The EWTN News portal (November 9, 2025) reports the celebration of a “solemn Mass” at the ruins of St. Maron’s shrine in Syria by the post-conciliar Maronite group in communion with the Vatican antipopes. The event – organized by the “Maronite Scouts” under “Fr.” Ghandi Mahanna – allegedly drew 80 participants to sites including the damaged cave chapel of hermit Toufic Ajib and the Church of St. Simeon Stylites. Security forces reportedly escorted this exercise in religious nostalgia, with pilgrims declaring “Syria was beautiful, and still is” – a telling admission that their faith resides in earthly nationalism rather than the supernatural reign of Christ the King.
Naturalism Masquerading as Piety
The central message delivered by Mahanna – that “the true presence of God is found in every human heart” – constitutes rank indifferentism condemned by Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Error 15). This heresy reduces the Eucharistic Presence to a subjective experience, directly contradicting the Council of Trent’s definition that Christ’s true presence exists “in the august sacrament of the Holy Eucharist under the appearances of sensible things” (Session XIII, Chapter 1).
By omitting any reference to the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass or the necessity of sacramental grace for salvation, Mahanna’s message aligns with the Modernist heresy defined in Lamentabili Sane: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20). The article’s focus on “living faith through love” without mentioning repentance or the Four Last Things exemplifies the neo-modernist reduction of religion to anthropocentric sentimentality.
Architectural Vestiges Cannot Sanctify Invalid Rites
The report’s emphasis on physical sites – the “Dead Cities” of northwestern Syria – reveals a materialist fixation on archaeological remnants rather than living Tradition. As Pius XII warned in Mediator Dei: “The worship rendered by the Church to God must be in its entirety interior as well as exterior” (§24). The Novus Ordo service performed at these ruins lacks both the form and intention required for validity, being based on Paul VI’s apostate Missale Romanum of 1969.
The participation of security forces underscores the Babylonian captivity of this sect to Syria’s Muslim-majority regime – a regime that systematically persecutes Christians while permitting token religious displays to garner Western sympathy. True martyrs like the 21 Coptic laborers beheaded by ISIS in 2015 would shudder at this collaboration with persecutors, recalling Christ’s warning: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28).
Ecumenical Rot in the Maronite Communion
The Maronite group’s current submission to Bergoglio’s antipapacy completes their theological disintegration. As the 1736 Maronite Synod of Mount Lebanon declared: “We anathematize everyone who does not confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.” Yet their modern successors reject this Filioque doctrine to please Orthodox schismatics – a betrayal documented in the 2017 “Anaphora of the Twelve Apostles” approved by their “Patriarch” Béchara Boutros Raï.
This apostasy continues a pattern begun when the Maronites abandoned their resistance to Muslim rule in the 12th century, culminating in their acceptance of Vatican II’s heresies. The article’s celebration of “religious tourism” while Syria’s Christian population has plummeted from 1.5 million to under 500,000 since 2011 reveals the bitter fruits of this compromise – demographic annihilation disguised as resilience.
The Silence of True Shepherds
Nowhere does the report mention the only solution to Syria’s devastation: the Social Reign of Christ the King as defined in Pius XI’s Quas Primas: “When once men recognize…the royal prerogatives of Christ, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony” (§19). Instead, the “clerics” parrot Bergoglio’s eco-socialist platitudes while their flock disperses through emigration and apostasy.
The ruined shrines stand as mute witnesses to Catholicism’s abandonment of its missionary mandate: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). Until Syria’s remaining Christians reject the conciliar sect and return to the true Faith preserved by sedevacantist bishops, their celebrations are but ignis fatuus – foolish fires leading souls deeper into the marsh of modern apostasy.
Source:
Mass celebrated again at ancient St. Maron’s Shrine in Syria after 15-year silence (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 09.11.2025