Church Militant The Vortex Feed

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

TRANSCRIPT

One of the things we really try to impress on younger folks here in the studio, as well as those in the audience, is just how much things have changed since we were their ages. There is really no way anyone older than about 50 could say this is the same country anymore. It's not. 

For example, Church Militant had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars simply to exercise our First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly in a blatantly obvious case of those rights being trampled by the city of Baltimore.

Likewise, it has now become apparent that Obama, Biden and Hillary remade the intelligence agencies by appointing Marxist-friendly leaders. They turned around and used the DOJ and FBI to spy on Trump and destroy his 2016 bid for president. Everything that has happened since is because that plan failed.

With the obvious exception of what the Holy Spirit protects and guarantees, this isn't the same Church anymore, humanly speaking. Men who do not believe the Catholic faith are in charge of administering the Catholic faith. The world in which many of us grew up no longer exists. It's gone. 

What will be here in short order, we can't say for certain. But we do know what the enemies of Christ, including those enemies in the Church, want the world to look like. They've told us. It is extremely important to keep in mind that the enemies of Christ inside the Church are in league with the enemies of Christ outside the Church. They share the same worldview, which is totally inverted from what it once was. 

For example, in the past few days, the German Synod has come out recommending women be ordained and sodomites be married in the Church. Likewise, all over the political battlefield, Democrats are wrapping themselves in the American flag and pounding the theme that they love America. Anyone who opposes them is a terrorist, insurrectionist or unpatriotic. That was the heart of Biden's Hitlerian speech a couple of weeks ago — that the Democrats are the only ones who can save democracy.

Talk about an inverted clown world! The entire culture is crumbling, and the accelerated rate at which it is crumbling is astonishing.

For the moment, there are still some places where you can pretend none of this is happening. There are still vestiges of the prior country and the "prior" Church that give the "head in the sand" crowd a place to feel comfortable. But those too will be gone soon, because evil needs complete and total subservience. The goal of the enemies of Christ has never been about tolerance or dialogue. It has always been about domination and nothing less.

While it is true that more people are now waking up to that reality, the question is whether enough people wake up to it. Even if they do, will they step forward and make the necessary sacrifices to push back and restore what once was? That is going to be a very tall order.

The enemies of Christ have been at this for generations — so long that they have succeeded in producing multiple generations of political, philosophical and theological idiots who know nothing of the prior country and prior Church. Tens of millions of Americans and Catholics in America have no conception of how life used to be, what an authentic spiritual life was, or what being patriotic was. Those notions aren't even on their radar and never enter their consciousness. They have been deprogrammed, in a sense, from even being human. Their intellects and their ability to think critically are simply gone, unless it involves some pop star, athlete or social media fad.

They have grown up in a world where killing children is fine, men having anal sex with each other is fine, hooking up is fine, shacking up is fine, but opposing any of that makes you a problem. You are thus judgmental, homophobic or a White Christian nationalist who is a threat to society and democracy.

In addition to being perverted intellectually, they have also been twisted psychologically. They have been taught for decades that they are "special," their feelings are what matter and they are entitled to whatever they want — even so far as signing a note promising to pay off student loans and then not having to pay.

Every story we hear about as "news" is really one more step on the way to the complete inversion of the culture. The refashioning of the armed forces, the insanity in America's classroom curricula, little children being exposed to drag queens — all of these are meant to dull your intellects, and eventually your morals, by constant repetition and exposure until you see it as no big deal. Sure, you may not like it, but you just come to accept it all.  Once that is achieved, Christ's enemies move the goalposts again. What they have been able to achieve is not some violent overthrow but a well-orchestrated takeover.

The exact same is happening in the Church. Why would gay-friendly bishops and their largely homosexual clergy want to destroy the Church's institutions, edifices and appearances? Because destroying those things is extremely helpful to their final goal of destruction — not of the Church, but of the Faith. All the human aspects of the Church — money, prestige, far-flung influence — are powerful weapons in the hands of the robe-wearing enemies of Christ. They need those things to accomplish their designs, just like the Democrats need to control the framework of the republic to eventually demolish it.

Where this will all end, no one can say. But we can say with absolute certainty that we are nowhere resembling where we once were. Since Marxism/socialism/communism first arrived on the scene of human affairs, it has scored victory after victory, while its few setbacks became tactical retreats.

The nation and, most importantly, the Church have been invaded. If you are not actively engaged in this fight, in whatever way you can, you are part of the problem.

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

TRANSCRIPT

The U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade has had the expected tsunami effect across the American landscape. The demonically possessed child-killers are mobilized, literally mad as hell and on the move politically. They are pulling out every single stop to lock down child killing as a permanent fixture from sea to shining sea.

But with a page right out of errant Catholic theologians' favorite playbook, they are now outdoing themselves.

Horrible theologians, inspired by errant Protestant theology, are fond of saying, "Jesus never said that." That is so stupid it's beyond belief that anyone would even say it. However, because Americans are so conditioned to inane Protestant theology that the Bible is the end-all, be-all; an appeal can easily be made to the malformed masses that if it's not in the Bible, it's not true.

In a rush to advance that craziness, even MSNBC pushes that line of thought, as though it's the case that if Joe Scarborough says it, it must be right. Joe "Theologian" Scarborough.  Give me a break. That's as bad as being lectured about morality by active homosexual Anderson Cooper on CNN.

For the record, you can find the appropriate Catholic response to that ridiculous claim by utilizing any one of a number of resources Church Militant has — our Basic Training Apologetics set, for example, loaded with proper Catholic teaching. Likewise, our very popular Where Did the Bible Come From? collection comes complete with a timeline chart tracing the development of the Scriptures. Knowing the place of Scripture and its role in spiritual life is of paramount importance, or else you end up with idiotic statements like, "Abortion is OK because Jesus never said anything about it."

Hey Joe, the Son of God also never said anything about climate change, racism, slavery, a nation's borders, pedophilia or immigration. So what? But He did say, "Love your neighbor as yourself," which a normal, non-virtue-signaling brain would take to include not hacking a tiny infant to pieces and sucking him out of the womb through a vacuum cleaner, among other things.

More importantly here, it was the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church alone that compiled the canon of Scripture, commonly known as the Bible. It was the Catholics who wrote the New Testament, rearranged the books of the Old Testament, translated them, transcribed them, canonized them, fought for them, defended them, enshrined them, and alone have the power and authority to interpret them. It's a Catholic book. No one, especially someone like Joe Scarborough, has any claim to being able to declare what it means or doesn't mean.

But once again, we turn our glance to the bishops who, once again, have forsaken their sacred duty and allowed this madness of personal interpretation of Sacred Scripture to proliferate. How do we know that? Is it just Church Militant being all mean again and everything, or is there some actual basis in fact that we state it? Well, it turns out there is a basis in fact. All you need to do is look around the Church itself and see the abysmal record of the bishops in curtailing personal interpretation of Sacred Scripture, even among their own priests.

Why would bishops say anything about errant Protestant interpretations when they don't say a peep about theologically errant Catholic clergy? For example, our old standby, James Martin, who has turned distortion of Sacred Scripture into a devilish art form, uses the very same argument to defend sodomy that Joe Scarborough uses to defend abortion — Jesus never said anything about two men having sex.

Same comment to you, Evil Jimmy, as to Scarborough — give me a break. Why are the laity having to rebuke Martin while bishops do nothing and say nothing — except, of course, retaliate against the laity doing their work for them? The occasional time a bishop does speak up, it's a day late and a dollar short, after extensive damage to the Faith, souls and truth, plus the culture, State and Church.

But even more glaring, and proving the point even more regarding the bishops not protecting the integrity of Sacred Scripture, are the absolutely inane "homilies" given by billions of priests "interpreting" Scripture. Or, to use that old Protestant standby so popular with brainwashed Catholic youth groups, "breaking open the word."

Please. Give me a break.

There is no scholarship in these Bible classes — just reading something and being asked how you feel about it. That same technique is what's applied by countless priests who "break open the word" for pew-sitters each Sunday. We've all heard the asinine interpretation that Our Lord didn't really multiply the loaves and fishes miraculously — He just convinced the thousands to share some of the dead fish in their pockets with those around them. Or, as Evil Jimmy likes to declare with frequency, Jesus got His marching orders not from His divinity, but from the Syro-Phoenician woman in the Gospels, because Jesus wasn't entirely sure who He was.

These horrors are everywhere in the Catholic world. They are left completely unchecked by bishops who are too busy doing everything else except caring for souls and being guardians of the truth.

The bishops are little else than absentee fathers who happily crack faithful Catholics over the head with their croziers, but would never reign in an erring cleric. In fact, they advance them and protect them at every turn.

At this rate, the bishops should ordain Joe Scarborough. He and Evil Jimmy can "break open the word" for us.

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

TRANSCRIPT

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

We are now down to 54 days until the midterm election. Over Labor Day weekend, the polling outfit YouGov conducted a pretty extensive poll of 1,500 Americans, inquiring about social concerns and voting plans. By any measure, it's pretty awful for Biden and Democrats.

For example, majorities or near majorities say the economy sucks, the economy is shrinking in addition to being in a current recession, prices are through the roof, prices will continue to increase, and Joe Biden is a weak leader and should not seek re-election. All in all, not exactly a rosy picture for the commies.

The problem for patriots is this overall national condemnation of the Dems and their policies isn't exactly translating into a big thumbs-up for Republicans. It's all pretty marginal, in fact.

Local issues and candidates are gonna win this — and there, because of the level of intensity required to break out those kinds of local numbers on national issues, it's anyone's guess. But nationally speaking, here is a ranking of the issues Americans appear to be most concerned about when asked, "what would you rank as the important relative to all other issues?"

And here is an interesting departure — all those previous issues were concerning to a majority of Americans. The last five issues scored less than majority concern:

In what could be a troublesome sign for Democrats, those last five issues are the bread and butter of Democratic Party rhetoric, and yet, compared to other issues, they are viewed as not as important.

When asked a more specific question — "Which single issue is the most important to you?" — still not a lot of good news for Dems. Coming in first was inflation/economy. Climate change was second. Health care placed third. Jobs was fourth. And taxes was fifth.

After that there was a log jam, a tie for sixth place among abortion, civil rights and immigration — all of which barely registered ahead of all the rest of the remaining issues. In fact, almost half of all voters pegged the four economic issues as the ones they are most concerned about. The other 11 issues divvied up the remaining half of all voters' concerns. Couple this with the week's earlier news that inflation actually rose, and, logically speaking, the Dems should get wiped out in the midterms. There's simply not enough time left for them — 54 days — to turn all this around.

What will be interesting to watch is what happens in states like Michigan, where abortion as an issue is directly, straight-up competing with economic issues. Church Militant will be monitoring this as a major point of our midterm coverage — coverage unlike any other media outlet.

So, given the current political climate, it will also be interesting to see what, if anything, the nation's bishops do or say. After all, it is their sheep who are being devastated by the horrible economy, not to mention abortion. If there was ever a chance to step into the political arena and side with normal, everyday American Catholics, this would be it.

So something else we will be watching: Will they talk about the deep concerns the average Joe has, or will they continue marrying themselves to Democratic rhetoric?

The slogan for the bishops' conference should be "We missed every opportunity we had."

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

TRANSCRIPT

The so-called "Liturgy wars" are raging in the Church these days. Frankly, most Catholics don't have the slightest idea that they are even happening, or for that matter, what the Liturgy wars even are.

For the record, a decent way of understanding the concept is that the Liturgy — the Mass and other formal prayers of the Church — not only gives worship to God, but at the same time sums up and expresses what the Church believes. Therefore, the words, gestures and postures have a dual purpose. If you change or alter one, you necessarily change or alter the other. If, for example, you dumb down the words used to give glory to God, you will necessarily dumb down people's awareness of God's majesty, sovereignty and so forth.

Dumb-downed Liturgies, in short, dumb down people's faith because their intellects become dulled.

Now, why is there a war in the Church going on over this (perhaps best summed up generally as the raging battle between the Latin Mass adherents, a decided minority, and the supporters of the Novus Ordo Mass, translated as the New Order of the Mass)? In short, those who support and likely attend the Latin Mass, generally speaking, are aware that the New Mass has certain deficiencies in how it speaks to and about God. Those deficiencies do not cancel the efficacy of the Mass. They don't make the consecration not happen. They don't invalidate the Mass. But that's not the point, whether the Mass is valid or not.

With the exception of breakaway schismatic groups like the SSPX, which actually labels the New Mass "evil," no reasonable minds in the Catholic world spout that idiocy. However, that does not mean that just because it's valid, everything is OK and there are no problems with it. This is where things start to get somewhat into the weeds, because huge numbers of Catholics have a poor understanding of liturgy, both in its purpose and effect. However, for those who do grasp this extremely important point about the importance of liturgy, there is a massive battle raging.

In short, there are those on the spiritually bereft side who actively seek to water down the Faith and replace its objective meaning with a more emotion-based understanding. They don't like or support, and in some obvious cases don't believe, Catholic teaching. They want the Church to be something other than She has always been, and so, in an effort to water things down, they water down the Liturgy. It's a pretty ingenious way, in fact, to accomplish their means. 

Since Catholics who supposedly believe the Faith attend Mass, if they can present a dumbed-down Mass then they can create a dumbed-down laity. They have been largely successful. In clear terms, why would a Catholic attending watered-down Masses for most or all of his life develop any authentic sense of the Eucharist, the need for confession, and so forth?

Weak men, mostly gay, are the priests who run the show day to day or week to week. These men generally despise the Faith because it demands something of them they cannot do. So, in keeping with the old adage that misery loves company, they remake their congregations in their own images — people, laity, who simply do not believe all the teachings of the Faith. These weak and homosexual men eventually make the Mass about them and the people, and not about its true end, which, of course, is worship of God.

So they tell stupid jokes about themselves in the homilies, and relay personal stories from their own lives, all in an attempt to humanize the Mass and take the emphasis almost entirely off God. Theologically, what they have done is to change the emphasis of the Mass from being a sacrifice, which is oriented toward God, to a meal, which is oriented toward the people.

It's one reason, for example, that back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, priests stopped facing God and started facing the people. But tellingly, whenever this change is spoken of, the modernist elements in the Church never express it in those words. Their entire analysis is human-centric. They say it's better for the priest to "face the people" than to stand with his "back to the people," because in their willfully errant analysis, the perspective of the people is all that matters.

For clarity, the priest never stood with his "back to the people" the way they mean it. He stood with the people, all facing God, like the priests of the Old Testament did.

There is much to talk about and learn about all of this — way too much to cover in a Vortex or even a week of Vortex episodes. That's why we have produced a new Premium program we call "Reclaiming Tradition," where all of this is outlined in great detail — how it came to be, what were the motives, real as well as claimed, of all these changes, what the impact has been, and why, in the face of all the destruction of the Faith, there is now, more than ever, an overarching need to reclaim tradition.

If you were to sum up the major change the Liturgy has undergone, it would be the de-emphasizing of sin and its consequences. Hell is practically never acknowledged. Judgment of souls is almost never acknowledged. Sin, as in our personal responsibility, almost never gets addressed. Walking out of such a Mass, week after week, why would anyone feel any urgency to amend their lives? And while it's true that such an urgency is not the primary reason for the Liturgy, it absolutely is one of the "side effects," because that's necessary for our salvation — which, of course, is all bound up with the Liturgy.

Weak faith is the end result of irreverent, man-centered liturgy. And weak faith is an almost guaranteed ticket to Hell. That's why all this matters.

So we strongly urge you to watch and learn. Do not remain willfully ignorant about the deep spiritual realities surrounding this entire battle. Please become a Premium member and watch our very important program Reclaiming Tradition.

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

TRANSCRIPT

Well, here's a little information that the Vatican is not going to like, not to mention the U.S. bishops.

When Pope St. John XXIII became pope, the very first encyclical he issued was called Ad Petri Cathedram, in 1959. It was written and published barely eight months after he became pope and addresses truth, unity and peace in the spirit of charity. The document consists of 150 paragraphs, and so it becomes an interesting point that one of the very first things the pope approaches as a major topic is the media.

For example, from paragraph 16 (again, near the very top of the encyclical): "Radio broadcasts, motion pictures and television shows which make error and vice attractive must be opposed by shows which defend truth and strive to preserve the integrity and safety of morals." From paragraph 15: "The weapons of truth, then, must be used in defense against these weapons of evil."

There are two things that, back in 1959, the Holy Father could not have foreseen: first, the internet becoming a dominant medium in the world of information; second, the massive corruption of the hierarchy and its cover-up by the Catholic establishment media. In fact, for the most part, the Catholic establishment media, as we understand them today, hadn't even been born, which was also the case, quite obviously, with the internet.

But when you combine the two factors of corruption and a complicit media actively covering it up, well, you get something no better than the Biden administration.

Think back on the extensive plotting and cover-up it must have taken for the Catholic media to simply ignore all the news about homosexual clergy sex abuse. Even though the Catholic media were much closer to the individuals involved — the bishops and priests — it took the secular media to uncover it. Then, once uncovered, the bishops took massive pains to skirt the actual issue of homosexuality in the clerical ranks, and the Catholic media were completely compliant.

Even as the secular media were investigating and uncovering stories as far back as the 1990s — like, for example, the Kansas City Star — about large percentages of priests dying from AIDS, the Catholic media sat on their hands, ignoring the voluminous information.

The financial scandals, the sexual scandals — most of each category, closely related, were never deemed sufficient to report about. Meanwhile, the Church was being attacked from within by all this, and still not a peep.

Even to this day — given the backing he gets from powerful prelates like Cupich and Tobin, not to mention the praise and accolades from Bp. Robert Barron — James Martin and his homoheresy is considered completely off-limits as a story.

So referring back to Pope St. John XXIII and looking at this crisis through his construct again — "The weapons of truth, then, must be used in defense against these weapons of evil" — allows us to ask the direct question, "Why would any Catholic turn to these establishment-media types for any information?"

Think of the enormous, massive harm and damage done to just the victims of all this, spiritually and bodily. Does all that not constitute evil? And yet, when organizations like Church Militant come on the scene and begin reporting on it all, we (and others) are completely vilified by the bishops and their lackeys in the so-called Catholic media.

It is just like the secular media shilling for Biden. The Hunter laptop story is just one example. The border crisis, Biden's dementia, inflation, changing the definition of recession — the list is endless.

So, people turn to other sources for their information because the establishment media cannot be trusted when what they are saying simply rings hollow — at the gas pump, the grocery store, public schools, you name it. It takes a long time to establish credibility in this business and just a few minutes to destroy it.

The Catholic media long ago lost all credibility owing to their participation in the cover-up of all the corruption. They are able to survive only because they never tick off the bishops and are therefore allowed to keep being parasites on the institution, as opposed to watchdogs of it.

The role of the media is to hold those in authority accountable. It is not to aid and abet them in crimes for financial gain.

You look over the current landscape and you ask yourself, "What on earth would Pope John write today in an encyclical about truth?"

Just a brief reminder to sign up for a Premium account where you get on-demand access to thousands of hours of truthful, hard-hitting content.

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

TRANSCRIPT

Catholic schools versus public schools — which is better? Sadly, the answer is not a slam dunk for Catholic schools. In fact, in many ways, Catholic schools are actually worse. Not only are students being deprived of truth, but faithful teachers are being dumped.

In the archdiocese of Detroit, a prime example is De La Salle high school — totally faithless but typical. This is in an archdiocese where the archbishop, Allen Vigneron, never stops yammering on about how the Holy Spirit is transforming the archdiocese. Apparently, The Holy Spirit hasn't managed to find time to get around to the schools yet.

Former theology department chairman and religion teacher Kyle Kopy was canned from the phony Catholic school because he would not bow to the woke agenda and insisted on teaching the Catholic faith at a Catholic school.

Kopy explains, "They said I was being insensitive, and I asked them, 'What if I were to teach on homosexuality or transgenderism, and I were to present the Catholic teaching on that? Are you going to back me up on that?' And they could not give me a straight answer." 

"The Catholic school system in America is in shambles," according to David Gordon, another former Catholic school teacher spurned for adhering to basic Catholic teachings. According to Gordon, "If you aren't 100% positive that your kid's school is orthodox, then it's 100% not orthodox. Heterodoxy and scandal are the rule in modern Catholic education, faithfulness the exception."

Full disclosure — both Kopy and Gordon now work here at Church Militant, where they have had to take pay decreases, but are once again able to advance and promote the authentic Catholic faith.

And as the leader here at Church Militant, I — and the staff — are happy to say we are delighted they are here.

Imagine for just a moment the total clown-world craziness of this — faithful men canned by Catholic schools for teaching the Faith having to take pay cuts and come to work for a media apostolate so they can fulfill their professional vocations. Such is the state of the Church right now, and very likely well into the future. The vast majority of America's Catholic schools have become secularized. As such, they are too often spiritually dangerous places for a child, adolescent or young adult.

A personal note — when I was growing up in the 1970s, my parents, God rest their souls, made significant sacrifices to send me and my brother to Catholic schools, as many parents did. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid. In fact, my parents would actually cash my dad's paycheck, and we lived using cash. We lived paycheck to paycheck, and sometimes there was no more money. My mom kept all the money — the cash — in an envelope series for budgeting. Since we were essentially poor, there was no envelope for my monthly tuition.

She would take $20 from this envelope and $20 from that envelope — meaning food and utilities and so forth — until it had totaled $100, the monthly cost for my Northern California Catholic high school in the 1970s.

But — and here's the point — every month she would bring me to the envelope pile and make me watch the cash being taken out of other areas so my tuition could be paid. She would say, "Your father and I want you to see the sacrifices we are making so you can get a Catholic education." Then she'd put those bills (and yes, many times even coins) into an envelope and put them in my satchel to take in and pay at the front office each month.

Catholic parents, who were being faithful and trusting back in the day, got completely screwed over and ripped off by the snakes — and yes, I mean bishops and their modernist cohorts, who essentially stole their money to produce future apostates and heretics.

Even Bp. Sheen knew about this back in the 1970s and publicly said so: "I recommend that my relatives send their college-bound children to secular colleges where they will have to fight for their faith, rather than to Catholic colleges where it will be stolen from them."

This is now the norm in Catholic schools, despite the glossy brochures and videos they run in place of homilies once or twice a year. Your children are not being taught the Faith. They are being taught anti-faith. There are a number of reasons for this that have all dovetailed to create an environment where your kids' faith is destroyed.

They sent Kyle on a three-day suspension and then fired him. Kopy relays: 

We even had a diversity/equity/inclusion person at the school, and word probably got around to people like them about my situation, and they said I need to be done away with. I got terminated through an email after working there for nearly a decade and never had a problem at the school, ever.

Kopy adds, "My experience has taught me that most run-of-the-mill Catholic schools are basically expensive public schools with poorly taught religion classes. Unfortunately, the Faith is not the most important thing to these schools."

Conservatives often complain about their children being exposed to evil ideologies in public schools. We hear the same complaints about Catholic schools. The public school system swears allegiance to the State, and a secular and godless State will have a secular and godless curriculum. No one should expect otherwise. But any institution bearing the name "Catholic" is obliged to honor that claim and should be held to it. 

In our very popular Premium show Mic'd Up, we aired an in-depth look this past week at this disaster and what parents could and should do. We are providing that episode for your viewing for free by just clicking on the provided link.

We want you to know about all this because you need to, but we also want you to see the work we do here with our Premium shows so that you will sign up. Your $10 a month goes to not only keeping the apostolate going but also helping pay the salaries of various "refugee" Catholics — smart people, dedicated people who ran into the buzzsaw of the modernist Church for simply telling the truth and trying to save souls.

Please click on the link below to see this Mic'd Up episode, and please sign up for a Premium account today.