Broadcaster Calls For Catholic Dictatorship

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The conservative French philosopher, Joseph deMaistre declared that King Louis XVI of France deserved execution not for his excesses, but for having committed the unpardonable sin (in his eyes) of being too soft on those demanding reform. DeMaistre disdained the Enlightenment and democracy and advocated Catholic monarchies that deferred to the Vatican.

Such ideas did not die with the end of the French monarchy. Meet a young Catholic monarchist and veteran TV broadcaster, Michael Voris.

His official biography tells us that Voris received a degree in communications from Notre Dame in 1983, followed by “… a number of years working as a CBS affiliate anchor, producer and reporter, in various markets, winning multiple Emmys for his work in broadcast news. ” And then:

On May 8, 2006, Voris opened St. Michael’s Media, a new state-of-the-art digital television studio, dedicated to the archangel who Scripture promises will lead the victorious battle against Satan at the end of time (Rev 12:07). Located in Ferndale, MI, it is the production center of broadcast quality Catholic programs, designed to educate a generation of Catholics largely ignorant of Church teaching and to save souls from eternal damnation.

In the video (above) released on a subsidiary of the network he founded, RealCatholicTV.com, for August 18, 2010 Voris declares: “Hello everyone and welcome to the Vortex where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed. I’m Michael Voris. There is an inherent problem with democracy. Actually, it’s definitional; it’s this: Everyone gets to vote. That’s right. EVERYONE gets to vote. Consider for a moment…”

It quickly went downhill from there. Voris says that “ignorant” people vote for candidates who support abortion, gay rights and taxation for government services — as if excessive taxation was never the hallmark of despotic of absolute monarchs – as indeed it was.

Voris denounces democracy because people who are not “faithful Catholics” and therefore are “ignorant” and likely to be “societal parasites” get to vote. Of course, when he says Catholic, he means über-orthodox traditionalist Catholic only. (He does not explain how even this kind of voting would work under the “benevolent dictatorship” of a “Catholic monarch” he also calls for.)

The Diocese of Scranton — usually no beacon of Catholic progressivism — recently banned Voris from speaking at Catholic institutions in the diocese.

The Diocese of Scranton has determined that Mr. Voris will not be allowed to speak in a Diocesan or parish facility. After these engagements were scheduled, the Diocese became aware of concerns about this individual’s views regarding other religious groups. In videos posted on the Internet, Mr. Voris makes comments that certainly can be interpreted as being insensitive to people of other faiths. The Catholic Church teaches us to respect all people, regardless of their faith tradition.
Although the Diocese shares Mr. Voris’ support of efforts to protect human life, his extreme positions on other faiths are not appropriate and therefore the Diocese cannot host him.

What the Scranton Diocese might have seen was the video below wherein Voris slandered Rabbinical Judaism as breaking the Covenant of Abraham and then extended the denigration to apply to Protestants. Just take a look:

But just how far out of Catholic Right thought is Voris? Patrick Buchanan remarked of deMaistre that he was “a great conservative” There is little that separates the eighteenth century French reactionary from Voris, the modern media reactionary. And he is clearly part of a wider movement of conservative Catholics. The web site Renew America has links to Voris’s Saint Michael’s Media. He has also been a featured speaker for traditionalist Catholic organizations.

Religious crackpots have been around forever. And yet we should be concerned about Voris. Long-discredited far right ideas have been regaining currency — secession, the gold standard and state nullification of federal law, to name a few. And talented, educated young demagogues leading anti-democratic factions are exactly the kind of people the framers of the constitution were concerned about.

We also have to wonder whether Voris is simply articulating what others on the Right are thinking. Obviously there are differences between Voris and the likes of Michael Novak, Robert P. George and George Weigel. These neo-cons would, for example, not be as openly critical of Judaism or their fundamentalist Protestant allies as Voris. But perhaps they have laid the ground world for the next stage in a long term campaign to restore Catholic monarchism when the last lights of the Enlightenment currently under assault, go dark.

Of course, whether Voris finds an audience longing for a government based upon orthodox Catholic morality and authority, and sufficiently large to contribute to the destablization of constitutional democracy, remains to be seen.

Kathy Hughes contributed to this piece.