Protecting the Status Quo: Vortex

As expected, the Church of Nice et al. responded to MV’s Vortex episode which suggested that the substantial salaries of the primary players in the mainstream Catholic media make them dependent on the approval of the powers-that-be; that means that reporting negative news about those same “powers” is compromised.

The people MV is talking to and about seem to just not get it. They think he was criticizing them for having substantial salaries! MV clarifies that in the sequel, embedded below.  He hammers home the point:

THE POINT is this – salaries are being made from the protection of the status quo – and THE STATUS QUO isn’t cutting it in the face of a worldwide apostasy.

…[W]hen the shepherds drop the ball, intentionally or not, it is the Church which suffers.  
This is why Catholic media have a DUTY, a moral obligation, to point out these shortcomings – to explain them, so Catholics in the pews wake up to the crisis, can understand it, take some kind of corrective action – at the very least in their own lives.

… It’s not an issue of how much a person makes – the issue is, however much it is, it’s good enough for them or they would go get another job. That said, they are now dependent, meaning NOT INdependent to be able to say what needs to be said about the deplorable problems in the Church – spiritually and temporally. This is what makes them – to use Pope Benedict’s words – “professional Catholics”. Not that they make money and earn their livings doing Catholic “stuff”, but that they are living off the institution – an institution they will not ever criticize, but is in dire need of having light shed on these problems.

But the Church of Nice doesn’t get it. One blogger (I’m not even going to mention his name, nor link to his post – you can find it if you want to, I’m sure) paints MV as a “controversial self-appointed prophet” and gives this analysis of MV’s personality flaws:

There is a certain type of personality that is never happy unless it has an enemy, and the enemy they like best are the ones around their own table… A little group gathers together and they all feel good about their group because they’re right… [T]hey begin to blame everyone else for being wrong, for being heretics, for being apostates. Then they feel snug and warm and good about themselves and their little religious group for a little while until the next “enemy” appears. Then they can go on the attack again with their smug self righteousness.

Hear that, all you faithful readers of this blog who seek the Truth, good liturgy, and a cleansing and renewal of the Church? That blogger is talking about YOU. He’s not just attacking MV; he’s saying that those of us who support MV, who agree with him, are just smug, self-righteous, nit-picking nattering nabobs out to stir the pot. We don’t care about the Church; we just care about making ourselves look good. He’s another of those who can say “I’m not against traditionalists; some of my best friends are traditional”, and then turn around and say it’s those sourpuss ol’ “rad-trad” traditionalists that give the rest of them a bad name. And who, might I ask, makes the call as to when a good “traditionalist” has crossed the line to being a bad “rad trad”?

That blogger’s little piece of psychoanalysis is purely judgmental. Now, “judgmental” is a word that is often misused, but I think it applies here. The author imparts motives to a broad group of people he cannot possibly know, and implies that he can discern exactly what is going on inside of our heads, that he can read our thoughts. “They feel good about themselves because they’re right” – how does he know this?! What was that about a “self-appointed prophet”?

So, was MV being “judgmental”, too, in supposing that dependency on salaries blinds some members of the Catholic mainstream media? Well, certainly MV cannot know what goes on in the minds of those individuals. But he can point to the correlation between salaries that are at least somewhat dependent on the person being on the bishops’ “approved” and the mainstream Catholic media’s reluctance to take the bishops to task for failures in leadership. Whether or not the blindness is intentional or subliminal is another question. The point is, the bishops are getting a pass from the mainstream Catholic media, and there is an apparent motive. The emperor has no clothes, but no one wants to say so.

The above-mentioned blogger is not the only one to misinterpret what MV said in the August 29 Vortex. Others say similar things. Sadly, I didn’t see any of them saying, “Maybe MV has a point. Maybe we should consider whether we’re actually turning a blind eye to the crisis in the Church…”

For a great rebuttal to the Church of Nice, be sure to read this post, and also watch the Vortex below, where MV clarifies the point.

The script:

There is a mass apostasy in the Church today. Most – meaning the vast majority of human beings who call themselves Catholic – simply reject the faith. In politics we call this treason. In religion we call it apostasy: the rejection of the tenets of your own faith.

But how do we speak of those in politics who do not reject the national beliefs – they actually accept them – BUT they aid and abet the traitors by NEVER talking about them or even acknowledging their existence?

This is the case in the Church these days with the very people you would imagine would feel moral obligation to do so – the Catholic media establishment. This was the point of last week’s Vortex where we spoke of Catholic media people and their salaries. No one cares what someone makes. That’s not the point.

THE POINT is this – salaries are being made from the protection of the status quo – and

THE STATUS QUO isn’t cutting it in the face of a worldwide apostasy. Many of these guys – heck all of them – do a great job laying bare the evil of the culture, the ignorance of other faiths in relation to Catholicism.  Again: not the point. THE Point is that that for all their fine work in those areas – directing people to the Church and away from a degenerate culture – what good is it if the Church they are coming to is rife with corruption, both moral and spiritual on a scale unprecedented in her 2000 years?

From a large number of homosexual clergy, to clergy who may not themselves be homosexual but are supportive of the agenda, to radial dissidents who preach garbage

Sunday after Sunday to milquetoast bored men who never want to rock the boat so they preach God is Love – but never tell you about God or explain what REAL love is.The

Church has been drowned under an ocean of pithy sayings and no real hard conviction.

And who is responsible for this? Well, while there is certainly enough blame to go around – us included – there is just no way that the bishops of the Church, in whom virtually every drop of authority and power resides, can escape a lion’s share of the blame. They are the leaders. Period. Did they CAUSE the initial problem? No, at least not THESE particular bishops – they were in seminary and were just baby priests when the wheels came off the wagon.

But they are responsible now for letting the status quo continue. Why don’t they remove errant priests from parishes? Why do they work so hard to marginalize anything traditional from emerging among the rubble? Why do they let rebellious clergy and nuns continue to run the show in parish after parish? Why do they give them such free reign in their chanceries over all kinds of departments that have massive influence over the daily life of the average unsuspecting Catholic.

Leaders are vested with power and authority and people who live under that authority expect it to be exercised in a way which protects them. They are too busy with their daily

lives in the secular world to do anything else but.

So when the shepherds drop the ball, intentionally or not, it is the Church which suffers.

This is why Catholic media have a DUTY – a moral obligation – to point out these shortcomings, to explain them, so Catholics in the pews wake up to the crisis, can understand it, take some kind of corrective action – at the very least in their own lives.

Wasn’t this the WHOLE point of what Mother Angelica used to do and say on EWTN when it was SHE who ran it and not the current leadership? She criticized almost non-stop the American hierarchy for their massive shortcomings.

But that sort of discussion has disappeared into oblivion at EWTN these days, replaced by the Church of Nice discussions that refuse to say ANYTHING controversial. And that same lead has been followed by every other major Catholic media outlet.

But when Catholic media WILL NOT talk about these things because they are beholden to the bishops for their paychecks – whatever amount they are makes no difference – then they are aiding and abetting in the rebellion – at least in this regard. And understand – beholden to them for their paychecks or incomes doesn’t mean the bishop actually signs the check. It means they are so closely tied to the establishment that to buck the system and criticize all this evil in the Church would absolutely mean the end of their careers and incomes – again, however much those incomes are.

The old saying don’t bite the hand that feeds you comes to mind.

It’s not an issue of how much a person makes – the issue is, however much it is, it’s good enough for them or they would go get another job. That said, they are now dependent, meaning NOT INdependent to be able to say what needs to be said about the deplorable problems in the Church – spiritually and temporally. This is what makes them – to use Pope Benedict’s words – “professional Catholics”. Not that they make money and earn their livings doing Catholic “stuff”, but that they are living off the institution – an institution they will not ever criticize, but is in dire need of having light shed on these problems.

We get emails here by the hundreds of horrible stories of people having fallen away from the faith because of things done in the Church regarding the faith – priests failing to tell them the truth of the faith and so forth. It’s inconceivable to us that all the other Catholic media types don’t get the same type of emails and letters and phone calls. If they don’t we’d be happy to share ours with them.

These spiritual calamities which have befallen the Church are the responsibility of the bishops. Period. That’s why Our Lord established a hierarchical Church, so we would be protected and fed by the shepherds. When that is not happening, of course the sheep have to say something.

But if some of the sheep with loudest bullhorns conveniently ignore the crisis because they have a dog in the fight – then that IN AND OF ITSELF becomes ANOTHER issue. The time for half-truths has come to an end and a simple honest look around the church these days reveals that sad reality.

Pray for the whole Church my fellow Catholics. We are being trampled by the culture, by and large, at the end of the day, because WE are allowing it – first and foremost, in our own ranks.

Sometimes the Good Guys Win: "Leather" Retreat Cancelled

Last night, my friend Christine Niles posted a link on Face Book to an article in California Catholic newspaper that described a retreat to be held at a diocesan-approved retreat center in the Diocese of Sacramento. The title of the article:

“Homosexualist and Leather Retreat in Diocese of Sacramento”

And I said to myself, “Huh?!?!”

Here are the opening paragraphs of the article:

From August 30 to September 2, Dignity San Francisco and the San Francisco chapter of the Defenders will sponsor a retreat at the Christ the King Passionist Retreat Center in Citrus Heights, California. The homepage of the Defenders website describes the retreat:

“Join us August 30 to September 2nd, 2013 (Labor Day weekend), for a joint retreat with Dignity/San Francisco at a retreat center near Sacramento. The first two days of the retreat we will be with those attending from the Dignity chapter, followed by a third day that will emphasize integrating leather and spirituality. The retreat will be lead by a Catholic priest who works with Dignity.”

The Defenders are an integral part of Dignity, and have been affiliated with the group since 1981. The webpage of Dignity SF’s webpage also publicizes the retreat, and says the retreat master will be Father Tom Bonacci. Father Bonacci has led a number of retreats for DignitySF.

There’s more…read the rest here, at your own risk. I actually was a bit scandalized just by the description of the group!

At any rate, I became a Catholic in the Diocese of Sacramento, and I still have friends there. In fact, my best friend ever lives there! And she does have a few contacts in the Chancery office and elsewhere. She is also a staunch and outspoken defender of the Faith, and when I shared the article with her, she “went ballistic” as they say.

And just a few hours later, she received word that the event had been cancelled! Thanks be to God!

Christine Niles actually called the bishop’s office to verify this, and was told that the bishop had only learned of the event yesterday, and that it had been cancelled.

Well…the reason the bishop learned about it is because Christine posted the link and a number of people emailed the bishop's office with their thoughts. The reason the bishop actually cancelled the event, I’m pretty sure, is because my friend took action. 

So…Christine posted the link; people emailed; I shared it with my friend; my friend informed key people in the Diocese of Sacramento; the event is cancelled.

Face Book is good for something after all!

Feel free to contact the bishop and thank him for taking action!

The Empire Strikes Back: Vortex

Yes, it’s a Vortex kinda week…and there will be one more tomorrow, I suspect. 

But this one will knock your socks off.

Today is the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist – a fitting day for CMTV to air the current Vortex, because if the Church of Nice could have its way, Michael Voris’s head would be served up on a platter as well!

As MV says, “When you strike out against the Church of Nice, you better be ready for them to come back at you guns blazing”. He gives a couple of examples: the reprisals CMTV itself faced for airing a program with their findings that the CCHD routinely hands money over to groups who support abortion, contraception, and other evils; and the recent news that, following the American Life League’s criticisms of Catholic Relief Services, that agency abruptly cancelled its contract with AKA Printing and Mailing – a company owned by Paul Brown, husband of Judie Brown, who just happens to be the president of ALL. MV notes:

CRS, in a letter from Bishop Gerald Kickanus said, point blank, that because of ALL’s charges against CRS, that CRS was going to yank its publishing contract with [AKA Printing and Mailing], whose owner Paul Brown, again, is husband of Judie Brown, head of ALL.

MV then “switches gears” as he says, and discusses the finances of some of the mainstream media groups. Following the disclosure of financial shortfalls by Catholic Answers,

…some enterprising com-boxers dug up official numbers that the top dogs at Catholic Answers all make at least a hundred thousand a year, with Karl Keating pulling down a cool quarter a million, and Jimmy Akin and Tim Staples each over a hundred thousand.

EWTN and Ave Maria Radio execs make the big bucks too, it seems.

…no wonder these groups NEVER say anything about the collapse of the faith being pinned on the bishops. They all make HUGE salaries and aren’t about to bite the hand that feeds them.

MV also discloses that at CMTV, the highest salary paid is his own - $40,000 per year; everyone else, he says "makes barely that or much less." 

I am reminded of a statement Rod Pead in his talk/paper “Sword of Unity”: 

I guess affluence and Catholic faith have never been good bedfellows: food on the table and a warm bed at night does little to encourage the vigorous prayer life required to sustain the truly Catholic mind we need in order to act justly.

Indeed.

The script:

How to put this somewhat politely… hmm… When you strike out against the Church of Nice, you better be ready for them to come back at you guns blazing.

Aside from the personal experience we have had here at ChurchMilitant.TV in this regard, we know this to be the case.

We had a tussle over email a couple of years ago with a very well-known bishop who has the reputation of being very orthodox and very outspoken. He gets praised from and by many Catholics who are very faithful. They hold this man in high esteem.

But let me tell you: you cross some of these men, and they turn on you like no one’s business. We had simply challenged the origins of the bishops’ annual CCHD collection program – an organization founded in the spirit of Jewish atheist Saul Alinksy. After much research, we aired a program with our findings that the CCHD routinely hands money over to groups who support abortion, contraception and so forth. This particular bishop went through the roof – again, someone WELL KNOWN, with a reputation of being VERY conservative.

We exchanged emails for almost the better part of the day. The next day, we received emails from two – not one, but two – different Catholic TV outlets who had been airing our shows for years, [saying] that they would no longer be airing them.

One-sentence emails… no explanation, abrupt, rude and definitive. Coincidence? Well, we explored further and had our deep suspicions confirmed: this “conservative, orthodox” bishop had worked his will behind the scenes and stuck a knife in our back.

We have never revealed this before publically because there was no reason to. It happened about four years ago and the bishop is no longer in his previous diocese, but in another prominent one.

But given what has just happened in the escalating war between the US Bishops Catholic Relief Services and the American Life League’s charges that point to more scandal, we thought it would be helpful to give some context.

The American Life League (ALL) has been fighting the war against the culture of death for as long anyone can remember. Like many faithful Catholic outfits, they came to realize that much of that war’s efforts are hampered by self-serving Catholics from WITHIN the Church. More on that later.

ALL’s founder, Judie Brown, is married to Paul Brown. I have met each of them personally, and they are outstanding examples of Catholic laity. Paul Brown owns a printing company: AKA Printing and Mailing. For quite a few years, AKA has been the contractor for CRS, Catholic Relief Services, printing and mailing their donation requests. When you get an envelope in the mail from CRS asking for a donation to help fight poverty, it was printed and mailed by Paul Brown’s AKA.

But when JUDIE Brown’s ALL, American Life League, went after CRS for giving grants to international organizations that support abortion, condom distribution programs, contraception programs and so forth .. weeeellllll, CRS got mad.

…But also decided to get even. CRS, in a letter from Bishop Gerald Kickanus said, point blank, that because of ALL’s charges against CRS, that CRS was going to yank its publishing contract with AKA, whose owner Paul Brown, again, is husband of Judie Brown, head of ALL.

BTW – you might recall that Bishop Kickanus was in line to become the next head of the US Bishops but when news emerged at the 11^th hour before the vote three years ago, that he had coddled and defended a seminarian, and advanced his cause toward ordination, who would later turn out to be a known homosexual priest child abuser – enough bishops turned their votes toward Timothy Dolan – who became head of the US Bishop by an extremely slim margin.

SO anyone who thinks for one moment that the Church of Nice really is NICE, don’t believe it. The Church of Nice is only kind and accepting and NICE toward dissidents and heretics and accommodationist milquetoast effeminate men in miters and collars.

Anyone who even thinks about trying to stand up and call us to our more pristine spiritual sides will be crushed like bugs if reputations or money is involved.

And speaking of the Church of Nice… to completely switch gears… a war in the Catholic blogosphere has broken out over the news coming out of Catholic Answers that they are in dire financial straits and are laying off staff due to a steep drop in donations and other revenue. Catholic Answers has done fine work in the area of apologetics and is to be commended for any souls they might have influenced to come to the Catholic Faith. Bravo!

But a few weeks ago, it seems like they made a major miscalculation – or perhaps an inadvertent blunder – highlighting something we have talked about here recently in the Vortex.

It seems they may have insulted a large portion of their own audience by doing what appeared to many [as] making fun of traditional Catholics in a Catholic Answers Live radio show heard from coast to coast.

You see, with the ever shrinking Church of Nice – of which many, rightly or wrongly, have accused Catholic Answers of being a vested player – the most invested players left in the Catholic world these days, on the ground, really, are the more traditional crowd. To insult them apparently has proven to be a bad move.

Then, on top of it, some enterprising com-boxers dug up official numbers that the top dogs at Catholic Answers all make at least a hundred thousand dollars a year, with Karl Keating pulling down a cool quarter a million, and Jimmy Akin and Tim Staples each over a hundred thousand.

That apparently set off a race among some bloggers to investigate how much other big name Catholic media people are pulling down. And a number of Catholics in the blogosphere are expressing shock.

EWTN bigwigs are all well into the six digit figures with funded retirement packages. Doug Keck and Michael Warsaw are each north of $130,000 per year, and Raymond Arroyo is over 100K per year.

Ave Maria Radio’s Al Kresta makes $115,000 a year, and Relevant Radio’s Drew Mariana earns around 150K. All of these figures, by the way, come from viewers who dug into the official IRS public numbers, and posted them online – available because these are all non-profits and must report salaries. They were spurred on by Catholic Answers’ recent financial plea.

Various viewers who have seen these salaries have expressed feelings ranging from surprise to shock to outrage. In various communications, the term “professional Catholic” has been asserted time and again and they are bothered that people are profiting from the Church in such a manner while at the same time begging for more money.

One viewer said to us, in particular, no wonder these groups NEVER say anything about the collapse of the faith being pinned on the bishops. They all make HUGE salaries and aren’t about to bite the hand that feeds them.

With recent revelations a few months ago that in Boston, the top few chancery personnel there are pulling down hundreds of thousands in salaries each year, all this begins to undermine the peasant Catholics’ view of how things run in the Church.

For our part here at ChurchMilitant.TV, we would like to say, don’t have your faith undermined. From professional Catholics to vindictive agendas to money clouding people’s view, human nature is fallen and susceptible to all sorts of chicanery.

It’s important that all this kind of news be revealed so that people can have all the necessary facts they need to make reasoned judgments about who to support, what to believe, to make correct judgments about the state of affairs in the Church.

Years and decades of Modernism have taken their toll. The Church has been divided into all sorts of little camps – even among those who count themselves as faithful, and even among clergy in the faithful camp.

What is needed is a fresh transparency where all that needs to be is dealt with truthfully and above board. This includes admitting that many past bishops laid the groundwork for the catastrophic collapse we are experiencing. Their efforts have continued to be supported, willingly or unwillingly, by a class of largely weak, ineffective bishops unwilling to make a substantial move to reverse course in a hard decisive manner.

[MV discloses here that the highest salary paid at CMTV is his own - $40,000; everyone else, he says, “makes barely that or a lot less.”]

AND their supporters in large Catholic media enterprises have been accomplices to the lackluster efforts because they run large operations that need the bishops’ support to keep their seats at the table and keep getting their paychecks.

As we said in a Vortex a couple of weeks ago – this whole way of doing business needs one massive reboot. 

Now – with all these revelations from high salaries to vindictive bishops to mean-spirited business decisions, one thing is certain – it is very difficult to keep an eye on the prize of saving souls.

The Modernist Beast: Vortex

In the August 27^th Vortex (embedded below), Michael Voris discussed the continued battle between “secular humanistic progressive liberal modernism” and the Catholic Church. Things are not looking so good for the Church, he notes. (See this post on modernism as well.) MV elaborates:

The hallmark of secular humanistic progressive liberal modernism is that it seeks an overthrow of God and the true religion and it uses ALL areas of life to achieve this end. And all these various areas overlap considerably. When St. Pope Pius X condemned the error of Modernism in 1907, he called it the synthesis of all heresies. And that is a very fit description.

...But the conundrum is this: so many members of the Church – most especially leaders – have been corrupted themselves, that they have fallen prey to this enemy without even realizing it.

In the West for example, so many Catholic bishops have bought into the false notion of a pluralistic society’s claim to competing subjective truths that they are powerless to see the damage that such a political and social philosophical construct can do to the culture.

When the leaders of the Church have drunk the kool-aid of modernism, MV laments, then something has gone very, very wrong. And are we not seeing this develop more and more every day? But it cannot go on. MV reminds us:

The only force in the world capable of attacking and beating back the secular humanistic progressive liberal modernist beast IS the Catholic Church. …The Church, meaning her leaders, has got to stand up and say it like it is. They need to stand up announce to the world that a new day has come in the battle against the beast – and that day is the day where we announce that this is a spiritual war.

…So the Church must first clean house to make herself an even more effective fighting force against the Beast. Weak bishops, those who have given in must repent, resign or both.

In their place must emerge strong men, strong fathers, who will not sit at dinner tables with the enemy, but rather reach across and plunge a dagger into the beast’s neck, the beast that threatens to devour their children.

I couldn’t agree more, but I must say that I do not think that the weak bishops will repent OR resign of their own accord. Many of them are so steeped in modernism and relativism that they don’t even know they’ve lost their map and their compass. It will take strong top-down measures to remove them, and frankly, I don’t see that happening any time soon. Would re-instituting the Oath Against Modernism change things? Actually, I don’t think so. People these days, even bishops and priests, seem not to take vows and promises seriously.

God, however, will do what He wills. Our Lord Jesus Christ will not let wayward bishops rape Holy Mother Church forever. MV says:

The Bishops who have consorted with this enemy need to wake up and realize what they have allowed to happen and that they will face the judgment of Christ the Fierce if they do not change now.

107 human beings die every minute; they exit earth, never to return again 107 every minute – 6 and half thousand every hour; 155,000 every day – day after day. How many of them plunge into Hell because they ignored the impulse planted in them by God to seek Him, but were never encouraged to follow that impulse by the very men put on this earth to encourage them to do so?

  

And that is why we must pray for these men who have lost their way. We pray for their souls, and for the souls of those they have led astray.

The script:

So far, in the battle between secular humanistic progressive liberal modernism AND the Catholic Church, the Church we are very sorry to have to repeat, has come up on the short end of that stick.

The reason we have to identify the enemy with such a long string of adjectives is because this enemy, this beast, has all sorts of tentacles that have inserted themselves deeply into every area of life – from the courts, to the movie houses, to the legislatures, to the classrooms, to hospital, to social philosophies and political philosophies to economics and yes, even into the houses of faith, including many areas in the Catholic Church.

The hallmark of secular humanistic progressive liberal modernism is that it seeks an overthrow of God and the true religion and it uses ALL areas of life to achieve this end.

And all these various areas overlap considerably. When St. Pope Pius X condemned the error of Modernism in 1907, he called it the synthesis of all heresies. And that is a very fit description.

Because it synthesizes a whole array of heresies from earlier days in the history of the Church, it can therefore be expressed in a whole multitude of areas of human life, as stated above.

But the key components of this social and theological heresy are what we need to identify before we can even begin to attack the tentacles in each area of human experience. At the end of the day, it is a rebellion against authority, specifically the authority of Almighty God expressed through His Holy Catholic Church. And since God vis-a-vis the Church is the ultimate enemy that secular humanistic progressive liberal modernism seeks to destroy, the Church Herself must come to terms with this reality and muster her forces.

But the conundrum is this: so many members of the Church, most especially leaders, have been corrupted themselves that they have fallen prey to this enemy without even realizing it.

In the west for example, so many Catholic bishops have bought into the false notion of a pluralistic society’s claim to competing subjective truths that they are powerless to see the damage that such a political and social philosophical construct can do to the culture.

Societies are not made stronger by division, they are weakened. Nations do not profit from a foggy notion of diversity, they are made weaker when that diversity allows for varying approaches to absolute truth – including its complete dismissal and ignoring.

Now the rest of society is quite capable of falling into the pit of hell, but when leaders in the Church pave the way for this by drinking the poison offered by the very enemy they are supposed to recognize and attack, then something has gone very wrong and wayward.

The only force in the world capable of attacking and beating back the secular humanistic progressive liberal modernist beast IS the Catholic Church. Nothing else and no one else – even those who dimly see the damage this beast has and is causing in certain areas of life.

It’s fine for the Church to have allies in fighting against the beast among, for example, political conservatives, or even social conservatives, but when those same people agree with the propaganda of the beast in other areas – like theology, or certain moral issues –  then they are weak allies at best, and still operating under the influence of the beast.

The Church, meaning her leaders, has got to stand up and say it like it is. They need to stand up announce to the world that a new day has come in the battle against the beast – and that day is the day where we announce that this is a spiritual war.

That the beast is at the service of the diabolical, that anything that is not in conformity with Catholic truth will eventually fall prey to the beast, because only Catholic truth is guaranteed Divine truth and only the Divine can vanquish the diabolical.

So the Church must first clean house to make herself an even more effective fighting force against the Beast. Weak bishops, those who have given in must repent, resign or both.

In their place must emerge strong men, strong fathers, who will not sit at dinner tables with the enemy, but rather reach across and plunge a dagger into the beast’s neck, the beast that threatens to devour their children.

Priests and religious who have consorted with the Beast must be expunged from the ranks. They have offered profane sacrifice after profane sacrifice to the Beast in their errant preaching, lack of faithful instruction, immoral lives and perverted twisted reason.

They have corrupted the young minds in their charge by their intellectual poison and poor example, thus setting the stage for their evil and wickedness to continue and survive long after they themselves have been damned.

The laity, who to be sure, have enjoyed the pleasures of indulging our senses and dulling our thoughts must at last be called back to a faithful stance, have the authentic faith preached to them and told to live a life of sacrifice on the ramparts of Fortress Catholicism.

Orthodoxy must be resurrected and faithfulness at last restored. If not, we will continue to see our children, friends, family, devoured by the Beast – for this is his sole reason for being – to devour the sons of God.

The Bishops who have consorted with this enemy need to wake up and realize what they have allowed to happen and that they will face the judgment of Christ the Fierce if they do not change now.

107 human beings die every minute; they exit earth, never to return again 107 every minute – 6 and half thousand every hour; 155,000 every day – day after day. How many of them plunge into Hell because they ignored the impulse planted in them by God to seek Him, but were never encouraged to follow that impulse by the very men put on this earth to encourage them to do so?

Christ did not intend for His Church to fail.

Beheading of John the Baptist: Fr. Andersen Homily

A homily from 2012 by Fr. Eric M. Andersen, Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, on The Passion of St. John the Baptist.

“It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.” Death has no power over these words (cf. Gueranger. The Liturgical Year. vol. 14., p. 109). A tyrant may put to death the man who speaks these words, but he cannot put these words to death. They are truth itself. “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.” This is not a man made law. This is God’s eternal law that cannot be broken without dire consequences.

These are the dire consequences:

“Josephus relates how [Herod Antipas] was overcome by the Arabian Aretas, whose daughter he had repudiated in order to follow his wicked passions; and the Jews attributed the defeat to the murder of St. John. He was deposed by Rome from his tetrarchate, and banished to Lyons in Gaul, where the ambitious Herodias shared his disgrace. As to her dancing daughter Salome, there is a tradition gathered from ancient authors, that, having gone out one winter day to dance upon a frozen river, she fell through into the water; the ice, immediately closing round her neck, cut off her head, which bounded upon the surface, thus continuing for some moments the dance of death" (Gueranger 112).

This feast actually celebrates four events. The first event is the beheading itself. “The second event is the burning and gathering, or collecting, of St. John’s bones” (Voragine, The Golden Legend. Vol II., p. 135). This is called the second martyrdom of St. John the Baptist. His disciples had buried his body at Sebaste, a city in Palestine…and many miracles had occurred at his tomb (cf. Voragine 135). “For this reason the pagans, by order of Julian the Apostate, scattered his bones, but the miracles did not cease, and the bones were collected, burned, and pulverized, and the ashes thrown to the winds to be blown over the fields…” (135). On the day when the bones were collected to be burned, some monks from Jerusalem secretly mingled with the pagans and carried out many of the relics, saving them from destruction. They delivered these to Philip, bishop of Jerusalem, who sent them to Anastasius, the bishop of Alexandria. During the Crusades, many of them were brought into the West and distributed among many churches.

The third event commemorated on this feast is the finding of the head of St. John the Baptist which happened on this day. It is said that when John was beheaded, Herodias had John’s head taken to Jerusalem to be buried because “she feared that the prophet would return to life if his head was buried with his body. Four hundred years later some monks took the head to venerate it in a more proper place. It was stolen and hidden in a cave. The man who stole it revealed on his deathbed where it was, but the hiding place was kept secret for a long time. Many years later, a holy monk, St. Marcellus, had taken up residence in this cave. It was revealed to him where the head was hidden. The head was then enshrined in a beautiful church in Poitiers in France.

The fourth event is the translation of one of St. John’s fingers and the dedication of a church. The finger with which he pointed to the Lord, could not be burned. The finger made its way to Normandy, France where a church was built in honor of St. John the Baptist.

NFP Discussion on Mic'd Up Tonight!

UPDATE: The completed show is posted here; the NFP segment begins at the 27 minute mark and goes to the end.

ChurchMilitant.TV is having a discussion about NFP on "Mic'd Up" tonight. Christopher Gawley, whose "Heroic Parenthood" was featured here, will be the guest.

Here are some status posts from the CMTV Face Book page:

Interested in "planning the size of your family" with Natural Family Planning?....watch tonight's LIVE streaming of Mic'd Up at 8 PM EDT to hear some Catholic views on NFP!
Mic'd Up- http://t.co/1yv5QnIiQs
Call in at 1-866-738-1207 or tweet your questions to: @bornforcombat
You won't want to miss it!

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What does the Church actually say about Natural Family Planning?
Curious??? Find out on Wednesday's edition of Mic'd Up at 8PM EDT!
Get your questions ready! Call in at 1-866-738-1207 or tweet LIVE: @bornforcombat

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Natural Family Planning.
Are you?
Should you?

...are you sure?