The Illusion of Contemplation: A Neo-Carmelite Facade in Post-Christian Sweden
VaticanNews portal (November 7, 2025) presents an interview with “Sr.” Elisabeth from the Glumslöv Carmel in Sweden, portraying it as a bastion of contemplative life. The article emphasizes her personal vocation journey, the monastery’s prayer life, and its struggles in a secularized society. Absent is any mention of the raison d’être of authentic Carmelite life: reparation for heresies, conversion of sinners, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Instead, the piece reduces monasticism to therapeutic spiritualism, exemplifying the conciliar sect’s gutting of religious life.
Eviscerated Monasticism: From Penance to Psychological Comfort
The article claims the nuns’ primary task is “contemplative prayer—the pursuit of union with God,” which allegedly provides “strength” or a “healing answer” to the world. This vapid formulation obscures the primary duty of Carmelites defined by Pope Pius XII in Sponsa Christi (1950): “to offer themselves as victims of expiation for the salvation of souls.” St. Teresa of Avila herself founded her reform to combat the Protestant heresy through sacrificial prayer and severe penance—not as a self-help retreat.
When “Sr.” Elisabeth states they “give [Jesus] what we can—and perhaps even more than what would be expected,” she invokes a dangerous subjectivism. The Church has always taught that religious vows demand exact fulfillment of the Rule (Canon 593, 1917 Code), not arbitrary personal standards. The silence on the Divine Office, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or Eucharistic adoration—the pillars of monastic life—reveals a community severed from Catholic sacramental ontology.
The Post-Conciliar Carmel: A House Built on Sand
The Glumslöv Carmel boasts of living “as closely as possible” to St. Teresa’s constitutions, yet this claim collapses under scrutiny. True Teresian Carmelites observe papal enclosure (Canon 604), perpetual abstinence, and the Divine Office chanted in full—practices systematically dismantled after Vatican II’s Perfectae Caritatis. The article’s admission of “limited” family visits (7 days/year) and reliance on letters contradicts St. Teresa’s prohibition of all superfluous contacts to safeguard the “great silence.”
Moreover, the convent’s tolerance of external news via the “Mother Superior” violates the clausura mandated by Pope Pius XII: “No nun may read newspapers or periodicals without express permission of the Holy See” (Sponsa Christi, XII). This laxity explains why the nuns perceive their bells as merely disturbing neighbors rather than summoning the faithful to recognize Christ’s Kingship over Sweden’s apostate society.
Naturalism Masquerading as Spirituality
Nowhere does the article mention the Mass of the Ages or the Rosary—the weapons of true Carmelites. Instead, “Sr.” Elisabeth reduces her vocation’s “most beautiful” aspect to a nebulous “Jesus,” detached from His Eucharistic Presence or Sorrowful Mother. This echoes the modernist heresy condemned in Lamentabili Sane (1907): that “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20).
The interview’s focus on community life as the “most difficult” aspect exposes the conciliar sect’s anthropocentric turn. Traditional Carmelite literature (e.g., St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night) identifies the arduous purification of soul, not interpersonal friction, as the essence of monastic struggle. This distortion reflects Paul VI’s disastrous Ecclesiae Sanctae (1966), which replaced ora et labora with communal “dialogue.”
Apostate Sweden’s True Diagnosis
The article laments Sweden’s 2% Catholic population and “aggression against faith,” yet suppresses the dogmatic remedy: the Social Reign of Christ the King. Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925) decreed that nations must “submit to the sweet yoke of Christ” through public profession of the True Faith—not ecumenical whimpering. Sweden’s apostasy stems directly from its Lutheran revolution, which murdered Catholics and outlawed the Mass. That the Glumslöv Carmelites omit this history proves their complicity with the conciliar sect’s false irenicism.
Conclusion: A Monastery Without a Mission
This Carmel embodies the conciliar revolution’s ruin: a community that “prays” while ignoring the Church Militant’s war against modernity. True Carmelites like St. Thérèse of Lisieux offered their lives “for the conversion of heretics,” recognizing Luther’s revolt as the source of Northern Europe’s apostasy. Until these nuns renounce the post-Vatican II reforms and return to the uncompromising Rule of St. Teresa, their cloister remains a decorative facade—a “whitewashed tomb” (Matthew 23:27) in Scandinavia’s spiritual desert.
Source:
A glimpse into contemplative life: Sr. Elisabeth on the Carmel in Sweden (vaticannews.va)
Article date: 07.11.2025