Investigation of Church Militant's Hate-On for the SSPX

Is Church Militant (CM) a reliable source of trusted investigation? At this point, the answer is a clear and resounding "NO!" They use innuendo, half truths, hearsay, and outright falsehoods to advance their agenda. They've done it to many liberal bishops in the U.S. who certainly deserve criticism, but even liberal bishops deserve to be treated fairly. 

But with the SSPX, CM engages in a scorched earth policy. Take no survivors!

CM obviously doesn't care about fairness whether they are talking about "Church of Nice" bishops or the SSPX. Their bias has become increasingly obvious over the past decade and spreads like kudzu over just about anything and anybody with whom they disagree and on whom they report. At this point, everything they allege needs to be independently verified because they, to put it charitably, stretch the truth to the breaking point.

So let's talk about investigation and whether CM is a reputable voice whose integrity is unquestionable and whose "investigations" can be trusted.

Every investigation involves searching for information, taking into account what's relevant and dismissing what is unnecessary or extraneous. The true investigator is unbiased and open-minded as he examines the evidence, because ultimately investigation is about searching for the truth. He may make a hypothesis but he doesn't manipulate the data to make sure he confirms it. He presents everything relevant, not just what proves his point. If there is evidence that casts doubt on the testimony of a witness, a reputable investigator presents it in order to give a fair and accurate picture.

Sad to say some who consider themselves investigators don't engage in open-minded research at all. They only look for information to confirm their biases. How many scientific studies are withdrawn because the data was manipulated? Injustice is often the end result of such "investigations."

We live in an age filled with people of the lie. CNN, MSNBC, NPR, etc. lie to the public daily, not only by their false narratives, but by failing to report inconvenient truths. You can lie by presenting false evidence, but also by suppressing evidence that tends to mitigate or exonerate.

What happens when the same bias, so evident in the liberal secular press, invades the Catholic press, when an outlet claiming to care about the good of the Church uses half truths, innuendo, and outright lies in their reporting to spin the news according to their particular biases?

That seems to be what has happened to Church Militant (CM). 

If you want to find the truth, you'll need a machete to clear
the kudzu of innuendo, half truths and falsehoods spread by CM.

It wasn't always that way. I was contacted in the early days of Real Catholic TV by Mike Voris when they were seeking support to make themselves better known and I was president of the Catholic Media Coalition. I added their daily Vortex feed to our website and said yes a few years later when they asked me to write for their site, which still (at least for now) carries some of my articles.

Around 2015 or 2016, though, I became so concerned about their direction that I asked our webmaster to remove the Vortex and stopped visiting the site as often as previously. As one blogger put it, the group that constantly criticized the "Church of Nice" had become the "Church of Nasty." I don't think they have any rivals today in that department, but I think they've also become the "Church of Deceit."

While CM trashes others on a daily basis, they frequently take umbrage and pounce on a few insulting comments from those who disagree with them as Voris did earlier this month on Twitter, a platform I left about a year ago. Using two comments, TWO COMMENTS, Voris trashed tens of thousands who attend SSPX chapels as "spiritually diseased" and "cult members." 

That is the bias that erupts every time Mike Voris or Christine Niles mention the SSPX. It's like molten lava flowing from the mouth of a volcano to destroy everything in its path. They absolutely hate the SSPX despite claiming neutrality.

Voris, who has absolutely no authority to do so, has declared the SSPX "schismatic" and outside the Church, a charge refuted by both Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Archbishop Vigano, bishops lauded by CM. How embarrassing for CM! Question: have the bishops excommunicated themselves?

"Church of Nasty" hardly comes close to describing what CM has become. They lack integrity and don't mind twisting the truth if it serves their agenda. 

Mike Church interviewed Matt Gaspers of Catholic Family News on The Mike Church Show in April 2020 after CM ran another hit piece on the SSPX that targeted Fr. Pierre Duverger among others. Here's a bit of the conversation:

Church: I don't know what's driving this [CM's hate-on for the SSPX], but I suspect that there must be some [unfinished sentence]....When we're talking about government corruption, man, what do you do? Look for the money....I don't see why there would be any difference here.

Gaspers: There are some disturbing accusations made in this report.... I don't have the inside information....I'm just like anyone else reading this. It has to be independently confirmed and verified. They quote from people they claim to be eyewitnesses and have eye-witness testimony of things. Maybe it's true and I certainly don't want to discount anyone who has actually suffered abuse or know someone who has, but because of their lack of integrity, I think that's the only way to say it, their lack of integrity in the past...you can't just take them at face value any more. All of this stuff that they've presented is going to have to be independently verified through unbiased sources.

Church: [After saying his show will never defend pederasts, whether they're wearing roman collars or not, Church continues the discussion.] It's not a source if it's anonymous. If you cannot tell me what the source is and you say it's anonymous then, by definition, Matt, it's not a source.

Gaspers: Let me give you something similar to that. They do name the sources, but they didn't actually publish the physical evidence...,what they're quoting, what actually transpired. One of the bombshells in the article, they publish internal communications within the Society of St. Pius X....[reads from the article which claims the emails prove the Society is strategizing to protect the institution] She [Niles] proceeds to provide some juicy quotes from that correspondence....The problem is we don't have the full transcript of these emails. We don't know everything that was said in context. It could be totally proof text quoting to make them look evil...and we know that they hate the Society to begin with, so how are we supposed to believe that they are being impartial and just, quote unquote, wanting the truth....If they want us to believe that this correspondence is legit, they need to publish copies of the entire transcript so we can see it.... 

Church:  The whole thing [what CM is doing] is creepy and it stinks.

Gaspers: One other thing that I really have to bring up.... In my opinion, one of the worst aspects of the article is that it actually pretty clearly implies that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre himself was complicit in creating a culture in the Society of perversion and coverup. This is absolutely disgusting.....[He was] probably the most prolific missionary bishop in the 20th century in Africa.

Niles implies that Archbihsop Lefebvre is one of the "perverts" in her article. She describes the archbishop as "enamored" of a young priest whom he travelled to the U.S. to ordain.

Church: Right, over a million baptisms and conversions in Africa under Archbishop Lefebvre....It's an outrage, that claim is outrageous.

Gaspers: What's sad about it, Mike, is that they can't even get some of the basic facts straight in this article. [Church and Gaspers go on to discuss Niles implying that Archbishop Lefebvre had a same-sex attraction toward a young priest by saying, "He was so enamored of the young priest...." that he went to the U.S. to ordain him. This is the kind of innuendo and slander so common to CM. Who else was supposed to ordain the priest given that it was 1980 and Archbishop Lefebvre didn't ordain the other bishops until 1988? He was the only one who COULD ordain the priest. The lack of integrity here spotlights CM's biased, sloppy, and slanderous reporting.] .... The long and short of it...[is] the allegations need to be thoroughly investigated...and independently verified....In my opinion...The real story is that CM hates the SSPX for some reason. They claim that they're schismatic and evil...so that's the motive where they're coming from. And they use whatever they can to malign the Society, so that's why everything has to be independently verified because they have a motive...and they reveal what they're trying to do with this article....They're trying to demonstrate that the Society is just as filthy and corruption-ridden as the rest of the mainstream Church and, therefore, no one should have anything to do with them.

Watch the entire video if you want to experience how grown-ups deal with serious issues. Their discussion about CM's hate for the SSPX is fact-based and without rancor. As they push their agenda to destroy-the-SSPX (Good luck with that), CM spins facts with fantasy to paint the SSPX as the empire of Mordor. In the process, they have lost credibility and any reputation they once had for integrity and honesty!

Stay tuned. Next time I open this can of worms, it will be to discuss rules of evidence.