Michael Voris tries to create divisons at the March for Life
>>> On this Feast of the conversion of St. Paul, some thought Voris could be another St. Paul, others a John the Baptist. Yet a more thorough examination of who he is, his works and his tactics, indicate this guy believes he is holier than the Pope and ironically, would probably blast Jesus and the Apostles if he were alive back in the day,
My advice to Catholics, leave this guy alone, there's nothing really to see here!
Who goes to the March for Life, asks a
structurally flawed question to participants, and then uses the results of his
survey to fuel a self-serving and divisive agenda?
Michael Voris does, that’s who.
It seems that furthering ugly divisions within
the Catholic Church is not enough for Voris, and so now he has decided to turn
his sights on the pro-life movement as well.
In the last few hours he has published a new video, filmed at
this year’s March
for Life in Washington DC, in which he surveys participants about their
personal views on the use of birth control, and then, you guessed it, uses the
results of his survey as a weapon to attack with: “for anybody in the church
of nice who thinks that things are just moving along nicely, you couldn’t be
more wrong. One third of the most pro-life committed crowd supports
contraception.”
Michael Voris needs to be strongly condemned for
this latest little self-serving publicity stunt.
Yes, I’m angry about this.
Not just because it is a pointless and terribly
divisive thing to do at such a positive and important event as the March for
Life.
Not just because it displays a completely
ignorant understanding of the fact that personal formation normally involves a
gradual deepening and movement towards the fullness of truth, rather than an
instantaneous awareness about everything.
But most importantly of all, what Voris has done
here is totally imbecilic, in that:
a. He has asked people a
structurally flawed question
b. He has completely failed
to understand the March for Life
c. He has selectively used
the results of his survey
Let me explain…
A structurally flawed
question
Firstly, the question that Voris has asked
participants here is structurally unsound.
He asks them:
“Do you think a couple using birth control is
always wrong in every circumstance?”
He then laments the fact that almost one third of
the people questioned answered “no” to his question.
Anyone with half an ounce of commonsense can see
the massive flaw here, and any well formed Catholic can tell you that it would
actually be okay to answer “no” to the question Voris asked.
For example, any married couple using birth
control for non-contraceptive purposes (using an anovulant as a treatment for
another medical condition is one obvious example) would not actually be acting
contrary to Catholic moral teaching, which actually allows for such an action to
take place.
Then there’s the issue of Natural Family Planning
(NFP), which, technically speaking, is actually a form of birth control, and
which Catholic moral teaching says is perfectly acceptable for married couples
to use when they have sound reasons to avoid pregnancy.
The funny thing is that at the start of the video
(at the 40 second mark), Michael Voris states that he asked people the
following, DIFFERENT, question:
“Is birth control, used as birth
control, always wrong, in every situation”
But, as is seen in the subsequent clips of him
interviewing March for Life participants, he didn’t actually ask people that
question – which is structurally a better question (still not totally perfect,
because NFP can technically be classed as a form of birth control) – instead he
asked the flawed question: “Do you think a couple using birth control is
always wrong in every circumstance?”
The end result of course is that his findings are
totally unreliable for the purposes he is trying to use them for – to suggest
that nearly one third of pro-lifers at the March for Life do not support the
Catholic teaching on artificial birth control.
This brings me to the second major flaw in Voris’
video:
Failure to understand the March for
Life
Michael Voris is speaking and acting as if the
March for Life is an exclusively Catholic event, when it actually is not.
Not only is this event attended by Protestants,
and people of other religious faiths, but it is also attended by non-religious
pro-lifers as well – and this year the
March for Life organisers went to great lengths to get even more Protestants
than usual to attend the march.
With this in mind, one really has to question why
Michael Voris would be:
a. Lambasting people, who may well not even be
Catholic, for holding beliefs that are not Catholic.
and:
b. Lambasting the Catholic Church for the
personal opinions of people at an event that attracts non-Catholics,
non-Christians and non-religious people.
Selective use of survey
results
This last point is kind of obvious.
Michael Voris has conducted a survey, which finds
that MORE than two thirds of people questioned actually support the position he
wants them to support (leaving aside the issue of the flawed question for a
moment), and yet he still decides to spin his findings in the negative and point
to the less than a third of people who didn’t hold that position.
What kind of person ignores the overwhelming
majority in this way?
Someone who is deliberately and selectively
looking for a negative angle to present in order further their own close-minded
agenda.
Thanks, but no thanks Michael. Our movement has
had more than its fair share of destructive divisions, petty jealousies and
empire builders, and the last thing we need is yet another one – especially in
light of the positive developments that have taken place in the pro-life
movement in recent years, with far greater cross-denominational and
inter-organisational unity than ever before in our movement’s history.
It’s one thing to have the truth create division,
but it’s another thing altogether to create divisions by doing stupid things –
this video is a case of the later, and for that it deserves to be strongly
condemned.
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