The EWTN News portal reports on a cyclist, Tom Schwein, who claims private locutions from the Holy Spirit following a near-fatal crash in 2015, prompting him to lead a 12-person team on a 3,000-mile ride across the United States under the banner of “Samaritan Cycling USA” to raise funds and “awareness” for homelessness via the conciliar structure “Catholic Charities.” The trek, framed as a spiritual mission, terminates in St. Augustine, Florida, site of the first Mass in the present-day U.S., coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the Masonic republic’s founding. This spectacle epitomizes the total substitution of the Church’s supernatural mission — the salvation of souls through the Sacraments and the Social Reign of Christ the King — with a naturalistic, Pelagian humanitarianism indistinguishable from secular NGOs, all validated by the counterfeit hierarchy of the conciliar sect.
Private Revelation and Enthusiasm: The Devil’s Counterfeit of Vocation
The article’s theological center of gravity rests not on the mandate of the Church, nor on the Great Commission to teach all nations and baptize them, but on private locutions allegedly heard by a layman. Schwein claims to have heard the Holy Spirit say: “Peace be with you. You will recover” and later “I’m not yet done with you here on Earth. Continue your ministry… Go big or go home.” This is the hallmark of illuminism and quietism condemned by the Church. St. John of the Cross teaches in The Ascent of Mount Carmel (Book II, Ch. 22-23) that God has spoken everything in His Son and that to desire new revelations is an offense to God. The Catechism of the Council of Trent warns that the devil transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14) to deceive souls through false consolations and imagined missions. The conciliar sect, having abandoned the discernment of spirits taught by St. Ignatius and St. Teresa of Avila, canonizes such enthusiasm as “faith in action,” leading the faithful into the desert of subjectivism where private judgment replaces the Magisterium.
Reduction of the Kingship of Christ to Secular Humanitarianism
The entire enterprise is framed in the language of secularism — “raising awareness,” “national crisis,” “shelter, stability, and hope,” “pathways toward stability.” There is zero mention of the supernatural end of man: the necessity of Baptism, the state of grace, Confession, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or the conversion of the homeless to the one true Faith. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declares with absolute clarity: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” The article celebrates the “250 years” of the United States — a nation founded on Masonic principles of religious indifference and separation of Church and State, explicitly condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Props. 55, 77, 78, 80) and Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae (Americanism). To end the ride in St. Augustine, celebrating the “first Catholic Mass of Thanksgiving,” while ignoring that the current civil order is built on the rejection of Christ’s Social Kingship, is the supreme irony of the conciliar religion: it blesses the very structures that dethrone Christ.
“Catholic Charities”: The Long Arm of the Conciliar Sect’s Naturalism
The beneficiary, “Catholic Charities,” is not an instrument of the Church’s munus sanctificandi but a bureaucratic appendage of the conciliar sect, largely funded by the Masonic state (government grants) and operating on the principles of religious liberty and interfaith dialogue condemned by Quanta Cura and the Syllabus. The article boasts of raising $2.2 million and targeting $350,000 more, partnering with local “Catholic Charities” along the route. This is the Caritas of the novus ordo: a horizontal, immanentist distribution of temporal goods, severed from the vertical dimension of grace. St. Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique (1910) condemned the Sillon for precisely this error: “They dream of a Church where the laity would play the dominant part… a Church without hierarchy… where the divine and the human are confused.” Here, the laity (Schwein, “Deacon Dan Cook” — ordained in the invalid 1968 rite) usurp the role of the hierarchy, replacing the Cure of Ars model of priestly sanctification with the model of the social activist.
Pelagian Activism and the Widow’s Mite Profaned
Schwein’s motto — “transforming physical endurance into meaningful impact and heartfelt passion into real provision” — is pure Pelagianism. It posits that man, by his own natural efforts (cycling 38,000 miles, raising millions), builds the Kingdom of God on earth. The comparison of a $2 donation from a poor father and son to the widow’s mite (Mark 12:42-44) is a sacrilegious trivialization. The widow gave all she had to live on to the Temple, the house of God, the place of sacrifice prefiguring Calvary. This donation goes to a 501(c)(3) structure that functions as a government contractor. The article’s closing appeal — “First and foremost, the team needs prayer… Then, those who feel called to give can donate per mile” — inverts the order: prayer becomes a safety charm for a physical feat; almsgiving becomes a transactional “per mile” sponsorship. This is the do ut des of paganism, not the Caritas of Christ.
Symptomatic of the Great Apostasy: The “Church” as NGO
This event is not an anomaly; it is the logical fruit of Vatican II. Gaudium et Spes shifted the Church’s gaze from superna to terrena, from the City of God to the city of man. The “Deacon,” the “Archdiocese of Denver,” “EWTN News,” “Denver Catholic” — these are the organs of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt 24:15). They simulate Catholic vocabulary (“ministry,” “calling,” “Holy Spirit,” “Mass”) while emptying them of dogmatic content. The “Samaritan Cycling” operation is a perfect metaphor for the conciliar sect: furious activity going nowhere, pedaling across a Masonic continent to celebrate the anniversary of a godless Constitution, raising money for the poor while leaving them in the darkness of unbelief, sine fide, sine spe, sine caritate (without faith, without hope, without charity). As St. Paul warns: “If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor… and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (1 Cor 13:3). True charity is supernatural; it seeks the soul’s salvation first. This is philanthropy baptized in Modernist water — idolatry of man wearing a mitre.
Source:
After near-fatal crash, cyclist rides across America for homeless (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 10.10.2026