Francis Schuckardt - Tridentine Latin Rite Catholic Church

Tridentine Latin Rite Catholic Church

About the time of his departure from the Blue Army, Schuckardt began giving lectures throughout the United States, promoting devotion to the Virgin Mary as well as speaking out against the various doctrinal changes that were, he claimed, the result of the Second Vatican Council.

He said that after a long and hard struggle, accompanied by much prayer and research, he concluded that from the Second Vatican Council emerged a "new" religion which was not truly “Catholic” (Open Letter to members of the Fatima Crusade, ca. 1968), and that Paul VI was a false Pope, that is, an illegitimate due to personal heresies. He also criticized the liturgical reforms of Vatican II and the teachings on ecumenism as severe departures of "true" Catholic doctrine.

In 1967, Schuckardt founded a community of nuns, Religious Brothers, and priests known as the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (abbreviated as CMRI), initially approved by the Bishop of Boise, Idaho. With his rejection of the reforms and authority of what he considered to be the "new Catholic Church," or the Novus Ordo (New Order), he formed an organization known as the Tridentine Latin Rite Catholic Church (TLRCC). He insisted that this is not a "new church," but the same Catholic Church that existed for almost two millennia prior to the changes imposed by Vatican II. His followers refer to the Church generally recognized as the Roman Catholic Church as the "Modern Catholic Church" or the "Post-Vatican Council II Church". They labelled Paul VI the "arch-heretic of Rome" and referred to the mainstream Church as "the Church of the Beast". "Who would be so bold or so foolish as to call these bishops Catholic or to pretend that they possess any legitimate authority? Including the arch-heretic in Rome?"

Schuckardt and an associate Denis Chicoine began a national lecture circuit advocating a return to traditional Catholicism. Due to their outspoken rejection of the Second Vatican Council and embrace of sedevacantism, Schuckardt and his followers were denounced by the Roman Catholic Church. However several traditional-minded Catholic priests (some Jesuits and diocesan priests) had joined Schuckhardt and would provide the Fatima Crusade with the traditional, Roman Rite of the sacraments and the Mass. In his public discourses (which were preserved on audiotape), then-Brother Schuckardt reminded his followers that, despite the apostasy of Vatican II, Christ would most certainly provide for legitimate apostolic succession in "the Catholic Church." He is on record as saying that he "never expected" himself "to be part of that succession".