More on Voris and RCTV

Lots of very ungenerous comments yesterday — detailing how Mark Shea is a heterodox-Michael-Voris hater — by people who were busily emoting, and ignoring the fact that yesterday morning, before most were even aware of the story, Shea was already defending Voris, and promising a beefed-up defense today.

And today, he keeps his word, coming to the defense not only of Voris, but of Simon Rafe, too:

“. . . I expect some in the blogosphere who aren’t especially keen on stuff like “The Vortex” will be rubbing their hands with glee (and then assuming a posture of “concern”). That’s not a big surprise. When you live, as RCTV does, by denouncing others as impure, you’d better run a tight ship of your own. When your bread and butter is encouraging contempt for bishops as bad managers of underlings, you’d better be careful about your own underlings. He who lives by the sword, etc.

But personally, I don’t think any of this stuff is a big deal and don’t think there is anything sinister at work here. I disagree with Voris on certain points and think that his My-Way-or-the-Highway presentation leaves much to be desired, but I don’t for a moment think him a dishonest man. As somebody who has an anti-charism of organization and who is cocooned in administrative chaos whenever I have to organize anything more complex than a trip to the zoo with my grand-daughter, I can easily believe that Voris simply lost track of whatever paperwork you have to do to make a non-profit stay on the books of the State of Michigan. If you find that incredible, then you’ve never worked in an organization founded by a guy with a specific charism (say, speaking and making videos) who delegates all the administrative stuff to somebody else and assumes it’s all being taken care of.
[…]
Similarly, I just don’t see the big issue with Simon Rafe, whose background is in English, Creative Writing, and that whole side of the artistic world using his creative gifts to write fan fiction or create a D&D game with “adult themes.” One routinely reads novels, plays and short stories by great Catholic writers (Chaucer, Shakespeare, O’Connor, or such great science fiction writers as Michael Flynn and Gene Wolfe) in which all sorts of “adult situations” are portrayed and no mature Catholic would object. The Bard alone is full of rape, incest, adultery, cannibalism, sorcery and murder, not to mention routine bawdiness that has gotten laughs for centuries. […] So while I think there is a tragedy and a scandal in the story of Rafe’s construction of imaginative worlds and tales, I don’t think the scandal belongs to him or to Voris or to Real Catholic TV. I think the sorrow lies in the fact that our puritanized semi-Calvinist Conservative American Catholic culture is one in which an honest Catholic who likes to construct imaginative tales in the medium of on-line gaming as an innocent hobby feels he must stifle and crush that imaginative impulse lest he be punished for it by people who fear and loathe imagination as a tool of the devil. I think it even sadder that, despite Rafe having apologized for this non-issue and taken it to confession, some people are still demanding Rafe lose his job and he be treated like a pariah. “

This is a very long and comprehensive defense, and a critique of narrow extremism or, “Judgmental Orthodoxy” as someone said, so do read it all.

There is also another piece about the RCTV story, which seems to have germinated in my comments thread. Patrick Thornton at CatholicVote.org wonders whether the organization is for-profit, or non:

As far as the lapse of the non-profit status, well that would seem to be important if RealCatholicTV.com operated as a non-profit.

However, they don’t appear to operate that way at all.

Their website does not claim to be a non-profit, but does contain a section titled “DONATE”. On the donation page in small print it also says, “RealCatholicTV.com is not a non-profit organization”. Under the main DONATE button you are informed that if you would like to make a “tax deductible donation” you can do so through Saint Michael’s Media. Regular donations administered through PayPal (and presumably subscriptions) go to “RealCatholicTV.com”.

But RealCatholicTV is not a an assumed name for Saint Michael’s Media. It is an assumed name for Concept Communication LLC (source: Michigan Dept. of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs) which is a for-profit Michigan based limited liability company owned by…you guessed it…Michael Voris.

Now, where have I heard about an evangelist running all his sales through a for-profit private company? Hmmm.

I think whether RCTV and St. Michael’s Media are for-profit or non-profit endeavors is entirely Voris’ business; he’s certainly entitled to run a for-profit business if he wants to. But perhaps he should be just a little clearer about it on the site, if for no other reason than to avoid speculation.

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