By A. Gerard Nordskoven
Watching a Catholic community autodestruct is wrenching. The Society for Tradition, Family & Property, or TFP, is eating Kansas City alive. It is a scenario played out all over the world. TFP is an all-male secret society promoting a "higher" calling than the priesthood, the warrior-monk. TFP is a cold-blooded vocation killer. Not one priest has arisen from their "conservative" formation of young men anywhere in its international ranks since its founding in the early sixties. None. One of TFP's slickest Screwtapes has been a woman, Marian Horvat. Horvat, president of the TFP's California offshoot, Tradition in Action, distinguished herself as one of four collaborating signatories to "We Resist You to the Face," a manifesto for Catholic schism. Before that, Horvat's duties were in the heartland, and more along the line of "We Stab You in the Back" with the quiet destruction of the faithful. She's a "nice girl", well-spoken and polite. And she gave TFP and their ideas entré into nice families. The Catholic scholars at her alma mater, K.U., saw through the Horvat family obsession with TFP and rejected their overtures to infiltrate the Integrated Humanities Program, a veritable incubator for clerics and other religious. Others have not been so discerning. Pious boys exploring their calling have hardened into caustic snobs who are taught by TFP recruiters to despise their parents as "the fountain of my revolution."
The simplest mystery of Judeo-Christianity is election. Yet it is almost unfathomable that the Most High chooses to grace souls and peoples for reasons unknown to man. The antithesis of election, indeed a tenet of Babylonian Mystery Religions (as is secrecy), is elitism. This is man exalting himself above other men. We were warned. The Lord reviled the people's desire for a king to rule over them, and told of their inevitable exploitation. Hindu elitism is writ in the squalor of a rigid caste system. The unholy marriage of elitism and Catholicity was fabricated in TFP founder Plinio's book, The Nobility and Traditional Elites. It was offered for sale after the Latin Mass approved by the KCMO Bishop. $50.00 was the penance exacted for presuming to be a noble, elite Catholic. But the young salesmen were friends of Marian, glowingly praised in the tome. And she was smart, a K.U. teaching assistant who hammered a journalism degree into a doctorate in Medieval History.
Few read the lavishly illustrated book, consigning it to the coffee table. In Nobility, the race and blood cults condemned by Piux XII are resurrected in his own words, spin doctored to fit TFP's agenda. Pius XII's flattering pleas to the nobility of Italy for funds to feed the starving during World War II are transformed into support for TFP's militant monarchists. Published two years before Plinio's death, Marian Horvat garnered high honors from the author for her assistance. That's saying a lot. Plinio Correa de Oliveira was a self-styled demigod, described reflexively in a TFP litany to his mother, Dona Lucilia, as the "Axiological Principle," or First Cause, a divinity. That's the secret side of TFP. In Plinio's book, the elite are defined as bluebloods, and as "professors" like himself and Marian. It is a predatory philosophy of NON SERVIAM, like the fictional spaceman's cookbook, "How to Serve Man." Horvat's brother adds information for the American audience. The elite of America were the Southern slaveholder in general, and genetic marvels like Robert E. Lee in specific. Here is the race and blood cult American style.
Priests do not fit into the TFP schema. They serve. They are poor. They don't rule countries. The colorful "scroll" centerfold in Nobility proclaims "the preferential option for the nobility." John Paul II's "preferential option for the poor" is directly contradicted. That's refreshing. There can be no question whose side they are on. The schismatic heraldry of "We Resist You to the Face" was just a flourish on a split with the Servant of Servants started years before. TFP disdains the priesthood, predicting it's obsolescence. No priests, no Eucharist. Wormwood, be advised. Horvat's crocodile tears for lost vocations as inspiring "We Resist You to the Face" are hypocritical. Styling herself a latter day Joan of Arc, Horvat is a free agent serving only demigod Plinio and the Ten Kings of the Antichrist with no regard for prelates unless they are useful as camouflage for TFP, or Tradition in Action, or the America Needs Fatima cash cow. Radical materialism is the name of the game and another hallmark of Babylonian Mystery Religions. That's the philosophical basis for Communism, so it is no surprise that K.U.'s long-time campus Communist converted to Horvat's brand of Catholicism. One gets all the exploitation without any of the guilt. The poor are solicited by mail for a dollar a day, and the wealthy get quietly approached for donations of homes, large sums of money, and farms, not to mention the entrustment of children. Horvat guided the formation of young women in her home-school Sodality, and the children of "traditional" Catholics in other educational venues.
Marian Horvat is an apt pupil of TFP's techniques, and ingratiates herself to the wealthy, well-educated and powerful only. Peasants are the enemy, and perhaps too reminiscent of her blue-collar background. Catholic scholars cotton to her, and she sailed her pirate ship under their colors whenever possible. Alice Von Hildebrand was shamefully used in discussions aired on EWTN. She slipped one over on the elderly philosopher by dropping Plinio's name into the mix. EWTN got wind of it and axed the "Feminity and Feminism" series. But this virago is far from feminine. Horvat's favorite ploy for testing the mettle of protegés at the family compound was to invite them over and release their snapping, snarling German Shephards. Some left, some signed on to continue undermining the Catholic community in her stead. Horvat came razor close to imposing a TFP school on Kansas City residents under the banner of a conservative Catholic education. The monied Texas woman Horvat talked into bankrolling the venture got wind of her unseemly connections and mercifully withdrew.
Watch for this coiling snake of Babylonian cast, and beg the Blessed Virgin to have bare feet ready to crush its head. Postcards may be found in the back of church from "America Needs Fatima." One response and it is virtually impossible to be free from TFP's dunning direct mail solicitation. And the Boys from Brazil are very appealing as they march like Medieval militants in their red capes, inserting themselves at the head of pro-life rallies, or setting up bookstalls at Catholic conferences, usually without permission. They are spoiling for a fight, and it is not with the forces of evil for which they claim they need lots of cash. It is with the Magisterium, in that they are already condemned by the Brazilian bishops conference, their home country. It is with Peter, as "We Resist You to the Face" obsequiously declares. It is with God, as blithely breaking the first command to honor no false gods. That's Plinio, who did not arise from the dead as he prophesied of himself. And do watch out for nice girls in pearls.
-- Opinion piece (c) A. Gerard Nordskoven, 2001. All Rights Reserved. Pictures: Left, Marian Horvat, Atila Sinke Guimaraes; center, Michael Matt, and Right, top, John Vennari, and, below, Christopher Ferrara, apologist for Remnant/Guimaraes tract. Integrists Showing Their Hand "In our view a possible future declaration of a sede vacante ('the period of time when the Apostolic See is empty, as a consequence of the heresy of the Pope,' CFN 7/2000) would take place automatically when the Church would become aware of the gravity of the present day errors and who is responsible for them." (1) ---We Resist The Pope To His Face, V.3 So there we have it, despite all the spin, tucked away neatly at the very end of their We Resist You.... mainfesto, though it is the very foundation of their errors and audacity: it will, according to the Matt, Guimaraes, Horvat, and Vennari, only take the "true" ideal Church to "become aware" of what these Integrists predict (that the Pope is a "heretic", in substantial rupture with Tradition in several dogmatic areas) -- and then? Retroactive-sedevacantism; the Popes they disgree with will be desposed! the same Sedevacantism to which they (the signers of the We Resist [the Pope] To His Face manifesto) are clearly implicitly committed now, though they tried in the past to play it coy through doublespeak and obfuscation when possible. Of course they deny it when convenient. But most people are not stupid. This is how these deluded souls can urge the public to follow them and officially "suspend obedience" to all the Popes since John XXIII, charging them with heresies and rupture with Tradition, and declare a "sustained public resistance," since they simply do not believe that the Council or present Holy Father has the authority to "bind" them. They have created an alternative, parody-church. Michael Matt, Atila Guimaraes will lead them. They alone will measure Truth. It is tragic. And they were warned by many. I myself warned Michael Matt that he was losing control and headed toward the cliffs. In vain. Their implicit sedevacantism is the very foundation of their belligerence and their call for "all traditionalists" to unite under such a reckless banner. They alone will be the arbiters of what is and is not Catholic, not the living teaching magisterium (see our Integrist section on the relationship between Tradition and the living Magisterium) . Such, tragically, is the hubris of schism. (See also our article below , "Why the Integrists Must Back Back-Pedal"; but this is not new for this group; their trajectory has been clear, whatever fine legalistic distinctions and convoluted arguments they proffer, even quoting JPII in their defense!!!!! ). These and their defenders (Chris Ferrara, Tom Woods -- a Lutheran just several years ago -- now instructing the Pope on Catholicism, Jonathan Tuttle, John -- "Paul VI is the escatological Antichrist" -- Parrot, et al) are all of one essential mind. To defend and appear with them is to join them, to propagate their errors and midwife schism. As the extreme trad conferences draw fewer and fewer people, they are now combining efforts: TFP'ers, Grunerite Fatima cash-cowites, rigorist Feeneyites, Sedevacantists, etc.