I first met Mike Voris at the 2012 Roman Forum Symposium at Lake Garda and then again at the Catholic Identity Conference in September of that year. On both occasions the other participants and I found him to be a regular fellow, an enjoyable companion and an intelligent observer of the current ecclesial scene who had no problem with the traditionalist position on the crisis in the Church even if, perhaps for prudential reasons, he had not embraced it entirely in public (which I can certainly understand).
Quite simply, I liked the guy. We all did. In fact, I thought I had found a new friend, if only a Nicodemus friend, as well as a valuable ally in the lay movement to restore the devastated vineyard. He even had me on his “Mic’d Up” talk show as a featured guest.
But then someone named Terry Carroll entered the picture. Over the past year it seems he has assumed the position of the “brains” of the CMTV operation (if not also the banker). In February of 2014 there suddenly appeared on the website of Church Militant TV (CMTV) what Louie Verrecchio aptly called “the mystery manifesto,” which is now known to have been authored by Carroll. This document advanced the curious proposition, unsupported by any teaching of the Magisterium, that while Catholics are free to engage in public criticism of any member of the hierarchy whose actions warrant it, as CMTV does every day, they may never criticize the Pope publicly because “the Pope is different.” CMTV, wrote Carroll, “will not engage in public criticism of the Pope. Period.”
Fine. Whatever. But Carroll did not stop there. His manifesto was only the beginning of a truly obsessive campaign to proclaim his idiosyncratic opinion as the moral standard for Catholics who write for the traditionalist press. In the same manifesto Carroll declared that The Remnant, Catholic Family News, John Vennari and yours truly, are publishers of “spiritual pornography” because we have been critical of what the press likes to call “the Francis revolution.”
For some reason, however, Carroll has hurled no such accusation at non-traditionalist commentators, many of whom have written things far harsher than what has appeared in traditionalist publications. Take German Grisez, for example, an eminent moral theologian of the post-conciliar “mainstream” who wrote of Francis that he
has failed to consider carefully enough the likely consequences of letting loose with his thoughts in a world that will applaud being provided with such help in subverting the truth it is his job to guard as inviolable and proclaim with fidelity. For a long time he has been thinking these things. Now he can say them to the whole world—and he is self-indulgent enough to take advantage of the opportunity with as little care as he might unburden himself with friends after a good dinner and plenty of wine.
Of late Carroll has taken to lurking in the comboxes of various Catholic blogs under the initials “JTC,” scanning them for any favorable references to The Remnant, CFN or its writers and posting endlessly wordy attacks upon us. On the excellent Blog for Dallas Area Catholics (BDAC), for example, Carroll (writing as “JTC”) responded to BDAC’s favorable mention of a recent Remnant TV commentary by Michael Matt and me by writing that we are “enemies of the Church hiding behind loyalty to the faith, ” are “waging war against the Church,” and are “like Playboy and their articles,” combining good content with “‘naughty pictures’ of Catholicism” that are “occasions of sin.”
I won’t burden the reader with a defense of myself or my colleagues against the calumnies of a reckless blabbermouth. Merely to repeat what Carroll wrote is to discredit him. But Carroll is useful as a prime example of the problem people like him pose for organizations like CMTV and the growing loyal opposition to “the Francis Revolution,” which now includes cardinals and bishops. The problem is essentially this: Carroll typifies the Catholic self-promoter of the Internet, who is less concerned with defending consistent Catholic principles than with maintaining his (or his organization’s) position at the expense of others. For people like this, expedience not principle dictates the latest move.
Accordingly, as the damage being wrought by “the Francis Revolution” becomes impossible to ignore, Carroll has suddenly discovered that one can criticize the Pope publicly, after all. In his post on BDAC, Carroll abandons the position of “the mystery manifesto” and now says precisely the opposite of what he said before, apparently in the hope that no one will notice: “You CAN [Carroll’s emphasis] criticize the Pope but, because ‘the Pope is different,’ one must be VERY careful that, in doing so, one doesn’t lead people away from the Church into ‘real’ or ‘practical’ sedevacantism.”
Now that Carroll has performed an expedient about-face, admitting what every reasonable Catholic already knew—that even Popes are subject to public criticism when warranted—he suddenly finds praiseworthy “Patrick Archbold and many others who, though critical of the Pope, criticize in a way that doesn’t bleed over into hatred of the Church Herself as we experience Her today.”
So, Carroll now seems content that there are “many” Catholics who engage in public criticism of the Pope—the very thing he declared impermissible before. What, then, is his problem with The Remnant and CFN? Here we encounter another sign of the bad faith typical of polemicists of this sort. His original position having exploded in his face, Carroll can hardly admit that The Remnant and CFN were right all along. So he carves out a convenient ad hoc exception for what he characterizes as “vitriolic criticism of the Pope, such as The Remnant and Catholic Family News engage [in]… angry, hateful, resentful vocabulary found in the columns found on The Remnant and Catholic Family News.”
In other words, Carroll is now pretending that his position all along was merely that critics of the Pope must be careful in their tone and choice of words. They must not present “‘naughty pictures’ of Catholicism,” but only criticism that does not “bleed over into hatred of the Church Herself.” This conveniently vague “bleeding over” standard allows Carroll to engage in selective denunciation of papal critics based on his tendentious characterization of their language—i.e., The Remnant and CFN.
Really now. Let us look at some of the comments Mike Voris made in Rome about the conniving of the progressive cardinals and bishops who, with Pope Francis’s obvious approval, manipulated the Synod—comments with which I happen to agree. As Carroll would have it, there were no “naughty pictures of Catholicism” in the following on-camera comments by Voris:
· “various bishops and cardinals are attempting to institutionalize sacrilege,” a move that “will seal your damnation”
· “you bishops do not get to sit back and take a laissez faire, hands off approach to this”
· “they are clearing the path to hell for millions and millions of souls plunging in themselves in the process,” because they are “looking for a way to bless adulterous and sodomitical relationships by admitting them to Holy Communion”
· “their eternal lives depend on how much they fight for the truth and how much they hate Satan”
· “they are using the Eucharist as a weapon in the war to get us all to believe that sodomy and adultery are OK”
· they are “plotting revolution,” and “an overthrow of the Church”
· the “forces of the diabolical are refining their tactics after their mild setback at this Synod”
· they speak “the language of heresy, dressed up in syrupy, effeminate gobbledygook terms meant to make someone abandon the authentic practice of the faith…”
· they represent a “diabolical hand at play”, and “Satan has a great hand in all of this…”
· they “want revolution against God,” and “pursuing this path will make their salvation impossible.”
On that score, consider also these remarks from one of Voris’s recent “Vortex” episodes, entitled “Wicked Bishops.” Concerning Cardinal Dolan, Voris declared:
· “You sully the bride of Christ with your wickedness,”
· “What the hell is wrong with you?”
· “…[Y]ou no longer believe the Catholic faith.”
· “You and other wicked people in the Church have allowed an attitude to grow, and atmosphere to come to life where people think they are free to pick and choose whatever they want from the commandments of God.”
· “Do you think you have any chance of escaping hell when you die if you don’t repent of this before your death? Do you even believe in hell?”
· “How dare you parade… around New York in the red robes of a bishop?…”
· “You need to repent publicly and swiftly. You need to admit the many sins of scandal you have caused… for the sake of your own soul…”
· “What you are doing is evil and wicked…. Do not think the punishment visited on you will not be of the most severe when you die….”
· “You need the humility to publicly recognize your sin, admit it, repent of it, and resign your office now….”
· “And for the record, any other bishops who have lost the faith need to step aside as well for the same reasons.”
If Mike Voris is not presenting “naughty pictures of Catholicism,” what would be? And if his comments cannot be called “vitriolic,” then how could anything we have written about Francis possibly be characterized as vitriol (which it isn’t)?
Further, if, as Carroll now admits, the Pope can be criticized publicly, he needs to explain CMTV’s studious avoidance of the following facts concerning Francis’s orchestration of the very gathering Voris so rightly condemned as a devilish cabal:
· It was Francis who conceived and called the Synod.
· It was Francis who praised Cardinal Kasper’s “profound and serene theology” of “mercy” according to which public adulterers would be allowed to receive Holy Communion while continuing in their adultery (as Francis authorized when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires).
· It was Francis who appointed all of the Synod’s radically progressive controllers.
· It was Francis who presided over every minute of the Synod, constantly passing notes to his handpicked General Secretary, Cardinal Baldisseri.
· It was Francis who stacked the Synod’s drafting committee with six additional radical progressives.
· It was Francis who overrode the Synod’s vote by ordering published and distributed worldwide the totally rejected and shamefully heterodox midterm report—a veritable transcript of Kasper’s “profound and serene” theology—which called for Holy Communion for public adulterers on a “case-by-case basis” and an “opening” to “gays” that would include “guaranteeing to them a fraternal space” and “accepting and valuing their sexual orientation.”
· It was Francis who ordered publication of three objectionable paragraphs in the Synod’s final report even though they failed to receive the required 2/3-majority and thus should not have been part of the report.
· It was Francis who, at Synod’s conclusion, denounced “so-called traditionalists” for not being open to “the God of surprises” and who declared the next day that “God is not afraid of new things!”
Carroll is certainly aware of these objections. But, being a dishonest polemicist, he has devised another convenient ad hoc argument to meet the rhetorical needs of the moment. As he concluded in his comment on BDAC: “The Pope represents the Church in a way that bishops and priests do not. You can criticize bishops against a ‘horizon’ of love for the Church. You can’t criticize the Pope without risking a blurring of that ‘horizon’ because the Pope represents and symbolizes the unity of the Church in a way that bishops and priests do not.”
Just a moment! Did not Carroll say only a few paragraphs earlier that the Pope can be criticized publicly? Now he appears to be saying, at one and the same time, that the Pope cannot be criticized because of the “risk” of “blurring” the “horizon of love for the Church.” Well, which is it?
That self-contradiction aside—it’s just another artifact of a polemic driven by self-promotion rather than principle—what Carroll argues is that regular public denunciation of cardinals and bishops as wicked and damnable is consistent with “love for the Church,” whereas what The Remnant and CFN publish concerning Francis, which is quite sober by comparison, is “angry” and “hateful.” Yet the prelates CMTV incessantly denounces are only following the Pope’s lead, indeed citing his example as the very authority for what they are doing.
Does anyone find anything remotely resembling a Catholic teaching in Carroll’s nonsense? One sees only the illogic of a position determined by expediency, producing absurd results. Hence, for example, Voris issued a groveling apology and deleted from CMTV’s website a broadcast from Rome in which he had merely reported Cardinal Burke’s remark that the Synod was causing confusion and that the Pope’s silence about where he stood was “harming the Church.” Yet, only days later, there was Voris denouncing Salt and Light TV because it had attacked Cardinal Burke for expressing the very sentiments Voris himself had censored and apologized for airing! Adherence to the Carroll Policy had twisted the poor man into a pretzel.
This, then, is the problem with apostolates controlled by people like Carroll, who is more interested in turf defense than truth. It was expediency, not principle, that motivated him first to claim that the Pope may never be criticized in public, only to admit that the Pope can be criticized in public once it became apparent that CMTV’s credibility was being destroyed by his original position. And it is expediency, not principle, that dictates Carroll’s current position that when CMTV publicly excoriates “wicked” bishops and cardinals as worthy of damnation this shows “love for the Church,” while The Remnant’s and CFN’s criticisms of Francis’s pontificate, employing no such invective, are beyond the pale. (The Remnant and CFN, echoing Sister Lucia of Fatima, often refer to “diabolical disorientation” in the Church, but this connotes confusion rather than subjective guilt, although there are some neo-Modernist prelates who are clearly deliberate enemies of the Faith.)
Terry Carroll has single-handedly destroyed what could have been a fruitful collaboration between CMTV and the traditionalist media. I don’t know how deeply Carroll has his clutches into CMTV’s operations, but I would say this to Mike Voris out of respect for what he is trying to do for the good of the Church: if there is any way you can dissociate yourself from this character, do it now before he inflicts irreparable damage on your apostolate.
