In the same way that all conspiracy theories are all slightly different in their own unique interpretations, making them fun to learn about, I am fascinated by the fractal nature of religious heresies and schisms. I had to look up this one because it's pretty damn obscure and I ended up spending all afternoon trying to figure out exactly what flavor of crazy the "Most Holy Family Monastery" are.
TLDR: they are a fringe group of sedevacantists who think all other sedevacantists and catholics are heretics and promote lots of insane infowars-tier conspiracy theories, run by two brothers living in an isolated compound in upstate New York. SPLC lists them as a hate group for being holocaust deniers.
So, the background context: in the 1960s the Roman Catholic Church held a big reform council (Vatican II) where, among other things, they decided to switch from the old Latin Mass to the modern one which celebrates mass in the vernacular, which is what nearly all of the world's 1.4 billion Catholic attend today.
A small fringe, called "sedevacantists", hated Vatican II so much they declared it was heresy, and that every pope since then is fake and there hasn't been a real pope since the 1950s. Hence the name: sede (chair) vacante (empty). Wordlwide, sedevacantists probably number around 30,000 (maybe as many as 200,000) and include all sorts of groups with various wacky beliefs.
Another small fringe is "Feeneyism", the belief that only baptized Catholics can go to heaven, with no exceptions for e.g. good people who never heard of the Church or who died before they could be officially baptized. The Catholic Church rejected this view in 1949 and the founder was excommunicated for disobedience. There are a few thousand of them left, mostly in rural New England. Some of them are still in communion with the mainstream Church, which quietly tolerates them.
This brings us to Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), currently run by brothers Michael and Peter Dimond in New York (which the above poster linked extensively). Neither of them is ordained, and no bishop recognizes them. The MHFM was founded by a guy named Joseph Natale in the 60s. He was a benedictine drop-out who broke away from the Catholic Church. Natale started an unofficial traditional latin catholic monastery in New Jersey which preached that Vatican II was a secret plot by the freemasons and the communists to destroy the Church, and predicted the world would end in 1999.
Weirdly, despite believing that Vatican II was a Communist Freemason conspiracy, the MHFM weren't sedevacantists under Natale; Natale just believed the pope was real, just a puppet controlled by the conspiracy. when Natale died in 1995, Michael Dimond took over with his brother Peter. They moved the operation to a rural hamlet in western New York and promptly declared that actually, the Pope wasn't just a puppet, he was a fake pope. Under them, MHFM became sedevacantist (which by their own logic makes their founder a heretic). But they also decided to become Feeneyites! So, being sedevacantists puts them outside the Catholic Church. Being Feeneyites means they consider every other sedevacantist group heretical, and vice versa. And being Sedevacantist makes them heretical to other Feeneyites, who mostly still accept the pope.
Some of their actual beliefs, as far as I can tell:
- Most everybody is going to hell except for them and and maybe some of their youtube followers
- Stage magicians use real magic, not illusions, which they get from demons
- UFOs are real and actually they're demons
- The covid vaccine was a cover-up
- John Paul II was the antichrist
- Holocaust denial. (if I had a nickel for every time I look up a sedevacantist group and find out they are holocaust deniers...)
The Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a hate group due to that last point.
Thanks for the links btw, I have no idea if your comment was a joke or not but I had never heard of them before and I had a fun time going down this rabbit hole
TLDR: they are a fringe group of sedevacantists who think all other sedevacantists and catholics are heretics and promote lots of insane infowars-tier conspiracy theories, run by two brothers living in an isolated compound in upstate New York. SPLC lists them as a hate group for being holocaust deniers.
So, the background context: in the 1960s the Roman Catholic Church held a big reform council (Vatican II) where, among other things, they decided to switch from the old Latin Mass to the modern one which celebrates mass in the vernacular, which is what nearly all of the world's 1.4 billion Catholic attend today.
A small fringe, called "sedevacantists", hated Vatican II so much they declared it was heresy, and that every pope since then is fake and there hasn't been a real pope since the 1950s. Hence the name: sede (chair) vacante (empty). Wordlwide, sedevacantists probably number around 30,000 (maybe as many as 200,000) and include all sorts of groups with various wacky beliefs.
Another small fringe is "Feeneyism", the belief that only baptized Catholics can go to heaven, with no exceptions for e.g. good people who never heard of the Church or who died before they could be officially baptized. The Catholic Church rejected this view in 1949 and the founder was excommunicated for disobedience. There are a few thousand of them left, mostly in rural New England. Some of them are still in communion with the mainstream Church, which quietly tolerates them.
This brings us to Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), currently run by brothers Michael and Peter Dimond in New York (which the above poster linked extensively). Neither of them is ordained, and no bishop recognizes them. The MHFM was founded by a guy named Joseph Natale in the 60s. He was a benedictine drop-out who broke away from the Catholic Church. Natale started an unofficial traditional latin catholic monastery in New Jersey which preached that Vatican II was a secret plot by the freemasons and the communists to destroy the Church, and predicted the world would end in 1999.
Weirdly, despite believing that Vatican II was a Communist Freemason conspiracy, the MHFM weren't sedevacantists under Natale; Natale just believed the pope was real, just a puppet controlled by the conspiracy. when Natale died in 1995, Michael Dimond took over with his brother Peter. They moved the operation to a rural hamlet in western New York and promptly declared that actually, the Pope wasn't just a puppet, he was a fake pope. Under them, MHFM became sedevacantist (which by their own logic makes their founder a heretic). But they also decided to become Feeneyites! So, being sedevacantists puts them outside the Catholic Church. Being Feeneyites means they consider every other sedevacantist group heretical, and vice versa. And being Sedevacantist makes them heretical to other Feeneyites, who mostly still accept the pope.
Some of their actual beliefs, as far as I can tell:
- Most everybody is going to hell except for them and and maybe some of their youtube followers
- Stage magicians use real magic, not illusions, which they get from demons
- UFOs are real and actually they're demons
- The covid vaccine was a cover-up
- John Paul II was the antichrist
- Holocaust denial. (if I had a nickel for every time I look up a sedevacantist group and find out they are holocaust deniers...)
The Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a hate group due to that last point.
Thanks for the links btw, I have no idea if your comment was a joke or not but I had never heard of them before and I had a fun time going down this rabbit hole