Let’s take the most notorious recent example: his video for “The Vortex” on August 29. From 0:00-2:00, Vortex talks about the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and churchmilitant.tv’s attempts to expose its support for immoral causes. Yet, during this segment, he basically outs either Abp. Chaput of Philadelphia or Abp. Sample of Portland (my guess is Chaput, a “very prominent, conservative” bishop who has been transferred in the last four years to a larger diocese) as having “stabbed him in the back” by getting Voris removed from Catholic TV stations over this story. Why talk about that? Why make it personal?
Anyway, I guess that could be forgiven, but let’s move on. From roughly 2:00 to 4:00, he talks about the dust-up between Catholic Relief Services and AKA Printing, which is owned by Paul Brown, the husband of American Life League’s Judy Brown. ALL joined a number of other groups who are critical of CRS’ funding practices, alleging that CRS supports pro-abortion and pro-birth control organizations. Peter Jesserer Smith published an article on this topic in the National Catholic Register. In a petty move, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, the chairman of the board of CRS, stated that his organization would withdraw from its business relationship with AKA Printing because of ALL’s critiques, essentially punishing Paul Brown because of the (legitimate) criticisms of his wife’s organization.
Voris then gives an account of how Bishop Kicanas coddled a priest who turned out to be a homosexual child molester, and asserted that this was why he lost the election to head the USCCB to then-Archbishop Dolan. This is mostly dead-on according to a number of reports on the question. The real problem was at roughly the 4:15 mark, where Voris says, “The Church of Nice [which seems to encompass most of the American episcopate] is only kind and accepting and nice towards dissidents and heretics and accommodationist, milquetoast, effeminate men in miters and collars.”
This is such an insulting over-generalization, and it’s precisely the part about Voris that I cannot stand. Here he is, talking about serious and important issues: the corruption of CRS and the CCHD, and how ludicrous that Bishop Kicanas would punish a business simply for association with an organization that criticized his group. Voris is 100% right on these questions. And then he completely ruins his credibility by descending to the level of schoolyard insults, calling the bishops milquetoast and effeminate....
....Voris’ approach to these issues often has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. He isn’t a logical, thoughtful thinker, and he views anyone who disagrees with him or his methods of presentation, legitimately or illegitimately, as a kind of enemy.
Read the pope’s homily from Sunday about how satan tries to show the same Light as God but he is hurtful when seeming to care, and that is the clue that it is not Jesus’ Light but satan’s.
What scares me is when I agree with much truth, light, from Voris, only to see the venom coming out too....am I being duped by the enemy to do satan’s business or God’s? The pope seemed to answer my thinking in his homily as he was speaking of US power toward helping/hurting Syria.
two