Bookended From Birth to Birth

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Father Vincent Bowes, O.C.D., who was born in Jordan, New York, which is about twenty-one miles due west of Syracuse, New York, on Christmas Day, December 25, 1918, has died, passing into eternal life on Low Sunday, April 18, 2009, at 8:00 a.m. Father Bowes had a life that was bookended by the Birth of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Easter Victory over sin and death that has made possible our spiritual rebirth in the Baptismal font and thus our birth unto eternal life in Heaven if we persevere to the points of our dying breaths in states of Sanctifying Grace.

Father Vincent Bowes lived his life as a Discalced Carmelite friar most anonymously. Although some of you in and around the Boston, Massachusetts, area knew Father Bowes personally and while others of you may have learned of him from His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan, who had spoken of Father Bowes's mystical experiences, most Catholics in the United States of America had never heard of this humble priest who remained faithful to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition from 1973 to the time of his death early on Low Sunday, which followed a period of hospitalization and confinement in a nursing home after he suffered a broken hip last year.

As you will discover momentarily, prudence required Father Bowes's mystical experiences, which led to him accept the fact that the conciliar "popes" have been imposters who have made war against the Catholic Faith, to be kept hidden for a few days after his death so that the terms of his Last Will and Testament, which included the specific request that  Father Denis McMahon offer his Requiem Mass according to the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, could be fulfilled without interference by the Order of Discalced Carmelites, whose superiors were, Father McMahon has informed me, very cooperative in seeking to fulfill Father Bowes's last wishes down to their last detail.

Father Bowes was born into a devout Catholic family. His only brother, Edward, who died in the 1980s, was a priest of the Society of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the Josephites. One of his sisters, Margaret, never married, staying home to take care of their parents as she pursued a career as a school teacher. His other sister, Mary, who died in 2001, was a sister of the Maryknoll order who did good missionary work for twenty years before succumbing to the ethos of conciliarism, which was embraced completely by the Maryknollers, many of whom gave their full support to Communist revolutions and insurgencies in Latin America. It is, though, a quite a tribute to Father Bowes's parents that each of their children sought serve the Church one capacity or another.

Father Bowes graduated from a business college in western New York in 1941, serving in the Army as a clerk during World War II. It was after his discharge from the Army that he sought entrance into--and was accepted by--the Order of Discalced Carmelites on September 25, 1947, taking the religious name of Father Vincent Joachim of the Holy Family.

He completed his novitiate and seminary studies for priestly ordination in the usual prescribed time for their completion. A protracted illness, however, kept him from being ordained to the Holy Priesthood until June 3, 1961, at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington, District of Columbia, by the Most Reverend Philip Hannan, then an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Washington.

Father Bowes served most humbly and ably as a porter for some years during prior to his ordination, reminiscent of the role played by Blessed Martin de Porres, O.P., at the Dominican Friary in Lima, Peru, and the work of a porter and sacristan that was done by the simplex priest, Father Solanus Casey, O.F.M., Cap., in Yonkers, New York, and the Borough of Manhattan and, most notably, in Detroit, Michigan, from 1904 to 1946, at which time he was transferred to a novitiate in Huntington, Indiana. Father Bowes discharged his duties as a porter with great humility and dignity in the years he was awaiting approval for his priestly ordination as he was recovering from his illness.

Concerned about the doctrinal and liturgical changes wrought by the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath, Father Bowes befriended the famous Catholic writer and noted defender of the Social Reign of Christ the King (and a firm opponent of the poisonous Americanist heresy that was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899), Mrs. Solange Hertz, who first came to public notice in Triumph magazine.

Mrs. Hertz convinced Father Bowes in 1973 to offer the Immemorial Mass of Tradition exclusively, a decision that cost Father Bowes greatly within the Order of Discalced Carmelites. Although his superiors "permitted" him to offer the Mass of our fathers, he was consigned to a small space in the basement of the Discalced Carmelite friary in the Boston, Massachusetts, area (located from 1942 to 1989 in Brookline, Massachusetts, before being moved to Brighton, Massachusetts in 1989). Father Bowes maintained his absolute fidelity to the Mass of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church from thereon out until the end of his life, never offering the hideous, abominable sacrilege that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service after Mrs. Hertz convinced him to abandon this travesty once and for all. His superiors never forced him to participate in any Novus Ordo services thereafter.

Father Bowes offered the the Immemorial Mass of Tradition quietly, avoiding any controversy with his brother friars. He did mention the name of whoever happened to be the conciliar "pope" at the time of his offering Holy Mass in the space in the friary basement that was assigned to him. All of that changed, however, in 1999 when Father Bowes began having what he believed to be locutions from Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I learned of these locutions on Saturday, June 23, 2007, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, after I had given a presentation on the Social Reign of Christ the King at Sacred Heart Church following a Mass offered by Father Benedict Hughes, CMRI. Mr. Robert Letourneau, a stalwart defender of Catholicism in the Boston, Massachusetts, area, who looked after Father Bowes's needs very selflessly and most assiduously for thirteen years with the devotion of a true spiritual son (and who provided me most kindly with most of the details of Father Bowes's life that have been recounted in this article), told me that Father Bowes wanted to speak with me.

Father Bowes was very priestly, very manly in his bearing. He was very matter of fact in telling me that he wanted me to sit down as I listened to him, explaining that he believed that Our Lord Himself  wanted me to know the information he was about to tell me. "Our Lord wants me to have this information?" I said to myself as tears welled up in my eyes. "Me? A terrible sinner?" I gulped as there was a seriousness of purpose to Father Bowes's voice and a total sobriety in his demeanor that captivated my full attention and respect. And it was at that point that Father Bowes began to describe his mystical experiences. I gulped again as I prayed fervently.

Mind you, I am not given to being credulous at the report of “signs and wonders,” I have been wary of reports of new locutions and apparitions, claims about which seemed to have proliferated exponentially in the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, I said rather publicly in the 1980s that the easiest, surest way to appear on the Eternal Word Television Network at that time was to claim that one was having apparitions of Our Lady appearing to him. This was not far from the truth.

Additionally, I have been introduced over the years to individuals who were said to have had some degree of “inside” information about the state of the Church. One of the most oppressive days I have ever spent was an afternoon in May of 1987 at the house of a man on Long Island who had written a book about the alleged apparition of Our Lady at Garabandal, Spain, in 1961. The whole afternoon was spent with the attendees seeking to ascertain with the mysterious Father Malchi Martin (see Malachi Martin's double agent status) when the end of the world was going to occur. I was trying to find some graceful way to exit from these painfully needless deliberations, being unable to do so. Father Martin concluded the proceedings with the following pronouncement, “I think that we can be fairly certain that the end of the world will occur on the feast of a male martyr of the Eucharist in 1992.”

Claims, therefore, of “inside” information from Heaven come to me with a heavy presumption of doubt.

This was true of the claims that first surfaced in 1981 that Our Lady was appearing in Medjugorje, Croatia, then a republic in Yugoslavia. I had a healthy degree of cynicism but was open to whatever the “church,” which I thought at the time was represented by what I now know to be the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its false “popes,” decreed on the matter. This agnosticism about the Medjugorje phenomenon continued until November of 1987, at which point I heard an apologist for the “apparition” at a Catholic Rendezvous at the Salisbury Inn in Lakeville, Connecticut, explain that Our Lady was alleged to have told the seers that those in false religions should strive to be “faithful” to those false religions and live “good lives” in according with their tenets. “This is not from the Mother of God,” I said to myself and others at the time. "This is not legitimate. This is from Hell."

It was a year before this that I had been invited by a man to attend a “charismatic” hootenanny” at a Best Western hotel in Hempstead, Long Island, New York, featuring an alleged seer, a Serbian Orthodox woman named Vassula Ryden, who claimed to have been given “dictation” by Our Lord and Saint Michael and each of the Divine Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Then Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger had issued a decree banning Ryden from speaking in “Catholic” churches and facilities. A “priest” in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Monsignor James Lisante, now the conciliar pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park, New York, circumvented this by holding a “prayer meeting” and Mass at the hotel on the very night that most of the “conservatives” in the diocese would be attending the annual Nocturnal Adoration Rally at Saint Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, which was organized by Father Robert Mason, a true priest (indeed, the priest to whom I made my first Confession at Saint Aloysius Church fifty years ago), who was the pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church from 1976 to 2008. Although I was reluctant to go the event, I did so with an eye to writing a story for The Wanderer, amazed to find over 2,000 people in attendance, each of whom had to pay an admission fee of ten dollars. Not a bad take for night’s work.

Mrs. Ryden entered the meeting room to great shouts of delight from the assembled multitudes, most of whom were drawn from various “charismatic” groups in the greater New York City/Long Island/New Jersey/Connecticut area, draped on the arm of the “priest.” The first thing she said was that “I was just speaking with Jesus before I came down here. He told me to tell you that He loves you.” Two thousand people went wild with applause as some fell to the floor, having been “slain by the spirit.” Several people exclaimed incredulously, “Jesus loves me? Jesus loves me? I can’t believe it.” I responded to this by saying to myself, “These people need Vassula Ryden to tell them that Our Lord loves them? Ridiculous.” Mrs. Ryden was and remains a syncretist who said that it did not make any different what religion a person belonged to as long as they “loved” Our Lord.

Full of “conservative” zeal, I wrote up a report and analysis, delivering it the following week while on a pilgrimage to Rome. The report and analysis were given to Father Charles Brown, a “priest” of the Archdiocese of New York who worked under “Cardinal” Ratzinger. It was less than a week later that Ratzinger, seeking possibly to burnish his credentials as a “conservative,” issued a reaffirmation of the ban against Vassula Ryden. And I’m not even going to get into the running battles that I had with the followers of the late Veronica Lueken and the whole Bayside cult that had insinuated itself in so many traditionally-minded sinews in the conciliar structures within the greater New York City metropolitan area.

This brief history has been provided by way of explaining that reports of apparitions and visionaries come to me with in almost every case with about three strikes against them, allowing that a passed ball or a wild pitch might give me pause to get past the “strikeout” and actually consider someone’s evidence about a particular claim.

I was, however, intrigued in early 2007 when His Excellency Bishop Daniel Dolan informed me of an elderly priest who had reported that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had been speaking to him since 1999 about the state of the Church. This priest was Father Bowes.

The aforementioned Robert Letourneau informed me via an e-mail a few weeks before my June 23, 2007, lecture at Sacred Heart Church in Lawrence that Father Bowes was going to attend one of my lectures, which he would up doing. Father Bowes had great difficulty walking. He listened to my lecture attentively, seeking me out afterward to have a moment or two to speak with me. I am normally very tired after my talks and am not a partisan, therefore, of “chit chat” after they have concluded, being willing, however, to answer questions informally concerning the lecture. I understood, however, that Father Bowes had something important to say to me. Time was thus made to sit down and listen to this priest, who is thirty years my senior.

Father Bowes exuded the dignity of Our Lord’s Holy Priesthood. He was very precise. He was not in the least prone to fits of sentimentality or emotionalism. He was sober and direct, having a truly fatherly bearing about him as he spoke to me. Knowing just a little bit about Father Bowes from what Bishop Dolan told me, I listened attentively, making sure that I focused intently on the details of what he was to say to me. The details were astounding. They remain astounding.

Father Bowes explained to me that Mrs. Hertz had discussed with him in 1973 that Our Lord was reliving His Passion again in His Mystical Body, the Church Militant on earth. This is a subject about which Mrs. Hertz wrote at length in The Remnant years ago (the series was republished within the past five or six years, during the time of my own association with The Remnant between December of 2002 and April of 2006). Father explained to me that while he thought highly of my writing that I needed to look at the situation facing the Church today in light of Our Lord reliving His Passion by means of the suffering of His Mystical Body, the Church Militant on earth.

The matter of Our Lord reliving His Passion through His Mystical Body, the Church Militant on earth, is something that I had not, to be honest, addressed as a constant theme of my writing and speaking up to that point, although I had written and spoken in the most general of terms about Our Lord being Crucified mystically by means of the attacks upon the Church and that there will be a resurrection of the Church following the Triumph of Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Being but a terrible sinner who makes no claim to any mystical experiences whatsoever, I have never wanted to presume a direct knowledge about Our Lord’s reliving His Passion through Holy Mother Church and have left that discussion to those whose mastery of the interior life and of the “higher things” is far greater than mine. Father Bowes believed that I should know what Our Lord had been telling him so that I could add a deeper dimension to my writing and speaking.

Father asked me if I understood in general terms that Our Lord was undergoing His Passion again by means of His Mystical Body, Holy Mother Church. I answered affirmatively. He then asked me if I knew the precise moment of the Passion that was taking place at present, which I did not. Once again, I have never presumed to speak about such things definitively and wanted to hear what this holy priest had to say.

Father Bowes explained to me that Our Lord started to speak to him in July of 1999, telling him that He is indeed reliving His Passion through His Mystical Body on earth, the Church. Our Lord told Father that the Novus Ordo is invalid because of its invalid words of consecration and that the “bishops” and “priests” in the conciliar structures are not true bishops and priests. A false church had been completed by that time in 1999, one that aped the Catholic Church but was not the Catholic Church despite its claims to be so. Our Lord termed each of “popes” from the time of Angelo Roncalli in 1958 to Karol Wojtyla to be not only anti-popes but Antichrists.

Our Lord described the events of His Passion in His Mystical Body since 1958 as follows to Father Bowes:

His Agony in the Garden, which had begun in the late-Nineteenth Century, reached its climax when He was handed over, this time to the Gentiles, not to the Jews, when Angelo Roncalli emerged as a false “pope” in 1958.

He was Scourged at the pillar repeatedly as the false doctrines were issued by the “Second” Vatican Council.

He was Crowned with thorns with Giovanni Montini/Paul VI said the following about the United Nations on October 4, 1965, during his address to the General Assembly in New York City: "The peoples of the earth turn to the United Nations as the last hope of concord and peace." (Giovanni Montini/Paul VI's Address to the United Nations, October 4, 1965.)

He was Crucified when Giovanni Montini/Paul VI promulgated the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service on April 3, 1969, remaining on the Cross for the next thirty-one years.

He told Father Bowes that He had died on the Cross and was buried in the Tomb at that time, where His Mystical Body remains for a period of time that He had not as of then, June 23, 2007, revealed to Father Bowes. The cause of His death mystically at that point was Joseph Ratzinger’s  press conference, held after the controversies engendered by the issuance of Dominus Iesus on August 6, 2000, saying that Jews and Protestants and the Orthodox do not need to convert to the Catholic Church. (The key text from that press conference, held on September 5, 2000, contained in a book that was published in 2002 but is now out-of-print, can be found in  Nothing New Under the Conciliar Sun.)

As noted earlier, Father Bowes said to me that he believed Our Lord Himself wanted me to know this. I gulped. Despite my sins, ladies and gentlemen, I do love Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother to the depths of my being. Yes, I, a perpetual cynic about visions and locutions, am convinced that Father Bowes was indeed being given messages by Our Lord and ask that those who are quick to dismiss and to disparage the sedevacantist position, especially traditionally-minded “priests” who are not who they think they are, will consider these questions:

What if Father Bowes was right?

What if the conciliar church is counterfeit and has no true bishops and priests in the Latin Rite (Father Bowes agreed that most of the bishops and priests in the Eastern Uniat Rites would be valid, the only exceptions being if an invalid Latin Rite “bishop” attempted to consecrate a man as a bishop in an Eastern rite)?

What if the Novus Ordo service is invalid?

What if the conciliar “popes” have indeed been Antichrists, thus making them enemies of the Faith, especially by means by their repeated sins against the First Commandment?

What if Father Bowes was right?

Father Bowes did not omit the “una cum” reference in the Canon of the Mass until he began hearing from Our Lord in July of 1999. He realized at that point that he had no choice but to do so. Would it not avail a traditionally-minded priest ordained after 1968 who is sincerely concerned about the salvation of souls, including his own, to take Father Bowes's words to heart?

I asked Father Bowes how long the visible Church would remain in the Tomb, that is, at what point the Resurrection will occur in the life of the Mystical Body of Christ. He did not know, stating that it was possible that these are end times and that the Resurrection of the Church might take place at the General Resurrection of the Living and the Dead on the Last Day. He did say that he believed that there would have to be much more suffering for our sins, noting especially that the United States of America will have to be punished severely for its many and severe crimes against God and man. Indeed, the reliving of Our Lord’s Passion and Death through His Mystical Body on earth has been the result of the sins and ingratitude of men.

Father Bowes was not sure when I asked him where the Fatima Message fit into this. He did say that there would be the Triumph of Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, and that it would be glorious. He said also that he doubted whether the consecration of Russia by a pope with all of the world’s bishops, which he believes is the condition that Our Lady has indeed spelled out for an end to the spread of the errors of Russia, could be done at this late date because of the lack of a true hierarchy. I pointed out to him that God could put a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter by any means that He chose, which he agreed could be the case. Father Bowes did say, however, that he did not know the specifics of how the Church would be restored or even if, as noted before, there would be a restoration prior to the end of the world.

Father Bowes mentioned to me in a follow-up telephone conversation of Monday, June 25, 2007, that he remembered being frightened by the “look” in the eyes of Joseph Ratzinger when he saw a photograph of him in a newspaper the day after his “election” as an antipope on April 19, 2005. Father wanted to make sure that he included this in his account.

Was Father Bowes a chosen vessel of election by which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is attempting to teach Catholics to flee from the counterfeit church of conciliarism? I believe so. He was humble. He suffered with docility the physical infirmities of old age and the calumnies from within his own religious community. Such men are not prone to make up stories for their own aggrandizement. Father Bowes had too much concern for the salvation of his own soul to attempt to fabricate something out of thin air. He had too much concern for the salvation of the souls of others to do so.

There will be cynics aplenty out there in cyberspace who will scoff at this report. The truth of the sedevacantist position rests in the doctrinal and canonical principles supporting it, not on private locutions. Nevertheless, my friends, anyone who had spoken with Father Bowes while he was alive was given great pause for reflection, especially at the time I spoke to Father Bowes in 2007 as the diabolically planned “liberation” of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition was about to trap so many well-meaning Catholics into silence about doctrinal matters in exchange for having a modernized version of the Mass of Tradition offered, for the most part, by false bishops and false priests.

As a son of Carmel, Father Bowes was very devoted to  the Mother of God and to promoting her Brown Scapular as a weapon against the same sort of false ecumenism today that the Prophet Elias fought when he slew the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel itself. Father Bowes was very devoted to Our Lady's Rosary and to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. He offered up all of his suffering to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through that same Immaculate Heart. Father Bowes was devoted also to the two founders of the Discalced Carmelites, Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila, as well as to the Little Flower of the Carmel in Lisieux, Saint Therese of the Holy Face of the Child Jesus. He was a superb Confessor and offered Holy Mass with exquisite perfection. spending a great deal of time offering spiritual direction to those who would visit him in person or telephone him from throughout various parts of the United States of America.

Father Vincent Bowes, O.C.D., was  beloved by those who knew him as their pastor and teacher and spiritual guide. He served Holy Mother Church faithfully in this time of apostasy and betrayal. Although we must pray for his immortal soul from now until the time of our own deaths, we can be confident that this good, faithful priest is able to intercede for our needs from eternity. Perhaps it will be his prayers from eternity that will convince at some men in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who believe themselves to be priests to muster up the courage to quit the false church and its false ecumenism that is so hateful in the sight of God in order to serve souls in the catacombs as truly ordained priests subordinate to our true bishops who make--and who never at any time countenance--any concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds.

Father Bowes had a priestly heart after the merciful designs of Our Blessed Lord and and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Sacred Heart. He specifically chose Father Denis McMahon, whom he, Father Bowes served as a Confessor for a number of years, to offer his Requiem Mass. Father McMahon's elder brother in the priesthood, Father Bowes, very much appreciated Father McMahon's great zeal to minister the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to the sick and the dying no matter where in the country a person may happen to be. The priestly heart of Father Bowes, an insightful Confessor and spiritual guide who I believe was favored by Heaven with messages from Our Lord Himself,  saw into the priestly heart of his brother priest, Father McMahon, and chose to honor him with the privilege of his Requiem Mass.

Not to be overlooked in the merciful designs of the the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is the true spirit of Charity exhibited by Father Bowes's superiors in the Order of Discalced Carmelites. Although those superiors did not ask any questions of Father McMahon, they knew full well that he is a sedevacantist. That did not matter to them. What mattered to Father Bowes's superiors was that his last wishes would be granted entirely, including a Requiem High Mass, at which Mr. John Sharpe, who had flown to Massachusetts to Virginia for the Requiem Mass even though he had never met Father Bowes, directed the choir, which included Father Joseph Collins, the pastor of Saint Michael's Church in Glenmont, New York,  three seminarians from Saint Joseph's Minor Seminary at the City of Mary who just "happened" to be visiting the Boston area with Father Benedict Hughes, CMRI (who was unable to attend the Requiem Mass), and Sister Bernadette and Mary Inez of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen .

The merciful designs of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus even manifested themselves in the location of the Requiem Mass, the main chapel of the Discalced Carmelite friary in Brighton, Massachusetts, where the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service offends God greatly every day. At the request of Father McMahon, His Excellency Bishop Donald Sanborn and Father Anthony Cekada, both of whom had taught Father McMahon at Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Ridgefield, Connecticut, researched the issue as to whether it was possible to offer a true Mass in a chapel that has been desecrated by false worship. Using books written by different canonists, Bishop Sanborn and Father Cekada discovered that a decree of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, issued in 1899 under the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII, who was so devoted to promoting Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, permitted the offering of Holy Mass in non-Catholic settings in extraordinary circumstances.Thus it is that Pope Leo XIII played a role in helping to fulfill Father Bowes's last wishes.

Finally, Father Bowes showed his Charity for his brother priests in the Order of Discalced Carmelites by having insisted in his Last Will and Testament that he receive a Requiem High Mass. Only the most hardened of hearts could refuse to be inspired by the glory and the beauty and the solemnity of the a sung Requiem High Mass offered according to the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Father Bowes gave his brother Carmelites quite a gift from eternity to ponder over for the rest of the years. How can one return to the profanity of the Novus Ordo when one has seen a foretaste of the glories of Heaven contained in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition's Requiem High Mass?

Father McMahon and Robert Letourneau told me in separate telephone conversations yesterday, Thursday, April 23, 2009, that the Requiem High Mass was, to use Father McMahon's words, "beautiful and magnificent." Great effort had to be expended to find all of the liturgical accoutrements necessary to offer a Requiem High Mass of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church as perfectly as is possible in this passing, mortal vale of tears. Father McMahon was amazed that the seminarians from the City of Mary knew how to sing the parts of the Requiem High Mass and that Sisters Bernadette and Mary Inez knew how to sing their parts with exactitude.

Father McMahon noted that six months' worth of planning could not have produced the beauty and the perfection that God Himself brought together in but a few short days with almost no time at all to practice beforehand. Father Bowes's Requiem High Mass had been "planned' from all eternity by God Himself down to its last exquisite detail, including the transformation of the Novus Ordo table into a altar for a true offering of a Catholic Mass.

The Master of Ceremonies for the Mass was Richard Van Deryt, an attorney from Ohio who serves as Master of Ceremonies for many of the complex rites that are offered so gloriously at Saint Gertrude the Great Church in West Chester, Ohio. Mr. Van Deryt had never met Father Bowes. Mr. Van Deryt and Mr. John Sharpe, who had met Father Bowes in the past, were willing to travel long distances to make sure that Father Vincent Joachim of the Holy Family received the Requiem High Mass that he requested and deserved, offered with as much glory and magnificence as God's graces, sent down from Heaven through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, could permit in this passing, mortal vale of tears. No one present was, from what I have been told, disappointed by the results.

Father McMahon told me his sermon focused on the fact that Father Vincent Joachim of the Holy Family was a true son of Carmel, from which many of the disciples of Elias and Eliseus were called by Our Lady to be present in Jerusalem on Pentecost Sunday and thus to be added to the ranks of Holy Church to sing her praises on Mount Carmel, as Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B. related in The Liturgical Year:

They saw this second Eve, they conversed with her, they felt for her that filial affection wherewith she inspired all of the disciples of Jesus. The Liturgy will speak to us at another season of these favoured ones. The promise is fulfilled to-day. In the lessons of the feast the Church tells us how the disciples of Elias and Eliseus became Christians at the first preaching of the Apostles, and being permitted to hear the sweet words of the Blessed Virgin and enjoy an unspeakable intimacy with her, they felt their veneration for her immensely increased. Returning to the loved mountain, where their less fortunate fathers had lived but in hope, they built, on the very spot where Elias had seen a little cloud rise up out of the sea, an oratory to the purest of virgins; hence they obtained the name of the Brothers of Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel.

 

The readings for the Divine Office for the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel contains the following description of this call:

When on the holy day of Pentecost the apostles, through heavenly inspiration, spoke divers tongues and worked many miracles by the invocation of the most holy name of Jesus, it is said that many men who were walking in the footsteps of Elias and Eliseus, and had been prepared for the coming of Christ by the preaching of John the Baptist saw and acknowledged the truth, and at once embraced the faith of the Gospel. These new Christians were so happy as to be able to enjoy familiar intercourse with the Blessed Virgin, and venerated her with so special an affection, that they, before all others, built a chapel to the purest of Virgins on that very spot of Mount Carmel where Elias of old had seen the cloud, a remarkable type the Virgin ascending.

Many times each day they came together to the new oratory, and with pious ceremonies, prayers and praises honoured the most Blessed Virgin as the special protectress of their Order. For this reason, people from all parts began to call them the Brethren of the Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel; and the Sovereign Pontiffs not only affirmed this title, but also granted special indulgences to whoever called either the whole Order or individual Brothers by that name.

As noted before, it was on Mount Carmel that Elias, who was battling King Achab's false ecumenism of worshiping false idols, thereby betraying the true religion of the time, Judaism, by violating the First Commandment, slew the prophets of Baal (3 Kings 18:19-40). Father McMahon.went on to relate that Eliseus, the disciple of Elias, asked for a "double spirit" from his master prior to Elias's being taken up in a fiery chariot (4 Kings 2: 6-13). Elias's mantle fell on Eliseus as he, Elias, was being whisked away in the fiery chariot  Elias's mantle was to protect Eliseus from the spirit of false ecumenism that had prevailed on Mount Carmel and was sponsored by the king himself, who as a figure of the Antichrist.

Father McMahon said that it was that same "double spirit" of Elias was given by Our Lady when she gave Saint Simon Stock her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel on July 16, 1251, as a protection against all spiritual dangers, including the false ecumenism of our own day which so offends God in our day as it offended Him as it was practiced on Mount Carmel when Elias slew the prophets of Baal. False ecumenism makes a mockery of His First Commandment. Father Vincent Joachim of the Holy Family, Father McMahon said, stressed time and time again the importance of the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel as a protection against the false ecumenism of the Modernists that has been practiced with such abandon by the conciliar "popes" and their minions. Father Vincent Bowes, O.C.D., the beloved Father Vincent Joachim of the Holy Family, loved God and He mourned that He was being so offended by men who claimed to be representatives of the Catholic Church on earth.

Father Vincent Joachim of the Holy Family gave God His all in life, being, as Father McMahon noted in his sermon, an especially fierce foe of false ecumenism. Indeed, Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, whose feast we celebrate today, April 24, 2009, gave up his life at the hands of those wretched Calvinists as he sought to convert them back to the true Faith. Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen believed in an "ecumenism of the return" that has been completely and categorically rejected by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. It simply cannot be that Saint Fidelis and all of the other martyrs who died trying to win Protestants and the Orthodox and Jews and Mohammedans to the true Faith were wrong and Ratzinger/Benedict is correct. Truth is on the side of the martyrs, not the apostates who do not even cry out in anger immediately when one of their "bishops" denies that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins. Like Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Father Vincent Bowes, was faithful to the end.

Father McMahon also related to me that Father Bowes's burial included quite an amazing event.

Father McMahon wanted the casket to be lowered into the grave after he had completed the prayers at the graveside. He was looking for some way to get some dirt to throw onto the casket as it was being lowered into the ground. Out of nowhere appeared the funeral director, who was carrying a specially designed trowel, one that was triangular with edges so as to contain dirt without it being spilled. Father McMahon figured that Father Joseph Collins had strong armed the funeral director to bring the trowel. He had not. Without knowing that Father McMahon would even ask for a bit of dirt to throw on the casket as it was being lowered into the ground, the funeral director was prompted to get some dirt and to give to Father McMahon, telling him that he figured that it was the traditional thing to do even though it is not done much any more. God was indeed providing for his priestly son, Father Vincent Joachim of the Holy Family, down to the last detail of his burial.

Those of us who were privileged to meet Father Bowes are grateful to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Most Blessed Mother for having been given this privilege. Several of our true bishops and priests (among whom are His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan, His Excellency Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, Father Anthony Cekada, Father Denis McMahon, Father Benedict Hughes, CMRI, Father Joseph Collins) visited with him. The most privileged of us all, however, was the aforementioned Mr. Robert Letourneau, who met Father Bowes in 1996, at a time Father was offering an "indult" Mass, and who placed himself under Father's spiritual guidance as he assisted as many of his daily Masses, went to Confession to him frequently, and accepted the truth of sedevacantism as Father explained to him what Our Lord had revealed to him, Father Bowes. Catholics owe a great debt of gratitude to Robert Letourneau for the care he extended to Father Bowes from 1996 to the time of his death.

Although Father Bowes had no immediate survivors, it is certainly true that he had spiritual children, some of whom, such as Father McMahon and Robert Letourneau, were very close him. Each of us can be close to him know by means of our prayers, can we not?

Readers will have to judge for themselves what to make of the late Father Vincent Bowes's belief that he had received locutions from Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to inform him, Father Bowes, about the true state of our ecclesiastical situation, which is what it is regardless of any private revelations. All I can say, ladies and gentlemen, is that Father Bowes’s account, which was told to me in a fatherly, kind, gentle, matter-of-fact way, is very similar to the following prophecies:

“I saw a strange church being built against every rule. . . No angels were supervising the building operations. In that church, nothing came from high above. . . There was only division and chaos. It is probably a church of human creation, following the latest fashion, as well as the new heterodox church of Rome, which seems of the same kind. . .

“I saw again the strange big church that was being built there (in Rome). There was nothing holy in it. I saw this just as I saw a movement led by Ecclesiastics to which contributed angels, saints and other Christians. But then (in the strange big change) all the work was being done mechanically (i.e. according to set rules and formulae). Everything was being done according to human reason. . .

“I saw all sorts of people, things, doctrines, and opinions. There was something proud, presumptuous, and violent about it, and they seemed to be very successful. I did not see a single Angel nor a single saint helping in the work. But far away in the background, I saw the seat of a cruel people armed with spears, and I saw a laughing figure which said: ‘Do build it as solid as you can; we will put it to the ground’ . . . . “(as found in Yves Dupont, Catholic Prophecy: The Coming Chastisement, TAN Books and Publishers, 1970, p. 61)

Let us pray to Our Lady so that the message that her Divine Son has entrusted to Father Bowes will reach hardened hearts and help to open closed minds to the truth that the counterfeit church of concilairism is not the Catholic Church and that each and every Catholic must flee from this false church and cleave only to true bishops and true priests in the Catholic catacombs who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the “legitimacy” of the false shepherds in its nefarious structures.

The final victory belongs to Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. We will have the purity of the Masses offered and the prayers said and the sufferings endured by the late Father Vincent Bowes, O.C.D., to help credit for making this victory manifest when it comes about in the Providence of God.

Father Bowes was very devoted to the Poor Souls in Purgatory. He would not for a single moment want any of us to presume that he is in Heaven. He wants us to have Masses said for the repose of his immortal soul and for us to remember him in our daily prayers for the Poor Souls. The fruit of our Masses and prayers will be directed by Our Lady to other deserving souls if Father Vincent Joachim of the Holy Family has no need of them because he has received his Heavenly reward, something that we won't know until eternity ourselves. Until that time we continue to pray for Father Bowes's soul, keeping in mind as well that the Poor Souls in Purgatory can intercede for us here in the Church Militant on earth even though they cannot help themselves

In the meantime, we proceed with absolute confidence in the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit. We travel by Faith, knowing that we may not see the glories of a resurrected and restored Church in this life but hoping that we can, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, plant a few seeds so that there will be a day when all hearts and lips will exclaim with joy:

Vivat Christus Rex!

Eternal rest grant unto Father Vincent Bowes, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and all of the souls of the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints