Do we need Fr. Longenecker?
http://throwthebumsoutin2010.blogspot.com/2013/08/do-we-need-fr-longenecker.html
Until now, I have kept quiet on the self-appointed celebrity priest Fr. Longenecker. However, today I read this piece where he ‘exposes’ Michael Voris, whom he disparagingly calls a ‘self-appointed prophet’.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing to hold people accountable, however there are serious problems with the way Fr. Longenecker made his criticism and I must be blunt!
First of all, he asks ‘what status does Voris have as a Catholic watchdog’ and ‘who appointed him as policeman for Catholic apostolates’.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Fr. Longenecker was ignorant of the credentials of Baptism. Baptism gives any and every Catholic the standing to carry out any and every action codified in Canon Law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Since he isn’t ignorant, it’s hard not to conclude he is willfully and deliberately marginalizing the fiat and power of the Sacrament of Baptism.
The Catholic Church has canonized lay people who corrected the errors of misguided Catholics and apostates.
Fr. Longenecker then asks ‘whether the financial situation of Al Kresta and Catholic Answers is any of Voris’ business’
Actually, yes.
The point of the video was to point out the fact that people who earn a living reporting Catholic news are turning a blind eye to episcopal and presbyteral corruption.
I like Al Kresta and all - but he DOES coverup corruption by refusing to report the corruption. I Like Carl too, but it’s pretty clear he’s let his apostolate be used to tarnish and attack faithful Catholics in who attend the Latin Mass. I don’t read Catholic Answers, but it’s clear he’s insulted a number of faithful Catholics who are now shunning his apostolate. He is now reaping the consequences.
Voris is 100% right on the money. No pun intended!
Just like the mainstream media isn’t covering the ethnic cleansing of Catholics - just like the mainstream media didn’t cover what was going on in Auschwitz and every other concentration camp — just like the mainstream media did not cover what actually took place in Benghazi or in the Obama administration — Al Kresta is a player in the Catholic journalist blackout of corruption. So isn’t Carl. The National Catholic Reporter, EWTN - etc., etc.
If one is ‘taking money’ for reporting Catholic news, one has the duty to be impartial and report the facts, irrespective of the identity of a person. If a whistleblower comes and reports corruption and has the facts to back it up, if the corrupt person is a priest or bishop and they bury the story, they are an accessory to the damage being done. Their silence is an intentional act to protect a person who is harming other people.
It has been going on for a very long time. It has in the past caused Catholics their salvation and sometimes, even their very lives. Catholic journalists do not give a damn about it or they do but the cash cow they have going for themselves is more important to them than the lives and souls of their brothers and sisters.
It’s a tough and embarrassing thing to face and say but it is the truth.
Consequently, the fact that Catholic journalists take money for reporting Catholic news is a perfectly reasonable fact — and I would argue necessary - in reporting the craven and selfish practice of covering up corruption.
Fr. Longenecker then states he learned things as a protestant.
A word to the wise.
Fugghetttabout the stuff you learned as a protestant. The man you knew with the bulldozer who quietly tithed is irrelevant. I’ll say it again: The moral of Voris’ story is about Catholic journalists who take money to report Catholic news and then protect corrupt people with their silence.
Nobody cares where their royalties are coming from. Nobody is saying they shouldn’t get a fair wage.
Fr. Longenecker makes good use of his emotions to build straw men and distractions.
Again: The fact that they earn lots of money to report Catholic news and then refuse to report corruption — that is something reasonable and impartial people get disgusted about.
It is a wrong and righteous people try to right it.
Then there is folks like Fr. Longenecker who try to undermine and discredit the people who are reporting corruption.
Most people don’t want to be discredited or shunned by a priest or a bishop or the entire USCCB!
This kind of conduct wields it’s own power. They used same weapon used against people who knew priests were raping children.
There are relatively few people in this world who will choose to serve Christ no matter what the price. It’s clear, at least to me, that Fr. Longenecker knows he isn’t one of them and is lashing out at a person who is.
I see what he is doing and it is pathetic.
The next problem with Fr. Longenecker is that he contradicts scripture.
First, he mischaracterizes the content of Voris’ video to do a character assassination. Check the section where Scripture describes the content on the Tablet Moses carried down from the mountain.
Next, he questions whether Voris sat down with Keating and Al to talk about their covering up corruption.
Is he serious?
How about the fifteen years we have approached Catholic journalists with the goods on the corruption?
Is fifteen years worth of trying good enough?
You know what whistelblowers got in return from folks in the Catholic Church like Fr. Longenecker?
Even when a bishop goes so far as to hire subcontractors to kill unborn children and force Catholic doctors, nurses and pharmacists to go along with the murders whilst he sits at arms length from it all in the peace and quiet of his rectory?
Cover ups and character assassinations, bullying, threats and intimidation.
It’s fair to say we have given up on Catholic journalists who run the spin machine for corrupt priests and bishops. We have found our own ways of doing God’s work.
I’ll tell you something else. You know what got this crowd crazy about Boston Catholic Insider? They couldn’t retaliate. They couldn’t slander. They couldn’t bully and threaten and intimidate. They couldn’t damage and hurt the whistleblowers. It drives them absolutely wild. They can’t execute retaliation.
What kind of a priest has convictions about ‘lunatics’ and ‘loons’. Is that how he attracts people who are scandalized and hurt back to the Church?
Moreover, a man wearing a roman collar who tries to claim the moral superiority of keeping gripes private because that’s what scripture tells him to do, then proceeds to violate it himself, doesn’t have very much credibility.
Father also tries to use sedevacanists to slander people who attend Latin Masses in complete communion with Christ’s Church - “if they are not careful” they’re next.
Quite the screed.
But whatever you do, don’t jump to conclusions.
Fr. Longenecker doesn’t want to be misunderstood as not liking Michael Voris.
Heavens no. Why that would be preposterous.
Father said it is just that Michael has the kind of personality that is never happy. Voris is the kind of person who is always looking for an enemy. Voris is insecure and paranoid and thinks “everyone” is a heretic and apostate. He thinks he’s so good, all smug and warm in his own little group attacking his next enemy in his smug little self-righteousness. He’s a sicko that one.
One last thing: Fr. Longenecker’s ending is page right out of Mark Shea’s phony attempts at humility.
He’s a sicko himself dontcha know. He’s sought to remove the speck out of Voris’ eye before his own and for this he repents unconditionally.
Does he actually think we don’t know that any sincerity in that statement would have caused him not to publish this piece of trash?
Ping to Post 14.
Seven!
Michael Voris certainly calls people to the edge.....and then he give them a hard-hitting punchline.
Without wading into the “is so-and-so sufficiently traditional?” swamp, it occurs to me that none of the people the author calls to task are actually investigative journalists. It is simply not their area of interest or expertise to probe for and expose wrongdoing, unless of course it happens to fall in their lap. On the contrary, it seems fairly clear that EWTN and its content partners go to considerable lengths to vet proposed guests before putting them on the air, and it seems to me that is their real area of responsibility.
Consequently it is a blatant non-sequitur to conclude from the absence of exposures of the unnamed persons to whom your comment alludes that those whose reputations you have undertaken to attack must therefore be complicit in the corruption you believe is so obviously rampant.
Please observe I have no knowledge of the facts you allude to, which is not my area of interest. I have on occasion attended the Latin Mass offered by a nearby parish and it certainly is lovely and worthy of the cultivation Pope Benedict XVI went to such pains to promote.
However, it is absolutely clear to me that either both forms are equally valid or equally invalid, and so if you insist that the latter is the case, you assert that the promise Our Blessed Lord gave St Peter, and by extension all the Church, has been rendered false. Who indeed has the power or authority to set that aside? Also, who is it that accomplished such a remarkable feat that eluded many emperors such as Napoleon or corrupt popes such as Benedict IX?