Church Militant The Vortex Feed

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TRANSCRIPT

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America is becoming less religious — no news there. It's the continuation of a decades-long decline, but it is now accelerating. But what few have recognized, at least in any formal sense, is that this trend is also present within politically conservative circles. This is a sea change from days gone by when Christians had a dominant influence.

Back in the days of Ronald Reagan, it was the Moral Majority of Jerry Falwell, a largely Protestant presence that drove the agenda on the political right. That was the reality for roughly 20 years, until the era of George Bush in 2000–2008. By the time Bush was done and Obama arrived, what was once a dominant force was already greatly diminished in GOP circles. In short, the conservative political project had lost its specifically Christian character.

It didn't seem that way during the campaign of Donald Trump in 2016, but it was already in full swing — just undetected because of the strong support of Christians for Trump. What we are seeing unfold now is a social conservatism as opposed to a religious one. Trump certainly did not cause this, but probably without consciously realizing it, he tapped right into the "religion indifferent" crowd now becoming dominant in conservative circles. 

Check out some of the numbers:

In the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump had much stronger support among those who attended church services less frequently.

Among those attending more than once a week, 32% supported Trump in the primaries. Of those attending a few times a year, 50% supported Trump. Rare attendees supported him at 55% and those who never attend provided 62% support.

In short, among self-identified political conservatives, the more they disregarded church attendance, the more inclined they were to vote for Trump. Underscoring all this, a 2020 Pew Research study revealed that fewer than half of Republicans said "being Christian" was important to them.

That helps explain the enormous change in Republican voters' attitude toward same-sex marriage. Their support doubled in just 10 years to what is now a majority. It went from 28% support in 2011 to a whopping 55% support in 2021.

This is no longer Ronald Reagan's Republican Moral Majority party. That cuts across every major narrative you can find, especially the White Christian nationalist fabrication that the Marxist media yammer on about nonstop. There is a definite nationalist streak, even a foundational one, among Trump supporters, but it isn't driven in any way by "Christians."

As for it being specifically "White," that too is not really true. Hispanics and Blacks turned out in record percentages to vote for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. It's true, of course, that among Hispanics and Blacks, Democrats are still predominant, but that is evaporating pretty rapidly. The conventional wisdom that increasing racial diversity would secure a Democratic stranglehold well into the future is being turned on its ear.

So if the conservative movement isn't really all that "White" and also isn't "Christian," then what is it? Well, we are left with the "nationalist" character. This is where the reality is.

Today's Right does not think in terms of religion or race, despite the heavy-handed claims of the Left. The truth of the matter is simply that the Right sees all this, ironically enough, in strictly Marxian terms: a class struggle between average-Joe Americans and a dominant government–corporate partnership actively hostile to them. Religion and race have very little to do with it.

The new social conservatism wants to overthrow this new dominant order. That is a complete turnaround, a 180-degree flip in convention, from the halcyon days when the Left was the one agitating against authority. Those firmly ensconced in the New Right are the ones embracing overthrow and unconventional tactics.

The reason is pretty obvious — the Left succeeded in winning and gaining everything it wanted. Now, with almost total power in its hands, the Left has become massively oppressive with the demand that everyone bow to its worldview. It used to be that the Left claimed all it wanted was a live-and-let-live approach. That was probably never true, but even if it was, it has changed drastically. Now, you offer a pinch of incense to the gods of the Left or you are actually punished.

You may even agree, at least in principle, with gay marriage, abortion in some cases, and so forth, but to be ordered to bow down has rubbed enormous numbers of Americans the wrong way, regardless of their views on religion or the color of their skin. In short, post-Obama cultural progressivism is being rejected by huge numbers of Americans.

So what does all this mean for Christians, specifically Catholics, on the political scene? Interesting question. Deeply religious people, especially Catholics, need to understand the new dynamic at play here. While, as always, it's a spiritual war because of the moral issues at play, it is not perceived that way at all by the vast majority of those who identify as political conservatives. In fact, they don't even think in those terms — completely off their radar.

True, there is an alliance around what could be called the new civic religion. There is a lot of overlap, certainly much more so than with anything on the Left. But, all this means that, for the moment, the choice Christians have to make is to either take their seat at the back of the bus, where they are welcomed by those in charge on the Right, or just not be on the bus at all.

Do the faithful simply withdraw support and likely ensure a win by the Marxists? Or do we stay in the game, fight this fight and then try to evangelize and convert, having to perhaps swallow hard at various moments? This is the new political reality, like it or not.

Catholics lost the possible initiative back in the 1950s and early 1960s, in what you might call the "era of Sheen." The 1970s and 1980s gave birth to the Protestant Moral Majority, the "era of Falwell," which had some influence owing to the sheer numbers of Protestants in America, but by 2000, was on the way out. We are now in the "era of Obama" and the entire, oppressive Marxist regime is being rebelled against by average Americans who are largely as unconcerned with religion as they are with race.

For those who decide to stay in the game, it will be a two-phase war, consisting of defeating Marxism and converting political allies. It's not clear at all that the U.S. hierarchy shares either of those goals. Interesting times, indeed.

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TRANSCRIPT

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The world, the culture we are living in today, is essentially the making of Barack Obama. Aside from the obvious points that Biden was his vice president and Hillary was his pick to succeed him, there is much more at work in all of this.

But perhaps the most disturbing thing for Catholics about Obama's world is the high degree to which leading Catholics assisted him and still support his vision. The simple truth is that Obama won the 2008 Catholic vote with a whopping 54%. He didn't manage that on his own — far from it. This is one reason why it's so important for faithful Catholics to understand their role and the necessity for them to be involved at all levels.

Obama's progressivism was ushered in by phony Catholics who are essentially Marxists. They populated Catholic universities, political offices, think tanks and other influential positions, all while draping themselves in religious-sounding language and pushing the need for "taking care of the poor."

Most people wouldn't recognize the names of this corps of corrupt Catholics. Fred Rotondaro, for example, is the chair of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Fred, good Catholic that he is, wrote all the way back in 2010 that "gay sex comes from God." He made his observation in an article for The Huffington Post titled "The World Needs a New Vatican Council."

Synod on Synodality, anyone?

Then there is the largely unknown Tom Perriello, a former U.S. congressman from Virginia. He co-founded Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, the same group of which Fred "Gay Sex / New Vatican Council" Rotondaro is chair. When Tom lost his congressional seat, he just mushed into the shadowy cabal of Marxist-minded Catholics and did a different job. In 2015, phony Catholic John Kerry, Obama's secretary of state, tapped him to oversee a U.S. government agency with a $50 billion budget aimed at coercing poor nations to get on board with the program.

Another group instrumental in getting Obama elected by subverting Catholic teaching, and making it "OK" for Catholics to vote for Barack, is Catholics United, founded by Chris Korzen. Back in the heat of the 2008 campaign, Korzen published a book titled "A Nation for All: How the Catholic Vision of the Common Good Can Save America From the Politics of Division."

Those who pay careful attention to these things, like we do here at Church Militant, will note such things as specific language. The Left is brilliant at creating new vocabulary terms, or simply hijacking old ones and infusing them with new meaning. You will recall that the "common good" became a big-time catchphrase of Obama's. Later, as President Obama, he walked onto the stage at the University of Notre Dame and droned on about that theme.

Unschooled Catholics have no idea what that means, but since it sounds good and they hear it everywhere, they sign on uncritically. Also, notice who wrote the foreword to Korzen's book — Pennsylvania senator Robert Casey, yet another Catholic politician left completely undisciplined by U.S. bishops.

On close examination of how this scheme works, we see there are multiple partnerships. This shows how all this mind-rot gets into the public consciousness — with the aid of Church leaders and their phony, unsanctioned Catholic influencers.

It involves educators and political–academic types who form think tanks and political action committees, such as Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. These groups produce propaganda, the arguments distorting Catholic teaching. They are the ones who publish the books and write the articles in mainstream outlets. The think tanks always come up with initiatives, talking points and so forth, which then get carried far and wide by their surrogates on the ground, down in the trenches.

Then there is the next level — groups like the Tide Foundation and the Arca Foundation. They are the money funnelers — political "527" groups specifically set up to make sure the money keeps flowing to propaganda groups.

Then there are the real people behind all of this — the George Soros crowd. The shock troops in the Catholic world, the ones on the ground who are executing the same-minded policy, include the likes of Kathleen Kaveny. She is currently a distinguished scholar at phony-Catholic Boston College, where her bio reads in part, "A scholar who focuses on the relationship of law, religion, and morality, serves as the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor at Boston College, a position that includes appointments in both the theology department and the law school."

She is the first faculty member to hold such a joint appointment. Kaveny regularly teaches contract law to first-year law students. She also teaches a number of seminars that explore the relationships among theology, philosophy and law, such as "Faith, Morality, and Law," "Mercy and Justice," and "Complicity." In the heat of the Obama 2008 campaign, she was one of the leading "Catholic" apologists for Obama.

Perhaps the most notorious of the sellouts was Doug Kmiec. He was a Republican Catholic who nevertheless came out and endorsed Obama in 2008. He wrote articles and granted interviews, rationalizing how Catholics could vote for Obama, despite the abortion issue. He made the completely nutty argument that Obama's positions on the issues of wages, health care and the Iraq War should tip the scales in Obama's favor, despite his abortion stance.

Kmiec's sellout, which came in an article in the Marxist publication Slate, drew many eyeballs and massive controversy, but served its purpose in helping persuade Catholics that Obama was actually a pretty decent guy whose child-killing policies could be overlooked because he was "Catholic" on so many other things. The shocking summation of Kmiec's pro-Obama position was his one-liner, "One of the things I kept discovering ... was that Obama was sounding more Catholic than most Catholics I know."

For his treachery, Kmiec was made U.S. ambassador to Malta by Obama in 2009.

Why does all this matter? Because these same people are still around, working to undermine the Church and destroy the Faith. They haven't gone anywhere, not by a long shot. They are echoes of the very same filth spewed by James Martin and company — filth that the U.S. bishops and their staffs simply don't care to confront, for a number of reasons.

This means you have to. You have to understand not just big 60,000-foot concerns, but how this all works at colleges and parish retreats. Guest speakers are brought in, articles are published, TV interviews are granted and so forth.

It's a war conducted by a few generals, yes, but it's carried out by traitors all over the Church. It's Obama's world right now.

They must be confronted. 

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In today's Vortex, Katherine Bennett interviews Michael Voris. Bennett, who hosts the Catholic podcast Choose Agape, has a bachelor's degree in theology and a master's in philosophy. She has taught religious education in London for more than 20 years.

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Imagine, if you will, a long train of many cars or boxes that jumps the tracks — your classic train wreck.

An important point to keep in mind, as we think about the train wreck the Church has become, is that the entire train does not jump the tracks at the same moment. On a long train, in fact, it is entirely possible that the passengers near the rear may be unaware that the engine has derailed. It takes time for each of the cars to jump off the rails — a kind of domino effect.

Likewise, there is a certain inertial moment when so many of the engines or cars near the front have jumped the rails that the wreck will happen with increasing velocity for the cars farther back.

Welcome to the Catholic Church train wreck of the third millennium. That is where we are right now. Almost every single car is now off the tracks, and those that have managed to hold on are jumping off at a faster rate. In short order, there will be nothing left.

Of course, in this analogy, the entire train is destroyed and will never see the light of day again. We know that cannot happen in the Church because there is the divine protection aspect.

But that doesn't mean the train wreck isn't real. It means that the Church will be — not can be — will be resurrected and restored, and that it will be done because of Our Lord's promise. He can do a direct intervention, a spectacular miracle — or, as He has done much more frequently in the past, employ human agents to carry out His will.

His will that the Church lasts forever is never in question, off the rails or not — which it is, or very nearly is.

All that said, consider the reality — meaning the scope and level of disaster — of the carnage that is the Church these days. Just last week, the diocese of Madison, Wisconsin announced a plan to slash parishes from the current 102 all the way down to just 32. Closing 70 of 102 parishes, or nearly 70%, is a train wreck.

When you do a deep dive into the announcements, bulletins, brochures, releases and all that, the carnage is evident. For example, Bp. Donald Hying — who blew up Fr. Richard Heilman for saying the truth about politics — admits the disaster of what cannot be denied.

He ordered an extensive study on the state of the Church in his diocese be done. Here's what he calls "Eight Takeaways," which are his reasons for cleaving not just meat, but actual bone:

Now, as we return to our train-wreck analogy, only one of these is attributable to anything other than Church leadership during the past decades — that would be the small giving rate by older people at No. 7. In a Biden economy, all charities are taking it on the chin a bit.

Also, note a point easy to blow past at No. 1. The overall citizen population is growing. Normally, that would suggest "the more people, the more Catholics," but the exact opposite is happening. The percentage of Catholics relative to the overall population is shrinking. That suggests something far worse than just a shrinking Church.

It points to the reality that there is a total free fall occurring, and not just in Madison, Wisconsin. 

As many of you know, I've been around the media world virtually my whole life. In my reporting days, I would routinely cover stories involving Catholics and politics. It was a given, a standard, a fixed number that the national percentage of Catholics relative to the entire population was always just about 25%.

During our coverage of campaign 2016, I noticed, for the first time in my career, the number had shrunk to roughly 22%. Catholics normally punch above their weight in terms of voting, so that 22% still accounted for about 25% of the vote, but the underlying number was undeniable.

The overall percentage of Catholics was dropping.

Then came 2020, and again, four years later, I detected another drop, down to about 21%.

So, in a pretty short amount of time, the percentage of U.S. Catholics had dropped from one in every four to about one in every five.

That is not going to stop. In fact, it's going to get worse, which is why Bp. Hying is dumping as many parishes as he can right now. Madison is not some outlier. In fact, with rare exception, it is the norm. All over the country, bishops are closing up shop and slashing parishes by the thousands.

According to the U.S. bishops' own numbers, there are now 3,000 fewer parishes nationwide than there were in 1990, when there was a record high of almost 20,000. For some perspective, while that was 30 years ago — of those 3,000, 2,300 have closed just since the time we began Church Militant/St. Michael's Media in 2005.

From 1990 to 2005, about 700 parishes closed. From 2005–2021, about 2,300 closed.

Behold, the train wreck.

Those numbers do not reflect all the major announcements that have been made in the past year of further closings — like Madison, for example. Those numbers aren't baked in yet. Once they are baked in, expect the rest of the train to be derailed.

Bishop Hying and various bishops around the country who have to make these announcements are always good at laying out the case for what has to be done. But not a single one of them ever says why. The occasional time they venture into the why there is always a smokescreen, which is likely why most of them don't expend the energy to do so.

From the 1960s to 1990, the Church was cursed with horrible men as leaders who were able to live off the gratis of previous generations of the Church. From the 1990s up until our present day, these bishops are now living off the fumes — and the fumes are running out.

However, in each of those groups of bishops, certain characteristics were evident, the largest one being that they were, almost to a man, weak men. There was and is nothing apostle-like about them.

Some or many are homosexual. Others are careerists. Some are nothing but old, tired middle managers who couldn't inspire anyone to anything. Others are fundraisers who cared little for the Faith other than to swindle rich and wealthy Catholics out of tens of millions of their money. Of course, some simply did not and do not believe the Faith.

But notice, no bishop ever takes responsibility for all this. They never talk about it. They never take ownership of it. They never resign and they never accuse their own, as they should — never hold them to accountability. They just plod along, selling off the patrimony, hoarding whatever cash they can from sales, transferring properties around, paying huge sums to lawyers, and all to simply manage the decline.

It is very clear that a new kind of bishop — no, a new kind of man to be made bishop — is needed. These men have no zeal, no passion, no love. They are placeholders, and not even good ones. They are merely keeping the seat warm for whoever comes after them, provided there are enough Catholics left to require that someone come after them. That's not even guaranteed.

The Church in the United States has become a small, unimportant voice, insignificant in the larger discussions of the culture. There will still be a few remaining years where there will be some nostalgia attached to the Faith among older people, who are aging and dying off. But as they move on — many of whom already have — those who follow will look at faithful Catholics more like they view the Amish.

From the era of Sheen in the 1950s to the era of the Amish in the 2020s, Hollywood producers would have rejected this script as too farcical and unbelievable. Because Church Militant has been talking about all this for roughly 15 years, those responsible for the train wreck hate our guts.

Back in 2013, we produced a Premium show covering much of this, called "Dispatches." It goes into detail about much of this and how we got here, which is, of course, important to understand, because these same things will have been purged in the future.

Please sign up today for a Premium account and be sure to watch those episodes from almost 10 years ago.

We said it then, we'll say it now — Church Militant is the only apostolate in the Church that brings you the full truth about the train wreck. Thank you for your continuing support.

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Perhaps the Marxists who run the federal government were right all along about "defunding the police."

Given the way Biden and his Department of Justice attack and assault his political opponents, or anyone who goes against the regime, it's not really a good idea for these folks to have weapons. For the record, this is why the Founding Fathers understood the need for the Second Amendment.

Remember, the Constitution was written to restrain the government, not restrain citizens.

As news broke last Friday and over the weekend that a large contingent of about two dozen Department of Justice SWAT agents kicked down the door and swarmed a pro-lifer's Pennsylvania house, the scene proved to be yet another in the weaponization of federal powers against Biden's opponents.

Joe Biden hates America. Even more importantly, Joe Biden hates Catholicism. He pretends to be loyal to both, but it's clear his only emotion is hatred. It comes out not only on his face more and more frequently, like his Independence Hall Hitlerian speech a couple of weeks back, but in the launching of raids by his DOJ Gestapo.

Regardless of whether the Republicans take back the U.S. House of Representatives, or for that matter, the U.S. Senate as well, as long as a Marxist sits in the Oval Office, this evil will persist. A Marxist-led Congress simply puts its seal of approval on his actions, but a president does not need congressional approval to conduct affairs at the Department of Justice, a launching pad of the SWAT raids — or to terrify small children.

In this recent case, pro-life activist, author, speaker and committed Catholic Mark Houck from the King's Men group, was hauled off by the SWAT team early last Friday to the Philadelphia federal building, not far from the site of Biden's Hitler speech, and processed for a "crime" that had already been declared as a big nothingburger earlier this summer in civil proceedings.

The supposed "crime" relates to a case where Houck tried to get an obscenity-screaming, pro-abortion, grown man away from his 12-year-old son at a prayer vigil in front of an abortion chamber this summer. The pro-abort made a habit for weeks of screaming, yelling and shouting obscenities at Houck's son. On the last occasion, he got so close to Houck's boy that Houck shoved him away, as any actual father would do. The child killer fell down.

That was it — nothing more. He then filed a civil suit, claiming he had to seek "medical attention," which could mean he skinned his knee. The suit was tossed out as meaningless. But it wasn't meaningless to Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, the U.S. equivalent of Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo.

In fact, with every passing incident, America more and more resembles 1930s Germany.

The Hitler/Himmler duo used the defunct civil case as the pretext for issuing the warrant they used to support the early-morning raid.

Many questions arise from a case like this, but certainly one is, How did the DOJ become aware of a minor, defunct nothingburger of a civil case? If anything, the actual case should have been filed by Houck against the pro-abort for child endangerment, protecting his 12-year-old little boy from the obscene ravings of a child killer.

Somehow, this rises to the level of a federal crime under Biden's regime — violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994. 

Therefore, 15 SWAT vehicles and more than two dozen armed agents, all with weapons drawn and aimed at Houck and his family, is Biden's response to a pro-lifer shoving a screaming pro-abort — who fell down on his own — out of the personal space of his child. Importantly, this was months after the fact.

There wouldn't have to be some months-long investigation because there was nothing to investigate. It could have all been discovered by simply reading the complaint in the civil lawsuit. All the details were right there.

So why did it take months to determine some "crime" had happened? And how did this all get on the Gestapo's radar? There is obviously a lot more going on than just a raid. 

The SWAT raid is nothing more than the periscope you see above the water line. Underneath, just below that water line, is a giant submarine. You don't need a physics degree to figure all this out. It's intimidation, pure and simple.

That's why the tremendous and completely unwarranted show of force occurred — just as in multiple other instances of Biden's Gestapo flexing its muscles. 

It doesn't matter if you are a pro-lifer, politically conservative Christian, Trump supporter or even Trump himself, you can expect an armed-to-the-teeth SWAT team to descend on your house and family whenever Hitler or Himmler feel like it. It's a brute show of force to scare the rest of the regime's opponents into submission and make examples out of anyone who challenges the narrative.

Imagine if Trump had used these tactics. My gosh, they would have impeached him a third time. The Marxist media would have been doing nothing other than wall-to-wall coverage. The U.S. bishops' conference would have worked itself into a frothing frenzy, issuing press releases about "human dignity" and the need for "tolerance" and "justice." But no, not a peep from the hypocritical posse.

Isn't deploying 15 armored vehicles bad for the environment? Just exactly how big a carbon footprint is being created by all these raids?

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Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Michael and the Archangels. Bam!

As is pretty obvious, St. Michael's Media — known online as Church Militant — is named after the most powerful angel in the celestial realm. 

A little background — back in the early, early days of the apostolate, a splendid, dedicated priest was visiting me in the old studio and asked me why I chose St. Michael. I said, "Because he defeated Lucifer outside of time and Our Lady defeated him in time." 

His response was something I have always remembered. He said, "That's correct. Mary and Michael are his most despised enemies, and if you raise their two standards inside this camp, you will take incoming rounds like you can't imagine. But you will have the Mother of God and the Prince of the Heavenly Hosts with you, and he [the Devil] will lose again."

Little did I realize back then not only the full truth of that comment, but also the intensity of the battle that would be waged. Incoming rounds, indeed.

In fact, the very first video, out of thousands we have produced, was the original episode of The One True Faith—St. Michael and the Angels. That was before a packed house on the Feast of St. Michael of Gargano in our original studio, about a mile from this one. 

You can watch that episode and the thousands of others with a Premium account. The sign-up link is included.

In that spirit, it is with great excitement we are celebrating and promoting a new movie on St. Michael. Producer Oscar Delgado has been in the media industry for a long time and brings great experience and skill. Saint Michael's "story," so to speak, is really tremendous when you consider one important yet seldom thought-about aspect.

It was Michael, a lowly little archangel near the bottom of the angelic choir, who first forged the path and blazed the trail in directly confronting, opposing and defeating evil, when Lucifer rebelled.

There had been no example for him to follow because there had been no need, since there had as yet been no rebellion of any kind against God. But it was his great love, meaning adoration and sacrifice for God, which emboldened him and inspired him to challenge the much higher angelic being, Lucifer, with his cry of disdain for the seraph, "Who is like God?"

The buck sergeant rose up and crushed the general, and did it with no other fuel in his tank than his devotion to God and with nothing to model himself after.

Because tomorrow is his feast day, producers made arrangements with movie theaters around the country to give it a single-day showing on Thursday, Sept. 29. It is not available after then. If you want to watch it, the only way is to watch it on the 29th. If at all possible, go see this tomorrow.

If you have to change your plans, change them. Live a little.

To find out in which theaters it's playing nearest you, just go to the website: https://saintmichaelmovie.com/

It's pretty simple to remember — Saintmichaelmovie.com, all one word, all lowercase. Bring a group with you as well.

It's a bit premature, but Happy Feast Day, St. Michael!

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Before we begin, happy Feast of St. Michael and the Angels. Rest assured, the staff here at St. Michael's Media will be having a celebratory cake. I can assure you they will descend on our communal food table like a biblical swarm of locusts. 

No matter how you slice it and dice it, election integrity remains firmly planted in the minds of huge numbers of voters. A majority still believe that cheating was involved in 2020, a narrative the Marxists, Democrats and their media allies have tried desperately to crush — without success.

The beliefs range from "the election was out-and-out stolen" to "there's no real way to know, but tampering was definitely involved."

The media continue to make the ridiculous claims that "there is no evidence" and "every court found no evidence and threw the case out." Both of those are out-and-out lies.

There was plenty of evidence — an overwhelming amount. It simply was never heard in a court because every single judge ruled the party bringing the claim had no standing. That's not throwing a case out because there was no evidence. It's throwing it out because the party is ruled to have no standing to present it.

So, what has come to be the case — in the absence of any evidence being allowed to be presented to a court — is a people's grassroots movement of gathering and presenting the evidence to the people at large.

Here in Michigan, one of the major battleground states in which people believe the election was stolen, a grassroots initiative called Election Integrity Fund & Force was formed to ferret out what happened.

Private citizens like executive director Sandy Keisel and data analyst Tim Vetter embarked on a massively detailed journey to get to the bottom of what happened, and is still happening, in Michigan.

"We're 22 months later, and we're still adding votes to the 2020 election, and we still have not reached the number of votes that were used to certify the election," Keisel said. 

What they have found is that the official numbers reported bear no resemblance whatsoever to the actual numbers of ballots.

Vetter, who does detailed and intricate numbers for a living and lives in the world of spreadsheets, had tracked and proven the case that something funky — what most people call cheating — is a provable fact here in Michigan.

"I have a column called delayed votes added," Vetter said. "There were 22,500 votes added in January, eight weeks after election. April — almost 50,000 votes were added. We've been tracking delayed votes far beyond the actual election." 

Just as troublesome, Michigan's primary this past August looked like nothing had changed.

"We've spent the past couple years learning," Keisel said. "Seven days after the primary, we sent volunteers to go in to request to see ballots, and we were told we couldn't see them for 30 days because the AG opinion that the public has to wait 30 days before they can see the ballots."

That attorney general for Michigan is Dana Nessel, an avowed lesbian who opened, and had to close, a criminal investigation against us here at Church Militant/St. Michael's Media.

That investigation arose from baseless charges by a homosexual liturgy and music director at a San Diego parish, who falsely claimed that Church Militant slashed his tires, so he called Nessel here in Michigan and reported us.

We sued Nessel. The San Diego police even rightfully concluded Church Militant had nothing to do with it and told the Michigan attorney general that. Case closed. But make no mistake — the Marxist crowd, which is largely in control, will do anything to nail its opponents and cheat like hell to keep its hands on the levers of power.

Here in Michigan, that means Secretary of State Joselyn Benson, who controls the state's elections and refused to allow any investigation into the votes of 2020. That includes willfully ignoring the obvious and literal cover-up of the vote tabulation in Detroit, as workers actually put up boards to cover up the windows and block the vision of poll watchers at the vote-counting center.

Citizens protested, collecting tens of thousands of signatures over the next few weeks and months. They took them to Lansing, where Benson and her uniparty comrades told the citizens to go to hell and refused to accept the petitions calling for an investigation.

That's why there's "no evidence" — because Marxists and judges simply refused to look at it.

Benson is being challenged by Kristina Karamo, who has made election integrity a priority.

It's now up to citizens to do everything they can to prevent election irregularities from happening again. That means foot soldiers, poll watchers descending in droves, by legions, on voting precincts during the midterms, as well as vote-tabulation centers.

It became clear to folks like EIF that trying to reverse and hold accountable those involved in the 2020 debacle would be next to impossible. So they set their sites on the midterms and 2024 to prevent any further shenanigans.

You don't have to be in Michigan to be dealing with this — there are multiple states where things just don't add up.

If you are in Michigan, contact EIF to volunteer this election cycle. If you are not in Michigan, the EIF folks can still help you figure out where to go in your state and who to contact to volunteer.

Election integrity is about truth. Since it's about truth, Catholics cannot remain indifferent to it. To watch the entire interview with Sandy and Tim, please click on the provided link. Well worth the watch.

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

In today's Vortex, Michael Voris talks with former Georgia District 7 congressional candidate Y.G. Nyghtstorm about his experiences as a victim of clerical sex abuse and as a blacklisted pro-lifer shunned by faux conservatives in the Republican Party.

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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."