TRANSCRIPT
There is what can be described as a “false front” being presented today by the hierarchy. It’s a pretended unity — a brotherhood, as it were — where bishops can never be seen to publicly disagree with one another. There cannot even be a whiff of division among them. That’s the party line. And the cost to maintain that facade of unity is truth.
Too many of the bishops (and their minions in the Catholic establishment media) scoff at faithful Catholics demanding accountability from the hierarchy, that they do their jobs and teach the authentic Catholic faith.
And to that point, it’s extremely important to realize just how well-insulated the bishops keep themselves from criticism. They have an entire web that keeps them protected from truth bombs.
For example (as you know), a couple of weeks back, we had our Bishops: Enough Is Enough prayer rally in Baltimore that the USCCB tried desperately to have canceled through their cooperation with the city. About 1,500 faithful Catholics were in attendance, and on stage were canceled priests, sex abuse victims of homopredators in collars and, interestingly, multiple secular media outfits. But unsurprisingly, not one single Catholic establishment media outlet (with one exception) covered the event or even mentioned it.
You know something is amiss when the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times and so forth are reporting on a gathering of faithful Catholics and no Catholic media does.
That deliberate ignoring of the rally did not go unnoticed by faithful Catholics, and it actually became a topic on Relevant Radio’s Patrick Madrid Show a couple days ago. A fellow wrote in and excoriated Relevant for refusing to cover the rally in any form, as well as sidestepping the much-wider issue of the evil within the hierarchy.
Amidst all the sex abuse, prolific presence of homosexuality and its embrace by bishops, the financial theft of billions of dollars, the widespread departure from the teaching of the Faith and much much more, here was Patrick Madrid’s condescending answer to the listener asking why not give some attention to the Baltimore rally: “How does that contribute to anything beneficial? … What will be accomplished, other than making people more angry? … Other than that, nothing. … Channel all of your anger at prayer and good example. … That’s where you can really effect some change.”
Now that’s an extremely interesting response because not only is Madrid refusing to engage with the actual substance of the listener’s concerns, but he also fails to mention one his motives for taking the “pray and shut up” approach is because of how tightly Relevant is bound to the bishops. Look at this from their website: They have more than 30 bishops on their episcopal advisory council, and some of them, frankly, are a little shocking, like Cdl. Joseph Tobin.
Tobin had an Italian active-homosexual underwear model living with him in his rectory a while back. When asked about it, the archdiocese of Newark responded that the Italian active-homosexual underwear model was just a student at Seton Hall, taking English as a second language. When asked further about why the Italian active-homosexual underwear model had to live in the rectory, and not with the rest of the students on campus, the Newark archdiocese refused comment.
Not too long after, the Italian active-homosexual underwear model returned to Italy.
But according to Madrid, no one in the Catholic world is supposed to question that or demand answers — ask for transparency.
The bishops themselves are the ones who are always saying, “Let’s have transparency, schedule listening sessions, engage in dialogue.” Maybe Madrid didn’t get the meme that it’s the bishops themselves who have publicly said this. We agree. We’ve been trying to speak with bishops for a dozen years, asking these questions, and — make sure you’re sitting down — they never seem to want to talk or answer questions.
Why would that be, we wonder? What reason could they possibly have for not wanting to talk and engage, and “get the smell of the sheep” on them?
In fact, Madrid went further, employing the language of the Left: “You are not called by the Lord to attack the bishops of the Catholic Church. Whether they’re doing bad things or not, that’s not for you to do. … The purification of the Church is going to come from the Lord, not from me and not from you.”
Pay very close attention to the characterization. Attack? Really, Patrick? Calling on bishops to give up their evil is an attack Letting others know that who they are dealing with are shepherds in wolves’ clothing — that’s an attack? Well, if it’s an attack, why did you claim that you yourself have done it over the years?
So which is it? When Church Militant says something about bishops and their evil, it’s an attack. But when Patrick says something, it’s acceptable. That’s ludicrous. What exactly did Patrick say about the bishops that he’s now grandstanding on?
Exactly what is it he is so free to say that would be meaningful with 30-plus bishops on the advisory council? Does he really expect anyone to believe that he’s going to be champion for authentic Catholicism, in the face of hierarchical malevolence, when 30 of them are looking over his shoulder?
As Biden would say, come on, man!
And speaking of Biden, did Madrid have any response to the news that broke last October — that Relevant Radio had accepted money from the Biden campaign to run his ads on Relevant?
That would be the same Biden who sent his solicitor general scurrying to the Supreme Court last week to argue in favor of Roe v. Wade not being overturned and has promised that if it is, he and his fellow Democrats (peppered with phony Catholics) should pass a federal law enshrining the child killing. That Biden?
Relevant Radio got blasted by its listeners for that — it had to call an emergency meeting on the weekend and change how they do business so they could turn down the political ads. But that was after the fact of accepting the money and the resulting blowback.
Is that out of bounds also, Patrick? Does reporting that qualify as an attack?
Here’s the problem with defending the bishops when you are part of the establishment — the episcopal network. Not only is it hypocritical because you are parasitic (making your living off them or their approval), but you also enable the evil to continue.
Because so many in the Catholic media world live and die on the adage that they should never bite the hand that feeds them, they constrict themselves, refusing or unable to talk about the actual malice and evil of so much going on in the Church.
What practical effect does this have — day to day?
Well, first, by ignoring the evil, they perpetuate injustice on the victims of the evil. Those victims are myriad. Not just sex abuse victims, but a vast multitude of spiritual victims — people who have lost their faith because they were never told the richness of the Faith, because the teachers were (and are) wicked or cowardly men.
Another practical effect: Their silence enables wicked and cowardly bishops to continue in their rot.
To remain silent in the face of monstrous spiritual evil — do Madrid and the entire cohort of the establishment really expect us to believe that our only duty is to shut up and obey? Go participate in Church bake sales and be friendly to each other?
For the record, that’s what has been going on for decades and how things got to the place they now stand. For all those media types out there who sponge off the establishment, ask yourselves this: Where does Church Militant get the information we air?
As a bishop in Baltimore asked me that very question, here was the answer. We get it from people in the Church who know: priests, seminarians, canon lawyers, chancery workers and so forth.
Every now and then, something we report is verified by secular media (like McCarrick, for example).
So the next question should be, why do these sources from within the Church come to Church Militant and not the Catholic establishment media? That answer should be pretty obvious. Because the Catholic establishment media are owned — lock, stock and barrel — by the bishops.
Victims — sex abuse, mothers, grandmothers, seminarians, canceled priests, those who had lost their faith and returned because of Church Militant’s bluntness — come to us because whenever they approached the institution, they were dumped on. Why? Because the institution exists to protect itself, to advance its own machinery.
Part of that strategy involves bishops never showing any public disagreement, pretending there is some unity that exists there, within their own ranks.
Some of those bishops don’t even believe the Catholic faith. How on God’s green earth can there be any unity? What exactly are they unified around?
But never let it be said that a parasitic gang of “professional Catholics” (to use Pope Benedict’s depiction) ever did anything to crack that perception of unity!
It’s a lie — a bald-faced lie — that the bishops are unified. They are not. Some are unified around Our Lord and the authentic Faith, even if some of them are malformed from their days in seminary in the wake of the sexual revolution and the resulting influence of communism. But most are not unified around Christ and His Church. They are unified around the institution and its priorities. They revolve themselves around multiple things that have nothing to do with the affairs of Heaven and salvation.
Yet many of them are content to let little evangelical efforts sit in the sidelines, and give them pats on the head and allow them to sponge off the establishment because they are useful idiots to them.
As long as these outfits are dependent on the bishops, the bishops know they will provide cover for them. That’s why none of these outfits ever would dream of having Church Militant on to talk about any of the evil we talk about and that they know is true.
If these guys think it’s enough to just talk about the Faith (while deliberately ignoring the destruction of the Faith and belief that goes on behind the scenes), well, good for them.
Church Militant isn’t that foolish. It’s ugly; it’s sordid, but it’s real. And until you man up and talk about it, confront it and start working to end it, don’t say, “Oh, just leave it Jesus’ hands.” If Our Lord did not want Catholics to be involved in the works of justice and truth, then why hasn’t He cleaned it all up already?
