Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

Perhaps the biggest danger these days, both in politics and in the Church, is the "weak sauce" flowing from the leaders. It is an emasculated attempt to answer the attacks of the diabolical which falls woefully short of providing anything commensurate to the level of the threat.

In politics, we saw it in spades from Republican leadership in response to the 2020 election. But in the Church, the "weak sauce" now predominates and poisons virtually every aspect of Catholic life. From seminaries to weekly homilies to bishops' ramblings, feminized emotionalism has completely replaced any vestiges of masculine, muscular faith.

This weak-sauce Catholicism is nothing more than warmed-over Protestantism — a heresy, remember — thinly veiled as Catholic. In truth, there is nothing authentically Catholic about it. For example, it possesses no intellectual firepower.  It trades away the deep, rich life of the greatest minds of the Church for a superficial and sickening claim that "the Holy Spirit told me" this or that.

Let's get real. Shut up with your private revelation that the Holy Spirit told you this or that. That's just a Catholicized version of the old Protestant idiocy that "The Lord placed on my heart." How do you know that? None of these claims are ever questioned, scrutinized or approached with intellectual rigor. In fact, intended or not, they have the impact of shutting down all objections to whatever is being attributed to the Third Person, because to even question them puts you in the position of "challenging the Holy Spirit." The political equivalent is being accused of racism simply because you objected to some policy of Obama.

For the most part, Catholicism today has been reduced to a soft, feminized whimper. The Church's message now is "never give offense" and "Jesus ate with tax collectors." This is a marketing scheme of misplaced compassion.  Those who market it think that it has some sort of appeal to others besides soft men. The reason is because the leaders are soft.  Any organization takes on the "personality" of its leadership. Weak men beget a weak organization, weak followers and weak workers.

Can any serious-minded Catholic look at any cultural institutions aligned against the Church and conclude they are run by "weak" leaders? For all their error and evil, the forces aligned against the truth are mentally as tough as nails. They are dedicated, passionate, rigorous and vigilant. They never miss a chance to press their case, even though their case is diabolical. 

Meanwhile, on our side, you see a bunch of soft, weak, emasculated males running around sounding like sissies, invoking their own inner inspirations and musings of "the Holy Spirit." Their conditioning begins in seminaries. That's how they get in, get passed through and get ordained. For the most emasculated among them, that's how they become bishops.

There is a solid psychological reason why women in the Church surpass males in terms of attendance. Men have no desire to go and listen to Fr. Fairy peddling his emasculated version of Catholicism. It has zero appeal for any authentic male. But don't believe me, just look around and see for yourself.

Returning briefly to the political parallel, this is precisely why authentic men are all ultra-MAGAs in the GOP. For decades, Republicanism has been spewing political "weak sauce," elevating the feminized, soft never-give-offense approach as the antidote to a crumbling civilization. 

We see this exact same approach in the Church — never go on offense against evil. Sit down and negotiate with it, reason with it and "meet it where it's at." By the way, if that stupid expression doesn't go in the annals of world history as among the most inane, we don't know what else would qualify. Where else would you meet someone, other than "where they're at?"  How exactly would you "meet" them somewhere other than "where they're at?"

The implication behind this phrase is not just to "begin a dialogue." It is to accept their sin and not challenge them, but rather to slowly bring them around. But the "bringing them around" part never really happens because, sooner or later, they must be confronted about their eternal destiny. Weak-sauce Catholics simply never go there.

The priests coming out of seminaries these days aren't trained to think in those terms, even though they may privately think in orthodox terms. However, the brainwashing they have undergone during years of formation — which really amounts to psychological malformation — precludes this type of thinking and prevents confrontation. Oh, they'll confront muscular Catholicism at every turn because it threatens their entire worldview, but when it comes to confronting or condemning sin, they shrink away like the insufferable little flowers they are.

There is a reason the Church in the West is in full-blown retreat, and why bishops everywhere are "managing the decline" and creating absurd marketing schemes like "Families of Parishes" to condition those few left in the pews to think in terms of growing even smaller.

"Why are these programs necessary to begin with?" the rigorous intellectual mind must ask. "Why are there so few priests that canon law must be disregarded and violated by bishops to build an illegitimate parish structure?" 

For example, here in the archdiocese of Detroit six years ago, Abp. Allen Vigneron launched a synod which he swore up one side and down the other was the "prompting of the Holy Spirit" to renew the local church. This past year we had zero ordinations. When he hands in his resignation in about 14 months, there will be only a smattering of parishes compared to what he inherited when he took the helm in 2009.

Here is a little test. Recall the history of great bishops in the Church from any region or era. Think of Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory, Nicholas — any of them. Now, name even one bishop today who comes close to these men. You can't, because there aren't any. Those past bishops were strong men, unafraid to call out evil and condemn sin. They were cut in the mold of St. John the Baptist. Today's bishops are cut in the mold of Lady Gaga, with apologies to Lady Gaga.

In his 2019 The Day Is Now Far Spent, Cdl. Robert Sarah addressed the topic with words worthy of meditation. "In a little while I will appear before the eternal Judge," he wrote. "If I don't convey to you the truth I've received, what will I tell you? We bishops ought to tremble at the thought of our guilty silences, our complicit silences, our over-indulgent silences in dealing with the world."

That, in sum, is exactly what Church Militant has been saying about these weak men and their revolting feminine daintiness, who for years have passed themselves off as "joyful missionary disciples." That daintiness has produced weak-sauce Catholicism, which the leaders then blasphemously excuse by claiming, "The Holy Spirit told me."

A spirit definitely told you to water down the Faith, never confront evil, never condemn sin and never give offense — but it wasn't the Holy Spirit.

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TRANSCRIPT

Happy Birthday to Our Blessed Mother this Thursday, Sept. 8, the day Holy Mother Church sets aside to mark her birthday. Happy Birthday, Mommy.

There is a common attitude among many notable Catholic clergy members — the ones on YouTube and other social media platforms — that they must "soft-pedal" Catholic teaching, as though Catholic teaching was just one belief among many. The problem is that when you present your case in terms of it being your belief, it means absolutely nothing. Everyone has his own belief or opinion. So if I disagree with your opinion, who cares?

This attitude has been adopted by Catholic priests, especially those on social media, who seem to believe the best way to announce the truth is to be as absolutely inoffensive as possible and never confront anyone.

If no one told the celebrity clergy members who are treading lightly that this approach doesn't work, then someone around them should. For example, a major secular publication recently did a Q&A with a very popular celebrity priest. We won't identify the priest for two reasons. First, people get all bent out of shape and ask, "How can you be so mean to Father? He's wonderful." So, naming a popular priest causes the entire message to be drowned in a sea of distraction. Second, it doesn't really matter who the priest is, because they all take this approach. It's a wrong approach and destined to fail. In the end, Church teaching is reduced to mere opinion.

For example, in this recent Q&A interview, the priest used the phrase "we (Catholics) believe in Original Sin." Umm, no. We don't believe in Original Sin. It's a reality whether we believe in it or not. Saying Original Sin is worthy of belief is like saying gravity is worthy of belief. It's not untrue that we believe in it — it's just that this wording makes it seem like a "take it or leave it" proposition.

"We believe it" is not a strategy for evangelization, because announcing the truth gets watered down to a list of propositions that we think would be good for you to follow. Well, what if the person listens to your "beliefs" but isn't moved to adopt them for himself? Being more concerned about how a person will react or respond to the bold truth immediately places handcuffs on you. There is this constant, mealy-mouthed, weak, pansy approach to presenting the truths of the Church.

These aren't policies. They aren't action plans. They do not comprise one strategy worth considering among many. They are absolute truths, and to depart from them one iota brings about ruin in this world and the next.

Celebrity priests are too often hamstrung by their own fame and the resultant fear of losing human respect so that they are no longer seen as "Fr. Cool." So they find the least objectionable way of presenting truth — so unobjectionable that it really doesn't seem like truth, but just an opinion.

What that says, in unspoken terms, is the Church is just one set of beliefs among many. For example, Bp. Barron referred to Our Blessed Lord not as the Way, as Our Lord Himself said, but as the "privileged way."

Stick an adjective in front of something as a qualifier and you immediately limit it. That is the purpose of an adjective — to limit and shape something, to pare it down, to make it not all-encompassing. But Catholic truth is all-encompassing. There is no getting away from that.

So, why is it that many priests are more concerned with not giving offense than with declaring the fullness of truth directly, loudly and clearly? The last thought on Our Lord's mind as He preached was to avoid giving offense. It never got on His radar.

For that matter, the same can be said of His enemies — back then as well as today. The offspring of the serpent are never concerned about giving offense. They "go for it" every single time. They don't have the truth, yet they never hesitate to declare their case as though it's perfect truth. They go for the gold every time they open their mouths. That is why they are winning. There is something attractive about a person who is convinced of his position — not squirreling around, side-stepping, or trying to play it safe.

The Son of God speaks in clear, precise language. Even the Devil's minions speak in clear, precise language.

Why on earth would celebrity priests think they don't have to do the same?

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TRANSCRIPT

Church Militant has learned of a very troubling controversy emanating from the archdiocese of Washington and Cdl. Wilton Gregory. It involves a question of obedience versus sacrilege. 

If you are a seminarian anywhere in the United States, you need to think deeply about this question, because the way things are going in the Church, you may be faced with this situation.

Here is the information privately revealed to Church Militant. In some unofficial-yet-clearly-understood message from Cdl. Gregory, his priests were instructed not to deny Holy Communion to President Biden. When Biden attends Mass locally in Washington, D.C., the apparent protocol is for the Secret Service and White House staff to contact a local parish and give them a heads-up that POTUS will be there for Mass.

However, Church Militant has learned that some priests will not go along with this. They have said that if they get an advance call from the White House or Secret Service, they will notify the archdiocese they refuse to distribute sacrilegious Holy Communion. If the cardinal wants this to happen, he must send a priest who will go along with it, because they refuse.

If you were a seminarian, what would you do?

This controversy has arisen because of the bishops' disobedience of canon law. According to canon 915 in the Code of Canon Law, "Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion."

A bishop commands you to join him in disobeying canon law, under the pretext that you have made a promise of obedience to him. What do you do? Do you distribute sacrilegious Holy Communion, thereby disobeying canon law? Or do you refuse and disobey the bishop?  

How is a young man discerning a possible vocation to the priesthood supposed to consider all this? A firestorm should erupt in every seminary in the country over this question. Seminarians deserve clarity on this from seminary faculty and formation teams. 

If you are a seminarian and are thinking, "Biden won't be president forever, so this won't really impact me," think again. Biden is the most high-profile example, but he is hardly alone. All over the country, there are hundreds of local, state and federal politicians who claim to be Catholic yet who vote for abortion so-called rights. Their bishops have turned a blind eye to all this for almost half a century.

Seminarians, any one of them can wind up in your Communion line in your future parish at any moment — not just on Sundays, but at weddings, funerals, confirmations and so forth. What will you do? More to the point, what will you do if you have one of those suck-up bishops, one-third of whom are registered Democrats?

Are you prepared to be "iced" for refusing? Are you psychologically prepared to be sidelined indefinitely for that? Before your "I want to be a martyr" bravado kicks in, remember that not everyone is built the same way and has the same constitution. Or are you the type who will pawn off your own moral responsibility because of a promise to "obey"? You are going to be disobedient to canon law or the bishop, so which one will it be?

If you become one of the few priests who will not distribute sacrilegious Holy Communion, good for you. God bless you.

However, consider all this from a 60,000-feet perspective. These weak men, some of whom are truly wicked and do not believe the Faith, hold over your head a promise of "obedience." But what if they lead you into conflict with your well-formed conscience? The continuing breakdown and dissolution of the Church will present more of these troublesome cases as the years go by. What will you do?

All of you seminarians need to bring up this specific example and demand clear answers from your bishop before he lays hands on you and forces you into a spiritual dilemma. Moms or dads of seminarians, you also need to raise this deep concern. What is your son's duty in obedience to a bishop who is disobedient? Just how far does a bishop's "authority" extend? 

These questions are brought to you courtesy of weak men who are modernist bishops and have not believed, taught or lived the Faith for decades.

Church Militant is not creating the division — we are merely shining a light on the pre-existing division.

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TRANSCRIPT

By a 5–2 vote late last week, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered that a state referendum on abortion be placed on the November ballot. This will end any hopes of a "red wave" here and likely ensure Democratic tyranny for generations to come.

Even in the face of massive inflation, a tyrannical COVID governor, a ruined economy and thousands of nursing-home deaths, Michiganders will look past all of that so they can vote to have orgasms whenever they want and take no responsibility at all.

Given the choice of abortion versus a good economy, Michigan and probably every other state will choose their orgasms over concern about inflation, just like they did in Kansas. In fact, we predict that within five years, every state in the country will follow the lead of Michigan and Kansas.

To emphasize the point that people care more about killing their children than the economy, a recent Wall Street Journal poll noted, "More than half of voters say the Supreme Court's elimination of the federal constitutional right to an abortion has made them more likely to vote." Voters cited the abortion ruling as "the single issue most likely to make them vote this November."

The child killers just need some time to organize their efforts across all the supposedly pro-life states. Once it gets momentum, evil always advances quickly. For instance, just look at sex education in public schools being taught by perverts.

After a summer flurry of legal maneuverings to end Michigan's 1931 law protecting children from being murdered via abortion, the pro-aborts have won their push to get this question before voters.

Using typical Democratic "judge-shopping" en route to the Michigan Supreme Court victory, the first openly homosexual judge in Oakland County and a judge who is a Planned Parenthood donor aided the pro-abortion cause. Besides being a financial backer of Planned Parenthood, Judge Elizabeth Gleicher also represented the nation's largest child-killing chain in the 1990s as an attorney for the ACLU.

Of course, the Court of Claims clerk issued a statement that, despite Gleicher's decades-long support for the murder of children in the womb, she would remain impartial. Yeah, sure. 

However, that little ditty is just a sideshow in the state. The real catastrophe was the Michigan Supreme Court ordering the measure placed on the ballot. For the record, it will be a vote to enshrine child murder — at any stage, even after birth — into the state Constitution. That means no law can ever be passed in Michigan protecting children unless another amendment is brought forward overturning this one.

This referendum, officially known as "Ballot Proposal 3," will coast to victory. Child killing is the stopgap for fully living the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Once divorce and then contraception gained acceptance by a majority of Americans, abortion necessarily followed.

The U.S. Supreme Court made that point clear with its ruling in the infamous 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey case, which upheld Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court intended its ruling to benefit "people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail." 

Within the framework of that sandbox, this ruling makes perfect sense. It's just that the entire framework is evil. The underlying assumption is that you possess a constitutional right to have an orgasm whenever and wherever you want. Of course, this would include with whomever you want. If a child is conceived, you can murder him.

Many years ago, the child killers were reluctant to admit that a human being had been conceived. Those of us who are older remember the original campaign of lies in the 1970s that labeled the new life "a clump of cells" or "the conceptus." However, as abortion has not just become accepted but actually embraced, those lies have outlived their usefulness. Now, the demonic agents admit it is a human baby, but its life is not more important than a career.

They have clung to the slogan of "reproductive healthcare," though. In fact, the Michigan ballot proposal is named "Reproductive Freedom for All." This makes about as much sense as the actual killing. How is this about "reproduction" when you are actually ending reproduction? 

But child killers don't care about anything other than their orgasms. Period. That's why the gay-sex movement is so allied with them. Why would two gay guys care about abortion, despite their insane claims about men being able to become pregnant?

Abortion has never been about anything other than avoiding the consequences of having an orgasm under whatever circumstances you want. Of course, this is the result of the sexual revolution, ushered in with the advent of birth control pills in 1960.

The American Catholic hierarchy bears massive responsibility for all the deaths and destruction of children, mothers and families — and yet somehow the bishops remain unfazed by it. When contraception on a wide scale became a thing, they sat back quietly. There were some "strongly worded" statements issued, but not strongly enough, obviously. The weak cowards in the episcopate back then, in the 1960s and 1970s, were the ones who trained today's weak and cowardly men who are now bishops.

Today's bishops accept in practice the sexual revolution. In fact, owing to the number of homosexuals within their own ranks, bishops essentially skipped over the entire abortion question by remaining largely silent on it, instead rushing headlong into the gay-rights insanity.

If you want proof of their dereliction of duty, watch the weak-sauce approach of the Michigan Catholic Conference in the face of Ballot Proposal 3. The conference and its bishops will issue a paper they know no one will read. But how can they really say anything of substance, when their entire history has been to ignore this issue and allow pro-abort Catholic politicians to receive Holy Communion?

Here in Michigan, they even took the remarkable step of allowing then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a pro-abortion Democrat and now Biden's secretary of energy, to be a Eucharistic minister at her suburban Detroit parish, Our Lady of Good Counsel in Plymouth. Cardinal Maida, who preceded Abp. Allen Vigneron in Detroit, gave explicit instructions to other bishops in the state not to get involved in that action.

That was confirmed by Bp. Earl Boyea of Lansing when, upon the announcement of his appointment in 2008, he met with his future seminarians at Sacred Heart Seminary. He told them Maida had instructed him not to become involved with Granholm's Eucharistic ministry and not to refuse her Holy Communion. Granholm lived in Lansing, which would soon thereafter become Boyea's diocese.

Unless you are "in the know" about what actually goes on behind the scenes with these crooked, despicable men, you might look at their "show" and fall for it hook, line and sinker. All a deceitful bishop has to do is utter a few murmurs that sound somewhat orthodox and he gets a free pass from the faithful.

While Church Militant was in Baltimore last November, I personally approached Bp. Boyea and asked him why the bishops do not uphold canon 915, which reads, "Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion." In a stunning display of dismissal and arrogance, Bp. Boyea told me that there are many ways to interpret canon 915. Boyea and other bishops in Michigan will be among those to secure abortion in this state, starting in November and lasting until the Second Coming.

When will Catholics who believe in the Faith wake up and realize that these bishops do not? They ignore and promote sacrilege, they embrace sodomy, and they have no concern whatsoever about contraception.

Tick tock, bishops. Tick Tock. You are old men who have one extremely narrow path to salvation which is growing narrower by the day. You have a duty to stand up very publicly and take ownership of your failed reigns. Admit your failures, your roles in them and the consequences of what you have allowed, and then spend your few remaining days locked away somewhere doing voluminous penance. Your sins are gigantic because of the responsibility entrusted to you — sins that have brought about the ruin of a nation and near total destruction of the Church.

You have mild success here and there at raising a few million dollars, but given your many crimes against God and man that prove you have no supernatural faith, how are you not distraught with fear over your eternal destiny? 

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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?"

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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.

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