By Un Fils de Notre–Dame, Church Militant - A recent Vortex about the "blundering bishops" and our national government featured the following statements: "The Catholic empire has fallen just as surely as the American empire has; in fact, the American empire has fallen because the Catholic empire fell first".. "The U.S. hierarchy led the way, all the way back to the 1960s, publicly and in private".. But, it was not always that way.