Most High Family Monastery

In 2008, Alex Jones (or Alex Jones, by way of Genesis Communications Network) was accepting advertising money from the Most Holy Family Monastery, an extreme break-off Catholic group based in New York:

At first glance, it appears that this is just some sort of religious group that believes that there's something wrong with the Catholic church. That's not something we haven't seen over and over again throughout history. It's not like an entire political party was created strictly on the basis of hating Catholics. American history is rich with anti-Catholic sentiment.

But, the Most Holy Family Monastery is no run of the mill anti-Catholic organization. No, they are members of what's known as the sedevacantist community who believe that all Popes elected since 1958 have been invalid, and that there hasn't been a real Pope since the death of Pius XII. For the most part they believe this because after that point, Catholicism lost it's roots, and that only they are still preaching "true Catholicism."

Now, the more skeptical among us might suggest that it's possible that they are just mad because Pius XII's successor John XXIII started his papacy with a splash. This might be the kind of stuff the sedevacantists are not thrilled about:

“Events during the war, especially the Holocaust, led John XXIII to eliminate the description of Jews as “perfidious” in the Good Friday liturgy and to confess the church’s history of anti-Semitism.”

But maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. We should probably learn more about this Most Holy Family Monastery before we make any decisions on anything.

The MHFM was founded in 1967, in New Jersey by a man named Joseph Natale. Natale claimed to be a Benadictine monk, that he had been at the Saint Vincent Archabbey where his superior had told him to go out and start his own monastery. Their record keeper has attested that, though Natale was at St. Vincent, he never took his vows, and is not a monk.

That didn't stop him from starting that monastery though, and attracting a little flock, mostly based around the idea that the Vatican, after Pius XII, was infiltrated by communists and Masons.

Natale died in 1995, at which point he was succeeded by a 23 year old acolyte named Brother Michael Dimond, who had been with the group since he was 19. There is a small problem in that, because Natale was not ordained or an actual Benadictine monk, he can't ordain anyone in his group, so Dimond is not a real monk either, nor can he ordain anyone. It's probably a moot point because they hate the Catholic church anyway so who cares about the Catholic church's definition of what is a monk?

Michael Dimond and his brother Peter took over the monastery, and since then, they have been operating like a proper fringe weirdo religious group, that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a "radical" group.

Fringe, radical groups often like to point a finger at the SPLC and say that their lists are biased and the SPLC are themselves the radicals, so I figured it would be best to dive into some of their positions and see what they were about for myself.

Luckily, they have a website where they list a whole lot of their positions on issues, and honestly, calling them radical is a very serious case of putting the thing lightly.

Homosexuality

It's pretty common practice for most Christian, especially conservative Christian, groups to not be thrilled with homosexuality. Many churches have become more accepting in the past few decades, and progress is being made, but the MHFM is stuck in the worst parts of the mid-1900's.

From their own website:

“A commonly held false idea in our day is that God creates some people homosexual (or that homosexuality is a result of some sort of “psychological” problem)… The truth is that God doesn’t create anyone with a homosexual orientation and that all those who are truly homosexuals (even those who are not engaging in homosexual acts) are homosexuals because of a demonic takeover and mortal sin”

Didn't take long for us to get all the way there. Being gay is caused by demons. Cool. Got any proof?

“The fact that all homosexuals are spiritually possessed by a demonic spirit is corroborated by the fact that most homosexual males can be identified by their effeminate external mannerisms. What explains this? It’s obviously the demon’s presence in the person manifesting itself externally – the external, unnatural mannerisms revealing the internal corruption of the soul.”

So, to make sure we're all on the same page, most homosexual men have effeminate mannerisms, and the obvious explanation for this is that demons make people act effeminate. This all checks out.

They go on to explain their belief that homosexuality is "curable" (it is not, and the very idea is pretty degrading), and that their bigotry is actually an expression of kindness and grace:

“Men and women are given over to homosexuality for inundating themselves with sins of impurity – and thereby worshipping the flesh rather than God – and for this they get possessed by the demon of lust, which takes them over and corrupts their entire orientation. (And they can be cured of this.)

By telling homosexuals the truth that their perverse orientation is not natural, we do them a great charity and show a true love for their souls. We give them the knowledge and the means to cure themselves.”

It's good to see that colonial mentality of "bringing civilization the the savages," a mentality solely employed to defend whites committing genocides against indigenous peoples, is still alive and well in 2018.

Their position on homosexuality alone would make the MHFM a pretty fucked up group of assholes, but this rabbit hole goes much deeper.

Masturbation

They believe that masturbation is a mortal sin, because it causes a man to become more effeminate (demons), and likely leads to homosexuality (more demons).

Vaccines

They are pretty anti-vaccine, and actually believe that the Swine Flu was a false flag hoax meant as an excuse to force people into vaccinations. Don't worry, they have reputable sources to make their claims, including a link to an InfoWars story.

UFOs

They believe that UFOs are actually demons trying to trick humanity. At least that's what I think their position is. I'm not entirely sure because they don't have this one up on the website, but they do sell a book called "UFOs: Demonic Activity and Elaborate Hoaxes Meant to Deceive Mankind," and I'm not buying it to find out the finer details.

Holocaust Denial

Alright, here's the big one. They believe the Holocaust was a hoax, meant to replace the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as the "central event of history."

They straight up have a page on their website titled "The Holocaust Hoax," which sucks. But on the plus side, they start it off with the best possible first sentence for a Holocaust denial page:

“INTRODUCTORY NOTE: Let us preface this by saying that we are not “anti-Semitic” and we desire the conversion and eternal happiness of all Jews.”

Oh cool! I was real worried that you might be a little antisemitic, but based on the fact that you said that you're not, and put antisemitic in quotation marks as if to suggest that antisemitism isn't even a real thing, I'm very relieved.

A little later in the page, they do say this though:

“...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.”

Nothing antisemitic so far. Let's keep looking.

As far as their argument about the Holocaust being a hoax, they take a lot from videos put out by a guy named Mark Weber, who is a pretty big name in the denial world, but his history reveals that the positions he espouses do not come from a place of seeking historical accuracy, but a place of deep seated antisemitism.

Early in his career, in 1978, Mark Weber was the editor for National Vanguard, the publication of the National Alliance, which is one of the biggest Neo-Nazi groups in the USA.

By 1979, he was also writing for The Spotlight, a very antisemitic publication that was started by Willis Carto specifically to turn public opinion against Jews.

By the late 90's, Weber was working for the Institute for Historical Review. They deny the holocaust on the regular, but do that thing where they pretend that they just "question things." In 1987, the IHR held its annual conference, and their “mystery guest” was Maj. Gen. Otto Ernst Remer, an unrepentant Nazi who many believe is the man most responsible for creating the post-war Nazi underground.

In 1989, Weber wrote that he didn't believe that black people could assimilate into American society.

This man being taken as a reputable source by MHFM brings up some very serious issues. Mark Weber is not a historian looking to correct what he perceives to be the mistakes of past scholarship, as he might want you to think. He is a person with an overt history in the world of the Neo-Nazis, and his Holocaust denial very clearly is a part of bolstering the Nazi perspective and demonizing Jews.

This trend continues as we look at one of their other big sources for their claims of the Holocaust being a hoax, a guy named Bishop Richard Williamson. This may surprise you, but he's not really a Bishop. He's just a big ol' Holocaust denier.

Williams was consecrated as a bishop without papal authorization, and after he started spouting "Holocaust revisionism," Pope John Paul II excommunicated him. That's not a problem though, because the sect that he was a part of, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), claim that the excommunication is not valid because they're sedevacantists too, and don't believe in Popes past the one who said that Jews were okay.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI decided to rehabilitate Williamson, which is probably just a coincidence that he is the pope who was a Nazi.

At this point, he was running a church in Argentina, though the Argentine government would go on to kick him out of the country because his visa was bad and his statements about Jews “profoundly offend the Argentinean society, the Jewish people and all of humanity”

He would later go on to be excommunicated again after he refused to apologize and distance himself from his holocaust denial and he insisted on consecrating people without Vatican approval. We hate this guy, but we have to admit it is pretty impressive to be excommunicated by two different popes in one lifetime.

When he was put on trial in 2009 for inciting racial hatred, the lawyer he hired to defend him was the former leader of Wiking-Jugend, a German Neo-Nazi group. In 2012, he was thrown out of the SSPX because he wouldn’t stop publishing a weekly email newsletter that the Society did not approve of, and because he performed sacraments while he was on an unauthorized visit to Brazil, so he joined up with a SSPX resistance movement and consecrated a couple bishops of his own.

All this is to say that "Bishop" Richard Williamson appears to be a dangerous lunatic, and someone with extensive ties to and affection for Nazis.

Oh, and he also offers safe harbor for priests who have been accused of sexually abusing children.

The fact that these two men, Mark Weber and Richard Williamson, are being used as sources to defend the Most Holy Family Monastery's position that the Holocaust is a hoax should lead any right thinking person to conclude that they too probably at least have some "pro-Nazi leanings" and are less interested in the truth, and more interested in demonizing Jews.

So, back to the point. What we have here is a monastery with no monks, that preaches bigoted positions about homosexuals, sees demons creeping behind every UFO, and thinks that masturbation will send you to hell. They also think that people are exaggerating about the Holocaust, in order to "out-important" Jesus, and in order to make their claims, they are citing Nazis. Turns out I may not have been jumping to conclusions earlier.

And in 2008, Alex Jones accepted their money to run an ad for their "church" on his show.