It keeps coming up; someone mentions it or it percolates near the top of search engine results every now and them. It’s a video by Brother Michael Dimond called, Proof that the Shroud of Turin is the Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ!
It came up again today.
You have to watch it and judge for yourself. Perhaps it is unfair of me to point out something about Br. Dimond; I’m poisoning the well or something like that. But if I don’t mention it someone else will.
Br. Dimond is a self-proclaimed "Benedictine monk" of a two-person Sedevacantism monastic sect (the other member is his sibling-brother Peter) that claims that the papacy has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. From their two-person "Most Holy Family Monastery" they claim that Pope John Paul I was murdered by Masons and Communists who infiltrated the Vatican. And they claim many other things from their website at www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com and www.vaticancatholic.com.
This video, good or not, will be thought of by many people as ridiculous or not-ridiculous (your point of view applies) as some of their other claims, which include:
- Vatican II was a false council
- The Heretic Benedict XVI (He is sympathetic to Anglicans)
- John Paul II (manifest heretic who claimed to be pope 1978-2005)
- John Paul I (manifest heretic who claimed to be pope for 33 days in 1978)
- Paul VI (manifest heretic who claimed to be pope 1963-1978)
- John XXIII (manifest heretic who claimed to be pope 1958-1963)
- Sedevacantism – the Chair of Peter is Empty
Proof that the Shroud of Turin is the Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ! – YouTube
Dan, Dan, Dan
They have it all wrong, Pope John Paul was murdered by Al Pacino in Godfather III.
As a matter of fact there was a lot of strange things going on at the Vatican that surfaced later. There was an enormous scandal involving the Vatican Bank and Banco Ambrosiano in Venice. The president of the bank, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging from the Black Friars Bridge in London. The press had dubbed him “God’s Banker” because of his Vatican ties.There are some who doubt the suicide (legitimately). Maybe most are doubters.
The claim that Pope John I was murdered by Mason’s and Communists is right-wing blather. As a matter of fact, Calvi was connected to Propaganda Due a Masonic lodge. However, there is no reasonable explanation of why the Communists would be interested in him. He might very well have carried out John XXIII’s “opening to the left.” The hot rumor which made it into a book was that he intended to loosen doctrinal restrictions on birth control. For insiders in the Vatican, that and his apparent unhappiness with the Vatican Bank was supposed to be too much.
Calvi was also tied to a redevelopment of railroad yards in a project in Manhattan called “Lincoln West.” Then Assemblyman Jerrold Nadler (now a congressman and a former client) was told by Trump that the Vatican was behind the deal. Jerry wasn’t impressed. That deal was later done with Vatican money but Trump was still in the middle of it. Jerry never supported it.
Correction: the West side Redevelopment project was done WITHOUT Vatican money. Ungodly typo. Sorry. Also Paul VI was between Pope John and Pope John Paul I.
JK’s comments relate to the scandals that came to light following death of Pope JP I, no doubt all good grist for the likes of the Sedevacantists. However we’ve seen this assertion of theirs before (no true pope since Pius XII). It’s essentially an ultra-conservative reaction against the reforms of Vatican Council II. Le Febre(?) had his own version of the same, and we even had several cells and variations of it here in faraway NZ.
Nobody has ever managed to explain to me how they explain away the Petrine text in Matthew 16:18-20 “Tu es Petrus …” … ‘And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it’ (JB). Perhaps they imagine themselves to be the sole remnant of Israel, or maybe they just wannabe pope themselves!
According to Dan there is only two of them in their Monastery (?!) But they are not alone in their far right nuttiness. See http://www.romancatholicism.org/101-benedict.htm
There are other pages so vile that I won’t site them that couple this kind of attack with virulent, undisguised anti-Semitism. One of them had a video of a priest (somewhere in Middle Europe (if not Middle Earth) leading a procession that was desecrating a Menorah.
Frankly, after reading 101 Heresies attributed to Benedict, I had a glint of admiration for the man. He was a leading liberal theologian at Vatican II, but after runs with the German Red brigade as a college Chaplain he flipped somewhat. You might find my blog on him of interest: http://open.salon.com/blog/jc_klotz/2010/04/04/benedictus_agonistes