I wouldn’t say they are orthodox, but more focused on church legalism rather than focused on expanding the love and mercy of Jesus Christ. My opinion only.
What isn’t?
Ha ha. It’s healthy to challenge and defend beliefs. Of course, challenging church doctrine around here is not tolerated.
I have never read any article in CM that seemed to offer useful information for the reader to act on.
I’m not really condoning their style, but I would bet that if they were around 20 years ago, a lot of abuse victims would have been saved.DeSales111:
I have never read any article in CM that seemed to offer useful information for the reader to act on.
I have talked to people who read it often. They never describe any action they, or anyone else took, as a result of reading CM.
What CM sells is Psychology. They offer thrills for a half hour, like a video game. CM offers readers the feeling that “you are right there, where the big decisions are made!”
It’s the same mindset as delinquent boys who joke about knocking off the Bishop’s hat with a snowball.
Anyway over the years I think what we have seen is Church Militant striving to build an audience. It is best understood as a business. By this I don’t mean that it exists simply to make money. What I mean is that if it does not make money it won’t exist. So It has developed an emphasis on stories that provoke emotional responses, repeat visits, and donations. These stories overwhelmingly are linked to sex and reproduction - not entirely to the exclusion of other issues but certainly as a dominant theme. This is standard in ‘tabloid’ journalism. Sex sells, and so does opposition to sexual practices you don’t support. It has researched I think the link between its core supporters and other streams of thought such as anti-Democratic party, pro-Trump and runs a sub-stream of stories picking up supporters whose dominant interest is politics rather than religion. And it of course seeks to pick up on the anti-abortion movement without stressing this as a major theme (I suspect their research shows only a minority of anti-abortion people want to read about it a lot so CM concentrates on ‘betrayal’ by those in the Church not upholding its take on teaching. Michael Voris is a talented journalist but does not seem to have attracted staff of similar calibre. As his content speeds out over more platforms to attract more audience the underlying quality is eroded. I think a part of the financial strategy must be to seek put people willing to leave CM money in their wills. A tried and true fundraising technique and no doubt promoted on its ‘retreat cruises’. I’m not saying any of this is wrong or immoral - just looking at the business model.Reports of victims indicating abuse occurring since the 1980’s are relatively rare; the vast majority of abuse occurred before that. And most of the cases that have been reported in the last 20 years have been abuse by priests who were trained and ordained outside the US, so not subjected the the scrutiny of priests trained and ordained in the US. There simply is no published evidence to the contrary, and making an assumption that CM might have had some (name removed by moderator)ut and/or impact on the abuse matters is unsubstantiated.
How do you know which of their info is true, what’s false? Like National Catholic Reporter or Chick Publications, they have no connection to the Church.
