Texans come from strong stock as we pointed out in last year's tribute to Father Frederick Schell as a charter member of the Tower of Trent Hall of Honor. So also Patrick's lineage for he was born in the panhandle where the weather can change at the blink of an eye from either stifling hot, or a norther blowing in with a vengeance off the Rockies and sweeping down on Amarillo with a biting chill that identifies the hearty folks of this city many refer to as "the town in the middle of nowhere." However his parents knew exactly where they were in respect to their Faith and brought up their children as solid Catholics. Patrick was born on the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua on June 13, 1931 during the 9th year of the pontificate of Pope Pius XI.

    It was also the time of the Great Depression. Yet, despite the hardships, his father Joseph Peter Omlor and mother Helen Anastasia Kochan Omlor made sure young Patrick had a solid Catholic education, sending him to St. Mary's Parish School and then, with World War II underway, enrolling him at Price Memorial College which had a high school run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools (F.S.C.), not to be confused with the Christian Brothers who have fallen into ill-repute by embracing the novelties and liberties of Vatican II.

    In 1944, in the middle of his Freshman Year he was accepted to the Preparatory Novitiate of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Glencoe, Missouri. After completing his high school and other preparations, he entered the F.S.C.'s Scholasticate at St. Mary's College in Winona in 1949. There he acquired his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics where he graduated summa cum laude. And speaking of "summa" it was there on the bluffs above the Mississippi that he reached for higher heights by delving into the Angelic Doctor's Summa Theologica and how to apply it in all aspects of life. This would prove invaluable in later years when sorting out all the ambiguities pronounced at Vatican II and after.

    In 1953 God called him to another vocation. Having grown in grace and benefiting greatly from his sound spiritual formation, he realized, just as this editor did after 7 years of priestly formation with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, that God had another mission for Patrick at the age of 22. He left Winona grateful for all the Brothers of the Christian Schools had imparted and with their blessings. Equipped with the foundations of the Faith, he decided to teach mathematics. From 1953 to 1964 he taught at numerous Catholic institutions of learning from California to Louisiana. From the plains of Amarillo to the lakes of Minnesota his journey now took him to the Bayou, California and to the Franciscan Sisters' College of St. Joseph on the Rio Grande in Albuquerque where he imparted the science of mathematics to young minds for the purpose of disciplining their minds and exacting proper order. With the changes and abdication of responsibility following Vatican II, the Franciscan Sister's College became the secular University of Albuquerque, but while Patrick was a professor there it was totally Catholic.

    New Mexico is known as the land of enchantment and Patrick was enchanted with a young lady by the name of Mary Victoria Adelo; so much so that he asked for her hand in marriage in 1956 in Albuquerque. In order to support a family and to advance his career the Omlors moved to Menlo Park where Patrick was awarded the prestigious position of staff mathematician at the Stanford Research Institute in Northern California. There life was good and the family increased, but as the 60's emerged there was trouble on the horizon.

    At first Patrick wasn't exactly sure why things were changing, but in reverting back to applying St. Thomas' logic, he began studying the documents of Vatican II which, back then, were not as readily available as many might think. Remember, the bishops were slow to circulate the documents and many of them had no clue and rubberstamped whatever came down the pike. That is one reason the reforms took such deadly root at the local church level. "The Pope said it" or the "Bishop wants it" and that was it. Catholics didn't question their shepherds. Yet the big problem that took a while for Patrick to discover, was that they were no longer shepherds but caretakers. They were merely the hirelings Our Lord spoke of in Sacred Scripture who will flee the flocks, leaving them vulnerable to prey at the first sign of danger. The Pastores Boni were no longer there. The mentality of the sixties also produced the "if it feels good, do it" attitude that permeated the Church. But Patrick realized that feelings have nothing to do with faith. The faith has absolutes and those absolutes were being relaxed, compromised and even abandoned. Something was seriously wrong!

    Consider here that the solid Catholic education Patrick received was basically the same as that administered to the priests, bishops, and cardinals in the sixties. Yet en masse the great majority of consecrated ones worldwide went along, enabling and empowering the very interlopers who had infiltrated Holy Mother Church over the decades. One reason was that misunderstood "obedience factor" - which is basically "blind obedience" - that made it all the easier to foist a new religion on the people in the guise of "updated Catholicism." While those who should have known better did nothing, Patrick heard the call to alert others as to the subterfuge and wreckovation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar.

    In 1967 he began writing articles, questioning some of the changes. He went into high gear as the seventies set in and the "abomination of desolation" foretold by Christ in Matthew 24: 15 became evident with the Novus Ordo Missae by Paul VI. What few realized but Patrick researched and discovered is that the so-called "New Mass" was a concoction of a Protestant rite totally devoid of Catholic origins and had been drawn up by a known 33rd degree Mason in Annibale Bugnini - a true cancer within the curia - and a Marxist Jesuit Father Joseph Gelineau and six Protestant advisors. Basically, as Patrick realized, Pope Saint Pius V's infallible decree Quo Primum had been rejected in order to please the Protestants. The absolutes had been sacked to placate man and God would have to live with it. Patrick realized the truths of St. Paul's words in Galatians 1: 7-12 and set out to valiantly defend the truth and to expose this new "gospel" - even though preached by the 'angels from heaven' posing in the Vatican - as anathema sit!

    In late 1973 he resigned his position at Stanford and, like another well-known family - the Hutton Gibson clan which, of course, included his famous son Mel who had all relocated to Australia a few years prior - Patrick and Mary moved their large family of three sons and seven daughters to Perth in Western Australia. There he felt as if he had arrived in Paradise, with the balmy subtropical climes of this Ocean port city which is renowned to this day as having the best weather in the world. There also he could continue to practice the Faith he was weaned on and insure that his children would have the same foundation in a world that had abandoned the true Faith for a false faith, a destructive faith that had duped so many.

    Storm warnings were everywhere and yet few saw what Patrick so clearly perceived. While he continued to work as Total Consultant and Operations Research Practitioner at the Western Australia Division of the Pittsburgh-based Aluminum Company - a position he retained until his retirement in 1993 - he realized why God had guided him towards the religious life in his younger years. He had a vocation to inform others of the dangers to the Holy Faith. He embraced this mission with fervor, editing the newsletter Interdum and contributing to other newsletters such as the Society of Traditional Roman Catholics and Father Kevin Vaillancourt's The Catholic Voice.

    Preparing a compilation of his articles, he produced a book that is must-reading for every concerned Catholic. He called it The Robber Church and it has become his signature work. Patrick was one of the first to identify the elimination of "pro multis" and the removal of "mysterium fidei" from the mandatory and necessary words for confection of the sacrament. This also was emphasized in his work No Mystery of Faith, No Mass. He was one of the first to cite the Saints, Doctors and Popes of the Church as condemning the actions of those who had commandeered the faith and now sat on the throne in modern Rome. Eternal Rome had been abandoned and Patrick, like the Crusaders did in attempting to recover the Holy City of Jerusalem, launched his own crusade to restore Eternal Rome. As early as 1969 he became at once both notorious to the New Order proponents and invaluable to those determined to cling to the Faith of their fathers. He released that very year his work Questioning the Validity of the Masses using the New, All-English Canon by Athanasius Press out of Reno, Nevada. Before Father James F. Wathen issued his irrefutable book The Great Sacrilege, Patrick's was one of the first voices to shout from the rooftops. Like so many of the early pioneers of Traditional Catholicism, Patrick knew he could not just sit back and wait, but resist from the beginning for the longer one waited, the more the enemy could dig in and become entrenched. In retrospect we can see this and it should be a wake-up call to those calling for a "cease-fire" with the election of Benedict XVI. They say, "give it time and things may change." Meanwhile the devil in the details anesthetizes the lukewarm, conquering more souls because so many of the faithful are lulled into a false belief that Joseph Ratzinger is going to right the ship. It had no effect on persuading Paul VI to abandon his course toward perdition; it did no good during Karol Wojtyla's 26 years in charge of the demolition of the True Faith. So why would they think it will be any different under the fifth man to occupy the chair since the death of Pope Pius XII? This is all the more highly improbable considering Ratzinger was one of the original periti and he is the very one who introduced the infamous and deadly "subsistit in" in the Lumen Gentium Vatican II document which, in effect and fact, signaled the formulation of a new church and the abandonment of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

    Author Griff Ruby has called Omlor's book The Robber Church "The Bedrock." He backs this up with his strong endorsement,

"I cannot recommend the reading of this book enough. All the strongest arguments, with rock-solid documentation and support from numerous Roman theologians, doctors, and canonists, gathered together to show that there is no reason to expect the Novus Ordo Missae to be a valid ceremony, sacramentally speaking. The arguments brought out here are so strong and airtight that Novus Ordo proponents can only respond to this with silence, doing their level best to avoid drawing attention to this book."

Another reviewer expressed,

"Patrick Henry Omlor is a brilliant apologist for the traditional Latin Mass...He cites main authorities such as St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and many others, to prove his thesis. So far to boot, no one has been effective in countering his arguments. A must have for every Traditional Catholic Library, this book proves that the post-conciliar Church, the Robber Church, has effectively abandoned the teachings of the true one, holy, apostolic Roman Catholic Church!"

    Like yesterday's recipient Solange Strong Hertz, Patrick has also shown how the United States government - long before the chaos of the 20th century exploded - undermined the Faith. He presents in his book The Phantom Fourteenth the rock-solid facts that the Fourteenth Amendment is unconstitutional and has been the portal which has paved the way for the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriages, violation of States' rights and other machinations that has produced the judicial tyranny we have today. Omlor presented an interesting review of the historical purpose of this amendment which dovetails the same reasons Hertz brought up for the underlying reasons of the Civil War. The anti-Catholic bias is evident and the legally impotent "right of privacy" has been maneuvered to protect every aberration possible with one exception - Catholic truth.

    And Catholic truth is what Patrick has always endeavored to convey with as much clarity as possible, fulfilling his second vocation to be a beacon for generations to come in upholding the infrangible Truths and Traditions of Holy Mother Church as handed down and preserved from Saint Peter through Pius XII. We encourage you to obtain reprints of Patrick's various works available from Missionaries of the Holy Ghost

    While another Patrick Henry may not have been committed to the Catholic cause, this Patrick Henry Omlor would say regarding the True Faith in resisting the oppression of the conciliar church, "Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" Patrick has fought for "the freedom and exaltation of Holy Mother Church" and would willingly give his life for his Lord and Savior and the salvation of souls which has turned into his life's work. From the sparce necessities of the depression to the opulence of these modern times, Patrick has remained steady and focused on the true goal: eternal life for himself, his family and so many souls trapped in the labryinth of lies and deception that have clouded hearts and minds over the past 40 years. In describing the feats of Patrick Omlor, we would also echo what the 1776 statesman Henry said, "We are not weak if we make proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power...the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone, it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." Patrick Henry Omlor has been just that vigilant, active and brave for he has used his God-given talents and the weapons of Faith placed in his power.

    Therefore, so that others may know of his invaluable contribution to the Traditional Catholic cause, The Daily Catholic proudly proclaimed, Thursday, June 2, 2005 - the Octave Day of Corpus Christi that this man who held so precious the proper confection of the Awesome Mystery of the Holy Eucharist - be declared Patrick Omlor Day throughout all of Christendom and we hereby present the Tower of Trent Trophy to him and enthusiastically add his name and feats of Faith to the Tower of Trent Hall of Honor as one of authentic Catholicism's noble knights of the Resistance.

    In closing, let us remember the day he died was on the feast of the "Apostle of Tradition" St. Athanasius. Patrick's funeral Requiem Mass was conducted by Fr. Julian Gilchrist in Perth where Patrick was laid to rest in the Roman Catholic section of the Karrakatta Cemetery. Thus, on the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine, the dauntless apostle of the Counter-reformation who, like Patrick, sought to convert souls away from heresy, and on the 96th Anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima and traditional observance of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament - the combination of the two pillars between which Patrick steered the ship of his soul and family safely through the storms toward the eternal port of Heaven. Thus, on this day we proudly proclaimed it as "Patrick Henry Omlor Day" throughout Christendom. Truly, this Trailblazer for Truth and Tradition will be greatly missed.