Church Militant The Vortex Feed

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Michael Voris clarifies the role and calling of the Catholic Church as the only Church established by Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Purchase this season on DVD

Purchase the complete The One True Faith on DVD

Michael Voris clarifies the role and calling of the Catholic Church as the only Church established by Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Purchase this season on DVD

Purchase the complete The One True Faith on DVD

Use code HalfOffOTF to get 50% off all One True Faith DVDs for a limited time! Visit the store today, and check out the terms and conditions and instructions for using a discount code.

Please consider donating using the form below to further advance the mission.

Use code HalfOffOTF to get 50% off all One True Faith DVDs for a limited time! Visit the store today, and check out the terms and conditions and instructions for using a discount code.

Please consider donating using the form below to further advance the mission.

TRANSCRIPT

They routinely poo-poo the reality of the crisis — attacking the messengers, making up excuses; whatever works best for them. You can refer to this group as the "whistling-past-the-graveyard gang."

But there is another very common knee-jerk-reaction crowd as well. We can call this gang "the silver bullet contingent." They understand the evil and its depth facing them square in the face, but instead of admitting the long-haul battle needed to combat it, they scramble about for a silver bullet — the easy-way-out approach.

So they are more inclined to turn to prophecies and visions and inner locutions.  They follow after anyone who comes along with a quick cure for what ails the world.

Both types, the whistle-past-the-graveyard gang and the silver-bullet contingent, are off base. They may be motivated by good intentions of wanting things to be right, but as the old saying goes — one that exists for a reason — the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

What needs to be embraced, in all its horror and consequent realities, is this: The world, including the Church, did not arrive at this point suddenly — and it will not pull back from it with denial or a quick cure. Where we are was arrived at over a long period of time: many players, many moving parts but one goal in mind — the destruction of Catholicism.

It's a spiritual war, every last bit of it, with many overlapping parts and players. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the bishops and hierarchy have had a major part in this still-unfolding drama.

Whether they were duped, were willing participants or were too cowardly to provide a strong pushback depends on which bishop you are talking about — but it is clear that almost none of them is up to the task of doing what needs to be done to combat all of this. In fact, it is also clear that many of these men don't actually believe the Faith.

Common sense dictates no other conclusion. Enemies of Christ cannot continue to hide behind the excuse of "prudence" in excusing themselves from the bold response that is now needed.

The faithful, like it or not, are now largely left to their own devices to learn the Faith. In fact, as many now reach that conclusion on their own and begin to explore some basics they were never taught or exposed to, they are shocked at some foundational truths the Church has always taught but they have never heard.

Huge numbers of Catholics have been duped by easy-to-hear fables and lies, like:

In short, owing to wicked and cowardly leaders, the vast majority of Catholics (who still believe in God, that is) are functioning as Protestants, and bad Protestants at that. The world goes the direction the Church goes, because only the Catholic Church — because of Who founded it — has the ability to defeat evil.

And only the most obtuse person would look around the world these days and say it is not awash in evil. So the question is, Why/how did all this happen?

Easy answer: Because the solution to it has been cast aside. Catholicism has been marginalized, and not so much by the world, although that is true, but by the leaders themselves who have made compromises with the world at every turn (especially in the past hundred years).

As we sit here today, there is not a single reason to think that these leaders have the desire or even the ability to turn things around. As Ven. Abp. Fulton Sheen said 50 years ago, it's up to the laity. The bishops cannot give what they do not have. No one can. It is a philosophical impossibility.

So as we look to the solution, ditch the silver-bullet nonsense and consider our Christmas gift offer a silver-bells approach.

Too much is at stake — meaning eternity, not patriotism and politics and so forth. Those will come into line when the spiritual order is set right and re-established, not before.

It doesn't mean a good person can't work on both at the same time, but it does mean a proper order must be created. At the top must be a solid working knowledge of the Catholic faith and a living out of it, springing from that knowledge and leading to a love of it.

Many of the Church's teachings have been twisted and distorted, wrapped up in such a manner as to empty them of their significance and import. It's high time, beyond time, for Catholics with goodwill (but not knowing what they don't know) to begin to embrace the reality that the world is off course because the Church has been betrayed from within.

So please strongly consider, this Christmas, giving a present (for yourself or others) that has the potential to really make an impact: the gift of the Catholic Faith.

Please click on the link to place your order and use the code HalfOffOTF to get the 50% discount. While you're in the Church Militant store, please look around for any other gifts you might want to buy.

There is enough consumer junk in the world.  Some of it, yes, is nice and fun, but again, it's all about the proper order. Faith first.

Thank you for your patronage, and happy viewing — and to our American audience, a blessed Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Please consider donating using the form below to further advance the mission.

TRANSCRIPT

Advent has arrived once again, and with its arrival, the twisted theology of the "homoheretics" is in full bloom as well, never missing an opportunity to make the sinful acceptable.

On Sunday, Martin tweeted out the following: "Gospel: Something new is coming. That's the message for the First Sunday of Advent. The key is noticing.  'Stay awake,' as Jesus says today. "A Gospel meditation here."

Martin claims the message for Advent is noticing that "something new is coming." He calls that noticing key. That's stupid. That's not the message, nor is it what's key about the first Sunday of Advent or any of the Sundays of Advent. Advent is about the second coming of Christ, also known as the Day of Judgment.

The inane claim that we are all supposed to just stand around and notice the King-Judge of Heaven returning to bring history to a close and render our final judgment? Come on, Jimmy. I don't think anyone will have to try and notice Christ on the clouds of Heaven. It'll be pretty obvious.

Then he goes on and links his hundreds of thousands of deceived followers to a Facebook link, with a tidy little "meditation" to ponder. The drivel drives the reader into a false belief that Advent is really just all about desire.

No, Jimmy. Advent is about preparation for our deaths when we will each face our personal judgment and be pronounced saved or damned. That is a day-to-day theme for every person, but in Advent, in particular, it is set against the backdrop of the last day, the general judgment.

There is a little link at the end of the wildly misleading meditation which takes the reader to the group "Outreach," an LGBTQ "Catholic" resource. That group espouses all the usual pro-sodomy propaganda you would imagine, dressing it up as Catholic.

"Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust. ... Make no provision for the desires of the flesh." Hmm, we wonder why that line didn't get the high-profile visibility. 

Nah. Actually, we don't wonder at all. We know why, and so do you, and so does James Martin. That line is as plain as the evil in Martin's writings, which is to say, as plain as the nose on your face.

It's fine and all to talk about the beauty of what salvation will be like and that we should all be desirous of it. For those who remained faithful to their last breath, of course, that's true. That's why the Church prays "May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace."

She does not pray for the souls of all the departed, just the faithful departed.  And there's a reason for that. Prayers are of no avail to the damned. Their fates are sealed.

To simply distort that scriptural truth and pretend everyone will enjoy it is a flat-out lie; a lie, mind you, that the U.S. hierarchy still has yet to blow up.

Martin is allowed to ride through the ranks of poorly catechized Catholics and behead them by the millions while the shepherds join him by their silence.

Does anyone really think these men are "looking forward" to the Day of Wrath, the Last Day, the day of the general judgment? They use the Scriptures as a propaganda weapon to advance their spiritual depravity. Beware these spiritual killers dressed in robes. 

That's the only question you need to concern yourselves with. If a man in robes claiming to be speaking truth fails that test, then you know who his father is — robes and collars, or not. Advent is about prepping for our own judgments, nothing else.

TRANSCRIPT

There is a massive lie within the gay community (among many) that within the Church, homosexual priests are not the problem when it comes to clerical sex abuse. That is an enormous lie, a Joseph Goebbels–sized lie.

Consider this one simple reality, a known fact: More than four out of every five sex abuse victims were postpubescent boys. That is the very definition of homosexual.

Those numbers, for the record, are from the U.S. bishops' own report they commissioned through the college of John Jay in 2004. But two years before that report, Wilton Gregory, who was president of the bishops' conference at the time, admitted that it was a homosexual problem.

Three months later — April 23, 2002 — then-Bp. Wilton Gregory stood in front of a crowded press office in the Vatican and publicly stated the following: "It is an ongoing struggle to make sure that the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men." His comments came directly in reference to the sex abuse crisis.

Likewise, in that exact same context and international press conference, Pope John Paul's spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Valls said, "People with these inclinations just can't be ordained."

As further proof, Church Militant has obtained a secret 12-page email sent to all the nation's bishops in June 2002. It's from the Catholic Medical Association and reveals the full scope of not only the tragedy, but that bishops were informed by their own professionals that this was indeed a homosexual crisis.

Some excerpts: 

Yet, with all that and much more, the bishops themselves completely dodged the issue and still do, to this very day. That detailed email was sent to them in 2002 and authored by some of the most knowledgeable, faithful Catholic men (in the field of psychiatry) from the Catholic Medical Association.

Yet just two years later, the bishops permitted the John Jay College study to publish its report detailing, on the one hand, that four out of five victims were adolescent males, and yet, on the other hand, explicitly denying the crisis had anything to do with homosexuality.

Of course, it had to do with homosexuality. The vast majority of abusers were adult homosexual males attacking and victimizing postpubescent males.

However, turning our attention back to the dominant lie within the Church, the organization "Outreach" (an LGBTQ "Catholic" resource and a favorite source for James Martin) lies through its official teeth, with online deceptions like this article: "Jesuit psychologist: Gay priests are not the cause of clergy sex abuse."

It is a clever deception which conflates findings of various studies, cross-tabulating unrelated data points to deliberately declare unsupported conclusions like, "LGBTQ people were not and are not the problem of the clergy sexual abuse. Numerous international studies actually determined there were more heterosexuals who offended in the Church."

Notice the deceptive arrangement of those statements. Take the first one: "LGBTQ people were not and are not the problem of the clergy sexual abuse." Well, of course LGBTQ people are not the cause or the problem. How many lesbian Catholic priests do you know? How about bisexual or transgender priests?

This is called creating a straw man; no one has made that claim. The claim and fact is, the homosexual priests are the problem, not lesbian or transgender priests, which, of course, don't exist.

Then, the even more irrelevant statement: "Numerous international studies actually determined there were more heterosexuals who offended in the church." This is another lie. 

First, of course, you would expect there to be more heterosexual abusers because there are more heterosexuals, period. The question isn't whether there are more cases among heterosexuals than homosexuals. The question is how to explain the preponderance of cases which relate back to homosexual priests.

Are there coaches and teachers and janitors who are heterosexual and abuse young girls? Of course, there are, but even given the much larger number of heterosexuals in the Church, a whopping 80% of adolescent abuse victims were boys and their abusers were homosexual men.

These radical homosexuals in the Church, including the bishops who shield them, are absolutely the cause of the sex abuse crisis — and let's go even a step further — the cause of the demise of the Church itself.

These men not only rape and pillage bodies; they also, even more so, rape and pillage souls. They cannot communicate the truth of the gospel because they do not live it or believe it, and no one can give what he does not have.

This is the reality of the Church in the 21st century. Until this evil is expunged — and men like James Martin are driven from its ranks, New Ways Ministry is completely condemned and Outreach is excommunicated — nothing will change because the skeleton, the bones are not there. 

The heart, the soul is, of course, because that belongs to Christ.  But as for the rest of the body, the corruption is so complete, so institutionalized, that nothing less than a radical intervention will save Her.

Whether that comes directly from God or from God through human agents is really the only question. But it will come because God is always faithful to His promise — and the gates of Hell shall not prevail.

TRANSCRIPT

As we showed you in yesterday's Vortex, Church Militant has come into possession of a secret email sent to all the U.S. bishops more than 20 years ago. It's from the Catholic Medical Association, and it outlines the serious, grave issue of homosexuality within the clergy and how it is the cause of the sex abuse crisis.

We are making the email available to you for your own viewing, downloading, printing and general distribution. Just click on the provided link. It details not only the homosexual nature of the sex abuse crisis but goes on to make a very serious case against ordaining men with same-sex attraction.

It goes into incredible detail, from a psychiatric perspective, of the dangers of these men in the clergy. At one point, a very telling line says, "Priests should be screened for homosexuality by their bishops or religious superiors prior to being considered for a position of responsibility in a diocese, religious community, or in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."

That conclusion raises the very serious question of just how Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill is now the pastor of a La Crosse, Wisconsin, parish. He was just made pastor by his bishop, William Callahan. Callahan is the same bishop who kicked out Fr. James Altman for saying Democrats can't be voted for because they kill children, and the pandemic was a scam.

Burrill, a priest who had been elevated to secretary of the bishops' national conference, was an active homosexual who got busted/outed more than a year ago for hundreds of contacts on the gay-hookup phone app Grindr, earning him the name "Msgr. Grindr."

Of course, the gay-friendly bishops, many of whom are more than just friendly about it, circled the wagons around him when the news broke and allowed him to slip out of Dodge, unscathed. Then, as is usual, they let him slip back into town — where Callahan quietly gave him a remote-post assignment for a couple of months, where, this past week, he raised him to the level of pastor.

Yup, nothing to see here, folks. All this gay clergy stuff, this was all decades and decades ago, not a thing to talk about. Move along. Move on.

Since when does Callahan, or any bishop, think he gets to skirt sound psychiatric advice?

After all, back when the scandal broke in 2002, they all pointed the finger at professionals who told them everything was OK, and the priests could go back into service. That was a lie then, and this is a lie now. Burrill spent vast sums of money — originating from faithful Catholics' donations — to have sex with other men, all on the dime of the USCCB.

The phone he used belonged to the U.S. bishops. The hotels he stayed in across the country were paid for by the U.S. bishops. The airfares were paid for by Catholics. Yet in the midst of all this, not a word from the bishops other than to promote him.

When that email was sent to bishops 20 years ago, the authors were unaware that many of the bishops themselves were gay. Of course they were and still are. Reliable estimates place the percentage of homosexual men in the priesthood at well over 50%.

Since that is the pool from which bishops are drawn, how could it not be the case that a large percentage of bishops are also gay? I even personally had it told to me, to my face, in a private conversation with a bishop (considered a good one) that he "knows a number of gay men who are bishops, and they're fine men." Really?

Let's talk about Callahan, for example. He has offered no serious explanation for why he thinks it's perfectly fine to install a known, practicing homosexual as pastor. For the crowd always going on about dialogue and prudence, wouldn't it be prudent to have an interview and explain himself here?

And yes, he does owe an explanation. Just because he is practically unaccountable does not mean he doesn't have to give an account. The faithful are sick to death of all this, and as a result, the number of the faithful keeps dwindling. Some are going into schism; others are embracing heresy by joining socially conservative Protestant groups.

In either case, the gay and gay-friendly bishops have created a gay and gay-friendly Church. They ignore the evil because they embrace the evil. Consider if Msgr. Grindr had not been outed; he'd still be climbing the ladder and might even be a bishop by now, or would be in the near future.

But if you think Msgr. Grindr is the only one like him, you're crazy. Just read the secret email for yourself. The bishops did, and then they lied to you.

TRANSCRIPT

There are many ways a person can be deceived by another. You can be directly lied to, of course. That's obvious, but you can also simply not be told the truth, deliberately, even when you have a right to know it. Under this category of not being told the truth, you can simply be ignored, or you can be told a bunch of stuff that really only serves as a deflection — a kind of "deflection deception."

And, of course, a combination of all of that can also be rolled out in a deliberate effort to keep someone in the dark. In the world of so-called Catholic so-called media, the practice of deflection deception is institutionalized policy. In fact, there is almost no difference between the likes of CNN and the run-of-the-mill "Catholic" media.

CNN deliberately lies, and the Catholic media world deflects, but in the end, the same goal is achieved — you are left without the important truth. Case in point: this 12-page secret email we've been showing you for the past couple of episodes.

We've attached the link for you to read it for yourselves. We didn't make this up, fabricate or conspire about it. There it is — just click on the link in plain view for anyone to open up and read, especially so-called journalists who claim to be reporting on affairs in the Church.

The details laid out in this email, sent to the nation's bishops 20 years ago by the Catholic Medical Association, are, in a word, explosive. It exposes that the U.S. hierarchy had indeed been warned about the dangers of homosexual men in seminary and the clergy despite their claims otherwise.

If anything ever qualified as a smoking gun, condemning the bishops' inaction and lies and cover-up, this is it. On the first page, it even recounts that Wilton Gregory, in an international press conference in Rome in April 2002, admitted the sex abuse crisis was owing to homosexuals in the clergy.

And what did the bishops do? Nothing. Then, two years later, they lied in the infamous John Jay Report and said it didn't have anything to do with that. Here is the proof they were told about all this.

So now the question must be asked of the Catholic media:

There are dozens more, but the point is well made. The answer to that question is the same for all these outlets: They have a dog in this fight and will not report the truth because it comes back and hurts them. Most of those outfits are completely dependent on staying in the good graces of the bishops. One cross word or report that the bishops have been (and still are) lying profusely about the homosexual problem in their ranks, and they will be out of business.

Some of those outfits are Marxist "Catholics," and the last thing they want to print is something/anything that runs against their LGBTQ-propaganda narrative — even if it is the truth. Yet truth is the currency of the media. Without it, you have nothing to sell, nothing to beg for donations with.

People often ask us, How come the bishops never seem to be accountable for all this evil and destruction of the Faith? The answer to that question is right here: There are dozens and dozens of so-called media (pretend journalists) who insulate them from criticism.

They are little else than stenographers for the bishops — keeping in their good graces, toeing the party line, so when it comes time to put out their hands, some money will pass their way. Some of these outfits are big and well-known, others less so, but the combined damage they cause with their covering up for the hierarchy is inestimable.

Tens of millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions, of souls over the years have been irreparably harmed by this crowd's inaction and refusal to traffic in the truth because of their greed and self-interest. They are complicit cowards, unwilling to endure the attacks that come when you stand for the truth.

And here is the truth: the U.S. hierarchy functions as an organized gay crime syndicate that knows full well the damage these homosexual clerics have inflicted — and continue to inflict — on souls under their care, and they do nothing about it because many of them are part of the entire corrupt enterprise.

The great psychological hurdle most Catholics have yet to clear, and likely why they don't want to actually know about all this, is very simple. Scores of bishops don't actually believe the Faith. That is a massive mountain to climb in your mind, but once you reach the peak and look around, everything is suddenly blindingly clear:

The list of their crimes and sins knows no end. The entire Church is being reduced to nothing. A collapse never before seen in history, and yet the "Catholic media," even with a document proving this has been deliberate, still sees all of it as unfit to report.

Allow me personally to make an appeal to you: This coming month, with the blessing of the bishops, many of these outfits are going to be sending you emails asking for money. Think about this Vortex — the truth of it, the implications of it — and then ask yourself, Who is truly worthy of my hard-earned money?

An apostolate that has weathered the storm of hatred and attacks because it speaks the truth, or some other outfit that keeps the truth hidden from you because they profit in doing so? Please click on the provided link below and send Church Militant/St. Michael's Media your end-of-year donation.

Read that email if you haven't already, and commit to no longer supporting the establishment that lies and covers up the truth and perverts the Faith. Choices have to be made in life.

TRANSCRIPT

Last week, a letter was published, written by Fr. Paul Kalchik, a Chicago priest driven from the Windy City by Cdl. Cupich's failure to protect him from the gay mob desirous of his blood for burning a gay banner.

Kalchik and some parishioners discovered the banner stuffed into the back of a cupboard in the sacristy of Resurrection Parish. It had hung in the sanctuary years earlier by order of the homosexual pastor who died in the rectory, hooked up to a sex machine.

Once discovered all those years later in 2018, parishioners burned it in the parking lot, and Kalchik got the blame for it, as well as the hatred from Cupich. Kalchik is a victim, not once but twice, of homosexual predation at the hands of a priest — so the letter he published last week has some gravitas to it. A link to the full letter is below.

It is in response to the election of Bp. Barry Knestout of the diocese of Richmond, to the chairmanship of the bishops' Committee for Protection of Children and Young People. The problem is that, back in the day, Knestout was secretary to the most prolific homopredator in the Chuch's history, Theodore McCarrick.

In a damning line from his letter, Kalchik blasts Knestout, saying, "Clerics like you, who have shown a blind eye to sexual predators they worked under, are not fit to lead any reform among our U.S. priests." Kalchik details how, as a seminarian, he was dispatched by the rector to pick up McCarrick at O'Hare airport for the funeral of homosexual Cdl. Joseph Bernardin.

Once seminarian Kalchik got McCarrick to the hotel, McCarrick propositioned him, inviting him to the hotel room for a drink (not the hotel bar, mind you — his room). Kalchik, of course, declined but knew in less than an hour that McCarrick was a gay predator.

So how could Knestout have been in his presence day in and day out as his secretary and not know or even suspect? You will recall back in 2018 when all the McCarrick news broke, cardinals and bishops practically trampled each other racing to microphones to deny any knowledge of anything whatsoever about McCarrick. Knestout was among them.

And now the man — another man who knew absolutely nothing, suspected nothing — was the chair of the committee to protect children and young adults from the very sort of man he worked for closely. But Knestout has another weird twist here related to McCarrick.

Back in the day, Mark White was actually ordained by McCarrick. And when the news broke that the man who had actually ordained him was the most prolific homosexual serial predator, he went public with his feelings on social media blogs. Knestout — who, remember, knew nothing about McCarrick — went ballistic, blasting Fr. White, ordering him to take down his posts.

Fr. White refused, and his case is in canon-law court in Rome. That said, the vengeful Knestout — who, remember, knew nothing about McCarrick — has actually petitioned Rome to have Fr. White kicked out of the priesthood. Yes, you heard that right, actually kicked out of the priesthood because he posted his feelings about being ordained by McCarrick — who, remember, Knestout knew nothing about.

Father White has written a book, and St. Michael's Media has published it. It's called Ordained by a Predator and is an extremely personal account of what it feels like to be abused by the hierarchy for merely telling the truth. If you'd like to purchase a copy and help support him, please click on the provided link.

It's true that the bishops hold almost all the cards. It's also true that there is very little that can be done about them (in this life). However, good victim-priests should be supported in their fight for justice and the truth. Both these priests have been steamrolled by the bishops' gay juggernaut and deserve support and embrace by the laity. And these rotten bishops, across the board, need to be sent a message.

TRANSCRIPT

Today is the two-year anniversary of the grand opening of our completely overhauled studio and chapel, from where we are able to bring you all our programming each day. Many hundreds of you contributed to our expansion effort back then, and we would like to once again thank you for your generosity.

As you know, this operation is quite costly to maintain, and we are once again, as the end of the year approaches, appealing to your generosity to help maintain us as the leaders in bringing authentic Catholicism to our millions of viewers. Thank you in advance for your end-of-year gift, which you can make by simply clicking on the provided "donate" button.

When we look out at the culture and see the wars over Elon Musk's Twitter world and the full-scale battle playing out in Arizona in the governor's race, not to mention the constant inter-Nicene battles raging in the Church over doctrine and discipline, What's really going on? is a good question.

The answer is pretty simple, actually. It's a war over truth. Call them the "truth wars." Truth seems to be an elusive item these days and certainly a rare commodity, as all sides lay claim to it — but it cannot be the case that everyone is right. Yet somehow that proposition is put forward, at least by some.

It's the cry of the "your truth/my truth" brigade, as though truth is somehow in the eyes of the beholder. But notice, no one who claims that, actually lives according to that proposition — or if they do, they soon find out in short order that they do not get to claim their own personalized truth.

Try telling your mortgage company or landlord that, when they come knocking for their monthly payment. "Well, Mr. Mortgage Man, I understand your truth is I owe you money, but my truth says I don't have to pay." It's as preposterous as suggesting that one minute you're a woman and the next you're a man, and then tomorrow you're a woman again, or, for this moment, I'm a woman and can go follow actual women into their bathroom.

Yet when it comes to anything touching on sex or preferences or so-called identities, that nonsense rules the day. Suddenly, all logic goes out the window, and the same sort that applies to the monthly mortgage no longer applies. It's not that everyone doesn't live according to the reality that objective truth exists, it's just some completely ignore it when their hormones are racing or their psychological problems are applauded.

This is where the divisions within Christianity have paved the way for all this evil. People who claim they follow Christ have never been able to agree on what that actually looks like. Degenerates see an opening there and press their post–sexual revolution agenda as far as possible.

When Martin Luther rolled into town 500 years ago, he treated the notion of truth as though it were somehow flexible. Flying in the face of (at the time) 1,500 years of settled doctrine, Luther simply decided that much of that was wrong and had to be chucked.

But before he died, a number of his followers decided his truth was wrong and had to be amended, expounded on and yes, unsurprisingly, chucked. Luther, in trying to rid the world of the pope, actually created tens of millions of antipopes — individuals who would decide the truth of Christ and the Scriptures and salvation and damnation for themselves.

How can anyone be surprised? If the very matter of eternity — the stuff of Heaven or Hell — can be treated so recklessly, so wantonly by those who espouse following Christ, why would the stuff of society and the moral life end up any differently?

After all, if hundreds of millions can hold their own truth about Christ, why can't hundreds of millions hold their truths about who to have sex with, or even what sex they actually are? Once any correct understanding of truth is laid aside, then it's "Nellie, bar the doors."

There are natural truths, physical truths, mathematical truths that most people agree on (notice, however, that most people agree on). Even here, there are those who insist, for example, that two plus two does not, in fact, equal four, at least not always. Some even refuse to accept the truth of gravity and set out to prove that it is not true. They soon discover they have actually proved it, not disproved it.

But for most people, that the world is round, gravity exists, two plus two equals four, and so forth, are truths — or, better stated, examples of natural truth. It's not a great leap. The refusal to accept natural truth almost always has immediate unhappy consequences.

But where outcomes or consequences can be delayed and altered for a desired outcome, then truth becomes very flexible. It can either be ignored or embellished or whitewashed or even lied about if the reward is valued more highly than the truth itself.

This seems to be the lifeblood of most media outlets, Catholic as well as secular. It likewise appears to be the dominant strain in interpersonal relationships, the professional world, the world of commerce and so forth. It has even found its way into the Church and the expression of religious doctrine.

The refusal to accept religious truth is what lies at the root of the nation's woes as well as those of the Catholic Church's leaders. Unlike natural truths, which have almost an immediate ramification when ignored, the ramifications of refusing to accept supernatural truth often unfold over time — but by the time it begins to be felt, it's often too late.

All natural truths flow from divine or supernatural truth, and when supernatural truth is pushed aside, natural truths will soon be treated the same way — which, of course, is what we see playing out across the nation. Because most of the world, including America, has never embraced theological truth as announced by the Catholic Church, it's always been a matter of time until men's natural affairs begin to disintegrate.

So much of what is wrong today in America — the gender garbage, the election-integrity question, the climate change issue, immigration, a recession, tens of millions of abortions, the collapse of the family, the mass disengagement of entire generations, all of it — is directly traceable to Martin Luther's revolt.

Man is chiefly a spiritual creature, who relates to the truths of his existence through his mind searching for divine truth. When divine truth is cut off from enormous swaths of the population, they will come to make their own "truth" — and that is what we have today.

The carnage is all around us. The extent of the damage, both in this life and the next, is incalculable. And yet the nation carries on, beating a path to its own final dissolution and ruin. Yes, some men (and even a growing number) do finally see this, at least in part.

There is natural truth and supernatural truth. The man who accepts natural truth has a good start but must arrive at the truth of supernature, or he will be forever mired in fighting the enemies of natural truth and likely eventually be overcome. Only supernature can defeat fallen nature. 

Many have come to understand there cannot be multiple versions of Christ, just as there cannot be multiple versions of truth in a singular instance. Women cannot be men — ever. Men cannot get pregnant — ever. Two plus two cannot equal anything other than four — ever.

Likewise, the Scriptures cannot contradict themselves any more than religious truths can stand in opposition to each other and both still be true. Compromise on truth happens for one reason, always: to grant permission to sin.

When man forgets that his nature is a fallen nature and sets about to reorder his world accordingly, his world will crash down around him, sooner or later. There will be nothing left. Those who willfully distort truth do it so they can sin and have others join them.

Those who blindly go along with it do so because, in their depths, they calculate some profit or advantage for themselves. Such is the truth of a fallen world. Unless and until men embrace the fullness of the truth of Christ, as found in His Catholic Church, look for nothing of substance to change.

Broken homes, troubled youths and young adults, nervous economies, uncertain futures — all of it is rooted in a refusal to accept supernatural truth, objective truth. Catholics who do know and understand this have a heavy moral obligation to try and bring this single reality into every sphere of life. The truth war can only be brought to an end within an individual person when truth is accepted and lived.

TRANSCRIPT

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There is a prevalent view that a man involved in good works is on his way to Heaven — that salvation is either assured or demonstrated, depending on which theological square you may be standing on.

There are, for example, many involved in the very important work of pro-life activism or feeding the poor or helping out at soup kitchens or teaching the Faith. All of that is laudable and, of course, needs to be done.

But a serious question for the individual here arises: Is it possible to be involved in such work, even if it's your life's work, and still be damned? Well, of course it is.

The distinction was made by St. Bernard when he spoke of the difference (in the spiritual life) between being a channel versus being a reservoir.

Hear him:

The channels let the water flow away, and do not retain a drop. But the reservoir is first filled, and then, without emptying itself, pours out its overflow, which is ever renewed, over the fields which it waters. How many there are that are devoted to works, who are never anything but channels, and retain nothing for themselves, but remain dry while trying to pass on life-giving grace to souls! We have many channels in the Church today, but very few reservoirs.

Consider: Even the work of sinners and the (eventually) damned, God uses in His providence. He even uses Satan's malice for His own end.

The damned Apostle Judas was a channel of grace. Pontius Pilate was a channel of grace. Annas and Caiaphas were both channels of grace.

While we each have free will and may choose our own demise, what our future choices will be is already known to God, and He crafts His divine plan of salvation accordingly.

This is why, when understanding the spiritual battle, one must never view it in terms of Satan versus God. No creature stands in juxtaposition to the Creator. The battle began between Michael and Satan and is now concluded in Our Lady: the woman and Satan.

God has no rival, as He is outside of time as well as completely over it. So the sinner, in the natural order or otherwise, never knows the future — but God does. Accordingly, He incorporates the freewill decisions men make against Him into His divine providence, reducing such men to channels of grace. As the saying goes, God even uses evil to bring forth good.

So in a topsy-turvy world where, today, so many people recognize the evil in politics, culture, the Church — wherever — and militate against it, if they are merely channels of grace in their good works and not reservoirs, they shall not see Heaven.

All good works, to give merit to the person, must originate from a life of holiness or, at least, striving to be holy. It is not the works that make one holy; it is the interior disposition from which the works flow that is necessary.

I'm directing this thought especially to young adults who are bearing the brunt of so much evil in society — the work that many of you do to try to stem the evil of corrupt politics, for example. That work may be availing to some; it may, on some level, even succeed.

But if you are trapped in a world of pornography and masturbation, it avails you nothing. If you and your live-in girlfriend or boyfriend or same-sex whatever are fighting for the unborn, that's good for the unborn but means nothing for you when you stand before Christ the Judge.

If you are a soup kitchen volunteer or routinely hand money to the homeless at red lights, that's good for the poor — certainly, they benefit — but if you are trapped in serious sin, you benefit nothing. You are reduced to a mere channel of grace — grace for the other, but you retain nothing of it.

Too many young people today have been inured to sin, especially their own: constant pornography, acceptance of masturbation, carefree sexual license of multiple types. These destroy your ability to fight the fight that matters most.

They cast their anger (justifiable anger, mind you) on a culture that has largely abandoned them and not passed on to them the necessary cultural and spiritual realities to advance into manhood.

But every man, and that includes men in their 20s and early 30s, still has the natural law written on his heart and, absent actual doctrinal truths being transmitted to him, will still be judged on how he conformed his life to the natural law.

If young men desire to fight the culture, to strike back at the disenfranchisement they rightly feel, then sainthood is the path. That does not mean to not engage in the culture wars — quite the opposite. But no matter what good in the natural order you may very well accomplish, it means absolutely nothing if you are damned.

Satan has many tricks to fool people into a false sense of security about their own eternal fate, even those working within the Church and doing objectively good things. Saint Paul warned of this, and most importantly, so, too, did the Son of God.

He recounts what it will be like for some of His followers when judgment comes, and they are refused entry into the heavenly banquet. In what has always struck me personally as the most horrifying words in all of Sacred Scripture, He says to them, Go away; I tell you solemnly I do not know you.

This, from the divine lips, even after they recount their close association with Him and works for Him — Go away; I do not know you.

Grace flows from God, is the lifeblood of God. When we each die, we must be as a reservoir containing grace, containing Him. That grace passed through us will account for nothing; grace passed through Judas.

While the words of St. Bernard are good for all of us to think on and amend ourselves accordingly, I'd like to especially direct them to young adults who are so rightly passionate about the destruction of the culture. Fighting for patriotism, fighting even for Catholicism, will mean nothing if you are damned.

If you have habitual sin, fight that first. Conquer the demon within. Bring him to heel in your souls, before fighting him in the streets. The remedy for the evil in the world is holiness. Strong men are only truly strong when they battle for holiness.

Only then can they attack the empire of evil and bring about change. All else is an illusion, even if a momentary victory is logged here or there. Satan can organize a cunning retreat on the cultural battlefield, only to turn around and launch a vicious assault against your soul. In the end, that's all he wants: your soul.

Give up sin, especially sins of the flesh, and you will have your victory.