EWTN News, the flagship propaganda organ of the conciliar sect, publishes a travelogue disguised as piety, listing seven monasteries and churches in Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Armenia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Iraq as destinations for “adventurous pilgrims” where “the walk or climb to reach them can be as memorable as the visit itself.” The article, authored by Romy Haber, a journalist specializing in “minority affairs in the Middle East” rather than theology, presents schismatic Orthodox, Monophysite, and Nestorian sites as equivalent “Christian pilgrimage” destinations, utterly indifferent to the Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation) dogma. This is not Catholic journalism; it is religious tourism marketing for the neo-church, reducing the supernatural quest for grace to a hiking itinerary.
Reduction of the Supernatural to Naturalistic Tourism
The linguistic decay is immediate and total. The vocabulary is that of the travel agency, not the Church Militant: “outdoor adventure,” “daunting mountain roads,” “rocky trails,” “hiking and exploring,” “the road itself becomes part of the pilgrimage.” The Quas Primas encyclical teaches that “the Kingdom of Christ is primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters” and that men enter it “through faith and baptism” (Pius XI, Quas Primas). Here, the “pilgrimage” is stripped of its telos — the remission of sin, the gaining of indulgences, the veneration of true relics and valid sacraments — and replaced by the aesthetic experience of the climb. The article speaks of “frescoes,” “mosaics,” “manuscripts,” “architecture,” “views,” and “wall paintings” as the objects of the journey. This is laicism in its purest form: the secularization of the sacred, where the stones speak louder than the Sacrifice.
Indifferentism Elevated to Editorial Policy
The article makes no distinction whatsoever between the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church and the schismatic and heretical sects that occupy these buildings. Sumela is “Greek Orthodox”; St. Catherine’s is “Orthodox”; Meteora houses “Orthodox monks”; Sevanavank is “Armenian Apostolic” (Monophysite); Abuna Yemata Guh is “Ethiopian Orthodox” (Monophysite); Wadi Qadisha is “Maronite” (though in communion with Rome, the article treats it merely as a historical “refuge”); Mor Mattai is “Syriac Orthodox” (Monophysite). To the conciliar sect, these are all just “Christian communities” sharing a “monastic tradition.”
Pope Pius IX condemned this exact error in the Syllabus of Errors: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church” (Error 18); “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Error 16); “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ” (Error 17). The EWTN article operationalizes these condemned propositions. It presents the Armenian Monophysites — who deny the two natures of Christ defined at Chalcedon — and the Syriac Monophysites as merely “Christian” variants. It cites the “Nine Saints” of Ethiopian Monophysitism as “traditionally associated with the spread of monasticism” without a whisper of their heresy. This is the ecumenism of the abomination of desolation: unitatis redintegratio achieved by ignoring the Credo.
The Theological Vacuum: No Mass, No Grace, No Salvation
Nowhere does the article mention the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence, the Sacrament of Penance, or Indulgences. The “pilgrim” is not directed to the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary but to “frescoes depict biblical scenes,” “sixth-century mosaic,” “library containing thousands of manuscripts,” “cruciform plans and central domes,” and “wall paintings.” The Council of Trent teaches that the Mass is “a true and proper sacrifice” offered for the living and the dead. The conciliar sect’s “pilgrimage” is a museum tour. The faithful are lured to sites where no valid Mass is offered, where no valid priesthood exists (the Orthodox lack jurisdiction; the Monophysites lack valid orders due to heretical intention and form), and where the Blessed Sacrament is not reserved. To call this “pilgrimage” is a fraud against souls.
Pius XI warned: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed” (Quas Primas). Here, Christ the King is removed from the very definition of pilgrimage. The article’s only reference to the Divine is the “burning bush” at St. Catherine’s — a type of the Incarnation, stripped of its fulfillment in the Catholic Church. The “sacred spring” at Sumela, the “caves recalling hermits” at Mor Mattai — these are naturalistic piety, the religio naturalis condemned by the Syllabus (Error 58: “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter”).
Legitimizing the Occupiers of the Holy Places
The article functions as a whitewash for schismatics and heretics who possess the holy sites by historical accident or conquest. It notes that Mor Mattai “sheltered Christians from nearby villages” in 2014 — a humanitarian act used to confer legitimacy on a Monophysite monastery. It highlights that Sevanavank was studied by Mekhitar of Sebaste, founder of the Mekhitarists (an Armenian Catholic congregation), blurring the line between the Armenian Apostolic (heretical) hierarchy and the Catholic one. It mentions the “Maronite patriarchs” at Qannoubine but omits that the Maronite hierarchy today is thoroughly modernized and integrated into the conciliar sect, having abandoned the traditional Syriac liturgy for the Novus Ordo.
St. Robert Bellarmine teaches that a manifest heretic “by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” (De Romano Pontifice). The same principle applies to bishops and patriarchs: heresy severs jurisdiction. The “Orthodox” and “Monophysite” hierarchs governing these sites are outside the Church, deprived of all jurisdiction (ipso facto). Their “monasteries” are not “Christian” in the theological sense; they are strongholds of schism and heresy. To send Catholic souls there as “pilgrims” is to scandalize the little ones (Matt 18:6).
The Conciliar Sect’s “Mission”: Religious Tourism for the Neo-Church
This article is a symptom of the systemic apostasy inaugurated by Vatican II. Dignitatis Humanae declared a “right to religious freedom”; Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Redintegratio mandated dialogue with schismatics and heretics as “separated brethren”. The fruit is EWTN: a media empire that cannot distinguish the Bride of Christ from the synagogue of Satan (Apoc 2:9). The article’s source — “ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News” — reveals the institutional nature of this indifferentism. It is not a rogue journalist; it is official policy of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
The Lamentabili Sane Exitu condemned the Modernist proposition: “The dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts” (Prop 22). The EWTN article treats the dogma of the Church’s unity and necessity as a mere “interpretation” to be discarded for the sake of a “human interest story” about “adventurous pilgrims.” The “synthesis of all heresies” (Modernism) has become the editorial line.
True Pilgrimage vs. Conciliar Counterfeit
True Catholic pilgrimage is penitential, sacramental, and ecclesial. It is undertaken sub conditione of the state of grace, directed toward valid shrines where the True Mass is offered and the Blessed Sacrament is adored. It seeks indulgences granted by the true Roman Pontiff (the last being Pius XII) for the remission of temporal punishment. It is a spiritual weapon against the world, the flesh, and the devil — not a “hike” to photograph “frescoes” in a Monophysite cave.
The faithful who retain the integral Catholic faith — the remanentes — know that the conciliar sect has no authority to direct pilgrimages. Its “bishops” are manifest heretics (Canon 188.4, 1917 Code: “Publicly defects from the Catholic faith”), ipso facto vacant from office. Its “priests” (ordained in the invalid Paul VI rite) are doubtfully valid at best. Its “saints” (John Paul II, Kolbe, Faustina, Newman, Ulma) are fabrications of antipopes. Its media (EWTN, Vatican News, etc.) are instruments of deception.
Conclusion: A Call to Reject the Conciliar Lie
This article is a microcosm of the Great Apostasy. It invites souls to wander in the desert of schism and heresy under the guise of piety, while the true Ark of Salvation — the Catholic Church of the Traditional Mass, the immutable Magisterium, and the sedevacantist episcopate — is ignored, persecuted, and maligned. “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), and that Name is not found in the “rock-hewn churches” of Tigray or the “cliff-side monasteries” of Meteora, but solely in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which subsists in those who hold fast to Tradition and reject the novelties of 1958. Let the “adventurous pilgrims” have their photos and views; the elect seek the Kingdom of Christ the King, “whose kingdom shall have no end” (Dan 7:14; Quas Primas).
Source:
From Turkey to Ethiopia: 7 churches and monasteries for adventurous pilgrims (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 11.10.2026