A tenebrous sect?

 

How the tenebrous Bing AI imagines the Trinity 

"A Pope of Their Own: El Palmar de Troya and the Palmarian Church" is a book-length study of a peculiar breakaway group from the Roman Catholic Church. The author is Swedish scholar of religion Magnus Lundberg, and the book is available free for download from his blog. Lundberg apparently spent some scholarly time in Seville (Sevilla) in southern Spain, doing research on unrelated topics, and there heard rumors about a strange pseudo-Catholic cult. The cult turned out to be based in the small town of El Palmar de Troya in the same part of the country. In English, this particular New Religious Movement is known as the Palmarian Church (sometimes Palmarian Catholic Church or Palmarian Christian Church).  It has long been very secretive and secluded, but Spanish media love to write more or less sensationalist articles about it. Easily the most sensational was when a former "pope" of the Church left the fold, married a former nun, and both then posed half-nude in an soft porn magazine?! Oh, and the newlyweds later tried to burglarize the cult´s main church building, arms in hand...

Small wonder the Palmarian Church is included in a Dan Brown novel! 

That being said, Lundberg tries to be as objective as he possibly can in "A Pope of Their Own", and I do think he succeeds to a remarkable extent. But yes, I think it´s obvious that the Palmarian Church has cult-like traits (at least according to many ex-members interviewed by the author or the media). The members have to follow bizarre rules (which are moreover subject to frequent change), ex-members are shunned and many suffer from sleep or food deprivation. Meanwhile, the autocratic Church leadership feasts, drinks and indulges in homosexual orgies. It´s hardly even a secret that the first "pope" of the Palmarians was a homosexual. Membership has been dwindling ever since the Church was first officially formed in 1978. Yet, the group has enormous financial means at its disposal, and has managed to build a lavish copy of a Baroque basilica in El Palmar de Troya. 

I originally assumed that the Palmarian Church was theologically highly deviant even for a Catholic traditionalist group, but judging by Lundberg´s book, many such groups are actually pretty strange. There seems to be a large overlap between Catholic traditionalism, ecstatic Marian apparitions, apocalypticism, conspiracy theory and fairly heterodox "new revelations". There is even an intriguing overlap between Catholic traditionalism and so-called Independent Sacramental Churches, the latter being theologically the polar opposites of the former. Thus, it turns out that the exiled Vietnamese archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc consecrated both traditionalist and independent clergymen! It´s also interesting to note that Catholic traditionalism predates Vatican II. Indeed, the Palmarian Church has apparently "stolen" many theological concepts from a previous schismatic group, the Renewed Church of French anti-pope Clément XV. 

There seems to be an entire spectrum running from the respectable and relatively moderate Society of St Pius X (SSPX) to a lunatic fringe such as the "survivantists", who claim that Pope Paul VI was replaced by a doppelgänger and that the real Paul VI is still imprisoned in a dungeon in the Vatican (he would have to be over 120 years old by now).  Another thing that struck me was that the often poor or otherwise underprivileged "seers" connected to various Marian apparation sites were supported by more prosperous "marvelists" with connections in the publishing industry, and sometimes even by aristocratic elite people of considerable means. 

At least to an outsider, the combination of "maximalist Mariologi" and patriarchal social teachings typical of many of these groups sounds very strange. Both the Palmarian Church and other alternative-traditionalist Catholic groups have de facto turned the Virgin Mary into a goddess. The Palmarians teach that the human souls of both Jesus and Mary were created by God before the foundations of the universe, that they are forever united, and that Mary is the Co-Redemptrix of the universe with Jesus. Indeed, Mary is present in the communion bread and wine together with Jesus (the Renewed Church apparently taught that both Mary and Joseph are present in the communion elements, and even form parts of an expanded Trinity). Unless I misunderstood something, the Palmarians also believe that Jesus and Mary were incarnated in Old Testament times as Melchizedek and the otherwise unknown "Essenia Queen of Salem", respectively. After death, the souls of the righteous are temporarily transported to the Planet of Mary (sic) where they dwell until Armageddon. 

Despite this ultra-high view of Mary, the Palmarians don´t have female priests and don´t seem particularly pro-woman in general either, their nuns (but not the monks) having to completely veil themselves in the style of extreme Muslims. Politically, the Palmarians are far right, having canonized Fransisco Franco and some of his associates. They even tried to erect a five meter tall statue of Franco on basilica grounds, but had to remove it due to Spanish law. In their pseudo-BIble (yes, the Palmarians have ditched the regular Catholic Bible and replaced it with their own completely altered version), Moses is referred to as "the Caudillo of the Israelites"!

As already indicated, new revelations given to charismatic seers play a central role in the Palmarian Church and other fringe Catholic movements. There were a number of Marian apparitions at El Palmar de Troya from 1968 onwards (they are still ongoing). Many different visionaries were active at the site. The Palmarian Church was formed by a seer, Clemente Dominguez y Gomez,  who together with some associates essentially tried to take over and institutionalize this somewhat amorphous charismatic movement. They did succeed in buying the land where the supposed apparitions took place, and later built the Baroque cathedral there, but most of the original ecstatics never joined the new Church. It´s interesting to note that many of these were women! The original movement around Our Lady of Palmar is called La Cruz Blanca and still exists, having their own site just outside the Palmarian church grounds. In the Palmarian Church, by contrast, visions containing new revelations from  Jesus, Mary, Elijah and various saints can evidently only go through the Church´s supreme leader (the "pope"). 

Many of the "popes" have been highly erratic individuals, and the quality of their "revelations" have reflected this. It´s interesting to note that Dominguez claimed to have been coronated Pope in a vision, apparently by Jesus Christ himself in the company of Peter, Paul and the recently deceased Paul VI. Thus, no earthly conclave was needed. As "pope",  Dominguez called himself Gregory XVII. Several later anti-popes of this small group preferred the papal name Peter, perhaps because of a supposed 12th century prophecy by St Malachy in which the last pope before the end times is called "Petrus Romanus". Of course, Peter (the disciple of Jesus) was also the first pope of Rome according to Catholic tradition! The most dramatic new revelation, given by Elijah to Gregory XVII, was that the entire Bible is a forgery by Jews and Masons. Members of the Palmarian Church were therefore instructed to hand over their Bibles to the Church authorities to be destroyed. The new Palmarian "Bible" is entirely based on new revelations given to Dominguez and his successors.

Another constant theme with this group is its highly secretive nature. Indeed, I wonder how they even managed to recruit new supporters in about a dozen of nations! Presumably, they "tapped" the stream of traditionalist Catholic pilgrims visiting the Marian apparition site at El Palmar de Troya. Ireland seems to have been the most important foreign base of support for this group, and Irish media has sometimes featured interviews with ex-members. Germany, Switzerland and Nigeria are other places were Palmarians have established local branches, and some support has also come from the United States (some of the few Palmarians there have been inordinately wealthy). The exact membership of the Palmarian Church is unknown, but Lundberg believes that it can´t be more than 1000 or 2000 at present. Most of them live at El Palmar de Troya. For years, the group didn´t even have a web presence (indeed, use of the Internet and mobile phones was banned). Today, they have changed policy and even have a YouTube channel, where bewildered Catholics from other traditionalist groups can watch the strange "pontifical" masses of the current Church head, Peter III. The all-knowing YouTube algorithm recently recommended one such video to me, and here I am...

I read about the Palmarian Church years ago in some book (which may have overstated Ngo Dinh Thuc´s importance for the foundation of the group), but then forgot about it. My impression has always been that the group is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. Clearly, this isn´t *entirely* the case, since there have been Palmarians in Ireland. In 2017 Dan Brown introduced the Church to a wider audience through his novel "Origins" (which I haven´t read). According to Lundberg, Brown got most things about this tenebrous sect wrong, but then, wasn´t he wrong about the Priory of Sion, too? ;-) 

Lundberg makes no predictions about the future of the Palmarian Church, and considering the colorful and erratic history of this group, I can´t say I blame him. My own two cents is that the group is probably too sectarian and theologically heterodox even for Catholic traditionalists to be a success story, but who knows what could happen if the sect decides to proselytize among people who don´t care about such things, say highly deviant non-Catholics? At the moment, however, all indicators are that the Palmarian Church is still on a downward trajectory. There aren´t enough priests, monks or nuns - at least not according to the Church leadership - and new members are almost exclusively people who are born into the group, while outside recruitment is essentially zero. 

Not sure how to end this review, so I just end it. There!