It looks like Church Militant, the Ferndale-based conservative Catholic media company that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, is no more — at least for now.
The company’s website churchmilitant.com has shut down in the aftermath of a number of scandals, including a defamation lawsuit brought on by New Hampshire priest Fr. Georges de Laire and the 2023 resignation of founder Michael Voris. The company also has not posted on social media since late February, around the time that Church Militant and its parent company St. Michael’s Media ended the lawsuit by retracting an article and paying Fr. de Laire a $500,000 settlement. It is also reportedly selling the pair of office buildings it owns at 2840 Hilton Rd., Ferndale.
On Monday, St. Michael’s Media sent an email to its subscribers with the subject line “Final Correspondence.”
“After 17+ years of teaching the Faith, it is with heavy hearts we must now announce the closure of our Church Militant website,” the email read, which was obtained by the Catholic blog called Where Peter Is. “The challenges posed by insurmountable scandals and hurdles have made it increasingly difficult for us to continue our mission.”
However, that might not be the end of the story. The blog also reported of a second email claiming to be from Church Militant, featuring a new logo and a Houston, Texas address.
“Church Militant will be bringing you new content well worth your continued support, as we partner with others just as devoted to seeing the advance of authentic Christianity and the on-going struggle against Communism, both in politics and the culture,” the second email reads. “We will be rolling out the first of our new content to you this coming week and are in current discussions to add more voices (some new, some familiar) and content in the coming weeks.”
In a social media post, former Church Militant employee Joe Gallagher claims that Voris is behind the new Church Militant.
“Voris began texting and calling former staffers about joining him on a new venture, but wouldn’t tell them who he was working with,” Gallagher wrote. “I have proof, but staff are afraid of what lawsuit-happy Voris might do to them. Out of respect for them, I [won’t] post the texts. Voris was asking if they’d relocate to Texas and would not say who he was working for/with.”
Voris reportedly resigned in November 2023 for breaching the company’s “morality clause.” While the nature of the morality clause was never made public, Voris vaguely alluded to personal “demons” in a video statement regarding his resignation. In 2016, Voris admitted of his own queer past, saying he was “confused about my own sexuality” and “lived a life of live-in relationships with homosexual men.”
However, in a six-page letter sent to St. Michael’s Media on Nov. 19, members of Church Militant’s staff claimed Voris “was recently seen at a well-known gay bar in Detroit, had a pornographic video playing on his computer when he had a male staffer come to his home for work, and had somehow posted obscene messages and shirtless selfies to the Church Militant DropBox account,” according to a report by the Catholic publication Our Sunday Visitor.
Under Voris, Church Militant repeatedly accused its targets of being gay, The Washington Post reports.
“Michael Voris hurt a lot of people. He attacked individuals privately and publicly, but couldn’t even come clean himself about his own gay scandal. Which was, yes, very gay,” Gallagher wrote on social media, adding, “This can’t continue. For his own soul, he needs to abandon apostolic work and go find God. There is no other option.”
Voris did not respond to a direct message on social media asking for comment. An email and a direct message sent to Church Militant also did not get a response.
The defamation lawsuit is pretty in-the-weeds, especially for the lapsed Catholics in the Metro Times newsroom, but the gist of it is that the anonymously penned article accused Fr. de Laire of being “emotionally unstable” and “incompetent,” among other unsubstantiated claims. The article was allegedly written by lawyer Marc Balestrieri, who had an undisclosed conflict of interest, though Balestrieri has denied that he wrote the article. You can read more about it in Our Sunday Visitor.
Needless to say, this is all incredibly messy, and we’re glad to hear that Church Militant is getting the hell out of Ferndale. Good riddance.
