International Center for Law and Religion Studies




Court dismisses suit seeking return of large donations to monastery

Howard Friedman, Religion Clause
In Hoyle v. Dimond, (WD NY, June 22, 2012), a New York federal district court dismissed fraud, misrepresentation, RICO, deceptive practices, false advertising and equitable claims by plaintiff Eric Hoyle who was seeking return of part or all of the over $1 million that he had donated to the Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM).  Hoyle, who rejected his Protestant faith, became a “traditional” Catholic and joined MHFM in 2005 in part because it was consistent with his beliefs that rejected  the Vatican II changes to the Catholic Church and did not recognize post-Vatican II Popes as valid. In 2007, Hoyle left MHFM and set up his own website condemning it as heretical.  In his lawsuit, Hoyle asserted that MHFM had misrepresented its historical connections to the Benedictine Order, which her relied on in choosing it. The court concluded:
… [E]ach of plaintiff’s claims is based on his assertion that the defendants misrepresented their status as Benedictine monks and the affiliation of MHFM with the Order of Saint Benedict.  Questions regarding the establishment of MHFM as a Benedictine community and its current identification as a “traditional” Catholic Benedictine monastery are matters of religious doctrine over which the court has no jurisdiction.  Moreover, plaintiff has failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact regarding the establishment of MHFM.

 I just purchased the MHFM complete $20 package with all their videos and books. One of the books is called "Outside The Catholic Church There is Absolutely No Salvation."

He makes some very interesting points. But yet I  have talked to traditonal clergy and they disagree with MFHM so I really do not know who to believe.

Dimond Brothers are NOT religious brothers, nor do they have a monastary.

Canon Law: The Dimond brothers are not monks and their monastery is no monastery (9-29-16)

Many who read what is available on this site comment that while they do not agree with the position held by Michael and Peter Dimond, operators of what is known as Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), they often visit their site because these purported “monks” have good information. A “position,” i.e., an allowable opinion by Church standards would be one thing. But here we are dealing with heresy, and heresy condemned as such by Pope Pius XII, (Feeneyism). It is not “okay” to visit the sites of known heretics, even if they present some things that are interesting or even unique, lest we cooperate in their heresy. While sometimes it is necessary to the truth to include some of these sites in research pieces, they should always be disavowed (and are on this site) and never recommended.

Belloc’s formula for establishing the existence of heresy
Heretics are very clever. They disguise their errors by carefully weaving them into a fabric consisting mainly of truthful statements, the better to lure them in, and this is how they deceive the unwary. In the Introduction to his work, The Great Heresies, (1920s) the respected Catholic historian Hilaire Belloc provides the following components of heretical perversity. “Heresy means…the warping of a system by ‘exception’: by ‘picking out’ one part of the structure and implies that the scheme is marred by taking away one part of it, denying one part of it, and either leaving the void unfilled or filling it with some new affirmation.
“The denial of a scheme wholesale is not heresy, and has not the creative power of a heresy. It is of the essence of heresy that it leaves standing a great part of the structure it attacks. It is the taking away from the moral scheme by which we have lived of a particular part, the denial of that part and the attempt to replace it by an innovation.”

It is very tempting, when one sees that “a great part of it” is right, to then be convinced that a few little errors may not matter and these folks are not so bad after all, just misguided. But that would be a grave error in judgment. Like all Traditionalists, MHFM has “plucked” the papacy from their midst and have denied not only the papacy but also the dogma of baptism of blood and desire, following the heretic Leonard Feeney. They then pose the innovation by setting themselves up as the true authority. According to Wikipedia, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_Holy_Family_Monastery):

“Most Holy Family Monastery was founded in 1967, in Berlin, New Jersey, by a self-proclaimed Benedictine monk named Joseph Natale (1933-1995), originally as a community for handicapped men. Natale entered the Benedictine Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1960 as a lay postulant, but left less than a year later to start his own Holy Family Monastery. According to an archivist of the Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Natale left before taking vows; he never actually became a Benedictine monk.

“Natale died in 1995, whereupon Michael Dimond (born Frederick Dimond), who joined in 1992 at the age of 19 after converting to Catholicism four years earlier was elected the Superior. Soon after, he relocated to Granger, New York (close to Fillmore, New York), where Natale owned more than 90 acres (36 ha) of donated land.”
Canon Law contradicts MHFM and their followers

https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/canon-law-the-dimond-brothers-are-not-monks-and-their-monastery-is-no-monastery-9-29-16/

Many who read what is available on this site comment that while they do not agree with the position held by Michael and Peter Dimond, operators of what is known as Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), they often visit their site because these purported “monks” have good information. A “position,” i.e., an allowable opinion by Church standards would be one thing. But here we are dealing with heresy, and heresy condemned as such by Pope Pius XII, (Feeneyism). It is not “okay” to visit the sites of known heretics, even if they present some things that are interesting or even unique, lest we cooperate in their heresy. While sometimes it is necessary to the truth to include some of these sites in research pieces, they should always be disavowed (and are on this site) and never recommended.

Now we get to the real impetus for slandering/smearing the Dimond Brothers, the poster's hatred for the "heresy" of Feeneyism.  Feeneyism is no heresy, and, although this took place technically during the "reign" of Roncali, the men who conducted it were in place during the time of Pius XII already, and they examined the work of Father Feeney and absolved him from any heresy.  No one has ever demonstrated that believing that those who lack Sacramental Baptism could be justified but not saved is heresy, and there's no Catholic dogma or even teaching that is contradicted by that position.

Post-Tridentine theologians, including the highly-respected and approved Dominican Melchior Cano, held that infidels, for instance, could be justified but not saved, and the Council of Trent dealt with JUSTIFICATION, not salvation in the passages that the Cushingites rely on for their slander of heresy.

We have a bunch of ignorant buffoons out there hating on the Dimond Brothers largely out of hatred for Catholic EENS dogma.

Bottom line is that any Trad Catholic who holds that non-Catholics can be saved (regardless of the question regarding BoD proper) is a schismatic, since the entire Vatican II theological system, the ecclesiology, the subjectivist soteriology, they are all the logical consequences of such an ecclesiology, and you'll note that this question has nothing to do with BoD, and the only reason it factors in at all is because many EENS-haters constantly use it to deny EENS and hide behind it to justify their rejection of this thrice-defined dogma.

Yes. Keep your mouth shut unless you are asked to do something immoral.
 There is a time and place for everything.

What's the point of addressing a post written in 2011, 14 years ago now?

I see that someone necro-bumped this thread, which had died years ago, and maybe you didn't notice, but I doubt the person is in the same state that they were in back then.