Stuff Found In Books

Stuff Found in Library Books returns from its very long occultation with a bang this morning. This pamphlet. Which doesn’t appear to be much but is actually attached to a fairly interesting story.

Our Lady of Fatima Crusade in Coeur d’Alene (oh, the struggles I have had with memorizing the spelling of that name) appears to have been founded by the late Francis Schuckardt, a traditionalist Catholic and Marian devotee (and Blue Army veteran) who one wag called “the rock n’ roll outlaw of Catholic traditionalism.” A fierce critic of Vatican II and the post-conciliar church (it got him formally denounced) e founded Mount St. Michael’s Parish in Spokane, where the Tridentine Latin Mass was still said. 

Facing allegations in the early 1980s that he sexually abused young, male seminarians, Schuckardt was eventually expelled from his church. he fled to California and founded another community, which was then raided by the police, who found a cache of drugs and weapons and some pamphlets entitled Death to Race-Mixers. (That’s what item number three is about. Thought so.) Schuckardt eventually relocated back to the Pacific Northwest, founding the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (not these Oblates of Mary Immaculate), a clandestine religious community that was scattered across Washington and Oregon and proof that just about anybody can by the pope of their own tiny church if they get the racism right.

Schuckardt died in 2006.

The pamphlet itself was likely printed in the 1960s or early 1970s, and it has that look to it – Our Lady of Fatima Crusade moved to Spokane in 1977 – though the Shrine of Fatima website still to this day has the Coeur d’Alene website. There’s a slight perforation on the back page, to more easily detach the pledge card, I guess.

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good morning everyone have an absolutely furious mongoose

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