EWTN News, the flagship propaganda organ of the conciliar sect, publishes a puff piece detailing the exploits of “fr.” Michael Sliney, a member of the Legionaries of Christ—that pseudo-order spawned from the loins of the degenerate Marcial Maciel Degollado—traversing the so-called “St. Charbel Trail” in Lebanon. The article, penned by Romy Haber, frames this 80-mile hike through the Qadisha Valley as a “hidden gem” of spiritual renewal, replete with encounters with “joyful” monks and nuns, Maronite vestments, and the alleged tomb of a “saint” canonized by the antipope Paul VI in 1977. It culminates in a plug for “pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), noting his 2025 pilgrimage to the Monastery of St. Maroun in Annaya. This report is not a chronicle of Catholic piety; it is a manifesto of naturalistic humanitarianism masquerading as supernatural religion, perfectly embodying the laicism condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas and the indifferentism anathematized by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors.
The Legionaries of Christ: A Rotten Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution
The protagonist, “fr.” Sliney, belongs to the Legionaries of Christ (LC), an institute founded in 1941 by Marcial Maciel, a man later exposed—even by the conciliar sect’s own investigations—as a serial sexual predator, drug addict, and father of multiple children. That this pseudo-order was not only tolerated but aggressively promoted by the usurpers John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI stands as irrefutable proof that the See of Peter has been vacant since 1958. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice, a manifest heretic—or one who protects manifest scandal—ipso facto loses all jurisdiction. The Legionaries are not a religious order in the Catholic sense; they are a paramasonic fifth column erected within the visible structures to simulate vitality while rotting the vine. Sliney’s “27 years of priestly ministry” in Washington and New York are, in reality, 27 years of ministry in the abomination of desolation, offering the Novus Ordo “table of assembly” and leading souls into the secta of the New Advent.
The “St. Charbel Trail”: Naturalistic Sentimentalism Masquerading as Pilgrimage
The article describes the trail as a “pilgrimage and hiking trail” linking “monasteries, villages, and historic sites.” Note the vocabulary: “hiking trail,” “striking natural landscapes,” “peaceful, silent environment,” “time capsule,” “resilience,” “hospitality,” “simplicity.” This is the language of tourism and anthropology, not theology. Nowhere does Sliney mention penance, indulgences, the conversion of sinners, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as propitiatory victim, or the Social Kingship of Christ the King over Lebanon and the nations. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, thundered: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” Sliney’s remedy for this shaking? A walking path. He claims the trail “creates a peaceful, silent environment where you can actually hear God.” This is Quietism divorced from the Sacraments, a Protestantized “personal relationship” with a vague deity, utterly foreign to the Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi of the True Church.
For Sliney, walking through the valley felt “almost like going back to a time capsule.” He said he was struck by the continuity of monastic life there, where Christians have prayed for centuries in monasteries and caves carved into the mountains.
This “time capsule” rhetoric reveals the modernist historicism condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 53, 54): “The organic structure of the Church is subject to change… Dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy… are merely modes of explanation and stages in the evolution of Christian consciousness.” Sliney admires the ruins of the faith—the stones, the caves, the “continuity”—while ignoring that the monks and nuns he praises are in communion with the antipope in Rome, celebrating a false liturgy, and teaching a false ecumenism. He sees the accidents (vestments, caves, medals) but misses the substance (the True Faith, valid Orders, unity with the Vicar of Christ).
The Antipope Leo XIV and the Legitimization of the Neo-Church in Lebanon
The article casually drops the bombshell: “the Monastery of St. Maroun in Annaya, where Pope Leo XIV prayed during his visit to Lebanon in 2025.” Robert Prevost, the current usurper on the Chair of Peter, is presented as a legitimate pilgrim. This is the ecumenism of the return inverted: the antipope visits a schismatic monastery (the Maronite hierarchy has been in communion with the modernist Vatican since the 18th century, but now fully submerged in the neo-church) to bless the status quo of religious indifferentism. Lebanon, once a bastion of Maronite Catholic identity, is now a theater for the Masonic “Fatima” operation’s final stage—ecumenical reinterpretation and syncretism. The Syllabus of Errors (Prop. 55) condemns: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” The conciliar sect, embodied by Prevost, does exactly this: it reduces the Church to an NGO promoting “peace,” “dialogue,” and “heritage trails,” stripping Her of potestas iurisdictionis and potestas ordinis.
The Invalid Canonization of Charbel Makhlouf and the Cult of Modern “Saints”
The entire enterprise revolves around “St. Charbel” (Youssef Antoun Makhlouf), “canonized” by the antipope Paul VI in 1977. Under the sedevacantist principle—confirmed by the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Pope Paul IV and Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code—a manifest heretic cannot validly canonize. Paul VI (Montini) was a public heretic (e.g., Dignitatis Humanae, Nostra Aetate, the Novus Ordo Missae); therefore, his “canonizations” are null, void, and of no effect. The cult of Charbel, as promoted by the neo-church, is idolatry—the veneration of a man elevated by a false authority. The article mentions “St. Charbel’s tomb” and “the house of St. Charbel” as focal points. This mirrors the False Fatima apparatus: “The name ‘Fatima’: a symbol of Christian-Islamic syncretism” and “Stage 3 (1958-2000): Takeover of the narrative by modernists, concealment of the Third Secret, ecumenical reinterpretation.” Charbel becomes a “bridge” figure for Muslim-Christian dialogue in Lebanon, a tool of religious relativism (Syllabus, Prop. 16, 17, 18).
Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ: Quas Primas vs. Hiking Tourism
The most damning omission is the total absence of Christus Rex. Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the “plague… of secularism of our times, so-called laicism” (Quas Primas). He declared: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders… who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom.” Sliney’s trail does the opposite: it privatizes religion, confining it to a “trail,” a “valley,” a “personal experience.” He worries Lebanese Americans are absorbed by “materialism” and “noise,” yet his solution is not the Reign of Christ in public law, education, and family life, but a hiking vacation. He says: “Our culture could use the silence so we can hear the whisper of God.” This is gnosticism—God found in nature and silence, not in the Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, not in the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, not in the Catholic State.
Indifferentism and the Erasure of the Necessity of Conversion
The article mentions the “Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon” in Harissa, “one of the country’s most important Marian pilgrimage sites,” visited by Muslims and Christians alike. Sliney praises the “resilience, hospitality, and spirit of service he encountered among Lebanese people more broadly.” There is zero mention of the conversion of Muslims to the Catholic Faith, zero mention of the Social Kingship of Christ over a nation where Islam dominates demographically and politically. This is the error of Indifferentism (Syllabus, Props. 15-18): “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which… he shall consider true… Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation.” By promoting the trail as a shared “heritage” for “Lebanese Americans” regardless of their current belief, Sliney acts as an agent of the Masonic ecumenical project described in the False Fatima document: “The imprecise formulation ‘conversion of Russia’ (without specifying Catholicism) opens the way to religious relativism. It can serve to legitimize dialogue with schismatic Orthodoxy.” Here, it legitimizes dialogue with Islam.
EWTN: The Propaganda Arm of the Conciliar Sect
The source, EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network), founded by the modernist “Mother” Angelica, is the Fox News of the neo-church. It exists to pacify conservative Novus Ordo Catholics, giving them “traditional” aesthetics (Latin chants, nice habits, pilgrimages) while ensuring they never question the validity of the antipope or the heresies of Vatican II. This article is a textbook example: it offers Catholic accoutrements without Catholic substance. It validates the Maronite hierarchy in communion with Rome (the antipope), the Legionaries of Christ, the false “saint” Charbel, and the naturalistic concept of pilgrimage as tourism. It is spiritual cyanide for the faithful remnant.
Conclusion: The Trail Leads to the Abyss
The “St. Charbel Trail” is a snare of the devil. It invites Catholics to walk in the footsteps of a false saint, guided by a pseudo-priest of a corrupt pseudo-order, under the gaze of an antipope, through a land where the True Faith is eclipsed by a syncretistic “Maronite” identity comfortable with the world. It fulfills the prophecy of Quas Primas: “The more the sweetest Name of our Redeemer is omitted with unworthy silence in international gatherings and parliaments, the more loudly it must be confessed.” Sliney and EWTN ensure that Name remains silent, replaced by the whisper of the wind in the Qadisha Valley. Flee this false piety. Cleave to the True Mass, the True Pope (sedevacantist continuity), the True Kingship of Christ. Non est alia salus.
Source:
American priest walks Lebanon’s St. Charbel Trail, encourages more pilgrims to follow (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.08.2026