The EWTN News portal reports on the twenty-fourth annual Fr. Chester P. Smith National Black Catholic Men’s Conference, held in Birmingham, Alabama, from October 15–18, 2026. The event, hosted by the Bowman Francis Ministry, the Society of the Divine Word Missionaries, and the Office of Black Catholic Ministry of the Diocese of Birmingham, centered on the theme “The Rock I Stand On.” It featured a Civil Rights Immersion Tour, a Harambe Town Hall with community leaders debating the “social and political climate,” and a “Mass” celebrated during the gathering. The article highlights the conference’s focus on “cultural reflection,” “Black Catholic identity,” and equipping men as “protectors and providers” through “spiritual and life skills.” This gathering is not a Catholic conference but a racialist, naturalistic assembly that substitutes the Social Kingship of Christ with identity politics and Masonic syncretism.
Theological Perversion: Race as a Locus of Revelation
The article explicitly states that Father Chester P. Smith’s “great contribution to the Black Catholic community was that he remained ‘unapologetic’ about the cultural aspect found in the identity of being a Black Catholic.” This elevation of racial and cultural identity to a theological principle is a direct violation of the Catholic dogma of the unity of the human race in Adam and its supernatural reconstitution in Christ the New Adam. St. Paul teaches: “There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). The conciliar sect’s obsession with “Black Catholic identity,” “cultural reflection,” and “what it means to be Black and Catholic” fragments the Mystical Body into ethnic enclaves, each with its own “spirituality.” This is the heresy of ethno-phyletism, condemned by the Holy Synod of Constantinople in 1872, now weaponized by the neo-church to dissolve the unitas fidei into a babel of “inculturated” pseudo-faiths.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declares that Christ’s Kingdom “encompasses all men” and that “His reign extends not only to Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The conference’s framework—“what it means to be a man that is Black and Catholic in terms of the leaders of their family… and take away some tools in order to enact those types of things of ministering to folks”—reduces the Kingship of Christ to a sociological empowerment program. The “Rock I Stand On” is not Peter’s confession (Tu es Christus Filius Dei vivi, Mt 16:16) but the shifting sands of racial consciousness.
Liturgical Simulation and Sacrilege
The article notes: “Mass is celebrated during the Fr. Chester P. Smith National Black Catholic Men’s Conference.” In the conciliar sect, this signifies the Novus Ordo Missae, a Protestantized memorial meal fabricated by the Freemason Bugnini, which denies the propitiatory Sacrifice, the Real Presence, and the priesthood as defined by the Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, can. 1-3). The “priests” of the Society of the Divine Word—ordained in the invalid Pauline rite of 1968—possess no sacramental character. Their “Mass” is a simulacrum, an idolatrous performance that fulfills St. Paul’s warning: “The things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God” (1 Cor 10:20). The photograph caption “Mass is celebrated” documents a public act of idolatry within the abomination of desolation (Mt 24:15) occupying the visible structures.
Civil Religion Replaces Supernatural Faith
The “Civil Rights Immersion Tour” and the “Harambe Town Hall” (a Swahili term for “pulling together,” redolent of Masonic universalism) expose the conference’s true deity: the secular state and its revolutionary mythology. The article describes “meaningful dialogue that connects faith, justice, and social responsibility” and “notable Birmingham community leaders debating todayʼs social and political climate.” This is the laicism condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… the Church’s authority to teach men, to issue laws, to govern nations… was denied.” The Civil Rights movement, however noble in its natural intent, is here absolutized as the locus theologicus, displacing the Cross. The “Promised Land” preaching cited by Beatty—“you canʼt just show up at the Promised Land, you have to work to get there”—is a Pelagian distortion: heaven is not earned by human effort but granted by grace through the Merits of Christ (Council of Trent, Sess. VI, can. 1-3).
The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864) condemns: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55) and “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41). The conference’s partnership with the “Office of Black Catholic Ministry of the Diocese of Birmingham”—a bureaucratic appendage of the usurping “bishop” structure—embodies this condemned separation, rendering the Church a chaplaincy to the secular order.
Syncretism and the “Ying and Yang” of False Mysticism
Cameron Beatty’s description of the Smith brothers as “the Ying and the Yang” introduces Taoist dualism into the conference’s spiritual vocabulary. This is not a harmless metaphor; it signifies the pan-religious syncretism inherent in the conciliar “inculturation” project. The Lamentabili sane exitu (St. Pius X, 1907) condemns the proposition: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Prop. 26). The conference’s emphasis on “tools,” “energy to go back,” “evangelize about what it means to be Catholic,” and “ministering to folks” reduces the depositum fidei to a pastoral methodology. The “Harambe Town Hall” debating the “social and political climate” mimics the Masonic lodge’s “free discussion,” substituting the Magisterium with the vox populi.
The “Society of the Divine Word” as an Instrument of the Revolution
The Society of the Divine Word (SVD), founded in 1875, has been thoroughly assimilated into the conciliar revolution. Its “missionaries” now function as agents of the aggiornamento, promoting the Missio Dei of the Second Vatican Council—a false mission that replaces Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus with dialogue, inculturation, and human development. The “Bowman Francis Ministry,” co-founded by the Smith brothers, is a product of this corrupted charism. The article’s praise for “Ambassadors of the Word” and “Boyhood to Manhood” programs reveals a naturalistic pedagogy focused on “rites of passage,” “self-value,” and “leadership”—the language of secular youth development, not Catholic asceticism. St. Pius X warns in Lamentabili: “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement” (Prop. 59, condemned). The SVD’s activism embodies this condemned Modernist error.
Sedevacantist Reality: No Authority, No Mission, No Church
The “Diocese of Birmingham” is a juridical fiction erected by the usurping antipope Paul VI (Montini) and sustained by the current usurper “Leo XIV” (Prevost). Its “bishop” possesses no jurisdiction (Canon 188.4, 1917 Code: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact… if the cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith”). The “priests” of the SVD, ordained in the new rite, are laymen. The “faithful” attending are sheep without a shepherd, “distressed and lying down like sheep that have no shepherd” (Mt 9:36), fed stones for bread by hirelings who “enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but climb up another way” (Jn 10:1).
The conference’s goal—“to make sure that his legacy lives on and his commitment to the ministry lives on”—is the preservation of a human institution, not the gloria Dei. The true Catholic mission is the restaurare omnia in Christo (Eph 1:10), the restoration of all things in Christ the King, not the empowerment of a racial demographic within a Masonic counter-church.
Conclusion: A Masonic Parody of Catholic Action
This conference is a microcosm of the paramasonic structure occupying Rome: it replaces the Social Kingship of Christ with racial identity politics; the Holy Sacrifice with a Protestantized meal; the Magisterium with “town halls”; supernatural grace with “tools” and “energy”; Catholic unity with ethno-phyletism; and the Cross with the Civil Rights movement. It fulfills the prophecy of Lamentabili sane exitu: “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism” (Prop. 65). The only “Rock” here is the petra scandali (Rom 9:33) of the conciliar apostasy. Non praevalebunt (Mt 16:18)—but not because of such conferences.
Source:
Conference encourages Black Catholic men to lead families, parishes, and communities (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 20.10.2026