Pious Trash: Church Militant Comes Out Fighting
Bishop Robert Baron, the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, and probably the top social media prelate in the world, floated the idea that bishops should consider an official designation for Catholic teachers on social media. He runs the famously successful Word on Fire ministry.
In a January 24, 2020 interview with the National Catholic Register Baron said he believes it is within the scope of a diocesan bishop’s authority to apply a vetting and recognition process for online teachers of the faith, similar to the mechanism Pope St. John Paul II developed in the 1990 apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae for colleges and universities.
Bishop Baron called the current era “a golden age of evangelization and apologetics” because the internet makes it much easier to access Catholic content. But be also addressed the downside of social media. “There are, to be blunt,” he said, “a disconcerting number of such people on social media who are trading in hateful, divisive speech, often deeply at odds with the theology of the Church and who are, sadly, having a powerful impact on the people of God.”
In order to stop online misinformation from people or groups claiming to represent what the Church teaches, Barron told the Register that perhaps he and his brother bishops could “introduce something like a mandatum for those who claim to teach the Catholic faith online, whereby a bishop affirms that the person is teaching within the full communion of the Church.” 
This suggestion got an immediate reaction from Michael Voris, 58, who runs St. Michael’s Media and its website, Church Militant. Church Militant is a gossipy, gadfly site with a focus on LGBT issues and personalities, and church officials he doesn’t consider orthodox enough. These include Pope Francis, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, and Voris’ own bishop, Archbishop Allen Henry Vigneron of Detroit. Voris’ homosexual past was made public in 2016. He said he is chaste now.
“Now, the latest Barron insanity and legalism comes in the form of his reportedly saying, while on his ad limina visit to Rome, that U.S. bishops need to come up with some kind of list or plan to tackle what he believes is a serious division of faith,” Voris begins. “That’s rich, coming from a man who shot to instant, celebrity-priest stardom by so nuancing the teaching of the Church on the doctrine of Hell so as to empty it of its content.” 
Voris went on to “out” several bishops that he felt could not be fit as judges of Catholic material. These included Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Patterson, NJ “involved in more gay crap than a gay bar on a Friday night;” and Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington, DC. “He certainly knows his way around from his days as Bernadin’s gay frontman,” Voris stormed.
But he saved his worst smack for last.
“Or how about Bp. Barron himself, who almost always has in tow a couple of body-builder producers who still to this day have up all over social media some pictures which leave little to the imagination. Hey, the past is the past, but have you ever told them to take them down now, or is that part of the Word on Fire online presence? What would people think if a priest had female workers who had pictures of themselves from a prior life scantily clad? Why does Barron get a free pass on this?”
Stay tuned!