Less than a week after inviting a controversial abstinence-only preacher from the US to speak to schoolchildren in Paisley, the Catholic Church once again demonstrated a shameful lurch to the extremist right. Church Militant TV presenter, Michael Voris was invited to talk to a packed hall of Catholics aged mostly sixty-plus with twenty-or-so hard-core young Catholic evangelists from Stirling, Dundee University, Glasgow, Hamilton and various other Catholic churches along with the Catholic Parliamentary Media Officer, John Deighan for a meeting in Motherwell, across the road from the Carfin Grotto.
In typical Bible-belt fashion, Voris is a suit and tie, tanned, toupee-wearing, Catholic apologist from Texas who dismisses global warming as “pseudoscience and hyper-sensationalism”. He correlates Hitler’s eugenics programs to global warming, theories of overpopulation, and support of contraception and legalized abortion, saying “What you have to understand is that the elite have now moved on to a sort of new updated version of this, a new technique. It’s not eugenics anymore. Now it’s called global warming.” He worries that many Catholic clerical hierarchy are “namby-pamby” and says he feels that what is needed now is “muscular Catholicism that isn’t afraid to encourage battle and sacrifice.”
Now he is delivering his militant message to an audience of around 150, asking them to put their hands up if they know two souls who had left the Catholic Church? There was a sea of waving arms as at least two-thirds signalled the loss. He claimed his “only conclusion” was that “Catholic leaders had lost faith.” That, and the spate of disgraced priests, bishops (and a cardinal, although he did not once refer to Keith O’Brien, except to point to the “social ill” of homosexuality) who were carrying away with them lost souls. The Catholic Church was “falling apart,” he admitted.
Voris has had much to say about “militant gays” who “violently promote the gay agenda of free disordered sexual behaviour, redefining marriage into extinction and aggressively wearing down those who don’t approve of the gay lifestyle”. Yet, in 2016 he admitted to engaging in “sins of a sexual nature” with other men and claimed the New York archdiocese was planning to exploit his “past life” and use it against him. He said: “For most of my years in my thirties, confused about my own sexuality, I lived a life of live-in relationships with homosexual men.
“From the outside, I lived the lifestyle and contributed to scandal in addition to the sexual sins. On the inside, I was deeply conflicted about all of it. In a large portion of my twenties, I also had frequent sexual liaisons with both adult men and adult women.”
He added: “These are the sins of my past life in this area which are all now publicly admitted and owned by me. That was before my reversion to the Faith.
“Since my reversion, I abhor all these sins, especially in the world of the many, many other sins I have committed having nothing to do with sexuality.
“I gave in to deep pains from my youth by seeking solace in lust, and in the process, surrendered my masculinity.
“Many of you know the story of my mother’s prayers and sacrifices and pleading to God on my behalf that I give up my sinful life and return home to the Church.
“As a last resort, she prayed to be given whatever suffering needed so that I would be granted sufficient grace to revert. It was shortly after that prayer that her very early stage stomach cancer was detected, which she died from a few years later.
“When my mom died, I pledged at her coffin that I would change… I returned fully and completely to the Faith.”
In Motherwell, Michael Voris advised “the Devil never takes a vacation, some don’t have bodies and they don’t need to rest.” The state of the Catholic Church, he surmised, was a result of “an attack by the diabolical”. There were nods and shuffles, but little sign of dissent. The audience had been well trained in obedience. He dipped into the Old Testament for evidence and to recount how “the snake just goes up to Eve and proposes a question – all is easy, isn’t it – she engages with him…” A moment’s pause before shouting. “BUT WE SHOULDN’T ENGAGE WITH THE DEVIL AT ALL!”
After prayers, first from a local cleric and then Voris, he confirms: “We have such an intense relationship for Him we would die for Him.” And that pretty much confirms his somewhat militant response to the collapse of the Catholic Church. “The job of the Church is not to make soup kitchens,” he scoffs, “but to make Saints.” He reminds the faithful of something they probably already know: “The Catholic Church isn’t about feelings.”
The Church’s position was quickly escalated. “The Catholic Church is the only thing that has been invested with the light of God”, he declared. The Church of Scotland and England, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses were dismissed as “man-made institutions.” And if you ever wondered how lonely a place Heaven might be, he ranted: “There is no-one in Heaven; except for Catholics,” adding, that if a few from other religions “found their way there it was despite of another faith; not because of it.”
He charged his audience not to seek popularity and to speak the Truth, (and only the Catholic Truth), so when they spoke to friends at work, their colleagues were really hearing Jesus. “And it will be offensive,” he warned. But this wasn’t an option,” the unmarried Michael Voris added: “It was a command…
“We need to explain why contraception and same-sex marriage is evil.”
Garry Otton 2013