If you are lucky, you may have missed the current debate rippling through the Catholic interwebs. Actually, it is a debate that comes up from time time to time, this time it just happens to involve video provocateur Michael Voris.
Voris contributes to the website RealCatholicTv.com. He produces several videos a week talking about issues related to faith, politics, and culture. No big deal, lots of us speak or write about these subjects every day. What makes Voris a hot topic of debate is mostly style and occasionally a little substance.
Having only watched a handful of Voris’ videos, I do not intend to debate the prudence or sagacity of all his remarks. But I do want to talk about style.
I recently weighed in on a cobbled controversy that popped up after remarks by Voris in which he advised people to run, not walk, from their parish to an orthodox parish if their priest offers a homily, at the request of Al Gore and Global Warming Inc., on the topic greening the planet on Easter Sunday.
Now while Voris’s remedy may be fairly debated, so much of the debate surrounding him is based on his style. Voris you see is loud, in your face, hyperbolic, and sarcastic and as everyone knows–you can’t be like that AND be a good Catholic. Or can you?
Before I go on, I wish to ….
April 18, 2011 at 5:26 am
Pat, you and your brother Matt both hit home runs today. I already thanked your brother for what he wrote. Thank you for defending Michael Voris' right to be Michael Voris.
April 18, 2011 at 5:40 am
What does it matter if an argument is made by Fr. Corapi or by Ned
Flanders so long as what is said is honest? Some may be persuaded
by the truth couched in Ned Flanderisms, some by Mr. Voris' work.
The interwebs are big enough to accommodate them all.
There are personalities and organizations out there that coat their
intellectual and spiritual dishonesties in the most soothing, appealing
veneer they can command. They are the enemy, not those who
present the truth in a way we might disapprove. Why do some folks
waste so much ammo on Mr. Voris or Fr. Corapi?
Mr. Archbold, you have a fine site here (which is why I drop by), you
are civil even to those with whom you disagree, you are not intellectually
dishonest, and you've got something to say. Yet I'm sure there's some-
one out in the interwebs who's furious about your style of commentary.
It is as it ever was—you can't make everybody happy.
April 18, 2011 at 11:36 am
So many of us often forgets the very simple reality and Catholic teaching that "error has no rights" and so Mr. Voris takes this simple truth and drives a Sherman tank right through it.
I love Mr. Voris to me his style is refreshing for once somebody is defending the Truth with no apparent shame or having to apologize for one thing or another. Same as Father Corapi but with the freedom that the lay position affords.
April 18, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Those criticising Mr Voris have, somewhere in their mind, an idea of how an apologist must act; and you can bet that their particular persuasion, passions,proclivities, and presentations match-up with that idea rather well.
I think that men like Mr Voris scare people because of his masculinity; he is decisive, direct, and unapologetic and if they do not like that approach they could just ignore it, right?
Wrong. Far too many soi disant apologists think that how they act is normative but that norm was established during a time of ascendant femininity within the Church and the most shop-worn of their tactics is to use men like Mr. Voris as a straw man that they can ignite with their fiery, "How dare he?" denunciations. (He gives off a lovely flame, doesn't he?)
There is not one thing that Mr. Voris said that was heretical or unorthodox but it was direct, decisive, and masculine and that is the unacknowledged subtext of so many of the complaints.
Fear of a return to masculinity in The Church is The New Fear of The Jews for the modern Church. The LAST thing the contented coterie of commentators want is a man of curt and courageous conviction who hurls anathemas at the nice christian; and so they try and silence and/or condemn as "extremist" men like Mr. Voris.
Casting the masculine and decisive Mr. Voris out of The Temple of "Be Nice" is the attempt on the part of the self-satisfied apologists to maintain their putative rhetorical laws of purity.
April 18, 2011 at 5:36 pm
WT$%@?!
What a huge big frikken bunch of cabbage stinking hullabaloo over zots, ZERO, ZILCH, NUTHIN'!
The "PROBLEM" is that the guy DIDN'T say to: FIRST, talk to the offending priest and at least TRY to straighten him out. THEN – if you don't get him straight, THEN LEAVE. Well EXCUSE HIM for livin'! So he didn't say that? Get over yourself. (Addressing no one in particular here, and everyone who didn't get that. DUH!)
Voris' audience is made up of people who have enough, ahem, guts, that they would naturally confront the priest first. If you didn't get that, maybe he wasn't talking to YOU. In fact, you probably only READ about it on some blog some where and only then dribbled your milk down your chin in outrageous indignation.
So – Half the people knew that he would, of course, recommend correction first. The other half didn't get it, and presumed he meant – "Go start your own personal Church of Mel Gibson." Poo!
Every good Catholic understands that if they ARE a good Catholic and their priest is going a bit flopsy bunny on them, they then have a DUTY to GO BUCK HIM UP. Hey – maybe God wants you in that parish BECAUSE HE SENT YOU THERE TO HELP SAVE IT, DING DONG!
So yeah, if that doesn't work, then yeah, you should split before that kinda malarkey rubs off on ya.
So what's the big deal? Big bunch a nothin'!
Gee whiz people….Next subject.
P.S. You don't like how I write…TOUGH! I don't give a hoot. Go fix yourself first.
April 18, 2011 at 9:43 pm
David Virtue wrote an article for the October 2002 New Oxford Review titled "Uncharitable? Divisive? Strident? Recovering the Art of Christian Polemics." Its worth a read: http://www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=1002-mills
April 19, 2011 at 2:37 am
Pat, you might want to consider reminding people of the sort of language St. Jerome often employed. He was a bad-tempered cantankerous old fellow who happened to be right most of the time, and who didn't mince words or suffer fools.
And he's a saint.
April 19, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Dear Dr. Kopp The entire piece can be read here:
http://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/205197/Re:%20Recovering%20the%20Art%20of%20Chri
April 19, 2011 at 3:17 pm
The people who are attacking Michael Voris's "style" are attacking it for, IMHO, for these reasons. They can't tolerate him for boldly proclaiming the true doctrines of the faith, for telling the truth about the subverison and corruption that's happenning in the Church, and telling the Laity how to fix it. His "style" is offensive to the status quo crowd because instead of leading his audience in useless hand-wringing about how terriable it is, he says, "Yes, it's terriable, and here's what we got to do to fix it." Yeah, MV's "style" demands that you confront the problem, and get in the faces of those who cause them. That "style" really offends the left over 60's crowd, the lavender mafia, certain apologists, and the complacent "everythings all right, do not disturb crowd".
April 21, 2011 at 4:13 am
It's Voris' anger that I've gotten fed up with. I'm in agreement with his message, it's the frothing about the lips and mouth that's gotten old.