Church Militant and its latest attacks

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FiveLinden

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It seems to me that Church Militant has reached a new stage of whatever journey it is on with an extraordinary attack on a member of the hierarchy. It goes beyond anything it has done before.

I’m trying to understand how it is possible for CM to still be seen as a part of the Church. I see the Detroit Archdiocese has been critical but it still appears to be able to operate and be seen as a part of the Church.

What would be the steps that potentially could be taken? I know they lost the right to use the word ‘Catholic’ in their title - but what else?
 
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FiveLinden said:
I’m trying to understand how it is possible for CM to still be seen as a part of the Church.
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It’s not a “part of the Church.” It’s a private nonprofit (a 501(c )(3) organization) exercising its First Amendment rights under the US Constitution. It’s subject to lawsuit if it breaks the civil defamation laws or commits some other civil offense. The press in USA tends to have quite a bit of freedom so unless they print outright lies, which most media is careful to avoid, there’s not much one can do.

I’m not sure where you got the idea that it’s “part of the Church” when virtually none of the Catholic media outlets are “part of the Church”. Some dioceses do have a newspaper or media outlet that’s understood to be the official channel of the diocese for getting important Catholic news to the faithful, or that the Diocese supports in some way. Church Militant is definitely not that, and the Archdiocese has made that clear, plus CM isn’t focusing its coverage on its diocese.

Many years ago it called itself “Real Catholic” or something similar. The Archdiocese of Detroit told Voris they weren’t authorized to use the word “Catholic” for their activities. So Voris changed the name to Church Militant and continued on his way.

It’s pretty obvious that the Diocese doesn’t like or approve of his activities, but like I said this is the USA and the press has a lot of freedom. CM also isn’t run by a priest or religious, so there’s no bishop or superior who could order Voris to stop what he’s doing. Also, the Diocese and the Church in general are likely aware that making a big fuss about some media just draws more people’s attention to get curious about it and go check it out. They’re probably also aware that a significant number of Catholics agree with Voris and don’t want to be making him a martyr or alienating those Catholics.

I would further note that Catholicism has quite a long history of rabblerousing media personalities making statements the Church does not like. In cases where the rabblerouser was a priest or religious, sometimes the Church could transfer the person or otherwise compel them to stop, sometimes the Church chose not to do so or couldn’t easily do so. Voris isn’t anything new or different or special, other than the fact that he benefits from using Internet platforms the same way as Fr. Coughlin benefitted from radio. I think Coughlin finally got stopped by the US Government; his bishop wouldn’t take any action to stop him until the Roosevelt Administration told the bishop they were going to indict Coughlin unless the bishop ordered him to stop. The Church didn’t go rushing to stop Coughlin because his original bishop agreed with the stuff he was broadcasting and then later they were worried that banning him could lead to a schism because he was popular.
 
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Church Militant has a habit of using a distasteful, rabble rousing style. It sometimes exaggerates, or plays down its targets’ mitigating circumstances. But I have so far been unable to detect an occasion when it actually said something that was not true.
 
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Church Militant’s beliefs are absolutely part of the same belief system. Their journalists are completely Catholic. They don’t behave very well sometimes but then neither do I. Im sure even you don’t, on occasion.
 
I readily admit to making lots of mistakes and doing things I regret. But as a non-believer I could not imagine myself taking part in a scheme to undermine an organisation with which I shared a significant part of my core system of ‘beliefs’. For example if I thought a science establishment was breaching conventions of peer review I would point it out, and strongly, but I would not be launching the sort of bitter and personal attacks I see on CM. I would also point out the good things I thought they were doing. I even point out good things that organisations with which I don’t have shared core beliefs do. In fact I find shared beliefs far more interesting than non-shared beliefs. CM seems determined to seek out difference and provoke anger. Why?
 
FiveLinden said:
When I said ‘seen as part of the Church’ I meant that a significant number of Catholics agree with it
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We have over 70 million Catholics in USA. That makes for a lot of “significant portions” who believe or agree with all kinds of media that’s not under the control of the Church. A bunch of people agreeing with a newspaper or blog doesn’t automatically make it “part of the Church” any more than if a million Catholics agree with Donald Trump then he becomes “part of the Church”.

Furthermore, there are also an equally significant number of Catholics who think Michael Voris and Church Militant are reprehensible, sinful, out of line, “bad Catholics” etc.
and see it as part of the same belief system.
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The Church can’t control people’s thoughts or how they view a particular media outlet.

I’m really not sure why you think this is a Church problem. It’s not like we don’t have hundreds of private media outlets, organizations, web pages etc expressing some view on Catholic teachings or current events or Catholic clergy that the official Church might not espouse or that a diocese might find objectionable. Like I said, it’s a free country, we have 70 million diverse Catholics in USA, and people have freedom of speech. I could start a webpage tomorrow insulting the Archbishop and ranting about whatever I wanted to rant about, and as long as I didn’t commit some civil wrong like posting lies or using someone else’s intellectual property without permission and outside the bounds of fair use, then the Church couldn’t do anything about it.

This applies equally whether it’s a watchdog site for listing all the names of clergy who are accused of sex offenses (I presume you’d approve of that website and we do have them) or a site like Church Militant that criticizes and mocks Archbishop Gregory and rants about gays.
 
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I believe they’ve covered quite a few different stories over the last couple of months. To which one are you referring to?
 
Maximian said:
They don’t behave very well sometimes but then neither do I. Im sure even you don’t, on occasion.
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None of us behave well all the time. But most of us don’t publicly call Archbishops names.
 
Oh say what now? If it’s so clear why not list the actual donations and who made them instead of implying that some ‘they’ donated some ‘this’ based on political yabba dabba doo.

Oh I almost missed the ‘white nationalist American Catholics.

It is extremely sad to see this kind of attack presented to a concern. Reeks of whataboutism and attempts at label and libel based on a dislike of a purely secular ‘politics’.

If the one group is at fault (CM), I fail to see that such attitudes will help in any way.

It’s basically kind of a, “Hey woke guys! Let’s get our social justicing envirofriendly arses going and wallop the bad guys, and watch OUR coffers swell”

See how that sounds? Using buzzwords and secular politics and sneers isn’t something that any Christian should feel comfortable doing—and no, the above is an example I offered, not my personal opinion, so kindly snuffle the torches.
 
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Seriously, sir? I am not a donor at all; and I do not necessarily agree with much, some or anyof what CM supports; I simply commented on the fact that trying to address failings by the kind of attack prose and ‘assumptions’ Found in your post was a poor idea if one was actually trying to make a point. The only point you wound up making, and continued in your implication that I was a supporter, and the Reasons I would—not might but would—were that I was a white nationalist or a Pope Francis hater—was that youpaint with the same broad and inaccurate brush of politicizing others, without holding yourself to the standard you demand others adhere to.
 
Maximian said:
But I have so far been unable to detect an occasion when it actually said something that was not true.
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They definitely have. But many of the subjects of their attacks have chosen not to engage in a public argument with them and give them any further publicity.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I’m really not sure why you think this is a Church problem.
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I think most organisations seek to defend themselves from attack, whether the see the attackers as internal or not. When attacks resonate with your own supporters, defence is even more expected.
 
JulianN said:
They definitely have. But many of the subjects of their attacks have chosen not to engage in a public argument with them and give them any further publicity.
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This is true. They attacked a priest who an investigator showed was innocent of abuse. I’ll have to see if I can find the story. It was a very lurid story.

I see Church Militant as a tabloid. Sometimes they can be an accurate source of information as the Families of Parishes thing in the Archdiocese of Detroit thing shows, which they broke days before it was announced. Other times, well.

Short of the Archdiocese trying to silence their freedom of speech there’s little that they can do to stop them.
 
If the Church spent its time “defending itself from attack” it would be doing nothing but that, 24 hours a day.

Additionally, the disagreement of people who are, to some degree, faithful Catholics, with how things are being run by the bishops, much of it fueled by past serious scandals, probably shouldn’t be seen as an “attack”. Michael Voris and his ilk are not trying to destroy the Church, nor lead people off into a different church. They see themselves as the faithful trying to right the ship.

I don’t mean this in any sort of rude way, but I think you might understand this better if you were actually a long term member of the Church, rather than an outside onlooker. While I don’t like Voris insulting Archbishops and printing sensationalist tabloid stuff, I can see where the Church in some sense brought this on themselves with their own actions over several decades. You reap what you sow. If the Church had moved more quickly to quell scandals and abuse within their own ranks, and hadn’t been so dismissive of traditionalist practice during the 1970s and 1980s, then they wouldn’t have so many conservative Catholic pundits throwing tomatoes today. Those people are part of the Church too, they’re brothers and sisters of the America Magazine/ Fr Martin contingent and we need to all learn to get along, not be kicking one or the other group out of the Church. We’re not Protestants, we don’t break into two churches every time somebody doesn’t like what somebody else does or says.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
While I don’t like Voris insulting Archbishops and printing sensationalist tabloid stuff, I can see where the Church in some sense brought this on themselves with their own actions over several decades. You reap what you sow.
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This is sadly true. I can attest one reason I’m skeptical of higher ups in the Church is the inaction on so many things. I try to be obedient but I can’t help but reach for a handful of salt when they talk. Which is sad.
 
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StudentMI just wrote to me privately and gave me extremely convincing testimony about CM being unfair. I stand corrected.
 
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