Halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, hard against the western side of Interstate 5 on a hill overlooking the Pacific, is the most ecumenically minded Presbyterian church in the country. It must be that, for it is named after the fourth pope. What a shock that must be to the shade of the founder of Presbyterianism, John Knox! It is likely, though, that few of the church’s congregants realize the connection with the third successor of Peter, because San Clemente Presbyterian Church is really named after the town in which it is located.
The church lies three miles north of an off-ramp that, forty years ago, was labeled Avenida del Presidente because it connected to a road of that name on the western side of the freeway. The road led to Richard Nixon’s Western White House. After his resignation, the off-ramp, but not the road, was renamed Christianitos Road, after the continuation of Avenida del Presidente on the freeway’s eastern side. This new name might be construed as “little Christians,” which is reminiscent of the language used by the last-living apostle, John, in his epistles, which he wrote about the time that Clement was pope.
Only one document by Clement is extant, a letter he wrote to the Church at Corinth around A.D. 96. He apparently had been asked to resolve a dispute regarding presbyters who had been deposed. He asserted their authority and, by doing so, his own. His letter is the earliest written demonstration of papal authority extending beyond the confines of the Eternal City. So highly regarded was the letter that it was incorporated into the early liturgy in Corinth, but, not deemed inspired, it did not become part of the canon of the Bible. The letter is notable for its reference to “offering the gifts” (celebrating the Mass) as a chief duty of presbyters.
Most Holy Family Monastery, located in Fillmore, New York, is a fake monastery, and the two men who run it, brothers Michael and Peter Dimond, are fake monks. They claim there has been no valid pope since Pius XII, that the vernacular Mass (the Ordinary Form) is invalid, and that Vatican II was not a valid ecumenical council. Worse, in their minds the council issued nothing but heresies, and John Paul II and Benedict XVI are heretics. Apparently, just about everyone not living at the monastery is a heretic, particularly those who were once associated with it but who left for one reason or another.
One such was Eric Hoyle, a one-time novice who came to the monastery in 2005. When he entered, he turned over to the Dimonds stocks and cash totaling $1.3 million. Two years later, disaffected, Hoyle left and wanted his money back. The result was a lawsuit that concluded last year in the Dimonds’ favor, when the court granted their motion for summary judgment.
According to the judge, Hoyle “admitted that he did not like the ‘nocturnal’ hours at MHFM, the lack of cleanliness of the shower stall, and the defendants’ participation in unproductive activities such as board games.”
One has to sympathize. When you sign up for a monastery, even a fake one, it can seem a bit of an imposition to discover that night prayer is held at night. The problem with the shower stall is the kind of thing that is hardly unknown in all-male environments, but it can rankle. But it seems the thing that rankled Hoyle the most was how much time the Dimonds spent playing board games. Maybe what irked him wasn’t late-night praying but late-night playing. However that may be, Hoyle now is poorer and perhaps wiser, while the Dimonds—given the dreck on their website—seem no wiser but certainly aren’t poorer.
Before they had a falling out with him, the Dimond brothers touted Gerry Matatics. They crossed him off their list when they discovered that he thought it possible—not at all likely, but theoretically possible—that a few non-Catholics, perhaps even Jews, could be saved. The Dimonds held a maximally rigorist interpretation of the teaching “no salvation outside the Church,” while Matatics held a still rigorist but slightly different view.
Given Matatics’s more recent opinions, the Dimonds might welcome him back—then again, maybe not. In June, on his website, Matatics posted an article called “The Catastrophic Consequences of Attending a Mass Offered Una Cum (“in ecclesial union with”) Benedict XVI.” He said that “someone attending a Mass inescapably professes ecclesial union with the man mentioned as pope in the opening prayer (the Te Igitur) of the canon of the Mass. . . . Everyone attending such a Mass identifies himself or herself as being a member of the church of which that man is the visible head on earth.”
To Matatics, Benedict XVI is “an unrepentant modernist” and “therefore a heretic and therefore an invalidly elected pope, i.e., an anti-pope.” So, if you attend a Mass where Benedict XVI is mentioned by name, you cease being a member of the Catholic Church: “Everyone attending a Mass which names Benedict XVI as pope in the Canon thereby objectively places himself or herself in that counterfeit church and thus outside the true Church.” This is an “act of spiritual suicide,” says Matatics.
He concludes that all such people—including probably all of the readers of this magazine—are going to hell because of the inclusion of Benedict’s name. This applies to most Traditionalist Catholics as well, even those affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X, because their Masses also mention Benedict. It even applies to the Dimond brothers, who, somewhat incongruously, receive sacraments at a Byzantine rite Catholic Church that mentions Benedict in the liturgy.
“People who call themselves ‘traditional Catholics’ need to stop doing things that are logically inconsistent,” writes Matatics, “such as putting themselves in ecclesial union with arch-heretic Joseph Ratzinger, and thus polluting the purity of their profession of the Catholic Faith, with dire results.”
This sort of thinking brings to mind that well-known admonition: “Whom the gods destroy they first make mad.”
In the past I’ve mention the parlous state of Catholic newspapers. Many diocesan newspapers have closed, their places often being taken by websites that no one seems ever to read. All four nationally circulated Catholic papers remain in print, but for the most part they have been battered by the general move away from newspaper reading.
On a left-right spectrum, the nationally circulated papers are the National Catholic Reporter, Our Sunday Visitor, National Catholic Register, and The Wanderer. The first seems to be holding its own in terms of circulation, perhaps because it is one of the few remaining refuges for the aging population of left-wing Catholics. Our Sunday Visitor, many years ago, had a circulation that was the envy of many city newspapers; today it has only a small fraction of the readers that once made it the most influential Catholic weekly. The National Catholic Register is now owned by EWTN, after having been owned for some years by the Legion of Christ.
The most recent notable change among these papers is found at The Wanderer. Until a few months ago it looked almost as it had looked a lifetime ago: gray and stodgy. Now it has gone to a standard page size and much better formatting of articles. In addition, there are more articles of an instructional nature, including not a few on apologetics. Even the news stories seem to have been brought up a notch. Visually, it is a welcome change, but it is a change that may have come too late, since The Wanderer’s circulation is half of what it was only a few years ago. The makeover may have been intended to bring back lost readers. It is unlikely to do that, since, given the paper’s demographics, most of the readers who are gone were likely lost to the grave. But the new format might attract new readers, if only they have a chance to sample the publication.