New Year of Faith: The Vortex

"The Vortex" begins the new year with an updated website, and some technical enhancements, which Michael Voris describes in the first part of the video below. I haven’t included that part of the script, but you can see what he’s talking about if you go to the website to watch the video.

In the script below, I jumped to the meat of the presentation; and that “meat” is the fact that there is a crisis in the Church, and we need to know our faith!  Voris describes the crisis, the evidence that it is real, and the sad fact that some – even Church leaders – want to pretend all is well.  He points out that we – the laity – need to jump in and do our part. “In fact,” says Voris, “Catholics who know [their faith] have a moral obligation – a duty – to inform and instruct anyone who will give them a hearing about the truth of Our Blessed Lord.”

He also describes the programming that is available to Premium subscribers to ChurchMilitant.TV. At $10 per month, it is an unsurpassed value, and I urge you to subscribe.  Watch the video and consider what Michael Voris has to say. 

The script is below, with my emphases.

There is absolutely no doubt that the Church is in dire straits.  Many people who have a vested interest in painting a rosy picture of current affairs either flat out deny the crisis or talk around it, as if it’s not real; or that by somehow ignoring it, it will not BE real.

That is an absolutely UN-CATHOLIC response because it is grounded in fear and denial; and the Catholic Church is about boldness and truth because that is what Her Divine Founder Our Blessed Lord is.

The same-sex marriage movement, for example, turned a corner this last election by winning all FOUR ballot initiatives where the issue was up for a vote. AND that movement had huge support from Catholics in the respective states.

Abortion is here to stay with the re-election of Obama, since he has the trump card of Supreme Court nominees, and will be naming probably three and quite possibly four in the next four years. 

That means by the time he is scheduled to leave office he will have named – more than likely – six of the nine justices; and you may rest assured they will all be of like mind as him in their support for the intrinsic evils of same-sex marriage, abortion, contraception and so forth.

Obama’s healthcare law has now assumed its full potency, and that is threatening many Catholics with having to choose between their faith or massive fines.

But even within the Catholic Church there is widespread acceptance of these evils on a personal day-to-day basis by many – in fact, an overwhelming majority of the faithful. Most contracept, over half divorce, a majority support same-sex marriage (in principle if not in practice).

A huge number – more than three quarters – no longer have any meaningful relationship with the Church whatsoever, in that they don’t attend Mass each week.  Even many who do, use contraception, fornicate, are divorced and re-married, and pick and choose whatever they want from the Church’s dogmatic and infallible teachings.

They LIKE the Pope, but don’t look to him as any kind of real authority – certainly not when it comes to deciding between choosing good and evil. Most often, they choose evil, and in so doing place their immortal souls in jeopardy of eternal damnation.

This state of affairs is precisely why we began our efforts at St. Michael’s Media, which also has given rise to ChurchMilitant.TV.  The loss and falling away of so many of our fellow Catholics – even some sitting in the pews – is a constant source of pain and hurt for us.

So much of the “establishment” Church was and is doing nothing…saying nothing…just papering over the problem – if they even acknowledged it at all – that we, as well as many others in THEIR own way, decided someone needs to do something.

So we produced this website with hundreds of hours of programs talking about the faith – aiming to help re-invigorate and lift up the dropping spirits of faithful Catholics, and inform lukewarm Catholics about the glories of the Church established personally by the Son of GOD for the salvation of men.

The website is essentially divided into two major areas – what we call the free page AND the premium page.  The free page largely consists of the more notable and controversial programs like The Vortex, CIA (Catholic Investigative Agency), and The Daily News show. 

In these programs we talk a lot of about the crisis and its causes and consequences – such as massive and widespread liturgical abuse, the hammering that religious vocations have taken, and yes, the frequent and oftentimes pitiful response on the parts of Church leaders – including a not small number of  bishops who let the crisis continue to fester and spread by their inaction, based in fear or ignorance or even, in some cases, complicity.

If Catholics can’t have open and honest discussion about the crisis, then we as a Church in the West are done for before we even get out of the gate.

And it’s a pity that many in the Church don’t want that discussion happening, because such talk would necessitate a change – an upheaval really – in the established order, and that would mean their cozy, comfy jobs and positions of influence would be lost.

So there are many, many people INSIDE the Church who do not want the Church’s teaching – for example, on contraception being taught, or the evil of homosexual acts – being brought up in homilies. 

Many priests and chancery officials in large numbers of dioceses are lukewarm at best to the pro-life cause, and are hugely resistant to the Holy Father’s calls for reform of the liturgy, which has simply gone off the rails in parish after parish everywhere in the Church in the west.

Because these truths will not be spoken about and treated honestly and openly by leaders, then lay Catholics must take up the yoke and do so.  In the process of keeping the machinery of the Establishment churning along, the teachings of the Church – Her treasure, Her glory – are being ground under the wheels of that machinery. 

The truths of the faith are ignored…mocked…or cleverly re-phrased so as to drain them almost absolutely of their meaning and richness.

This is ONE reason so many Catholics simply have nothing to do with the faith anymore: because they’ve never really heard even the most basic and rudimentary teachings – and certainly not in any real in-depth manner that would give them pause to stop and re-evaluate their lives and the moral choices they make.

Even for faithful Catholics – except for the MOST intrepid – years, decades of pabulum from the pulpit; liturgical abuse after liturgical abuse at Mass; horrible and rotten catechesis from liberal Catholics and angry ex-nuns who want to be priests and reject all the Church’s teachings on sexual morality; all this can wear down even the most guarded of souls.

While we aren’t the only ones who are angered by this state of affairs – and rightfully so – we decided to try and do our part as faithful Catholics to help other Catholics understand and become aware of what they were never told.

In fact, Catholics who know have a moral obligation – a duty – to inform and instruct anyone who will give them a hearing about the truth of Our Blessed Lord.  That’s why we produced hundreds of hours of programming over the past going-on-seven years now: for this very purpose.

We have shows like our flagship program, “The One True Faith” – 115 hours of many of the basics of the faith, laid out in simple, easy-to-grasp ways. 

CMTV's chapel

Is it controversial? You bet.  But in a world that denies God or at least HIS importance – as Pope Benedict said at Christmas – of course pointing to GOD and his Absolute truth is going to be controversial.

We have a very popular program called “Shadow Priest” – short vignettes about a truth of the faith and how it impacts our daily life choices – offered by a priest who wants to remain anonymous so the MESSAGE can be the focus, not him.

A brand new show coming this season is one we simply call “Popes”, with Joe Gallagher, a bright 15-year-old who takes a fun tour through the history of the Papacy, focusing on various popes down through the 2000 years who are notable for one reason or another.  While it’s aimed at a teen audience, it’s actually a fun and interesting presentation for anyone.

There is a spectacular program called “Right Reason” with Professor Charles Rice, Emeritus Professor from Notre Dame’s Law School, who discusses in-depth Natural Law and how ignoring it causes the end of civilizations.

These four shows are just a small sampling of the close to 20 different ones we have to offer.  And it’s all available for just $10 a month. That’s it. 

For less than the price of just one cup of coffee a week, you have at your fingertips a storehouse of programs that cover almost every imaginable topic in the church you can think of: spirituality, devotion, history, apologetics, scripture, and more.

There’s one thing that’s certain – and it’s an old, old maxim – you can’t love what you do not know.  The crisis in the Church today is owing to Catholics not knowing their faith.

There are many reasons for this, and we explore them frequently on the free site – in the Vortex for example – but the heart of ChurchMilitant.TV is not the free site; it’s the premium page, where we unpackage and share with you the manifest beauties of the faith – that which MAKES us Catholic.

So in this year of faith, we’re asking you to sign up and become a premium member, and don’t forget: your $10 a month not only goes to help us keep producing premium content, but also helps allay the cost of the free programming – which is free to you, but not free for US to produce.

We have an excellent research team of some fine dedicated young guys who lay the groundwork for all of our long form investigative pieces and special reports.  Even though there is no direct cost to viewers for watching CIA or Special Report,  it still costs US money to produce those shows. And wait until you see what we will be releasing in a couple of weeks.

Your $10 a month helps keep them churning out material so that Catholics can better understand and get a grasp on the reality of the Church today.

So we’re asking you to please sign up and help us not only keep you abreast of the challenges facing the Church from largely INSIDE Her walls – which we do on our free page – but also, more importantly, help us help as many Catholics as we can understand or better understand the majesty of and glory of the Faith found in 2000 years of the Magisterium.

We’re talking about souls and their salvation.  That’s it, at the end of the day.  That’s the bottom line.  Our Blessed Lord said, in order to obtain Heaven we must love him and keep His commandments. How next to impossible is that, if so many don’t even know or understand?

So please, sign up today and if you are already one of the thousands of premium subscribers we have, USE the site.  Go to it everyday.  Watch shows with your college mates or your family…friends…parents…children. Begin talking about the faith and the truths of it.  Make the faith your life, your reason for being.

And don’t forget to shoot us an email and let us know what you think of the updated site.  GOD Bless and thanks in advance for your support. 

GOD Love you,

I’m Michael Voris