Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

A couple of years ago, Church Militant exposed the truth that Scranton, Pennsylvania, bishop Joseph Bambera — a raging homosexualist and homopredator cover-up artist — was a registered Democrat. He certainly isn't alone among his brother bishops, all members of the gay cabal strangling the life of the Church. Apparently, the liar couldn't take the heat anymore, and, a short while back, he quietly switched his party affiliation to "independent."

Is there anything more revolting than a bishop who is a registered member of the Party of Death? Well, yes, there is. It's one who, once exposed, then tries to cover it up. Coward. 

But what else do you expect from this type of human male? We are, of course, deliberately avoiding the use of the word "man" because he isn't one. Does he really think that by checking a different box on a voter form people will now believe he's all good? Why don't you come out and explain why you changed, Bp. Bambera?

Given the current political climate, a notable bishop from Joe Biden's hometown who suddenly walks away from the Democratic Party is pretty significant news. But, of course, the reason he won't say why is because he really hasn't changed anything at all, except the official piece of paper. In his mind, he still aligns with the Party of Death. And in his heart, he still embraces their agenda. Bambera is a Democrat in his "bishop CEO suit" and nothing more. 

And he is in league with dozens of other bishops across America who are just as sodomy- and child-killing friendly as the Democratic Party itself.

The Democratic Party wants you dead. Period.

Of course, they can't go from zero to "you dead" in a heartbeat, so, along the way, they will happily limit your rights, box you in, shut you up, prosecute you, censor you, demonize you, conspire with social media giants against you, lie about you, disarm you, vax you, mask you, bankrupt you, investigate you, steal elections from you — and anything else they need to.

Of course, they always pretend all of this is for your health, your safety, a better planet for you, equal rights and a better life. But the Party of Death has no concern about a better life for you. They want you dead.

They've already killed tens of millions of babies, disarmed schools, created a massive drug/mental-health crisis, greatly increased suicides, vaccinated people to death, cheered rioters who are killing dozens, let killers or violent felons walk out of prison, imported criminals from other countries and turned them loose on your streets. Their list of crimes against life and peace is too long to count.

On top of that, they have perverted your children and grandchildren through their "drag queen story hours" and public school instruction manuals on anal sex and masturbation, and they have taken over the educational system and hired freaks to accelerate the perversion. This is the Democratic Party of the 21st century. It hates God, detests life, abhors freedom and responds violently to the truth.

A recent poll of young males who self-identify as leftists revealed almost half of them believe assassinating the political opposition is perfectly acceptable. But what else would you expect from a generation raised on no morals, video games and nonstop propaganda? They make the Hitler Youth pale in comparison.

We can see why a bishop like Bambera would want to publicly disassociate with them, but it's only a public disassociation. If he'd had an actual conversion, he'd announce it happily. He'd call them out for their evil and apologize for the years he had allowed himself to be duped. He'd also have the integrity to resign at the end of his "I was wrong" speech.

But see, he and his brother Party-of-Death bishops don't think they are wrong at all. They are down with that entire agenda. Why should we believe that he cares about children's lives when he has kept his mouth shut about millions of them being killed in abortion chambers? There are at least three abortuaries within 30 minutes of his chancery. When's the last time he was at any of them to pray or to lead the faithful or to recognize the gruesome reality of what goes on inside these modern-day killing centers?

Is he worried that the local bishop showing up at these murder factories would upset some of his buddies in the Party of Death or that he might be exposed by them for who he truly is, a completely compromised cleric?

The Party of Death isn't something that exists in the ether. Every day, millions of people get up and go to work, totally dedicated to the mission of killing you. They use politics, media, law, education and medicine — all in concert with each other — to deprive you of as many rights as possible, all of it on the way to depriving you of your right to live.

On one level, while it is extremely sad and very difficult to watch (and, believe me, to report on), it is good that the facade of Catholicism they have spent decades constructing — a facade that has nothing to do with the authentic Faith — is now crumbling before their eyes.

They have to sell off parishes, ordain insufficient numbers, close schools, pay off sex abuse victims, hide their finances, sit in depositions and meet with marketing firms. What a life. Yet they persist in it. They persist in it because they have long since sold their souls to Satan and know nothing else.

However frightening it is, the reality is simple: The Party of Death has been able to advance because of crooked, complicit Catholic clergy, essentially homosexual men who are bishops who found a home in this political organization that provided refuge and some respectable cover for their perversions.

It should come as no surprise that perverted bishops and perverted politicians found a common cause in child sex abuse and its cover-up, child perversion and child murder.

The Party of Death wants you dead. Their bishop accomplices want you dead in eternity.

TRANSCRIPT

Wow, what a difference a holiday weekend makes — especially for bad men.

Let's start, shall we, in Rome, with the "shocking" not-shocking news that Pope Francis elevated one of the most homosexual-friendly bishops in the United States, Robert McElroy of San Diego, to the College of Cardinals.

Seriously, a known sodomy-supporting bishop has been put in the position of voting for the next pope. But of course, on that score, he's not the only one (Cupich in Chicago and Tobin in Newark, just to name a few).

Still, there is a certain stench around this particular appointment — and that's saying something when you consider those other two. McElroy, for example, had been informed about Theodore McCarrick before all the news about the ex-cardinal homopredator and, of course, deep-sixed it.

In a 2016 interview with the heterodox Jesuit magazine America, he said, "The destructive attitude of many Catholics to the gay and lesbian community is motivated by a failure to comprehend the totality of the Church's teaching on homosexuality." He says active, unrepentant homosexuals can have Catholic funerals.

At a series of 2018 "listening sessions" about the clerical sex abuse crisis, McElroy tossed out some young, devout Catholics who were asking questions he didn't like about homosexuality. He was the featured speaker at the 2018 Association of United States Catholic Priests' meeting — a pro-gay organization.

He's on record as saying the Catechism needs to change its language and not call homosexual acts intrinsically disordered. He asserts the insane claim that climate change kills more people each year around the world than abortion. That's 40 million victims, for the record.

He never stops going on about illegal immigration — as in the need for everyone to be let in. Yep, this guy's a real winner. And now, he's on track to have a say in who the next pope will be.

I bet he votes for himself.

And speaking of winners, also as the Memorial Day weekend approached, Dubuque archbishop Michael Jackels issued one of the most demeaning letters you could imagine to Catholics in his archdiocese in reaction to the recent Buffalo and Uvalde mass shootings.

He says, for example, "You've got to wonder about reasons for refusing reasonable limits on gun ownership," and adds, "we readily identify things like abortion and capital punishment as life issues, but protecting the earth, our common home, or making food, water, shelter, education and health care accessible, or defense against gun violence ... these are life issues too."

Ah, the voice of homopredator Cdl. Joseph Bernardin and his "seamless garment" garbage screams from his grave yet again.

In the minds of these prelates, everything is a life issue, but what they always fail to state is that there is a hierarchy of life issues. They are not all equal.

The only reason abortion exists is to deliberately kill an innocent human. That's it. But the crazy archbishop then goes on to attack Catholics fighting abortion, saying:

Some people want to repair the scandal of pro-choice Catholic politicians by refusing them the Eucharist. But that's a misguided response for at least two reasons: As Jesus said, it's the sick people who need a doctor, not the healthy, and He gave us the Eucharist as a healing remedy; don't deny the people who need the medicine.

That is so theologically twisted that it proves the reality of just how malformed these old men are. Notice how he conflates two unrelated aspects here.

True, Our Blessed Lord did say the sick need a doctor, but it was not in any manner in context with reception of Holy Communion. It was when the hypocritical Pharisees challenged Him for eating with tax collectors — nothing to do with the Eucharist.

So is Jackels just stupid about that, or is he deliberately misleading? 

As for the point about the Eucharist being medicine — again, more twisting of truth. A soul in a state of mortal sin (Catholic pro-abort politicians, for example) is dead.

Hence, the term "mortal sin" — a concept that seems lost on most of the U.S. hierarchy, perhaps because many of them are likely in that state themselves, given the condition of the Church and their preaching. You can't administer medicine to a corpse, Archbishop.

But then he brings it home: "Also, to be consistent, to repair the scandal of Catholics being indifferent or opposed to all those other life issues, they would have to be denied Holy Communion as well."

Umm, no they wouldn't. Not even close.

No Catholic is deliberately voting in support of gun rights so that mass shootings will happen, Archbishop. No Catholic is voting to deny food, water, shelter, education and health care to people.

This is the distinction that these liberal (or malformed) bishops never seem to make. And the Catholic mind makes distinctions because distinctions need to be made. A person's intent matters.

Abortion is done intending to kill an innocent life. Period. And not just an innocent life, but the most vulnerable life you can imagine, with zero capacity to defend itself. These other smokescreen issues are just that — smokescreen. They are a balancing of rights with other rights, and, in political terms, they result in policies that often are imperfect. But to suggest that those on either side are heartless killers and should be denied Holy Communion is absurd and insulting.

Nancy Pelosi and many other so-called Catholics are heartless killers, Archbishop. In no way can they be compared to Catholics who support the Second Amendment. You're theologically nuts, Archbishop. Completely crazy.

Where did you go to seminary, Our Lady of Climbing the Episcopal Ladder? You owe Catholics an apology for your muddled, confusing letter.

This is the sorry state of the episcopate these days — nutty statements fired off by old men in miters who feel (feel, not think) they speak with some authority that allows them to override Catholic teaching and just plain old common sense.

Jackels, in his letter, does not speak for the Church because he does not speak with a Catholic mind or heart or even a Catholic sense. But if he keeps stupidly yammering on like that, who knows, maybe he'll be the next U.S. cardinal.

He's only 68, which means if he became a cardinal, he could keep screwing up the Church for another dozen years, just like McElroy, who is also just 68.

TRANSCRIPT

The very first requirement in battle is to know your enemy. You must know who you are fighting and what his strengths are — that allows you to draw up a plan of attack.

Don't overestimate him, certainly, but do not underestimate him. Doing either of those hinders your planning and could easily spell defeat.

In the battle for the culture, any thought that politics alone will win things back is decidedly wrongheaded. Politics has become a necessary battlefield, absolutely; but that's only because battles farther back down the line have already been lost. In a manner of speaking, the political world is our last stand.

However, for faithful Catholics, there is a much larger battle that must be fought, and, we're sorry to report, most Catholics are completely delusional when it comes to understanding this battle.

First, being delusional is the understandable human response. Human nature, fallen human nature, never wants to really embrace the magnitude of any evil right in front of it. It does so in stages; it goes through a process and digests it slowly. And oftentimes, as the enormity of what stares us in the face comes into sharp focus, we recoil and look for easy answers.

Again, it's a totally understandable response because what we are seeing in the Church is frightening. When people sense their world actually collapsing around them, many retreat into whatever comfort they can find.

It's akin to the "comfort food syndrome" of eating foods we like when we are emotionally overwhelmed or stressed or whatnot. Some people can't deal with things, so they look for an emotional diversion.

When battling evil in the Church, given the eternal stakes at play, the fear is compounded, and so the desire to find an easy answer, a quick fix, naturally arises. This desire takes various forms, depending on the person and his personality.

Some just stick their heads in the sand and say things like, "Oh, the Church has been through bad times before — no big deal," or, "We know who wins in the end."

Both of these and similar thought patterns are born from cowardice, an unwillingness to face the full truth of what is happening. It's like Hitler in his bunker deploying imaginary army groups to wipe out the approaching Russians. The truth is, a failure to sufficiently comprehend a crisis actually increases the crisis.

On the other hand, there are people who do grasp the reality, but respond poorly, deluding themselves into thinking there is one overarching solution — the "silver bullet."

Unlike the other group that refuses to grasp the severity of what's playing out, this group "gets it," but is massively fanciful in their minds about what to do.

You find this approach among people, for example, who think that all they have to do is go to the Latin Mass and all will be fine. There was even a woefully naive slogan a few years back that said, "Save the Liturgy, save the world." But to place all your eggs in one basket is fool's gold.

First of all, the Church began to visibly fall apart when the Latin Mass was the dominant Liturgy, so how did that happen? Every bishop at Vatican II was schooled, formed and consecrated in the Old Rite. Again, how did that happen?

Even the tendency to just point at Vatican II and blame everything on that is misguided — but it is easy, which makes that approach attractive. Likewise, there is another group that is so distressed at affairs in the Church that they chase prophecies and visions and apparitions and secret unapproved messages "from Heaven."

Every bit of this smacks of Gnosticism — secret, privileged knowledge — and, ultimately, is rooted in pride. But what the new Gnosticism and the "silver bullet" crowd have in common is that they never get down to business. They do not want to look this filth in the Church squarely in the face and properly diagnose it. They won't spend time learning the history, for example, of how we got where we are. 

It's too easy to just sit on social media and read some report of an unapproved apparition somewhere that speaks to their own personality traits. Too many people want signs and wonders such as Our Lord splitting open the sky, hurling down lightning bolts and a host of other instant cures.

Of course, Our Lord can do that whenever He wants, if He wants, but "hope" is not a strategy.

On the point of learning, Church Militant has produced a series of reports and investigations on how we got to where we are. These span centuries, from the philosophical collapse originating with Martin Luther, to the societal trends and the failure of various Church leaders to confront these evils.

We go deeply into the role the Rockefeller family played in all this at the end of the 19th century and then the cooperation with all that by notable clerics like Notre Dame's president Theodore Hesburgh.

We take a deep look into the modern homosexual rights movement, which began in Germany in the 19th century, and we explore at great length the rise and advance of Freemasonry and the dominant role it has played in all of this.

We were the first Catholic outfit to produce any meaningful programming on the connection between Saul Alinsky and the U.S. bishops, which is the very thing that started them paying attention to us and eventually understanding the danger we posed to their wickedness. In short, they'd been discovered.

Likewise, we investigate the phony "man-made climate change" movement, which goes back much farther than almost anyone realizes.

Church Militant has spent literally thousands of hours researching and producing these investigations. They are all right here on the website under "All Shows" and then "FBI—Faith-Based Investigations."

We started producing them back in 2009 once we caught on to what was going on in the Church, and we set on a course to unearth the reason why things were so bad. What we discovered in all these investigations is that the problem is not some simple thing, nor is the solution a simple one. It is, in fact, much more serious and deeper than almost anyone realizes, and that means there will not be an easy, short solution to this. It will require a multi-generational attack; a relentless, constant war.

In truth, we should have been in this mindset all along, but as the servants in the gospels came to understand, they fell asleep, and the enemy planted the seed while they were sleeping.

It's pretty clear that for the foreseeable future, the hierarchy as a whole is a lost cause, especially with the recent appointment and promotions by Pope Francis. It is, in a term, a total disaster.

To date, the response from the laity at large has been woefully inadequate. In fact, it's been naive and cowardly. That will have to change — a mobilization of those who believe and love the truth must develop.

Church Militant has already begun this process with our Church Militant Resistance. Resistance is a Catholic grassroots operation founded and organized by Church Militant to help Catholics learn the riches of their Faith, increase in holiness, strive for strong virtue and combat the heresies and abuses that have infiltrated the Church. We don't trick your email out of you by pretending that if you sign this or that petition it will make some difference. It won't. What petition drives will do is ask you for a ton of requests for donations, but they won't accomplish anything substantive in the war. It will just make you think you've actually done something, but you haven't.

This will be a long and arduous war with no silver bullet, no simple anything.

This is the greatest crisis to ever face the Church, and it's been over a century in the making. It's time now for those who want to fight to step up and be completely dedicated to the cause.

Catholic saints must now arise and answer the call. 

TRANSCRIPT

In the midst of the global craziness that has become the new norm, we must remember that "the Catholic lens" must always be at hand. Everything that happens in the world must be viewed through this lens — and not just in big-stage global affairs, but in our own individual lives. 

Most people don't make the necessary intellectual jump from "the world" to "their world" — as in your household, your children, your day-to-day life, your soul. But the globalists have made that connection. In fact, they created it, and they even trumpet it, as World Economic Forum leader Klaus Schwab bragged about at the recently concluded Davos meeting in Switzerland.

A combination of many forces has brought the world to the brink of all this — technology, media, education, economics, politics. All these forces, each in the hands of spiritual degenerates, have created a new order for the world. 

True, the plan has been around for centuries, and that plan has been the destruction of the Christian order of the world, but until certain pieces were put in place, it could not accelerate. Those pieces are now being put into place, and we have seen some of this play out already:

It never ends. The entire point is to wipe away any vestige of Christianity — specifically Catholicism — because until the Faith is crushed underfoot, they don't have total control, as founder of the Italian Communist Party Antonio Gramsci admitted back in the 1930s.

The world, as well as your world, has zero hope of salvation without Catholicism. That's why, from day one here at Church Militant, we have been dedicated to proclaiming Catholic truth — especially in our programming, much of which is Premium programming.

On that score, we are proud to announce the rollout of three new Premium shows. The first is Mental Health (and the need to understand it from a Catholic perspective), which debuted last month.

The second all-new show that debuted earlier this week is Marian Moment. The inspiration for this was a live show we produced every day with very limited staff back during the early COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. Its focus was specifically on Marian theology, but in this new program, we expand on that and talk about how the fullness of Marian theology finds its place in today's global crisis, brought about by Freemasonry and communism.

The Church Militant Premium channel literally has thousands of hours and hundreds of episodes that explore virtually every last nook and cranny of the Faith. We've never changed the low cost of just $10 monthly, because we want anyone who wants to, to be able to join and view the content.

Likewise, Church Militant provides hours and hours of programming each week, such as this Vortex, Evening News, Headlines and Investigations — all of that for free to you.

But it isn't free for us to produce. Your $10-a-month subscription not only goes toward the Premium content, but it also allows us to keep producing the daily free programming. And not just video, but high-quality production and relevant information that is properly vetted and researched by accomplished professionals with degrees in theology and real-world experience in politics and journalism.

All of that is what your $10 monthly (as well as any other donations) provide: a guarantee of Catholic analysis and perspective delivered like no other in the Catholic world. It's truthful, hard hitting and to the point.

If there was ever a time to support Church Militant and become a Premium member, now is that time.

Finally, we mentioned a third Premium show, which is now in final production. That show is called "Restoring Tradition" and will trace the history of the attacks against Tradition and orthodoxy and lay out the need to restore them. Look for that in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, please sign up today to become a Premium member by clicking here.

Thank you in advance.

Today's Vortex is the first half of our Church Militant Spotlight investigation into Bp. Richard Stika of the diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Watch Part II here. 

Today's Vortex is the second half of our Church Militant Spotlight investigation into Bp. Richard Stika of the diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Watch Part I here. 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Despite the constant harping by the Left that people need to move on from the 2020 election, an enormous percentage of Americans still believe that the election was either stolen or that we don't know who actually won.

Surveys produce varying results, but about one-third of all voters and two-thirds of Republican voters believe Biden is in the Oval Office because the election was somehow rigged or, at least, badly mismanaged.

And to show how persistent and current that belief is, in the ongoing primaries around the country, it is largely the Republican candidates who espouse this belief who keep winning, as highlighted in this article from last month.

The feeling among rank-and-file Republicans that Democrats stole 2020 is intense, and they are the ones turning out to vote — and doing so in record numbers. And this feeling is finding a concrete reality in multiple ways, which largely explains the success of the movie 2000 Mules, available largely away from the big screens and being intensely viewed at home by millions.

The movie by Dinesh D'Souza outlines a team of investigators exposing the fraudulent election, and polls of people who have watched it, including Democrats, say the flick has increased their conviction and anger.

The 2022 midterms are shaping up to be what experts call a "revenge vote."

The Democrats and the national media had hoped — and even encouraged the belief — that as time went by, fewer and fewer voters would remember or care. Things are turning out, however, to be the exact opposite, and now that the primaries are in full swing, these voters finally have a way to begin to vent their anger.

But it's not just the Democrats that middle-class Americans are ticked off at. It's also the Republican leadership, as well as even Donald Trump himself. Trump has endorsed a flurry of candidates for both federal and state offices all over the country, but an increasing number of those endorsements are raising eyebrows with the base.

Many were scratching their heads over his endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, but the recent smiles and hugs extended to Congressman Kevin McCarthy ticked off quite a few. McCarthy is seen as pure GOP establishment, one who did nothing to listen to the pleas of the little man in the wake of 2020.

On this subject, conservative commentator Pedro Gonzalez said, "Trump endorsing Frank Luntz bunk buddy Kevin McCarthy, instead of using his political capital to undermine bad GOP leadership, is a sign that Trump has not learned much after all this time about who is and is not America First."

Another guy took to Twitter, essentially saying the same thing: "Trump's endorsement of swamp rat Kevin McCarthy makes me think that he has learned absolutely nothing from his past mistakes. If he were to be re-elected, he will most likely surround himself with the same losers and backstabbers as he did in his first term."

These tweets pretty much sum up what many conservatives are thinking right now.

Kristina Karamo is a prime example of how strongly the revenge vote may factor in this election. She's running in Michigan for secretary of state against incumbent Jocelyn Benson, an autocrat who helped make sure nothing was done in Michigan to investigate the steal. Benson simply locked down and shut down all access to voters' calls for a statewide inquiry into the claims.

But Benson's tyrannical approach was greatly assisted by a complicit GOP state leadership, headed up by big-money Republicans, spearheaded by the DeVos family, owners of Amway in the western part of the state. That leadership wants nothing to do with a grassroots Republican candidate like Karamo.

While Karamo is not Catholic, she is closer to a Catholic worldview than many big-name Catholic politicos whom the bishops support or, at the very least, rarely say a word about. In fact, there is a parallel thing going on between rank-and-file faithful Catholics and rank-and-file Republicans.

There is a strong feeling among both — and there is a lot of overlap between these two camps — that they have been massively betrayed by leaders, and large numbers of each point to the same reality that there has been a rejection of core Christian teachings among the elites.

Church Militant has interviewed Karamo on three occasions now, this last one being here in the studio. In many ways, she is like many we have interviewed — the anti-candidate, someone who is not concerned with the political game but with making politics work for the people.

It's much like Catholics who are walking away from the Church of Nice and its abandonment of core beliefs in favor of the latest "cause of the month," depicted by an increasingly confusing flag with so many agendas represented that even some leftists aren't sure what it all means.

Thanks to a rebellion in the ranks of delegates to the Republican convention earlier this year, Karamo is already the party nominee for Michigan Secretary of State and there isn't a lot the GOP elites can do, although they are trying dirty tricks behind the scenes.

Therefore, Karamo, with her Trump endorsement in hand, will go on to face off against a woman who successfully shut down every challenge in the state to the 2020 election results. She just won't have any real backing from the party establishment, who would be content to allow Benson another four years in order to prevent a candidate of the people from winning.

If you'd like to see the full interview of Kristina, please click on the provided link.

TRANSCRIPT

There is a quote all over the Catholic internet attributed to Pope Benedict XVI that he never actually said, just like many quotes attributed to people, especially saints, that they never said.

Sometimes these quotes are a "mashing together" of various things they said over a period of time, and then authors and internet types take huge liberties and arrange separate thoughts, putting them together as though it was one continual utterance.

The specific quote attributed to Pope Benedict we are referencing is "The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness."

While the gist of that is true, it's not what he said. It likely arose from a combination of things he said at various talks and what he wrote in his 2007 encyclical, Spe Salvi, which translates to "saved in hope."

What he wrote is "Man was created for greatness — for God Himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched."

What he spoke at various times were things like "Man is not created for comfort." So, yes, the upshot is that we are not made for ease, but for God. Good enough.

But there is something much deeper here, and it's something that has been glossed over for decades and downplayed by Church leaders: Man has zero capability of achieving greatness. God alone bestows greatness because greatness, properly understood, is life with God. Anything outside of life with God and in God, sooner or later, is found wanting, insufficient.

Yet, a veritable cornucopia of insufficient, temporary satisfactions is placed before us by the millions, comfort offered over greatness. The first step to life with God is a rejection of these false gods — and there are many of them.

This is, for example, the chief error of James Martin when he preaches to confused audiences of homosexuals, who are mostly baptized Catholics. It is also the chief error of the hierarchy, which stays silent about his evil.

At its heart, accepting comfort over greatness is a violation of the First Commandment, "You shall have no other gods besides Me." Yet to choose comfort over greatness is precisely that — opting for a fake god over God Himself.

So how does one aspire to greatness — not achieve it, just aspire to it? We never achieve greatness. God grants it.

Note, for example, the Tower of Babel account. It states specifically that they desire to be great; it's the motivation for their action. God wiped out those plans. But then He shuffled over to Ur and spoke to Abram saying, "I will make of you a great nation."

It is God alone Who bestows greatness; we just need to be worthy of receiving it and worthiness comes through our actions. "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."

Love entails rejecting comfort when it becomes a block to becoming worthy. Ultimately, it demands sacrifice — and not just some sacrifice that is normal and usual in the day-to-day of human life. Even atheists make sacrifices, sometimes repeatedly. But the sacrifice must entail the view — the intention — to be made for greatness with God.

Sacrifice on its own is meaningless. In fact, sacrifice is woven into the fabric of daily life even for the most selfish person. A selfish person works and "sacrifices" some of his wealth for a house, food, car and so forth. Ultimately, all sacrifice is just an exchange of one thing for another, a thing you hold valuable for something you consider more valuable.

But unless the object of the exchange is God, it will ultimately disappoint. Food perishes; houses need constant repair and upkeep; cars break down. No earthly comfort ever suffices. Sex, money, power and drugs are all oriented toward self and have no substance to bring about greatness.

The Christian life is the Cross, the sacrifice here for the reward later. It's so basic, you say. But if it's so basic, why do we never hear about it?

The James Martins of the world, the U.S. bishops and the worldwide hierarchy are constructing a "Tower of Babel," looking to establish some kind of "great" civilization of controlling the climate, reimagining nations and so forth.

Like in the Old Testament, it will be brought to ruin. It's just too bad that so many leaders in the Church have cast their lot with those building the tower, as opposed to those being chosen by God for greatness.

TRANSCRIPT

There is a quote all over the Catholic internet attributed to Pope Benedict XVI that he never actually said, just like many quotes attributed to people, especially saints, that they never said.

Sometimes these quotes are a "mashing together" of various things they said over a period of time, and then authors and internet types take huge liberties and arrange separate thoughts, putting them together as though it was one continual utterance.

The specific quote attributed to Pope Benedict we are referencing is "The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness."

While the gist of that is true, it's not what he said. It likely arose from a combination of things he said at various talks and what he wrote in his 2007 encyclical, Spe Salvi, which translates to "saved in hope."

What he wrote is "Man was created for greatness — for God Himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched."

What he spoke at various times were things like "Man is not created for comfort." So, yes, the upshot is that we are not made for ease, but for God. Good enough.

But there is something much deeper here, and it's something that has been glossed over for decades and downplayed by Church leaders: Man has zero capability of achieving greatness. God alone bestows greatness because greatness, properly understood, is life with God. Anything outside of life with God and in God, sooner or later, is found wanting, insufficient.

Yet, a veritable cornucopia of insufficient, temporary satisfactions is placed before us by the millions, comfort offered over greatness. The first step to life with God is a rejection of these false gods — and there are many of them.

This is, for example, the chief error of James Martin when he preaches to confused audiences of homosexuals, who are mostly baptized Catholics. It is also the chief error of the hierarchy, which stays silent about his evil.

At its heart, accepting comfort over greatness is a violation of the First Commandment, "You shall have no other gods besides Me." Yet to choose comfort over greatness is precisely that — opting for a fake god over God Himself.

So how does one aspire to greatness — not achieve it, just aspire to it? We never achieve greatness. God grants it.

Note, for example, the Tower of Babel account. It states specifically that they desire to be great; it's the motivation for their action. God wiped out those plans. But then He shuffled over to Ur and spoke to Abram saying, "I will make of you a great nation."

It is God alone Who bestows greatness; we just need to be worthy of receiving it and worthiness comes through our actions. "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."

Love entails rejecting comfort when it becomes a block to becoming worthy. Ultimately, it demands sacrifice — and not just some sacrifice that is normal and usual in the day-to-day of human life. Even atheists make sacrifices, sometimes repeatedly. But the sacrifice must entail the view — the intention — to be made for greatness with God.

Sacrifice on its own is meaningless. In fact, sacrifice is woven into the fabric of daily life even for the most selfish person. A selfish person works and "sacrifices" some of his wealth for a house, food, car and so forth. Ultimately, all sacrifice is just an exchange of one thing for another, a thing you hold valuable for something you consider more valuable.

But unless the object of the exchange is God, it will ultimately disappoint. Food perishes; houses need constant repair and upkeep; cars break down. No earthly comfort ever suffices. Sex, money, power and drugs are all oriented toward self and have no substance to bring about greatness.

The Christian life is the Cross, the sacrifice here for the reward later. It's so basic, you say. But if it's so basic, why do we never hear about it?

The James Martins of the world, the U.S. bishops and the worldwide hierarchy are constructing a "Tower of Babel," looking to establish some kind of "great" civilization of controlling the climate, reimagining nations and so forth.

Like in the Old Testament, it will be brought to ruin. It's just too bad that so many leaders in the Church have cast their lot with those building the tower, as opposed to those being chosen by God for greatness.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Despite the constant harping by the Left that people need to move on from the 2020 election, an enormous percentage of Americans still believe that the election was either stolen or that we don't know who actually won.

Surveys produce varying results, but about one-third of all voters and two-thirds of Republican voters believe Biden is in the Oval Office because the election was somehow rigged or, at least, badly mismanaged.

And to show how persistent and current that belief is, in the ongoing primaries around the country, it is largely the Republican candidates who espouse this belief who keep winning, as highlighted in this article from last month.

The feeling among rank-and-file Republicans that Democrats stole 2020 is intense, and they are the ones turning out to vote — and doing so in record numbers. And this feeling is finding a concrete reality in multiple ways, which largely explains the success of the movie 2000 Mules, available largely away from the big screens and being intensely viewed at home by millions.

The movie by Dinesh D'Souza outlines a team of investigators exposing the fraudulent election, and polls of people who have watched it, including Democrats, say the flick has increased their conviction and anger.

The 2022 midterms are shaping up to be what experts call a "revenge vote."

The Democrats and the national media had hoped — and even encouraged the belief — that as time went by, fewer and fewer voters would remember or care. Things are turning out, however, to be the exact opposite, and now that the primaries are in full swing, these voters finally have a way to begin to vent their anger.

But it's not just the Democrats that middle-class Americans are ticked off at. It's also the Republican leadership, as well as even Donald Trump himself. Trump has endorsed a flurry of candidates for both federal and state offices all over the country, but an increasing number of those endorsements are raising eyebrows with the base.

Many were scratching their heads over his endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, but the recent smiles and hugs extended to Congressman Kevin McCarthy ticked off quite a few. McCarthy is seen as pure GOP establishment, one who did nothing to listen to the pleas of the little man in the wake of 2020.

On this subject, conservative commentator Pedro Gonzalez said, "Trump endorsing Frank Luntz bunk buddy Kevin McCarthy, instead of using his political capital to undermine bad GOP leadership, is a sign that Trump has not learned much after all this time about who is and is not America First."

Another guy took to Twitter, essentially saying the same thing: "Trump's endorsement of swamp rat Kevin McCarthy makes me think that he has learned absolutely nothing from his past mistakes. If he were to be re-elected, he will most likely surround himself with the same losers and backstabbers as he did in his first term."

These tweets pretty much sum up what many conservatives are thinking right now.

Kristina Karamo is a prime example of how strongly the revenge vote may factor in this election. She's running in Michigan for secretary of state against incumbent Jocelyn Benson, an autocrat who helped make sure nothing was done in Michigan to investigate the steal. Benson simply locked down and shut down all access to voters' calls for a statewide inquiry into the claims.

But Benson's tyrannical approach was greatly assisted by a complicit GOP state leadership, headed up by big-money Republicans, spearheaded by the DeVos family, owners of Amway in the western part of the state. That leadership wants nothing to do with a grassroots Republican candidate like Karamo.

While Karamo is not Catholic, she is closer to a Catholic worldview than many big-name Catholic politicos whom the bishops support or, at the very least, rarely say a word about. In fact, there is a parallel thing going on between rank-and-file faithful Catholics and rank-and-file Republicans.

There is a strong feeling among both — and there is a lot of overlap between these two camps — that they have been massively betrayed by leaders, and large numbers of each point to the same reality that there has been a rejection of core Christian teachings among the elites.

Church Militant has interviewed Karamo on three occasions now, this last one being here in the studio. In many ways, she is like many we have interviewed — the anti-candidate, someone who is not concerned with the political game but with making politics work for the people.

It's much like Catholics who are walking away from the Church of Nice and its abandonment of core beliefs in favor of the latest "cause of the month," depicted by an increasingly confusing flag with so many agendas represented that even some leftists aren't sure what it all means.

Thanks to a rebellion in the ranks of delegates to the Republican convention earlier this year, Karamo is already the party nominee for Michigan Secretary of State and there isn't a lot the GOP elites can do, although they are trying dirty tricks behind the scenes.

Therefore, Karamo, with her Trump endorsement in hand, will go on to face off against a woman who successfully shut down every challenge in the state to the 2020 election results. She just won't have any real backing from the party establishment, who would be content to allow Benson another four years in order to prevent a candidate of the people from winning.

If you'd like to see the full interview of Kristina, please click on the provided link.