CathInfo.com

It screams both financial and spiritual irresponsibility on Eric Hoyle's part.

So, the website was put together by the father of some French kid (young man) who had done work for MHFM for about 5-6 years putting up a French website.  He and his family live in France.  As his son put up a lot of the Dimonds' materials on the site, the father was reading it and actually converted to the Catholic faith as a result.  But there was an incident which was, IMO, very badly handled by the Dimonds.  Evidently the young man wanted to put some video up on the website in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo incident in France.  He had asked permission from the Dimonds, but got no response.  So after waiting quite a while for the response, he posted it.  Well, the Dimonds were enraged, took over control of the website, using a password the young man had given them, took the article down, and locked him out of the website he had spent several years maintaining and doing French translations for.  Evidently, the content of the article was in fact extremely imprudent, where the young man had basically threatened the French government, saying he was ready for them, and ending in the sound of gunfire.  So I don't blame the Dimonds for taking it down.  They could have saved the boy from a 10-year prison sentence.  But the acerbic manner in which they wrote to the young man and his father was completely out of line, bitter, vitriolic, and uncharitable.  He had done nothing more than to make a mistake in judgment.

So the father then wrote the Dimonds, and threatened legal action.  In response, the Dimonds wrote an even more bitter response ... to the young man ... blaming him for the father's letter (unfairly).  So this escalated, and the father had enough with the Dimonds.  And initially the young man did as well.  But then, after a short time, the young man reconciled with the Dimonds and accepted their rebuke.  And the father was incredibly upset by the development.  One day the boy refused to say grace with the family, no doubt persuaded by the Dimonds that his family were non-Catholic heretics.  This enraged the father so much that he threw the young man out of his house.  That was as terrible an overreaction as the Dimonds had made to the Charlie Hebdo video.

After some time, the father learned (with joy, I guess), that the young man had split from the Dimonds.  Except now, evidently, it turned out that he had been influenced by that jackass heretic John Pontrello ... a TRUE heretic, not the Dimond variety "heretic".  And the father is happy that his son has basically adopted Eastern Orthodoxy?  So the young man's reasoning was that Pius IX was a heretic due to a teaching he had issue to the effect that no one has any HOPE of salvation outside the Chuch unless he be encuмbered by invincible ignorance.  This is not a heresy, but is in line with his other teaching that those who are invincibly ignorant are in a position to be enlightened by divine light and grace ... echoing the teaching of St. Thomas.  Pius IX was apalled that the Liberals in his day were using these texts precisely the way that BoDers use them today, to undermine EENS dogma.  But it was his fault for wording them so badly.  In any case, this young man's position was some blend of Ibranyi and Pontrello.

So, this young man then, on the basis of Pius IX being a heretic, decided that Vatican I's dogma of infallibility is also up for grabs ... and is posting links to Pontrello's heretical garbage.  And the father is happy about this ... out of his personal animosity against the Dimond Brothers.

So both the father and the Dimond Brothers badly mishandled this situation, so this young man is a casualty of their actions.  He had in fact run across Pontrello's garbage, and had asked the Dimond Brothers to put together a refutation, but they responded that Pontrello was a nobody and that going after him would only draw attention to his absurd theories.  In retrospect, they probably should have undertaken that refutation, as it may have helped the boy avoid being ensnared by his heresies.

This kind of bitter zeal from the Dimond Brothers has done a lot of damage, even though they're right about most of "the issues".  I'm happy to see a kindler-gentler tone from them the past year or two.  That shift has been very noticeable.  But a lot of the "radical schismatics" they denounce, like Ibranyi and Hoyle, are actually creatures of their own making, as they simply extended some of the same principles and the same quasi-schismatic mentality to various logical conclusions.  If you see videos made by Dimond followers, many of them have that same tone, use the same language ... and so do the attack videos made against them by former followers.

Nevertheless, the father's website there is a complete mess, filled with lies and distortions, clearly biased by his extreme animosity against the Dimond Brothers.  This is not to say that the Dimonds are blameless in the entire mess, but that doesn't justify the false information on the website.  If you look at the court ruling, the judge actually did an excellent job writing up the decision, and, no, the decision was not merely rendered on the basis of him recusing the court on account of First Amendment reasons, but because the facts simply didn't back up Hoyle's charges.  So, for instance, this website claims that Hoyle swears there was a docuмent/contract saying he'd get $750K of his money back, but in sworn testimony, Hoyle actually said he couldn't remember what was in it, whether it had been signed, and could produce no copy of said docuмent.  So the website's account of the Hoyle affair actually contradicts Hoyle's own statements made under oath.

We should pray for all involved, the young man (who's now been lead into heresy by Pontrello), for the father, for Eric Hoyle, for the Dimond Brothers, and for Pontrello himself.