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Most Holy Family Monastery

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Most Holy Family Monastery (also stylized as MHFM) is a non-profit sedevacantist Catholic organization, based in Fillmore, New York. It is headed by Brothers Michael and Peter Dimond.

According to a spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, the monastery is neither part of the diocese nor the Catholic Church.[1]

Due to its publication of a pamphlet entitled "101 Heresies of Anti-Pope John Paul II" it was declared "a dissident organization that challenges the papal authority" by The Catholic League in January 1999.[2] The group has also been condemned by the Catholic diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska.[3]

History

Most Holy Family Monastery was founded in 1967, in Berlin, New Jersey, by a self-proclaimed Benedictine monk named Joseph Natale (1933-1995), originally as a community for handicapped men. Natale entered the Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1960 as a lay postulant, but left less than a year later to start his own Holy Family Monastery. According to an archivist of the Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Natale left before taking vows; he never actually became a Benedictine monk.[4]

Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Natale denounced the Second Vatican Council and the post-Vatican II Mass, and by the mid-1970s the community had separated from the Vatican. By mid-1980s, there were ten monks in it, but by 1994 the number declined to three. Shortly after a conference in 1994, John Vennari left to work for Fr. Nicholas Gruner.

Initially incorporated in 1993 as the Queen of Angels Corp, Most Holy Family Monastery is a New York Domestic Not-For-Profit Corporation under the business type “religious organization”.[5]

Natale died in 1995, whereupon Michael Dimond (born Frederick Dimond[6]), who joined in 1992 at the age of 19 after converting to Catholicism four years earlier,[7] was elected the Superior. Soon after, he relocated to Granger, New York (close to Fillmore, New York), where Natale owned more than 90 acres (36 ha) of donated land. The former grounds in New Jersey are now home to the Mater Ecclesiae Parish, a traditionalist church run by the Diocese of Camden and in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

Michael and Peter Dimond's position condemning the Vatican's promotion of Natural Family Planning (a fertility awareness method for married couples to regulate conception, pregnancy, and birth) was noted in the 2010 book Twentieth-Century Global Christianity by Fortress Press, as "an admittedly rare example of contemporary opposition".[8]

Sacraments

As none of their members were ordained into the priesthood, and as they believe that the post-Vatican II Mass is invalid and that even the form of Tridentine Mass permitted by Benedict XVI in 2007 is compromised because the 1962 Roman Missal that he approved includes changes made by Pope John XXIII, they receive the sacraments from a Byzantine rite Catholic Church that is in communion with the Vatican, in Rochester, New York. During these occasions they would wear layman's clothes in lieu of their Benedictine habits. Peter Dimond wrote: "In receiving the sacraments from certain Byzantine priests for over the last decade – i.e. from priests who are not notorious or imposing about their heresies – I've received what I consider to be tremendous spiritual graces."[9][10]

As of 2020, MHFM teaches that no one should receive communion or attend Mass at any Catholic parish (including any sedevacantist sects), since they all preach heresy. However, they advise their followers to receive the sacrament of confession from Eastern Catholic priests or Latin rite priests ordained before 1968;[11] when the Second Vatican Council changed the rite of ordination for the Latin Church.

Claims of miraculous experience

According to Michael Cuneo, who researched the various traditional movements in the USA, Natale claimed that he had the gift of prophecy in these words:

Even before Vatican II was finished, I knew, and knew absolutely, that it was part of a Communist conspiracy to destroy the Church. The bishops at the council wanted to democratize Catholicism, they wanted an egalitarian theology, and most of them were secret communists and Masons. They knew exactly what they were doing. My community here was the first one in the United States to see the council for what it really was, and we rejected it completely.

Regardless of what you have been told, John Paul I did not die of natural causes. He was murdered. Shortly after his election "I went into a kind of trance" and was told that John Paul I would be murdered because he wanted to return the Church to its traditions. He was murdered by his own. The Communist infiltrators in the Vatican and the College of Cardinals, working together with the Masons, killed John Paul I. At the same time I also had a vision of John Paul II, and I was told that he would be the next pope and also that he would be an authentic pope, even though most of his actions would be controlled by Communist advisers and manipulators in the Vatican.

Five years [from 1994] is about all the time the world has left.[4]

A former member claimed that he heard angels singing when he joined the monastery.[12]

Views

Dimond and his associates consider the Holocaust "The propaganda hoax which has been so effectively used to cement Jewish power and influence in the world, and to silence any questioning of Jewish activities, support for Israel or a Jewish agenda...we work to expose Jewish domination and evil Jewish enterprises in the world, which (one must say) constitute the main power of the secular conspiracy."[13]

Frederick Dimond (Bro. Michael) is the author of UFOs: Demonic Activity & Elaborate Hoaxes Meant to Deceive Mankind, published in 2008 by Most Holy Family Monastery.[14]

Criticisms

Griff Ruby (a traditionalist) wrote against Peter Dimond regarding baptism of desire.[15] Richard Ibranyi (a sedevacantist writer and speaker) wrote against the Dimonds regarding several topics.[16]

Southern Poverty Law Center listing

The Southern Poverty Law Center listed MHFM as a hate group[17] by placing them in the category of adherents of "radical traditional Catholicism, or 'integrism'."[18] This category is said to "routinely pillory Jews as 'the perpetual enemy of Christ' and worse, reject the ecumenical efforts of the Vatican, and sometimes even assert that recent popes have all been illegitimate. They are incensed by the liberalizing reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, which condemned hatred for the Jews and rejected the accusation that Jews are collectively responsible for deicide in the form of the crucifixion of Christ."[18]

References

  1. ^ Tokasz, Jay. "Monastery Accused of Taking Man's $1.6 Million", Buffalo News, September 13, 2010
  2. ^ "Miscellaneous". Catholicleague.org. December 31, 1999. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  3. ^ [1] Archived August 28, 2003, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b Cuneo, Michael W. (22 October 1999). The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary ... - Michael W. Cuneo - Google Boeken. ISBN 9780801862656. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  5. ^ "Entity Information: Most Holy Family Monastery", New York State Department of State, Division of Corporations
  6. ^ "Hoyle v. Dimond et al :: Justia Dockets & Filings". Dockets.justia.com. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  7. ^ "Benedictine | What is a Benedictine Monastery?". Mostholyfamilymonastery.com. 1995-11-11. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  8. ^ Mary Farrell Bednarowski, ed. (2010). Twentieth-Century Global Christianity. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. p. 427.
  9. ^ "new mass". Mostholyfamilymonastery.com. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  10. ^ http://www.TheCatholicFaith.us/Council_Of_Basel_Dogmatic_Decree_Against_Notorious_Non-Catholics.htm[permanent dead link]
  11. ^ "Where To Receive Sacraments". Catholic Church. 2014-09-28. Retrieved 2020-12-07.
  12. ^ "Archived Radio Programs". Archived from the original on October 16, 2007. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  13. ^ "Facts which contradict the official “Holocaust” story", Most Holy Family Monastery
  14. ^ ''UFOs: Demonic Activity & Elaborate Hoaxes Meant to Deceive Mankind, Abe Book UK
  15. ^ "GRIFF RUBY'S STRAIGHT STUFF (jul7str.htm)". Dailycatholic.org. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  16. ^ "Brief against the Dimonds" (PDF). Johnthebaptist.us. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  17. ^ "Active Radical Traditional Catholicism Groups". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  18. ^ Jump up to: a b "Radical Traditional Catholicism". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2014-03-12.

External links

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