The Pillar reports on the Diocese of Tulsa’s organized Seven Churches Visitation for Holy Thursday, a devotion led by diocesan priests Father Jon Fincher and Father Steven Ditzel. The article presents the event as a growing, spiritually edifying tradition where young adults visit multiple parish altars of repose, culminating in social gatherings. While describing a practice with historical roots, the piece reveals a profound naturalistic and modernist reinterpretation of Catholic worship, reducing the sacred Triduum to a communal experience and omitting the supernatural realities of sacrifice, atonement, and the kingship of Christ over all aspects of life.
Naturalistic Reduction of the Sacred Triduum
The article’s language consistently frames the pilgrimage in terms of human experience and community building, stripping it of its supernatural object. Father Fincher states the goal is to be “in the garden with Jesus as he is about to be arrested and die on the cross,” and Father Ditzel speaks of “entering into that paschal mystery with the Lord to keep watch with him.” This reduces the redemptive act of Calvary—a unique, objective, and infinitely meritorious sacrifice—to a subjective, meditative “experience” or “journey” that we “enter into.” The focus is on our feelings of being “together in this journey” and seeing a “much bigger community,” not on the objective, propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass and the real presence of the Victim in the tabernacle. This is the naturalism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, which denounces the error that “moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction” and that “all human duties are an empty word” (Syllabus, Errors 56, 59). The article’s tone reflects the “cult of man” Vatican II would later enshrine, where the community’s sentiment and shared activity become the measure of success.
The Omission of Christ the King and His Social Kingship
The most glaring theological bankruptcy is the complete silence on the reign of Christ the King over individuals, families, and states—a central, immutable doctrine of the Church. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas, instituted the feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism that “removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from… public life.” He declared that Christ’s kingdom “encompasses all men” and that rulers have a duty to “publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” The Tulsa event, however, is presented as a private, devotional “spiritual practice” confined to church buildings and followed by a trip to a pub. There is no mention of the duty to have the Name of Christ publicly honored in legislation, education, or civil governance. The pilgrimage becomes a safe, internalized escape from the very public conflict Pius XI said the feast was meant to ignite. This omission is not accidental; it is the fruit of the conciliar revolution’s rejection of the social kingship of Christ, replaced by a “dialogue” with the world that demands no public obedience to divine law.
The “Conciliar Sect” and the Illegitimate Hierarchy
The article repeatedly references the “Diocese of Tulsa” and its “diocesan priests,” Father Fincher and Father Ditzel. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, these structures are part of the conciliar sect that occupies the Vatican. The “popes” since John XXIII are manifest heretics who, by the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, automatically lost the papacy (*ipso facto*) upon their public defection from the faith (cf. De Romano Pontifice). As such, the bishops consecrated in the new rite and the priests ordained in the post-1968 context operate without legitimate jurisdiction. Their organization of a “pilgrimage” is an act of a schismatic body simulating Catholic worship. The article’s unquestioning acceptance of these clerics’ authority demonstrates the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place—the false hierarchy leading souls into a naturalistic, sacramental-simulacrum religion.
Sentimentality Over Sacrifice and Atonement
The description of the altars of repose decorated like gardens and the emphasis on “mourning” and “preparing our hearts” replaces the theology of the Holy Thursday Mass, which is the true sacrifice of the Mass—the unbloody renewal of Calvary. The article never once mentions the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice, the Real Presence as Victim, or the necessity of being in a state of grace to receive Communion. Instead, the “heart of the evening” is “keeping watch with the Lord” and a “garden experience.” This is a direct echo of the Modernist errors condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu, which attacks the true nature of the sacraments. Proposition 46 states: “In the early Church, there was no concept of a Christian sinner whom the Church absolves with its authority… even when penance was recognized… it was not called a sacrament.” The Tulsa event, by focusing on personal meditation and community, implicitly rejects the sacramental, juridical, and sacrificial nature of Holy Thursday, aligning with the Modernist synthesis that reduces religion to interior sentiment.
Ecumenical and Syncretistic Undercurrents
The article notes the pilgrimage’s popularity with young adults and its “universal Church” feel, as participants visit different parishes. Father Ditzel says it “shows that we’re not just one parish… but the Lord is present to each of us in all of our parishes.” This language, while seemingly benign, reflects the post-conciliar ecclesiology of the “People of God” and the “mystical body” understood as a mere human community, rather than the exclusive, visible, Catholic Church founded by Christ. The “taste of the universal Church” is a vague, inclusive sentiment that mirrors the ecumenical spirit of Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, which contradicts the Catholic doctrine that “outside the Church there is no salvation” (Council of Florence). The subsequent social gathering at a pub further blends the sacred with the profane, a symptom of the “worldliness” Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici gregis as a mark of Modernism.
Conclusion: A Beautiful Tradition, Profaned
The Seven Churches Visitation, in its authentic form, is a salutary devotion that honors the Real Presence and meditates on the Passion. In the hands of the conciliar sect, however, it is stripped of its sacrificial and dogmatic core, reduced to a sentimental, communal, and naturalistic “spiritual practice.” The priests of Tulsa, by operating within the false hierarchy and omitting the non-negotiable doctrines of Christ’s kingship, the propitiatory sacrifice, and the exclusive nature of the Church, are not preserving tradition but offering a modernist counterfeit. They lead their flock into a “garden” of subjective feeling, while the true Garden of Gethsemane calls us to acknowledge the solemn, bloody, and necessary sacrifice of the Son of God for the redemption of the world—a truth the conciliar sect has systematically obscured.
Source:
Keeping vigil with the Lord in Oklahoma — the Seven Churches Visitation, Tulsa style (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 02.04.2026