Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

With the approach of Father's Day, we wanted to reach out on the subject of masculinity — manhood. The culture has denuded the concept of masculinity. It has robbed most young men of any living memory of what manhood is really all about, and for Catholic men in particular to have fallen prey to the notion of "toxic masculinity" is to bring about the end of civilization. There is a toxic masculinity and we see it evidenced in gangs and Hollywood role models of violent sexually-aggressive males and arrogant professional athletes who think the sun rises and sets in their physical prowess. 

But radical feminists have seen fit to lump anything and everything that is authentically masculine into the category of "Toxic Masculinity." Funny how they miss that they themselves are prime examples of toxic feminism, but that's another topic. Manhood — which is properly ordered to protection through sacrifice — requires all those qualities of authentic masculinity: discipline, strength, focus, drive, persistence, comradery, obedience, self-control. Manhood is all about protecting the weak, making those in our care safe. Men provide safety and security and they do this at the cost of themselves.

In short: real men are tough, first with themselves.

They aren't self-indulgent cry babies. They die to protect and defend the community. In the natural order, this has most often been evidenced historically in the fact that men go to war. They are more physically equipped for it than women. And that’s not discrimination. It’s just a fact, even if there might be a rare exception here and there. But you don’t build the defense of an entire nation around exceptions.

All of this twisted thinking about toxic masculinity being the same as manhood has infiltrated deeply into the thinking of Church leaders these days, and they are wrong. Catholic men — real men — are the pressing need for the Church right now, at this moment in history. In truth that is always the case, but some moments in our sacred history are more urgent that others and, behold, we are in one of those moments.

So what is a Catholic man?

Well, manhood, as we said, is about providing safety and security to those we love and care about. That is manhood on the natural level. And please note that even the most committed atheist can be a spectacular father on the mere natural level. He can hold down three jobs, deprive himself of sleep, work seven days a week, find time to teach his boys manners and civility and go to their sporting events. That is natural virtue — and recall, the 'vir' in virtue is Latin for man, as in male. But when we introduce the Catholic aspect of manhood into the manhood definition, things become greatly elevated.

My first concern, as a Catholic man, is that you get to Heaven because the Catholic man is both supernatural as well as natural. He exercises his virtue on two different planes at the same time. He protects your body, but he most importantly protects your soul. Both matter. One matters more — much more. In order to be an authentically Catholic man, the man must be above all a man of prayer. All authentic manhood is derived from God and the loving example of the Father — the first person of the Blessed Trinity — whose first, but not only, concern for us is our soul.

But remember His Divine Son, who, out of love and protection and safety for us, He did not spare, gave us a glimpse and revealed that His concern for us is so manifold that even every hair of your head is counted by Him. Prayer is relationship to God. It's all we will do in eternity, please God, be in perfect relationship with God, known completely by Him and knowing that we are completely known by Him.

This is the example of the Father to us. So authentic Catholic men are men of prayer because that is, when the final guns go off, being in closest relation to God, which is the perfect definition of Heaven. So men who do not pray — or pray a little — can never be authentically Catholic men. They might begin to approach that goal. They will never embrace it into themselves.

But now we encounter a problem. For too long, men have stayed somewhat out of touch with religion and prayer, at least on a regular basis. It's viewed, if even subconsciously, as women's work. Church and the parish, etc., being somehow relegated to the haunt of the feminine. Given the dismal state of most parishes these days, that's not a totally unjustified opinion, but it is still incorrect. The Eternal Logos, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, came to earth and assumed the flesh of, not just humanity, not just mankind, but of a male — a flesh and blood body of a man.

If that doesn’t instantly and completely blow up the the thought of "religion is for women," then you're brain dead. Men must be in communion with Heaven, and that is done specifically through prayer. In fact, the definition of prayer is being in communion with Heaven.

And allow us to suggest that a perfect prayer for men is: the Rosary. It takes discipline. It takes focus. It takes exercising will power. It needs sheer force to form the habit. It requires sacrifice, concentration and dedication — in short, all the qualities that make a man, a man; a Catholic man.

The Holy Rosary is anything but feminine. Most of the great saints and holy men of the past nearly thousand years prayed it incessantly — giant men, warriors of the faith. It is precisely why I wrote the book The Weapon — to dispel the notion quietly residing in many guys' minds that the Rosary is more of a girl thing.

Not sure why that thought is there, but there seems to be some reality to it. It's why Catholics always talk about the "little old ladies in the back of the Church" saying the Rosary. That is just wrong. The Rosary is a weapon, a deadly weapon to Satan.

Dads praying the Rosary are killer dads, deadly dads to the sworn enemy of their families: the serpent. It's a Gatling gun lighting up the diabolical with a ferocious incoming assault — the ammo clip being provided by our 12-star general, the Mother of God, who commands that this be prayed. To rattle men's cages and wake them up to the need to become warriors, soldiers, militants literally armed with their Rosary weapons, we are making a special offer for Father's Day.

From now until Father's Day, we are making The Weapon available for just $15 — two for $25 if you have more than one man in your life who needs to step it up. Inside these pages, you will find a different approach to the Rosary than you normally see. We call out the spiritual combat, the war present in every single mystery. And believe me, every mystery is strewn with spiritual combat.

In fact, that's the point of the Rosary: to awaken within us, especially men. Our high calling to turn and concentrate our male powers, elevated by grace, on the enemy of our loved ones.

How do we rightly defend their souls? By embracing the war and the sacrifice needed to fight it.

Please click on the link, order your copy or copies today and ask your dad, husband, son, brother, uncle, to embrace the battle for your sake.

Authentic manhood is ordered to holiness. There are very few more sure fire ways to holiness than the Holy Rosary.

TRANSCRIPT

So the Catholic Church in America has a dirty little secret it doesn't really want to know. It's this— how many people who convert to Catholicism through RCIA actually remain practicing Catholics? In short, just how good is the RCIA thing in making people saints? Becoming a saint or at least striving for sainthood is the heart of the Church's mission. If that is not happening then the parish and diocese are failing in its mission.

Here's what needs to be looked at carefully and called into question: The devastation to the Faith that has occurred over the past 50 years is finally having to be dealt with honestly as bishops all over the country close down parishes and schools etc. They can no longer deny that their actions or inaction have wrought destruction on a scale never before seen. So a good number of bishops have implemented various programs to try and stem the flow out of the Church. By far and away, the vast majority of these efforts encompass some sort of watering down of the Faith to make it more palatable to non-Catholics or poorly educated Catholics in an effort to get them to return.

They call it "pre-evangelization," as in get em' in the Church before you can preach em' the Gospel. Problem is, often times, when they do have some marginal success in getting them in the Church, they often times never get around to really preaching. And here's where the dirty little secret comes in — loads of these new people end up leaving cuz' all they are getting is the meringue and no substance. Since no one keeps any official track of these numbers, it's anyone's guess, but informal discussions with various people in the Church who touch all this on a daily basis suggest that as many as 50 percent of RCIA converts leave after the first year and as high as 75 percent have left after five years. Again, there's no way to verify those numbers with scientific certainty, but they can't be that wrong given the reality of how much the Church is atrophying in the U.S.

One out of every eight Americans walking around is a former Catholic and 50 percent of all baptized Catholics in America have left the Faith. There is no way that RCIA is being successful in keeping new Catholics, Catholic, in the face of those known statistics. You can understand why no bishop or the national conference of bishops really want to dig down deep and discover the truth of RCIA success. It would just be further confirmation that their efforts have been and continue to be an epic fail and who wants to deal with that? But that is exactly what needs to be dealt with.

All this blather and cheerleading for "pre-evangelization" like Alpha and a dozen other programs, in the end, accomplishes very little and in some cases is actually hastening the decline because of the long-term, knock-on effect of the failure. Consider if, and this is a big if, if a local parish or diocese has some success in getting people into an RCIA program and then because of the watered down or even anti-Catholic stuff they hear there, eventually leave the Faith, now you have produced a corrupted Catholic — a person who can say, "I went through RCIA, I know what I'm talking about and the Catholicism isn't that different from anything else."

Statistics bear out, in fact, that 50 percent of Catholic who leave the Church go on to no religion and what a sad commentary that the last official exposure the "religion" which they no longer have an interest in was Catholicism. Getting people into a "listening session" or to a "come and see" night at the parish may as well not be done at all if the end result is going to be "come and see and reject."

Church leaders are setting themselves up for a massive failure down the road because they are cooking the books. Each year, every parish and diocese reports and records their numbers of baptisms and conversions to national headquarters and all that information is gathered together in what's called The Kennedy Directory, but it is full of inaccuracies. It records baptisms, but nowhere does it track those who leave the Church, so the number of total Catholics is essentially meaningless.

Right now, the latest numbers show roughly 70 million Catholics in the U.S. But that is nowhere near as reflective of the actual number who embrace and live the Faith. We know, we all know, that number is nowhere near 70 million. It's much closer to around 7 million. We know 35 million have left the Faith. So the number is absolutely inaccurate by at least half. We also know that of the remaining 50 percent, at least half of them do not go to Mass each week, so that's another slash of 25 percent, meaning the real number of total Catholics is no higher than about 17–18 million, not the vastly overstated number of 70 million. Various bishops and dioceses around the country may not have run the actual number on all this, but they know with certainty, this is true. They live in this world everyday. Fewer and fewer Catholics means, among other things, declining revenues. And whatever they may know, they do know that.

So how is this happening? How is it with all the "pre-evangelization" programs, which have enjoyed at least a limited success in getting some people's attention, that all that effort isn't contributing to any kind of turnaround? Allow us to posit that no turnaround is happening because RCIA, Alpha, "Come and See," "Gather us In," "Joyful Bands of Missionary Disciples" — that sounds so gay — and all that marketing hoopla is not faithful to authentic Catholicism. They still concentrate on the subjective experience and emotions and personal-based language that the rest of the world also traffics in. Catholicism has not set itself apart from the world but has rather tried to baptize the attitudes and approaches of the world and it has failed.

Catholicism presents nothing unique under its current presentation. There are a million reasons why, and those are all subjects of many other Vortex episodes, but suffice to say, it's true. Church leaders are embarrassed by the Faith. They have not tried to distinguish it from the world, and when it comes to effectively out-marketing the world with its billions and one distractions from the spiritual life, you ain't gonna' win that battle.

The music is better outside the Church. The preaching is better outside the Church. The "liturgies," such as they are, are better outside the Church. Heck, the message is better outside the Church. Catholic leaders have laid aside Catholicism and are trying to sell a knock-off brand, and no one is buying it. That's why hordes leave even after going through RCIA. RCIA is not effective on the balance because Catholicism is not being taught in those sessions. Friendly, non-offensive, personal feeling Catholicism is being offered and no one cares. They convert and then have buyer's remorse. Exactly how many leave is the dirty little secret. But that they are leaving — in stampedes — is no secret at all.

Unless and until the authentic faith is presented, taught and insisted on, there will be no rescuing of a failing Church, whose leaders appear to be completely tone-deaf or have no desire to do the heavy lifting required to turn this around. We must do our part — those of us who know the truth, the whole truth. We must do our part and do it now. We will answer to Our Blessed Lord for not loving souls enough if we don't get in the game.

Correction: an erroneous date was given for the publication of Humanae Vitae in the video. The correct date is July 25, 1968. 

TRANSCRIPT

This summer is the 50th anniversary of one of the most controversial encyclicals ever produced in the Church's history, Humanae Vitae, Bl. Pope Paul VI's authoritative, binding restatement of the Church's never changing condemnation of birth control. On July 28, 1968, headlines around the world screamed out that the Church opposed the pill and a revolution began — a revolution inside the Church, a revolution still going on and whose effects have brought the Church to her knees.

The revolution was begun by dissident priests who worked actively behind the scenes for years prior to the pope's issuance of his encyclical, men like Fr. Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame, perhaps the single most important man in the Catholic Church to bring about the destruction of Catholic education. Then, there was Fr. Charles Curran who was the public face of the revolution, from high atop his perch at Catholic University of America from where he orchestrated a well-planned public relations attack against Pope Paul and Humanae Vitae. He wrote extensively over the next 20 years condemning Church teaching in the areas of premarital sex, masturbation, abortion, homosexual acts, divorce, euthanasia and in vitro fertilization. In 1986, the Church finally declared him unfit to teach theology at any Catholic university and so now he teaches at Southern Methodist.

Another leading figure was Fr. Gregory Baum who wrote and spoke frequently against the Church's teaching on contraception for many decades. He was present at Vatican II and worked in secret to gin up support for his anti-Catholic position. Before he died last year, he wrote a book where he confessed, proudly, that he was homosexual and had been involved in an active homosexual relationship for many years, including while he was barnstorming in favor of birth control and against the Church.

Another towering figure skulking about in the open was Dominican Fr. Henri de Riedmatten of the Vatican's Secretariat of State. Pope Paul had named him the secretary general of the papal commission on birth control, formally known as the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family and Birth-rate. Riedmatten did everything he could to tilt the commision in favor of rejecting the Church's teaching, from arranging the agenda of the various meetings to administratively blocking orthodox theologians from being allowed to be present and so forth.

There were many, many actively working to destroy the Church, but these four did more in this area than nearly everyone else. They corrupted the theology, stacked the commission, ginned up rebellion behind the scenes and had the commission reach a predetermined outcome. And what has their love and warm embrace brought the Church — spiritual and demographic ruination. They submarined all attempts at successful catechesis on the matter. They stacked the deck for future generations of Catholics to never hear the truth — any future generations that were actually born, that is.

Catholic families shrank from their more robust numbers to the more common two children per household, causing a knock-on effect in religious vocations, Catholic school populations and the overall number of Catholics — like contraception accepted in the culture helped the divorce rate to soar, so too in the Catholic community. And just as in the culture, a contraceptive mentality has ruled the day, resulting in acceptance of every sexual deviancy, so too, acceptance of these deviancies among Catholics is par for the course.

The spiritual, moral, theological damage inflicted on the Church and Catholic families from this rebellion — and what we can do about it — is the topic of Church Militant's Humanae Vitae conference we are sponsoring next month, June 9, here in the metro-Detroit area. We've provided a link on this page where you find out more and register for the day-long conference.

There are many things that can be pointed to in pinpointing what happened in the Church, but perhaps no one thing was more destructive of Catholic life than the rebellion against Humanae Vitae. Until this damage is undone — and a solution is found as to how to combat it — the Church will continue to dwindle away. Bishops remain virtually mute on the subject. Seminaries barely mention it. Most priests would rather undergo torture than to bring the topic up from the pulpits. Yet someone has to point the finger at this evil and call it out.

Please join us this coming June 9, here in Detroit for our Church Militant conference Marriage Under Attack: 50 Years After Humanae Vitae. Again, please click on the link for all the details.

TRANSCRIPT

With the approach of Father's Day, we wanted to reach out on the subject of masculinity — manhood. The culture has denuded the concept of masculinity. It has robbed most young men of any living memory of what manhood is really all about, and for Catholic men in particular to have fallen prey to the notion of "toxic masculinity" is to bring about the end of civilization. There is a toxic masculinity and we see it evidenced in gangs and Hollywood role models of violent sexually-aggressive males and arrogant professional athletes who think the sun rises and sets in their physical prowess. 

But radical feminists have seen fit to lump anything and everything that is authentically masculine into the category of "Toxic Masculinity." Funny how they miss that they themselves are prime examples of toxic feminism, but that's another topic. Manhood — which is properly ordered to protection through sacrifice — requires all those qualities of authentic masculinity: discipline, strength, focus, drive, persistence, comradery, obedience, self-control. Manhood is all about protecting the weak, making those in our care safe. Men provide safety and security and they do this at the cost of themselves.

In short: real men are tough, first with themselves.

They aren't self-indulgent cry babies. They die to protect and defend the community. In the natural order, this has most often been evidenced historically in the fact that men go to war. They are more physically equipped for it than women. And that’s not discrimination. It’s just a fact, even if there might be a rare exception here and there. But you don’t build the defense of an entire nation around exceptions.

All of this twisted thinking about toxic masculinity being the same as manhood has infiltrated deeply into the thinking of Church leaders these days, and they are wrong. Catholic men — real men — are the pressing need for the Church right now, at this moment in history. In truth that is always the case, but some moments in our sacred history are more urgent that others and, behold, we are in one of those moments.

So what is a Catholic man?

Well, manhood, as we said, is about providing safety and security to those we love and care about. That is manhood on the natural level. And please note that even the most committed atheist can be a spectacular father on the mere natural level. He can hold down three jobs, deprive himself of sleep, work seven days a week, find time to teach his boys manners and civility and go to their sporting events. That is natural virtue — and recall, the 'vir' in virtue is Latin for man, as in male. But when we introduce the Catholic aspect of manhood into the manhood definition, things become greatly elevated.

My first concern, as a Catholic man, is that you get to Heaven because the Catholic man is both supernatural as well as natural. He exercises his virtue on two different planes at the same time. He protects your body, but he most importantly protects your soul. Both matter. One matters more — much more. In order to be an authentically Catholic man, the man must be above all a man of prayer. All authentic manhood is derived from God and the loving example of the Father — the first person of the Blessed Trinity — whose first, but not only, concern for us is our soul.

But remember His Divine Son, who, out of love and protection and safety for us, He did not spare, gave us a glimpse and revealed that His concern for us is so manifold that even every hair of your head is counted by Him. Prayer is relationship to God. It's all we will do in eternity, please God, be in perfect relationship with God, known completely by Him and knowing that we are completely known by Him.

This is the example of the Father to us. So authentic Catholic men are men of prayer because that is, when the final guns go off, being in closest relation to God, which is the perfect definition of Heaven. So men who do not pray — or pray a little — can never be authentically Catholic men. They might begin to approach that goal. They will never embrace it into themselves.

But now we encounter a problem. For too long, men have stayed somewhat out of touch with religion and prayer, at least on a regular basis. It's viewed, if even subconsciously, as women's work. Church and the parish, etc., being somehow relegated to the haunt of the feminine. Given the dismal state of most parishes these days, that's not a totally unjustified opinion, but it is still incorrect. The Eternal Logos, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, came to earth and assumed the flesh of, not just humanity, not just mankind, but of a male — a flesh and blood body of a man.

If that doesn’t instantly and completely blow up the the thought of "religion is for women," then you're brain dead. Men must be in communion with Heaven, and that is done specifically through prayer. In fact, the definition of prayer is being in communion with Heaven.

And allow us to suggest that a perfect prayer for men is: the Rosary. It takes discipline. It takes focus. It takes exercising will power. It needs sheer force to form the habit. It requires sacrifice, concentration and dedication — in short, all the qualities that make a man, a man; a Catholic man.

The Holy Rosary is anything but feminine. Most of the great saints and holy men of the past nearly thousand years prayed it incessantly — giant men, warriors of the faith. It is precisely why I wrote the book The Weapon — to dispel the notion quietly residing in many guys' minds that the Rosary is more of a girl thing.

Not sure why that thought is there, but there seems to be some reality to it. It's why Catholics always talk about the "little old ladies in the back of the Church" saying the Rosary. That is just wrong. The Rosary is a weapon, a deadly weapon to Satan.

Dads praying the Rosary are killer dads, deadly dads to the sworn enemy of their families: the serpent. It's a Gatling gun lighting up the diabolical with a ferocious incoming assault — the ammo clip being provided by our 12-star general, the Mother of God, who commands that this be prayed. To rattle men's cages and wake them up to the need to become warriors, soldiers, militants literally armed with their Rosary weapons, we are making a special offer for Father's Day.

From now until Father's Day, we are making The Weapon available for just $15 — two for $25 if you have more than one man in your life who needs to step it up. Inside these pages, you will find a different approach to the Rosary than you normally see. We call out the spiritual combat, the war present in every single mystery. And believe me, every mystery is strewn with spiritual combat.

In fact, that's the point of the Rosary: to awaken within us, especially men. Our high calling to turn and concentrate our male powers, elevated by grace, on the enemy of our loved ones.

How do we rightly defend their souls? By embracing the war and the sacrifice needed to fight it.

Please click on the link, order your copy or copies today and ask your dad, husband, son, brother, uncle, to embrace the battle for your sake.

Authentic manhood is ordered to holiness. There are very few more sure fire ways to holiness than the Holy Rosary.

TRANSCRIPT

Cardinal Dolan of New York just doesn't get it. In his great rush to be relevant, he is just selling off the Faith. His latest pandering? Giving a very duplicitous, deceptive, deflective opinion on Pope Francis’ grossly mistaken personal opinion that God makes gays "that way."

He came out and agreed — this from the prelate prancing along at the head of the St. Patrick's Day parade where he orchestrated the allowing of active sodomites into the parade and then lied about it, saying "the group [OUT@NBC Universal] does not support the gay agenda." Riiiiight!!!

And no, Your Holiness and Your Eminence, God does not make someone gay, any more than He makes ephebophiles and pedophiles "their way." Or alcoholics, or those with advanced, overdrive libidos, or the "criminal gene" — a proven scientific fact, unlike the "gay gene," or a host of other sinful desires acted on.

See, word in Rome is that Dolan has fallen out of favor with Pope Francis and many of the ruling elites in Rome — perhaps too much buffoonery doesn't fit their style. He's apparently not radical enough for them, which ought to tell you how really bad things are in the eternal city right now.

So a more cynical mind could look at this latest implosion of Dolan's and say he's trying to get back in the good favor of the guys in charge and agreeing with them when they say something out of place or damaging to the faith — for his own personal gain of course. Now, what's particularly disingenuous of Cdl. Dolan here is how he presented his case and how he left unaddressed the real problematic statement attributed to the Pope.

Dolan chose to focus his comments on just one thing the Pope is supposed to have said: that God loves gays. Well, big deal. God loves everyone, unconditionally. He died for everyone — that's redemption. He so loved the world that gave His only begotten Son. So it's hardly earth-shattering news that God loves gays, or murderers, or bank robbers, or drug addicts, or child rapists, or adulterers, nor fornicators — you name it — He loves them.

But he loves them because He is love, not because He approves of the sin. In fact, God hates sin.

And those who die in their sin are His enemies. In truth, those who live in their sin have made themselves His enemies, but He still loves them and desires their salvation, for God wills that all men be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth — the truth that sets you free — free to exercise your will to choose eternal life with Him.

But that God loves gays is not all that was reported to have been said by the Pope, nor of course denied by the sinister characters running parts of the Vatican.

However bad the Pharisees and scribes were — so much so that Our Blessed Lord called them serpents and a brood of vipers — they at least dd not have the grace of office of the priesthood.

This lot in charge today. Imagine what He will call them at their judgments if they die in this state. And as a sidebar, Our Blessed Lord called people animals so Fr. Martin and the liberal media going nuts needs to just step off. Pope Francis is purported to have said more than God loves gays. He said, according to reports, that God made them gay, actively willed this condition for them and loves them in this condition — the condition of sinning being the unmistakable conclusion.

But deceptive Dolan never addresses this aspect of what the Pope said. And in truth, that aspect is the entire crux of the matter, not that God loves sinners, but that he created them to sin and simply overlooks it or even applauds it. This is typical Church of Nice fare: lie, deceive, side-step, warp the meaning of something, deflect, skip over, ignore.

The time has come for faithful Catholics to become incensed and enraged over this Clintonian type double-speak. Heck, we should, at some point in the near future, wait for Cdl. Dolan to say something like, it depends on what the meaning of the word is, is.

He publicly stated there was nothing offensive to Catholic sensibilities at the horrific Met Gala a couple weeks ago — standing not too far from the sadomasochism head mask draped in rosaries as chains. Yep, good grief, who could be offended at that?

He lied about his involvement in the sordid, filthy Fr. Peter Miqueli scandal and still to this day has not come clean about his homo-laden chancery that enables that illness. He is the man behind the scenes who brought active sodomites into the parade celebrating the patron saint of Ireland and then marched in front of them, not to mention had us tossed out when we confronted him about his scandal.

And now, a deflection of the most insidious kind.  

Agree with the most innocuous part of a statement — that even Satan would agree with and say nothing about the real problematic part — thus leaving open for reasonable minds to conclude, you agree with that part as well. And for the record, the reverse question needs to be asked based on all his past scandals revolving around the gay issue, does Dolan actually agree that God actively wills, makes/creates someone to be gay and then is fine with it?

It could easily be the case that he does agree with that, but is a bit nervous about coming out with it publicly, so he "signals" it, dog whistles it, so to speak. This homoheresy has got to be brought to an end, and it doesn't matter who the person is that occupies a given office in the Church.

As long as they support it, in whatever way they support it, directly like Fr. Martin, or signaling their support by silence and deflection, they need to be called out. They can all go to Hell if they are so desirous of it, but they don't have a right to have others follow in their wake.

TRANSCRIPT

Church Militant exists, as our motto says, to "Serve Catholics." What does that mean, precisely?

Well, precisely, it means two things, two sides of the same coin, because current conditions demand such an approach. We serve Catholics by helping them be better Catholics. And the Church of Nice hates it when we call ourselves Catholic because of this double dynamic we operate by. The work of evangelization today, unfortunately, demands a dual path approach. Why?

Because conditions in the Church are so bad that when you are trying to help someone convert or revert to the faith, you simply cannot ignore this reality. In many places, RCIA is barely a joke, if not downright non-Catholic. Many other evangelization and catechesis-like efforts, like Alpha, barely rise to the level of Christian, much less Catholic. A huge number of prelates and clergy have been poorly formed or even malformed in the Faith.

The rampant homoheresy dominating so much of the life of the Church is out of control. Nutty, anti-Catholic ideas like, for example, everyone, or almost everyone, goes to Heaven, have become ensconced in many Catholics' minds. We could go on and on. The overall point is that there is so a dearth of fidelity to authentic Catholicism these days, owing to either schism, heresy or dissent, that it cannot be ignored or sidestepped when truly serving Catholics.

Church Militant does talk about all this, exposing it for what it is, which is un-Catholic, and for this approach we are roundly despised by the ever-shrinking, ever-disappearing Church of Nice. And for the record, we are on record as saying that given current trends, the Catholic Church in America will essentially be extinct within roughly seven years.

And behind closed doors, meeting with their diocesan finance personnel, every bishop in America knows that's true. That's why there is this massive unprecedented money grab going on across the country, finance campaigns trying to collectively raise billions of dollars.

They know that older Catholics are the most faithful and they are dying off. So better get the money while they still have the chance. It's ironic that the very men who have presided over the destruction of the Church and deprived younger generations of the authentic faith are now turning to the aging grandparents of those they have deprived and asking for their money before they die.

That takes a lot of gall.

"Hey, old Catholics. I am part of the Establishment Church which didn't care enough — or at all because I don't believe it — about the salvation of your children and grandchildren's souls. Nevertheless, can you cough up as much money as possible before you croak, so we can keep pedaling our poison and promoting leftist ideology and pretending it's Catholic?"

Well, at least that would be honest.

This is what we do here every day. Expose the dissident, homoheretical, social justice, big money, traditional Catholicism-hating machine that dominates the Catholic landscape these days. It absolutely needs to be talked about for what it is.

But the other part of the dual aspect approach it is to preach the actual Faith in all its beauty and glory. Think of the dual approach as dealing with both the natural as well as the supernatural.

And right now, the prevailing conditions of the Church of the Church on a natural level are too often a roadblock to the presentation of her supernatural beauty.

So how does Church Militant go about serving Catholics? By talking about both — no holds barred. It's why we ask you to become a Premium member, because your $10 a month not only gives you access to hundreds of hours of solid Catholic video but also allows us to remain in the game of this great war we are in for the soul of the Church. Even though the Church of Nice is dying out, it still is formidable, a wounded dinosaur capable of tricking people out of billions of dollars because it presents what many have called Catholic-Lite — all fluff, no substance.

Not here. We are completely dedicated to hardcore, truthful, terrible, awe-full (as in full of awe) authentic Catholicism. The type which brings about moral miracles, changes lives forever, saves souls from eternal damnation. Your Premium membership, even if you don't have a lot of time to watch, keeps us on track.

We are able to turn about a couple of books a year for those who like to prefer the written word. We sponsor conferences each year where tough topics are tackled. We have our annual Retreat at Sea where hundreds have come to be fed on the majesty of the faith and its sublime soul-stirring truths.

We stream live each weekday our morning prayer and evening prayer and are constantly encouraging you to pray the Liturgy of the Hours with us. We publish easy to read and pass around short pieces on a huge range of Catholic topics for your benefit and those you are trying to convert or help. We are invited to speak in countries all over the world where we record those talks — hundreds of them now — and make them available for you free.

We quietly provide support behind the scenes to many priests and religious who have been abused by the liberal Church of Nice. None of this would be possible without your Premium membership.  See - it doesn't just pay for the Premium programming, it keeps us able to do all these other things we would never be able to do otherwise.

We made the decision very early on to offer all this other stuff to you for free because we are convinced this is what a completely committed, comprehensive Catholic apostolate not only does, but has to do in this current environment. Your monthly subscription is not just for your benefit. It helps many other people as well by providing the means by which we can do all these other activities.

Heck, even our news articles, where we are often times the first to bring you important news, even those are free because, again, the times demand it. But we need your help, your commitment, your skin in the game as well, as the saying goes, to help us keep serving Catholics.

Imagine, if an apostolate like this had been around 30 or more years ago where millions read or view our material. Maybe the current conditions wouldn't be so bad. Maybe some souls who abandoned the One True Faith might not have. Maybe even more souls would have converted when presented Catholic glory straight-up.

This is your apostolate as much as it's ours, because it's all the work of the Church, which is saving souls.

Please help us continue serving Catholics by signing up for a Premium subscription today. Thank you to all of you who are Premium members already and thank you in advance for those who respond enthusiastically to this message.

Remember, it costs less than a single cup of coffee a week.

TRANSCRIPT

Two priests I'd like to focus on for a moment: Fr. John Hardon and Fr. Pablo Straub. Father John Hardon, who has been a continual source of inspiration and information for us here at Church Militant, once said called the liberal mainstream media "The Luciferian Media" because of the evil they poured into people's minds. And it didn't matter if it was news media or the entertainment media. He correctly saw that it was all a very valuable tool of the diabolical in destabilizing the culture and the Church.

Father Pablo Straub — a saint of a man who was a dear friend of ours here at Church Militant — once said to me in house one evening while we were visiting, “Michael, we have to bring Christ to the internet.” He was channeling the same inspiration of Fr. Hardon, that the media must be utilized to bring as many souls to Christ as possible, no matter the ferocious uphill battle against the demonic we may face in that industry along the way.

And so here we are. And I'd like to get very personal with you if I can for a moment. This apostolate, as you've heard me say many times before, exists to be used for the salvation of souls. We have faced many many obstacles along the way, from opposition from multiple Church leaders who despise our presentation of authentic Catholicism and pretend it's about the tone, when it's really about no such thing.

We've had a small contingent of people who were at one time close to our work here join forces with those who would seek to destroy us and betray us. We've had blackmail, extortion attempts, necessitating my public confession two years ago of my past sins. We have been blasted by no less than a dozen times by the secular media over the past year and half and labeled every imaginable slur and insult.

We were also specifically singled out by faithless men in the Vatican itself who felt the great need to slam us in a widely publicized article last summer. And through all these times we have stayed true and dedicated to the one prayer we make multiple times a day: "Dear Lord, use us to save souls."

We have consecrated this work to the Immaculate Heart of Our Blessed Mother. We have dedicated our work here and placed it under the protection of St. Michael the Archangel. And they have never abandoned us. They have stood right beside us every step of the way — as difficult and emotionally draining as many of these times have been. They have stayed with us, supporting us, because we have remained faithful to Our Blessed Lord's Bride, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and, please God, always will.

Years ago, for a variety of reasons, the least of which was not that my entire career had been spent in the television news and production broadcasting business, the decision was made to launch an effort never before undertaken in the Catholic media.

We would, as Fr. Pablo instructed us, bring Christ to the internet, and we would do it through the daily presence of video. One or two at first, but then expanding.

Twelve years later, Church Militant is the most commented on Catholic internet site in the world, recognized as one of the premier news and information Catholic portals and gaining in influence and attention because of the ever-deepening crisis in the Church.

No one else in the Catholic media world does what we do everyday. We bring you the most direct authentic presentation of Catholic truth — no holds barred — in the most professionally produced manner of anyone else. A number of the secular media outlets that came to Church Militant last year to due their "exposé" reports on us were very free with their personal assessments that we were every bit as professional as anything they saw routinely as CNN or MSNBC. And here is what sets us apart from the rest of the Catholic media world: We understand that in this time and place in history and the culture, the visual image is king.

While I personally agree that reading is much more important, in founding and running this apostolate, I understand the reality of the visual image and its impact of viewers. I made my living for decades in this industry. It was my stock and trade and, frankly, I got sick of this wonderful medium being used as a tool of Satan.

So here we are now, constantly elevating our production standards — as many of you have said to us — always digging deeper in trying to get to the heart of the matter of whatever we are conveying to you. In truth, dollar for dollar, I would stack our content and its production value up against anything the Luciferian media has to offer.

We specialize in two major areas of video production: news, current events and theological. For the most part, our news and current events are offered for free, and our theological content resides in our Premium offering for $10 a month.

In short, we generally use the free content opportunity to alert people to the reality that the Church is on fire, and the theological content to provide a solution, which always comes down to increasing your knowledge so you can convert that to increasing your sanctity — the end goal of the Catholic life.

We have hundreds of hours of Premium content, as we said, for a mere $10 a month and your being a Premium subscriber affords us the opportunity to do much more than just produce Premium programming. Your monthly subscription, even if you often times may not have a lot of time to view the Premium offerings, fuels the entire infrastructure of what we do here.

Our annual budget is more than $2.2 million. Yes, TV costs a lot of money — not just paying the dedicated staff of more than 30 in-house employees, but the cost to keep up with ever-changing technology as well as the day to day equipment failures and maintenance required.

We have, hands down, the best productions available in the Catholic world because that is the standard we operate under. If the professionals in the Luciferian media can, and they do, spend themselves for a level of quality to pollute people's minds and souls, then the very least we as faithful Catholics can do is match their professionalism, and in reality, exceed it.

What we are asking you is please, right now, sign up for, or renew a lapsed Premium membership, so you can join us in this mission of fighting for souls amidst all the confusion in the Church and the world.

What we do here is the work of the Church, and that's all we do. We do it through this medium of the visual image, but we do it nonetheless and we put our hearts into it. Nearly everyone who began their time with Church Militant/St. Michael's Media had next to zero experience in this field — whether it was news or script writing, shooting, editing, website management, marketing and so forth.

Through your prayers and financial support we believe we have put together one of the most formidable challenges to the Luciferian media in the Catholic world today. Both of us, the Luciferian crowd and Church Militant, are battling it out for your soul. They lie to you. We give you Catholic truth in all its glory.

We have multiple people tell us, frequently, that they came back to the faith, or converted, because our site was used by Our Heavenly Father as the means to communicate timeless Catholic beauty to them. That is why we exist. That is ultimately the only reason we exist.  

Whether you have the opportunity to be a regular viewer of our Premium programming or life is a little crazed and you don't have as much time as you would like, please still become a Premium subscriber. Your subscription helps us continue the work in the trenches. The spiritual war raging all around us has many foxholes on this giant battlefield.

With your help, this is one foxhole — excellent daily video production to match the Luciferian media stride for stride — that we don't intend to surrender. Father Pablo told us to do this. Father Hardon said there was a need for it. Please sign up today and join us in this foxhole.

TRANSCRIPT

The man who is the current pope is wrong in his very personal, very fallible opinion presented as a mere man, and not as Pope. God does not make people gay, and such a person is not born that way.

Jorge Bergoglio is wrong.

Now again, given the circumstances of a person repeating to the press what he said the pope said, we have to presume the victim of a long ago assault by a homosexual priest was not lying when he said the pope said God makes people gay and loves them that way. If Bergoglio the man — not Francis the Pope — did indeed say that, then the gay-controlled Vatican has a moral duty and obligation to come out and deny either that he said it or that was not what he meant.

In either case, crickets from the elitist gays in control in Rome because all of this press suits their plans very well. Just as they schemed and connived behind the scenes at the 2014 Extraordinary Synod on the Family to deliberately produce the headline: "Church Says Gay is Okay" — a plot, as you recall, Church Militant was more than happy to have a part in blowing up.

[Bruno Forte — Transcript Unavailable]

The Vatican gays are now at it again, riding this latest rainbow wave across every major paper in the world. Perhaps the man who is pope is getting fed his bad info from closeted or homosexualists Vatican appointees like Fr. James Martin or Fr. Thomas Rosica, among the biggest gay cheerleaders you will find in Rome. We aren't certain that what is being ascribed to the pope is either what he said, if it was translated correctly, reported correctly or what he did mean if those were his words.

What we do know is this: The Vatican has not "clarified" the matter to any substantial degree, and the homoheresy gang in the Vatican is making hay out of the whole affair

So let's be clear here. The opinion of the man Jorge Bergoglio means absolutely nothing in this regard. He is not a psychologist. He is not gay — that anyone has ever said anyway. Whatever view he has of homosexuality is filtered heavily by a group of influential gay or homosexualist cardinals and clergy who never stir from his side.

For someone, regardless of who the man is, to even suggest that Almighty God actively creates, deliberately brings into existence a disordered sexuality is reprehensible. Then to suggest, or leave open to easy interpretation, that the Almighty likes it or loves the disorder is malicious.

Again, we don't know, for all the above mentioned variables, if that is what the man who is currently pope said or believes or not.

But we do know that there are many standing around him who do believe and say that and we might add it's not unreasonable to consider the possibility that they are using him to advance and normalize their own disordered sexualities. There is an ocean of difference between God permitting the evil effects of a fallen world to play themselves out and Him actually bringing about the evil and then loving it.

People are not born gay — and that message is for you, Fr. Martin. Stop your lying. Holy cow, the "gay" man who claims to have repeated the words of the man who is pope was raped by a homosexual priest when he was a youngster. Think that maybe had anything to do with it?

A predator homosexual priest, by the way kept hidden and tucked away so he could rape multiple other altar boys by the very same establishment now saying we should all embrace gay and build a bridge and listen to a gang of altar boy rapists, or those who support such predators. The only folks who seem to get a nod for mercy in this gay Vatican are other gays or those who embrace sacrilege, because really, it's all part of the same cloth: a denial of truth and right order.

About seven years ago, Church Militant was in Rome and reported on the scandal of gay clergy in the Vatican. We were attacked savagely by the Church of Nice establishment and their media — called sensational, lying, etc. Sadly, little by little, everything we reported has come to pass in spades. But see, what many Catholics don't understand in this whole "gays in the Church" thing is this: One dynamic is these perverts working feverishly behind the scenes to make it appear as though the Church has changed its teaching.

Then there is the complicit Church of Nice establishment who never wants this topic talked about in public because the truth of their own connivance would be completely exposed. Well, the silent treatment hasn't worked because now the homo clergy has not just come out of the closet, but they have come screaming and hooting and hollering out the closet. So the little dirty secret of the Church of Nice — think as just one of hundreds of examples, Cdl. Dolan's homo chancery in New York — has now come completely into the light with the headline: "Pope Say Gay is Okay."

What a filthy rotten disgusting diabolical lie. If God deliberately created gays as gay, and revels in it and thinks its so great and wonderful, then why did he give them the power to reproduce?

No one is born gay.

They are traumatized into it, raped into it, abused emotionally into it, deprived of an authentic masculine presence into it and even coached into it by predatory men — some of whom are priests. I'd like the man who is currently pope to look me in the eye and tell me God made me the way I used to live and therefore intends me to be that way and was happy with it and would have no problem with me returning to it, because after all, He made me that way.

You can imagine what my answer back would be. My answer to the very fallible man with a very errnant, very personal opinion who just happens to also be pope, for now.

Pray for him and the gang of perverted men around him.

TRANSCRIPT

It takes an enormous effort to try and change a Church that is two thousand years old. It's comparable to turning around an aircraft carrier. It takes some time, but once the course is changed and there's a full head of steam, the sheer momentum is practically impossible to stop.

That's what the anti-traditionalist crowd in the Church is doing — and doing very well. We call them anti-traditionalist because not all of them would — in fact, the great majority — would never view themselves as modernists bent on destroying the Church.

This lot — useful idiots for the modernists — see themselves as just updating things in the Church to make her more relevant and relatable.

So a little nip here, a little tuck there and voila: same Church, different look and feel. Except, it's not the same Church. And that's what the anti-traditionalist crowd fails to understand and why they are such helpful tools of the modernist crowd. When you change the appearance of something, you change much more than the appearance. You change the perception in people's minds. In fact, that is the entire point of changing an appearance.

Take for example the patient who "goes under the knife" to supposedly look better, although it doesn't always work out that way. The person wants to present a different face to the world — literally. They want people to see them differently. That is the consciously intended effect.

But there is also a subconscious effect and this subconscious effect happens to the person. They begin to see themselves differently, understand themselves differently, feel differently about themselves. Perhaps that's not necessarily a big deal when you're talking about a middle-aged woman trying to feel better about herself, but it is a big deal when you are tampering with the self-understanding of the faithful.

All the millions of little "cosmetic" changes that have been introduced into the Church these last fifty years have served nothing but to make Catholic understand themselves completely apart from what authentic Catholicism really is. These changes absolutely matter because they have gotten down into the DNA of the faithful and resulted in them leaving the Church.

Holy Communion in the hand doesn't seem that big of a deal. You're still getting the Eucharist, right? What’s the big deal? Holding hands during the Our Father and swarming all over the Church to give the "sign of peace"? Nothing to see here folks.

Take for example this picture of Bp. Robert Barron standing proudly after Mass with his whole troop of girl altar boys. Not a big deal, you say? But, it is a big deal.

This image completely destroys the notion of the importance of the masculine in the sanctuary and that has been one of the leading problems in the Church the past fifty years — the downplaying of the masculine and the advancing of the emasculated.

Consider this, the sanctuary — the part of the Church that used to be set off by the Communion rail — is the womb of the Church. It is where Christ is, in a certain sense, conceived on the altar, brought down from Heaven and made real — incarnated.

This is in fact why the sanctuary is referred to as a sanctuary because the Holy becomes tangible and visible, physical and real in this womb.

Now, there is — or at least was — much symbolism in every action and location of the Church. That is before the modernist crowd moved in and changed everything and then enlisted the help of the anti-traditionalists, thousands of men like Bp. Barron, for example.

The symbolism, which speaks to the reality, of having only men in the sanctuary is that it is only men who enter the womb and through their presence initiate life. But when the sanctuary is overflowing with women, that sort of thought is impossible. It changes the sanctuary from a place of life to a place of worldly "equality" where women are just as good as men. Which is all fine and good, except the sanctuary is not a place for worldly concerns to state their case, through word or symbol.

It is the place of the holy, the word sanctuary has as its root, "sanct" — holy.

Now does Bishop Barron — or thousands of other clerics who are just fine with all this — do they all have the conscious thought on their minds to let me destroy the notion of the masculine and feminine and how that plays out in the presentation of the liturgy? Probably not. But some of them do. Those are the ones who made this "seemingly" visible change, but it's not just a visible change.

It speaks right on the issue of what is happening on the altar. in the sanctuary. You will notice in many older churches, there is a baldacchino over the altar. The most famous and recognizable one is in St. Peter's Basilica. It is essentially a canopy — as in the canopy over a bed, like a four post bed canopy.

Why is that there? Why are baldacchinos hanging over so many Catholic altars? Because it represents the location where Christ comes to love his Spouse, the Church, and bring forth the fruit of that supreme union of love — you and me — the sons and daughters of the Church, born from his marital embrace of his bride, the Church.

All of this reality is bound up and expressed in the symbolism of the male-only sanctuary, the architecture reflective of an actual marital bed. The greatest treasure of the Church, the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament, the sacrifice of the Mass is all expressed and made visible through signs and symbols. This is why a little tweak here and a little nip and tuck there is so destructive.

When you change the appearance, you change not just the look, but the self-understanding. How many Catholics have any conception of the Real Presence these days? How many have any idea why the sanctuary would be visibly demarcated and only entered into in the liturgy by males?

To promote the idea of "nice" by showing how fun and sweet it is to have girl altar boys — and let's pose for pictures with them — is not serving the greater good of the Church.

There is no theology supportive of girl altar boys or women in the sanctuary, for that matter. Those are cosmetic changes initiated first by those who sought to destroy your faith by first destroying the way it looked. Then they enlisted the help of thousands of naive clergy who don't understand the significance of every movement, breath, image and subtlety of the liturgy, because they were poorly formed in seminaries which were controlled by the destroyers.

This is how you change a Church — the Catholic Church — by destroying its understanding of itself, of the necessity of masculinity, and replacing it with a silly cutesy heavily feminine presence that over time completely perverts the significance of the reality and turns it into something completely different.

Looks do matter. That's why the destroyers went after them with abandon. Change the appearance and you change the perception. That's the point.

TRANSCRIPT

So the Catholic Church in America has a dirty little secret it doesn't really want to know. It's this— how many people who convert to Catholicism through RCIA actually remain practicing Catholics? In short, just how good is the RCIA thing in making people saints? Becoming a saint or at least striving for sainthood is the heart of the Church's mission. If that is not happening then the parish and diocese are failing in its mission.

Here's what needs to be looked at carefully and called into question: The devastation to the Faith that has occurred over the past 50 years is finally having to be dealt with honestly as bishops all over the country close down parishes and schools etc. They can no longer deny that their actions or inaction have wrought destruction on a scale never before seen. So a good number of bishops have implemented various programs to try and stem the flow out of the Church. By far and away, the vast majority of these efforts encompass some sort of watering down of the Faith to make it more palatable to non-Catholics or poorly educated Catholics in an effort to get them to return.

They call it "pre-evangelization," as in get em' in the Church before you can preach em' the Gospel. Problem is, often times, when they do have some marginal success in getting them in the Church, they often times never get around to really preaching. And here's where the dirty little secret comes in — loads of these new people end up leaving cuz' all they are getting is the meringue and no substance. Since no one keeps any official track of these numbers, it's anyone's guess, but informal discussions with various people in the Church who touch all this on a daily basis suggest that as many as 50 percent of RCIA converts leave after the first year and as high as 75 percent have left after five years. Again, there's no way to verify those numbers with scientific certainty, but they can't be that wrong given the reality of how much the Church is atrophying in the U.S.

One out of every eight Americans walking around is a former Catholic and 50 percent of all baptized Catholics in America have left the Faith. There is no way that RCIA is being successful in keeping new Catholics, Catholic, in the face of those known statistics. You can understand why no bishop or the national conference of bishops really want to dig down deep and discover the truth of RCIA success. It would just be further confirmation that their efforts have been and continue to be an epic fail and who wants to deal with that? But that is exactly what needs to be dealt with.

All this blather and cheerleading for "pre-evangelization" like Alpha and a dozen other programs, in the end, accomplishes very little and in some cases is actually hastening the decline because of the long-term, knock-on effect of the failure. Consider if, and this is a big if, if a local parish or diocese has some success in getting people into an RCIA program and then because of the watered down or even anti-Catholic stuff they hear there, eventually leave the Faith, now you have produced a corrupted Catholic — a person who can say, "I went through RCIA, I know what I'm talking about and the Catholicism isn't that different from anything else."

Statistics bear out, in fact, that 50 percent of Catholic who leave the Church go on to no religion and what a sad commentary that the last official exposure the "religion" which they no longer have an interest in was Catholicism. Getting people into a "listening session" or to a "come and see" night at the parish may as well not be done at all if the end result is going to be "come and see and reject."

Church leaders are setting themselves up for a massive failure down the road because they are cooking the books. Each year, every parish and diocese reports and records their numbers of baptisms and conversions to national headquarters and all that information is gathered together in what's called The Kennedy Directory, but it is full of inaccuracies. It records baptisms, but nowhere does it track those who leave the Church, so the number of total Catholics is essentially meaningless.

Right now, the latest numbers show roughly 70 million Catholics in the U.S. But that is nowhere near as reflective of the actual number who embrace and live the Faith. We know, we all know, that number is nowhere near 70 million. It's much closer to around 7 million. We know 35 million have left the Faith. So the number is absolutely inaccurate by at least half. We also know that of the remaining 50 percent, at least half of them do not go to Mass each week, so that's another slash of 25 percent, meaning the real number of total Catholics is no higher than about 17–18 million, not the vastly overstated number of 70 million. Various bishops and dioceses around the country may not have run the actual number on all this, but they know with certainty, this is true. They live in this world everyday. Fewer and fewer Catholics means, among other things, declining revenues. And whatever they may know, they do know that.

So how is this happening? How is it with all the "pre-evangelization" programs, which have enjoyed at least a limited success in getting some people's attention, that all that effort isn't contributing to any kind of turnaround? Allow us to posit that no turnaround is happening because RCIA, Alpha, "Come and See," "Gather us In," "Joyful Bands of Missionary Disciples" — that sounds so gay — and all that marketing hoopla is not faithful to authentic Catholicism. They still concentrate on the subjective experience and emotions and personal-based language that the rest of the world also traffics in. Catholicism has not set itself apart from the world but has rather tried to baptize the attitudes and approaches of the world and it has failed.

Catholicism presents nothing unique under its current presentation. There are a million reasons why, and those are all subjects of many other Vortex episodes, but suffice to say, it's true. Church leaders are embarrassed by the Faith. They have not tried to distinguish it from the world, and when it comes to effectively out-marketing the world with its billions and one distractions from the spiritual life, you ain't gonna' win that battle.

The music is better outside the Church. The preaching is better outside the Church. The "liturgies," such as they are, are better outside the Church. Heck, the message is better outside the Church. Catholic leaders have laid aside Catholicism and are trying to sell a knock-off brand, and no one is buying it. That's why hordes leave even after going through RCIA. RCIA is not effective on the balance because Catholicism is not being taught in those sessions. Friendly, non-offensive, personal feeling Catholicism is being offered and no one cares. They convert and then have buyer's remorse. Exactly how many leave is the dirty little secret. But that they are leaving — in stampedes — is no secret at all.

Unless and until the authentic faith is presented, taught and insisted on, there will be no rescuing of a failing Church, whose leaders appear to be completely tone-deaf or have no desire to do the heavy lifting required to turn this around. We must do our part — those of us who know the truth, the whole truth. We must do our part and do it now. We will answer to Our Blessed Lord for not loving souls enough if we don't get in the game.