The Vortex — This Has to End

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to the vortex where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed i'm michael voris tuesday of this week church militant did something that has never before happened in the history of the church in the united states perhaps the world we hosted not one not two but nine persecuted priests all at the same time to let you hear their collective stories of pain and suffering at the hands of the hierarchy some of them you've heard of others maybe not as much but their pain their struggles to serve the church which is all each one of them wants to do is palpable these men represent literally hundreds of other priests from all over the country who because of the way our blessed lord structured his church have no recourse except to be at the whims of corrupt or cowardly bishops all over the country hundreds and hundreds of faithful men who have given up everything to be instruments of our blessed lord to lead us to heaven are being persecuted by bishops for nothing more than being faithful the following interview is a bit long and at times it is difficult to listen to but we cannot stress too heavily just how important it is you hear from them as a group please listen to the stories and the pleas of your priests who desire nothing more than your salvation this has to end all right fathers thank you for coming you've come from different parts of the country and even here in the archdiocese of detroit uh we have you here because every one of you has experienced or is experiencing currently some version of uh what we have labeled in others episcopal tyranny uh you've all been put on ice uh or are currently going through some sort of canon law thing or whatever the case is many of your various stages of this you father perrone have had the distinction in the group here of being the only priest and one of the very few priests who's actually had your case vindicated in rome and yet here you still are forbidden from wearing your uh clerics uh and presenting yourself publicly as a priest all of you are in various types of stages of that so just in case people who are your detractors and there are many because of what you represent the truth of the faith uh in case they want to say things about you i just like to sort of go through a little clearing checklist right away uh have any of you been unfaithful to your vows no sir have any of you embezzled money from your parish or any other source no have any of you molested a child no have any of you taught heresy or anything even beginning to approach it no do all of you believe every single thing the catholic church teaches yes and why are you sitting here why are you iced why are your bishops sidelined you and marginalized you anybody just feel free bother one of the things i've observed is that the men that are sidelined are those men that make believing in jesus christ attractive to normal people so as i become aware of each of my brother's stories these are men that had a heart for making jesus christ known and loved and they were effective at doing it so it's an odd answer but i think that's part of the reason why we've been sidelined is because we were effectively proclaiming the gospel of jesus christ which is a frightening proposition when you consider the people who sidelined you are shepherds who would you would think want that to happen fathers father altman you're never short on words well that's why i'm here probably because i'm not that yeah i always summarize it this way that we're fathers and those people out there are our children and right from the get-go i think what got me notoriety is that a good word that i couldn't believe that shepherds of the church locked the people out and denied them the whole reason why we exist is to bring sanctifying grace to our our families those are our children of all ages and uh so i let them have it and justly so how dare they fathers shepherds of the church deny their children to be fed to be anointed to be baptized what kind of fathers are they they're not so yeah you could get you've gotten going i think we just did yeah well that's it isn't that it that's we're all trying to like he said we're all trying to feed our families we're all trying to teach them the truth and as you've heard me say i don't know how many times how many at what percentage are they are these miners of the of america going to wake up you know if it's what is it 85 i think you said that don't even bother coming to mass anymore when are they going to wake up and see this little experiment they've tried for the last 50 years has failed we've lost the faith it's their fault and they're mad and oddly enough they're mad at us who are actually being very what's the word that i was called in no i'm being very effective because 100 of the people that come into my parish believe in the real presence yeah i would say that's true of probably all of you father father you want to say something praise be to god i want to say especially in these difficult times it's i've been listening to my brother priest and and i have a heavy heart for that because obviously i love our lord jesus christ the priest and i love the priesthood and i love my brother priests and it's kind of unbelievable that these things are happening in the way that they are and i don't know the real answer to the reason why but i know that it's taking place and i also feel as as as my brother priests heavy in my heart for the sufferings of the people of god and i want to give a a word of encouragement that even though these things are taking place we don't lose our mind to god or our heart to god and we trust to the lord we just recently celebrated the holy feast of pentecost and we trust in the holy spirit and even though these times are dark we don't give up hope right that's why i want to encourage the people of god these things were prophesied before in scripture and in different revelations and words from our blessed mother mary and although it's unbelievable that we're enduring these times we have hope firmly it was just in the this past sunday was the 11th sunday of ordinary time and in the second letter that was read the second reading from the letter of saint paul to the corinthians he said we are courageous and that's why i desire for the people of god that even though these things are scandalous that we're not surprised by it and that we strengthen our firmness of faith to the promises of the lord i think that's the most important thing and and when i when i try to grasp how it is that these things are taking place i can't help but think to the words of the lord himself when he went through his passion 2000 years ago and when i look at the bewilderment of priests like i take encouragement and confidence from the witness of these men who are enduring these incredible hardships and and i can't believe that so many priests in our time are having to go through these things as well yeah i think that's a real shock to many of the faithful it is that's the reason we wanted nine of you we should say for the record that there were a number of other uh priests who were wanting to come and whatever the particular circumstances they were in are you not able to get away from the parish or whatever the case was they weren't able to uh to make it here but i mean i think it's a fair statement to say and i think you would agree with it if you do uh that your presence here really represents many other priests some of whom who are actually you know suffering quietly privately they don't know that when the bishop called them in they should have brought in a cannon lawyer with them all of these sorts of things and they've been really taken advantage of and abused and think because of your disposition as men and priests that well if the bishop says i have to do this i have to do it and that's not always the case is it yeah i wanted to speak a moment with respect to how over the last since the council psychology has been used in a bad way to shelve a sideline priest you know um psychology psychology for example there's good psychology and there's bad psychology all of us know that uh in our world today we need good psychological institutions programs to help people with addiction problems various forms of mental illness and whatnot and so throughout our country there every state has very good facilities for dealing with psychological issues so there is you know one of the big uh problems venues for sidelining priests are institutions like saint luke saint john vianney ditmer as well as others alma guest house here in michigan you know it's it's one thing to and just for the sake of the viewers father if i can interrupt you these are places where just for the curious the numbers of year how many of you have either been uh have either been to one of those places has been told you have to go to one of those places or been threatened with having to go to one of those places yeah okay look at that that's almost unanimous with the exception of father perron who probably got told that and said no [Laughter] so eight of the nine of you have been threatened i'm sorry i haven't been threatened yet yeah maybe that's coming but i mean to this point i think it's an important point uh this is something that is largely off the radar of the faithful that you are accused of having mental problems anger issues and all of this that's how they kind of mask over the fact that you're teaching the faith of course you've got your problems everybody on earth has their problems but you have to go be institutionalized for them put away for six months at the cost of about thirty thousand ish dollars a month of lay people's money they give for the spreading of the faith and they're using that money to essentially silence you and brand you as having mental problems and the whole bit and then you come back to your dioceses and if you get an assignment again it's in you know it's our lady of the trash heap somewhere at the very far reaches of the diocese and you never heard from again because you're kind of a nut case is that a fair summation correct so but even even more obnoxious than that is this ruse they play for having an individual before they're institutionalized signing off to the bishop or his protege power of attorney for medical decisions that is something that should flagrantly never happen i did it once in my life and i will never do something as stupid as that again yeah let's let's elaborate on that for a moment again something i don't even father altman even knew that from the book on history no i did not as a lawyer go who was his no this is going back many years ago okay so this is uh his predecessor so again his predecessor who was fled out in bed recovering from radical cancer surgery so again you have boys individuals working in chancellories uh given the responsibility for something as sensitive as that which should only really be limited by law to a blood relative or somebody who uh is a hundred percent behind you as compared to this um concept i mean imagine that you have to sign away your rights to make your own medical determination is that common i've never heard of this before yes yeah welcome to the club so the father i know you have some opinions on all of this well i have five years of experience with this so i was ordained a priest of jesus christ thanks be to god five years ago on november 28 2015 and nine weeks into my assignment at the cusp of the new year in 2016 i was hearing confessions of confirmation students these were teenagers and they complained how i heard their confessions because they didn't examine their conscience so i had to help them examine their conscience with them and um you know you cover all the ten commandments and you cover the sixth commandment and some feel uncomfortable it's yes or no questions and i know noticed other details that are there that i was not trained properly but i was zealous and trying to do the work that other pastors had not done to help and cata catechesis uh just not there to help them examine their consciences to make the good confession they could brought in four days later with all these letters saying that i was uh grossly asking questions and confessional and appropriately trying to do the best job i could with the way i was trained and um you know sentence uh you can go to the psychological hospital for priest or you can be permanently unassigned and so i said well i want to go back into ministry you know so if the best way to get back to ministry is to go to this psychological hospital uh they really do weaponize this again they send you a folder and they say we need you to reevaluate the priest you want to be and they say we don't hear confessions like that okay well you could have told me that in two minutes i understand i won't do confession like that ever again um you know it could have been solved in two minutes and instead it turned into a five-year exiled nightmare of the cross and being abandoned and you're still in she's still in you know uh there's um the the only the only resolution is to live with christ to die with christ to rise with christ and to realize what it means to be a true priest of jesus christ is your residence is the cross it is calvary and uh to depart from calvary is to depart from every source of grace and so it became uh because god called me to priesthood and the bishop was trying to call me out of priesthood after six months of working the program at st john vienne center uh was at the tune of thirty thousand dollars a month which if you do the math it's a hundred eighty thousand dollars uh they labeled me with a personality disorder unspecified with narcissistic and histrionic traits so they could say that this man is unstable for ministry uh but even the john viennese center wanted me to go back into ministry they said we don't really a threat you know to anybody we can go back to ministry but then the bishop says you're you're not going to benefit the diocese you know so we need you to work here you sit permanently we need you to work at lowe's and houma at the hardware store for the next year and go through more psychological mind rape for the next year and talk about all these issues that you surrender all of your medical rights and histories and then the possibility of violating hipaa goes through the roof because if the bishop and the vicar for clergy receive your hip uh you know your diagnosis they're sharing with the insurance companies the insurance companies see that you're a risk at some capacity just even a whisper of a risk and if the bishop puts you back in ministry and let's say some incident does happen to happen and it might even be a it might even be a very small minor issue then all of a sudden the insurances will pull their insurance from the dioceses and the bishop is saying well i either defend this priest or i risk losing the entrance of the diocese then you realize that the bishop is a ceo of a corporation with a religious veneer and it's in a priest is just an employee of the corporation and you're either a benefit or a liability to the corporation you're not a priest of jesus christ anymore you're not a son of god you don't have the dignity of a human person anymore you're lower than a worm and you can fully enter into the mystery of christ when christ himself says i am a worm and no man and then you you figure the the strength of your priesthood has to come from the cross and the crucifixion of the spiritual saucer dota side that comes from spiritual fathers of bishops destroying their priestly sons and committing priest abortion and then so many priests leave the priesthood because of this and other priests continue to pray heroically their masses silently they can affect people on a smaller scale ministerially physically but by their prayers who knows the effects of the masses of the union union of the priests and the eucharist and the cross in that moment to pray for the graces of the world so that the bishops can have a conversion of mind and heart to say you know what god called me more to be a ceo of a dice of a corporation with a religious veneer that calls itself the catholic church do you think when i ask you fathers do you think that this is something you are from multiple dioceses here and again many other priests that we've spoken to and done some stories and features on do you think this is just sort of a widespread mentality among the bishops that you know as you characterize it ceos of a corporation but something other than shepherds who have their spiritual sons who have their spiritual children and we're all trying to get to heaven that's what all of this is about and yet none of you seem to have any of that even close to that experience of any of this do you think this is just a widespread thing among the u.s episcopate what are the last 15 months taught us though maybe one of the reasons why they closed the church if they were afraid of oh somebody might say well they got sick at the catholic church i mean it's preposterous but in what kind of if he if they thought as a father thought they never would have done that none of them would have done that two weeks maybe and then they're over um so yeah that sounds like a very good explanation as to how they approach the office of the minor and it just staggers you know this isn't rockets all you need to know they locked the churches and denied people the sacrament so one job we're supposed to do with one thing and they did they canceled it even as planned parenthood stayed open we prayed by the way on the way here we passed it and we prayed yeah it was it was pretty amazing father right you have a bit of a it's not exactly the covid thing but you are being threatened with having your priesthood completely taken away from you and busted down to the lay state as far as the shepherds the fatherliness i think we all were shaken i know i was to learn that the shepherd who gave me holy orders should have been in jail that very day and talk about psychologically confusing thing to have happened you know speak for myself but i think i speak for really a lot of catholics a lot of priests a lot of catholics uh needing some kind of psychological recovery from something like that um and i mean i've found great inspiration from the way that uh the victims of of this particular predator theodore mccarrick and other victims of other predators have found a way to do that have that have given us uh the solution you know the the the weaponization of of psychology in our lives is something that most of us have had to deal with the the the healing that victim survivors have experienced by speaking the truth openly uh confronting the evil-doers with the truth that's that that's healing right there that's that's inspiration and that that has helped me enormously to uh find a path from where uh thousands tens of thousands have lost the faith because of this kind of predation that we've seen systematically in our church uh interrupt your father and ask you and then the other priest how uh shocking was it to you as priests to hear senior members of the u.s hierarchy like donald wuerl and kevin farrell who's now the camerlingo of the church flat out lie about what they knew about theodore mccarrick they flat out lied they interviewed cardinal farrell just for the sake of the audience and jog their memories they interviewed cardinal farrell in the immediate aftermath and he sat there and said oh i was shocked i was shocked and in reality when the mccarrick report came out down there buried in a footnote i think it was on page 138 i can't remember what page it was on doesn't matter it says he knew about it in 2007 that's 11 years before the revelations became public lie flat out lie and donald wuerl oh i didn't know anything about it it was not like it's a crisis or a massive massive crisis and here we come to find out from his secretary yeah he knew all about it because here's all the papers and i turned them over and archbishop vegano comes out and says yep these guys are all lying through their teeth he said donald wuerl is lying through his teeth for your priesthoods what kind of impact does that have on you men and other priests when you when all of this starts to come public father altman you you talked about teaching the truth to the faithful how about living the truth uh and and uh the reason i'm sitting here is because um i just got fed up being on the inside i was a bishop malone secretary in buffalo in buffalo new york who has been dubbed the lying cheating bishop malone of buffalo yes disgrace just grace disgrace so you know ended up recording uh some of the meetings and and showing to the people indeed that he is lying you know and um sometimes people say you know what i've done to the bishop i said no i've done nothing to the bishop except let people hear his voice when he's in private uh in private meetings you know and um and my struggle is is uh that as our founder jesus christ taught us the truth will set you free why are we hiding why are we lying about the truth you know and it's it's uh it's simply to protect predators like mccarrick uh monsters like other you know uh a number of other predators around um you know we we hide them and and uh shelter them and that's the reason for the lie and and it's it's so contrary to what we are about as a church you know and and uh so so my own personal struggle is you know if if the bishops so-called shepherds are going at such a extend you know uh to to lie about such horrible things how could you expect them to be to care for the faithful to for their souls to be nourished for for the salvation you know if they if they if they lie about and hide and protect child rapists you know so so uh we need to sometimes wake up and realize like you know they're not just lying about mccarrick they've been lying for last 30 40 years about what's been going on in 2016 as a bishop secretary i had a unfortunate task of going through the secret archives in our diocese that experience really i consider as a rape almost to my soul to see that decade after decade these bishops knew what was going on number of victims came 160 victims in buffalo that many files i was reviewing um came forward described what happened to them and the priest was removed from the parish and sent to a boys town you know and this is this is not isolated incident so so so you know what what we're what we are uh uh seeing is is is uh a total denial of truth about the past then how could we uh expect the bishops uh you know to lead us to the truth if they cannot live it so i don't want to paint all the bishops with the with the you know same uh stroke but you know the the um i want to see for me the smell test for shepherd is are they afraid of the truth and and and you know the the the thing is uh uh uh very important uh to me personally uh you know because what i saw on the inside is all about deceiving the faithful hiring great pr firms pr people changing the narratives it's not about the gospels not about the works it's not about the salvation but the pr father you're not here the dilemma for us is that if we speak the truth if we expose this if we defend the faith and preach it boldly as we're supposed to and speak about the corruption the church we are sidelined so and we have no other recourse they are the bishops they are in charge so if they remove us they are effectively continuing the very problem that we're trying to address and and speaking out i mean you're all sitting here right now father interrupt you and then you're all sitting here because in essence what you've done needs to be silenced is part of the cover-up the continuing cover-up and if we don't have a medium like this church militant you know there's going to be no way for us to speak uh our pulpits have been taken away from us and uh and we are separated from the people at least in my case we're forbidden to have contact with them so how do we how do we continue to be priests uh how do we continue to be heralds of the of the gospel if if if we are removed and there is no other recourse this is my this is the great paradox the bishops uh christ set up his church as a hierarchy right so um we can't sideline them we can't become protestants we're not we can't open up shop and and start our own church so when the very structure itself is having these uh problems and we want to address them and we are removed from having any effect and make any change uh it's just very frustrating and that's why that's why we're here other fashions your original question michael why are we here i i've spoken to all the priests sitting here and i can speak for myself now i'm here and i became a priest because you know i'm in love with the catholic faith and it's a hard doctrine and when we speak about corruption in the church in the hierarchy or in whatever ranks you know we we all make mistakes we all sin i've certainly sinned in my life and even sometimes grievously but i've repented and what we seem to be seeing is this lack of repentance so you ask the question you know how does it make you feel when you hear these lies and it's frustrating and discouraging because we became priests to inspire people to this faith that we're in love with but we want to be inspired too by our leaders and those are over us and and i we're just not seeing that you know when you look at the senior leadership the cardinals of the church here in the us and very powerful archbishops who never talk about anything publicly or very seldomly talk about anything that you're talking about on the spiritual realm it's always immigration reform climate change you know bishop mcelroy came out and said uh last year i believe it was you know uh stop placing so much virtu so much emphasis on chastity you know it's just it's just a virtue it's no big deal and he kept going on and they're constantly it almost sounds like sideways fashion attacking the church and usurping it and trying to turn it into something that it's not and yet here you all are saying nope sorry shepherds you got your priorities completely flipped around completely flipped around what's your response if i might sure i think we do have in common a couple things we we have in common uh as father fasting just said so beautifully that we're in love with the catholic faith where we're in love with with our lord and and and i think we have in common that that we trust him we trust in the genuine uh source of life of the church which is god and jesus christ and so we have something to say about it and and we we are inspired to bear witness to the truth that we believe in and trust and for some reason that um is interfering with a communications control program that is being imposed from an authority that is not strong but is in fact quite weak because the the strong authority doesn't fear the free speech of honest men trying to bear witness to the to the foundational truths of the church so um let's i i try to hold on to that trust that that ultimately even though there might be other authorities trying to exercise limited power over us at this moment in history that that the lord is is the one who runs the show in the end and we we i think the other thing we have in common here is that we know we have to answer to him above all and that's what we're trying to i want to say segway on what father mark said again when i was abused by uh reverend lawrence cosey in 1982 the very just for the audience to say father you were sexually assaulted by a priest you put it down as a rape in the middle of night when i was working as an orderly in a nursing home in which she orchestrated making certain um so it took place in a night with very few there's like next to no staff on board in a back area of the facility in the lower level so that was before you were a priest yeah and so and it never happened again because i walked out of that facility it's the only job i've ever walked out of i was a orderly with responsibility for like 20 some patients and i walked off the job after it happened and i and i the first thing i did was go to my good pastor father corvo and spill my guts out and i spent the whole morning there just uh sitting there in a chair but and i watched him go to task as a good priest and pastor that he was calling bernadine's chancellor and reporting everything that happened and it was reported that day i was never to go back to that facility again he orchestrated me going back to school early so i came back to detroit for my studies early and got back on track with getting my life together which really took about 12 years because i was with the franciscans at the time summer at home with family doing my job as an orderly which i was trained for so that being said um did nothing ever come against father cozy not at all and that's that's the whole thing father cozy was a classmate of bishop world at the north american college they are the same class similarly the provincial for uh the scale of indians who's this gallivanian priest was also of that same class these are all boys spoke italian english and they were all fast-tracked for making it good in the church however father cozy because of his print election for kids got in trouble very early he was in charge of the high school seminary this gallery has had in the stone park in illinois he was removed as rector for uh messing with too many of the boys there and and years later i would meet up with them with support groups other other individuals that were abused by this man so father father uh the priest that abused me was taken out early in his 50s by i always put it they said he died from diabetes at 55 but i always put it down for uh aids probably again there's no fact but it is what it is um so but he died a priest he died a priest and he was given honors and all of the above when he passed away even though they knew it they are the ones who took them out even though multiple victims made what played out happened happened so you know classics example and then in circa 2008 um you know in the aftermath of spending almost seven months at st luke's in one of the therapy programs was to write up what happened to me and present it to responsible authorities so that was done so everybody in the archdiocese of chicago got a full copy i met with witnesses with cardinal francis george he knew who was involved with what played out similarly i met with the classmate provincial scalabrinian for father cozy classmate of world and uh you know after going through the spiel of what played out with myself uh this man said oh i never you know it's it's it takes your breath away the audacity of these guys and how they go about lying oh i am never knew he had a drinking problem because because the you know part the the the abuse he was you know he was a guy in charge of a couple hundred bed facility totally intoxicated when this all plays out so uh so it's it's bizarre again you know they it's it it all said you know this month it's three years since the mccarrick you know the uh revolutions came on came out and nothing has changed absolutely nothing has changed you have these favorite guys that are promoted to episcopacy and whatnot and uh just look the other way with respect to jettisoning their vows and the rest of it in a temporal fashion you know this this the thing is these guys get away with lying because the media in all respects supports the narrative of the lie right no but no nobody in catholic media has ever ever talk to me about anything that happened you know you know you know when you think about it it's phenomenal how an individual who was abused not once but twice in the course of his youth came full circle after working out in the community uh for 11 years to become a priest you know which was my you know when i was four years of age i wanted to be a priest and that was all put on hold for a long period of time because of what played out with father cozy's rape of me and that facility all those years back you know because i couldn't uh put it together in my head how on the one hand you can have this guy celebrating mass every day in front of a bunch of nuns in this health facility and then on the other hand you know he's messing with the male staff um it is what it is you actually bring up a really good point father the institution has i think by its own actions uh more than the veneer but probably the substance not spiritually talking temporally uh of just being flat out corrupt it's corrupt it's a network it protects its own it does whatever it does and that includes not just the bishops but the people who keep the bishops in place by never doing stories about them and here's why we here have earned their you know great respect [Laughter] because we'll just say you know blazes with it we need to tell the truth you're all victims the people who are now deprived of your love for them through your priesthood they are victims the sexual abuse people victims are victims of survivors but they're victims of it all and all of this entire thing is being protected and covered up by these men and they promote each other they advance each other they shut up for each other they cover for each other and you're all witnesses to that plus all the other hundreds of priests that we speak to and yet here you are essentially stranded and attacked by these very men because all you want to do is speak the truth we were talking last night about being a systemic problem systemic systemic in the church yeah or i like the swamp is another word for it too uh it is very systemic i didn't mean to cut you off but it does seem to me i mean even when you look at oh there's nine of us here right aren't there 20 in rockford that i just god people don't know the extent that this happens and something else too is it okay so we know about pharaoh and we know about world knowing knowing what they did and they flat how to put live through their teeth said it yeah so so why aren't the other bishops saying something because silence is complicity yes so we can say well maybe you know a third or whatever percentage we're we're just like i mean i'm just shocked by these stories that i'm hearing uh that would go like what you what he was talking about and and he came away how many hundred and some files 160. yeah and and i'm shocked by this well right now it's up to 500 but 160 is in buffalo alone yeah and that probably represents only about ten percent of victims you know yeah some of the victims won't come forward some of them have died some of them just don't want to be bothered reliving it but that was minimal but that was known for for for years and years before so it's not like the victims haven't been coming forward they have and that's the lie i heard as a priest oh that's been taken care of that's a long time ago we have policies in place and then you come across as like they lie even to us and if the shepherds know it because everybody listen nobody did not know what mccarrick was up to why are they not speaking up and speaking out against them because they'll incorporate you know that's why that's why you know it's a network as you pull one thread and the whole thing comes down father you had something to add one of the things i'm so grateful for for this initiative we got to talk together beforehand and just being inspired and encouraged by my brothers who have been suffering this much longer than i have you you struggle with because we love the lord and we love his church we don't want to create scandal because our lord tells us if we create scandal it'd be better for a millstone to be tied around us and thrown into the sea but as i wrestled with that the lord gave me the conviction that failing to speak the truth and participating in the cover-up that's the scandal amen so it's time to rip the band-aid off and to let god's people see exactly what's going on behind the scenes another reason why i was encouraged to come here is about a month ago i had an opportunity to talk with a brother priest and he's going through the exact same thing that i went through that is they're threatening him with the psyche val because of anger issues if he refuses to go to the psyche val they're just going to sideline him and when i saw a tear in his eyes and his gut response was i'm just going to leave the priesthood that's when i realized we need to do something because if this mechanism of defaming and sidelining priests if something isn't done it's never going to stop and so i'm just so grateful for this opportunity to hear the testimony of my brothers and to be encouraged by them do any of you fathers feel that your presence here is being disobedient [Music] not at all i'm trying to speak the truth so how could that be against obedience and the church's teaching you know so i think a lot of people a lot of catholic faithful think that no matter what the bishop or a bishop tells a priest to do he must do it or he's disobedient you guys care to disabuse the audience of that again that concept of blind obedience i don't know where it comes from but it's definitely not found in sacred scripture nor is it part of our tradition we look closely many of the saints over the years have bucked the authorities of the time whether it's king or bishop so again a priest makes a vow primarily to god to be obedient to all things and faith and morals he doesn't make a promise to any man to uh follow every dictate that comes from his mouth on a given day it just does not work that way you know so for example you know you look back historically in the aftermath of world war ii and then urban trials uh many of the soldiers that you know gave tessa oh you know but uh i was just doing just following orders and it's like when did we subvert what was rational and good to be obedient to some authority some man it's bizarre so uh you know that sort of uh and you so you you see this you know it's oh you know the the the bishop uh told us that we have to lock up the churches so so how does that work with keeping the third commandment you know it's one of those questions that that comes to your mind immediately so so uh you know we're called we've always understood as roman catholics that you keep the sabbath by going to church with other parishioners and if in a state of grace receiving the sacrament of holy communion right that's how we keep the sabbath we don't keep the sabbath by you know sitting around at home and turning on a tv set and trying to catch a uh on online math online math somewhere and hope the camera works father you got a comment yes sir i i i'm so proud of these priests because uh i know that they would never go outside of the church and i believe every single one of us would even give our live blood before we would be separated from the church and we recognize her structure from the beginning established by the lord so the the hierarchy is absolutely essential to the life of the church absolutely but just like when i serve in the i serve in the prisons back in texas and beautiful faithful men and women and i tell them oftentimes you're just as much a part of the body of christ as any priest or bishop and i believe in in the struggles of these times it's gonna take the laity to rise up and do their part to put the house of god in order anew i i think that that's absolutely critical because the pain of of the realities that are taking place are nothing new but i think even more more painful and prevalent than even in the beginning it's like the lord himself said if this had been done to me by an enemy i could bear his but it's you my own intimate friend and the sad reality that i've come to see in in our time is that there are many judas priests yeah i'd like to ask you this it's uh might be somewhat sensitive but hey look we're all all friends here uh the um when the original john jay report came out in 2004 based on all the revelations of the boston globes you know excellent reporting uh on the sex abuse and all of that initially the john j report laid it all out it was roughly 80 to 85 percent of the sexual abuse victims were teenage physically mature teenage males well that doesn't speak to just a generic sex abuse problem that speaks to a homosexual sex abuse problem and we weren't dealing with pedophilia which is prepubescent we were dealing largely way by and large with a fibophilia which is essentially pederasty how much more disturbing is it that it's not just sex abuse being covered up but you men have all been in seminary you've all seen seen and heard many things in seminary that are untoward you have other priest friends who've told you well this place is gay i left it just on and on and on like that how much do you think the current crisis in the church and what you're feeling the effects of is due to uh homosexuality than the ranks of priests and bishops father i would say a hundred percent of what we're experiencing um would you all agree with that he just said a hundred percent when father stephen spoke about the importance and maybe father jeff touched that too that um if you know if we do sin we have to repent right and so the nine of us here we don't have any fetish with any particular sin right it's like we're not homophobes we don't hate homosexuals and we're not afraid of them right but it's that unrepentant sin it's saying something that is a sin is not a sin that's when you end up having to live a double life you become a whitewashed tomb because you're not able to be sincere you're not able to be yourself right so you have this corruption within you and you don't repent you don't ask jesus for grace or mercy so if our bishops were struggling with adultery and they were saying that adultery is not a sin it would be the same issue so it's not that we have a fetish for any particular sin or any particular vice it's the unrepentant sin and it's saying that a sin is not a sin that's where the issue is and you know in my own experience i'll never forget the day in november of 2019 when a family came to me with serious concerns that an employee of the archdiocese was homosexually grooming their college-age son and i had to hear that testimony and when i was all of a sudden put in the middle of the investigation and at a certain point i was told there's nothing that can be done right well having heard the pain that those parents were going we're talking about 2019 this is that point that nothing's changed right so then when i pushed back and there had to be another investigation another interview then once again the response was there's nothing that can be done that's when i started to yell on the phone what do you mean there's nothing that can be done if i called and said that a priest was sexually harassing my 23 year old daughter but my daughter's not comfortable coming and talking about right now you tell me there's nothing that could be done and so to me it's that's the corruption that's at the core of so many of our problems because the people in the establishment can't be sincere because they're not willing to repent and so they just become whitewashed tombs and that weakness michael the you know whether it be the homosexuality the unrepentance or the you know the not telling the truth the lying is hampering our ability i mean for me it's hampered my ability to simply speak the gospel message authentic catholicism boldly and clearly because that's what i do and for that that's what you've gotten in trouble for i have gotten in trouble for preaching about things like the reality of hell that a whole host of doctors of the church have taught us that most people aren't going to heaven um you know i preached about the doctrine of fraternal correction um and yeah it's amazing how i'm not supported you know by those who are over me for simply preaching that truth you know our faith is a beautiful faith but it's a it's a difficult doctrine but not one that we can't live because christ asks us to live it and he always will give us the grace to live it but because of this weakness that we're all highlighting it does you know even the bishops have trouble when we preach hard truths like that at least in my experience it's it's been that do you think there is a uh that by and large perhaps not every single bishop in the u.s but by and large there is a sympathy way beyond what it needs to be for homosexuality within their own ranks and i will share without saying who the bishop was i was kind of floored i was having a private conversation with a bishop a number of years ago right just in the wake of the mccarrick stuff and i meant made mention to him about well you know this is this is all homosexuality here it is carrick it was all boys and seminarians and blah blah and i could see he was slightly put off by the underlying assumption that it was homosexuality and he said to me and i really have to say i was really like knocked back particularly because of who it was coming from he said why he was a bishop he said well i know many bishops who are gay and i was just shocked when he said it and he referenced well you know they're being celibate or you know whatever i'm so and the immediate question that came to my mind was well first of all how do you know they're being celibate secondly how do you know they're gay not celibate chaste and how do you know they're gay why are they telling you that if this is something they're all fine with and it's in it's all compartmentalized correctly and they've treated spiritually and all the stuff if everything's fine why are they telling you that and how do you know that what they're telling you is true and you as we here at church militant all the 60 plus people work here we hear all these phone calls we get all these emails and visits from like yourselves and others all we constantly hear is that there is this network of gay men who administer the seminaries run the seminaries appoint the rectors of the seminaries climb their way up protect each other advance each other and everybody else who is some threat to that structure is too rigid needs to be marginalized needs to be sidelined you have anger problems you need to be institutionalized and that's what's really running the show here and i think that's coming out more and more your thoughts i as a seminarian i was assaulted by a priest and um excuse me how many of you have ever been approached either as a priest or a seminarian by another priest sexually wow wow for me it happened during the night um when i woke up the priest was there behind behind me um when i reported it to the diocese i ended up being blackmailed by auxiliary bishop who later on i found out he was a classmate of that priest father art smith i was told it was my fault that he locked the door and uh how old were your father i was 21. but it was difficult that was just uh freshly arrived in this country i all i knew at that point it was how to order latte at starbucks perhaps not to how to report a sexual assault and and you know uh i remember just going through a dictionary just to find words to describe you know what what happened and and then um but then i when i went to see the bishop uh actually bishop was in charge of the diocese at that time uh i was like filled with hope because i was hoping like you know he he'll help me you know to deal with this crazy guy you know a sick fellow and he says you know richard unless you shut up you'll not be ordained a priest and implied that if i if i don't stop speaking about this i'll be deported back to poland and you know it was my uh conviction at that time and still is that i was called and made by god to be a priest and it's very hard to to to what do i do do i uh then go to the press go to police and sacrifice a dream a vocation and and that's a lot for a 21 year old to process exactly and see but you know what what i realized is is the the the situation that seminarians are in you know the vulnerable being so vulnerable like you know you have you have no rights canonical rights even as pastors you know some guys have some rights but as a seminarian you could be dismissed for reason whatsoever reason so if you uh you know try to disrupt the predatory culture of course they're gonna get rid of you you know unless you conform and or at least stay silent oh stay silent you know and and i was i was um that's one of the my big regrets is that i did not go to the press why because then i found out later on father smith victimized several people after me father how old are you now i'm 40 years old before and it still hurts it still hurts that you know i chose to be a priest instead of blowing in the predator and those are the choices as the seminarians you face so so i i think you know if people want to see change is they need we need to do something for the seminarians so they don't have to be in such situation again so i'm not sure what what it might be but there must be some solution to it that that you know uh uh that the culture um because what happens in the seminar is the reason why there are so many predators around it because it's an easy prey you have no voice no rights and then you invite guys from all over the world you're on a student visa and you know i want to consult an attorney and you know if if i report to the police well they'll dismiss me from the seminary i have to leave the country how do i defend myself and and you know from from another country barely speaking the language nor the culture so so uh but but i know many other seminarians uh uh have been in a similar situation you know and and and they're they're they're uh um is laying very heavy on my heart to advocate for change of how seminars are wrong that men you know can stand up uh and and have some backing you know uh of the people of i don't know if the institution cannot expect you know some something needs to change because um you know uh later on it's like what do you do as a priest you know do i sacrifice my priesthood if i say something i know some of my brother priests are afraid to to stand up and and preach the truth or tell the truth because they might be 60 years old and they don't have much savings how will i live you know what do i do you know we don't make a lot of money and sometimes you know if you if your family doesn't give you money where do you get it from so so you're totally dependent on the bishop with the moment you're suspended you lose a lot of or all of your income and those are the choices that that you know somebody might be facing you know am i you know gonna uh be uh honest and and challenge or tell the truth and and or i'm gonna provide for my medication you know if i cut me off from the insurance i have this you know expensive medication i need to take and um but that's that's priesthood seminaries are far more vulnerable and and and this is this is uh what's what's uh what i shared with you is as many many men had similar experience i've i've i've spoken i just wanted to add one thing here the entire system as it has been set up by the lavender mafia has to be scrapped just just to tag along one thing when bernadine passed away in 96 they had us seminarians going to the airport picking up bishops and whatnot for his funeral i had the grace of being given and again this is all by design now but i picked up archbishop quinn brought him in downtown to this hotel when went back out to the end i picked up also mccarrick so you know uh again it just calls me now all these years later to just to reflect on that system that put a predator having at the time i was uh 36 37 uh 37 years of age nothing was going to happen but you know mccarrick with 40 bucks at the time to a guy not working in the seminary was a lot of money oh you want to come up to my room for a drink it's like what absolute bs to have a system that puts predators in the in and seminary vulnerable seminaries close together you know with money in hand to entice them to a private spot father perron you saw in your seminary years uh much of all of this up close here we are talking about things that have happened in the last 20 years or so this goes back for you 50 years this is systemic it's non-stop it just keeps going right right across from my room in the seminary we knew that this homosexual activity was going on but there was no way we could report it because if we did then we would be the problem and then you knew that then we knew it that way we all knew it everyone knew this was going on and we also knew that we would be penalized if we if we spoke up so everyone just kept quiet about it we laughed about it we joked about it i mean what what can you do about it so did those men go on to be ordained uh no thank god these two no did not but many did sure i i presume i mean yes i don't know who's who uh in in my uh experience at the seminary except what's come out you know since since that time but uh um yeah it was it was there was an oppressive spirit that we had to keep our mouths shut otherwise we would be we would be the problem instead of a being the problem now you've reached an older age where you didn't keep your mouth shut and you're the problem so your instincts back then were right father it's true that there's no place in the priesthood of our lord jesus christ for any of that kind of sentiment and because it's absolutely contrary to the gospel it's an abomination and it's also true that a person a man who struggles with the temptation like that should never be the one to go chasing to the priesthood because of the spiritual struggle that it becomes more intense than any other temptation and that's why the church has long had that sentiment in her history but it's true that i would say that's one of the the greatest uh root causes of the problems that we face in in in the modern church homosexuality among them yes and in fact uh i raised my hand when you asked if if if ever it was uh affronted to my to my own person and some you know uh when i've spoken about these things or anybody speaks about it sometimes they'll say uh well if you speak against that you're a homophobe or it's uh because you're too rigid and that's not true at all it happened in privacy or in private i could have crushed this man but i desired for his conversion authentically and to be true to god when i reported some things when i was in the seminary it put off my ordination to the holy priesthood for more than a year hold that point for a second how many of you has that either happened to you or you have other friends who are priests who had ordination delayed because they were telling hey here's what's going on father you too yes all right good continue bob and so that's why you know these these problems are deep as we mentioned systemic and uh we can never uh relent on the fight to renew the church i think that that's that's what has to take place we've seen in the past in the time of dominic and francis teresa of avila great champions on the past i was telling the brothers this morning we need some saints and they were like yeah we need some saint bishops and i'm like amen amen and we can't give up we can't uh relent in as i mentioned earlier saint paul said to be courageous for for the church because we can never go out of the church of course not father one thing i wanted to add is that this is not pure speculation in terms of the gee i wonder if this could be the case i remember in the late 90s father pavone in his priests for life newsletter he published an excerpt from a militant homosexual magazine in the 70s in which they laid out their game plan they said we are going to infiltrate you catholic church we're going to infiltrate your curias your seminaries your schools your parishes and we're going to destroy you so there's at least some evidence of a plan that was orchestrated put into place by a few or by many to infiltrate our holy church so as to destroy it in some charitable terms what do you men who have dedicated your lives to the truth of the faith and sacraments and saving souls and all of that how do you respond when you see not just this particular priest but many like him but him in highlighting father james martin being invited into your dioceses being invited on zoom calls and conferences and having busloads of thousands of teenage high school students brought to him and bishops cardinals endorsing his book and he's all this celebration and you would be hard-pressed to find a single bishop in the united states that will speak out against him yeah you're all sitting here representing hundreds of others uh who are sidelined for the exact opposite your thoughts it's truly disgusting and it's a reversal of roles of what a bishop should do to protect and defend the catholic faith instead of promoting uh not the catholic faith and not in protecting not the catholic faith you know promoting sin is not the catholic faith there's never been repent and of your sin and believe in the gospel uh in that respect you know why are we all here it's to call to mind conversion among the clergy among the brother priests among the brother seminarians among the the bishops uh are you know bro are those above us in authority now what causes that conviction it's conversion and at la and it points to god being above all else the greatest love of your life and there's nothing that should stop you from loving god no sin no relationship no power no so no source of no no position of authority should be greater than your love for jesus christ and whenever you receive the reconciliation and the power forgiveness and the confessional of whatever sin it is because homosexuality or any other sexual sins they want to convict you of you're the worst person in the world and if somebody knew about those sins then i am just going to melt into oblivion i'm going to be less than pond scum and the in the the reality is is that we are all never mer we never merited anything good in this life save what christ has given to us in salvation and it is a free gift of grace and is so wonderful and this this gift of repentance and forgiveness and restoration is given to us in the confessional and the book of the apocalypse says clearly the accuser of our brothers is cast out and we what what you're experiencing the systemic oppression of good priests is a systemic oppression of the faith because that's what the devil does because that's the accuser and whenever we don't live a life of reconciliation and saying okay yes i have sinned you know part of the reflection of the last five years yes i have sinned but i'm also paying for the sins of others there's temporal punishment due to sin and it's okay to suffer penance to restore my state in life and to say you know what i did sin but i'm not gonna live in my sin i'm going to move forward i know that the the power of christ is greater than my sins and in the and i'm preaching to the bishops right now there is no sin that is unforgivable and the people of god are very forgiving if you're honest with your sinfulness and if you're honest in saying christ needs to be the center of my life again because christ is the center of the church and i need my authority to stem from the lifeblood of the faith which is a fountain and whenever your faith is that fountain of grace is flowing then we can be you can be the shepherd that you're called to be instead of the ceo of a corporation that's not going to get you into heaven being a good shepherd will get you into heaven not being a hireling entering through the gate and the gate is jesus christ and christ crucified and if there was a moment to say you want a really clean house you have to really be specific about sin and bring it out into the open and saying you know what i am a sinner and i'm i know i am worthless and i am spineless and i need to be recreated you know jesus christ is a carpenter he can fix the church if we give him the permission to and you give him permission to when you permit when you stop going to confession with the same people that have heard your confession for decades and giving you oh it's okay it's going to be okay it's going to be okay no it's not okay wasting every single priest that's here is worth a half a million dollars in education and other subsequent funding so you're looking at almost a billion dollars of the people of god's money thrown away because bishops cannot love god more than the money they can't love god more than their sins they can't love god more than their positions of authority and power that were given to them because they decided to play the game and salvation is not a game and then what's that father i want to add one more thing to what's playing out particularly with respect to sins of the flesh you know we're living in a society now that has no shame and no behavior is thought as shameful so you know what you have playing out with individuals like jim martin who go out there and validate people's sinful behavior as if it was a good those are individuals who will never be saved those are individuals who will never walk with christ because in large part their sinful behavior you know have been given a okay a slap on the back and affirming something that is bad as a good so jesus made great headway with the woman at the well in john's gospel because she came to the well in shame so that she wouldn't meet up with nobody at high noon in the heat of the day it was in that conversation with our lord who spoke to her uh who didn't want to speak to anybody um that she came to a relationship with christ and repent of who she was and oh well i've heard you guys i've had more than five husbands so you know this man knows everything i've ever done well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out a woman slinking to the well in the heat of the day is doesn't want to meet up with anybody so uh when somebody in their spiritual journey encounters them feeling guilty because of this that or the next thing it's a good and we should bring that to god and ask god to remove the sin and go on so father was talking here about conversion so the opposite is happening with these uh individuals pushing sin in this very sport whether it's divorce and remarriage and then receiving communion or or the whole oh you know love is love that kind of stuff is flagrantly not based in sacred scripture that we know and it's something other so father's we've legit to wrap up on on time with it but uh if we can uh if i can ask you if you any of you would like to give us just sort of a final thought uh and then father perron you're the senior here no not in black if you could lead us in a hail mary to to conclude father so we're talking about uh a systemic problem and and um my question still i'm pondering is how come the predatorial cultural behavior can exist in the church and we're talking you know issues with homosexual predatory behavior in this country but if you look at the plight of nuns in africa or in india how many of them are raped and how come this you know the institution that is promoting the the uh the truth the care the love the forgiveness is allowing uh this uh predatorial culture around the world including my own country in poland exist what is wrong with the way we are set up the institutions are set up that that such predatory behavior is is allowed to flourish father we're praying for the u.s bishops that are meeting this week and back in 2006 i had been a missionary all over the world for seven years came back home to my archdiocese my home diocese in san antonio and there were seven men discerning to the seminary and we met with archbishop jose gomez who was at that time the archbishop of san antonio and we had mass it was on father's day 2006 and after we went out to eat and he was listening to us speaking and he said all that i need is men who will know and teach the truth of the faith and the catechism of the catholic church and i believe if that was to take place and we pray for that to these bishops that all of these problems would go away yes we are we are promised that absolutely fathers last comment father yeah just a word of encouragement to all of our brother priests that are out there um to have the courage that if the lord asked them to shed light into the darkness to speak the truth that they'd have the courage to do it and you know all of us here would say it's not going to be easy and it's probably not going to end up well but to be a man of integrity and to be able to speak the truth and to be able to have the courage because of our love of christ and his church that might be part of what could lead to this conversion and this repentance is if enough of us had the courage um to shed light into the darkness you had a couple thousand priests like yourself all speaking out and we put two thousand people in here for the interview if a couple thousand priests that would be quite the statement wouldn't it but they don't because what he was saying that they're all afraid because these you call them monsters and miters that was an amazing phrase they this is what happens and uh i think what we need to do hopefully this gives everybody courage to realize they're not alone and something has to be done or else these monsters and miners will continue their oppressive and evil and godless ways in in the church until that changes you know they don't seem to grasp this one simple concept but i'll just leave it with this thing is that the people are fed up with it we're done they're just sick and tired of those people doing what they're doing and when they see suddenly they'll see well there's a lot of us and and and there will be a rallying and they will well artificial food and sheen said 70 years ago you got to rely on the people because the priests and the bishops are not going to do it we are and uh so yeah rick rise up said father from leaders i would just like to say a personal thing is that maybe god is using the suffering of of the priests who have been sidelined uh for some greater greeter and and so you know we shouldn't um i'm just speaking for myself here i've come to realize that i may be doing more good for my people in exile than i would be for them if i were in the parish in some ways that only only god knows and if i unite myself with christ crucified that he will make good of this circumstance so i just you know i i i'm grateful for this opportunity being with these other priests uh it helps me and i hope it's uh it's good for the faithful to hear it as well absolutely in the name of the father and the son of the holy spirit amen hail mary full of grace the lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb jesus holy mary mother of god for us sinners now the hour of our death amen mother of priests pray for us in the name of the father and of the son of the holy spirit amen fathers on behalf of church [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Church Militant

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Keywords: Church Militant, Catholic Church, Michael Voris, The Vortex, Church Militant Michael Voris, Vortex, Church Militant Headlines, Church Militant The Download, Roman Catholic, Priest, Protestant, Atheist, Jewish, Islam, Homosexuality, Liberal, Conservative, Agnostic, Democrat, Republican, Culture, Society, Sin, Virtue, Christ, Jesus, Pope, Vatican, Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary, Christine Niles, Headlines, Spotlight, Mic'd Up, Catholic

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Length: 80min 26sec (4826 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 17 2021