I've Joined a Militia

[00:00:14] We live in an increasingly anti Catholic, divisive and combative society. As Catholics, we need to respond forcibly. Today I'm going to discuss how I'm planning on doing that. Hello, I'm Eric Simmons, your host editor chief of Crisis magazine. Welcome to the program. Before we get started, just want to encourage everybody to smash that like button like we need to smash the evil forces in our world. Also you can subscribe to the channel. [00:00:40] Please go. We really appreciate that. Also go to crisismagazine.com Put your email address and we will send you our email newsletters every, every day. Every morning you'll get our our newsletters that have our articles usually two a day. Okay. So actually before I get started in the purpose of podcast today, I do want to give a little bit of a plug. [00:01:02] You may not know, you may know that I have been writing a science fiction novel called Shard of Eden. It is set in the early 22nd century and it's a world in which AI has had a revolt, has there's been an AI revolt and the world is recovering from that. [00:01:21] And the Vatican is again the most powerful political force in the world with former war hero as the Pope. But they hear a mysterious signal in deep space and he sends a ship out to investigate it. And I'm very excited to announce that it's now available for pre order. It should be shipping at the end of this month, end of October 2025. Just go to shardofeden.com that's shardofeden.com and you can download the first chapter to see what you think about it. [00:01:50] Also you can, you can pre order it there. I, I'm excited about this because it's not just a matter of us saying what's wrong with the culture, saying, you know, why Hollywood is woke, complaining about the fact that Netflix is producing shows and, and movies that are awful and canceling Netflix. I mean, heck, I canceled Netflix like three, four rounds ago when they were doing something terrible. I can't remember now what it was at the time. [00:02:17] Not just about canceling the evil stuff, but it's about also producing good and wholesome Catholic content. And so I'm a big fan of the genre of science fiction. And so I decided to do something about it. And so I wrote my own science fiction book. [00:02:32] This is something very appropriate, you know, for teens and above. [00:02:36] Just, you know, there's nothing immoral in it, obviously, there's nothing woke in it, but it's not preachy. I don't like, oh my gosh, I don't like the. [00:02:45] Like the Christian fiction that is clearly about. Just let's do a message. And I don't care much about the story. [00:02:51] The story is what's paramount in this. It's very Catholic, but at the same time, it's the story that. That's first and foremost. So, anyway, just go to shardofeden.com and you can pre order. The book, like I said, should be published at the end of this month. [00:03:06] Okay, so now let me go ahead and get into the purpose of this podcast. [00:03:11] You know, we're called Crisis Magazine and the Crisis name is from the 1980s, but it's still applicable, and that we're living in a time of great crisis. And I think most of us realize that this crisis has been brewing for some time, but it's really reached new stages in recent years. Obviously, the political violence, the shooting of Donald Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the church shootings, the attacks on churches. I read where there has been a 400% increase in attacks on churches in America since 2019. 400%. [00:03:51] And we see that there's this increasing crisis both inside and outside the church. I mean, we talk about particularly the crisis inside the church a lot on this program at Crisis magazine. We all know it's happening. [00:04:06] And we're all. I think we all feel. I mean, at least I feel. Let me just talk for myself. [00:04:11] That we need to do something in response. And I know a crisis. What we've done for years is we have responded to it by trying to expose the evil and to propose the alternative. [00:04:24] What Catholicism really is, how it should be practiced, you know, how we can. How we can resist the evils in the world. We've been doing this, you know, the. The magazine has been doing it for 43 years now. [00:04:36] And I've been here for almost five years at crisis. And I think that's very important. [00:04:41] But I don't think it's enough. [00:04:43] I don't think it's enough just simply to talk about what's wrong online, which is what we do. And I'm not even trying to denigrate that because, I mean, do it for a living. [00:04:52] So I do think that's important because we need to educate people. I still find there are people who, who don't really understand the crisis. And they find our magazine, they find the podcast, and they do become more informed and they do start practicing their faith more deeply. And I'm very thankful to God that he's allowed us to be an instrument for that to happen. But I don't think that's all we can do now. The danger, of course, is, is that we can have a bad response to the bad things going on. We get an evil response to evil going on. I listened to a podcast recently by a priest. He was talking about the virtue of temperance, that we need to be temperate in our response, meaning we don't return evil for evil. [00:05:36] We don't go guns ablaze, in other words, at some in Hollywood or something like that. That's just not. We don't do what they do. [00:05:46] And in fact, I would argue if you look at history, the times of the mo. Of the worst, I should say the worst times in history is when the greatest saints were raised. I mean, look at, for example, the Arian crisis in the fourth century. We have saints like Saint Athanasius, you know, rising up. Saint Augustine came soon after that. You know, the Cappadocian fathers were during the time of Aryan crisis. Then we have the Reformation, a terrible time in the church. And look at all the great saints that were raised during that time, particularly, you know, the St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Philip Neri, St. Teresa of Avila, so many others. And so that's really got to be the type of response we have. [00:06:34] We need, though, to take concrete action. We can't just talk about it. We need to take concrete action. And so I've been feeling this for quite some time, you know, for. For at least over a year now, that I want to do more than just what I do at crisis and of course, the importance of prayer, I've always emphasized that, but I want to do more. And so what I've decided to do personally is I've joined a militia. And probably you suspect what I'm going to say here, if you're Catholic and you're kind of in the Catholic world, I've joined the militia of the Immaculata, which is founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who's right here above me. And if you're watching the video, a picture of saint image of Saint Maximilian Colby. I joined the militia of the Immaculata. [00:07:22] And I'm not. I literally joined today, October 7, 2025. I did my consecration this morning, went to confession two days ago, went to mass, and I did my consecration today. [00:07:35] And if you don't know what you do, just the point is you do a consecration to the Immaculata, to Mary, and that's how you become a member of the. The militia of the Immaculata. Now, I'm no expert, obviously. I've literally been a member of the Militia Immaculata for about, let me think, about six, maybe eight, maybe eight hours now. [00:07:57] But I did want to talk about it a little bit, and because I think it applies to everybody, even if you're not a member of the Militia Immaculate or you're not planning on joining. [00:08:05] It was, of course, founded by St. Maximilian Colby. Now, St. Maximilian Colby is most well known for what he did in the consecration concentration camp of Auschwitz, where he gave up his life for another, where they took 10 men out to execute because somebody had escaped. And one of them was saying, I have a wife, I have children, please spare me. And Saint Maximilian stepped out and said, take me instead. And by the divine providence, by the workings of grace, the evil Nazi leader said, okay, will do that. Which is just crazy. Why wouldn't he just kill Saint Maximilian as well as the other guy? But for some reason he didn't. And I think we know why. Because the Holy Spirit didn't allow that to happen. Didn't allow that, allowed St. Maximilian to be that. That alternative. [00:08:53] He's most known for that, Saint Maximilian. But the truth is, his whole life led to that moment. [00:09:00] The reality is most of us wouldn't do that because we didn't live a life that would have prepared us to do that. He was a saint before that happened. That's the key. [00:09:12] It wasn't that act that made him a saint. [00:09:15] He was a saint before he gave up his life, before he willingly gave up his life, went to the starvation chamber for another man. Everything he had done in his life before they had led up to that point. [00:09:26] And I think that's very important to remember. And, and if you look at The Life of St Maxwell Colby, I'm not going to read his whole biography, but he was a man who's deeply in love with Our lady, as he called her the Immaculata. And he had this deep devotion to her, but he really had an evangelistic spirit. [00:09:45] He desperately wanted to save souls and he used modern means of communication, the mass media. [00:09:53] This is why one of the reasons why I'm so attracted to Saint Maximilian is because basically he would endorse what we're doing here at Crisis. [00:10:02] He would endorse it because he wanted to use. He used, in his time, he used the mass media of, like, newspapers. He also started to get into radio. He's going to get into TV and movies if he had not died. That was his plan. He's considered, in fact, the apostle of the mass media. I've, in fact, put Crisis magazine under his patronage, under the patronage of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, because I feel like he is a perfect patron for what we're doing here. He didn't reject modern tools. I know we have a tendency, and I do this too, where we say social media is so evil, the Internet's so evil, it's so bad. [00:10:38] And I know, and I'm like, I said, I've done this. And I think it's true. There's a lot of truth in that. [00:10:44] But what we've seen in recent years is how much social media and the Internet is actually bringing people to Christ. And Saint Maximilian would say, I told you so, because in his day, people were saying there were Catholics saying, oh, you can't use those methods. There's only terrible people using those methods. And it's true that we're at his time as well, but he said, no, we use them for good. And the fact is, is what we've seen is that at a time when uncounted number, untold number of Catholics are leaving the church, Crayol Catholics leaving the church. There are so many people entering the Catholic Church, and a lot of it's because of their interactions online with other Catholics. I wrote about this a month or so ago. [00:11:27] Yes, it's true. Cradle Catholics, many of them are leaving. But there's a new energy of young people, particularly who are not Catholic, who encounter the Catholic Church online and decide to join the church. I just last night taught a class for the adult conversion class in our parish, and I met a number of beautiful souls, former Protestants, a number of people who had no religious background, who were all deciding to become Catholic. [00:11:54] And what I think the reason that people are finding the Catholic Church and embracing it through their online interactions is because, to be blunt, online Catholics are more faithful, they're more honest, they're more direct, they're more evangelistic than your average Catholic parish. Your average Catholic parish, frankly, is a wasteland of spirituality. It's a wasteland of no desire to change people's lives. Whereas online, yes, we have the toxic online Catholics. I get that. But the fact is, it's like the bluntness, the directness, the unwillingness to apologize for being Catholic that you find online it's attractive. This is exactly what St Maxwell Kolbe would have loved. He would have loved this. I guarantee you. Saint Maxwell Colby would have had social media accounts. He would have had a video. He would have been making by video podcasts. He would have been making movies, probably, who have been doing so much. [00:12:54] And so he is that example, I think, because remember, the age he lived in. This is something to remember as well. [00:13:01] He lived in a very similar time to us, especially when he founded the Militia of the Immaculata in 1917. I hope I got that date right. I think it was 19. Yeah, 1917. October 16th, 1917. So we're coming up on the 108th anniversary, I guess. [00:13:15] Well, this is 1917. If you know your history, you know what that year means. What is 1917? We have, of course, Fatima. We have the Russian Revolution, we have The World War I, basically, just about the end. [00:13:30] We have great evil in the world. And St. Maximilian was a young seminarian in Rome in 1917, and he saw a march, a Freemason march in Rome. And they literally had banner banners, for example, depicting Lucifer defeating St. Michael. They had one of the Pope being basically under the thrall of Satan. [00:13:53] Freemasons back then were a lot more outright outward about what they believed. And he saw that and he was. And he wanted to run out there and try to convert them all, but his superior wouldn't let him. [00:14:04] But instead, what he decided was, I need to create a militia in response to this great evil. [00:14:10] And that's when he created the Militia of the Immaculata with, I think it was like six or seven other Franciscans that ended up growing into a worldwide movement of millions of people. But don't you see the parallels to our day? [00:14:21] We see these evil forces. I mean, think about the 2020. We see these evil forces marching on the streets. You know, the evil uses of mass media, all these things. I think Maximilian himself was. [00:14:36] Was against. [00:14:38] We're seeing again today. And so that's why I believe that the Militia of the Immaculata is a beautiful response to this. And that's why I've decided to join and put Saint Maximilian as the patron of Put Christ magazine under the patronage of St. Maximilian Colby. [00:14:55] So the point is here that we. We need to fight. We need to really go against the forces in a new and greater way than we have in the past. Not just sitting back on our computers, but. But also, which I do and I will continue to do, but also really taking the battle to the evil forces. Now, here's the thing is our fight is not physical, it's spiritual. I'm not saying there'll never be a time where it won't become physical, because obviously we've seen an increase in the physical violence. We need to protect ourselves. And there have been times in history in which Catholics had to take arms. I'm not a pacifist, but we're not at that point yet. And also I believe, and I've said this before, I think on the podcast, it has to be done in the right way. Not just somebody going off half cocked on their own or even a group of people saying, I'm going to form my militia in the woods and go off half cocked. But no, through an organized and a state sponsored type of way. But the point is our fight is spiritual. And so we need all the spiritual resources, all the spiritual weapons at our disposal. [00:16:01] The prayer of the daily prayer that a member of the militia Immaculata says, it says, O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you and for all those who do not have recourse to you, especially the enemies of Holy Church and all those recommended to you. I really like that because it acknowledges something we don't acknowledge in the church these days, that the church has enemies. The church has enemies. I mean, if you, if you listen to your typical Catholic leader these days, you'd think everything was all roses and great and like, basically everybody loves us, we love everybody. And no, nobody. We don't have a care in the world. [00:16:37] All we need to do is fight for immigration or something like that. When really there are enemies at the gates of the church trying to knock them down. We know they won't knock them down, but they can do a lot of damage. [00:16:48] And so we take the fight to them and we acknowledge this. And through this prayer, O Mary, is of course the miraculous male prayer added on. O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you and for all those who do not have recourse to you, especially the enemies of Holy Church and all those recommended to you. In other words, we pray even for those who are our enemies, who are not. They're not fleeing to Mary, they're not asking Mary for her intercession, not, you know, going to Christ. They hate the church. That's who we're praying for as well. We're doing penance, we're doing sufferings. See, Maxwell and Kolbe loved the. [00:17:21] He appreciated, I should say, the importance of suffering. I think he loves suffering too. This is why he was able to do what he did. At the end of his life, he had tuberculosis. He basically had like only one lung. I mean, he had two lungs, but, you know, he had all these problems with them. He had serious health problems throughout his life. Yet he did so much even through that. And one of the things I thought that was beautiful, he said in his. At the monastery, when he would, you know, the friary where he would set up, he'd be the superior. [00:17:47] He would take somebody on a tour of what they're doing and what they were doing. They'd have these great printing presses and all these brothers working on printing out, I mean, hundreds of thousands of newsletters of the Knights of the Immaculata newsletters, and so much they were doing. [00:18:03] And he would take them to the infirmary where the sick brothers were, and he say, these are the most important brothers in the house. [00:18:11] These are the most important brothers in the house. The sick and the suffering. [00:18:15] He felt like they had the greatest job of anybody in the friar. Not the person at the printing press, not the person, you know, even the people out on the streets. [00:18:25] On the streets, you know, evangelizing. No, it was those who were offering up their sufferings to Christ. [00:18:31] And I think that's very important because I think there's a lot of people suffering. I think a lot of people who are watching this are suffering. It might be the suffering because they have a child who's left the faith. It might be a physical suffering. Maybe they have a chronic illness, chronic pain, something like that. [00:18:48] Maybe they have a bad marriage situation. [00:18:53] Maybe, you know, there's so many different ways that we suffer. And I think those are the most important to, say, Maxwell and Colby, at least those are most important people in our work. Those who are suffering, who offer up that suffering for the conversion of souls. That's far more important than anything I'm doing here. That's for darn sure. It's far more important than. Than podcasts, than. Than editorials, than, you know, know, social media posts or anything like that. [00:19:19] It's just offering up your sufferings. That's. That's what. That is a major part of the effort, I think. And this is really something that. [00:19:28] I mean, I know this is kind of. I get that this. This podcast, a little more personal. I usually do. I don't like talking about myself that much, but, like, it's something I've come to because I've seen since I became Catholic 32 years ago. [00:19:42] I've really seen, like, I've done a lot in the. In the. In the world of evangelization. [00:19:50] I. I was in charge of evangelization at my parish for five years, almost eight years or so. I was the director of evangelization for a diocese for five years. I wrote a book on evangelization called the Old Evangelization. [00:20:03] And what I realized is this. Catholics in general don't care about evangelization. [00:20:08] And I get that. But more importantly, when I realized, like my book, Old Evangelization, which I think is a good book, it's very much on the practical steps that Catholics should take to evangelize. And I think that's important. [00:20:20] But I realize that's not really the key. That's not really. When I especially read about St. Maxwell Kolbe, you know, what his primary means of evangelization was and is for the Militia of the Immaculata. They just hand out miraculous medals. [00:20:36] They just hand out miraculous medals. And that struck me because I have spent so many years trying to evangelize by, you know, by word, by saying, okay, do this, you know, you know, you know, learn about the faith this way, or, you know, apologetics, all this stuff. And I'm not discounting that. The importance, I don't think would either. So I'm not saying that. [00:20:58] But ultimately, it's in the hands of Our Lady. [00:21:01] If we just give somebody the miraculous medal, that's probably far more impactful for their soul than anything we could say or do. [00:21:11] And so one of the things I think we should do is we should commit to that. One of the things I want to do is commit to that, is to have. [00:21:18] Is to hand out the miraculous medal. Wear the miraculous medal. Of course, I have a blessed miraculous medal on right now. [00:21:25] I think we need to just rethink our whole purpose of evangelization, because one of the things I feel like, okay, this is kind of a complaint about the post Vatican II church. So I'm sorry, I know some people don't like when I do that, but there's plenty of reasons to complain. [00:21:41] I feel like we're very much like, I'm talking about the good Catholics after Vatican ii. I'm not talking about the liberals, the progressives who are undermining the faith. I'm talking about the good conservative, mostly Novus Oro Catholics. [00:21:55] We have so many programs and plans and seminars and conferences, and it's all very didactic of like, let's just teach people the faith. Let's tell people about the faith. We'll talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And then people will realize, wow, I want to become Catholic. Yes, there is lip service given that we need to pray and things like that. There's almost no lip service given the need for penance. [00:22:18] But I feel like there's a supernatural element that's missing that we see with Saint Maximilian Colby and the Militia Immaculata that just gives away the miraculous medal. Obviously, pray for them, do penance for them, and let our lady, take care of it. Now, Our lady might give you some words to say when you do that. I mean, it might even give you a relationship with the person. But I really think that that is far better, far deeper, far more what God wants us to do than all the programs combined that we have. I mean, I have run programs, I've run conferences, I have done seminars, and I'm going to continue to do them on some level. [00:22:56] But it's not all about talk. We're too focused on talk in the modern church today. I'm talking about the good Catholics again, not talking about the people trying to undermine the faith in the church, talking about the good Catholics. It's all about programs and talking and writing and things like that. It's got to be more on a spiritual level. [00:23:12] What see, Maxim Colby did when he founded Militia Immaculata, it was to basically give everything over to the Immaculata, to Mary and say, okay, Mary, I consecrate myself to you. Do with me what you will. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I have no idea how to do it. So just do me, do, do, do with me what you will. Tell, tell me what to do and I'll do it. And that really is the path forward. That really is the path forward, I think. And I, and I think one of the reasons, by the way, today was the day I enrolled in the militia Immaculata and consecrated myself to the Immaculata was because today's feast day is Our lady of the Rosary, which is a great feast day. And the rosary is our greatest weapon. We're talking about a militia. We need weapons. And there's no question, obviously the miraculous medal is a great weapon, but the rosary is a great, the great weapon. I want to show you a rosary here, if you're watching. If you're not watching. Well, just picture it. If you notice, this is one of those very cheap, you know, 50 cent rosaries, plastic beads. It's blue and white. This rosary is over 33 years old. You know, I know that because this is the actual rosary. I prayed in February, on February 25th. I'm sorry, February 23rd, 1992. And it was the first time I'd ever prayed the rosary. I was a Protestant. [00:24:33] It was on my roommate, Catholic roommate's desk. I picked it up and I prayed it. Now, praying is kind of a funny way to put it because I literally read the prayers. I didn't know the Hail Mary and so I just read it, didn't know the mysteries. [00:24:45] Just three days Later I decided to become Catholic. That's the power of the rosary. That's power of this rosary. This is like if my house were burning down and my kids were all safe, my family was. My wife was safe, stuff like that. [00:24:58] And I was like, okay, you have. You can grab one thing out of the house and only one thing. This is what I grab would be this rosary above. And this thing literally probably costs 30 cents or something back in with inflation. Probably cost 5 cents or something like that. That would be the thing I would grab if I. I was told you can only grab one thing. Everything else goes. I got a lot of stuff in my house. I admit that I like. I'm a little too materialistic in that sense, but that would be the thing I would grab. [00:25:23] And the rosary, though, is such a powerful weapon. It's the weapon that St. Dominic used to defeat the Albigensians. I mean, here we have this heresy that's a social heresy as well. That's the thing you realize about the Albigensians. It wasn't just a theological heresy. It was a political heresy that really threatened to undermine the whole political order. Just like now Modernism, Progressivism, threatens. It's not just theological error. It threatens to undermine our political order. It already is undermining it really well. St. Dominic used the rosary to basically overcome it. All the armies of the world couldn't do it, but St. Dominic's army led with the rosary, could do it. And so the rosary is what we really need to do. [00:26:03] I think one of the things we have to do that I think is important is that we have to get out of the activist mindset. [00:26:13] And I'm talking, by the way, all this stuff when I say these things, I'm talking to myself. First and foremost, we need to get out of the activist mindset. What that means is, is that when we see something go wrong, we can't be like our first. Okay, we gotta do something. I gotta do something. I gotta write something, I gotta post on social media, make picture, be on the air. We need to do that on some level. But that can't be our primary main thing. That can't be. Like, our whole worldview is we are an activist, because activists, they end up burning out. They end up, you often going astray. We've seen that too often with. With certain figures in the church. [00:26:49] St Maxwell Kolbe was extremely active. I mean, the guy, unbelievable what he did, particularly if you understand his physical condition. But he was an apostle, not an activist. He. He gave primacy to the interior life of prayer and penance, of. Of embracing suffering, that was his priority. [00:27:08] And then flow what flowed from that was all this various activities. But he trusted in Mary, he trusted her. Rather than trust in his own abilities, he trusted in Immaculata. And I think that's what we need to do because the activist depends on, upon himself his own powers and that's going to fail miserably. [00:27:28] But the apostle.