The National Catholic Register, the flagship propaganda organ of the EWTN media empire, announces the September 17 debut of The Road Less Traveled, a new travel series hosted by Protestant-affiliated storyteller Dave Stotts. The program promises a “fast-paced, adventurous learning experience” through Turkish archaeological sites — Antioch, Cappadocia, Ephesus, the Seven Churches of Revelation, Nicaea, and Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia — framing the cradle of Christianity as a backdrop for emotional inspiration rather than the theater of the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary and the social reign of Christ the King. This spectacle exposes the conciliar sect’s reduction of the Church Militant to a religious tourism agency, peddling naturalistic sentimentality while the abomination of desolation occupies the Vatican.
Factual Level: The Protestantization of “Catholic” Media
The article reveals that Dave Stotts cut his teeth on Drive Thru History, a series aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a bastion of Protestant televangelism and the “prosperity gospel.” His migration to EWTN Studios is not a conversion but a consolidation of the ecumenical indifferentism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 18): “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion.” Stotts explicitly states the goal is to “inspire viewers through a fast-paced, adventurous learning experience” — a purely naturalistic, pedagogical aim devoid of the supernatural finality of the Most Holy Sacrifice. The series visits the Cave Church of St. Peter in Antioch, the underground cities of Cappadocia, and the Hagia Sophia, now a mosque, treating these as museum pieces rather than loci of the Church’s indefectibility or divine chastisement. The “seven churches of Revelation” are presented as historical curiosities, ignoring the Apocalyptic warning to the Laodiceans: “Because thou art lukewarm… I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Apoc 3:16) — a verdict perfectly describing the conciliar sect’s “Church of the New Advent.”
Linguistic Level: The Rhetoric of Entertainment and the Erasure of the Supernatural
The vocabulary is tellingly secular: “travel show,” “on-location storyteller,” “fast-paced,” “adventurous learning experience,” “rediscover,” “ignite our own faith.” Nowhere appear the words Sacrifice, Mass, Transubstantiation, Papacy, infallibility, state of grace, mortification, or divine judgment. Stotts speaks of “pattern[ing] our own lives after their courageous witness” — a Pelagianism of self-improvement through historical emulation, denying the primacy of grace (gratia praeveniens) defined by the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, Can. 3). The phrase “faith we’ve inherited” treats the depositum fidei as a cultural heirloom rather than the pearl of great price (Matt 13:46) requiring the obsequium fidei to a living, teaching Magisterium — which the conciliar sect has abdicated. The “breathtaking Hagia Sophia” is admired aesthetically, not mourned as the trophy of Islamic conquest permitted by God due to the sins of Christians, a sign of the social kingship of Christ rejected by nations (Quas Primas, §28-31).
Theological Level: Naturalism, Indifferentism, and the Denial of Christ’s Kingship
The series constitutes a practical application of the heresy of Americanism and Liberalism: the separation of the Church’s history from her divine constitution and her mission to teach, govern, and sanctify (Quas Primas, §31). Pius XI teaches: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken” (Quas Primas, §31). Stotts’ tour of Nicaea — where the homoousios was defined — is stripped of its dogmatic necessity; the Creed becomes a historical artifact formulated by “the Church” (an undefined entity), not the infallible voice of the Holy Ghost through the Roman Pontiff. The visit to Ephesus, where “St. Paul’s preaching turned the city’s paganism upside down,” ignores that the same city is now entirely Muslim, a fulfillment of the withdrawal of the candlestick (Apoc 2:5) for loss of first charity — the integral Catholic Faith. The show’s treatment of St. Nicholas in Myra reduces the defender of the Divinity of Christ at Nicaea to the “legacy [that] lives on today as Santa Claus” — a capitulation to the cult of man and commercial paganism.
Most gravely, the series operates within the paramasonic structures of the conciliar sect (EWTN), which recognizes the usurper “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) and the line of antipopes from John XXIII. By producing content that assumes the legitimacy of the post-conciliar hierarchy, the program participates in the great apostasy (2 Thess 2:3). The Defense of Sedevacantism demonstrates that a manifest heretic loses the papacy ipso facto (Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice 2:30; Canon 188.4, 1917 Code). EWTN’s “Catholic” media empire is thus a pseudo-church apparatus, simulating the Church’s visibility while denying her indefectibility by adhering to a false pope. As Pius XII warned in Mystici Corporis: “Only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith and have not separated themselves from the unity of the Body.”
Symptomatic Level: The Conciliar Sect’s “Bread and Circuses” Strategy
The Road Less Traveled is a symptom of the Church of the New Advent’s strategy: distract the faithful from the vacancy of the Holy See and the invalidity of the Novus Ordo Missae by offering religious entertainment. This is the opium of the people in the Marxist sense — a palliative for the spiritual agony caused by the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt 24:15). The False Fatima Apparitions document exposes how false mysticism and sensationalism (“Miracle of the Sun”) divert attention from the modernist apostasy within. Similarly, this travel series diverts attention from the theological vacuum at the heart of the conciliar sect by offering “breathtaking ruins” and “hidden, rock-hewn, cross-shaped churches.” The faithful are invited to descend “nearly 200 feet to the lowest level of Derinkuyu” to feel “challenged to live my own faith with that same kind of courage” — a subjectivist emotionalism replacing the objective obligation to profess the integral Faith, reject the Novus Ordo, and adhere to bishops with valid orders and valid jurisdiction (which the Lefebvrians and Indultists lack, being schismatic within the schism).
The silence on the Social Kingship of Christ is deafening. Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely so that “nations… would recognize the reign of our Savior” (Quas Primas, §32). Stotts walks through Constantinople (Istanbul), the Second Rome, now the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (schismatic) and a Muslim metropolis, without a whisper of the duty of the State to profess the Catholic Faith (Quas Primas, §32; Syllabus, Prop. 77, 78). The “seven churches of Revelation” are visited not to hear the Spirit’s judgment on the lukewarm conciliar church, but to “explore each of the letters.” This is Modernist exegesis condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 59): “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples.” The letters are the all-encompassing doctrine for the Church Militant until the Parousia.
Conclusion: A Pilgrimage to Nowhere
The Road Less Traveled is a broad, paved highway leading to the synagogue of Satan (Apoc 2:9; 3:9) — the conciliar sect’s comfortable, air-conditioned, media-savvy apostasy. It offers the sensible consolations of history and travel while denying the Cross, the Mass, the Papacy, and the Social Reign of Christ the King. True Catholics, adhering to the immutable Tradition and the Sedevacantist position necessitated by the manifest heresy of the conciliar “popes,” must reject this idolatrous spectacle. We do not need a “storyteller” from TBN to show us the stones of Antioch; we need the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary offered by a validly ordained priest in union with the true Roman Pontiff (whoever he may be, canonically elected), for the glory of the Most Holy Trinity and the salvation of souls. Non est in aliis salus (Acts 4:12) — neither in travel shows, nor in the neo-church that produces them.
Source:
New EWTN Travel Series Takes Viewers to the Birthplace of Christianity (ncregister.com)
Date: 28.08.2026