Church Militant's nonsense not authentically Catholic

[rug]

Clip from Church Militant's website, showing selection of latest videos

Michael Sean Winters | May. 11, 2017

The Atlantic video about Church Militant and their founder Michael Voris was, at the same time, fascinating and frustrating.

The fascination stems from the easy way that normalcy and extremism seem to coincide in the lives of Voris and his colleagues. One minute he is eating pizza with his dad, and the next he is prepping for a broadcast that will, like all his broadcasts, be viciously extreme and extremely vicious. He drops by a Subway for a sandwich, and then is shown spouting gibberish.

"In all of the great debates we have had in America, we've never as a country sat down and had the debate over which of these religions is the right religion," he observes. Huh? We have that conversation almost every day, both among the churches and within them. What we have not done, mercifully, is let that conversation descend into a replay of the Thirty Years' War. The inability to recognize the value of tolerance is shocking. He is followed in the video by his colleague, Simon Rafe, who compares Donald Trump to the Emperor Constantine, in that he is allowing "the cream of the crop, the Christians, to rise to the top." I am not even sure what that means. I would love to know what Jared Kushner thinks of it.

The frustration with the video is that it provides no context to what Church Militant does. I am sure that a secular reader of Atlantic will be horrified by what they see and hear on this video, and that horror will overlap with mine, but I know, too, that there is a horror unique to a Catholic viewing this video.

https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/church-militants-nonsense-not-authentically-catholic

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/525231/church-militant-a-right-wing-media-empire-in-the-making/

[Dawson Leery]

1. These are dangerous people.

Islam does not sit alone in it's desire to subvert the free world.

[rug]

2. Yes, they are.

[Dawson Leery]

3. The Church used to be this way.

Many want to take it back to the old days and all of us along with them.

Mike Voris is a nut along with Robert George.

Considering how white Catholics voted, I am grateful every time I hear of a church shutting it's doors.

[rug]

4. You should be sure how white Catholics voted before making sweeping statements.

https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/faith-and-justice/pollsters-confused-about-catholic-voters

I doubt you are happy to see any church open, election or no.

[Dawson Leery]

5. Pew research says Trump won 62% of White Catholics.

My own interviews confirm this.

Left the bastards 10 years back and will NEVER be returning.

Congregationalists and Unitarians are of a higher caliber, as are the Jews.

[rug]

6. The Pew data came out November 9 based heavily on exit interviews.

More thoughtful analyses show otherwise.

Now, by "bastards" I assume you mean Catholics. If you left them ten years ago why are you here now?

BTW, referring to any group of humans by "caliber" is obnoxious.

[Willie Pep]

7. It wonder who funds all of these right-wing "Catholic" organizations?

They almost always have great-looking websites and their videos usually have strong production values. EWTN (which I used to watch before it became obviously right-wing), the Acton Institute, and Church Militant all seem to be part of a concerted effort to make Catholicism and Christianity in general synonymous with the Republican Party platform. Not to go all conspiracy theory but I wouldn't be surprised if corporations and wealthy conservatives were behind many of these organizations.

Interestingly, the official church hierarchy is almost always more "liberal" on certain issues than these organizations. Right-wing organizations like Church Militant always claim to be truly orthodox. They literally think that they are more Catholic than the pope. Michael Sean Winters is right to compare Voris to Charles Maurras. Maurras used the language and symbols of Catholicism in a cynical attempt to make his right-wing movement appealing to French Catholics. Maurras himself was an agnostic for most of his life. These right-wing Catholics remind me of Maurras in that they use images and language from Church history (the Crusades, Lepanto, etc.) in order to suck believers into their demented ideology.

I wish the hierarchy would crack down on these organizations. If the Church could crack down on liberation theologians they could do the same to groups like Church Militant.

Edit: This is why I am wary of most blogs and websites that claim to be Catholic these days. I try to get Church news from neutral sources or from official Church publications. Even more moderate websites like Catholic Answers forum tend to be dominated by right-wing Catholics. Right-wing Catholics seem to have an outsized presence on the Internet compared to Catholics in real life where we are all over the map politically.

[rug]

8. I'd put my money this one accounts for a lot of it.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/12217822