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What will you do?

A couple of weeks ago, we told you about the upcoming trial of one Douglass Mackey, a patriotic meme maker who was arrested for publishing memes about Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. Mackey put up goofy posts encouraging people to text "Hillary" to a number in order to vote for her and avoid lines.

Of course, the whole thing was a spoof and a goof, akin to the practice back in the old days of telling your opponent's supporters to be sure and vote on Wednesday, when, of course, the election was the day before, on Tuesday.

By way of update, last week, Mackey was found guilty of interfering with citizens' sacred right to vote and is now awaiting sentencing and could face 10 years behind bars.

Church Militant has been watching this case very closely. Here are about 75 pages of research on it because we know a lot of the behind-the-scenes story, a story that could end up setting a precedent for not only canceling free speech but actually imprisoning you for it.

Douglass posted his satire memes a week or so before the 2016 election, where Trump defeated Killary. Then when Biden "won" in 2020 and was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021. An indictment against Mackey was handed down two days later, and he was arrested later that week.

The timeline says it all. The chair in the Oval Office was still warm from Trump when Biden's DOJ went and arrested Mackey for posting a joke meme. The back story is that the DOJ was itching all during the Trump years to arrest, charge and convict Mackey but held off, waiting in the wings.

No sooner had old braindead Brandon gotten in than they went racing after the young man. Later media reports revealed the Department of Justice, which is a joke if there ever was one, had been plotting for years to gin up a "test case" whereby they could actually throw someone in prison for his political postings.

Primary Video source and transcript continues here: https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-a-dangerous-road

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The Left will murder without a second thought.

After managing to set the stage, behind the scenes, for winning elections, the Marxists are now onto the next phase — the use of violence. We got a foretaste of all this in the summer of 2020, but now we are beginning to see it carried out in specific circumstances, aided, of course, by the media, who really have developed into the enemy of the people.

Let's start with the Tennessee killings, carried out by a woman pretending to be a man. The mentally ill woman shot and killed three children and three adults in a private Christian school. As horrible as the trans assassin's actions were, they are not singular. In 2018, 26-year-old Snochia Moseley shot and killed four people, including herself, at a Baltimore suburb Rite Aid. Mosely was a lesbian, who had begun transitioning to a "male."

In Colorado Springs, in November last year, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, who identifies as nonbinary, shot up Club Q and killed five people as well as injuring 18 others. In Denver, in 2019, 16-year-old Maya Elizabeth McKinney, who identified as male ("Alec" McKinney), shot and killed one teen and injured eight others at a STEM high school. That's four cases.

But these are not the only cases of violence (committed against innocent victims) emanating from the Left. Just a few days ago, Phillip Todd, a 26-year-old assistant of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, was stabbed in broad daylight in Washington, D.C. He is currently recovering from the brutal attack.

...

It's also noteworthy that the media are reporting on the trans killers and assailants and identifying them by their preferred pronouns, not their actual biological sex and names. And as multiple states begin passing and signing into law measures to curb or eliminate trans surgeries and drugs for children, the Left is losing its collective mind, staging protests and disrupting various lawmakers' speeches and appearances.

The bottom line on all this is pretty clear: If you are the commies, the use of violence is a form of free speech. If you are conservative, free speech is a form of violence when you disagree with the Left. See how this works? Conservative values are violent. So a violent response to them is justified as "free speech."

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They are back in fashion.

Now that we are firmly ensconced in the 2020s, this would be a good time to look back a century to the 1920s — that exuberant, over-the-top decade known as the roaring '20s. While flappers were kicking up their heels to the Charleston here in the United States and bootleggers like Joe Kennedy were making a fortune with illegal booze and speakeasies during Prohibition, on the other side of the Atlantic, communism was firmly implanting itself.

Joseph Stalin came to power in Russia in 1924 following the death of Lenin, but in the lead-up, had been consolidating his power from his position then as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Marxism as a theory was already, at the time, gaining traction in the United States. World War I, for example, was barely over, and already, Marxists established the Communist Party of the United States in 1919.

At the same time, in Mother Russia, communism was asserting itself as the dominant influence, and by the time Stalin seized control, all bets were off. Communism, like Christianity — specifically, communism — has as its goal world dominance. The glaring difference, of course, is that communism employs mass murder. Catholicism employs mass instruction.

From its earliest beginnings in the 1920s, Marxist communists immediately sought to undermine all things Catholic — the natural virtues of religion and patriotism, to name just a couple. That's why the latest findings of that Wall Street Journal poll are so revealing. In just a quarter of a century, a little less than two generations, the percentage of Americans who say patriotism is very important to them has been cut nearly in half from 70% in 1998 to just 38% today.

Same trend with religion — while not quite as precipitous a drop as patriotism, religion being considered an important value also took a walloping, down from 62% to 39%. The same trends exist with both having children and community involvement.

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Catholics must become engaged.

Just before we begin today, if you could please remember my mom in your prayers — today would have been her 89th birthday. Thank you.

Roughly one-quarter of the U.S. population identifies as Evangelical. That translates to about 80 million people. Evangelicals are not their own Protestant denomination, but rather a movement within Protestantism overall. As such, it draws on various denominations for its support.

Evangelicalism has deep roots in America and worked to transform society in different eras, notably compromising the backbone of the abolitionist movement. Evangelicals became notably political as big cultural, moral changes began developing in the late 1950s and especially the 60s, moving forward. They were the main ingredient, for example, in Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority helping Ronald Reagan twice into the White House.

Since the 1990s, however, their political clout has somewhat waned, and by the time we arrived at the 21st century, that so-called Christian Right had splintered to the point where a portion of those calling themselves Evangelicals also identify as "progressives." However, despite the waning influence over political policy, they are still a strong presence in the theological and cultural spheres.

Evangelicalism has a number of core holdings that include, as the name implies, evangelizing but also, the inerrancy of Scripture as well as the need to be "born again." These terms and labels are really nothing more than Martin Luther's original "Sola Scriptura" and "Sola Fide" — Scripture alone as the authority, as well as simply believing as the only required response.

What supporters, however, fail to realize is that building a religion on those premises is doomed to failure, not only as a religion but, ultimately, as a nation. The idea that Scripture — the Bible — is its own authority is beyond spiritually insane — it's destructive. It's not only interesting but also important to note that not a single book in the Bible claims to be inspired by God.

...

Yet here is the problem: Only a few Protestants accept that on its face, and the few who do, do so grudgingly and then quickly pass on. And yet, this is the key, the main point of Christian theology — from which falls morality and ultimately the life of a nation — for a nation does rise or fall on its moral code.

If the authority of the Catholic Church — not individual leaders here or there, but the teaching authority of the Church — is denied or ignored, then you have theological chaos. That theological chaos, sooner or later, translates into social and political chaos, which is what we see playing out now. Drag queen story hours, for example, have a direct line straight back to Martin Luther, as does every social and political evil afflicting the modern world.

Protestantism, simply put, allows each man to decide for himself what is right and wrong, what Scripture means, what it doesn't mean, Who Jesus is and Who He isn't. Despite all the good and well-meaning intentions on the part of the Evangelical movement within Protestantism, in the end, it will fail because, at its core, it is incomplete.

Primary Video source and transcript continues here: https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-chaos

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRe2tQpAPQY

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McCarrick connected to convicted murderer.

Today's Vortex highlights the Church Militant Spotlight revealing the connection between former Cdl. Theodore McCarrick and Robert Chambers (New York Preppy Killer).

Primary Video source and transcript continues here: https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-cardinal-and-killer

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AXQPfk4smI

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They just move forward.

There is a commonly held expression, at least in political circles, that a conservative is nothing more than a liberal, just five years behind — true. When it comes to the great battles of our day, we need to realize that those driving the bus are the commies, the Marxists. They have almost total control of everything, including large parts of the Church. How have they accomplished this?

In a word, they are extremely aggressive and relentless. They never stop pushing forward. It's what you could call a Marxist march. Through a combination of understanding so-called conservatives' mindset, human nature in general and excessive cunning, they have gotten most (meaning, nearly all) of the culture to accept varying degrees of their agenda.

Once a person comes to accept part of their agenda, they generally move on to accept all of the agenda. Not every single person — but then again, they don't need every person — just enough of them. You don't need to win the game by five touchdowns; a field goal works just fine. A win is a win.

In the meantime, so-called conservatives have offered next to nothing in the way of resistance, pushback or even much of a fighting spirit. A few, certainly, but, then again, nowhere near enough. Apparently, it is the nature of these conservatives to be little else than beta males.

Primary Video source and transcript continues here: https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-the-marxist-march

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Decade of Disorientation.

Just a quick reminder — tonight at 7 p.m. ET is the debut of our Membership Mondays where we will be holding a live chat to talk about various timely issues and give you the opportunity to check in with your questions or comments as well. Anyone can view the show, but to get into the live chat all you need to do is sign up to become a Premium member.

Again, that's tonight at 7 p.m. ET. We'll see you over there. Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the pontificate of Francis — a tumultuous time for the Church. But one positive thing that has happened is awareness.

Just as most politically conservative Americans would still be blissfully unaware of and willfully blind to the communist undermining of the government had it not been for Donald Trump, the case can also be made that, had Francis not arrived in Rome, the massive corruption stretching back more than a century would likewise have remained largely unknown.

Most Catholics — in the West, anyway — have simply walked through the world brain-dead to the evil of an overwhelmingly corrupt hierarchy. Pope Francis did not just drop out of the sky. He is the product of an ecclesiastical swamp even more dangerous than the D.C. Swamp.

Primary Video source and transcript continues here: https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-ten-long-years

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Pro-life movement caught flat-footed — again.

This massive conference has become the premiere event in the pro-life world, with more than 1,000 attendees present. And it is altogether fitting that it is being held in Ohio because of what's appearing on a statewide ballot this coming November. It's a child-killing amendment to the state constitution that would allow abortion right through to the moment of birth — and nothing could ever be legislated against it because it would be in the state constitution.

Since the fall of Roe, the child killers have figured out their strategy whereby abortion would be legal, state by state, in all 50 states. They are working diligently — again, on a state-by-state level — to actually create an environment worse and more devastating than had been the case under Roe.

[Transcript unavailable]

Just as in honest presidential elections, whatever way Ohio goes is an almost automatic win for the candidate. It really is a bellwether state. So if you win here, it's pretty clear that you'll win overall, and that reality has propelled Ohio into the pole position — ground zero — in the abortion wars.

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Why the Right keeps losing and how to win.

Today's Vortex is a talk given by Michael at the "Bringing America Back to Life" convention on March 11, 2023.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vVWq9wPhpk

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Someone has to be it.

In war, someone (some unit) must be "the tip of the spear," the first ones off the landing craft — the first to charge over the hill right into the teeth of enemy fire. They are the ones who clear the way for the entire rest of the assault force, which hopefully follows right behind them. In the war over truth, raging right now in the Church, Church Militant has been that tip of the spear.

We were the ones, and remain the ones, challenging evil upon evil by exposing the deeds of darkness — the financial corruption, along with the sexual, liturgical and theological corruption. Why do we do this? Because in war, there is no way to actually vanquish the enemy without attacking him — a full-on assault. Defense never wins; it only stalls the inevitable loss.

This is a lesson that so-called conservatives, in their desire to simply conserve and never actually advance, have never learned. The most aggressive always wins the war. No military geniuses went down in history because of their ability to defend.

The conservative movement, such as it is in the Church, is comprised of soft men, weak men, who are every bit as responsible for the loss of tens of millions of souls because of their complicity by their silence. It's not so much that there are evil men in the Church — there certainly are — but that they are unchallenged, even by those who should be challenging them and reporting on them.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apGiKoOm0_Y

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What an honor!

The news about that FBI dossier talking about faithful Catholics being terror threats and naming Church Militant is like the gift that keeps on giving. The other day, a reporter here in Michigan called and asked to interview me on the subject of Christian nationalism, which I agreed to.

He said he was trying to better understand what Christian nationalism is, and since I had been interviewed earlier on the subject, he wanted to get inside my head and learn about it. Of course, all this talk about Church Militant, as well as others, being domestic White terrorist nationalist extremist Christians (there, did I cover every permutation possible?) is completely insane.

These adjectives are thrown around in every possible combination you can think of: White terrorists, extremist nationalists, domestic Christians and a hundred other combos. What it shows, more than any threat, is just how idiotic and propagandist the people conflating all these things are.

If you take those six adjectives — Christian, terrorist, extreme, White, domestic and nationalist — and arrange them in varying combos, you get the entire, crazy world of the leftists trying to label Christians, especially Catholics, as a threat to the established order: enemies of the State. And the combination can be whatever combo a given outlet or government agency wants it to be because, in the end, for them and multiple media allies, all that matters is that we are somehow portrayed as dangerous or violent.

Nevermind it's not Catholics lopping the heads off hundreds of statues of saints across the country or defacing our own parishes with graffiti and sometimes setting them on fire or attacking pro-life pregnancy centers. What matters is that we are the enemy — period.

And if they can't find an actual crime, like with the case of pro-life dad Mark Houck, then they'll just scramble the adjective list around and come up with a fresh label. When the reporter asked me what Christian nationalism is, I told him, 


He said, "Well, why does it have to be Christian? Why can't it be Hindu or Islamic?"

I said,


He appeared to have gotten that notion but then moved on to the question of nationalism, saying, "Why would a nation have to be governed by Christian principles?"

I replied, 


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoupznZdw6k

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Cast him out!

In a recent article in the publication First Things, Bp. Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, absolutely blitzed Cdl. Robert McElroy of San Diego. Bishop Paprocki actually wrote the article (a commentary, actually), and it had the trappings of an ecclesiastical firing squad, destroying McElroy for his phony-baloney pretense and false teachings about the Holy Eucharist.

Paprocki, in a theological jiujitsu, absolutely leveled McElroy when he said he's a heretic who has excommunicated himself for his preachings and beliefs. Bam! While it is a point of order that the bishop never actually identified the cardinal by name, he did identify him by his words. Paprocki begins by politely presenting the case as a hypothetical — well, sort of:

"Imagine if a cardinal of the Catholic Church were to publish an article in which he condemned "a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist" and stated that "unworthiness cannot be the prism of accompaniment for disciples of the God of grace and mercy." Or what if a cardinal of the Catholic Church were to state publicly that homosexual acts are not sinful and same-sex unions should be blessed by the Church?"

Well, you don't have to imagine it or speak of it as a hypothetical — because it's actually real. The words Bp. Paprocki lifted to describe the "imaginary" cardinal were directly taken from pro-gay Cdl. McElroy himself. In a January article in the pro-gay magazine, America, published by the pro-gay Jesuits, the pro-gay cardinal said exactly those pro-gay words (attributed to the "hypothetical" and "imaginary" cardinal).

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The article that McElroy penned for the pro-gay social justice rag that James Martin is an editor at large for — the article is a piece of crap — and that's being beyond charitable. The loser cardinal directly defies Catholic teaching across the board, saying, in essence, sexual acts don't really matter; sleep with whomever the hell you want and do whatever the hell you want and then come up to the Lord's table and receive.

And, as usual, the heretical claptrap from the pro–anal sex crowd in robes is rife with woke social justice vocabulary. Inclusion, big-tent dialogue, radical inclusion, cultures of exclusion, discernment, pilgrimage and so on, until you reach for the vomit bag. These types are always saying how much we need to "reimagine" and "dialogue" and "understand things in a new and radical way," but somehow their strategy never seems to apply to themselves.

Yo, Cardinal, go "reimagine" your own damn heresy, for once. Of course, what McElroy filth would be complete without the whole sodomy-cheering portion? And right on cue, His Hereticalness gets down to business with, first, the blasting of Church teaching about sexual sins and, second, using that to bless sodomy as, well, just not that big of a deal (you know, like sex was procreation or something and reserved for married couples actually capable of procreating).

McElroy deserves to be stripped of his office, then his priesthood, then his participation in the life of the Church — including the sacraments — and just be left to count his blessings that he didn't live in former times when being executed would have come along with that list of punishments. Is it cases like this why, all of a sudden, the death penalty is out of fashion in Rome?

Primary Video source and transcript continues here: https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-bam

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Embrace them.

The Catholic Church is in possession of the sacraments, given to Her by Her Bridegroom and Lord as the guaranteed means of making Him "present" to a soul — a transmission, as it were, an infusion, a flooding of grace into the soul when received with the proper disposition. Sacraments as sacraments have always been something of a stumbling block for many of the 40,000 Protestant denominations, to one degree or another, depending on which denomination you're talking about.

Christ instituted seven sacraments, and when Luther felt the need to correct Christ, he cut the list down to five — well, maybe three, then — wait a minute — four seems right, and so on. What Protestantism and even among many malformed Catholics don't get is this: Nature, even fallen, has a certain sacredness to it, and God elevates the underlying nature of that sacredness to its fullness. And therefore, a created thing becomes the instrument, the vehicle, for an even fuller measure of holiness.

Water bears within itself the grace of washing the soul clean from Original Sin. The hand of the priest raised in blessing, accompanied by his voice, bears within it the restoration of that baptized soul — a resurrection from death-dealing sin. The hands of a bishop over the head of a man bring about an ontological change in the man's soul and conform his soul to Christ to perpetuate the Sacrifice of Calvary — one sacrifice for all.

The sacraments take earthly things and make them instruments of holiness in and of themselves. This requires — demands — a Church to ensure the passing on of this for centuries, the making new of all things, generation after generation. Protestantism is organized around the notion of a "personal Jesus," a personal relationship with Christ that doesn't really need a Church. A church or congregation is cool and all, maybe even fun and emotionally supportive, but, in the end, it is not required. Why would it be?

After all, you can read the Bible by yourself. You can pray by yourself. The Holy Spirit can talk to you by yourself and place things in your heart without any need for the Church (an authority) and its "tradition." Or, do you actually stand in need of a church? Aside from your own interior thoughts, how do you know your thoughts about a given Scripture passage are actually true? Is not the very concept of prayer derived from the lived experience of the Church — the community of believers of one mind and heart? "Master, teach us how to pray." (Luke 11:1)

How do you know the "spirit" talking to you "personally" is not the unholy spirit? In short, the idea of a "personal" experience with religion where you essentially make it up as you go along with an occasional vague reference to some quasi-church should make you wonder: Does this idea have it completely backward? There is nothing that goes beyond the subjective, personal opinion, normally based on some emotional stimulation or psychological disposition. It's why St. Paul tells us directly to "discern the spirits" (1 Corinthians 12:10) — because they aren't all good spirits.

The sacraments keep objective truth squarely before our eyes. It's all very much a yes-or-no proposition and therefore easy to grasp and then build from. That water really does wash away Original Sin because of the grace present in it, making visible to our senses the invisible reality. That bread and wine really are changed in substance into Our Lord's Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. That couple really is now joined in an inseparable bond as Christ is to His Church. "I saw a New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven, adorned as a bride for Her Groom." (Revelation 21:2)

Primary Video source and transcript continues here: https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vort-the-sacraments

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