Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

Just a brief reminder, Church Militant is on the ground in Rome bringing you every bit of what you need to know about the synod each day. Our Rome correspondent, Jules Gomes, reviews the day's happenings on Church Militant's rome dispatch, hosted here in Detroit by our own Brad Eli every weekday.

There's a link here in the Vortex every day for the month of October to their discussion and breakdown of the synod. Don't miss a single episode of rome dispatch — a one-stop shopping for you each day on all the news from the synod, concise and straightforward.

Now, war. War in the Middle East.

No matter where you fall, even if you don't have an opinion one way or the other on the decades-long Israeli–Palestinian conflict, there is something larger to consider here. The military-industrial complex, first identified by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as he left office (and later termed "the Swamp" by Trump) — that crowd loves war. They profit from it.

But with the commies largely in control of the swamp these days, there is an even further dynamic, far worse than before. When the wars used to be about just profit, that was bad enough. But now, it has taken on an entirely different skew. It's not just about financial profit, but ideological profit as well. In recent decades, the communist Democrats have allied against Israel (again, whatever your position on that question is, is beside the point).

They have decided, by their reckoning, that they can kill two birds with one stone here. The entire commie Democrat machinery (for ideological reasons) has lined up against Israel. The likes of AOC, Tlaib, Omar, and the rest of the socialist "squad" are the mouthpieces, but they enjoy broad support within their party.

And the Democrats, among whose stronger support at the polls is from Jewish voters, pose a conundrum for people: Why would they be so popular among Jewish voters yet be so anti-Israel? Here's a possible way to turn that around: It's not so much anti-Israel as it is pro-Palestinian, which, for the most part, is Muslim, which means anti-Christian.

While Christians don't especially fare well under Muslim rule or Jewish rule, the Jews just bomb them to intimidate Palestinian authorities, looking on them as mere collateral damage; they don't have terror groups beheading them and parading them around on social media.

The Dems back the largely more extreme Muslim forces of the Middle East precisely because of their hatred for the Christian West. And that is the overlap, the point where they form alliances with them, and, in the case of Israel, they are on the wrong side for the commie Dems.

When you toss in the horrible theology of evangelical Protestantism that modern-day Israel is precursor to the second coming — it's not — the atheist commies see a target-rich environment. Remember Obama, hater all of things American and Western civilization, handed the Iranians billions in cash, only to have Trump come along and cut it off. And that doesnt even include his complicit support for ISIS (remember them?).

Now that commie Biden is in control, the money started flowing again and geopolitical experts are saying that some chunk of that money flowed to Hamas so they could arm and equip for this latest and most devastating attack as well as future ones. It's interesting to note here that the Biden White House over the weekend posted a "we must refrain from retaliation" message thinly veiled at Israel. Biden took it down after heated criticism.

It's funny, you know: He doesn't have that "please refrain" message for Ukraine, when Russia attacked them. That's because Russia doesn't play in his (and his Hunter-friendly, Ukraine-proxy commie/globalism sandbox). So Russia is automatically the bad guy for that reason, and to Biden and his communist party, that's the only reason that matters.

And the major commie-allied media will fall right into line, reporting according to the party talking points. Over the weekend, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation issued a memo to employees saying do not refer to the terrorist organization Hamas as a "terrorist organization." All the money that flows out of D.C. to "allies" around the world seems to flow only to allies intent on destroying the republic and ultimately Western civilization.

Talk about "follow the money."

TRANSCRIPT

The effects of communism or Marxism are not confined to the spiritual realm — far from it.

While the spiritual consequences are the most devastating, because they are everlasting, there are material world effects as well. Take, for example, urban America, the once great cities dotting the American continent: Nothing in history had ever been seen like this before, sprawling prosperous cities bolstering a giant economic engine that was the envy of the world.

But today, owing to a century-long plan hatched even as that prosperity was dominant, those same cities are in ruins, not even rising to shadows of their former glory. Perhaps the leading example of that is right here in Detroit, which was so high and fell so fast. The question is, "Why?"

America's urban rot has been a valuable tool for the Marxist Democrats. While it is that their policies have kept this the status quo for 60 years, they claim to champion the "little guy" — the oppressed, minorities, the impoverished.

But they are the very ones responsible for the oppression, the impoverishment — because they want it that way. It helps keep them in power. They are taking a page right out of Karl Marx's playbook.

For three days, the Michael Voris Show toured around Detroit, interviewed residents, peeled back the propaganda to show you the present-world effects of Democrats and their Marxism. And while Detroit is the focus because it's our own backyard, this sad story, this soul-crushing reality, is present in big cities all over America thanks to the communist agenda.

So we invite you to watch all three parts by clicking on the link below.

Ejecting God from daily life obviously has hellish consequences in the next world, but that hell begins right here in this world.

TRANSCRIPT

Just a reminder that Church Militant brings you the best, most insightful coverage of Pope Francis' synod underway in Rome this whole month.

Our Rome correspondent, Jules Gomes, breaks down the happenings each day in our popular program Rome Dispatch, hosted by Brad Eli. Click on the provided link to keep up on everything.

Now, St. Paul and communism may be separated in history by almost 2,000 years — but truthfully, not really.

Catholics are in the midst of an identity crisis brought on since the end of Western civilization, which, for the record, is over. What has moved into the power vacuum is the greatest tyrannical government known to man: communism, trafficking these days under the pseudonym of "globalism." Call it whatever you want; it's all atheistic tyranny designed to crush belief and the soul.

Keenly aware of the influence and power of government, St. Paul spells this out in his letter to the Ephesians: In each successive generation, Christ's followers must win the world for Him. Paul lays out his plan for doing just that in his letter to the Catholics at Ephesus, but very few Catholics today actually know this.

We've had it so good for so long that the need to be constantly vigilant and aggressive no longer sufficiently exists in our mindset and worldview. Evil never rests; why on earth would Catholics think that we can?

Do you want to get a handle on what Paul was talking about? In fact, you need to get a handle on it! For this reason, Church Militant is offering our first-ever masterclass on the Bible, specifically, St. Paul's letters to the Ephesians, where the great apostle is crystal clear about all this.

Starting on Oct. 22, it will be available to you live, and it will run for six consecutive Sundays at 4 p.m. ET.

Classes will be live on Zoom but will also be downloadable for those of you who can't be present during live sessions. One ticket covers your whole household. Homeschooling families, bring your kids for a college-level biblical theology education.

Understanding Scripture and politics should be foundational for Catholics, and that's why we're bringing you an expert like our friend and biblical scholar Chris Plance to teach you the nitty-gritty of what you need to know.

So please sign up for this special offering from Church Militant today by just clicking on the provided link. Make this a priority. Spend a few hours learning in a class setting, and stop being passive.

The world is falling apart, and too few seem to know or care to do anything about it. Don't let that be you.

TRANSCRIPT

Just a reminder that Church Militant has the best, most insightful coverage of Pope Francis' synod underway in Rome this month.

Our Rome correspondent, Jules Gomes, breaks down the happenings each day in our popular program Rome Dispatch, hosted by Brad Eli. Click on the provided link each day to keep up on everything.

Now, most Catholics have zero idea that St. Paul was a social warrior, clamoring for Catholics to not sit on their keisters and get busy with changing the world. It wasn't about just getting to Heaven individually for Paul; it was about initiating the kingdom of Heaven here on earth — right here, right now.

Catholics, as a whole, are among the most complacent, sit-back-and-let-the-world-happen types that you will ever meet. Maybe a hundred years or so ago, that could pass, but with the communist agenda seizing massive control around the globe, there needs to be a wildly new approach. And Paul lays it out in his letter to the Ephesians.

The problem is so few Catholics even crack open the Bible that they have no idea that Paul is sounding the alarm about getting in the fight in this world. Spiritual warfare happens in the temporal world. What makes it spiritual is the effects are everlasting. But the dirty work happens right here on earth, right now.

For this reason, Church Militant is offering our first-ever masterclass on the Bible — specifically, St. Paul's letters to the Ephesians where the great apostle is crystal clear about all this. It's available to you live, starting on Oct. 22 and running for the following six consecutive Sundays at 4 p.m. ET. Classes will be on Zoom, but will be downloadable for those of you who can't be present during live sessions. One ticket covers your whole household, so homeschooling families, bring your kids for a college-level biblical theology education.

So please sign up for this special offering from Church Militant today by just clicking on the provided link. Make this a priority. Spend a few hours in a class setting actually learning, and stop being passive. The world is falling apart and too few seem to know or care to do anything about it. Don't let that be you.

TRANSCRIPT

As the ecclesiastical train wreck that is Pope Francis' Synod on Synodality gets underway in Rome today, Church Militant will be bringing you every bit you need to know of the day's events from our Rome correspondent Jules Gomes on the ground in the Eternal City, in our much-loved broadcast rome dispatch, hosted here in Detroit by our own Brad Eli.

We will be providing a link here in Vortex every day for the month of October to their discussion and breakdown of the synod. Jules is a highly respected international journalist who has broken multiple stories for Church Militant over the past number of years and enjoys the confidence of numerous sources in and around the Vatican.

Don't miss a single episode of rome dispatch, a one-stop shopping for you each day on all the news from the synod, concise and straightforward. Just click on that provided link below after Vortex for the absolute latest from Rome.

Now for today — guess who is all of a sudden a champion of the southern border being regulated and the flow of millions and millions of illegals brought to an end? None other than New York City's bumbling cardinal-archbishop, Timothy Dolan, whose clock is ticking on the end of his scandal-plagued reign in the Big Apple.

Cardinal Laughapalooza is all of a sudden concerned that since Catholic governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida are shipping bus load after bus load of illegals out of their states, straight to the steps of the liberal cities whose leaders caused this chaos — that now a nation should have effective border policy.

Quoting the laughing cardinal from last week, "The Church has always been very supportive of the right of a nation to have borders and border security. ... We don't just want borders where anybody can come in."

Oh really? Well, Dolan is right that this is the Church's teaching, but here in America, where under those who are supposed to teach that teaching, the bishops, it has gone largely ignored and actually trampled on. Could it be because the bishops have made billions off the backs of U.S. taxpayers ignoring the teaching?

Likely.

When the nation's primary diocese, Baltimore, last week, late on a Friday afternoon so as to avoid as much press coverage as possible, became almost the third-dozenth diocese to declare bankruptcy in the face of homosexual-clergy sex abuse lawsuits, it became astoundingly clear that money is the driving factor for these men.

Billions of your dollars have been paid out to church attorneys in an effort to thwart victims being compensated. Parishes have been closed, property sold off, and yet, the big cash cow — U.S. tax dollars flowing to the bishops for their immoral role in illegal immigration — remains largely under the radar when it comes to most Catholics understanding the connection.

The billions in collection-plate dollars and church holdings they have paid out in legal costs have been largely offset by U.S. tax dollars.

By the way, a shout out to Baltimore archbishop William Lori for trying to hide the news of his declaring bankruptcy by issuing the release at a minute to 5 on a Friday. Did you really think no one would notice, Archbishop? Really?

Lori has been a snake of an operator in the hierarchy for nearly his entire career. He plays dumb but is as crafty as they come. There's hardly a scandal in the Church he isn't intimately connected with.

Someone needs to tell Abbot and DeSantis to save a little on gas money and drop off a few million illegals in Baltimore, so Lori could have a sudden policy change as well. That would make Cdl. Timothy "Not in My Backyard" Dolan happy.

It's funny, you know, all these immigration lovers — Obama, Hillary, Eric Adams (in fact, the entire Democratic communist party establishment) — are all good with invisible, nonexistent borders, until it affects them.

I mean, you can almost picture Dolan standing on the front steps of St. Patrick's on Fifth Avenue bellowing, "Not in my cathedral!"

Dolan has less than two years to go: He hands in his resignation on his 75th birthday, Feb. 6, 2025, less than 16 months away. He came to New York with a reputation of being a strong, orthodox bishop. That was all a facade. Like so many of the rest of the hierarchy, he presented whatever face he thought he needed to climb the ladder.

He fought behind the scenes like crazy to get gays in the St. Patrick's Day parade in a Faustian deal with then-governor Andrew Cuomo to get funding for New York Catholic schools from state lawmakers.

The deal blew up in his face. The schools are closing and the gays are marching. And millions of illegals continue to pour across the border, with Dolan only now expressing concern.

Communism has complete and total control over the Democratic Party. Part of that control was achieved through their use and manipulation of the U.S. bishops, playing on their greed.

You wonder, do any of these men, as they reach their end, actually have a drop of remorse for what they have done to bring about the collapse of the republic?

Within three years, almost all of these men will be gone from office. Vigneron, in Detroit, is done this month; Cupich, in Chicago, in five months; Dolan, in 16 months; Lori, in 30 months.

They weren't content with helping undermine the Church; they helped engineer the collapse of the republic as well.

That's one helluva track record, fellas. Wow.

TRANSCRIPT

I'm Michael Voris on our final day aboard the Fall Retreat at Sea off the New England coast.

Revolution sprang from these shores 250 years ago. Civil war erupted within these shores 160 years ago. And many citizens are thinking civil war is on the way again. Those are the findings of two recent polls that say a large plurality of Americans believe Americans will be killing each other within 10 years. A Zogby poll puts the number at 46%. An Economist/YouGov poll puts it as 43%. In neither poll did more Americans think there would not be a civil war. Those are trend lines that have ratcheted up considerably in the past decade.

Interestingly, even the Left, the commies, are beginning to comment on all this in agreement, that yes, civil war is a distinct possibility in the foreseeable future. Of course, they blame it on an overreaction by one of their favorite bogeymen, "Christian nationalists," whatever that means exactly. The calm, progressive, mild-mannered states are the victims, while the mean, religious, gun-toting crazies are the villains.

Whatever you might think about the possibility of a civil war, it is extremely telling that almost half of Americans think the likelihood of it happening is pretty darn good. Why would so many Americans think civil war is possible, even likely? Well, the commies guess that since we are "losing," we will resort to violence more readily and quickly. But what they don't seriously address is why so many Americans think the country is being lost.

See, for communists, children being killed in the womb or sexually transitioned or taught perversion in schools, that's all perfectly normal, and to think otherwise or oppose it makes you a bigot or a homophobe or a racist or a white nationalist. The irony is completely lost on them that the very act of labeling normal people as all that is what normal people are sick of. In short, the commies have pushed too far, and people are done; they've had enough.

Does there have to be an actual war to reverse things back to how they were? And "how they were" means you don't have to worry about the FBI kicking in your door because you're pro-life or the Justice Department labeling you a terrorist threat because you are a faithful Catholic or spying on you in Mass.

You can choose to not go along with the prevailing culture of perversion and not be canceled. You can speak from your traditional religious convictions and not worry about the government and Big Tech coming after you or cutting off your bank account or shutting off your car or whatever.

The bottom line is that huge numbers of Americans are looking down the road and asking, "Where does this all end?" And a huge number of them are answering that question, "It concludes at the end of a gun barrel." Right or wrong, necessary or not, as long as the commies keep pushing, the scales are going to keep tipping.

No war ever just starts out of the blue. There are always precipitating factors and multiple dynamics that prepare the way for it. The only thing commies and Christians seem to agree on today is that many of the necessary factors and dynamics are falling into place more and more. And all of this on the eve of what may be the most hotly contested election in U.S. history, a history that began in violence right here on these shores.

TRANSCRIPT

I'm Michael Voris, coming to you from onboard our fall Retreat at Sea as we steam back toward New York.

The experience of Catholics in America, which has been the theme of this retreat, the history of the Church here, went from bad to good and then back to its present-day bad.

And, in truth, the present day (as we have said before) is nothing less than a total dumpster fire. For example, the bishop statistics group just last week published its findings that the number of Catholics who attend Mass each Sunday has plummeted even further, down now to just 17%.

There's not really a need to go through all the depressing (yet revealing) stats other than to say no conclusion can be drawn other than the Church in the United States is headed for extinction.

A number of sociological data points also point to impending shipwreck. For example, Gallup published its poll last week and it was immediately seized upon by atheists like the Freedom From Religion Foundation as proof of their success.

It revealed for the first time since Gallup has asked the question that a majority of Americans no longer identify as simply "religious" — 51%, in fact. And as you might already have surmised, the future outlook is even more bleak, as large numbers of young people skew the poll even further.

And as a population trends more and more atheist, or at the very least "religiously indifferent," the politics will be sure to follow. Politics is always downstream of culture. Leaders rarely actually lead. They follow what their constituents want so they can hold on to their own power.

In a democracy, once the citizenry becomes immoral, the laws will eventually catch up to that. There are now fewer parishes in America than there were in 1965. The number of marriages, baptisms, confirmations and first Communions is tanking.

Catholicism specifically is heading the way of religion in general in America, which is into the arena of irrelevance. The largest group of Catholics in the country is now former Catholics.

Among all religious bodies, there is one trend in general that sticks out: Protestantism, predictably, is disintegrating at a shocking rate. In the aftermath of World War II, almost 70% of Americans identified as such.

Today, that number has been cut in half, down to 34%. So-called non-denominations, which did not exist immediately after the war, do comprise 11% of the population, but even when you add them together with Protestants (which they really are themselves, without identifying that way), it still comes up to less than half the total population of the country.

Catholicism has flatlined since the war, with a modest overall uptick in the post-war years right up until the Reagan White House years and, after that, a steady decrease. The average percentage of Catholics had held relatively steady for decades after the war at around 23–25%. Today, it is closer to 18%.

The rise among Americans has been with those who say they have no religion, the so-called "nones."

For the first time ever, there are now more people in the United States who identify as having no religion than there are Catholics. Buried and hidden inside that group saying they belong to no religion are millions of former Catholics.

There are more Catholics who have walked away from the Catholic Church than there are adherents of any other single religion. That's owing partly to the fact that there were more Catholics than any other religion to begin with for the last century, but is also a testament to the massive collapse of the Church.

There was a decade roughly immediately following the war where America could have been on its way to a Catholic-majority nation.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen was hosting the No. 1-rated show on TV. Catholic Notre Dame football ruled the gridiron. Catholic schools and parishes were opening everywhere. Religious orders and vocations were booming. Catholic cultural icons dotted the movie landscape — Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Danny Thomas. Catholic movies were winning Academy Awards — The Song of Bernadette, A Man for All Seasons.

Everything looked ripe for the nation to become Catholic. Heck, America elected its first Catholic President in 1960. Conquest looked assured.

So what happened?

It's extremely difficult to pinpoint one single cause, and that's true because there really wasn't one single cause. But underneath that rosy social picture, warning signs were already appearing. And perhaps the most telling was Mass attendance.

While many U.S. Catholics trumpet 1945–1960 as a kind of "golden age" for the Church here in America, 25%, one in four Catholics, were not going to Mass each week. Today, as we said, it's closer to five in six Catholics that do not go to Mass each week, which, by comparison, makes 1950 look stellar.

Still, when one out of four are not going to Mass, participating in the routine sacramental life of the Church, that is a massive red flag, a flag that was either missed or ignored by the bishops. Answering the question, "Why were one in four not attending and why did the bishops miss or ignore that?" likely holds the answer to the question, "What happened?"

Regardless, the Church in America is now heading into preservation mode. Too much has been lost or surrendered, too much ground given up.

The situation now facing Catholics is not what to do in a Protestant-majority country (which it no longer is), but what to do in the face of an impending atheist or religiously indifferent country.

How we respond to that as a people will determine if the Church even survives, or perhaps thrives once again, on these shores.

TRANSCRIPT

I'm Michael Voris, coming to you from our autumn Retreat at Sea on this feast day of St. Michael.

Speaking of St. Michael, who, St. John informs us, drove Lucifer and his minions from the celestial realm, we need him in a dire way now. The same St. John informs us as well that Satan has come down to earth in great fury knowing his time is short.

Throughout all of human history, Satan has made use of government and politics to strike at the people of God. The political system, in fact, seems to be one of the "go-tos" in his arsenal. It's unsurprising really, when you think about it, because of the vast power a state exercises over its citizens.

Perhaps no other form of government has been as instrumental to the great dragon than communism, with its phony promise of "heaven" on earth. What communism really is, as well as its true cause, is best summed up by Ven. Abp. Fulton Sheen: "Communism is the scavenger of decaying civilizations. It makes its way into a country and into a culture only when that culture begins to rot from the inside."

As the old saying goes, truer words were never spoken. What Bp. Sheen may have omitted, however, because when he said that in the 1950s it might not as yet have been so apparent and manifest, is this: Communism not only arrives to finish off a dying civilization but, actually, heavily contributed to the death.

Communism was a major contributor to the decay of the American republic because of its plan of attack launched against the family. Communist architects of globalism understood that a nation rises and falls on the strength of the family.

Healthy families produce good citizens who uphold the Republic. Unhealthy families speed the deterioration. The best way to attack the family would be to attack the moral fiber that provided the environment for a healthy family. Poison the environment and you would weaken the family, which would set in motion the collapse of the culture and, in short order, the republic.

Nikita Khrushchev, former head of the Soviet Union, knew this when he said, "We will bury you." Yes, he may have been speaking directly of economic systems, but economies are always tied to social structures.

When families collapse, societies, including their economies, also collapse. For example, the government-handout-state that America has devolved to will, for the first time ever, begin paying $1 trillion a year for interest on the national debt. 

Moral ruin precipitates all other ruins in society. Bishop Sheen knew it and said so, and frankly, the communists know it as well. The only difference is Bp. Sheen was warning against it; the commies are advocating for it.

TRANSCRIPT

I'm Michael Voris, coming to you from our autumn Retreat at Sea, traveling up the coast of New England and stopping along significant places in the history of the Catholic Church.

Today we are in Boston, ground zero for the unearthing of the homosexual-clergy child sex abuse scandal that has and continues to devastate the Church in the country (and really throughout large portions of the Church).

More on that evil a little later.

The history of the Church in the United States has been one overall of extraordinary compromise by the U.S. hierarchy with the prevailing decay of morality. And nowhere might that be more evident than right here in Boston, going back to the 1960s, as the sexual revolution was getting a full head of steam.

The cardinal at the time, Richard Cushing, was extremely powerful, so much so that politicians feared him. One bad word from him and their careers would be over in the state.

In the 1940s, as the nascent birth control movement was still finding its footing, some state lawmakers introduced a bill here to legalize it. Cushing came out strongly against it, and it went down to a thunderous defeat as 57% of voters rejected the measure.

Fast forward 20 years and Massachusetts was the sole remaining state where birth control was still illegal. Again, the measure came up, and this time, Cushing folded like a cheap suit. Why? Because of the influence of a Jesuit priest who was in his ear — John Courtney Murray.

Murray, whether he intended it or not, was one of the leading influences kicking off the collapse of the Church here in the United States. If you think of Rasputin in the ear of Czar Nicholas, you wouldn't be far off.

Murray had convinced Cushing that contraception was a matter of "private" morality and should not be legislated about. So heavy was Cushing's influence that state lawmakers convened a panel and asked for the cardinal's testimony. While he himself did not show up to present his remarks, they were read into the record for him by his attorney.

But what almost no one at the time knew is that Murray had ghostwritten them for Cushing. The key line lawmakers were looking for was Catholics could not "forbid in civil law a practice that can be considered a matter of private morality."

It was all the lawmakers, anxious to dump the state's ban on contraception, needed to hear. The law was shot down, and the Catholic bastion of Massachusetts gave way to sexual revolution with the blessing of one of the most powerful cardinals in the Church.

Could he have stopped it? Well, according to former presidential candidate and governor of the state Michael Dukakis, yes. He is on record as saying, "The cardinal was the most powerful man around. What he would have said was going to go. If he wanted to kill that bill, he could have."

Murray is one of the most influential men in the collapse of the Church in America you've probably never heard of. The worldview, political view and scheming of men like Murray (and, important here, their embrace by leading churchmen) not only gave way to the collapse of the Church, but subsequent fall of the culture.

So while the homosexual-clergy child sex abuse scandal was widespread in the U.S. church, it was first unearthed by secular journalists here from the Boston Globe in 2002. Cardinal Bernard Law and the entire Church establishment in Boston rallied around the cover-up of what had been known for many years.

They lied left and right, enlisted the help of the Knights of Columbus as well as powerful wealthy local Catholics who didn't give a damn about the child victims and were solely concerned with their own image and protecting "the institution."

The chancery, including Law, had known for years that these priest-predators were a threat and just moved them around from parish to parish where even more children, the vast majority of them physically mature teenage boys, were raped wholesale, all while the entire establishment looked the other way, and some of whom actually covered up.

Is there a link between Cushing's caving in on contraception and Law's lies and deceit on child sex abuse by his gay clergy?

Of course there is.

When Church leaders give way to one evil, it is spiritually naive to think that they won't give way to another. Evil leads to more evil unless it is arrested.

Massachusetts was originally a very hostile Puritan environment for Catholics in the colonial days, with laws on the books forbidding the practice of the Faith. Then, as the waves of mostly Irish immigrants swelled the number of Catholics, the situation completely reversed to the point of a single cardinal-archbishop could control what laws were passed statewide regarding morality.

It's almost incomprehensible that given that powerful hard-fought-for status, that a a couple of men could simply wipe it out in one generation. They played on the naivete of the laity and destroyed them in the process.

TRANSCRIPT

I'm Michael Voris coming to you from on board our fall Retreat at Sea, trekking along the New England Coast and focusing on the very beginnings of Catholicism here in the United States.

There really are two geographical centers of Catholic introduction to the New World. One was the Deep South, meaning the Gulf Coast area and extending further south into the Caribbean, Mexico and so forth.

Then there is the Atlantic Seaboard area. What may perhaps be a little note many Catholics don't know is this — neither area was especially "Catholic" in the way we might first think of it. For example, almost 200 years after Columbus landed in the modern-day Bahamas in 1492, the Catholic population of the New World was pretty tiny.

And especially in the English colonies (with their noted hatred for Catholics), the population was beyond meager in terms of numbers.

By the time the War for Independence broke out in 1776, the sum total of Catholics in all the colonies combined was about 30,000, compared to going on 3 million largely Protestants. Catholics were approximately 1% of the population.

During the pre-Revolution days, religious and political wars were being fought all over Europe, as the fallout from the 16th-century Protestant revolt continued to echo across the continent. Much of that had spilled over to the New World as well, as the Catholic French and the English Protestants duked it out in various battles.

The problem for Catholics boiled down to a numbers game: There simply were not enough. While the age of discovery was fueled by Catholic monarchs and Catholic explorers, in the end, it was the English Protestants who cashed in on it.

Being first doesn't matter if you don't push your advantage. And they were able to cash in for two major reasons. First, owing to the desire to leave England and get away from the English Church, which, for them, was still too "Catholic," their numbers began to swell.

The Mayflower may have been the first, and its passengers barely surviving, but it was by no means the last. Whatever their motive, it was English Protestants who poured into North America in overwhelming numbers between 1607 and 1776.

And they did not hold any regard for Catholics, whom they saw as the mortal enemy. The New England colonies had established churches, which were congregationalist. Those were Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and, eventually, Maine.

They each had laws officially on the books that Catholics could not vote, and the "papist" religion would not be tolerated in their borders. The middle colonies — comprised of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware — did not have established churches, but that did not stop New York and New Jersey from having some of the most anti-Catholic laws on the books in all of the colonies.

Pennsylvania, and to a lesser degree Delaware, did demonstrate some level of religious tolerance, but even there, it wasn't pretty for day-to-day life of the handful of Catholics who took up residence there.

The southern colonies of Maryland, Virginia, Carolina and Georgia all had the established Church of England as the State religion. Only in Maryland was there breathing space for Catholics.

Maryland was founded in 1634 as a colony by Lord Baltimore for Catholics in England seeking refuge from persecution. So religious tolerance was granted, but it was a tolerance that permitted huge numbers of Protestants to flow in.

Eventually, they captured the House of Delegates in 1649, and tolerance for Catholics was brought to an end. Catholics were despised, persecuted and had laws erected against them in the colonial days.

For example, in Virginia, if a Catholic sought public office, he could be arrested, charged and fined 1,000 pounds of tobacco. In Maryland, it was illegal for a couple to be married by a Catholic priest. And so the list goes on, up and down the colonies.

In 11 of the 13 original colonies, Catholics were legally maltreated. And on a point of order here, it was not largely owing to dogma and doctrinal differences. It was the idea that the pope was a sovereign ruler as well, and the belief he would try to extend his rule to them as well.

Colonial Catholics were viewed as secret ambassadors of that sinister plot, and the English colonists were having none of it: Nipping Catholics and their popish loyalties in the bud before they could undermine the colonies was job one. 

As we sail up and down the New England coast on this retreat at sea and briefly into Canadian waters, where the Protestant English and French mixed it up considerably, it's good for Catholics to take stock and remember the roots of America as they existed in the pre-Revolution colonies.

One final point to drive that home — the public school system was established in the colonies for one purpose: to teach children how to read the Bible on their own and not look to any "authority" to interpret it, especially a Roman one.