EWTN’s ‘Road Less Traveled’: Sentimental Tourism Masking the Vacant See
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.