Disclaimer: After posting about the dismissal yesterday there was quite a stir, and some people involved in the situation asked LifeSiteNews to remove the interview and article below. We reached out to Fr. Maximilian Mary and he replied:
Was Daniel silent as Susanna was unjustly being led off to her execution? Not in my Bible. The holy prophet Ezekiel writes, “And if the watchman see the sword coming, and sound not the trumpet: and the people look not to themselves, and the sword come, and cut off a soul from among them: he indeed is taken away in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at the hand of the watchman” (Ez 33:6). And the gentle Doctor, St. Francis De Sales, writes, “It is a work of charity to shout: ‘Here is the wolf!’ when it enters the flock or anywhere else.” In the end, this is not about this or that religious community; the agenda is much bigger. The Modernists believe that religious life needs to “evolve” with the spirit of the times. This error was condemned over 100 years ago by Pope St. Pius X. I take back nothing that I have said and what I have said is motivated out of the pure love for Christ, His Church, and His faithful. “God is charity: and he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him” (1 Jn 4:16).
FRONT ROYAL, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) – In an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews’ Jim Hale, Father Maximilian Mary Dean, a former Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate, revealed that he has just been fired by the Vatican as chaplain of the traditional Discalced Carmelite nuns in Fairfield, Pennsylvania.
“The Vatican removed me as chaplain,” said Fr. Maximilian. “So as of Palm Sunday, I will no longer be serving the sisters as chaplain. And also in Valparaiso, [Nebraska] their chaplain of 30 years, Msgr. Thorburn, was removed and told that he had to leave the chaplaincy residence there. So [it’s] just a huge shock.”
The dismissals come in the wake of the Vatican’s September apostolic visitation to the nuns. According to Fr. Maximilian, the firings are the “official response to the report [that the congregation] got on the apostolic visitation, which, you know, it was totally unjust and full of an agenda.”
The approach of the Vatican towards female monastic orders is outlined in its 2018 instruction Cor Orans. The papal directive seeks to re-organize the Church’s female monastic orders into mixed collective associations, effectively pressuring those that are currently autonomous to abandon their founding identity, charisms, and contemplative seclusion from the world.
“[The nuns] were told by no means they will receive a dispensation from the document Cor Orans,” said the hermit priest, noting as well that the Fairfield Carmelites were given roughly one year to comply.
“In fact, from what I understand, they were basically being told that if they want to follow St. Teresa of Ávila, you know, with the constitutions that she wrote, and that was their desire and that they stuck to that, that they are basically not true children of the Church—because they’re not obeying the congregation that’s saying they have to belong to a federation and make all these compromises with regards to their formation and many other things.”
He continued: “So it was just a very harsh response to these brides of Christ that have left everything to love Jesus and to pray for the Church and for all of us in a special way.”
Despite the Vatican’s latest moves, Fr. Maximilian still speaks with joy about his circumstances and whatever future the Lord has in store for him.
“As I say often, you know, everything is a gift of God, which Jesus gives us through the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” he said.
“So everything, every cross, whether it’s COVID for Christmas, or moving out of my hermitage for Ash Wednesday, or getting the boot as the chaplain, it’s all somehow part of His loving plan to draw me closer to Himself, closer to his Sacred Heart, and I accept that—and I embrace that,” he concluded.
To support Fr. Maximilian’s spiritual works and join him in prayer, please visit www.novenamasses.org.