The National Catholic Register portal, the house organ of the EWTN media empire, reports on the launch of a new travel series, The Road Less Traveled, hosted by longtime Protestant television personality Dave Stotts. Debuting July 13 on the conciliar sect’s streaming platform EWTN+, the program conducts a whirlwind tour of ancient Christian sites in Turkey—Antioch, Cappadocia, Ephesus, Nicaea, Constantinople—framing them as backdrop for a “fast-paced, adventurous learning experience” designed to “ignite our own faith.” Stotts, a veteran of the Protestant network TBN, waxes poetic about “forgotten roads,” “cross-shaped churches,” and the “courageous witness” of early martyrs, culminating in a visit to the Hagia Sophia. This glossy travelogue is a diabolical distraction, a panem et circenses (bread and circuses) operation by the neo-church to anesthetize the faithful with sentimental tourism while the Chair of Peter remains vacant and the Abomination of Desolation sits in the Vatican.
The Protestantization of “Catholic” Media: A Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing
On the Factual Level, the most glaring datum is the host himself. Dave Stotts is not a Catholic; he is a product of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the flagship of the charismatic Protestant “health-and-wealth” heresy. His previous series, Drive Thru History, aired on a network that denies the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Papacy, the Immaculate Conception, and the Real Presence. That EWTN—the “Global Catholic Network” of the conciliar sect—hires a Protestant entertainer to “teach” Church history is the supreme admission of intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy. It fulfills the prophecy of St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: the Modernist “does not deny, he transforms.” Here, the Catholic Faith is transformed into a Protestant-style “Bible history” travel show, stripped of the Sacramental Economy, the Hierarchy, and the Divine Liturgy. The “Cave Church of St. Peter” in Antioch is reduced to a photo-op; the Cathedra Petri—the very sign of unity and orthodoxy—is ignored because the current claimant to that Chair, “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), is a manifest heretic who perpetuates the apostasy of Vatican II. Stotts explores “underground churches” in Derinkuyu, yet fails to recognize that the true Church today is underground, persecuted not by Roman pagans but by the “bishops” and “cardinals” of the conciliar sect who have demolished the Lex Orandi and the Lex Credendi.
Rhetoric of Adventure: The Language of Naturalism
On the Linguistic Level, the article reeks of the therapeutic, immanentist vocabulary of the New Evangelization™. Words like “adventurous,” “fast-paced,” “storyteller,” “rediscover,” “impactful moments,” “inspire,” and “pattern our own lives” dominate. There is zero mention of sin, hell, judgment, the Four Last Things, the Propitiatory Sacrifice, the necessity of Baptism for salvation, or the Social Kingship of Christ the King. Stotts speaks of “the faith we’ve inherited” as a cultural heirloom, not the Depositum Fidei guarded by the Magisterium. The trivialization of St. Nicholas—reduced to “the fourth-century bishop whose legacy lives on today as Santa Claus”—is a blasphemous descent into secular folklore, stripping the Confessor of Myra of his episcopal dignity and his defense of the Homoousion at Nicaea. The phrase “shape history itself” regarding the Hagia Sophia betrays a purely horizontal, sociological view of the Church. The Church does not “shape history”; she sanctifies time and judges history from the throne of the Rex Regum. This language is the lingua franca of the Church of the New Advent, designed to make the faithful comfortable in the world, not to save souls from it.
Theological Nullity: History Without Dogma, Stones Without the Spirit
On the Theological Level, the series commits the heresy of Historicism condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 52, 53, 54): treating the Church as a mere human institution subject to evolution, whose “foundational creed” at Nicaea is an artifact to be admired in ruins rather than a dogmatic truth to be believed sub pena damnationis. The article gushes over Nicaea where “the Church formulated Christianity’s most foundational creed.” Which “Church”? The Una, Sancta, Catholica, et Apostolica Church defined the Symbolum Nicaenum under the authority of the Roman Pontiff (St. Sylvester I / St. Julius I) and the Episcopate in communion with him. The conciliar sect occupying those ruins denies that Creed daily by its false ecumenism (Assisi), religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), and collegiality (Lumen Gentium). To film a travel show in Nicaea while the “pope” in Rome prays with pagans and heretics is the height of Pharisaism—whiting the sepulchers of the Fathers while being “full of dead men’s bones” (Mt 23:27).
Furthermore, the visit to the Hagia Sophia is diabolically symbolic. Once the Great Church of Christendom, converted to a mosque by the Turk, secularized by Atatürk, and recently reconverted to a mosque by Erdoğan—it stands as a monument to the Ichabod (the glory has departed). The conciliar sect’s “pilgrims” gawk at its architecture while the True Mass is banned in its shadow and the True Faith is banned in the Vatican. Stotts says he was “challenged to live my own faith with that same kind of courage today.” What faith? The Protestant faith of TBN? The conciliar faith of the Novus Ordo? The only courage required today is the fortitudo martyrum to reject the Novus Ordo Missae, the false “popes,” the false “bishops,” and the false “saints” (Kolbe, Newman, Faustina, John Paul II) and cleave to the Tradition preserved by valid bishops and priests sine missione canonica from the usurpers. The “underground cities” of Cappadocia are a perfect type of the Sedevacantist remnant: hiding from the persecutors who hold the visible structures. EWTN films the ruins; the remnant lives the reality.
Symptomatic of the Great Apostasy: Bread and Circuses for the Laity
On the Symptomatic Level, The Road Less Traveled is a textbook implementation of the Masonic plan described in the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita: “We must popularize the Church… make it a place of amusement.” EWTN, founded by the charismatic “Mother” Angelica (a disciple of the false mystic Faustina Kowalska, whose writings were on the Index), has always been the opiate of the conciliar masses. It provides a 24/7 simulation of Catholicism—rosaries, “Masses,” talk shows, now travel shows—to prevent the laity from asking the Gretchenfrage: “Where is the Pope? Where is the Mass? Where is the Faith?” The series targets the “laziness and timidity of the good” (Pius XI, Quas Primas) who prefer a comforting DVD about Antioch to the hard sayings of Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio (Paul IV) or Quo Primum (St. Pius V). It reinforces the Great Illusion that the conciliar sect is the Catholic Church, merely “exploring its roots.” In reality, the roots have been cut. The “Church” in Turkey is a museum; the “Church” in Rome is a Masonic lodge. The only “Road Less Traveled” today is the Via Crucis of Sedevacantism—the narrow way of those who, like the Christians of Derinkuyu, descend into the depths of the catacombs to offer the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary in secret, refusing communion with the Abomination of Desolation standing in the Holy Place (Mt 24:15). This series is not evangelization; it is spiritual anesthesia administered by the paramasonic structure to keep the dormant faithful from waking to the reality of the Sede Vacante.
Source:
New EWTN Travel Series Takes Viewers to the Birthplace of Christianity (ncregister.com)
Date: 12.07.2026