his case, and a "simple resolution" (again, his words) was in the works. Catholic News Agency made no mention of that.

Catholic News Agency and EWTN are now wholly operating according to concerns of the U.S. bishops, who managed to force Mother Angelica to resign and seized control of the entire operation, consolidating it as a force to promote neocon Catholicism, also known as the Church of Nice. Anyone who doesn't follow suit with niceness and politeness eventually comes face to face with these cowardly Catholics who make their living off the ignorance of half-plugged-in Catholics.

To report this story at all without also publishing the letter is a crossing of the journalistic line, which is just the latest in a long series of such crossings. So, as it stands now, the hierarchy once again has its way. A priest who challenged corruption routinely is shunted to the sidelines. 

They have no accountability for their actions, no transparency, no having to explain anything, and their little in-house mouthpiece posing as a "news" agency gets to break the code of professional conduct to carry their water. And, again, they are likewise unaccountable. The Catholic media world is a joke. And then, of course, looking to capitalize on the news, there are the expected calls to go into schism from that side of the nutjob world.

One major outfit has, of course, cranked up the sign-this-petition machinery to get your email and later send you donation requests. It's disgusting. But one thing that did come out loud and clear and without any question surrounding it: Fr. Pavone said, in the face of all this, "I'm sticking with the Church. No matter how corrupt the various clergy may be, it's never an excuse to go into schism or heresy."

In every crisis that comes along, the parasites come along with it — whether it's from the Church of Nice establishment carrying the water for the bishops or from the let's-push-schism crowd, happy to leech off yet another scandal. It's agenda Catholicism, and, once again, it's able to flourish because of the homosexual men in miters and their allies who continue to allow the faithful to be rocked and buffeted by one scandal after another.

Notice in the letter the telling line from the Apostolic Nuncio Christophe Pierre where he says Fr. Pavone is a "high-profile figure," and this case may be "a matter of interest among the faithful." He even went so far as to write a little talking-point memo for the U.S. bishops, just to keep everyone on the same narrative. Let's just say everything they accuse Fr. Pavone of is true — that he is such a horrible man that he no longer has a place in the priesthood. Is this how you go about handling the case? Really?

This is all hard evidence clearly indicting the culture of corruption that the hierarchy has now embraced. If you are looking for justice, fairness, straightforwardness — do not look to these men. They are deceivers of the first magnitude, and they get away with it because they hide behind their robes and offices.

We will be keeping you updated on all this as events unfold and become clear. And tomorrow, with a special focus on James Martin, we'll be asking, Which is worse, blasphemy or out-and-out heresy?

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That they can't see that (what everyone else clearly sees) is extremely disturbing. But then again, this is how these men operate. Nothing is ever transparent. Almost nothing is done above board. You can't get a straight answer about anything out of anyone attached to the establishment.

Without my speaking to specifics of the ruling from Rome that Frank Pavone has been laicized, look at everything else surrounding this case. As we discussed yesterday in The Vortex, a letter to the bishops from apostolic nuncio Abp. Christophe Pierre was leaked from inside to the Catholic News Agency.

Why? What was the purpose of leaking that letter? Who leaked it, even before Pavone or his canonist had been informed of the Holy See's decision (which had been made a whole month earlier)? Bad form, fellows, even for your lot. Imagine being delivered a death sentence, which laicization is for a priest, and everyone else knowing it before you. And then, broadening the circle, we have to engage in some what-about questions. What about James Martin and his case compared to Frank Pavone's? That is a more than fair comparison to be made.

In the nuncio's letter to the U.S. bishops, he included some talking points to them to ward off criticism from laity he correctly anticipated would lose their minds once the news got around that Fr. Frank Pavone is no longer "Father." In his talking points to the bishops, he made sure to include that they tell the faithful he had been found guilty of "persistent disobedience of the lawful instruction of his diocesan bishop."

OK, let's, for the moment, say all of that is true. Let's say there was no backroom stuff going on, no sideways discussions in the halls of the USCCB, and that Pavone's work in the pro-life movement was not a huge thorn and even source of embarrassment for the hierarchy that doesn't seem to care one iota about the evil of abortion. Let's say that Pavone's involvement in the Trump (who many of the bishops loathe) campaign had no involvement whatsoever in any of this.

If the standard for kicking a priest out of the priesthood is "persistent disobedience," then it seems like justice demands that the standard be applied evenly — which brings us to the case of James Martin. While Pavone was dumped for persistent disobedience to his bishop, does not the question arise, in the case of James Martin, that a priest can be persistently disobedient to Christ?

After all, and though it may come as a shock to various members of the hierarchy, the Son of God does actually outrank them. When a priest is disobedient to a bishop, that bishop's authority comes from Christ, so it is, in the end, disobedience to Christ, which, of course, all sin ultimately is by everyone. So what about the case of James Martin, who makes a living blurring the truth of Christ, the Supreme Shepherd?

Martin's "expertise" is in sodomy, specifically, and homosexuality, generally. He constantly and purposefully conflates the lines between the sin of sodomy and the condition of homosexuality. And he has made a career of walking right up to the line, as close as possible, hundreds of times, with the deliberate intent of confusing the faithful.  

For example, a while back, Martin, who is prolific in his tweets and social media postings in constantly undermining Church teaching, went after Sacred Scripture. He tweeted this: "Where the Bible mentions [same-sex sexual] behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether the biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctioned slavery as well and nowhere attacked it as unjust."

The issue is whether the Bible is right. Seriously? Well, if there is an "issue," it would necessarily include, by Martin's own words, the possibility that Scripture is wrong. That is the whole point of that tweet, after all. How on God's green earth is that not heresy? How is that not disobedience — not to a local shepherd, but to the Supreme Shepherd?

Martin has hundreds of thousands of people following him on social media. There isn't a Catholic with knowledge of him, who doesn't know all this about him — that he undermines the Church's teaching at every turn. He leads souls astray, by his vague yet thinly veiled attacks on the inerrancy of Scripture and the Church's moral teaching — infallible, divinely protected moral teaching, by the way, bishops.

Yet no bishop ever confronts this man — none of them. I did, when in Rome, back in the run-up to the Amazon Synod and the ugliness of the whole Pachamama garbage. I walked right up to Martin and confronted him about his "preaching." He tried to employ charm and smile and deflect, but I didn't let him off the hook. I have no authority over Martin. So if a layman can do that, why can't a bishop (any bishop), the Church, the pope, anyone in authority over him, his superior? This double standard not only looks bad — it is bad. 

And people of goodwill look at all this and rightly protest not necessarily the decision to kick out Fr. Pavone (a decision shrouded in secrecy and God knows what else, including the possibility of ill will) but the hypocrisy of saying disobedience to a local bishop is so bad, but disobedience to the teachings of the Church — not so much.

That is what is at the heart of the outrage. And bishops, that outrage is merited and your lot owns every bit of it. You are detestable cowards who run the Church like your own private fiefdom. That doesn't mean you don't have the authority — you absolutely do. But your abuse of that authority will damn the lot of you. Just as any other person who betrays a trust, an authority, an oath. Repent, or die in your sins. And no amount of talking points or a nice little memo from a nuncio will get a hearing at your judgment.

James Martin needs to be kicked out of the priesthood, and someone needs to file a canon law case against him for heresy. Heresy is far worse than blasphemy. The bishops won't because he's one of them. That will not bode well when they are being charged by the Supreme Shepherd with disobedience to Him.

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In fact, quite the opposite: He is celebrated by bishops and given platforms in their dioceses from which to corrupt the minds and hearts of the faithful. Cardinals endorse his pro-sodomy books, writing glowing reviews of his propaganda because it dovetails nicely with their own perverted agendas.

Even the pope sits down with this man, lending an air of credibility to his filth, even giving him a post on a Vatican committee. But with all that said, an inescapable comparison arises between the pro-gay Jesuit and another infamous Martin: Martin Luther.

In 1517, Martin Luther began his march down the road to heresy and eventual excommunication. In 2017, exactly 500 years later, James Martin began his march down the road to heresy, and all that awaits him is excommunication. In fact, the question seriously needs to be asked how this man has not yet been excommunicated, sharing the same verdict from the Church that Martin Luther got whacked with. Their cases are very similar.

Although Luther worked his way up to his break from the Church through incremental steps, denying various teachings along the way, it did take some time for him to completely lose it. But when he did lose it, he lost it big-time. He denied virtually everything the Church teaches beyond the most basic, rudimentary things; but along the way, he jettisoned all sorts of other stuff.

Here's the reality: Catholic teaching is completely and totally unified because its origin is Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. And since there is nothing but unity within the Trinity, nothing which emerges from It can be anything else than unity. So, yes, Catholic teaching is a single, unified whole. It is always an all-or-nothing proposition; it must be.

But when you pull on even a single thread, you threaten the entire framework. So when a crazy cleric in the 16th or 21st century comes along pulling on a thread, it won't be long before he starts pulling on other threads. Luther started with the corruption of the hierarchy — some things don't ever seem to change — but moved from problems with the leaders of the Church to the teachings of the Church.

It wasn't long before he was denying Purgatory, the communion of saints, the priesthood, the Mass and Sacred Scripture's role in the Church. That's a lot of threads to be pulling on, but he did so until he brought down Christendom and set the stage with his heresy for billions of souls to be denied the truth of Christ.

What they got instead was the truth of Luther, sometimes, occasionally, here or there coinciding with the truth of Christ. But when a conflict arose, it was the truth of Christ that always got tossed overboard (like, for example, Martin's destruction of the Old Testament as well as his perversion of the New Testament). In addition to tossing out whole or parts of seven books of the Old Testament, he inserted the word "alone" into St. Paul's letter to the Romans, saying, "We are justified by faith alone."

That's not what Paul said, but Luther didn't care — he did it anyway. He eventually corrected his action, but the damage was done. Right down to today, hundreds of millions of people who claim to be Christian insist that all they need is faith, sola fide, and they are saved. Not even close: Christ Himself repeatedly denies this and insists on much more than just faith. Faith is the first step, not the only step.

But as we said, when a conflict between Christ and Martin arose, Luther conveniently always sided with himself. Ultimately, what Martin Luther did was deny the authority of the Church, which, bottom line, is the authority of Christ. Our Blessed Lord gave His own authority to the Church, so to deny Her authority is to deny the Giver of that authority, the Son of God.

Now fast-forward 500 years later to another Martin, who, like his forebear, is also denying the authority of the Church. He's a lot more subtle about it than Luther, but make no mistake, James Martin is every bit as destructive as Luther and indeed much more. Luther at least had the integrity to get the hell out; James Martin remains, able in his collar to inflict much more damage than without it.

Martin Luther had his agenda, and James Martin has his as well. James Martin's agenda is to normalize, in the Church, sodomy and homosexual acts; to make gay sex seem as something, well, acceptable, even holy. He has declared that those who are attracted to the same sex are "born that way" — no, they aren't.

He accepts same-sex "marriage" — no such thing, not in any sacramental manner. He puts out that the Bible may be wrong about homosexuality in its condemnation of it — no, it isn't. He says the language of the Catechism is wrong when it says homosexuality is "disordered." In fact, there is nothing that the Church promulgates about homosexuality from a moral standpoint, that Martin doesn't either object to, undermine or both.

His entire social media empire is nothing but a monumental testament to his denial of the authority of the Church in Her teachings. But like Martin Luther, James Martin, also having pulled one thread, starts pulling others. He says Jesus didn't really have a clear idea of His mission, may not have known Who He was and needed the help of fallen humans to understand the scope of His mission — what a load of garbage. All of that absolutely and completely flies in the face of Church teaching, which translates into a denial of the Church's authority.

Small wonder he suggests that Jesus didn't really "get Himself," because if that were true, then it would follow that the Church also doesn't "get Herself," which, again, would mean all these teachings could be wrong and in need of "reimagining," "reformulating." Like we said, Catholicism is an all-or-nothing proposition. Because of Her claims, the Church must be either all correct in her teachings or all wrong. In this case, there is no middle way.

Martin is a Jesuit (by the way, Luther was an Augustinian) and, being a Jesuit, knows all this ecclesiology (how the Church sees Herself and understands Herself) quite well. She is the Bride of Christ; the spotless, immaculate Bride of Christ; the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven, as a bride adorned for her husband.

That last line is from St. John's Apocalypse, what Protestants call the "Book of Revelation," a book that Martin Luther scoffed at, saying, "A book of revelation should at least be revealing." James Martin likewise mocks Scripture by calling into question its inerrancy. Where could you possibly find in the Scriptures that Jesus Christ was unsure of Who He was, what His mission was?

Yet Martin pursues a lie, looking through the pages for any stray syllable that can be twisted to his own agenda. Theology is not an end in itself, and when the Church has settled something, it is settled. Theology, at that point, steps in and helps us gain new appreciation for an existing truth. It does not create new truth, but that is what Martin does. Sometimes (most of the time, in fact), it is subtle, planting just enough doubt to lead to error.

But sometimes, it is straight-up heretical, like the claim that Our Blessed Lord needed the Syrophoenician woman to help Him understand that His mission was for the gentiles as well, not just the Jews. Well, thank God Jesus just happened to stumble into that town at that time, or all of us gentiles would have been pretty much doomed if that woman hadn't pointed that out to the Son of God.

Likewise, thank God that God had the humility to listen to her and change His mind and come to a better understanding of Himself. What an insane, spiritually poisonous exegesis Martin inflicts on the faithful and, more to the point, is allowed to inflict — allowed by the very same cowards in miters who have permitted disaster to be visited upon the Church, in all quarters of the Church, be it heresy or schism.

Each leads away from the Church and the truth of authentic Catholicism. Like Martin Luther, James Martin is one of many pied pipers leading the children of God over the cliff. He just uses heresy as his favorite instrument; others use schism. James Martin needs to be put on trial for heresy.

He needs to explain in full detail, without the use of his diabolical vagueness, precisely not only what he believes about the Church and Her teachings, but also that he absolutely and without any reservation accepts and believes with divine and Catholic faith everything the Church proposes for salvation — and that includes, most especially in his case, that men having sex with men is, at all times and everywhere, evil.

Other priests cannot be laicized or marginalized for much lesser reasons and this Martin not held to account as well. Martin, of the Luther sort, was excommunicated. James Martin, for the good of his soul and all those he currently plunders, must also be excommunicated for his manifest evil and heresy. He must recant and repent, or, as St. Paul says, be cast out and handed over to the Devil.

The bishops had better come to understand, in short order, that they are going to face judgment on these very matters when they die. They don't get to remain silent about this marauder. They have let a wolf into the fold, again with the name of Martin.

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There are all sorts of angles and levels of the divine mystery and glory worth plumbing, but let's go to perhaps one of the most basic. Since we are, after all, celebrating a birthday, let's zero in on the woman actually giving birth, making the birthday possible — Mary, both virgin and, never forget, a general, a 12-star general.

I grew up in the U.S. military, as many of you know, and Mary as general has always been easily relatable for me — more on that in a moment. Through the divine will, the divine will from all eternity, this woman brought forth, in time, the Author of grace. Does anybody really believe that the divine will, which accorded Mary the singular highest grace any human could ever receive, would suddenly pull back and reduce her role in salvation history?

She herself, bearing God within her immaculate womb, declared that all generations would call her blessed. That little nugget, recall, is brought to us courtesy of the Holy Spirit, who inspired St. Luke to record her prophecy — which makes sense since the Holy Trinity was speaking through the young Virgin from Nazareth.

Next to the Church's authentic teaching on the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the teachings about Our Blessed Mother are the most commonly rejected, completely misunderstood and blasted routinely by non-Catholic Christians. Some Protestants, for example, willingly accept the teachings of the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, declaring and reaffirming Jesus Christ's divinity. But the same Church that declares that teaching is immediately wrong (in their eyes) when it declares in another council that she is Theotokos, God-Bearer, the Mother of God.

They don't necessarily reject it in theory but certainly do so in practice. They give her no thought, no honor, no respect, except the once-a-year moment when they stick up a plastic lit-up Mary in their front yard. In the now overused Protestant statement and marketing scheme "What Would Jesus Do?" they seem to overlook that Jesus did not disrespect His mother, nor did He ignore her. He performed His first miracle at her request, even going so far as to intimate to her that His revealing of His true identity would begin her own trek to Calvary. Once there, from the Cross He entrusted the Church (in the person of St. John, the beloved disciple) to her maternal care.

Our Lady — specially chosen by Heaven to be the new Eve, known in the mind of God from all eternity, given the highest grace that could be given any human — declares that throughout all human history, she will be called blessed. She enjoys the most intimate relationship with the Holy Trinity, being daughter to the Father, mother to the Son and spouse of the Holy Spirit. She brings about the first public miracle of her Divine Son, becomes His most loyal disciple, suffers like no other human could possibly suffer, is present at the descent of her Spouse at Pentecost — and gets nothing from Protestants other than a nod of the head once a year and, even then, only passingly.

Recall that there is a military aspect to all this, a spiritual war; and Mary is no passive participant in this. In fact, scattered all over the scrolls of Scripture, Mary comes up repeatedly. In the Old Testament, right there on the very first page, in what is known as the protoevangelium (the first gospel), Chapter 3 of Genesis recounts the Lord God's cursing of the Serpent, and not just cursing, but promising his eventual defeat by the woman, a literal crushing defeat: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. You will lie in wait and strike at her heel and she will crush your head."

Indeed, Mary was present at Golgotha ("the place of the skull") for the crushing of the Serpent's head, brought about by her obedience to the will of God. In the Song of Songs, Mary is prefigured as the heavenly general: "Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array?"

In the apocalypse, written by St. John (in whose house the general resided for years after Jesus ascended into Heaven) recognizing Mary as the general and echoing that passage from the Song of Songs, he tells us, "And a great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and over her head a crown of 12 stars." Hidden in the simplicity of the stable 2,000 years ago, draped in humility, was Satan's greatest enemy, the General-Virgin who would crush his proud head.

Satan is a creature and so, too, is Mary. He fell to the lowest depths, owing to his pride. She ascended to the highest heights, owing to her humility. It is God Himself Who chose to have Satan defeated in this manner, the greatest military defeat of all time. Something which looked like an impossible victory became the most humiliating, crushing defeat in history.

And every bit of it was brought to you by a simple yes in response to the angel Gabriel sent by God the Father. Here is a thought to meditate on from St. Methodius: "Jesus said, 'Honor your father and mother.' Therefore, in order that He might observe His own decree, he gave all grace and honor to His Mother!" When you approach the crèche on Christmas Day and the rest of the Christmas season, do not leave without offering a deep prayer of gratitude to the Mother of God.

It's always important to keep things in their proper order, their natural sequence, as one truth builds upon another. As we ponder the glory of our redemption, remember this: Had she not said to the angel Gabriel, "Let it be done unto me according to thy word," not a living being could have been saved because, without her, we would never have known salvation clothed in flesh. He drew His flesh, His humanity from her because He desired to. He created her to be the single human most closely related to Him. That accords her the title mother and general because God wills it that way.

From the entire staff of Church Militant and St. Michael's Media, a very holy, happy Christmas to you and all those dear to you.

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The Church is in a horrible state right now. We all know this. Anyone with a pulse recognizes this. What we are witnessing almost every day, in new and more terrible ways, is the culmination of decades and decades of treachery, and, yes, it stretches back to way before Vatican II. The post-council era has certainly accelerated the crisis, no doubt — but it would be naive to think this all came about sort of out of the blue.

But for those who are dumbstruck at the horror, it can seem that way, certainly. This is why the role Church Militant plays in these days is so vital to support. People can not only fall off the ship on the left; they can also fall off the right side. Schism exists as well as heresy.

The faithful must guard against both, and they must guard against each with great diligence. From our first days, this apostolate has always sought to fight the corruption by exposing it, while also guarding against overreaction to it. There are many ways to leave the Church but only one way to remain in Her.

You can leave through apostasy, heresy or schism. Every single person, throughout our 2,000 years, who has chosen any of those paths has believed, in all sincerity, they were right and the Church was wrong. However sincere they may have been, they were sincerely wrong. Likewise, just like Martin Luther, at the time, none of them thought they were leaving the Church, but that the Church had left them, and the "real Church" consisted in some other form, or place, liturgy, locale, whatever.

Also interesting to remember, every time there was a massive groundswell reaction of either heresy, schism or apostasy, it was always a reaction to the corruption of the hierarchy. The evil of the bishops is what brought about the reaction, but the decision of the laity (and some clerics) sealed the deal.

What Church Militant is committed to is encouraging people, emboldening them to remain faithful to the Church even in the face of these monsters in miters. Martin Luther was convinced the Church was so corrupt that it could no longer be the Church, and a "return to tradition" was the answer. For him, "that tradition" was the first century, the early Church.

Henry VIII died convinced he was a good Catholic, even though he murdered faithful clergy and destroyed hundreds of monasteries. His rationale: The realm needed an heir, needed to be preserved. Of course, that also included adultery and cavorting, conveniently.

Even before Luther, whose revolt succeeded, largely owing to the introduction of the printing press, there were various earlier revolts, led by clergy. They were reacting, or better said, overreacting to the scandals of the Avignon papacy, also known as the Babylonian captivity quickly followed by the Western schism with its three simultaneous claimants to the throne of Peter.

These scandals endured more than a century, and people viewed the Church in terms of Her leaders, priming them to leave when the opportunity arose. A hundred years before Martin Luther there was Jan Hus, for whom the Hussites are named. Hus was a priest calling for reforms long before Luther was ever known. He was burned at the stake in 1415.

There was, of course, the Dutch Catholic theologian Erasmus also strongly agitating for reform against the scandals and corruption. Same with John Wycliffe, yet another Catholic priest who paved the way for the English Reformation as he protested the luxurious lives of the English clergy. Their initial observations were largely correct. Avarice, power, lust, you name it, the hierarchy was a sordid mess.

However, and this is the major point, eventually, their paths led them out of the Church. Some through schism, others through heresy, and others through apostasy. And they were later joined and supported by other Catholic clerics who continued the damage.

Whether through bad theology, a misguided desire for "tradition," or rejection of papal authority (even when exercised by a brute), it was Catholic clergy who paved the way, and Catholic clergy who led the march (out of the Church) of millions and now billions of souls down through the centuries.

These men have their modern-day descendants who must be opposed, in addition to the corrupt bishops who give rise to them. It doesn't matter who the man or archbishop is, they each think their response is the right one. Any response that leads to schism, heresy or apostasy, even if the followers reject those labels, is never the right response.

We here at Church Militant realize that we have to thread the needle each day; that, yes, the path is indeed narrow and sometimes (oftentimes, in fact) hard to navigate. Nevertheless, it must be followed and adhered to. We have no choice. Catholics can fall off the right side of the ship (schism) as well as the left (heresy), or, in the case of apostasy, try to just sink the ship.

We will continue to fight the overarching corruption by exposing it every chance we get. But we will also remain absolutely steadfast in encouraging the faithful to remain and fight and not desert our Mother, no matter how appealing it may be, convinced of a self-righteous, incorrect response to what is manifest injustice.

In these troubled times, very troubled times, this is this apostolate's response to these times, and we will never waver from this approach. Disobedience comes in many forms, and each needs to be confronted and called out.

If you can see fit to support our work, our mission and vision, please click the link and make whatever end-of-year donation you are able to. Thank you in advance for your kindness.

TRANSCRIPT

Surveying the collapse of nearly all that is good, certainly on a large scale, many people are stunned, shocked — especially those of us old enough to remember a Church and nation in much different shape. That we actually sit around and have debates, discussions or even just read headlines about 10-year-olds, for example, undergoing operations to change the appearance of their bodies to the opposite sex — it's completely nuts.  

No one could have thought, even one generation ago, that any of the current conditions would be so prevalent, yet here we are. All of this, of course, suggests that things will get worse. On that score, we often hear the expression "Things will get a lot worse before they get better." The first part of that is certainly true, but the back half, "before they get better," has in there an assumption not rooted in anything realistic.

Who says things will "get better" or that there is some magical trajectory that things always improve? Most of humanity is damned. It certainly doesn't apply in the spiritual war, so why would anyone think it applies in the natural order of events? It's a Pollyanna reading of historical events. Left to their own natural arrangement, things get worse, not better. 

"Better" is only brought about by striving for it:

We intuitively know these things. Yet when it comes to looking out on the disaster that is the culture and the Church, most people (Catholics included, even good Catholics) just leave their intellects and intuitions at the door. They think reposting something on social media is somehow being in the fight. They further allow themselves to be hoodwinked into thinking that clicking on a useless online petition means they've done their part. You haven't done a thing except feel like you have.

There are the emotional, explosive responses to the bad news du jour, on which many Catholic social media personalities thrive — got to get those clicks, after all. Notice what all that has in common — it's instant gratification, in a theological context; a spiritual dopamine rush but with no real lasting effects, except, of course, that the next one has to be an even greater high.

Here at Church Militant, we deal and think in terms of the long game. Online petitions do nothing, other than give your email over for later donation requests. Posting stuff around on social media has a minimal effect at best. Yes, it's good to inform, but if it's left there, then what's the point?

We got to where we are because the communist forces, born of Freemasonry, set out on a hundred-year march, content to not get to see their actions come to fruition but content to know they would. Not one of those atheists suffered from fulfilling a need for instant gratification. Corruption takes time, sometimes a long time, to take control and completely "flip" an institution or, for that matter, even a person.

They were perfectly willing to wait, to set in motion things they knew would introduce chaos into the world. They were organized. They knew their enemy, which was the Catholic Church and the family and all its teachings based on the dignity of man, made in the image and likeness of God. They had a goal. They knew their enemy. They drew up a battle plan. They waited for the right moment to launch an assault. It was a well-crafted, well-executed plan, and it has succeeded.

Middle school students can learn about masturbation to pornography, get their biological sex characteristics cut off and even kill their children, all without their parents' knowledge, much less, consent. It took a century to get here and now, with all the momentum, it is only going to get worse.

Where is the organized counterattack? Where is the Catholic military response to this aggression? Your country, your land, has not been infiltrated. It's been invaded and is now occupied, and too many think clicking a petition or reposting some clever satire on Twitter is sufficient.

They want you to think that. It makes you feel secure, lulls you into a false sense of security, makes you feel like you are in the fight — but you're not (not in any meaningful way, that is). It's like voting Republican; sure, why not? But don't expect anything on that score, except a minor win here or there.

District of Columbia is controlled by the uniparty, also known as "the Swamp" — same thing in the Church right now. It's controlled by modernists. In political analogy, think Democrats and, assisted by self-preservationist cowards (laity as well as hierarchs), think Republicans. Exactly what getting-better scenario does any reasonable person think is going to emerge from the ecclesiastical swamp?

As long as you are a keyboard warrior, they will never have to worry about you being an actual warrior. What the communists did in order to eventually seize control by grabbing the narrative, driving the narrative, was first present the narrative. It was somewhat subtle at first, but they simply presented ideas and raised questions challenging the established order, which is to say, the moral order taught by Catholicism.

For example, 40 years (actually more) would go by between the time that sex was believed to be reserved for marriage and procreation until the sexual revolution got rid of that. Appeals were made to eugenics, in the beginning, until Hitler forced them to change their vocabulary. Eugenics was quickly replaced with the myth of overpopulation, and then, the beat carried on.

But all of this warfare happened on a million little battlefields and millions more little skirmishes around kitchen tables, holiday gatherings, classroom lectures, book publishings, media productions and so forth. It was a giant army deployed in little squads all over the culture.

Eventually, of course, the weight of millions of little victories collected into one giant victory. That's how war works. They played the long game — and that's what we do here at Church Militant. It's a hundred years' (if we are lucky) war. Yet there is little necessary aggression, no real militancy on our side. That has to be the first thing to change.

You need a fighting force before you can deploy it. Right now, the "force" resembles little else than a ragtag, confused gathering of a few people aimlessly wandering about, dazed and confused and clicking on things at their keyboards.

An army, a military, a militia — rooted in Catholic truth, trained and equipped for battle — needs to be built up. Part of all that includes knowledge of the past. How did we get here, who were the players, what did they espouse and so forth? This is a major reason we are asking for your support here at the end of the year, to keep Church Militant as the tip of the spear in this effort.

It is a hundred years' war, and the vast majority of the faithful, as well as others of goodwill, have no concept of that; and worse, they are not prepared for it. This is the single, most crucial step that needs to be taken. God Himself declares, "My people perish for lack of knowledge." It's time to become informed, not reactive. Informed, brought through the school of Catholic militancy, which is, of course, for what we were each baptized.

Please contribute whatever you can to our continuing efforts here at this apostolate, to lay the groundwork for the counterattack. It must come — or give up any hope of things "getting better" after they get worse. Without a fight, they only get worse after they get worse. 

Please click on the link and donate today. Thank you.

TRANSCRIPT

And speaking of the vital work we do here at Church Militant and St. Michael's Media, what exactly is that work? Ultimately, it's to be used to help save souls, which is, actually, the work of every baptized soul in the Church Militant. A number of people in social media seem to be completely unaware of what that term means or what we do here in relation to it.

First, the Nicene Creed (formulated almost a century before the Bible and the foundational list of beliefs of anyone baptized) contains the basic concept right there in the explicit announcement of belief in the communion of saints. It's almost entirely overlooked by virtually every Protestant denomination there is, but you can add to that list a failure on the part of most Catholics.

As an aside, someone is going to need to sit down with me one day and explain how someone can be so adamant in expressing a theological belief but have almost not the slightest bit of knowledge about what it is they profess to believe. It's kind of disingenuous.

Anyway, for those Catholics who go to Mass and, every single Sunday, say they believe in the communion of saints but don't have any real concept of what they are professing belief in, here it is in a nutshell: The baptized who are in a state of grace (as opposed to mortal sin), are viewed from three perspectives. Those in Heaven, who have attained the beatific vision (meaning, seeing God in the face as He really is, the vision of the blessed), these comprise the Church Triumphant.

They have attained salvation and so merited it by cooperating with the graces afforded them by Our Lord's redemption for us on the Cross. Sidebar again — redemption and salvation are two entirely different things. Bad Catholics and almost all Protestants have this completely wrong. Redemption means that the guilt of our sins on the spiritual plane has been paid for and we are now able to be saved, not that we are.

This is precisely why St. Paul commands all Christians, in his letter to the Philippians, to "work out your salvation in fear and trembling." Redemption is won only by Christ and His Passion, but salvation is something we must participate in to ever have it. No one is "saved" this side of the grave. So those who have participated in and merited their salvation by cooperating with the graces of the redemption, these are the Church Triumphant. They have won. Victory is theirs for eternity.

The second dynamic at work is the Church Purgative, those baptized souls who died in a state of grace but are not yet perfect. The beloved disciple, St. John, tells us in the Apocalypse that "nothing imperfect shall enter in," enter into Heaven — and when you think about it, how could it? If imperfect souls were walking around populating Heaven, well, how exactly would that be any different, substantively, than right now on earth? 

Likewise, as the Son of God Himself commands, "Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect." So how does someone who dies in non-deadly sin (as St. James distinguishes from deadly sin, mortal sin), how does that person achieve the beatific vision? They won't be damned because their sin is not deadly, yet they are still "in sin" and, therefore, cannot enter into the beatific vision.

Enter the Church Purgative, where God's justice and mercy collide, what Catholic theologians have named Purgatory. However, it actually predates Catholicism by centuries. The Jews believed in Purgatory for centuries before the Church, as described in 2 Maccabees, but Martin Luther conveniently tossed that book out along with six others. The souls in Purgatory are saved, but they do not yet enjoy the necessary perfection to see God in the face. They will when their purgation ends but not yet.

And this brings us to the Church Militant (a military, being militant), the theological phrase identifying the souls of the baptized still fighting to attain salvation. It is to these, to us, that St. Paul is speaking when he says to "work out your salvation." Why? Because for the very simple reason that since you have not yet secured it, you can still lose it. And, even more frightening, it is entirely up to us, each one of us.

Follow this theologic to its ultimate conclusion. God wills that all men be saved and come to knowledge of the truth. The Holy Spirit assures us of that in Sacred Scripture. That swarms of humanity are, in fact, damned in the end means they chose their damnation, chose against God's will. They rejected the love of God, the mercy of God. How did they choose against God and embrace the fires of Hell? They did it by their actions, their deeds. 

Jesus Christ Himself says, quite explicitly, If you love Me (which is necessary to be in Heaven, loving God) then you will keep my Commandments. Disobeying God, rejecting the fullness of His truth, is the ticket to damnation. And, moreover, each person consequently chooses his own eternal destiny. The Son of God personally testifies to this, at the end of Matthew's Gospel, speaking about the elect and the damned on the Last Day.

So, what do we do here at Church Militant? First, we do not, as some have accused us of, claim to be the Church Militant — that's completely stupid. However, what we do here is absolutely part of that Church Militant, the Church Militant: fight for salvation, both for ourselves and others. People must know the truth in order to conform their lives to it, and Heaven is absolutely contingent on conforming your life to the truth.

God's love is unconditional, but salvation is not. It is very much contingent on us — our choices, our deeds, our moral choices. Think of Heaven as the goal of a war. For 2,000 years, in fact, all the saints, including Paul, have spoken of attaining Heaven as a military campaign, a spiritual war. Just because some of our comrades may have successfully captured the flag, the flag of salvation, does not mean we will.  

Others among our comrades have been injured and need to be medivacked to hospitals to recover their health. They, too, have achieved victory, even if they cannot participate in it just yet. They have to recover from their wounds. Just because those comrades are also assured of victory does not mean we are. While the kingdom of evil has fallen, has been defeated, there is still much to do in the way of mop-up duty. Dangerous enemy units who refuse to stop fighting are still very much lethal, and, if you encounter one of them, unprepared, they will kill you. You will never participate in the victory that has already been won.

This is the communion of saints: those very much still fighting, the militant; those recovering from their battle injuries, the purgative; and those enjoying the spoils of war, eternal life, the triumphant. There is a deep relationship, a band of brothers, a brotherhood, a common union, a communion between these groups; and this is the communion of saints, believed in by the very first Christians, stretching back millennia.

While we (here on earth, still engaged in the fight for our salvation) know these truths, it is our responsibility to speak these truths, and we must speak them in whatever forum we find ourselves: family dinners, the internet, social media, the culture at large, politics, wherever. The truth is seldom popular — even less so, well-received — because the truth has this certain dynamic, a self-conviction aspect to it.

Why do most who hear the truth, while admittedly drawn to it, eventually walk away from it? Because once comprehended, the reality that I must change hits home, and this is where the rubber hits the road. Everyone is changed by the truth, they can't help but be. The question is, will the change be for the better or worse in a given person? On the individual's answer to that question hangs his eternal destiny, Heaven or Hell.

Here at Church Militant, we are in the battle to help as many as possible come to this truth and choose wisely, train for battle, fight the war and join the Church Triumphant. Whatever you are able to donate to this continuing work, thank you.