The Vortex: Recent Episodes

Here are two recent episodes of the Vortex, as RealCatholicTV.com makes its transformation to ChurchMilitant.TV. While things are still in transition as the studio is moved and the new website is constructed, Michael Voris and company continue to give us encouraging words in the midst of their current chaos!

The first episode shown below is from June 13; the second is from June 14. The scripts appear below each video.

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Better to Give than to  Receive (June 13 episode)

Hello everyone and welcome to The Vortex where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed. I’m Michael Voris.

Odds are that by now you have learned of all the new stuff going on here: new studio, new name, new website.

The studio is in the final stages of coming fully on line  - about another week or so.  The new name, ChurchMilitant.TV will be fully operational in a few days and the new website be rolled out gradually over the coming weeks.

As a quick aside, we are still over budget on the whole project so if you are able to help, we would be most grateful.  Just click on the donate button and thank you in advance.

We’ve chosen to step up our efforts and go bigger now because we feel it is the appropriate response to the current crisis in which Holy Mother Church finds Herself.

A short note: one of the young fellows who has joined us here was asked by his family why he was simply uprooting his life and coming here to work for peanuts and head don a whole new path he hadn’t even considered just a month ago. 

His answer? “Because the Church needs defending.”  With that, he kissed his mom and sister goodbye, got in the car and rolled up here last week.

The Church does indeed need defending: there are barbarians from without and wolves from within, all seeking Her demise. This has become abundantly clear in the last few years:

There’s the scandal of leaders in the Church in open rebellion against the Holy Father, publically questioning the Church’s teaching in the secular media, suggesting that there be a “new openness” to various sins of sexual immorality.

Then there is the silent bunch – the leaders who sit back and allow all manner of heresy and heterodoxy to crash down on the laity.

Then there are those who care more about their political advancement in the Church and so TALK a good game, but at the end of the day do NOTHING.

Among the laity, there is such widespread disobedience to the Pope that it boggles the mind – partly the fault of leaders but also of the laity who are perfectly willing to strike a contract of silence on matters of immorality.

Much of the lack of zeal on the part of laity can be placed squarely at the feet of poor catechesis – poor teaching – on the part of the leaders and their allies mentioned above.

But it can’t all be placed there. This is the most mind-numbing age of information known to history, yet for all our information and data overload and instant communication, we are considerably poorer in wisdom.

Man has divorced much of what God established as unified: sex from pro-creation; wisdom from knowledge; truth from the rational mind. In their place, modern man has built an altar to himself.

It is the job of the Church Militant – meaning the faithful who are loyal to the Holy Father and accept the Church’s teachings (all of them) – not as a list of rules, but as glorious rays of truth shining from the Sacred Heart of God. It is the duty of those who hold these beliefs to assault that altar to man, and re-establish the altar to God.

This is why the Church on earth is called the Church Militant: because we are in the fight – the fight for souls – our own and everyone we can reach.

When you become aggressive, as we are called to be, you are going to take incoming rounds from the enemy – the world the flesh and the devil – no doubt.

But appealing to the scriptural adage “it is better to give then to receive”, you be sure and fire back. You say the truth in season and out of season, in good times and in bad.  You answer to God and the truth of His Holy Catholic Church – not to man, not to the culture, not to the prince of this world…but to the King of the Universe.

This is why we like to look at our new home – which by the way was paid for totally by an anonymous donor and his wonderful wife, after we prayed continually to Archbishop Fulton Sheen – as a fortress for the faith, able to produce the finest in Catholic social media to both vigorously defend the faith and manfully advance the truth of Christ.

We ask you to keep us and our work in your prayers and thoughts.  Vatican II said the laity should be involved in promoting the gospel; well, here we are.

And Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, “Who is going to save our Church? Do not look to the priests, do not look to the bishops. It’s up to you the laity to remind our priests to be priests and our bishops to be bishops.”

That’s just one reason we have named our new four-stage studio after arguably the most impressive Catholic to ever stand in front of a camera: Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who through his TV show in the 1950’s converted hundreds of thousands to the One True Faith.

Archbishop Sheen .. pray for us

Master Builder (June 14 episode)

So in the midst of the move to our new building, a lot of craziness is going on, just like with every move: you can’t find things, someone is sure that someone else packed up this box or that box with the missing this that or the other in it.

But in all the craziness, somehow it all gets put together and the NEW comes into focus – just like here with these stages in the new studio.

The reason it all comes together is because everyone understands and agrees on the goal, the finished product – what this is supposed to look like when it’s all done, even if sometimes that get a little out of focus from time to time.

Our move here has been reminiscent of the scatteredness of the Church right now – but with one notable exception: there are loads of people supposedly in the Church today who are working toward different ends. They have a completely different ideas in mind of what the finished product should like.

The confusion this creates is beyond reckoning.  Imagine for example if some of the community here put up these studio lights, and then some others on staff came and took them down.

Or one bunch of guys here installed this backdrop curtain, and then other guys came and tore it down.

That’s what happening in the Church these days – too many people with diverse understandings of what the Church should look like. The problem is that many positions of authority and influence in the Church are occupied by people who are at odds with the final building plans, so to speak.

The architect is Our Blessed Lord, and the general contractor is the Holy Father. Yet too many subcontractors and laborers are ignoring the final drafts and doing whatever they want. Some of them, in fact, seem to act as though they are not even AWARE there is a set of final plans.

The job of building up the Church – the Kingdom – is so vast and so complex, being flung to the far reaches of the world and stretching over many ages and cultures, that it seems almost inevitable that there will be honest mistakes and misunderstandings. Those are not what we’re talking about.

There is a malice within the Church on the part of many who simply think they know better than the Our Lord and the Pope. The connection between Our Lord and Peter was so singular, so unique, that in all the time and places He spoke, it was only of St. Peter and Himself that Our Lord ever said, “We”.

The Church belongs to Our Lord. It is His. To St. Peter and his successors, He has entrusted the sacred duty of building it up – finishing the job, so to speak.

In many ways, the Church is nearing its completion. When we speak of “the Church”,  those of us here on earth can sometimes think in too localized a fashion. We don’t always immediately understand the word “Church” in all its greater context and glory.

The Church is composed of the Church Triumphant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Militant.

This little spoken-of reality of the Church is one of its foremost beautiful aspects. It’s why we make intercessory prayer to saints in Heaven; why we pray for relief for the dearly departed from their sufferings in purgatory as they await final glorification in heaven; and it’s the proper way to understand us members of the Church still present here on earth.

We are each triumphant…suffering…and militant – bound together in unity as members of the Church, the body of Christ in its various aspects. This is why it is called the Communion of Saints: we are in communion with each other building up the body of Christ.

To us on earth – the Church Militant – falls the duty and blessing of teaching, instructing, and evangelizing the world as to the ultimate reality of Christ and His One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church under the guidance of the successor of St. Peter.

When viewed in this manner, the Church is a gigantic army, stretching across time and eternity, bound together in love and might and power and glory. It is our privilege on earth, as the Church Militant, to draw people by any means available to us into the final end of the Church Triumphant.

Just as the Holy Trinity is a unity of community and a community of unity between Father Son and Spirit, so to is the Bride of Christ a community – a communion of Saints among the Church Triumphant, Suffering, and Militant.

We must each do all we can to follow the directions of the Master Builder and his General Contractor so that what is being be built and established, we may have a share in. And when we find workers trying to sabotage the plans or loafing off, it must be pointed out.

Unless the Lord builds the House, in vain do the laborers labor.