TRANSCRIPT
If you had to point to one leading cause of the collapse of the Church, which has led to the collapse of the culture, you would have to have near the top of the list — if not the very top — the complicity of the enablers (especially wealthy enablers) of the U.S. bishops.
There is oftentimes a disturbing dynamic between the wealthy and their parasites, especially if the parasites bring a certain level of respectability and their own cache.
While this is true in various walks of life, it is especially true in the Church when bishops kiss up to the wealthy for obvious reasons, but the wealthy also get their pound of flesh by rubbing elbows with the hierarchy. They get to tell their friends that they’ve “just come back from dinner with the cardinal.”
Both the wealthy and the bishops are lying to each other and enabling each other’s respective weaknesses. For example, typically speaking, the wealthy are normally buttoned down. They seldom make a fuss or step outside the accepted boundaries of proper etiquette. All “distasteful” issues are handled in private, in what can easily be described as an underhanded way.
This, of course, is business as usual for the nation’s prelates. These manipulative males know that they have the influence to stoke the egos of the wealthy, and they play them. But the games are reciprocal. The wealthy know the bishops want their money, so that ensures them that they get a place at the table.
Sometimes, wealthy people having access to the halls of power is a good thing, depending on how they use their influence. But too often, it’s just an exercise in ego gratification. Such is the case with the very wealthy Tim Busch of the Napa Institute, who is very good friends with many bishops in the United States. They stoke the fires of his ego in exchange for access to his checkbook.
In fact, he has donated and raised tens of millions of dollars for various ventures, including for Catholic University of America where the extremely impressive School of Business bears his name. To be fair, Busch does help all sorts of Catholic causes, but always under the banner of the bishops.
Each year, Busch sponsors a gathering in the wine country of Napa Valley at his prestigious Meritage Resort and Spa, an event where he rakes in huge sums of money from Catholics who are largely unaware of the horrible condition of the Church. To lure them there, he always has a number of notable bishops with some degree of name recognition among the polite Catholic crowd. Owing to the generosity of a certain donor, Church Militant was able to attend last year.
From day one, we began filming Vortex reports based on conversations with many of the 800 fellow attendees. Those Vortex reports caused Busch to flip out and comment to those around him that he wasn’t sure what to do with Church Militant there. So, on the second evening, he approached me at the wine and cigar event and invited me to meet with him the next day to, in his words, “get to know each other.”
I accepted, and he and I and one of his assistants had a cordial meeting for around an hour. We also agreed tentatively that when he was going to be back in Detroit in the early fall, he would try and come by the studios for a visit.
We texted with some regularity over the next few weeks, but then as the time for a visit drew near, the expected ghosting started, and then the non-responses started. Now, normally, none of this would be worth commenting on, much less even revealing at all, but it’s what happened last month that makes this now worth talking about.
The same donor contacted us and said he would like us to attend again and that he would pay. Our names were submitted by his assistant back in March and the reservations were made in plenty of time to secure the rooms. The same donor also reserved a room for Fr. James Altman.
Well, lo and behold, when the assistant contacted the Napa Institute to confirm all was good to go (after having received a confirmation back when the reservations were originally made months ago), he was told there had been a “clerical error” and the Church Militant crew and Fr. Altman had been moved to a waiting list.
Shocked that a clerical snafu like that could happen, the donor’s assistant called to dig deeper and got a voicemail, and that’s where the truth came out. The original communication that there were no rooms was actually a lie — that’s not why Church Militant and Fr. Altman had been taken off the list.
It was because of the “controversy” — and here is where the “bull-puckey” of the relationship between the wealthy and the bishops gets all weird and twisted and enabling. When Church Militant was in Napa last year, we were greeted very warmly by many of the attendees, many of whom thanked us for exposing the filth in the hierarchy. In fact, a number of priests in attendance even said so. Faithful Catholics, those in the know, are sick to death of the cover-up of all this filth, namely the presence and acceptance of homosexuality in the clergy.
That singular rot has destroyed the Church in the United States, but, apparently, the wealthy have not gotten that memo. They protect and enable this filth with their emasculated approach of never being controversial, never giving offense. It wouldn’t be “cricket,” you know. It’s too gauche. We aren’t barbarians. We are gentlemen.
No, you aren’t. You’re a bunch of sneaks who play dirty pool. Tim Busch made the decision to cancel Church Militant and Fr. James Altman because his bishop buddies told him to, or he knew they would like it that way. Busch’s Napa party has dozens of conferences and speakers and chances for people to talk and so forth. Yet, nowhere on the docket, nowhere at any time, is the topic of homosexuality among the bishops ever allowed to be talked about.
Nowhere is any bishop ever put under the spotlight and asked why they go along with this filth. Why do they seem to think that ordaining homosexual men is okay?
Heck, Fr. Altman’s bishop, William Callahan in La Crosse, not only thinks it’s okay but actually assigned Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill back into active ministry after it was revealed he was having gay-sex hookups with countless men through a phone app called Grindr.
Wouldn’t a setting like Napa — loaded with faithful Catholics who love the Church — be the perfect setting to talk about all this evil and what to do about it with the free and unrestricted dialogue and “listening sessions” that Busch’s buddy-bishops promote nonstop?
The Napa event is billed as bringing together bright minds and various lectures all geared to restoring the Faith and reinvigorating the culture. Bull. That may be Tim Busch’s fantasy, but that’s all it is, fantastical. The gay steamroller is plowing through the Church and yet the bishops are never questioned about it. They never have to give an account for it and are given a complete pass by their wealthy friends.
At the four-bishop Q&A panel last year, no one was actually allowed to ask questions. The bishops were given the questions the night before, and they were asked by a hand-picked moderator.
Wealthy complicit friends are excellent at ignoring “uncomfortable” situations and shielding the bishops. For example, in a handwritten note to Tim Busch and John Meyer, Busch’s henchman at Napa, the donor (who pays for various people to attend) asked for them to call Church Militant and Fr. Altman and explain why we were all canceled.
Here’s his handwritten note from last week to Busch and Meyer:
“I would like to talk, but please first communicate with Michael Voris and Fr. Altman as they were the ones you are canceling, and this is between you and them. I don’t want to be used to deliver a message like this. It is not professional.”
The donor was assured by Meyer that Church Militant and Fr. Altman would get a call. John Meyer lied.
Despite being given our private contact information, neither Fr. Altman nor Church Militant ever got any communication from Busch or John Meyer because the cooperators with wicked or cowardly bishops don’t ever operate in truth. They are always angling, trying to figure out the best strategy for avoiding controversy and how to do the bidding of bishops who never say the truth in its fullness.
Why would anyone want to go to a “Catholic conference” orchestrated by enablers and liars? Sure, some good things might be presented, but so what?
Last year at the conference, I personally went up to a number of the bishops in attendance and asked the very uncomfortable questions that Busch never allows to be asked. I asked why they won’t publicly condemn James Martin; why they never admit that the sex abuse problem is a homosexual clergy problem; qhy they will not confess the failing of the hierarchy — past and present —- in staying silent on sodomy within their own ranks.
At last year’s conference, the news about Msgr. Grindr had just broken, and many attendees were talking about it, but in Tim Busch’s and John Meyer’s Napa bubble, it was like it never happened. Busch and Meyer only allow what the bishops allow to be talked about at Napa. The Napa event is nothing more than a grandiose Church-of-Nice gathering. The filth — the truth — is never permitted to be spoken of from any stage.
Busch is an emasculated coward who gets his ego stroked by being embraced by the bishops. Hey, Tim, you can’t buy your way into Heaven. And on that score, Tim, your wealth, permitted to come your way by Almighty God for His glory, doesn’t really belong to you. You are merely a temporary custodian of it, and it (and the access it gives you to the hierarchy) was given to you so that you may effect change in a real way, not by building Catholic buildings and naming them after yourself. Very few individuals have the access to these weak cowards that you have, and you have not helped them in any way. You have enabled them in their cowardice, not called them to greatness.
You are good friends with L.A. archbishop José Gómez . Do you ever tell him that his rule over that abomination of an archdiocese is shameful? You are good buddies with the extremely proud and retired archbishop Charles Chaput. Do you ever tell him to lose his massive ego and fess up to all he knows about episcopal corruption?
Of course you don’t. You rationalize your way through these relationships, fooling yourself and them into thinking you are accomplishing good. You aren’t. You could have done so much more. But relatively speaking, you did little.
With much wealth and much influence comes the concomitant responsibility to do much. The Church is on fire and you are hosting lunches. You have too little concern for truth where you have to pay a price personally. That’s not being a man. It’s being a coward. You didn’t even have the courage to tell me your decision to my face or Fr. Altman’s face.
You completely ignored the donor who told you he didn’t want to do your dirty work for you. You had him actually lie to the donor, telling him that Church Militant and Fr. Altman would get a call to tell us all this personally.
Your guy, John Meyer, actually told the donor that Fr. Altman was canceled because he didn’t have a letter from his bishop saying he was in good standing. That’s another lie from Busch and Meyer. That’s three lies for those of you at home keeping score.
Fr. Altman wasn’t speaking. He was going to be there as nothing more than a private attendee. Do all the other attendees have to produce a letter of good standing? Is that why Church Militant was canceled? But these are the circles you run in: liars, enablers, complicit cowards.
No one challenges you, Tim, because you have the money. And you don’t challenge the bishops because you prize their association even more than the truth, which is why you lie. For all your wealth, the Church is not better off because of you. You crush the uncomfortable truth.
But you go on and fool yourself into thinking you’re accomplishing something for the Church by raking in money at your conference and rubbing elbows with bishops and hosting speakers with their esoteric topics. You’ve been doing this for over ten years now and yet things just keep getting worse in the Church.
So go ahead with the party — just have some integrity to stop billing it as saving the Church or the culture. Bill it for what it is: a party in wine country where uncomfortable truth is suppressed, but good wine is served. You are part of the problem, Tim, not the solution.
If you really wanted to be part of the solution, you would invite Church Militant to come give a conference on all the evil and filth we’ve uncovered and reported on for years, and have the bishops sitting there. Then you’d open the floor to questions for the bishops.
But cowards and liars don’t operate that way. It hits too close to home.
Registered attendees should cancel by the droves. But, of course, in another deceptive move, you changed the cancellation/refund policy the same day you lied to the donor about Church Militant and Fr. Altman. Was that in anticipation of people being ticked off and wanting to cancel once this all became public?
As a final note, someone on the inside of the Napa Institute who became aware of all this was so disturbed by the unfairness of it, they sent us the attendee list with a note to send this anticipated Vortex to everyone coming.
