by sf 3 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
This cult was featured on Joe Scarboroughs show on MSNBC the last two nights. He has vowed to stay on top of it. On his show, he has been showing a very sickening video taken by the cult. MSNBC has it on their site, I'm pretty sure.
Rick Ross has been a guest for this piece. Here is the link on his site for this child abusing cult:
http://www.rickross.com/groups/tlrchurch.html
If and when you do see this video, be warned, it is very disturbing.
sKally
http://www.rickross.com/reference/tlrchurch/tlrchurch3.html
Seattle - Members of a reclusive religious sect claim to be dedicating their lives to God.
The Eastside group is known by many different names, but most commonly as the "Tridentine Latin Rites Church." It is not associated with the Catholic Church or the archdiocese of Seattle.
We've learned that one child, maybe others, were sexually abused within the church's own inner sanctum.
That news comes as one family decides to take drastic steps to get their loved one out.
Video shot by KING 5 News outside a Seattle hospital captures what appears to be a crime, an elderly woman surrounded and then snatched at the main door of a Seattle hospital.
The woman is Kathleen Raleigh, who just finished a doctor's appointment and is then forced into a van.
Her captors are none other than her own children, who call this an intervention, a last ditch effort to save their mother from the grip of a mysterious religious sect.
“Her mind is in prison. She's been told if she talks to her children and her husband she will be damned and lose her soul ,” said her daughter, Rosemarie Offenhauer, “and we saw that very vividly as we talked to her.”
Mrs. Raleigh is a long-time member of the Tridentine Church. After decades of running from the law and controversy in other cities, about 100 Tridentines have lived for several years in obscurity in the suburbs east of Seattle.
Now, the KING 5 Investigators have learned the Tridentines face their most troubling accusation yet, that they're helping to cover up crimes against their most defenseless members, their own children.
"I trusted these people to take care of my son. They were supposed to be men of God,” lamented a woman who was, for decades, a Tridentine.
She lived in a Bellevue house with her daughters and the group's other women. They were strictly separated from the males, who once lived in a home near Issaquah.
Only after she left the group did the woman learn that her now 13-year-old son was repeatedly raped in the men's house by at least one, and possibly several, group members.
"They were raping him and they were telling him that it was O.K. That that's what everybody does,” she said.
“It's very hard to admit that these people that I gave my son to, that I trusted, are the very ones that destroyed his innocence."
Life as a Tridentine involves hours of prayer, strict discipline and no contact with the world outside.
Former members say church leaders preached fear to keep them from running away.
“They had us convinced that if we left, we were automatically going to hell," said former cult member Michelle Chestnut.
The indoctrination begins at the earliest age.
On Halloween, which the Tridentines celebrate as All Saints Day, the group performs an annual ritual: The smallest children are confronted by a person dressed as the devil, who threatens to drag naughty children from the safety of the church to the evils of the world outside.
“It was horrifying - none of the mothers liked it,” said one mother.
But former members say no one dares defy orders from the group's leader, an elusive man named Frances Schuckardt, who they say considers himself to be the true pope.
At his peak in the 1980's, Schuckardt headed a Spokane church, one of the nation's largest congregations of so-called traditional Catholics -- who split with the Vatican in the 1960's.
Leaders of his own renegade church eventually ousted Schuckardt, accusing him of fondling young men, abusing prescription drugs and embezzlement, allegations he denied.
In the latest criminal case, one Tridentine does not deny he sexually assaulted the former member's young son.
Steven Belzak, 19, confessed to child molestation and will be sentenced in King County Juvenile Court later this month.
You'd think church leaders would want to root out the problem.
Instead, detectives accuse them of blocking efforts to hunt down additional suspects.
“Everywhere they turn they're hitting these walls were they don't want to talk to us, don't want to assist us at all. They want nothing to do with us," said King County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Travis Defries.
An arrest warrant has been issued for another person wanted in the rape, 20-year-old Justin Kirkland.
But detectives say church members refuse to answer questions about his whereabouts and they deny that a third suspect identified by detectives even exists.
Some of the group's younger members have no birth records or Social Security numbers, making identification next to impossible.
“We do have one victim. There may be a lot more victims out there. Because of the walls that are put up around this organization it's hard for people inside to get out and share their story and share what's happened,” said Defries.
In the meantime, the woman whose son was raped hopes others within the Tridentines come around to her view of the group.
“God gave me that child to protect him and I didn't do it. I just pray the other parents that are in that group will wake up," she said.
The Raleigh family, in the meantime, hoped their desperate gamble would wake up their mother.
Her children drove her to Spokane to reunite with her ailing husband, who gave her flowers and recited their wedding vows.
The family was devastated when the reunion, the first in more than a dozen years, ended when Mrs. Raleigh demanded to return to the church.
“At that point I realized that my mother probably died 13 years ago. This is not the same woman I last saw 13 years ago. It's a different person," said Rosemarie Offenhauer.
The Tridentines declined repeated offers to appear on camera for this story.
In an e-mail, one church leader said "it appears to us that both the media and the government are stacked up against us."
Regarding the rape case, he said, "it is my understanding that the accused herein claim that the accuser is lying and feel that the boy [the victim] is being handled and coached by those who pursue an agenda of hate against our church."
He said church leaders are not trying to obstruct justice, but if there is a lack of cooperation, it's because their members have no faith in the criminal justice system.
Detectives have been out recently hunting for Justin Kirkland, the charged suspect whose whereabouts are unknown, and they're working on charging a third young man as well.
______
~sigh~
sKally
Just doin' a googlin' :
Cross Currents: The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and ...
For example, Francis Schuckardt (b. 1937), moved in the 1970s from a Marian ...
Sedevacantism, a theory espoused by Francis Schuckardt and some SSPV members ...
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_m2096/is_n2_v48/ai_20968471 - 30k - Cached - Similar pages
The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism. - book reviews...
Michael W. Cuneo. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 214pp. $27.50 (cloth).
Michael Cuneo's Smoke of Satan is an engaging survey of traditionalist American Catholics, all of whom are angry at the legacy of the Second Vatican Council. For convenience he divides them into three distinct groups. The first, whom he labels conservatives, believe that most of their fellow Catholics misinterpreted the message of the Council. They argue for an interpretation of its documents that emphasizes continuity with the past instead of the jarring disjuncture they have witnessed over the last thirty years. The second group, Catholic separatists, have broken away from the church altogether, believing that it no longer represents the true Catholic faith. They now belong to an cluster of exotic movements that try to keep the preconciliar flame burning but squabble among themselves, and live with the contradiction of being schismatic in the name of orthodoxy. Cuneo points to the irony that many of these splinter groups, seeking shelter from the corrosions of American life, are actually reliving one of the most familiar patterns in American religious history. Marianists, the third group, are devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who believe that visions at Fatima (Portugal), Medjugorje (Herzegovina), and even Bayside, in Queens, New York, offer supernatural guidance to a church adrift in the chaotic modern world. The three groups overlap at times. Pro-life activists among the conservatives, for example, are often devotees of Mary too, and separatists often started out as members of conservative or Marianist groups before making their jump.
Cuneo's subjects are the antithesis of the everyday American Catholic in the pew. For example, Francis Schuckardt (b. 1937), moved in the 1970s from a Marian organization, the Blue Army of Fatima, to running his own church, the Tridentine Latin Rite Church in Spokane, which gathered a few hundred followers. "From beginning to end," writes Cuneo, "he insisted [that] the Second Vatican Council was a demonic conspiracy aimed at subverting the traditions of the church and thereby preparing the way for an atheistic world order" (103). His group's parochial school children were subjected to gruesome forms of penance by sadistic nuns, and Schuckardt himself was forced to turn into a fugitive and survivalist after allegations of homosexual abuse at his Mount St. Michael's seminary.
______
traditionalmass.org | Articles: Traditionalist Controversy ...
The St. Michael group was founded by Francis Schuckardt, a layman who gained ...
In October and November 1971, Francis Schuckardt was ordained a priest and ...
www.traditionalmass.org/articles/ article.php?id=26&catname=14 - 34k - Cached - Similar pages
Mt. St. Michael & CMRI: Brief Overview Rev. Anthony Cekada
From time to time, I am asked about the background of the Mount St. Michael group (or CMRI), a traditional Catholic organization headquartered in Spokane, Washington. The following is a brief summary of what I have already written on the issue.
Origins of the Group
The St. Michael group was founded by Francis Schuckardt, a layman who gained considerable prominence in the 1960’s for his eloquence in promoting the Fatima Message. In 1967 Schuckardt and about a half-dozen young supporters of the Fatima Message banded together as the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI) with the idea of living the religious life as traditional Catholic nuns and brothers. Schuckardt’s magnetic personality and reputation in the Fatima movement made him a natural leader for this group. The project at first enjoyed the approval of the Most Rev. Sylvester Treinen, the Catholic Bishop of Boise, Idaho.
Schuckardt, however, was among the first in this country to reject as non-Catholic all the changes in faith and worship introduced in the Church in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Naturally this led to problems with Bp. Treinen. The priest who had been advising CMRI was replaced with a modernist, and the group began looking elsewhere for clergy to serve them.
A few sympathetic priests were persuaded to help out, among them the Rev. Burton Fraser, a Jesuit from Colorado who refused to say the New Mass. He became the CMRI’s spiritual advisor.
CMRI & “Sedevacantism”
In about 1970, Schuckardt and his followers came to the conclusion that Paul VI, by his own acts and words, had forfeited his authority and office and that the Holy See was therefore juridically vacant — they became “sedevacantists,” in other words, years before the term was invented.
In 1971, of course, no Catholic bishop would ordain priests for a religious order which rejected Vatican II, the New Mass and Paul VI.
Schuckardt’s Consecration
At this point in the story we encounter one Daniel Q. Brown. Brown, a Catholic layman who had rejected the Vatican II changes nearly from the start, had gotten himself ordained a priest and consecrated a bishop by an “Old Catholic” prelate.[1] Brown’s conclusions on the post-Vatican II Church turned out to be identical to Schuckardt’s. He, too, believed the Holy See was vacant.
Fr. Fraser believed that the situation in the Church was extreme and that there were no Catholic bishops to whom one could go for the traditional sacraments.[2] Fr. Fraser concluded that the moral principle of epikeia — in the face of unforeseen circumstances, favorably interpreting the mind of the Church as law-giver in such a way as to permit an action which the law would forbid under normal circumstances — could be invoked to allow one to receive Holy Orders from Brown. His conclusions were deemed sufficient by members of the group to warrant the actions which would follow.
Brown repented of his schismatic acts, renounced his ties with the Old Catholics, made a public abjuration, went to confession, and received absolution from a traditional priest. In October and November 1971, Francis Schuckardt was ordained a priest and consecrated a bishop by Brown. CMRI would later move its center of operations from Idaho to a former Jesuit seminary, Mount St. Michael, in Spokane, Washington.
Preserving the Faith
Schuckardt’s emphasis on Marian piety and the traditional Latin Mass drew to the movement over the years thousands of laymen dissatisfied with the modernism of the Conciliar Church. Many young people, as well, joined the two religious orders Schuckardt had established. Schuckardt organized dozens of Fatima groups throughout the country for traditional Catholics who supported his cause.
Here we must give credit where credit is due. On the central issues — the New Mass, for instance, and the defection en masse of the hierarchy from Catholic teaching — the members of the St. Michael’s group were right. They also preserved intact all those traditions and practices which are now a part of the religious and devotional life of every traditional Catholic chapel in the world. This they did, please note, at a time when most of us — even the group’s most vocal opponents — were still going to the Novus Ordo, defending Paul VI, and urging “conservative” interpretations of the disastrous Vatican II changes.
Detour into Isolation
At the same time, however, Catholics who turned to Schuckardt in their quest to preserve their faith also unwittingly became entangled in something which started to show all the signs of a classic personality cult. Schuckardt’s word was law, and he introduced many devotional and penitential practices which were bizarre and extreme. To isolate followers, the reading of literature produced by other traditional Catholic groups was forbidden, even to priests. Many were left completely in the dark about the actual source of Schuckardt’s episcopal consecration.[3] All traditional clergy outside Schuckardt’s orbit were depicted as having compromised with the Conciliar Church; the laity, naturally, were forbidden to approach outside priests for the sacraments. Followers were also sometimes subjected to disorienting techniques associated with cults and mind-control.
Most people, of course, have no idea of how a Catholic bishop of the old school would really conduct himself. Since Schuckardt’s followers had no standard for comparison, it is manifestly unjust to reproach them for mistaking his methods for the spirit of the Church.
Not surprisingly, Schuckardt ordained only six priests — a large body of clergy could have constituted a threat to his position. Nevertheless, some of them eventually began to have second thoughts. Schuckardt sent two clerics to a nearby college to take a course on cults — he hoped they would gather enough information to refute the press’s charge that the St. Michael’s group was a cult. The opposite occurred. Both came away convinced that Schuckardt was in the process of turning the operation into a full-fledged cult.
Soon after his consecration by Brown, Schuckardt turned himself into a remote and mysterious figure, isolated from the day-to-day life of the religious communities he founded. He generally issued his orders and directions in writing or by phone, rather than in person. Other than giving an annual retreat, Schuckardt left the spiritual formation of the nuns and brothers to others. While he kept quarters at Mount St. Michael, he would normally visit there only on major feast days. From the beginning, he lived in houses apart from the religious community itself.
Schuckardt’s Departure
Despite this, in the early 1980s some of the priests, brothers and nuns in the community began to conclude that his behavior was becoming increasingly strange and erratic.
In 1984 a series of stories in the secular press accused Schuckardt of drug abuse and gross personal immorality,[4] charges which shocked the Mount St. Michael community. In June 1984 three priests confronted him with the accusations. After delays in addressing the issue, Schuckardt fled with a small number of religious and lay people.
Recovery & Reorganization
In autumn of 1984 the priests sought out a bishop to ordain for the CMRI. Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of St. Pius X were out of the question, particularly since the Archbishop at that time was seeking to work out a compromise with the Conciliar Church. They settled on Bishop George J. Musey, one of the line of traditional Catholic bishops who trace their consecrations back to Archbishop Peter Martin Ngô-dinh-Thuc, former Archbishop of Hué, Vietnam.[5]
On 23 April 1985 before Bp. Musey, the remaining three priests formally and publicly took the Abjuration of Error and Profession of Faith ad cautelam — in case through their previous actions they had incurred any ecclesiastical censures. Bp. Musey then re-ordained them conditionally. (This was a prudent step. While the Church before Vatican II usually regarded ordinations stemming from Old Catholic bodies as valid, she also looked at each particular case.)
The priests announced their intention to turn the group into a normal traditional Catholic organization. They adopted a standard set of rules and constitutions for a religious order — Schuckardt had run the organization by personal fiat — and instituted checks and balances to avoid a rerun of past abuses. Fr. Denis Chicoine was elected Superior General, and was succeeded in August 1989 by Fr. Tarciscius Pivarunas. Across the board, the Fathers systematically uprooted the cult-like practices Schuckardt introduced.
Some Objections
Despite the normalization program the CMRI leadership put into effect, a handful of traditional Catholics in the U.S. have continued to denounce it as non-Catholic or “schismatic.” The following should be noted:
First, it is unjust to continue to condemn CMRI for past deviations which have been acknowledged, rectified and atoned for. Schuckardt departed more than a decade ago, the group’s leaders took an abjuration, and much additional information has come to light. One should have the good grace to acknowledge these facts and their consequences. To do otherwise is both intellectually dishonest and morally wrong.
Second (and more to the point), the law of the Catholic Church simply does not support the accusation that CMRI is (or was) “schismatic.” Despite repeated challenges to do so, CMRI’s critics have been utterly unable to demonstrate that either the group or its individual members come, or indeed ever came, under the Code of Canon Law’s definition of schismatic.[6] In the final analysis, the accusation is nothing more than an epithet hurled by those who are either ignorant of the law, or choose to be so.
Recent Developments
In February 1991, Bishop Moises Carmona, a traditional bishop from Acapulco who had been consecrated by Abp. Thuc ten years earlier, asked the CMRI Fathers to choose one of their number for episcopal consecration. Bp. Carmona, then in his eighties, wanted a younger successor to care for the numerous traditional clergy and Mass centers he was serving in Mexico.
On 3 April 1991, the Fathers elected Fr. Pivarunas as their candidate. Following standard Church practice, he reassumed his baptismal name, Mark Anthony, and in accordance with the CMRI Constitutions, resigned his post as Superior General.
Bp. Pivarunas was consecrated by Bp. Carmona during a public ceremony held at Mount St. Michael in September 1991. He resides in Omaha, Nebraska, where he serves as Pastor of Mary Immaculate Church, and Rector of Mater Dei Seminary. In his capacity as a bishop, he also travels extensively in the U.S. and Mexico in order to confirm and ordain for various sedevacantist groups.
As of this writing, the CMRI has 12 priests, a number of brothers and seminarians, and about 50 sisters. They operate traditional chapels throughout the United States, and in Mexico, Canada and New Zealand. Several thousand lay people assist at the traditional Mass at these chapels.
• • •
Traditional Catholics inclined to condemn CMRI for its past ought to remember that no traditional Catholic organization — indeed, no human organization — is impeccable, unsullied by misdeeds or immune to occasional scandals. The histories of SSPX, SSPV, ORCM, TCA, TCM or any organization in the traditionalist alphabet soup would turn soap opera writers into millionaires.
Let us keep this in mind as we seek to preserve the truth of the faith — which will profit us nothing without charity.
(Pamphlet, October 1993).
[1] “Old Catholic” is a generic term for a number of schismatic sects originating in the 17th and 19th centuries. The Catholic Church regarded ordinations conferred in European Old Catholic groups as valid; the issue of the validity of ordinations by American Old Catholics, however, is not nearly so clear.
[2] This transpired in 1970, when Archbishop Lefebvre was a virtual unknown attempting to secure Paul VI’s blessing for his newly-founded Society of St. Pius X.
[3] Lay people involved for many years with St. Michael’s have told me that the first time they heard of “Old Catholics” was when they read my 1990 pamphlet, “A Question of Authority.”
[4] The case was highly publicized at the time. There is no point in repeating all the details.
[5] For information on Abp. Thuc, see my study “The Validity of the Thuc Consecrations.”
[6] I have written several articles on the canonical issue.
_______
sKally
I saw this also...it's pretty clear that cults always try to COVER UP and DENY abuse! They almost never cooperate with authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice. It takes a member coming forward and going up against all odds, to try and get this exposed and save loved ones. Sound familiar?
Swalker
