Church Militant The Vortex Feed

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TRANSCRIPT

The archdiocese of Baltimore, the nation's first diocese, has seating at weekend Masses for 25,000 attendees. Only about 2,000 show up.

Ten years ago, under the leadership of the reported homosexual Cardinal Abp. Edwin O'Brien, the archdiocese set up one of those Madison Avenue marketing campaigns to make it look like they were taking the decline of the Faith back then seriously. They weren't.

Back then, the immediate issue was the plummeting enrollment and drastic falloff of Catholic schools. So, of course, a strategic plan was instituted and a blue-ribbon committee was established, complete with consultations and listening sessions. That's what they always do.

You'll notice there are never any strategic plans, blue-ribbon committees, consultations and listening sessions undertaken about how to teach the fullness of the Faith. These only happen when the bank accounts are hit.

In either case, that was 10 years ago. The result was even more losses.

Today, homosexualist Abp. William Lori has rolled out a new strategic plan. This one will not only deal with the drop in Catholic schools, but also Catholic parishes. The silly name given to the latest plan is "Seek the City to Come." They always have these stupid names.

Everyone really knows what's going on. It's nothing other than managing the decline. That's all it is.

The problem, as it is stated, is how to reorganize the current parish system to serve the needs of the people and the surrounding community. But Lori and the rest of the nation's bishops are lying to themselves.

You can't just keep rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Eventually, it sinks.

Lori wants to serve the needs of the parishes. Yo, archbishop, if there aren't people in the pews there is no parish! The problem isn't how to use the parishes and allocate your resources. It's that you and the rest of the bishops have killed the Faith in peoples' hearts.

You will never admit that, at least not publicly. But that's what it is. People will likely go to Hell because of your massive failures and weak manhood, but you and the rest of the U.S. hierarchy will be leading the way.

The story is told of a meeting Pope John Paul II had with some American bishops during their regular five-year visit. At dinner, one of them said to him, "Holy Father, we do not think most American Catholics will be damned because they do not know the Faith." He answered, "They may not be damned, but you will be for not teaching them."

We imagine things got a little awkward at that point. It's hard to imagine one of them asking him to pass the ketchup after that.

The U.S. hierarchy is facing this crisis all over the country. Yes, it's not evenly distributed — population shifts and demographic changes have some part in it as well. Also, every now and then, a new parish opens up here or there.

But overall, baptized Catholics simply do not believe the Faith. They have no touchstone to it. It has never been made relevant to them. They have never been instructed in it. They have no idea what it is.

From 2000 to 2020, there has been a nationwide drop of 18 points in the number of Catholics who attend weekly Mass, according to Gallup. Even in Baltimore, Lori deludes himself into thinking the role of the Church is to be a social-justice soup kitchen.

Part of his bold, new plan to pack the churches again includes closing the parishes for Mass, but repurposing the physical buildings for social-justice ministries. Actually, that's just the logical conclusion to what the non-shepherding shepherds have been doing for decades, so at this point, why not?

Another interesting note, pointed out in the local Baltimore press, is that Lori and his team consulted with other sterling champions of the Faith facing the same issues, like Vigneron in Detroit, Cupich in Chicago and Rozanski in St. Louis.

That's laughable, because those three have shut down hundreds of parishes and made up all kinds of cute little names and slogans in the process. There is nothing like turning to a loser to get advice on how to win.

Lori might as well have phoned Bp. Hying in Madison, Wisconsin who last week announced he is closing 70 of his 100 parishes. At least he had some decency in being truthful, admitting the Church was going into the grave and awaiting the resurrection.

You can't pin all the blame for the current train wreck on today's bishops. Their predecessors started the ball rolling on all this. A large combination of factors has brought us to this point as a Church, but every single one of them is attributable to the failed leadership of the U.S. hierarchy at different points along the way.

What's truly bothersome at this point with today's bishops is that none of them have the you-know-what to simply admit it. They are married to some archaic belief that you can never say anything bad about a brother bishop. Of course you can. But they are all so delicate and fragile, they're terrified of saying the truth about their own and each others' failures.

Only one of two possibilities exists here, as thousands of parishes across the nation have to keep being shut down — a phenomenon that will continue and pick up pace in the immediate future: Either the bishops actually believe their own press releases about "restructuring" and "repurposing" and "blue-ribbon committees" to the rescue and all that, or they are simply lying to themselves and us.

A knock-on effect has been going on for years, and only recently has the bill come due. First you lose the Faith, then you close your doors. True, there is some time that passes in between those two events, but one absolutely leads to the other.

The bishops are in a crisis, hair-on-fire mode now in the natural world, because they long ago were in a crisis, hair-on-fire mode in the supernatural world. 

Baltimore, of course, is a special place for us here at Church Militant. It was the city — in conjunction with the bishops — that tried to get our "Enough is Enough" rally canceled last November.

We had to go to court, as you may recall, to lock down the free exercise of our First Amendment rights. It was a case that we won resoundingly at the district-court level as well as the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

But the city's actions did have a dampening effect on the number of people who attended. The day before the city stepped in and shut it down, we had 2,200 people signed up to attend. Think about this for a moment — 2,200 people.

That's more at a Church Militant rally on a Tuesday than would have been at Mass on the following Sunday. 

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TRANSCRIPT

When companies are doing internal reviews and want to know what their customers think of them, their products and their services, it's typical that they conduct market surveys.

The surveys come in all kinds, shapes and forms — from focus groups to incentive emails to online surveys, and so forth.

Recently, a company sent out a survey and asked the following questions of its patrons:

As companies "dig down" into their customers' likes and dislikes (and then, broader opinions and thoughts), they often ask these types of questions. And then, whatever they are able to implement from these surveys, they do.

After all, you've got to keep the customer happy, because a happy customer is a repeat customer. Now, a little confession: The "company" that sent out the survey was a diocese asking Catholics those questions and a few others. 

This is precisely why Catholic, Inc. is failing. It sees itself in corporate terms, not spiritual. Nowhere on the survey was there even the slightest attempt to try and see if the "customers" understand what the Church is or, more exactly, who the Church is.

Every single question on that survey (and the possible choices) is reflective of a bishop and his staff who have zero comprehension of the Church as She is constituted in Herself. Consider that for more than half a century, the hierarchy has failed to teach that most salient point, the nature of the Church ("ecclesiology" is its proper name).

Then 50-plus years later, after having corrupted the minds of its customers by depriving them of the truth, a bishop shoots out a marketing survey asking them their thoughts about the Church — meaning, their feelings about it.

Do they like everyone's voice being valued? Do they like listening to one another? Do they like joint discernment and decision-making, dialoguing with society? What in hades do any of those terms even mean? They are completely stupid — just like the survey itself, the people who wrote it and the person who approved it.

This has nothing to do with eternal salvation. It's a customer survey designed to discover the likes and dislikes of the customer base and then make appropriate changes to the product according to the survey results.

In fact, given the inane questions — the wording, the choice of phrases, the vocabulary — the whole thing can be likened to Henry Ford's famous quip when marketing his Model T: "You can have it in any color you like, as long as it's black."

The survey is designed to elicit responses that have zero relationship to the truth. Who cares if someone doesn't feel everyone's voice is valued? Some voices should not be valued at all.

In fact, far from being valued, some voices should be expelled from the Church — Fr. James Martin; Cdls. Cupich, McElroy and Tobin; virtually the entire German Bishops' Conference; need we continue?

For all the bluster about "all voices being valued," go ask your local chancery if Church Militant's voice can be valued at the next diocesan men's conference.

This is all part of the smokescreen of remaking the Church — pretending to be listening to the people of God when all that's being heard is just an echo chamber of faithless prelates hearing back their theological insanity from the past half-century.

Since when did fellowship take priority over the sacraments? Since when did my voice gain greater importance than the Cross? This garbage is off the rails.

These surveys are being conducted in dioceses all over the world, with the results collated and then forwarded to Rome for inclusion in next year's agenda for the Synod on Synods — even the name is stupid.

Synods don't replace Church teaching, even if they have a billion questionnaires that prove nothing other than the gross failures of their bishops.

That will, however, be the one redeeming factor of the great big universal synod: It will produce living proof of just how much the hierarchy itself has rejected the Faith. It won't be the first time in Church history, and if mankind lives long enough, it likely will not be the last.

But we weren't alive during the Arian heresy. We also will not be alive during whatever future heresy swamps the bishops decades or centuries from now. We are alive in this one. That demands a response from us, here and now.

This is fool's gold. It's Protestant, building a religion around the emotional whims of the "people of God," collated from a series of worldwide surveys and decades of being malformed in the Faith. The Church as She is constituted in Herself is under divine protection. Individual members of the hierarchy, as well as the collective people of God the way they mean it, however, are not.

When Our Blessed Lord's visible body went into the tomb, His followers mourned, were near despair and had given up hope. Only His Mother believed — she hoped, and not just hoped but hoped supernaturally. 

She alone kept the candle of faith alive. You could say, in a certain sense, that for those three days the entire Church was subsumed into her.

Our Lord's visible presence here on earth once again appears to be going into the tomb. This will call for a deep faith, a supernatural faith — a "man of steel" approach to His promise that He will not leave us orphans.

In this month of the Holy Rosary, emulate the Mother of Christ, who did not despair but sat keeping vigil, waiting to see her Divine Son again on Easter morning.

Mary Magdalene was the first public witness to the Resurrection, but it is held by innumerable Fathers and Doctors of the Church, along with multitudes of saints, that the first to behold His resurrected, glorified body was His Blessed Mother — a uniting of Himself to her in a singular way. Yes, in exchange for her deep sorrow, but also as a reward for her abiding faith and hope, motivated by her love for Him.

What son, having witnessed the agony of his own mother at his sufferings and death, would not appear to her first, to bring her agony and sadness to an end?

G.K. Chesterton made the comment once that the Church has died many times in its millennia-long existence, only to be resurrected by God again and again. Hold on to that thought, that realization, that hope, as we descend into the tomb yet again.

We will not be there forever. As Psalm 16:10 says, "you will not leave my soul among the dead, nor suffer your beloved to know decay."

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David Knight interviews Michael Voris Oct. 4 about why being a Christian nationalist is a good thing.

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

David Knight interviews Michael Voris Oct. 4 about the evil of government indoctrination centers, also known as public schools.

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TRANSCRIPT

One of the largest challenges — perhaps the largest — media outfits have is how to present and package information we have.

Some might think we'll just write an article and publish it. Not so much. Industry standards have shown for decades now that a vast majority of people only read the headline.

A few more read the first paragraph, and, after that, unless the reader is very interested in the story already, most people stop. Reading has been on the decline in America for years, but that has been accelerated with the advent of short-attention-span social media blurbs and video.

In short, very large numbers of people prefer to watch and listen, as opposed to read. That's why Church Militant has been dedicated to video/TV presentation since our very first day.

It is also why all sorts of other Catholic media outlets have followed our lead and committed resources to video as well, with podcasts and interviews and all that. Video presentations, for better or worse, connect with the average Joe much more so than reading.

People see other people on their screens. They see another human face, like theirs (like they do in their everyday lives), and they respond — positively or negatively. People simply identify with another face more than they do words on a page or screen.

So the face, the person, the presentation becomes the vehicle for conveying the idea.

So in this world, this is always the challenge. How to take the idea, the information, and package it together so that message is conveyed as best as possible, within the limits imposed by day-to-day reality.

The more sophisticated or involved the presentation is, the costlier it becomes, generally speaking. 

But if we want to reach people, this is just part of the equation. It's how the Marxists have been so extraordinarily successful in their quest to corrupt minds. They know the power of the visual, and they execute that power very well.

So we here at Church Militant are always engaged in this activity. To that end, we are producing a new program we call The Daily Beat. It originally airs in the last part of Evening News live each night — where we are able to take viewer questions live.

But after Evening News has aired, we lift it out of its spot there and duplicate it as its own standalone show, making it available that way as well. We rolled it out earlier this week, and we'd like to introduce it to you now.

We'd like to remind you all this is possible only through your continuing support, for which we thank you.

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TRANSCRIPT

The Church is in a disastrous state.

Many bishops don't believe the Faith. They certainly don't care about souls. They have destroyed countless souls. Anyone with a brain can see this. It is undeniable.

The question isn't, Is this all true? It has been asked and answered multiple times. The question is, What do we do?

Among those who are most distressed over the current crisis — and yes, it is a giant crisis — there is too often a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They turn uncritically and unthinkingly to anything that proposes itself to be a remedy to the crisis.

As a result, the sense of "tradition" gets bandied about as some kind of silver bullet cure-all for everything ailing the Church.

However, "tradition" means different things to different people — who, again, have to properly understand the nature of the crisis. For example, there is a naive belief that if it happened before Vatican II and if it was accepted before Vatican II, then it must be rushed into headlong.

While that instinct is certainly understandable, it's wrong — dead wrong.

We aren't talking about Church teaching, we're talking about the approach to the Church. For faithful Catholics who cling to tradition, properly understood, they also cling to wrongheaded traditions that come along for the ride.

For example, there is the approach to the priesthood. Faithful Catholics treasure the priesthood. It is the priesthood that brings us Our Blessed Lord in the Eucharist, bestows absolution for our sins and so forth. All that is a tradition.

But coming along with that is an approach to individual priests that is completely wrongheaded. Just because a priest wears a cassock all the time and offers the Latin Mass does not make him holy.

McCarrick started out wearing a cassock, was ordained in the Old Rite — and was raping seminarians left and right. Cardinal Spellman of New York, who raised McCarrick from the dust and set his feet on the path of careerism, wore a cassock, loved the lace, was solidly orthodox in his preachings, offered the Latin Mass — and was reportedly massively homosexual.

We move to Joseph Bernardin, who was not only homosexual but also involved in Satanism. Bernardin wore his cassock, was ordained in the Latin rite, offered the Latin Mass and was notorious.

So it goes. In fact, every single bishop at Vatican II pre-existed the Council, quite obviously. Each was made bishop by totally solid popes.

So, how did things go so sideways?

To delude yourself that all was good before Vatican II, and therefore everything in the Church before that needs to be emulated today, is simply just that: delusional. In fact, the argument can easily be made that the seminaries prior to Vatican II were the breeding grounds for the homosexuality that eventually burst onto the scene with Catholic clergy starting in the 1960s.

If everything was so hunky dory before 1965, how was it that so many religious — male and female — simply abandoned their vows and religious communities so quickly? Why was Mass attendance in France already in a freefall, with fewer than half of Catholics in the Eldest Daughter of the Church actually going to Mass?

The fact that there are massive problems today — seemingly almost insurmountable — does not discount that there were very serious problems back then as well.

So to want to "turn back the clock" to before 1965 is a wrongheaded approach.

Regarding the laity, within three years of the council ending, Catholics all over the West ignored the teaching on contraception and embraced the Culture of Death. That speaks directly to a huge lack of catechesis. There is just no way a well-prepared and instructed laity would walk away from the Church, in such huge numbers and in such a short period of time, if they had been properly instructed. It's not possible.

This brings us to the dangers of the "mad, rad, trad" world today. No, we aren't speaking of normal Catholics who have an affinity for the Old Rite. We are talking specifically about the crowd members who can't reason their way out of a bag on these issues.

They are mad about the current state of affairs. With reason.

They are radical in grasping onto anything and everything just because it predates 1965. They wrap it all up in the term "tradition" without making the necessary distinction between teaching and approach to the Church.

What else could explain the brain-dead approach to the case of Fr. James Jackson of the FSSP by the mad, rad, trad crowd?

He was arrested last year and charged by the feds with child pornography — not just your run-of-the-mill child porn, but actually involving infants and animals. He was re-arrested in July on what amounts to the same charges and basically admitted in legal pleadings in court last week that the government's case could easily be made against him.

The case sent shock waves through the mad, rad, trad crowd, who immediately went into hyper-overdrive, declaring that it had to be a conspiracy organized by Pope Francis and Joe Biden; or demons were present in his computer wiring; or it had been planted by nefarious people who didn't like his traditional veneer. One even joked it was aliens. 

I didn't know the mad, rad, trads even believed in aliens.

They spouted any ridiculous nonsense they could come up with, because in the language of one of the most prolific deniers among them, no priest who says the Latin Mass could possibly be guilty of this. He would be holy and incapable of such filth. There's some circular logic for you.

One notorious blogger even collected about $140,000 from the mad, rad, trad crowd, declaring he would get to the bottom of all this.

Mike Parrott, of the Restoring the Faith media blog, told his followers he would get his hands on the evidence (which was the computers and hard drives) and turn it over to a computing forensic expert to perform his own independent examination of them. In short, he would defend the Church (insert chest thump).

Of course, he had no access to anything he claimed, and no forensic computing was ever performed. Still, that didn't stop the mad, rad, trad crowd from donating all that money — so willing to believe that there was just no way any of this could be true.

When Church Militant, journalistically curious about his claims of getting his hands on the prosecution's evidence and soliciting donations to pay for it, contacted him and asked some typical questions, he and the mad, rad, trad world went bananas. They blew up social media, saying our journalism was unreliable and like the National Enquirer, that we hated tradition, and on and on.

The charge was led by Mike Parrott, who didn't like us posing questions about him collecting $140,000 under the pretense of getting his hands on the state's evidence to conduct a private analysis. The attacks got so bad, defaming our journalistic integrity, that we had to sue him. It was settled a couple of weeks ago, with Parrott having to pay us for some of our legal expenses and issuing a recorded apology.

The point of all this is to say that the mad, rad, trads are off the hook — promoting schism and attacking other Catholics who don't share their insanity.

This crowd has come to support the schismatic movement of excommunicated archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. For the record, three popes in a row — John Paul, Benedict and Francis — have officially declared the SSPX movement schismatic. But the mad, rad, trad crowd, while claiming loyalty and fidelity to the Church, gives the finger to those declarations. It has officially condemned the Novus Ordo Mass as "evil" and actually "re-ordained" priests who joined the movement after being ordained in the New Rite.

The SSPX has its own hierarchy and its own annulment courts. In short, it has established itself as its own church. But hey, they say the Latin Mass, so ignore all of that.

The entire movement within the Church — brought about in reaction to the evil of the hierarchy for the past half-century — is little else than Protestantism speaking Latin.

Sadly, well-known Catholic media sites and Catholic YouTube personalities are signing on to this agenda, directly or subtly suggesting Vatican II wasn't legitimate, Francis is a heretic and the Novus Ordo Mass isn't valid.

These outfits and personalities have found cash cows in some wealthy backers, who throw their money to promote this agenda. So they tailor their stories and talking points to those donors. Don't be taken in by them, no matter how familiar you are with them and may have even liked them in the past.

You don't get to tell three popes in a row to go jump in the lake, treat valid sacraments as though they are worthless and then re-administer them, declare yourself "Eternal Rome" and still claim to be Catholic, just because you have a pre-1965 calendar on your wall.

One thing, however, that the schismatic members did manage to import from the post-1965 era was the penchant for clerical sex abuse and their bishops covering it all up, as multiple investigations have proven. Ignoring or apologizing for sex abuse — in effect, aiding the cover-up — is now becoming commonplace with these same media outlets in the trad world.

Just like the post-1965 bishops became quite expert at lying, as well as enlisting multiple lay people to continue the lies, so too has the SSPX lied through its teeth even to this day, denying and deflecting with the best of any modernist bishop.

Praying in Latin does not make a priest or a layman "holy."

But in their unthinking, uncritical, emotional, off-the-rails response to the crisis, the mad, rad, trad crowd feels completely justified in lying, smearing, stealing and attacking anyone who dares challenge them and their tradition.

The mad, rad, trad crowd's understanding of "tradition" is not one to be emulated. Breaking away from the Church while claiming to be loyal to the Church is a non-starter. This crowd has created a cottage industry out of it. Given the current insanity coming from the hierarchy, they are able to advertise themselves as a splendid alternative, with incense and candles and Latin.

But they conveniently leave disobedience out of their messaging, as well as denying the validity of sacraments not performed by their clergy. 

Their leader is excommunicated. Their current leaders cover up sex abuse on an international level. Their followers lie so intensely, they need to be sued and made to pay damages to be forced to tell the truth.

Yes, the Church is in a crisis, perhaps the greatest one in 2,000 years. But joining a schismatic movement, no matter how "traditional" it looks or claims to be, is never the answer.

The answer is to do what faithful Catholics do and have always done — stay and fight.

Read our FAQ on the canonical position of the SSPX.

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TRANSCRIPT

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Say what you want about Trump, but he tapped into something in the American male psyche.

This is most easily seen in what is happening with minority voters, particularly Black and Hispanic males. Both of these groups were traditionally solid supporters of Democratic candidates. 

But ever since Trump arrived on the political scene, males — both Black and Hispanic — have been migrating to the Trump camp. We saw that trend begin in 2016 and only increase in 2020.

Now, with only about a month to go before the midterms, it looks like the trend is picking up speed. Black women are, hands down, the most reliable voting bloc in the Democrat column. But Black males are not so much of a lock anymore.

What seems to be going on, considering it is minority men moving to Trump, could be as simple as this: Trump represents a form of masculinity not seen in these parts for many years.

Love him or hate him, Trump's style appeals to a large segment of the male population that feels completely emasculated by toxic femininity. This is the major effect of the women's lib movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

You read that right — the feminist movement, as in the women's lib movement, is toxic. It derides the masculine, belittles men and infantilizes young males.

Normal, healthy males have sat around for decades being dumped on, not having a national figure to coalesce behind. Practically every commercial on TV, and multiple major characters in movies and TV programs, depict males as hapless buffoons.

It has now become almost commonplace among the elite to view men as little else than sperm donors.

The message is clear from the women's-lib quarter — men are weak and women are the real heroes.

But then along came Trump. While his history could hardly be painted as virtuous, he has brought to the forefront the remembrance of a time when men were men. Whether his bravado and straight talk are real or political doublespeak, they have proven extremely effective.

Why is this? Why is the guy that "light in the loafers" media talking heads blasted for his "mean tweets" still hanging around the political battlefield?

There was a time in this country when men not only spoke plainly, it was approved by the culture. Sometimes you have to call them the way you see them. 

But once dominant, toxic femininity seized control, manhood has been driven off the scene. It's not just actual biological females pushing toxic femininity — it is also failed men, among whom are legions of homosexuals who despise the masculine.

That is why there is such support for abortion within the homosexual community — they identify with women and have swallowed the canard that abortion is a "woman's right."

Social forces have combined against masculinity for decades now. For the beleaguered troops, any stand-up male who comes along receives almost instant adulation.

They want someone to rally around. Trump has proven to be "da man."

It's the same reason Florida's Catholic governor, Ron DeSantis, is off the charts in popularity and approval ratings. He is viewed as a "mini-Trump," but without a Twitter feed. This is the main reason he's coasting to re-election.

The Democratic side has no real men. They have biological males, but not one of them is a "man."

While the case can be made that many wimpy males fit the same bill on the Republican side, there are the ones like DeSantis who have tapped into the "real man" theme.

This is the major reason the Catholic Church is failing, especially with real men. What red-blooded man is going to be attracted to a parish where a homosexual in robes, or at least a highly feminized male, is prancing about?

Then again, these priests are put in place by the same type of bishop. Weak males are recruited for the priesthood, screened for in seminary and then passed on for ordination.

The Trump/DeSantis type of man would never get past the admissions committee — unless he was a good-looking dude.

The Church is viewed as the haunt of the feminine by authentic males and therefore holds no appeal. Leaders don't seem to care at all, even as they continue to close down thousands and thousands of parishes around the country.

The call for authentic masculinity is certainly not in the pole position these days, but it is emerging, finding its footing and beginning to reassert itself.

Is Trump the guy to carry the water for all of this? Whatever you think about the answer to that question, one fact is clear: Right now, he's the only game in town.

The re-emergence of the masculine movement is lacking in a well-grounded spirituality.

The re-emergence of the masculine movement is lacking in a well-grounded spirituality.

Imagine how things would be very different if an authentic Catholic man had access to the national stage.

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TRANSCRIPT

This is being brought to you by the same crowd that has peddled every wrong narrative in the past six years, from there's no recession to COVID to the "big lie" to parents are domestic terrorists to the FBI leadership is awesome to Afghanistan was just a little messy to Hunter's laptop was OK to Hillary's emails were about Chelsea's wedding, and on and on.

On the other side, you have the logical people, the Patriots and polling firms that actually poll and don't predetermine the outcomes — places like Trafalgar.

One is the narrative about the vanishing red wave: While perhaps having receded a bit, isn't really grounded in much real-world reality.

And the second largely unreported thing is the Latino vote is one of the major drivers. And for Catholics, remember, about half that Latino vote is made up of what's proving to be socially conservative Catholics.

You might even say they are stubborn in that. As we've covered before, remember, the Democratic strategy has always been to cobble together a near majority coalition of various minority groups and then peel away enough White votes to put them over the top.

It worked locally pretty well, and even on the national stage helped get Clinton and Obama in the White House as well as get Biden "elected." But what happens when one of those political "bricks" holding up that wall starts crumbling?

Well, the wall tumbles down, and that's what appears to be happening right now.

Call it the "empathy" question, and the results are flat-out horrible for Biden and the Democrats.

That was the theme of the day. Elect Joe because he feels your pain and suffering and will do something about it. Well, he certainly has done something about it. He's increased it and it's beyond clear from that 20-point gap — not to mention the majority — that Joe has added to the pain and does not care or have empathy for the middle class.

But non-stop policy disasters impacting everything from the economy to crime to the border meltdown — with each of those categories having its own laundry list of woes — have now convinced a majority of likely voters the Democrats don't care about you or your pain.

Digging even deeper, however, when you look at the demographics, the group-by-group breakdown, the situation may soon be turning suicidal over at Democrat Party headquarters.

And leading the meltdown are Latino voters; again, half of whom are Catholic. First, look at women voters on the specific question: "Does Biden care?"

51.4% say no, which is almost exactly what male voters responded (51.6%). Whatever so-called gender gap existed has evaporated.

Running out the door full steam are Black voters.  A majority, 65%, still accept Biden cares "much more" about the middle class; but a whopping 20% say he cares "much less." That may not seem like a lot, but coming from the most reliable voting bloc the Democrats have, to lose one in five on this question is a political earthquake.

While the poll itself has not officially been released yet (consider this a sneak peek), when it comes out, expect very little play in the Marxist media.

But remember, there is a reason Biden isn't on the campaign trail for Democratic candidates: They don't want to be seen with him. And who could blame them?  

The takeaway from all this as regards those Latino voters is simple: The combination of Catholic and more conservative evangelicals among them is proving toxic to Democratic candidates.

And that reality is most pronounced among them, many of whom are in the direct line of fire from the Democratic agenda, especially in the southwest along the border.

They reject out of hand all the woke nonsense as being in violation of their morality, which it is, and they want nothing to do with an open border because they are the ones suffering most from it.

Of course, it doesn't help their cause, and certainly makes the disconnect wider, when the first lady refers to Latino voters as "tacos." Good job, Jill.

But in the case of the Democrats, this may soon go down as the biggest political miscalculation in American politics. Church Militant is going to be in the Southwest the next few days looking at this specific angle, the impact of Catholic and conservative Latino voters on the country's political landscape.

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TRANSCRIPT

I'm Michael Voris, coming to you from Taco-land, at least according to Jill Biden. To the rest of Americans who aren't racist, it's just called Texas. 

There is a horrible miscalculation that the Democrats — who really are racist — made about Latino voters. In a phrase, here it is: "They're all the same."

Democrats have strategized for decades that they will do next-to-nothing to stop the flow of illegal immigration. In the end, it will benefit them at the polls during elections.

The reasoning went something like this: "All these Mexicans are all the same, and the ones already here legally will welcome the illegals, because they're all just tacos at the end of the day."

It's nearly unavoidable. The truth comes out of the mouths of even evil people, the truth being that irresistible. 

Just like Whites aren't all the same and Asians aren't all the same, Latinos are not all the same. But when your party leadership is flat-out racist, you see the world in racist terms.

After all, racist Nancy Pelosi just said it's wrong for Republican governors to send busloads and planeloads of illegal immigrants up North because — wait for it — they need to be down South, picking the crops. 

The Democratic Party appeals to Latino voters are about as authentic as Robert O'Rourke, a fourth-generation Irish American, running around using a pet name given to him by his family to distinguish him from his grandfather.

Beto O'Rourke has about as much in common with Latino voters as Latinos have in common with "Bo-Guh-Das" — which is to say, nothing. His name is Robert. Period.

But the phony appeal by Democrats here in Texas to Latino voters does have some reasoning behind it. This year, for the first time ever, there are more Latinos in Texas than Whites — excluding Beto, of course.

That's why the eyes of the political world will be on Texas this election — to see exactly how the Latino vote breaks down. Democrats have longed for this moment and helped engineer it, but it might just blow up in their faces.

Latino voters are proving to be much more stubbornly conservative than Democrats had hoped.

Roughly speaking, half are Catholics and the other half are some version of mostly conservative Evangelicals. This is a testament to the failure of bishops in the United States to keep the Latino population Catholic, but that's another story.

They do not support open borders. They do not support abortion on demand. They do not support attacks on the family. They do not support the craziness in the schools with sexualization of their children.

According to polls, a meager 3% of Latinos use the term, but even more have combined forces to have it dropped. They see it as insulting to their heritage, which it is.

As Axios noted, this reflects "a movement by some Latinos to define themselves rather than be labeled by predominantly white progressives."

All three of them have deep ties to the Catholic Church — not the Catholic faith, mind you, just the institutional aspect of the Church. They go to Mass at least somewhat regularly, receive Holy Communion when they do go and openly talk about their Faith as though they actually believed it.

Instead, they are racists who exploit whatever they need to remain in power. But with the Latino vote, they may have met their Waterloo here in the Lone Star State this election cycle.

While California has a higher actual number of Latinos — 15 million, to 11 million in Texas — more than half of Texas is now Latino. This November, that means a sea change in American politics may sweep across the American political frontier. The Democrats may very well have only themselves to blame for it.

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TRANSCRIPT

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

I'm Michael Voris, coming to you from our continuing tour of the southwestern United States, where the illegal immigration and border crisis problems are most acutely felt.

In addition to the Democrats losing Latinos over these issues, as well as quite a few others, so too are the U.S. bishops. A little history is in order to understand the scope of the problem. 

First, the terms "Latino" versus "Hispanic" — there is a meaningful difference. But in social surveys and polls, these two terms are often interchanged by pollsters. For this Vortex, we will merely repeat whatever term pollsters used, with your understanding that term-switching may have occurred.

Now the numbers: In 2019 it became a fact that most Hispanics or Latinos in the U.S. were no longer Catholic. It was a dramatic drop, falling from 57% in 2009 to 47% in 2019. A percentage decrease every year for a decade.

That, more than any other single factor, is what is at play behind the shifting political landscape of the Latino vote being lost by the Democrats. Non-Catholic Latinos are, more and more, voting against Marxism.

True, there was a rift within ecclesial ranks once Roe v. Wade was handed down, but it was not enough to counter the Party of Death in any significant way.

Whites, as well as Latino Catholics, got the message loud and clear — the Democrats were fine, except for that irritating abortion question.

Bishop after bishop, especially here in the Southwest, continued to send that signal — almost total sanctioning of the Democratic agenda.

Long before the crazy, disconnected trans–LGBTQ agenda of corrupting children's minds swept into public schools; chanceries, Catholic schools and parishes were already havens for homosexual and gay-friendly teachers and administrators.

The Catholic faith has not been faithfully taught in Catholic schools for decades. As a result, what has poured out of Catholic schools since at least the 1970s are social justice warriors, perfectly at home in a morally corrupt culture pushed legislatively by Democrats.

At first, when the number of Hispanic or Latino Catholics was relatively low, much of the effect on them was not observable. But now, since their numbers have swelled, it's easier to measure the impact not only on the country but also on the Church.

You talk about the upside-down world or clown world. This, ladies and gentlemen, is brought to you courtesy of a U.S. hierarchy run amok.

As homosexuality within the ranks of U.S. bishops and priests, as well as the embrace of it, continues unabated, the feminized-clergy problem will continue to serve as a deterrent for healthy Latino males.

That's beyond startling when you consider that, across the nation, a whopping 40% of the Church comprises Latinos. In short, 40% of the Church is able to provide only 1% of its priests.

Bottom line — Hispanic males born and reared in the Church in the United States have no desire to become priests.

Why is that? Masculinity and fatherhood are highly valued in the Hispanic culture, as they used to be in European-descendant culture. But once homosexuality reared its head, it was "lights out" with Hispanics.

It's especially a deserved slap in their face when you consider the bishops prattle on about illegal immigration issues. Hispanics still walk away, rejecting the pandering. If the bishops' plan was to fill the emptying pews by replacing them with Hispanics, it's not working.

It's true that the overall percentage of the Church in the United States is increasingly Hispanic. But at the same time, the overall raw number of Catholics is shrinking, even if more of those faces may be Brown as opposed to White.

What a sad commentary on U.S. Catholic leaders. Had they done the right thing and walked away from the Democrats, it could have been the Church leading the charge to preserve America, with many converts to boot. As it is, the "always on the wrong side of history" U.S. hierarchy just stayed on the course of self-destruction.

Depending on how the midterms and the 2024 presidential election work out, we could very well be looking at a race to the bottom between the country and the Church, with the bishops leading each team.

It's all part of our continuing commitment to you, to bring you what you won't hear practically any place else.

What we do costs a lot of money, but we think you will agree that no one does it better than we do. Please support our continuing work here. Thank you in advance for your support. Please just click on the link.

Soon we will leave Texas and continue to Arizona, to check out the political goings-on over there from a Catholic perspective.