CNA Staff, Nov 22, 2023 / 11:45 am (CNA).
Michael Voris, the founder of St. Michael’s Media which operates the controversial Catholic media outlet Church Militant, resigned this week over an undisclosed “morality” violation, the company said on Tuesday.
Church Militant posted on its website on Tuesday that Voris had “been asked to resign for breaching the Church Militant morality clause.”
“The board has accepted his resignation,” the notice said.
“We understand this is a shock to you all, but our founder and former CEO is stepping aside and focusing on his personal health,” the notice said. “The Board of Directors has chosen not to disclose Michael’s private matters to the public.”
“The apostolate will be praying for him, and we kindly ask you to do the same,” they said.
The enterprise has generated controversy over the years for its often severe criticism of what it sees as lax or insufficiently devout Catholicism.
The outlet has claimed that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) “isn’t Catholic,” alleging that the bishops “only pretend to represent the Church.” Church Militant has at times held protests outside USCCB gatherings.
The outlet has likewise at times been highly critical of Pope Francis’s papacy. In 2020 it alleged that Francis’s remarks on homosexual unions were made “in stark and unprecedented defiance of Catholic teaching,” while last year a headline at the site declared that Francis “falsifies biblical teaching on taxes.”
Church Militant did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning regarding the decision.
In a video posted to his Twitter page on Tuesday, Voris addressed the controversy, alluding to “some very, very ugly truths from my past…that I, for essentially 62 years, have avoided facing.”
“There are things I have to go away and address and work on,” Voris said. “They are, again, horrible ugly things. [I’m] not going to share them. Nobody else’s business but mine.”
“In one sense I’m kind of relieved that I … have reached this point,” he said in the video. “I’ve been looking at the ugliness surfacing inside. [I] have not liked it. [A] number of times in my head I have written my resignation letter already, a handful of times this year.”
“I need to conquer these demons,” he said. “…The underlying cause of it has been too ugly for me to look at.”
“It involves an awful lot of, in one sense for me, like, spiritual terror,” he said, choking up, “and I’ve not wanted to go near it.”
Voris urged viewers to “[not let] all of my stuff move over onto the apostolate.”
“I am out of the apostolate specifically so there will be a very clear separation there,” he said. “That work, and the staff there … deserve your continued support.”
Voris founded St. Michael’s Media in 2006. The company launched Church Militant — originally titled Real Catholic TV — in 2008.
In 2011, when the outlet was still known as Real Catholic TV, the archdiocese said in a statement that it had informed the company that “it does not regard them as being authorized to use the word ‘Catholic’ to identify or promote their public activities.” Voris changed the outlet to its present name shortly thereafter.
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Good riddance.
Shouldn’t we be praying for him?
Leftists don’t pray. They howl and screech and call for violence against those who don’t affirm their feelings.
Your a great recipe of Christ … Glad your so perfect.
While I appreciate the kind of news that CM brings forward, I cringe a bit at the “bitter zeal” that normally accompanies their presentation. They have a way of mixing news with toxicity of presentation. As a result, I have since set them aside for outlets like Catholic World Report and believe my soul is all the better for it.
The question is, was Voris a fraud from the beginning or was he a good may and a high value target for demons who finally got him? He is a self confessed homosexual. Voris took on and exposed powerful evil people. Those people probably targeted him and they knew exactly how to temp him and frame him. He went for the bait. His associate at Church Militant, Christine Niles resigned about a week prior. In her statement on X, she said that Voris changed when he stopped praying with her and the others. There is a lesson there. Like all of us, Voris is a sinful mortal who must always resist the onslaught of sin, but sometimes fails. He was a high value target of the homomafia clergy and their demons. They scored a big hit when they got him. Voris let a lot of people down and he did a lot of damage to the movement to expose and remove unholy clergy. Voris is one man. Good Catholics who want to clean house of unworthy clergy should be undeterred. The litmus test for clergy is to ask if he believes if the ACT (not the predisposition) of homosexual behavior is sinful. If you get an answer other than “yes”, that is all you need to know about that clergy. Pray for Voris. Based on his outgoing statement, he plans to be back. Do not underestimate him.