Indifferent Catholics, hypocritical Catholics - in Catholic Ireland

Back in the 1960s I regularly used to travel to Ireland for my summer holidays.

I loved the country, I liked the lifestyle and above all, I felt at home in a Catholic country where being a Mass goer was the norm.

Not any more.

The Michael Voris video clip below took place in Dublin but, my guess is that it could just as easily have been London or Glasgow or Cardiff (if you could find any Catholics to interview).

It shows the poor state of the Faithful, if one can call them that.

Another good Catholic lay speaker

And a female which is good because we need more women coming forward to redress any imbalance there may be and to represent their gender within a Catholic context.

She is also American which is fine for her and for Catholics in the USA but it would be good if there was an English Catholic Voice of similar calibre - of course, good also to have a French, Spanish,  or Welsh speaker but let's not try to eat all of the elephant at one sitting.

I know of at least one young Catholic woman, not English admittedly, but English is her first language, who would be more than capable of speaking, Voris style, to camera or to an audience; I am sure there are many more and men also.

The woman on the video is Helen Alvare and, if you can spare just under one hour of your time, you will not be disappointed at the end.

I've never heard Catholic Voices

I mean that in all sincerity (folks) - it is just that, despite being a regular listener to Radio Four and having my  ear to the ground as far as forthcoming television programmes that may have a Catholic interest is concerned, I have not yet had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of one of CVs "ambassadors" for the Faith.

I know not the reason for this; I wish the organisation well, I am not sniping at them.

But, on the other hand we have Michael Voris and Church Militant.

You cannot visit the Catholic blogosphere without seeing the Daily Voris.

He's there, tackling the topic of the day, as fresh and as regular as one's daily bread.

 As strong as St Michael and may God bless him in his good work.

And to those who state that they are not enamoured of his forthright approach let me ask the question: "If John the Baptist was with us in the flesh today, how do you think he would sound?"

Answer: "Uber forthright" methinks.

The great saints have never minced their words, Campion, Pro, Fisher, Catherine of Sienna - all were outspoken in their day; they did not pussy-foot around with political correct words and phrases, they spoke on the teachings of Christ, straight from the shoulder.

And where are our great orators today? Is there a Monsignor Knox or a Fr McNabb OP in the country?

Or a Chesterton or a Belloc?

We need Michael Voris, desperately; we need more like him; we need Catholic women (especially) who can speak out on Faith issues.

I don't believe in wasting time in re-inventing the wheel; why should there not be a British satellite group stemming from Church Militant? No snub intended for Catholic Voices, their agenda is quite a distinct one from Voris's with a different profile and, unless they were prepared to kick it out and start again, I don't think that it would work.

It's a bit like asking the question: Who is there who could lead the Conservative Party if David Cameron resigned tomorrow?

Not many, if any names spring to mind. Can you think of anyone? To speak for the Faith, I mean.

"You are responsible for the souls of your children

I like muscular Catholicism, telling God's truth as it is and straight from the shoulder.

"We like the Catholic Faith because it's so black and white, you know where you are" used to be a mantra coming from the mouths of converts or catechumens years ago.

Not any more.

We are fed a sloppy diet of sliced value bread and skimmed milk - no nutritional value, nothing to sustain.

I like Michael Voris and cannot understand why so many Catholics slag him off.

He speaks confidently, forthrightly and with conviction - he lives and speaks the Faith!

We are not used to that these days and he may strike some as being just too bold and just too Catholic.

Philothea on Phire has a great post that touches on Michael Voris's latest video clip and the issue of attending a Mass in the Extraordinary Form Latin Mass - here he is:-

The message is: "Get up and go" - what is stopping you?"

Voris Talk in London

What do you think then?

Vorisian Interlude

Twirling the pencil: Voris

As we make our way through my retrospective pilgrimage diary, let us take a small detour down Voris Way where we meet Michael Voris by a tree. Not just any tree, mind, but the Tyburn Tree, the site of the martyrdom of St Oliver Plunkett and other famous Catholic martyrs. Of course, there is no tree to speak of, just a rather easy to miss round stone plaque marking the site where King Henry VIII and I guess Elizabeth I, also, had Catholics put to death for treason against the Crown. If you haven't seen it you can watch his report on Tyburn below.

I was at a loose end after having some lunch with him and some fellow Catholics at a Chinese buffet near St James's Park and asked if I could 'tag along' with him, his one man camera crew, Paul Smeaton and Sean Wright of Juventutem. He was very personable, affable and was very interested in what young English Catholics had to say about their view of the state of the Faith in England.

Martyrdom really seemed to be the essence of Voris's exciting talk, 'Living the Catholic Faith, Radically' at the Salvation Army (an aptly named venue for Voris's pep talk for the troops). Voris is able to really engage an audience and I have to say that while Dr Joseph Shaw of the LMS is absolutely right to point out a couple of things in Voris's talk that raised eyebrows, I didn't come away thinking that he wasn't a good public speaker. All I would say is that with Voris the message (which is bold and exciting) can become too much perhaps only because of his delivery, which is loud, bold, straight-talking, American and therefore cannot escape being tagged as tele-evangelical and off-putting. You will either love Michael Voris's style, or you will hate it - it really is as simple as that. Had the same speech been given by Alec Guiness I'm sure it would have gone down perhaps even better with an English audience, though I'm sure Alec Guiness would never have recommended that people give up stamp-collecting to dedicate more time to preaching the Faith.

Voris led us in a decade of the Rosary at the Tyburn Tree

He is impassioned and challenging and really said what many Saints have said and sadly what too many Bishops and Clergy do not say: to save our souls and the souls of others, we have to face and embrace the Cross. He was addressing us as individuals, which was refreshing, instead of being critical of the Church in its corporate or hierarchical sense. The Cross, is, of course, not at all appealing, which is why so often we prefer to hide in a corner both in our own spiritual battles and in the battle to win others to the Catholic Church - the place and instrument of God's Salvation. For Voris, the Cross means, as well as his public vows of personal chastity, the courage to proclaim the Catholic Faith to anyone who will listen and to endure mockery, rejection and even being hated.



This program is from RealCatholicTV.com

Voris has the ability to grab his audience by the neck and then surprise them with tenderness without suggesting that he is bi-polar or paranoid schizophrenic. He described the condition of homosexuality as a huge Cross and said that chaste homosexuals bearing their Cross within the Church as "spiritual giants", which is something that more in the Church perhaps should be saying - as well as encouraging homosexuals to live the Catholic identity and the Catholic life fully. One gets the sense that Michael, like so many I have met on the recent pilgrimage, make prayer a practise of every hour and every day, in everything he and they do. Part of the reason that I think I feel blue having left the pilgrims is that I have never been exposed to so much corporate prayer and one really does feel like one is being lifted up to Heaven, without it feeling in the slightest bit 'cultish'.

He humourously compared his own Cross of being rejected or mocked by liberals within the Church who enjoy the comfort zone, with first century Christians who were eaten by lions and said that should by God's mercy he get to Heaven and meet one, he will feel embarrassed that he got off so lightly in this World. I found his description of his return to the Church having been jarred by his mother's dying words that she didn't want to 'get to Heaven knowing you are in Hell' moving and there is little doubt that his return to Holy Mother Church was Augustinian - particularly in his abandonment of secular pursuits and determination to turn around and drive the Gospel message full speed into the Church and the World. Like quite a few bloggers, Voris is refreshing because he keeps the message simple and it is a message that he repeats again and again - it is really the message of Our Blessed Lord and His Forerunner, St John the Baptist and Saints like Dominic and Francis. There is a very real sense that the Church so often over-complicates the message and thank God that there are people like Voris who are able to go straight to the heart of the Gospel message and to leave his audience at least thinking about where our lives are going and what our priorities are.

Voris talks with his audience at pub afterwards

Discussing these Saints, Voris urged his audience to be like them and described the truly Catholic life as a candle that burns and burns and burns until nothing is left and they are dead, leaving behind them a trail of light and a fire of charity for Christ and His Church. As others have pointed out, the danger can be in burning out too quickly - we need to put aside some time for things that are objectively pointless hobbies sometimes lest in firing on all cylinders, we break a gasket. Anyone who has seen posts by bloggers written at 4.12am knows what I am talking about.

I did ask Michael whether he would consider coming on the walking Pilgrimage to Walsingham (it would have made a wonderful place for him to do an episode of The Vortex), but he told me that he had to go onto Rome to do another piece...How convenient...lightweight!

It was nice that his audience also got a chance to discuss his talk and his work with him at the pub after the speech. Say a prayer for him. His is an important voice in the Church today, amid a clamour of voices that are saying things contrary to the Teaching of the Church. Whether you like his style or not, his contribution to the new evangelisation is considerable and he is, I believe, a great asset to the One True Church - if only because he is clear that there is only One True Church and it has only one real mission from Christ: the Salvation of the World.

Michael Voris - another opportunity missed

I never made it to London to hear Michael Voris speak. I am still biting my knuckles and kicking the cat (I don't actually own one but if I did I would kick it, sorry cat lovers). I like this man immensely yet he seems to attract quite a degree of criticism from fellow Catholics.

They appear not to like his 'slick performance' - would that we had a few more 'slick performers' - to me that just means someone who is able to communicate in a lively fashion. They say that the human attention span lasts for 30 seconds when being addressed (sermons included) so you need to be pretty damn slick to hold an audience for an hour or more.

They (the ubiquitous 'They') also do not like the fact that he is a layman - come on! No Bishop is going to speak out on behalf of the faith so welcome the fact that a layman does so. And why shouldn't a layman speak out? Don't Catholic bloggers sound off on every facet of the faith? All that Voris is doing is making video clips and personal appearances whereas we do the same thing (less effectively) on the blogosphere.

I am also somewhat filleted over the fact that I missed out on the pub session after the show (let alone the lunch beforehand). What an opportunity to meet Fr Ray Blake and so many of the other big bloggers. Chizzle!



Michael Voris -
"I come not to bring peace but a sword..."
Matthew 10:34



But, seriously, there is nothing wrong in having someone speak out confidently and confrontationally - Archbishop Sheen did it, St Edmund Campion did it, St Thomas More acted in such a manner and all manner of lay members of the Catholic Evidence Guild did it over many years at Speaker's Corner - so there is a precedent! It's just that Voris does it bigger and better.

Now some have stated that he (Voris) did not always present the facts in an authentic manner; by which I believe they mean that Voris got some of his theology slightly wrong. That may well be, as stated earlier, I was not there.  But, if Michael Voris did get some aspects wrong then we should judge him as a man who gets up to speak more or less ex tempore, no notes, no visual prompts; I guess that even Aquinas may have trod in the brown stuff once or twice under such circumstances - that's not an excuse for the chap, just a reason why absolute perfection might escape us all under similar circumstances.

God bless Michael Voris and may his next stop be Cardiff!

Michael Voris

Well, I have been able to obtain some cover for the soup run on Wednesday and will be able to go and cover the Voris talk. The co-ordinator is covering me that day and she also gave me a gigantic marrow from her allotment which will hopefully keep me for food for a week.

I'll be taking my video camera, of course, but I expect that St Michael's Media will be pretty hot on people videoing it.

I hope to be able to meet the man himself, but I must say, I will be a little frightened to talk with him because he is so hardcore I might find myself out of my depth. He's like a steel-reinforced 10ft deep concrete wall with the word 'CATHOLIC' written on the outside, and inside too!

Five minutes with Michael Voris I expect will be worth a week's worth of life coaching...

Maybe I can interview him. It might stop him asking any questions about what I'm doing with my wayward, hamster on a wheel existence. Any questions? Please, nothing about hair. More on the huge marrow to come...

Michael Voris in London

I don't watch Michael Voris on my computer anymore because unfortunately my sound no longer works. I suppose, having just shelled out £690 on a van and a truly extortionate figure for insurance, the extra money to fix my computer seems like small fry, but having spent that much, I think I can live without sound a while longer.

What is more, I'll be unable to go myself to the talk he is giving on Wednesday as sadly I have another commitment. I am hoping very much that Mr Voris will be making the pilgrimage to Walsingham, but I am unsure what his itinerary is when he is on UK soil.

I know that the presenter of The Vortex is not everybody's cup of tea, but I rather enjoy his videos which are available on Real Catholic TV and usually appear like clockwork on Gloria TV as well.  As others have commented on other blogs, Voris, like the lay Catholic wing of the blogosphere, emerges at a time when the truths of the Catholic faith are not proclaimed boldly, in season and out of season. Sometimes, sadly, for many, it is a perpetual winter. And so Voris becomes necessary - his talks are urgent, hard-hitting, pull no punches and go straight to the point and he manages to drive the point home in about 5 minutes - which is quite a talent. He really is using his talent very well.

He used to work in the wilderness of the secular media and came back to the Faith and doesn't appear to have looked back. He is a man on a mission and that mission is the salvation of souls and the proclamation of the Gospel. He's very charismatic, as you will see from his videos, but he is charismatic in the right way - his gift, his charism, is teaching the faith. He also loves the Traditional Latin Mass and is horrified, as many of us are, that Summorum Pontificum has not been more widely embraced by the Church in the West.  If you can go, do, because I am sure you will be thoroughly entertained and learn more about the Most Holy Faith. Details below, but you can join the Facebook page here.

Michael Voris will be speaking live on "Living the Catholic Faith Radically!" at Regent Hall, 275 Oxford Street, London W1C 2DJ.

There will be an opportunity to ask questions after Michael's talk.

All tickets are £5 and will be sold on a first come, first serve basis. You can purchase them via paypal by visiting: http://smeatonscorner.blogspot.com/

Any remaining tickets will be sold on the door on the night.

Doors open 7pm

Regent Hall is owned by The Salvation Army amd I'm grateful to them for giving us the use of the hall for the talk.

Please note that this will be a new talk for us in London, so even Michael's biggest internet fan won't have seen or heard it before.

This is a public event so do feel free to invite your friends via this events page. Please remember that by clicking 'Attending' you have not confirmed your place. You need to pay online to do that.

I'm thinking of decking the back of my van out in Catholic paintings and then starting my own Catholic media centre...or at least, that is one of my ideas in what for me is an habitual state of faffing around. Michael doesn't faff around, that is why he is a great gift to the Church. He knows what he is about and he knows what he should do - and he does it. I find it terribly sad that he is unpopular with many in the Church because of his views - his views are, after all, Catholic and in sync with the desires of the Holy Father. Here he is discussing that thorny issue - Communion in the hand.

I don't like the term 'Taliban Catholic'.....

....and neither does Michael Voris apparently.
H/T to Christine at A Catholic View.