Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Seminary: A Traditional Catholic Nonprofit

Introduction to OLMC and Its Mission

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Seminary (OLMC) is a nonprofit organization located in Boston, Kentucky, that specializes in teaching and training young seminarians in the methods and traditions of the Catholic Church. It is not your average Catholic seminary, however. It is not part of the local diocese and is not overseen by the local bishop. It has not received permission from Rome to open its doors to young seminarians. In fact, the priests who established the seminary operate it illicitly as far as the authorities in Rome are concerned. Having opened its doors to international students in 2012, the seminary has been training young men from all over the world — Brazil, Argentina, Africa, England, Asia, and America. Its aim is to produce priests and teachers who can go out into the world and spread Traditional Catholic doctrine.

To understand what this means, it is important to examine the history of the Catholic Church and what happened in the 1960s and 1970s — specifically, the events that took place at and after the Second Vatican Council, which the founders of OLMC regard as a definitive turning point in the history of the Church. This paper discusses the history of this nonprofit organization, its structure, and who it serves, in order to show how it is a unique nonprofit with a unique agenda in today's world.

The information regarding OLMC comes from firsthand interviews conducted with the priests and seminarians at the organization's headquarters in Boston, Kentucky. This writer was granted access to the headquarters because of his friendship with the founders, who had gained national and international exposure prior to their founding of the organization. Accordingly, this writer was familiar with them, their activities, and their aims even before they opened their seminary in 2012.

Prior to founding OLMC, the main priests involved worked with the Society of St. Pius X, an international organization with headquarters in several countries around the world. The two principal founders of OLMC had been part of the Society of St. Pius X for more than twenty years. Fr. Pfeiffer had served parishes in the United States as well as in India and the Philippines. Fr. Hewko had worked mainly in the United States. The Society of St. Pius X was also a Traditional Catholic organization, with over 500 member priests worldwide. It provided the same service that OLMC aimed to provide in 2012, but something happened around that time that led Frs. Pfeiffer and Hewko to feel it was necessary to establish their own organization and part ways with the Society. To understand what happened, it is necessary first to understand why the Society of St. Pius X was formed.

The Second Vatican Council and the Traditionalist Response

The Society of St. Pius X was formed in the early 1970s after the Second Vatican Council had concluded in Rome and a new set of directives were issued by the Roman Pontiff suggesting that priests and bishops update their teachings to better meet the needs of modern man. What this meant in practice was that Church leaders should move away from emphasizing sin and salvation and instead adapt to the times. Attitudes about sexuality, birth control, working on Sunday, attendance at Mass, the Mass itself, and ideas about God and Transubstantiation were all changing, and rather than resisting these changes, Church leaders were encouraged to go with the modern flow.

Many churchmen accepted this direction, and as a result, the Mass was changed from being celebrated in Latin everywhere around the world to being celebrated in regional languages. The rubrics of the Mass were revised so that it no longer resembled a traditional Catholic Mass and instead bore a closer resemblance to a Protestant communion service. This change was made so that the Church could present itself as less offensive to Protestants — an admitted aim of the Second Vatican Council. Ideas about sexuality also changed in the Church's official catechism: children were no longer taught to be the primary aim of marriage. Instead, the new teaching held that a husband and wife's primary focus should be on each other and on making one another happy. Children appeared to become an afterthought — a teaching that stood in complete opposition to what the Church had maintained for hundreds of years.

Consequently, some traditionally minded churchmen refused to change with the times. They continued to teach Traditional Catholic doctrine, to celebrate the Mass in Latin, and to instruct families in the traditional values that the Church had always expressed. They maintained the dogmas concerning God and Transubstantiation, and they condemned the direction of the post-Vatican II Church as modernist and in error. One of these men was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who had himself participated in the Second Vatican Council and had done his utmost to persuade other priests and bishops of the harm the Church would cause by passing the schemas under discussion at that time. Some listened, but many did not.

Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of St. Pius X

Following the passage of the revolutionary schemas, Archbishop Lefebvre established his own organization at the insistence of a group of seminarians who wanted to be formed in the traditional manner, viewing the new methods as harmful to their faith (Mallerais 202). Lefebvre received permission from the local bishop to do so in the 1970s and quickly began attracting both seminarians and teachers. As the Church became more and more revolutionary throughout that decade, his stature grew as a bulwark against modernism within the Church, and he soon had followers all over the world.

However, the authorities in Rome did not welcome his success. Communities in several countries called for his services and those of his priests — they wanted traditional Catholic teaching, the sacraments, and the Latin Mass, things the new Church was no longer providing (Lefebvre 13). Rome began to crack down on Lefebvre and his Society, refusing to grant it permission to continue unless Lefebvre agreed to celebrate the new Mass. Lefebvre refused. Instead, he consecrated four bishops without the Pope's permission. For this action, Lefebvre was excommunicated, along with the four newly consecrated bishops. In his own defense, however, Lefebvre viewed this move as necessary for the continuation of the Society: he was elderly, the demand for the Society's work was great, and he believed that if he did not consecrate new bishops, the faith of the old Church was in danger of being lost.

Nonetheless, a very public rift opened between the authorities in Rome and the Society of St. Pius X, which was now deemed a renegade organization offering traditional Catholic sacraments and teaching to communities wherever it was called. The Society's priests were effectively disavowed by the official Church and had to operate in a semi-underground capacity, going only where they were called by people seeking their services. It was within this organization that Frs. Pfeiffer and Hewko grew up. They became priests of the Society and vowed always to teach traditional formation to their parishes and communities.

Works Cited

"Bishop Confirms." CFNews. Web. 27 Mar. 2016.

Lefebvre, Marcel. I Accuse the Council. Kansas City: Angelus Press, 1988. Print.

Lelong, Michel. "Towards a Necessary Reconciliation." The Recusant. 2012. Web. 27 Mar. 2016.

Mallerais, Bernard. Marcel Lefebvre. Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2002. Print.

Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2011. Print.