The Devil’s Final Battle
By Fr Paul Kramer
(Chapters 1, 5, 8, 10 and 16 Including,
Foreward, Editors Preface and Introduction)
Available from www.catholicbook.com
Foreword
For the
past half-century, a bizarre story has been unfolding inside the Catholic
Church that could have serious implications for the entire world.
As
this book explains, the crux of the story is a message from Heaven, and hence,
a matter of faith and belief. This may make it seem to be of concern only to
Catholics and Church officials, but there’s more to this story than that—much
more.
The
message was conveyed in a manner that is unique in Church history, and its form
and content are also unique. This puts it in a class by itself; it can’t be
relegated to the broad category of "private revelations" experienced
by various Catholic saints and mystics over the centuries. If it could,
non-Catholics and even many otherwise devout Catholics would be free to ignore
it. But ignoring this particular message is impossible for Catholics, and may
also be unwise for everyone else on this troubled planet.
The
message in question was delivered by the Blessed Virgin Mary to three shepherd
children near the little town of Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. Far from being a
private event, its delivery was accompanied by a public miracle witnessed by
70,000 people, and reported in newspaper headlines around the world. No other
apparitions, not even those associated with the world-famous shrines at Lourdes
in France and Guadalupe in Mexico, have been authenticated in this spectacular
manner. This sets the apparitions themselves apart from all previous events of
this kind, but that is only one unique aspect of Fatima.
When
the content of the message received by the children was revealed, it, too, was
unique in the annals of Christianity. It contained a request, as well as a
warning of punishments to come if the request were not granted. Never before
has a message of this kind been reported, either in public or in private, by
any witnesses to an apparition.
As it
does in all cases of this kind, the Vatican subjected the Fatima events to
intense scrutiny. The Church is usually reluctant to endorse such things, as
they are often quite subjective, and difficult to verify. In the case of
Fatima, however, the Catholic hierarchy, from the local bishops of Portugal to
a series of Popes in the Vatican, has unanimously regarded the Fatima
apparitions as "worthy of belief." Pope John Paul II has gone so far
as to say that the Message of Fatima "imposes an obligation" on the
Church. This uniform hierarchical approbation over the years strongly
reinforced the conviction of the Catholic faithful that the Fatima apparitions
had conveyed an authentic message from Heaven.
But
then, on June 26, 2000, the Fatima story took a strange turn. On that day, the
Cardinal in charge of Catholic doctrine at the Vatican and his immediate
subordinate held a press conference which the Los Angeles Times
described as an attempt at "gently debunking the cult of Fatima." The
theme of the conference was that the Fatima prophecies are in the category of
"private revelations" and that, in any event, they "belong to
the past."
What
happened? How did the Fatima apparitions go from being officially declared
worthy of belief to being officially debunked by a high-ranking Cardinal? And
what about the message, with its request and its threat of punishment? These
are questions any reasonable Catholic might well ask, given the strange
behavior of Church leaders on this matter. But once the content of the message
is considered, they are also questions every human being on earth might ask.
The
content of the Fatima message is largely concerned with matters of Catholic
religion that lie entirely in the realm of faith and belief. One part of the
message, however, has wider implications that warrant wider attention. This is
the part that makes a request, and then warns of punishment if the request is
not granted.
The
request is that Russia be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the
Pope, together with all the Catholic bishops of the world. To those outside the
Church, this ritual may have little meaning. Inside the Church, however, such
ceremonies are a well-established tradition. Consecrations have a sanctifying
effect, so in the eyes of Catholics, such a ceremony would be beneficial to
Russia.
Of
course, performing this ceremony is something only the Catholic Church can do.
However, the threat that accompanies the request extends well beyond the
Catholic Church. If the consecration is done, says the message, "a period
of peace will be granted to the world." But if it is not done, the message
warns, then, among other things, "various nations will be
annihilated."
Is
this a credible threat? Should non-Catholics and non-Christians worry about
such a thing? At first glance, one might think not, but the question deserves
closer examination. It isn’t necessary to believe this message definitely came
from Heaven to give it some serious consideration. This is what gives Fatima
its global dimension.
Since
the Vatican judged the apparitions believable, and the annihilation of nations
may be at stake, one would think the consecration would have been performed
long ago. After all, what it requires is a simple, traditional ceremony that
obviously can do no harm to anyone. And if the message has even the remotest
chance of being authentic, the benefit of performing the ceremony as requested
could be of incalculable value. Given these circumstances, even the most
skeptical of outsiders might well consider the consecration "worth a
try."
And
yet, for reasons known only to a small group of Vatican officials, the Fatima
request has not been granted, even though the Church has been aware of it for
at least six decades. Time and time again, various formal consecrations have
been performed, including one that named Russia explicitly, but in all cases,
they have avoided fulfilling the specific requirements of the Fatima request:
that the Pope and the Catholic bishops of the world consecrate Russia, by name,
in a solemn public ceremony. The most recent example was a consecration of the
world in Rome by Pope John Paul II and 1,500 visiting bishops in 2001. Many
people thought the Pope might take that opportunity to fulfill the Fatima
request, but to their disappointment, Russia was not mentioned.
To
both insiders and outsiders, the Vatican’s treatment of this matter seems
strangely inconsistent with its own standards and traditions. It also seems to
show a reckless disregard for the safety not only of the Catholic faithful, but
the rest of humanity as well. If the Fatima threat is genuine, the price of the
Vatican’s reluctance could be very high indeed—and it would be paid by all
mankind.
Under
these circumstances, any reasonable person might ask why the Church persists in
ignoring the message, and risking such catastrophic consequences.
How
and why this is happening is the subject of this book. The story it tells
involves a mixture of facts and matters of faith. For non-believers, the facts
may not prove conclusively that the message is authentic, but they go a long
way in that direction—far enough to persuade many open-minded people to regard
authenticity as a real possibility. And for those who share the Catholic faith,
the facts go much further, affirming authenticity and raising alarming
questions about the state of the Church hierarchy today.
The
story shows the Vatican undergoing a series of changes that caused it first to
endorse Fatima, then to cast doubt on it, then to suppress it, and finally to
discard it altogether. Tracing this process is difficult, as much of what
happens in the Vatican is done in secret, and official attitudes must be
decoded from pronouncements that are often cryptic.
No
one can see into the hearts and minds of the Vatican officials who have
conspired to treat the Fatima message this way. They can only be judged by
their actions, and by the logical consequences of their avowed positions. When
these are analyzed, as they are in this book, a disturbing picture emerges of a
Church divided against Herself, with the rift going right to the top.
There
is an ironic aspect to this story that will not be lost on unbelievers. The
facts related in this book will convince many open-minded non-Catholics that
the authenticity of Fatima is at least possible. If this can be said of
outsiders, how much more convincing should the story be for Catholics? And yet,
even as the story moves unbelievers towards belief, it seems to have the
opposite effect on certain Vatican officials. Ironically, some of the people
now least likely to believe in Fatima are among those who should be the most
likely. Beliefs once central to the Catholic faith are now being abandoned not
by the faithful who remain in the pews, but by some of the highest authorities
in the Church.
A
further irony concerns the position of the Pope in this matter. Like all his
predecessors since the Fatima apparitions occurred, John Paul II has openly and
repeatedly professed his belief in the authenticity of the apparitions. He has
visited the Fatima shrine three times, and attributes his survival of an
assassination attempt in 1981 to Our Lady of Fatima. And yet, even the Pope
seems powerless to prevent his own highest-ranking Cardinals from taking a very
different view of Fatima. He was not present at the June 2000 press conference
mentioned above, where two of the Vatican’s top officials made an effort to
undermine the credibility of the Fatima prophecies and relegate them to the
past.
As
several chapters in this book explain, the Message of Fatima also has political
implications that may have influenced the way Vatican officials have handled
it. The message asks for the consecration of Russia specifically, in order to
convert that nation to Catholicism. To perform a ceremony with that overt
intention runs counter to the so-called "Ostpolitik" the Vatican
adopted first with regard to international communism, and more recently to the
Russian Orthodox Church. In both these areas, the Vatican apparatus has
abandoned the Church’s traditionally militant defense of Her teaching, agreeing
to refrain from denouncing communism as evil, and to cease seeking the
conversion of Russian Orthodox adherents. Hence, the Fatima message has been
and still is "politically incorrect" in the context of current
Vatican policy.
One
might suspect that the Vatican is refraining from consecrating Russia simply
for these political reasons. But is that really credible? Given what is at
stake, would the Vatican really risk the annihilation of nations just to avoid
a diplomatic incident with the Russians? Would Russia really be seriously
offended by a ceremony that, in effect, commends that country to the care of
the Mother of God? And even if Russia were offended, what would they do about
it? What could they possibly do that would be worse than the penalty for not
consecrating Russia, namely, that "various nations will be
annihilated"?
This
book reveals and examines the political machinations that have clearly
influenced attitudes towards Fatima among some high-level Vatican diplomats.
There can be little doubt that the architects of the Vatican’s conciliatory
"Ostpolitik" find the Fatima message inconvenient. But it still seems
unlikely that these diplomatic considerations alone could persuade the Vatican
to ignore a message from Heaven. For that to happen, something else must be at
work, something deeper and darker than worldly politics.
That
deeper and darker ailment is the ultimate subject of this book. It reveals how
the Catholic Church has been transformed in ways that have left many of the
faithful confused. Meanwhile outsiders now see a church maintaining an
appearance of normal function that only masks the radical transformation behind
this facade.
Viewed
from afar, the Catholic Church appears to be an institution that changes only
slowly and reluctantly. The process of reform initiated by Vatican II in the
1960s led to unprecedented changes in the Church (e.g., vernacular Masses,
abandonment of distinctive clerical garb, etc.) that may have seemed dramatic
to insiders, but were almost invisible to outsiders. Compared to secular trends
in the latter half of the 20th Century, the Church seemed resistant to change,
maintaining Her teaching on such things as priestly celibacy, ordination of
women, contraception, divorce and abortion. In all these respects, the Church
still seems firmly entrenched in positions She has maintained for centuries.
But
does this mean that Vatican leadership is resolutely traditionalist? Outsiders
who rely on such things as the Pope’s public utterances might well think so.
But as this book explains, insiders know better. The Catholic Church today is
not what She seems, and the gap between public perceptions and actual realities
is growing wider every day.
While
traditions have been officially upheld in certain respects, they have been
abandoned or undermined in others. And while the positions still being
maintained have been widely publicized, those being abandoned or undermined
have been barely acknowledged. Catholics who once shared a common set of
beliefs around the world now find themselves drifting in different directions
in different places, following contradictory and uncertain leadership at all
levels.
The
famously monolithic Catholic Church is no longer monolithic at all; it is full
of fractures that this book traces to their sources. It shows us a fragmented
Church leadership where the first fissure divides a Pope who is an ardent
believer from his own immediate subordinates, who are anything but.
Four
of these high-ranking officials are examined closely in this book, which amply
documents their role in attempting to "close the book" on Fatima as a
politically incorrect expression of traditional Catholic belief. While it is
impossible to be certain about their individual motivations, it is also
impossible to avoid the conclusion that what they have been doing has
contributed to the current crisis of faith and discipline in the Church.
Many
Catholic commentators have noted that in the post-Vatican II epoch, beliefs
once shared by virtually all Catholics have now been marginalized, and reduced
to cult status. Principal among these are beliefs in apparitions, miracles and
prophecies. Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has raised to the rank of
sainthood many hundreds, each of whom was canonized on the basis of miracles
performed through his or her intercession. Many of these same saints
experienced apparitions of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Catholic tradition
affirms belief in a dialogue between earth and Heaven, mediated by visionary
saints, who are called forth as prophets of their time and who authenticate
their prophecies with miracles. Far from upholding this long-standing aspect of
Christian belief, certain of today’s Vatican officials make a point of
asserting that "private apparitions" can be disregarded as "not
essential" to the faith—including the apparitions at Fatima, despite
Fatima’s warning of global catastrophe.
In
general, the post-conciliar "updating" of the Catholic Church has
left Catholic beliefs reduced to a shrunken core, and even that core is
challenged at high levels. Widely-published (and openly heretical)
"theologian" Hans Küng has received only a slap on the wrist for
questioning such basic articles of faith as the resurrection and divinity of
Christ.
The
plain fact is that it is no longer possible to determine clearly what some top
Vatican officials actually believe. The key official in this regard is called
the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Traditionally,
this position is occupied by a man whose commitment to the preservation of
Catholic doctrine is absolute and unquestionable. Today, the position is
occupied by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a man whose statements concerning
Catholic doctrine (in numerous interviews and even in certain official
pronouncements) are so laden with ambiguity that even theological experts are
unable to say with certainty what he actually believes in many areas.
All
this may seem irrelevant to outsiders, and in most respects, it is. It is of no
concern to non-Catholics or non-Christians if Catholics attend the traditional
Latin Mass or go to a modern vernacular Mass, or pray the Rosary or not. What
Cardinal Ratzinger thinks about matters of Catholic doctrine generally means
nothing to outsiders.
But
what Cardinal Ratzinger thinks about apparitions, miracles and prophecies does
matter. It matters because if he does not believe in the Fatima apparitions,
disregards the Miracle of the Sun, and ignores the prophecies in the Fatima
message, he may be putting the whole world at risk.
The
collapse of traditional belief thus emerges as the most plausible explanation
for the Church’s otherwise inexplicable behavior with regard to Fatima. The
traditional Catholic belief in apparitions, miracles and prophecies is at the
heart of the Fatima story. Abandonment of belief in these things is what has
transformed Fatima from something "worthy of belief" into a cult the
Church’s doctrinal leader tries to discredit and debunk.
Outsiders
might wish this was entirely an internal Catholic matter, but it isn’t. One
doesn’t have to be a Catholic to wonder about God, and how God might choose to
communicate with humanity. People who lack faith in any particular religion
usually don’t deny the existence of God, they simply don’t know whether God
exists. In that state of uncertainty, how can anything be ruled out? God might
well choose to communicate with the human race through the Message of Fatima,
however bizarre that may seem to many people. As the Bible wisely tells us,
God’s ways are not our ways.
The
ultimate issue is therefore not simply what the Catholic Church believes, but
what this might mean for humanity as a whole. This situation invites everyone,
Catholic or not, Christian or not, to consider the possibility that the Fatima
message is authentic. Improbable as it may seem on the face of it, there are
some persuasive pieces of evidence to support this idea. The Vatican’s own
exhaustive investigation found none of the inconsistencies, contradictions or
discrepancies that often invalidate events of this kind. Instead, they found
everything in order. They also acknowledged the unique nature of the Miracle of
the Sun, an event witnessed by thousands for which there is still no adequate
scientific explanation.
When
the content of the message was more widely publicized in the 1940s, further
support for authenticity began to accumulate. The message contained a series of
prophecies, each of which has come to pass as predicted. These include the end
of World War I, the election of Pope Pius XI, the start of World War II, and
the expansion of communist Russia. The evidence has proved sufficient to elicit
the belief of six successive Popes since the apparitions occurred, along with
millions of Catholic faithful. It has also persuaded the Vatican, under the
present Pope, to beatify the two deceased witnesses to the apparitions,
Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and to commemorate the Fatima apparitions in the
Roman Missal, the official book of Catholic worship used by the Roman Catholic
Church for the celebration of Mass.
Yet
another Fatima prophecy, which has only been partially revealed, is the Third
Secret of Fatima. Evidence outlined in this book points strongly to a
prediction of serious problems in the leadership of the Church, problems that
bear an uncanny resemblance to what is actually happening in the Church today.
Most
Catholics have been stunned by the recent cascade of revelations of sexual
abuse of children and teenagers by members of the clergy. Such a thing is
completely unprecedented in Church history, even in medieval times, when many
high-ranking prelates made a mockery of celibacy. In their search for an
explanation for this appalling situation, both Catholics and others might well
look to the still-unrevealed Third Secret.
This
book provides good reasons to believe that the Third Secret predicts exactly
what is happening now. Scandals in the clergy are the beginning of the
chastisement promised if the consecration is not done. While the whole world
will ultimately be punished, the penalty falls first on the Church Herself. The
withering of the Catholic priesthood and its moral degeneracy are just the
first signs of a calamity that will ultimately engulf the whole of mankind.
The
fact that the four Vatican officials examined in this book have gone to great
lengths to put the Fatima question to rest while still concealing the text of
the Third Secret strongly supports this interpretation. Clearly, these
officials still have something to hide. Otherwise, why not publish the document
in question, and why not allow Sister Lucia dos Santos, the only surviving
witness to the apparitions, to testify to its authenticity?
When
the whole story is told, it seems obvious that the real reason the Vatican
won’t perform the consecration is because doing so would affirm the
authenticity of the Fatima message. And doing that, in turn, would affirm the
authenticity of the prophesied apostasy reaching even into the Vatican itself.
Unbelieving officials are not about to indict themselves by heeding a message
that points a finger at them. Instead, they have tried to bury the message, so
as to avoid giving credence to that which the Vatican itself had earlier
declared worthy of credence.
In
virtually any other era in the history of the Church, members of the top
echelon in the Vatican would have been foremost among believers in a message
from Heaven delivered in such convincing fashion. They would have lost no time
in heeding it, and complying with its request. With the confusion that has
followed the Second Vatican Council, and the rapid advance of secularism into
every institution, including the Church, over the past 40 years, such a message
is now being given a hostile reception even by certain Vatican officials. In
ignoring the message, these prelates place themselves not only outside the
ranks of believers, but even outside the ranks of non-believers possessed of
common sense, because they aren’t even willing to give the message a try
anyway—just in case.
The
Bible offers an enlightening example in this regard. The Fourth Book of Kings
(4 Kings 5:1-15, in some Bibles it is referred to as 2 Kings 5:1-15) tells the
story of Naaman, the leader of the Syrian army, whose king sent him to the
prophet Eliseus in Israel to seek a miraculous cure for his leprosy. Without
actually meeting him, Eliseus sent Naaman instructions to bathe seven times in
the river Jordan, in order to be cured. Naaman was indignant that Eliseus
didn’t come to administer his cure personally. Merely bathing in the Jordan, he
felt, couldn’t possibly be any better than bathing in any of Syria’s fine
rivers. Rejecting the prophet’s instructions as trivial, Naaman prepared to
depart, but his advisers dissuaded him. They argued that, if the prophet had
asked him to perform some arduous feat to be cured, Naaman would have done it.
So why not do the very mundane thing that had been asked instead? In effect,
they said to him: Why not try it, since it’s such a simple thing? Naaman agreed
to give it a try on this basis, and sure enough, on his seventh washing in the
Jordan, his leprosy disappeared.
There
is a striking parallel between this miraculous Biblical event and the attitude
now being taken by the Vatican regarding the consecration of Russia. Like
Naaman, Vatican officials seem unable to believe that something as simple as a
consecration could deliver a benefit as momentous as genuine world peace. And
they are so obdurate in their position that won’t even allow the remedy to be
tried, despite repeated appeals over many decades from millions of the
faithful, including thousands in the Catholic clergy.
To
outsiders, it may seem incredible that a tiny group of highly-placed doubters
can block an action so ardently desired by huge numbers of believers. To
understand this, it is necessary to understand the structure of the Church,
which is very different from a democracy. Bishops of the Catholic Church are
not selected by the faithful, nor even by their peers. They are chosen by the
Pope and consecrated by him or (more usually) by an existing bishop, and the
power conferred on them by this consecration comes directly from God. Once
consecrated, each bishop is ultimately answerable to God alone and, under God,
owes obedience in Church matters to the Pope alone.
Given
the temper of the times and the administrative style of the present Pope, it is
certain the Pope will give no direct order to all the bishops unless there is a
general consensus among them first of all.
What
all this means is that it is ultimately up to the bishops of the Church, who
number about 4,500, to agree voluntarily to do the consecration as requested.
Given their wide powers over appointments, promotions and other privileges, it
is easy for the small group in charge at the Vatican to prevent such a
spontaneous agreement from ever emerging.
Today,
it is obvious to everyone in the Catholic clergy that speaking out on Fatima is
a one-way ticket to oblivion for any priest, bishop or even Cardinal. So most
bishops are silent on the matter, regardless of what they actually think or
believe. The same is true for priests, who are even more vulnerable to
punishment for being "politically incorrect."
This
book also mentions the repressive treatment of the "Fatima Priest,"
Father Nicholas Gruner, who has devoted himself to the promotion of the Fatima
message at great personal cost. The Vatican’s efforts to silence him, which
have even included the threat of excommunication, stand in sharp contrast to
the lenient treatment of hundreds of other priests, and even bishops and
Archbishops, who have been embroiled in allegations of sexual molestation of minors.
The sorry state of the Catholic clergy today is epitomized by this contrast
between the treatment of Father Gruner and that accorded to Catholic clergy who
are actually guilty of serious crimes.
The
Catholic Church has in its hands a remedy that might do something no one else
knows how to do—bring peace to this endlessly war-torn world. Based on the
compelling case presented in this book, those who are preventing this remedy
from being tried have much to answer for. They owe both the Catholic faithful
and the world an explanation for their conduct. Further, given its importance
to the world at large, the cover-up of the Fatima message is even more an
occasion for public outrage than the episcopal cover-ups of priestly sexual
misconduct that have been exposed in the year 2002 by the press.
The
final chapter of this book offers some suggestions as to what individuals, both
believers and non-believers, might do to persuade the leaders of the Catholic
Church to act in both the Church’s own best interest and that of the whole
human race. As this book makes clear, both Catholics and non-Catholics have
much to gain and a great deal to lose if the Message of Fatima continues to be
ignored by the very men who are charged to follow its imperatives.
The Devil’s Final Battle
Editors' Preface
The hypothetical man on the street would be surprised to learn that the
terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 and the sexual scandal now wracking the
Catholic Church are closely related events. But they are indeed closely
related. The relation becomes apparent when the two events are viewed through
the prism of the Message of Fatima.
It is often said that as the Church goes, so goes the world. That, in essence,
is what the Mother of God cautioned when She came to Fatima, Portugal, 85 years
ago, in a series of apparitions authenticated by a public miracle without
precedent in world history. Since that time the prophetic admonitions in the
Message of Fatima have all been fulfilled to the letter—save for one: the
annihilation of various nations, which the Virgin of Fatima warned would be the
ultimate consequence of failing to honor Her requests.
The Fatima apparitions have been deemed authentic by a series of Popes and are
now commemorated in the Roman Missal (the basic book of Catholic worship) by
the decree of Pope John Paul II. And yet, in what must be seen as a mystery of
iniquity, the Virgin’s simple requests remain unfulfilled due to conscious
decisions by some of the highest-ranking prelates in the Catholic Church. The
result, just as She predicted, is an ever-deepening crisis in the Church and
the world, accompanied by a growing sense, even among non-Catholics, that we
are witnessing the beginning of an apocalypse.
This book was originally conceived as a compilation of some of the more
important writings and speeches on Fatima in recent years.1 It was hoped that collecting these works
under one cover would give them wider distribution and longer shelf life. But
this concept was soon supplanted by a better one—recasting the articles and
speeches as an integral book with a coherent overall theme. With the authors’
permission, Father Paul Kramer and the editorial staff of The Missionary
Association sculpted the articles and speeches (adding much new material) into
a work unlike anything ever published about Fatima.
It was in the process of assessing and augmenting the material that something
remarkable happened: a theme emerged entirely on its own, as if by Providence.
In approaching the subject of the Fatima Message from different angles, the
various speakers and writers had all converged on one conclusion: the events at
Fatima represent a heavenly focal point in the battle now raging for the Church
and the world. Both the crisis in the Church and the crisis in the world center
around the divine truths summed up with heavenly concision in the Fatima
apparitions. In the fulfillment of the Message of Fatima lies the end of these
twin crises. In the denial of that Message lies, in great measure, the origin
and the augmentation of both.
The astounding events at Fatima were not some useless spectacle, for God does
not engage in useless spectacles. The Mother of God came to earth with our
present circumstances clearly in view, and with the solicitude of a mother She
offered us a way out—the way chosen by God Himself for our time. That being the
case, one cannot understand the state of the Church and the world today without
understanding what happened at Fatima.
One must also understand the strange and systematic effort by certain Catholic
churchmen to obstruct fulfillment of the heavenly imperatives of the Fatima
Message including: the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary;
the miraculous conversion of Russia to Catholicism; and the consequent triumph
of the Immaculate Heart in a period of world peace. The central importance of
Fatima in the scheme of current world events is only demonstrated by the
recent, almost frantic, efforts of certain Vatican officials to
"deconstruct" and "demythologize" Fatima in order to avoid
giving offense to various elements outside the Church—especially the Russian
Orthodox, whose implacable opposition to Rome is as intense as ever after forty
years of useless "ecumenical dialogue" with Vatican representatives.
The pages that follow present evidence against the most prominent churchmen
involved in this campaign against Fatima, laying at their feet a large portion
of the blame for the ecclesial crisis and the world crisis we must all face.
To those who say that our undertaking to expose their campaign against Fatima
is scandalous, we can only reply with the words of the Virgin Herself: "If
My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if
not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and
persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will
have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated." Russia has not
converted. Russia’s errors, including the holocaust of "legalized"
abortion, have spread throughout the world. There is no peace. And today even
non-Catholics and unbelievers live in fear of the annihilation of nations. To
echo the words of Pope St. Gregory the Great, it is better that scandal arise
than that the truth be hidden—especially when, as in this case, the truth could
avert global disaster.
We submit this work to the judgment of the Pope and to the judgment of you, the
reader. We submit this work publicly because numerous private entreaties,
spread over more than five years, to high Church authorities have all been
unavailing. Meanwhile, the men who surround an increasingly frail Pope render
him effectively incapable of responding to petitions from rank-and-file clergy
and laity. At this very moment a papal deathwatch is underway, with would-be
successors to the papal throne maneuvering for positions of advantage at the
next conclave. As the decades-long episcopal cover-up of sexual scandals among
the priesthood demonstrates, in present circumstances the public forum is the only
forum open to Catholics who seek redress of just grievances affecting the whole
Church.
Our motivation in presenting this book is that of loyal sons and daughters of
the Church, who know and love the Faith and believe in conscience that the
current course still being followed by certain Church leaders is gravely
mistaken, as recent events in the Catholic Church should make clear to any
objective observer. If we have erred in any of our facts, reasoning or
conclusions, or committed any injustice, it would be the duty of the reader to
offer us, not invective or empty denunciations, but legitimate correction based
upon facts—for our own sake and the sake of the Church. But if the case
we present is well-founded, then the reader has a different duty: the duty to act
upon the evidence we present—now, while there is still time.
Father Paul Kramer and the
Editorial Team of The Missionary Association
December 8, 2002
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Footnote:
1. Among the
principal sources of this book are: "Are There Two Original Manuscripts on
the Third Secret?", Andrew M. Cesanek (The Fatima Crusader, Issue
64, Spring 2000); "Cardinal Ratzinger’s Third Secret", Father Gregory
Hesse (The Fatima Crusader, Issue 66, Winter 2001); "Chronology of
a Cover-up", Father Paul Kramer (published on www.fatima.org);
"Freemasonry and the Subversion of the Church (the Alta Vendita)",
John Vennari (Transcript of speech from Fatima Conference in Rome, October
2001); "It Doesn’t Add Up", John Vennari (The Fatima Crusader,
Issue 70, Spring 2002); "Let us Hear the Witness, for Heaven’s Sake,"
Christopher Ferrara (The Fatima Crusader, Issue 70, Spring 2002);
"Lucy and the Pirates", Mark Fellows (The Fatima Crusader,
Issue 70, Spring 2002); "The Lying Press Conference of June 26,
2000", Father Paul Kramer (Transcript of speech from Fatima Conference in
Rome, October 2001); "Our Lady of Fatima vs. the Desire to Destroy our
Catholic Heritage", John Vennari (Transcript of speech, Fatima Rally
Against Terrorism, New York, November 2001); "The ‘Party Line’ and its
Relationship to Fatima", Father Paul Kramer (Transcript of speech from
Fatima Conference in Rome, October 2001); "Pope John Paul II Gives Us the
Key to the Real Third Secret," Father Nicholas Gruner (Three part series, The
Fatima Crusader, Issues 67-69); "The Stalinization of the Catholic
Church" (Transcript of speech from Fatima Conference in Rome, October
2001); "The Third Secret," Father Nicholas Gruner (Transcript of
speech from Fatima Conference in Rome, October 2001).
|
SELECTED
CHAPTERS
Chapter 1
The Message and the Miracle
God
does not waste miracles. Throughout salvation history—from Joshua, to Moses, to
the Twelve Apostles, to the saints of the Catholic Church down through the
centuries—God has granted miracles for one overriding purpose: to serve as a
divine credential for a witness who invokes the miracle in His name. When God
chooses a witness, and then associates an authentic miracle with the testimony
of that witness, we can know for certain that the witness is worthy of belief.
God does not grant miracles to vouch for unreliable witnesses; God does not choose
unreliable witnesses.
No,
God does not waste miracles. Much less does God waste a public miracle
witnessed by 70,000 people, believers and unbelievers alike, which occurred at
precisely the moment predicted three months earlier by three witnesses whose
testimony had been doubted: Lucia dos Santos (known to the world as Lucy) and
her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto.1
It
is October 13, 1917. In a humble field known as the Cova da Iria in Fatima some
70,000 people have assembled to await the happening of a miracle. This in
itself is astounding. For never before in salvation history has a visionary predicted
months in advance that a public miracle would occur at a precise time and
place. Never before has a vast crowd assembled to witness a predicted public
miracle. Yet that is exactly what was happening on this day.
Why
this day? Because Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta had
been receiving apparitions from "the Lady" on the thirteenth of each
month since the previous May. The Lady had been appearing to them above a
holm-oak tree in the Cova, and with each apparition the crowds had grown. But doubts
about the veracity of the seers had also grown, as well as mockery and
persecution of the seers and their families at a time when Portugal was under
the control of an atheistic and Masonic political regime.
And
then, on July 13, 1917, the Lady had shown them something which would terrify
them and change them forever, making them into saints who would spend their
lives (in the case of Francisco and Jacinta, very brief lives) praying and
making sacrifices for sinners. As Lucy recounts in testimony the Catholic
Church has deemed worthy of belief, the Lady showed them hell:
She opened Her hands
once more, as She had done during the two previous months. The rays of light
seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in
this fire were demons and souls [of the damned] in human form, like transparent
burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the
conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within
themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side
like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and
groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.
(It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they
heard me). The demons could be distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by
their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black
and transparent like burning coals.2 This vision lasted but an instant.
How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, Who had already
prepared us by promising, in the first apparition, to take us to Heaven.
Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.3
Having
shown the children the fate of the damned, which is considered the first part
of the Great Secret of Fatima, the Lady then confided to the children the
second part. Everyone, including those members of the Vatican apparatus who are
the focus of this presentation, agrees that the second part of the Secret, as
recorded in Sister Lucy’s diaries, is as follows:
You have seen hell
where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in
the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many
souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if
people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the reign
of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this
is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its
crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and of the
Holy Father.
To prevent this, I
shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and
the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If My requests are heeded,
Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her
errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The
good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various
nations will be annihilated. In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The
Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a
period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal the dogma of the
Faith will always be preserved etc. Do not tell this to anybody. Francisco,
yes, you may tell him.4
The
basic elements of this astonishing Message are these:
- Many souls go to hell because of the sins they commit.
- To save them, God wishes to establish throughout the world
the uniquely Catholic devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
- This is to be accomplished by consecrating the nation of
Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (in conjunction with the Communions
of Reparation on the first Saturdays of each month), whereupon Russia will
be converted to the Catholic faith.
- If this is done, many souls will be saved and there will
be peace.
- If it is not done, Russia will spread its errors
throughout the world. There will be wars, famine, persecutions of the
Church, and martyrdom of the good. The Holy Father will have much to
suffer. And if Our Lady’s requests are still not obeyed, then various
nations will be annihilated.
- Nevertheless, "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will
triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, which will be
converted, and a period of peace will be given to mankind."
To
these things, the Lady added an urgent request that Catholics include in their
recitation of the Rosary at the end of each decade, the following prayer:
"O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell. Lead all
souls to Heaven, especially those most in need." In obedience to the
Lady’s request, and as a testament to the authenticity of Her apparitions at
Fatima, the Church included this prayer in the Rosary, and Catholics recite it
to this day.
The
Church has also adopted the First Saturday devotion of the Communion of
Reparation, which the Lady explained thusly: "I promise to help at the hour
of death, with all the graces needed for salvation, whoever on the First
Saturday of five consecutive months shall: confess and receive Holy Communion,
recite five decades of the Holy Rosary, and keep Me company for fifteen minutes
while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of
making reparation to Me."
We
pause here to note in passing (for further discussion later) the curious phrase
at the end of the first two parts of the Secret: "In Portugal the dogma of
the Faith will always be preserved etc." The incomplete phrase, ending
with "etc.", appears in Sister Lucy’s fourth memoir of the
apparitions. It clearly introduces a heavenly prediction, containing further
words of Our Lady not recorded, about the state of adherence to Catholic dogma
in the Church at large, distinguished from Portugal in particular, where the
dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.
Standing
alone, the observation about adherence to Catholic dogma in Portugal appears
gratuitous and quite senseless, for the phrase does not at all follow logically
from the first two parts of the Secret. Every recognized Fatima scholar
concluded from this that the phrase represents the beginning of a third part of
the Secret—what came to be known simply as the Third Secret of Fatima. As we
shall see, Lucy was so terrified by its contents that even after she was
ordered to write it down in October of 1943, she was unable to do so until the
subsequent apparition on January 2, 1944 in which Our Lady assured her that it
ought to be done. And yet, to this day, the Vatican has never revealed the
words of the Virgin which clearly follow "In Portugal the dogma of the
Faith will always be preserved etc." The "etc." remains a
secret. This ongoing concealment is a key element of the crime that is the
subject of this book.
Having
received from Heaven itself a message with obviously profound importance for
the Church and all humanity, Lucy knew that she and her cousins needed a divine
credential if they were to be believed. During the apparition on July 13,
Sister Lucy asked the Lady "to tell us who You are, and to work a miracle,
so that everybody will believe that You are appearing to us." And the Lady
replied: "Continue to come here every month. In October I will tell you
who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and
believe."5 The Lady repeated this promise in further
apparitions to Lucy and the other seers on August 19 and again, at the Cova, on
September 13.
And
so the people had assembled in a great crowd at the Cova on October 13. And at
precisely the hour predicted in July—12 noon solar time, and 1:30 p.m. by the
clock in Portugal—it begins. Lucy suddenly tells the people in the crowd to
shut their umbrellas in the midst of a drenching rain which has turned the Cova
to mud. She then goes into an ecstasy, and the Lady, appearing again, first
tells Lucy who She is and what She wants, just as She had promised: "I
want a chapel to be built here in My honor. I am the Lady of the Rosary."
The Lady is the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, who will henceforth also be
known under the title Our Lady of Fatima, one of many bestowed upon the Blessed
Virgin by the Church. The chapel, of course, was built, and then rebuilt after
being blown up on March 6, 1922 by a bomb placed there by the friends of the
Tinsmith, a nickname for the Masonic mayor of Ourem.6
And
then the Miracle began. We recount here the testimony of a reporter who cannot
possibly be accused of partiality in this matter and for a good reason! We
refer to Avelino de Almeida, the chief editor of O Seculo, the large
"liberal" anticlerical and Masonic daily newspaper of Lisbon. He
writes:
From the road, where
the carriages were crowded together and where hundreds of persons had stayed
for want of sufficient courage to advance across the muddy ground, we saw the
huge crowd turn towards the sun which appeared at its zenith, clear of the
clouds. It resembled a disc of silver, and it was possible to stare at it
without the least discomfort. It did not burn the eyes. It did not blind. We
would say that it produced an eclipse. Then a tremendous cry rang out, and the
crowd nearest us were heard to shout: "Miracle! Miracle! ... Marvel! ...
Marvel!" Before the dazzled eyes of the people, whose attitude transported
us to biblical times, and who, dumbfounded, heads uncovered, contemplated the
blue of the sky, the sun trembled, it made strange and abrupt movements,
outside of all cosmic laws, "the sun danced", according to the typical
expression of the peasants ...7
Attacked
violently by all the anticlerical press, Avelino de Almeida renewed his
testimony, fifteen days later, in his review, Ilustração Portuguesa.
This time he illustrated his account with a dozen photographs of the huge
ecstatic crowd, and repeated as a refrain throughout his article: "I saw
... I saw ... I saw." And he concluded fortuitously: "Miracle, as the
people shouted? Natural phenomenon, as the experts say? For the moment, that
does not concern me, I am only saying what I saw... The rest is a matter for
Science and the Church."8
Saturday,
October 13 begins for the pilgrims as a walk of penance because it had rained
the whole preceding night. Now, this "almost sudden change of weather,
with the dusty roads transformed into muddy quagmires by a pelting rain,
causing to replace abruptly, for a day, the sweetness of autumn with the biting
rigors of winter, did not succeed in moving them, to make them give up or
despair."9
In
comparing the numerous accounts of witnesses, we can distinguish the diverse
aspects and the result of the astounding phenomena seen by all. For each one of
the phenomena, it would be possible to line up some ten pages of witnesses
which would constitute in themselves an impressive book.
Here
is the first marvelous fact described by Dr. Almeida Garrett:
It must have been
1:30 p.m. when there arose at the exact spot where the children were, a column
of smoke, thin, fine and bluish, which extended up to perhaps two meters above
their heads, and evaporated at that height. This phenomenon, perfectly visible
to the naked eye, lasted for a few seconds. Not having noted how long it had
lasted, I cannot say whether it was more or less than a minute. The smoke
dissipated abruptly, and after some time, it came back to occur a second time,
then a third time ...10
Whereas
"the low and heavy sky had a very dark color, laden with moisture, [which]
released an abundant and long lasting rain," during the time of the
apparition, the rain stopped totally. Abruptly the sky cleared: "The sun
triumphantly pierced the thick bed of clouds hiding it until then, and shone
intensely." (Dr. Almeida Garrett) This abrupt change of weather took all
the eyewitnesses by surprise: "It was a day of heavy and continuous rain.
But a few minutes before the miracle, it stopped raining." (Alfredo da
Silva Santos)
And
this testimony from a physician, a man of science, concerning the inexplicable
silvering of the sun, allowing it to be viewed directly without harm to the
eyes:
"Suddenly I
heard the uproar of thousands of voices, and I saw the whole multitude spread
out in that vast space at my feet ... turn their backs to that spot where,
until then, all their expectations focused, and look at the sun on the other
side ... I turned around, too, toward the point commanding their gazes, and I
could see the sun, like a very clear disc, with its sharp edge, which gleamed
without hurting the sight ... It could not be confused with the sun seen
through a fog (there was no fog at that moment), for it was neither veiled, nor
dim. At Fatima, it kept its light and heat, and stood out clearly in the sky,
with a sharp edge, like a large gaming table. The most astonishing thing was to
be able to stare at the solar disc for a long time, brilliant with light and
heat, without hurting the eyes, or damaging the retina." (Dr. Almeida
Garrett)11
In
the same vein this testimony by the editor-in-chief of O Seculo:
"And then we
witnessed a unique spectacle, an incredible spectacle, unbelievable if you did
not witness it. From above the road ... We see the immense crowd turn towards
the sun, which appeared at its zenith, clear of the clouds. It looked like a
plate of dull silver, and it was possible to stare at it without the least
discomfort. It did not burn the eyes. It did not blind. One might say that an
eclipse had occurred." (Article of October 15, 1917)
And
likewise: "The people could look at the sun as we look at the moon."
(Maria do Carmo)12
One
could multiply endlessly the testimonies about the ensuing solar phenomena,
witnessed even by the secular editor-in-chief of an anticlerical newspaper.
Consider these:
"It shook and
trembled; it seemed like a wheel of fire." (Maria da Capelinha)13
"The sun turned
like a fire wheel, taking on all the colors of the rainbow." (Maria do
Carmo)14
"It appeared
like a globe of snow turning on itself." (Father Lourenço)15
"The pearl-like disc
had a giddy motion. This was not the twinkling of a star in all its brilliance.
It turned on itself with impetuous speed." (Dr. Almeida Garrett)16
"At a certain
moment, the sun stopped and then began again to dance, to spin; it stopped
again, and began again to dance." (Ti Marto)17
"The sun took on
all the colors of the rainbow. Everything assumed those same colors: our faces,
our clothes, the earth itself." (Maria do Carmo)18
"A light, whose
colors changed from one moment to the next, was reflected on the people and on
things." (Dr. Pereira Gens)19
What
happened next constitutes the most terrifying aspect of the Miracle, and one
with profound implications for our era, in which man has perfected the ability
to destroy the whole world with fire from the sky: the sun appeared to detach
itself from the sky and plunge toward the earth.
"We suddenly
heard a clamor, like a cry of anguish of that entire crowd. The sun, in fact,
keeping its rapid movement of rotation, seemed to free itself from the
firmament and blood-red, to plunge towards the earth, threatening to crush us
with its fiery mass. Those were some terrifying seconds." (Dr. Almeida
Garrett)20
"I saw the sun
turn and it seemed to descend. It was like a bicycle wheel." (John
Carreira)21
"The sun began
to dance and, at a certain moment, it appeared to detach itself from the
firmament and to rush forward on us, like a fire wheel." (Alfredo da Silva
Santos)22
"I saw it
perfectly descending as if it came to crash on the earth. It seemed to detach
itself from the sky and rush toward us. It maintained itself at a short
distance above our heads; but that sort of attack was of very short duration...
It seemed very near the people and it continued to turn in the opposite
direction." (Maria do Carmo)23
"Suddenly, the
sun appeared with its circumference well-defined. It came down as if to the
height of the clouds and began to whirl giddily upon itself like a captive ball
of fire. With some interruptions, this lasted about eight minutes."
(Father Pereira da Silva)24
"It suddenly
seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth." (Father Lourenço)25
"Seeing the sun
falling on us ..." (Father John Gomes)26
"Finally, the sun
stopped and everybody breathed a sigh of relief ..." (Maria da Capelinha)27
"From those
thousands of mouths I heard shouts of joy and love to the Most Holy Virgin. And
then I believed. I had the certainty of not having been the victim of a suggestion.
I had seen the sun as I would never see it again." (Mario Godinho, an
engineer)28
Another
astonishing fact: all those people, who were for the most part soaked to the
bone, verified with joy and amazement that they were dry. The fact is attested
to in the canonical process for Jacinta and Francisco, who were ultimately
beatified on May 13, 2000.
"The moment one
would least expect it, our clothes were totally dry." (Maria do Carmo)29
"My suit dried
in an instant." (John Carreira)30
The
academician Marques da Cruz testified as follows:
This enormous
multitude was drenched, for it had rained unceasingly since dawn. But—though
this may appear incredible—after the great miracle everyone felt comfortable,
and found his garments quite dry, a subject of general wonder ... The truth of
this fact has been guaranteed with the greatest sincerity by dozens and dozens
of persons of absolute trustworthiness, whom I have known intimately from
childhood, and who are still alive (1937), as well as by persons from various
districts of the country who were present.31
And
finally, there were also moral miracles of the conversions of many people. In
his book, Meet the Witnesses, John Haffert writes:
The captain of the
regiment of soldiers on the mountain that day—with orders to prevent the
gathering of the crowd—was converted instantly. Apparently so were hundreds of
other unbelievers, as their testimony will show.32
"There was an
unbeliever there who had spent the morning mocking the ‘simpletons’ who had
gone off to Fatima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed paralyzed, his
eyes fixed on the sun. He began to tremble from head to foot, and lifting up
his arms, fell on his knees in the mud, crying out to God." (Father
Lourenço)33
"I live eighteen
miles from Fatima. And in May of 1917 we were told about the extraordinary
apparitions, but the news came to us mixed up with the fantasy of the people.
Naturally I did not believe. I sincerely supposed it was only (the) imagination
of someone. ... At my mother’s request, I went once more to Cova da Iria in
August at the time of the apparitions. Once more I came back discouraged and
disappointed. But that time, something extraordinary happened. My mother, who
had had a large tumor in one of her eyes for many years, was cured. The doctors
who had attended her said they could not explain such a cure. Still I did not
believe in the apparitions. Finally, and again at my mother’s request, I went
to the Cova da Iria once more on the thirteenth of October. ... In spite of
what had happened to my mother, I was disappointed and did not believe in the
apparitions. So I sat inside my car. Then all at once I noticed that everybody
looked at the sky. Natural curiosity attracted my attention, and I got out of
the car and looked at the sky, too. ... From those hundreds of mouths I heard
words of belief and of love to the Blessed Virgin. And then I believed."
(Mario Godinho, an engineer)34
A
number of other cases of cures and conversions are documented in, among other
places, the following books: Documentação Crítica de Fátima and Fatima
from the Beginning.35
To
those who would say the miracle was a product of "mass hysteria" at
the scene, God Himself arranged a ready rebuttal: the phenomenon could be
admired from beyond Fatima. Perfectly credible witnesses, who were very far
from the Cova da Iria, related having seen the unprecedented spectacle of the
dance of the sun, exactly like the 70,000 pilgrims gathered around the holm-oak
where the Virgin had appeared.36
In
the small village of Alburitel, situated about ten miles from Fatima, the whole
town was able to enjoy the vision of the solar prodigy. The testimony frequently
quoted is that of Father Inacio Lourenço, because it is the most detailed. But
what he relates having seen, all the villagers, questioned by the
investigators, confirmed seeing it exactly the same way.
The
witnesses of the event were indeed innumerable, their testimonies agree and we
are flooded with the documents they have left us.37
In
the first place, numerous accounts appeared at once in the Portuguese press. It
is noteworthy that the first to provide testimony were the anticlerical
reporters. The three articles of Avelino de Almeida—the one of October 13,
immediately before the event; the other of October 15, edited at Vila Nova de
Ourem on the evening of the 13th; and a third article of October 29—merit a
special mention. In spite of the jeering tone and Voltarian irony which inspire
in part the first article, in spite of the expected anticlerical tones which
still appear in the article of the 15th, these texts from a talented reporter,
one who besides, is honest and conscientious, are historical documents of prime
importance.38 But he was not the only one to relate the facts, for
other reporters were present at the Cova da Iria.
Next
there were the official investigations. In November 1917, at the request of
Bishop de Lima Vidal, who was then directing the diocese of Lisbon, the parish
priest of Fatima led his investigation and questioned several witnesses of the
parish. Unfortunately, he transcribed only four depositions!
The
investigations of the historians fortunately compensated for the negligence of
the official investigators. The report of Father Formigao, who obtained from
Dr. José Maria de Almeida Garrett, professor at the Faculty of Sciences of
Coimbra, a very thorough account, is the most scientific report in our
possession.39 In addition, we have the reports of Father da Fonseca
(whose work was done in order to verify the points disputed by Father Dhanis,40
who refused to examine the evidence), Father de Marchi, Canon Barthas, Father
Dias Coelho and Father Richard.
In
1977, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the last apparition, it was
still possible to assemble in Fatima more than thirty persons who had been
present at the solar prodigy and who could reveal their memories. Thanks to
those numerous testimonies, it is possible to reconstruct a precise running
commentary, allowing us to relive, hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute, this
decisive day, assuredly one of the most important in the history of the world.
Indeed, the evidence of the solar miracle on October 13, 1917 was so
overwhelming that in 1952 even Hollywood vouched for its authenticity by
releasing a classic film (starring Gilbert Roland) entitled "The Miracle
of Our Lady of Fatima", which is still being sold on videotape today.
Why
was this day so important? Because it was the day on which a heavenly Message
from the Mother of God was authenticated beyond any reasonable doubt; a message
which, more than 84 years later, stands at the heart of the perilous situation
of the Church and the world at this very moment in human history, offering us a
way out.
|
The first chapel of Our Lady of
Fatima built on the exact spot where Our Lady appeared. It was dynamited by
anti-Catholic forces in Portugal on March 6, 1922. The photograph above shows
the hole in the roof from the explosion. Providentially, the original statue
of Our Lady of Fatima, pictured on page xxiv, was not in the chapel at the
time. |
Footnotes
1. This chapter is largely taken verbatim from
Frère François de Marie des Anges, Fatima: Intimate Joy World Event,
Book One, The Astonishing Truth, (English edition, Immaculate Heart Publications,
Buffalo, New York, 1993) Chapter III, pp. 163-198.
2. English translation of text in Sister Lucy,
"Fourth Memoir", Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, (Postulation
Centre, Fatima, Portugal, 1976) p. 162. See also Frère Michel de la Sainte
Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume I: Science and the Facts,
(Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, New York, U.S.A., 1989) pp. 181-182.
3. English translation of text in Sister Lucy,
"Third Memoir", Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, p. 104. See also The
Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume I, p. 182.
4. English translation of text in Sister Lucy,
"Fourth Memoir", Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, (Postulation
Centre, Fatima, Portugal, 1976) p. 162. See also Sister Lucy, Memorias e
Cartas da Irma Lucia, (Porto, Portugal, 1973, edited by Father Antonio
Maria Martins) pp. 340-341; in Sister Lucy’s own handwriting there is no
ellipsis after the "etc.". See also Frère Michel de la Sainte
Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume I: Science and the Facts,
p. 182.
5. Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole
Truth About Fatima — Volume I, pp. 180-181.
6. Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole
Truth About Fatima — Volume II: The Secret and the Church, (English
edition, Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, New York, U.S.A., 1989) pp.
357-358.
7. O Seculo of October 15, 1917.
8. Article of October 29, 1917. See also Frère
François de Marie des Anges, Fatima: The Astonishing Truth, p. 164.
9. Ilustração Portuguesa, October 29, 1917.
10. Frère François de Marie des Anges, Fatima:
The Astonishing Truth, pp. 171-172.
11. Ibid., pp. 172-173.
12. Ibid., p. 173.
13. Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole
Truth About Fatima — Volume I, p. 337.
14. Frère François de Marie des Anges, Fatima:
The Astonishing Truth, p. 178.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., pp. 178-179.
23. Ibid., p. 179.
24. Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole
Truth About Fatima — Volume I, p. 337.
25. Ibid., p. 339.
26. Ibid., p. 340.
27. Ibid.
28. Frère François de Marie des Anges, Fatima:
The Astonishing Truth, p. 179.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole
Truth About Fatima — Volume I, p. 340. See also Father John de Marchi,
I.M.C., Fatima From the Beginning, (Missoes Consolata, Fatima, Portugal,
1981, third edition, first published in 1950) p. 141; and Joseph A. Pelletier,
A.A., The Sun Danced at Fatima, (Doubleday, New York, 1983) pp. 129-130.
32. John M. Haffert, Meet the Witnesses,
(AMI International Press, Fatima, Portugal, 1961) p. 62. This book was
published with an Imprimatur from the Bishop of Leiria, Portugal and provides
us with credible direct testimonies of numerous witnesses to the Miracle of the
Sun.
33. Ibid., p. 65.
34. Ibid., pp. 86-89.
35. Documentaçáo Crítica de Fátima, Volume
II, (Santuário de Fátima, 1999) 17 cases documented on pp. 277-372; and Father
John de Marchi, I.M.C., Fatima From the Beginning.
36. Father John de Marchi, I.M.C., Fatima
From the Beginning, p. 136. See also Documentaçáo Crítica de Fátima,
Volume I, (Santuário de Fátima, 1992) p. 408. See also Frère Michel de la
Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume I, pp. 330-331.
37. Among the many reference works, see: Frère
Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume I:
Science and the Facts; John M. Haffert, Meet the Witnesses; Father
John de Marchi, I.M.C., Fatima From the Beginning, pp. 135-142.
38. We find the photographic reproduction of those
three articles in Fatima 50 of October 13, 1967, pp. 6-10; 14-15.
39. Novos Documentos de Fatima, Loyola
editions, Sao Paulo, 1984, pp. 60-63.
40. The modernist Jesuit priest, Father Dhanis, who
would later attempt to "debunk" the vision of hell and the prophetic
elements of the Message, including the consecration and ultimate conversion of
Russia. Father Dhanis refused the invitation of Sister Lucy herself to come to
Fatima and study the Fatima archives. Father Dhanis will eventually be cited by
key members of the Vatican apparatus in their attempt to revise the Message of
Fatima according to a "commentary" published on June 26, 2000.
Chapter 5
A Motive Emerges
As
we charged in the Introduction, the crime against the Church and the world
which we intend to prove in this book involves "a systematic attempt,
since the year 1960, to conceal, misrepresent and deny the authenticity of this
message — the Message of Fatima—even as its alarming prophecies are being
fulfilled before our very eyes."
But
why would men in the highest positions of authority in the Church commit such a
crime? As Aristotle observed, in order to understand an action one must look to
the motive. That is what we shall do in this chapter.
To
be sure, proving motive is always a difficult business; for one cannot read
another man’s mind, much less judge the state of his soul. In arriving at a
conclusion as to motive you, like any jury in a merely civil case, can only
base your decision on the external actions of the accused, in light of the
surrounding circumstances. When a jury finds that a man has murdered his wife
for the motive of obtaining insurance money, for example, it makes its finding
of motive based on a reasonable inference drawn from the surrounding
circumstances. Rarely would the killer in such a case openly admit "I
killed her for the insurance." Instead, motive would be inferred from such
things as the husband’s recent purchase of a very large insurance policy on the
wife.
Now,
no one would accuse a jury of "rash judgment" in inferring from the
circumstances that the husband in our hypothetical case harbored the intention
of killing his wife for money. In the case of Fatima, too, motive can be
deduced from circumstances; it is not "rash judgment" to reach a
reasonable conclusion about motive based on what the accused themselves have
said and done. Moreover, as we will demonstrate in this case we have the equivalent
of an admission as to motive. The accused have been quite explicit about what
they approve and what they intend concerning the crime at issue.
A
New and Ruinous Orientation of the Church
As
we charged in the Introduction, the motive in this case arises from the
recognition by the accused that the Message of Fatima, understood in a
traditional Catholic sense, cannot be reconciled with decisions they have taken
since the Second Vatican Council to change the entire orientation of the
Catholic Church. That is, the Message stands in the way of their effort to do
precisely what the future Pope Pius XII foresaw in his moment of supernatural
clarity: to remake the Church into an institution oriented toward the world.
The currently raging scandal in the Catholic priesthood is only one symptom of
this ruinous effort to "update" the Catholic Church. Another way of
putting it is that the current condition of the Catholic Church is the result
of an unprecedented invasion of the Church by liberalism. We recall once
again those prophetic words of Msgr. Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII),
uttered in the light of the Message of Fatima:
I am worried by the
Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the
dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of
altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. … I hear all
around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the
universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse
for Her historical past.
A day will come when
the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter
doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our
churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits
them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask,
"Where have they taken Him?"
In
the Introduction we also noted that this great change of orientation in the
Church—in "Her liturgy, Her theology, Her soul", as the future Pope
Pius XII put it—was the long-cherished goal of the organized forces that have
been plotting against the Church for centuries; the same forces that were at
work in Portugal in 1917, but were repelled by the Consecration of that nation
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1931. To repel those forces throughout the
world was the very reason Heaven itself sent the Mother of God to Fatima to
prescribe the Consecration of Russia. Those forces were soon to become the
prime weapon of Satan’s long war against the Church. Truly, the outcome of the
war against the Church in our time hinges on the battle over fulfillment of the
Fatima Message.
Our
presentation of the evidence of the motive in this case—namely, a desire to
impose upon the Church a new orientation to the exclusion of the Message of
Fatima—requires some considerable historical background, which we will now
present. This background will be of interest not only to Catholics, but also to
non-Catholics who are seeking to understand what has happened to the Catholic
Church since Vatican II.
The Goal of Organized Freemasonry:
To Neutralize and "Instrumentalize" the Catholic Church
As
we have seen with the example of Portugal in 1917, the forces of Masonry (and their
Communist fellow travelers) conspired to prevent the Message of Fatima from
finding its fulfillment in Portugal. The Message was called a fraud or a
childish delusion; the seers themselves were persecuted and even threatened
with death. Such was the hatred of these forces for the Catholic Church and the
Virgin Mother of God.
And
so it is with these forces in the world at large today. One need not descend
into the fever swamps of conspiracy theory to know that before 1960, the Popes
issued more condemnations and warnings about the plotting of the Freemasons and
the Communists against the Church than on any other single subject in Church
history.
On
this point, one cannot fail to consider the infamous Permanent Instruction
of the Alta Vendita, a Masonic document that mapped out an entire plan for
the infiltration and corruption of the Catholic Church in the 20th
Century.1 While it has become fashionable since the Second Vatican
Council to scoff at the existence of such a conspiracy, it must be noted that
the secret papers of the Alta Vendita (an Italian secret society), including
the Permanent Instruction, fell into the hands of Pope Gregory XVI. The Permanent
Instruction was published at the request of Blessed Pope Pius IX by
Cardinal Cretineau-Joly in his work The Roman Church and Revolution.2
With his brief of approbation of February 25, 1861 (addressed to the author)
Pope Pius IX guaranteed the authenticity of the Permanent Instruction
and the other Masonic papers, but he did not allow anyone to divulge the true
names of the members of the Alta Vendita implicated in the documents. Pope Leo
XIII had likewise requested their publication. Both Popes acted, no doubt, in
order to prevent such a tragedy from taking place. These great Pontiffs knew
that such a calamity was far from impossible. (Pope Pius XII also knew it, as
we can see from his prophetic remarks while he was still Vatican Secretary of
State.)
The
full text of the Permanent Instruction is also contained in Msgr. George
E. Dillon’s book, Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked.3 When
Pope Leo XIII was presented with a copy of Msgr. Dillon’s book, he was so
impressed that he ordered an Italian version to be completed and published at
the Pope’s own expense.4
The
Alta Vendita was the highest lodge of the Carbonari, an Italian secret society
with links to Freemasonry and which, along with Freemasonry, was condemned by
the Catholic Church.5 The estimable Catholic historian Father E.
Cahill, SJ, who is hardly a "conspiracy nut", states in his work Freemasonry
and the Anti-Christian Movement that the Alta Vendita was "commonly
supposed to have been at the time the governing center of European
Freemasonry."6 The Carbonari were most active in Italy and
France.
In
his book Athanasius and the Church of Our Time (1974), Bishop Rudolph
Graber, another objective and quite unimpeachable authority writing after the
Second Vatican Council, quoted a prominent Freemason who declared that
"the goal (of Freemasonry) is no longer the destruction of the Church, but
to make use of it by infiltrating it."7 In other words, since
Freemasonry cannot completely obliterate Christ’s Church, it plans not only to
eradicate the influence of Catholicism in society, but to use the Church’s
structure as an instrument of "renewal," "progress" and
"enlightenment"—that is, a means of furthering many of its own
principles and goals.
Discussing
the Masonic vision of society and the world, Bishop Graber introduces the
concept of synarchy: "What we are faced with here is the sum-total of the
secret forces of all the ‘orders’ and schools which have joined together to set
up an invisible world government. In the political sense, synarchy aims at the
integration of all the financial and social forces which the world government,
under socialist leadership naturally, has to support and promote. Catholicism,
like all religions, would consequently be absorbed into a universal syncretism.
Far from being suppressed, it would be integrated, a course which is already being
steered in the principle of fellowship between clerics (of various
religions)."
The
strategy advanced in the Permanent Instruction to achieve this aim is
astonishing in its audacity and cunning. From the start, the document tells of
a process that will take decades to accomplish. Those who drew up the document
knew that they would not see its fulfillment. They were inaugurating a work
that would be carried on by succeeding generations of the initiated. The Permanent
Instruction says, "In our ranks the soldier dies and the struggle goes
on."
The
Instruction called for the dissemination of liberal ideas and axioms
throughout society and within the institutions of the Catholic Church so that laity,
seminarians, clerics and prelates would, over the years, gradually be imbued
with progressive principles. In time, this new mentality would be so pervasive
that priests would be ordained, bishops consecrated, and Cardinals nominated
whose thinking was in step with the modern thought rooted in the
"Principles of 1789" (i.e. the principles of Freemasonry which
inspired the French Revolution)—namely, pluralism, the equality of all
religions, separation of Church and State, unbridled freedom of speech, and so
forth.
Eventually,
a Pope would be elected from these ranks who would lead the Church on the path
of "enlightenment and renewal". It must be stressed that it was not
their aim to place a Freemason on the Chair of Peter. Their goal was to effect
an environment that would eventually produce a Pope and a hierarchy won over to
the ideas of liberal Catholicism, all the while believing themselves to be
faithful Catholics.
These
liberalized Catholic leaders, then, would no longer oppose the modern ideas of
the revolution (as had been the consistent practice of the Popes from 1789
until 1958, who unanimously condemned these liberal principles), but would
amalgamate or "baptize" them into the Church. The end result would be
a Catholic clergy and laity marching under the banner of the
"enlightenment", all the while thinking they are marching under the
banner of the Apostolic keys.
No
doubt with the Permanent Instruction in mind, in Humanum Genus,
Pope Leo XIII called upon Catholic leaders to "tear off the mask from
Freemasonry and make plain to all what it really is."8 The
publication of these documents of the Alta Vendita was a means of "tearing
off the mask".
Lest
there be any claim that we have mischaracterized the Permanent Instruction,
we now quote from it at considerable length. What follows is not the entire Instruction,
but the section that is most pertinent to our proof. The document reads:
The Pope, whoever he
is, will never come to the secret societies; it is up to the secret societies
to take the first step toward the Church, with the aim of conquering both of
them.
The task that we are
going to undertake is not the work of a day, or of a month, or of a year; it
may last several years, perhaps a century; but in our ranks the soldier dies
and the struggle goes on.
We do not intend to
win the Popes to our cause, to make them neophytes of our principles,
propagators of our ideas. That would be a ridiculous dream; and if events turn
out in some way, if Cardinals or prelates, for example, of their own free will
or by surprise, should enter into a part of our secrets, this is not at all an
incentive for desiring their elevation to the See of Peter. That elevation
would ruin us. Ambition alone would have led them to apostasy, the requirements
of power would force them to sacrifice us. What we must ask for, what we should
look for and wait for, as the Jews wait for the Messiah, is a Pope according to
our needs ...
With that we shall
march more securely towards the assault on the Church than with the pamphlets
of our brethren in France and even the gold of England. Do you want to know the
reason for this? It is that with this, in order to shatter the high rock on
which God has built His Church, we no longer need Hannibalian vinegar, or need
gunpowder, or even need our arms. We have the little finger of the successor of
Peter engaged in the ploy, and this little finger is as good, for this crusade,
as all the Urban II’s and all the Saint Bernards in Christendom.
We have no doubt that
we will arrive at this supreme end of our efforts. But when? But how? The
unknown is not yet revealed. Nevertheless, as nothing should turn us aside from
the plan drawn up, and on the contrary everything should tend to this, as if as
early as tomorrow success were going to crown the work that is barely sketched,
we wish, in this instruction, which will remain secret for the mere initiates,
to give the officials in charge of the supreme Vente some advice that they
should instill in all the brethren, in the form of instruction or of a
memorandum ...
Now then, to assure
ourselves a Pope of the required dimensions, it is a question first of shaping
him ... for this Pope, a generation worthy of the reign we are dreaming of. Leave
old people and those of a mature age aside; go to the youth, and if it is
possible, even to the children ... You will contrive for yourselves, at little
cost, a reputation as good Catholics and pure patriots.
This reputation will
put access to our doctrines into the midst of the young clergy, as well as
deeply into the monasteries. In a few years, by the force of things, this young
clergy will have overrun all the functions; they will form the sovereign’s
council, they will be called to choose a Pontiff who should reign. And this
Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will be necessarily more or less
imbued with the Italian and humanitarian principles that we are going to begin
to put into circulation. It is a small grain of black mustard that we are
entrusting to the ground; but the sunshine of justice will develop it up to the
highest power, and you will see one day what a rich harvest this small seed
will produce.
In the path that we
are laying out for our brethren, there are found great obstacles to conquer,
difficulties of more than one kind to master. They will triumph over them by
experience and by clearsightedness; but the goal is so splendid that it is
important to put all the sails to the wind in order to reach it. You want to revolutionize
Italy, look for the Pope whose portrait we have just drawn. You wish to
establish the reign of the chosen ones on the throne of the prostitute of
Babylon, let the Clergy march under your standard, always believing that they
are marching under the banner of the apostolic keys. You intend to make the
last vestige of tyrants and the oppressors disappear; lay your snares like
Simon Bar-Jona; lay them in the sacristies, the seminaries, and the monasteries
rather than at the bottom of the sea: and if you do not hurry, we promise you a
catch more miraculous than his. The fisher of fish became the fisher of men;
you will bring friends around the apostolic Chair. You will have preached a
revolution in tiara and in cope, marching with the cross and the banner, a
revolution that will need to be only a little bit urged on to set fire to the
four corners of the world.9
The Rise of Liberal Catholicism
As
we have noted, the goal of Freemasonry was not to destroy the Church, which the
Masons knew was impossible, but to neutralize and instrumentalize the
Church—that is, to make the human element of the Church into an instrument for
the advance of Freemasonic goals, by inducing the Church’s members to embrace
liberal ideas. A liberalized hierarchy would readily lend itself to the work of
establishing the Masonic ideal of a new world order (novus ordo seclorum)—a
false pan-religious "brotherhood" in which the Church abandons Her
claim to be the sole ark of salvation and ceases Her opposition to the forces
of the world. The first stage of this process was manifested in the 19th
Century, by which time society had become increasingly permeated with the
liberal principles of the French Revolution. Even in the mid-1800s this program
was already causing great detriment to the Catholic Faith and the Catholic
State. The supposedly "kinder and gentler" notions of pluralism,
religious indifferentism, a democracy which believes all authority comes from
the people, false notions of liberty, interfaith gatherings, separation of
Church and State and other novelties were gripping the minds of
post-enlightenment Europe, infecting statesmen and churchmen alike.
The Condemnation of Liberal Catholicism
The
Popes of the 19th and early 20th Centuries waged war against these dangerous
trends in full battle-dress. With a presence of mind rooted in the
uncompromised certitude of Faith, these Popes were not taken in. They knew that
evil principles, no matter how honorable they may appear, cannot bear good
fruit, and that these were evil principles at their worst, since they were
rooted not only in heresy, but apostasy. Like commanding generals who recognize
the duty to hold their ground at all cost, these Popes aimed powerful cannons
at the errors of the modern world and fired incessantly. The encyclicals were
their cannonballs and they never missed their target.
The
most devastating blast came in the form of Blessed Pope Pius IX’s monumental Syllabus
of Errors, which he appended to his encyclical Quanta Cura (1864).
When the smoke cleared, all involved in the battle were in no doubt as to who
was on what side. The line of demarcation had been drawn clearly. In the Syllabus,
Blessed Pius IX condemned the principal errors of the modern world, not because
they were modern, but because these new ideas were rooted in pantheistic
naturalism and, therefore, were incompatible with Catholic doctrine, as well as
being destructive to society.
The
teachings in the Syllabus were counter-liberalism, and the principles of
liberalism were counter-syllabus. This was clearly recognized by all parties.
Father Denis Fahey referred to this showdown as "Pius IX vs. the
Pantheistic Deification of Man."10 Speaking for the other side,
the French Freemason Ferdinand Buissont declared likewise, "A school
cannot remain neutral between the Syllabus and the Declaration of the
Rights of Man."11
Yet
the 19th Century saw a new breed of Catholic who sought a utopian compromise
between the two. These men looked for what they believed to be "good"
in the principles of 1789 and tried to introduce them into the Church. Many
clergymen, infected by the spirit of the age, were caught up in a net that had
been "cast into the sacristies and into the seminaries" by
Freemasonry. These men came to be known as liberal Catholics. Blessed Pope Pius
IX regarded them with absolute horror. He said these "liberal
Catholics" were the "worst enemies of the Church". In a letter
to the French deputation headed by the Bishop of Nevers on June 18, 1871,
Blessed Pius IX declared:
That which I fear is
not the Commune of Paris—no—that which I fear is Liberal Catholicism ... I have
said so more than forty times, and I repeat it to you now, through the love
that I bear you. The real scourge of France is Liberal Catholicism, which
endeavors to unite two principles as repugnant to each other as fire and water.12
The Rise of Modernism
Yet
in spite of this, the numbers of liberal Catholics steadily increased. The
crisis reached a peak around the turn of the century when the liberalism of
1789 that had been "blowin’ in the wind" swirled into the tornado of
modernism. Father Vincent Miceli identified this heresy as such by describing
modernism’s "trinity of parents". He wrote: "Its religious
ancestor is the Protestant Reformation … its philosophical parent is the
Enlightenment … its political pedigree comes from the French Revolution."13
What
is meant by "modernism"? Modernism is nothing more or less than a
synthesis or combination of all the errors of Liberal Catholicism into a
comprehensive philosophical and theological system whose effect is to undermine
the integrity of the entire Catholic faith. While a complete examination of the
vast modernist system of thought is far beyond the scope of this book, it
suffices for our purposes to say that, by various subtle errors, the modernist
denies or undermines the divinity and divine revelation of Christ, the founding
of the one true Church by Him, and the absolute immutability of Catholic
doctrine (which the modernist claims can "evolve" according to
changing circumstances). The modernist also embraces and promotes the liberal
notions of "free speech," "freedom of conscience," and the
error of religious indifferentism, which holds that all religions are more or
less good and praiseworthy because they all arise from a so-called
"religious sense" in man—an error which, of course, implicitly denies
the reality of Original Sin by suggesting that all men can be truly religious
and can find salvation in the various religions they invent without need of
Baptism, Faith and the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
Saint Pius X Puts Down the Modernist Revolt
Pope
St. Pius X, who ascended to the Papal throne in 1903, recognized modernism as a
most deadly plague that must be arrested. St. Pius X waged war on modernism by
systematically isolating, defining and condemning its many erroneous
propositions. In particular, St. Pius X issued a monumental encyclical against
modernism (Pascendi) and a Syllabus of modernist errors (Lamentabili).
In his encyclical Pascendi this great Pope wrote: "There is no part
of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to
corrupt." In the same encyclical he called modernism "the synthesis
of all heresies," declaring that the most important obligation of the Pope
is to insure the purity and integrity of Catholic doctrine, and that if he did
nothing, then he would have failed in his essential duty.14
But
Pope St. Pius X did not stop there. A few years after Pascendi,
recognizing that the Modernists had to be crushed before they rose up and
caused havoc in the Church, this sainted Pope issued his letter Sacrorum
antistitum, which mandated the Anti-Modernist Oath to be sworn by all priests
and teachers. He oversaw the purging of modernists from the seminaries and
universities and excommunicated the stubborn and unrepentant. St. Pius X knew
that nothing less than the very nature of the Church was under attack by the
modernists, who in their audacity were now acting openly for the overthrow of
Catholic Dogma and Tradition:
[T]he gravity of the
evil is daily growing and must be checked at any cost. We are no longer
dealing, as at the beginning, with opponents ‘in sheep’s clothing’, but with
open and bare-faced enemies in our very household, who, having made a pact with
the chief foes of the Church [i.e. Freemasons, Liberals, Protestants, Jews,
Muslims, etc.], are bent on overthrowing the Faith … They want to renovate it
as if it were consumed by old age, increase it and adapt it to worldly
tastes, progress and comforts, as if it were opposed not just
to the frivolity of a few, but to the good of society. … There will never be
enough vigilance and firmness on the part of those entrusted with the faithful
safekeeping of the sacred deposit of evangelical doctrine and ecclesiastical
tradition, in order to oppose these onslaughts against it.15
St.
Pius X effectively halted the spread of modernism in his day. It is reported,
however, that when he was congratulated for eradicating this grave error, Pope
St. Pius X immediately responded that despite all his efforts, he had not
succeeded in killing this beast, but had only driven it underground. He warned
that if Church leaders were not vigilant, it would return in the future more
virulent than ever.16 As we are about to see, St. Pius X’s
prediction has come true—with a vengeance.
Modernism Begins to Rise Again
A
little-known drama that unfolded during the reign of Pope Pius XI demonstrates
that the underground current of Modernist thought was alive and well in the
immediate post-St. Pius X period.
Father
Raymond Dulac relates that at the secret consistory of May 23, 1923, Pope Pius
XI questioned the thirty Cardinals of the Curia on the timeliness of summoning
an ecumenical council. In attendance were illustrious prelates such as Merry
del Val, De Lai, Gasparri, Boggiani and Billot. The Cardinals advised against
it. Cardinal Billot warned, "The existence of profound differences in the
midst of the episcopacy itself cannot be concealed ... [They] run the risk of
giving place to discussions that will be prolonged indefinitely."
Boggiani
recalled the modernist theories from which, he said, a part of the clergy and
of the bishops are not exempt. "This mentality can incline certain Fathers
to present motions, to introduce methods incompatible with Catholic
traditions."
Billot
was even more precise. He expressed his fear of seeing the council
"maneuvered" by "the worst enemies of the Church, the
Modernists, who are already getting ready, as certain indications show, to
bring forth the revolution in the Church, a new 1789."17
Masonic Predictions of a Modernist
Breakthrough at an Ecumenical Council
In
discouraging the idea of a Council for such reasons, these Cardinals showed
themselves more apt at recognizing the "signs of the times" than all
the post-Vatican II theologians combined. Yet their caution may have been
rooted in something deeper. They may also have been haunted by the writings of
the infamous illuminé, the excommunicated Canon Roca (1830-1893) who preached
revolution and Church "reform", and who predicted in amazingly
precise detail the subversion of the Church that would be brought about by a
Council.
In
Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, Bishop Graber quotes Roca’s
prediction of a "newly illuminated church" which would be influenced
by the "socialism of Jesus".18 In the mid-19th Century,
Roca predicted that "The new church, which might not be able to retain
anything of Scholastic doctrine and the original form of the former Church,
will nevertheless receive consecration and canonical jurisdiction from
Rome." Roca also, amazingly enough, predicted the liturgical
"reform" after Vatican II: "[T]he divine cult in the form
directed by the liturgy, ceremonial, ritual and regulations of the Roman Church
will shortly undergo a transformation at an ecumenical council, which
will restore to it the venerable simplicity of the golden age of the Apostles
in accordance with the dictates of conscience and modern civilization."
Roca
foretold that through this council will come "a perfect accord between the
ideals of modern civilization and the ideal of Christ and His Gospel. This will
be the consecration of the New Social Order and the solemn baptism of modern
civilization." In other words, this council would usher in the triumph of
the Masonic plan for subversion of the Church. Roca also spoke of the future of
the Papacy. He wrote "There is a sacrifice in the offing which represents
a solemn act of expiation ... The Papacy will fall; it will die under the
hallowed knife which the fathers of the last council will forge. The
papal caesar is a host [victim] crowned for the sacrifice." Roca
enthusiastically predicted nothing short of a "new religion, new dogma,
new ritual, new priesthood." He called the new priests
"progressists" and speaks of the "suppression" of the
soutane [cassock] and the "marriage of priests."19
Pointing
to the writings of the French heresiarch, Abbé Melinge (who used the pseudonym
Dr. Alta), Bishop Graber warned of a revolutionary program of "the
replacement of the Roman faith by a ‘pluri-confessional’ pontificate, able to
adapt to a polyvalent ecumenism, such as we are seeing established today in the
intercelebration of priests and Protestant pastors." (Melinge was
referring to certain renegade priests; today, however, the Pope himself
conducts joint services, including Vespers, with Protestant
"bishops.")20
Chilling
echos of Roca, Melinge and the Alta Vendita are to be found in the words
of the Rosicrucian, Dr. Rudolph Steiner who declared in 1910 "We need a
council and a Pope to proclaim it."21
The Masonic Alliance with Communism
It
must be noted that in their striving toward these goals the Masons were the kin
of the Communists, who were plotting alongside them for the overthrow of both
Church and State. As Pope Leo XIII observed in Humanum Genus (1884), his
monumental encyclical on the threat posed by the Masonic societies: "Yea,
this change and overthrow is deliberately planned and put forward by many
associations of communists and socialists; and to their undertakings the sect
of Freemasons is not hostile, but greatly favors their designs, and holds in common
with them their chief opinions."
As
we have since learned from numerous independent witnesses, Communist
infiltration of the Church22 began as early as the 1930s. Lenin
himself (the very founder of Russian Communism) declared in the 1920’s that he
would infiltrate the Catholic Church, particularly the Vatican. The historical
evidence on this score was recently summarized in the venerable periodical Christian
Order:
Ex-Communist and
celebrated convert Douglas Hyde revealed long ago that in the 1930s the
Communist leadership issued a worldwide directive about infiltrating the
Catholic Church. While in the early 1950s, Mrs. Bella Dodd was also providing
detailed explanations of the Communist subversion of the Church. Speaking as a
former high ranking official of the American Communist Party, Mrs. Dodd said:
"In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to
destroy the Church from within." The idea was for these men to be
ordained and progress to positions of influence and authority as Monsignors and
Bishops. A dozen years before Vatican II she stated that: "Right now
they are in the highest places in the Church"—where they were working
to bring about change in order to weaken the Church’s effectiveness against
Communism. She also said that these changes would be so drastic that "you
will not recognize the Catholic Church."23
As
Christian Order points out, the existence of a Communist conspiracy to
infiltrate the Church has been confirmed abundantly not only by former Communists
Dodd and Hyde, but also by Soviet defectors:
Ex-KGB officer
Anatoliy Golitsyn, who defected in 1961 and in 1984 forecast with 94% accuracy
all the astonishing developments in the Communist Bloc since that time,
confirmed several years ago that this "penetration of the Catholic and
other churches is part of the Party’s ‘general line’ [i.e. unchanged policy] in
the struggle against religion." In fact, hundreds of files smuggled into
the West by former KGB archivist Vassili Mitrokhin and published in 1999 tell a
similar tale, about the KGB cultivating the closest possible relationships with
‘progressive’ Catholics and financing their activities. One of the leftist
organs identified was the small Italian Catholic press agency Adista,
which for decades has promoted every imaginable post-conciliar cause or
"reform" and whose Director was named in The Mitrokhin Archive
as a paid KGB agent.
Mrs.
Dodd, who converted to the Faith shortly before her death, was legal counsel to
the Communist Party of the United States. She gave voluminous testimony on
Communist infiltration of Church and state before the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee in the 1950s. As if to atone for her role in subverting
the Church, Dodd delivered a series of lectures at Fordham University and
elsewhere during the years leading up to Vatican II. Christian Order
recounts the testimony of a monk who attended one of those lectures in the
early 1950s:
I listened to that
woman for four hours and she had my hair standing on end. Everything she said
has been fulfilled to the letter. You would think she was the world’s greatest
prophet, but she was no prophet. She was merely exposing the step-by-step
battle plan of Communist subversion of the Catholic Church. She explained that
of all the world’s religions, the Catholic Church was the only one feared by
the Communists, for it was its only effective opponent. The whole idea was
to destroy, not the institution of the Church, but rather the Faith of the
people, and even use the institution of the Church, if possible, to destroy the
Faith through the promotion of a pseudo-religion: something that resembled
Catholicism but was not the real thing. Once the Faith was destroyed, she
explained that there would be a guilt complex introduced into the Church.
… to label the ‘Church of the past’ as being oppressive, authoritarian, full of
prejudices, arrogant in claiming to be the sole possessor of truth, and
responsible for the divisions of religious bodies throughout the centuries.
This would be necessary in order to shame Church leaders into an ‘openness
to the world,’ and to a more flexible attitude toward all religions and
philosophies. The Communists would then exploit this openness in order to
undermine the Church.24
Now,
if the enemies of the Church were to succeed in their plans, which we have just
outlined, we would see these things happening in the Church:
- First,
there would be, as Roca predicted, an upheaval at an ecumenical council
of such magnitude that the entire world would realize that the Catholic
Church had undergone a revolution in line with modern ideas. It would be
clear to all that an "updating" of the Church had taken place.
- Second,
a new "theology" would be introduced that would tend to
contradict previous teachings.
- Third,
the Freemasons and Communists themselves would voice their cockle-doodle
of triumph, believing that the Catholic Church had finally "seen the
light" on such points as pluralism, the secular state, equality of
religions, and whatever other compromises had been achieved.
- Fourth,
as the result of this subversion, the new orientation of the Church would
come to take precedence over the very dogmas and traditions of the Church
in Her teaching and practice—including the Message of Fatima, which would
have to be "revised" or buried to accommodate the new
orientation.
It
now remains for us to demonstrate the extent to which this design for
subversion of the Church has come to pass, and how it has given rise to the
motive for the grave crime committed: the attempt to nullify the authentic
Message of Fatima. By this crime the accused have left the Church and the world
exposed to the gravest possible dangers, including the annihilation of various
nations and the loss of millions of souls. Truly, this is a crime not only
against the Church but against humanity.
Footnotes
1. For a booklet on the connection between the Alta
Vendita and the new orientation of the Church since the Council, see John
Vennari, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita (TAN Books and
Publishers, 1999).
2. 2nd volume, original edition, 1859, reprinted by
Circle of the French Renaissance, Paris 1976; Msgr. Delassus produced these
documents again in his work The Anti-Christian Conspiracy, DDB, 1910,
Tome III, pp. 1035-1092.
3. Msgr. Dillon, Grand Orient Freemasonry
Unmasked, pp. 51-56, full text of Alta Vendita — Christian Book
Club, Palmdale, California.
4. Michael Davies, Pope John’s Council,
(Angelus Press, Kansas City, Missouri, 1992) p. 166.
5. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, (New
York Encyclopedia Press, 1913) pp. 330-331.
6. Rev. E. Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian
Movement, (Dublin: Gill, 1959) p. 101.
7. Bishop Graber, Athanasius and the Church of
Our Time, (Christian Book Club, Palmdale, California, 1974) p. 39.
8. Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, (TAN Books
and Publishers, Rockford, Illinois) para. 31.
9. Msgr. Dillon, Grand Orient Freemasonry
Unmasked, pp. 51-56, full text of Alta Vendita (Christian Book Club,
Palmdale, California).
10. Father Denis Fahey, Mystical Body of Christ
in the Modern World, (Regina Publications, Dublin, Ireland, 1939) Chapter
VII.
11. Ibid., p. 116.
12. Quoted from The Catholic Doctrine, Father
Michael Muller, (Benzinger, 1888) p. 282.
13. Father Vincent Miceli, The Antichrist,
(Roman Catholic Books, Harrison, New York, 1981) p. 133.
14. Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On
the Doctrine of the Modernists), September 8, 1907.
15. Pascendi.
16. Father Vincent Miceli, The Antichrist,
cassette lecture, Keep the Faith, Inc. Ramsey, NJ.
17. Raymond Dulac, Episcopal Collegiality at the
Second Council of the Vatican, (Paris: Cedre, 1979) pp. 9-10.
18. Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, p.
34.
19. A full account of all of Roca’s quotes printed
here is found in Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, pp. 31-40.
20. "Joint Catholic-Lutheran Vespers at
Vatican," CWNews.com, November 13, 1999: "Archbishops G.H. Hammar and
Jukka Paarma—the Lutheran primates of Sweden and Finland, respectively—and
Bishops Anders Arborelius of Stockholm and Czeslaw Kozon of Copenhagen joined
with the Holy Father for the Vespers service. Several other Lutheran bishops
from the Scandinavian countries were present for the ceremony, including two
female bishops."
21. Athanasius and the Church of Our Time,
p. 36.
22. See "The Secret Red Plan to Take Over the
Catholic Church", published in Red China in 1959. Published in English in The
Fatima Crusader, Issue 19, February-April, 1986, p. 6. See also "The
Prophecy of Bella Dodd", a Fatima Perspective web column by Chris Ferrara
(www.fatima.org/perspective235.htm); this
prophecy is also found on pages 47-48 of this book. See also Father Paul
Kramer, "The ‘Party Line’ in Relation to Fatima", The Fatima
Crusader, Issue 69, Winter 2002, pp. 10ff.
23. "The Greatest Conspiracy", Christian
Order, November 2000.
24. Another ex-Communist, Mr. Manning Johnson gave
similar testimony. In 1953, to the House Un-American Activities Committee,
Manning said: "Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations
was set by the Kremlin ... The Communists discovered that the destruction of
religion could proceed much faster through the infiltration of the Church by
Communists operating within the Church itself." He then stated, "This
policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even our Communist
expectations." Speaking of the infiltration of religious institutions in
general, Manning Johnson further explained, "... the major plot to take
over religious organizations was really hatched during that particular period
(1935), and the fact that the Communists in headlines in the Daily Worker,
can boast of 2,300 Protestant Ministers supporting them is the result of this
part that began in the thirties when I was a member of the Communist
party." Testimony of Manning Johnson, Investigation of Communist
Activities in the New York City Area — Part 7, Hearing Before the Committee on
Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-Third Congress, First
Session, July 8, 1953, (Published by the Government Printing Office,
Washington, 1953) p. 2214. A collection of quotations from ex-Communists and
the infiltration of the Church is found in John Vennari’s "Heaven’s
Request for Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus", Part III, Catholic
Family News, August 2001.
Chapter 8
The Message of Fatima
versus the Party Line
What
has been the overall effect of the sudden, unprecedented and quite dramatic changes
in the Church which began with Vatican II? As Catholic writers have observed,
what Catholics have witnessed over the past 40 years represents a kind of
"Stalinization of the Roman Catholic Church" that bears an eerie
resemblance to what was called at the time "the Adaptation" of
Russian Orthodoxy to the demands of the Stalinist regime.
The
subversion of the Orthodox Church by Stalin is certainly among the developments
in Russia foreseen by the Virgin of Fatima. This is precisely why She came to
call for the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart: so that Russia
would embrace the one true religion and the one true Church, not the schismatic
Orthodox Church which was founded in human rebellion against Rome when it left
the Mystical Body of Christ over 500 years ago, and thus was constitutionally
incapable of avoiding its total Adaptation to Stalinism.
The
Orthodox Adaptation began officially when the Metropolitan Sergius of the
Russian Orthodox Church published an "Appeal" in Isvestia on
August 19, 1927. The Appeal of Sergius, as it came to be known, set forth a new
basis for the activity of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian layman Boris
Talantov described this as "an Adaptation to the atheistic reality of the
U.S.S.R." In other words, the church had to find a way of living, so the
argument goes, with the "atheistic reality" of Stalinist Russia. So
Sergius proposed what came to be known in shorthand as the Adaptation.
The
Adaptation consisted first and foremost of a false separation between the
so-called spiritual needs of man, the purely religious needs of man, and his
socio-political needs. In other words, a separation of Church and State. The
church was to satisfy the purely religious needs of the citizens of the Soviet
Union but without touching on the socio-political structure which had been
erected by the Communist Party.
The
Adaptation required a new administration of the church in Russia according to
guidelines which were set forth after the appeal of Sergius was published.
Basically this came down to an agreement not to criticize the official ideology
of the Soviet Union under Stalin. And this would be reflected in all of the
activities of the church. Any opposition by the Russian Orthodox Church to the
Soviet regime would henceforth be considered a deviation from pure religious
activity and a form of counter-revolution which was no longer to be permitted
or countenanced.
In
effect the Orthodox Church, through its silence, became an arm of the Soviet
state. In fact, Sergius would go on to defend this betrayal and even call for
the condemnation and the sentencing to concentration camps of his own fellow
Orthodox for so-called counter-revolutionary activities. Talantov, who
condemned the whole Adaptation, described it this way: "In actual fact all
religious activity was reduced to external rites. The church preaching of those
clergymen who held strictly to the Adaptation was totally remote from life and
therefore had no influence whatever on hearers. As a result of this, the
intellectual, social and family life of believers, and the raising of the
younger generation, remained outside church influence. One cannot worship
Christ and at the same time in social and family life tell lies, do what is
unjust, use violence, and dream of an earthly paradise."1
This,
then, is what the Adaptation involved: The church would be silent about the
evils of the Stalinist regime. It would become a purely "spiritual"
community "in the abstract", would no longer voice opposition to the
regime, would no longer condemn the errors and lies of Communism, and would
thus become the Church of Silence, as Christianity behind the Iron Curtain was
often called.
The
Appeal of Sergius caused a split in the Russian Orthodox Church. The real
believers who rejected the Adaptation, who denounced the Appeal and who
remained attached to the Metropolitan Joseph rather than Sergius, were arrested
and sent to concentration camps. Boris Talantov himself would eventually die in
prison, as a political prisoner of the Stalinist regime. Meanwhile, the Church
of Silence, in effect, was transformed into an organ of the KGB. Stalin
decimated the Russian Orthodox Church; all of the real Orthodox believers were
sent off to concentration camps or executed and replaced by KGB operatives.
Shortly
before Talantov died in August of 1967, he wrote as follows about the
Adaptation:
The Adaptation to
atheism implanted by Metropolitan Sergius has concluded (been completed by) the
betrayal of the Orthodox Russian Church on the part of Metropolitan Nikodim and
other official representatives of the Moscow Patriarch based abroad. This
betrayal irrefutably proved by the documents cited must be made known to all
believers in Russia and abroad because such an activity of the Patriarchate,
relying on cooperation with the KGB, represents a great danger for all
believers. In truth, the atheistic leaders of the Russian people and the
princes of the Church have gathered together against the Lord and His Church.2
Here
Talantov refers to the same Metropolitan Nikodim who induced the Vatican to
enter into the Vatican-Moscow Agreement, under which (as we showed in Chapter
6) the Catholic Church was forced to remain silent about Communism at Vatican II.
Thus, the same Orthodox prelate who betrayed the Orthodox Church was
instrumental in an agreement by which the Catholic Church was also betrayed.
At Vatican II certain Catholic churchmen, cooperating with Nikodim, agreed that
the Catholic Church, too, would become a Church of Silence.
And
since the Council, the Catholic Church has almost everywhere unquestionably
fallen silent not only as to the errors of Communism—which the Church has
almost completely ceased condemning, even in Red China, which viciously
persecutes the Church—but also as to the errors of the world at large. We
recall that in his opening address to the Council, Pope John freely admitted
that the Council (and most of the Church after him) would no longer condemn
errors but would open Herself to the world in a "positive"
presentation of Her teaching to "men of good will." What followed, as
Pope Paul VI himself admitted, was not the hoped-for conversion of "men of
good will" but what Paul VI himself called "a veritable invasion of the
Church by worldly thinking." In other words, to the extent that this is
possible in the Catholic Church (which can never completely fail in Her
mission), there has been a kind of Sergian Adaptation of Roman Catholicism.
Now,
in keeping with this Adaptation of the Catholic Church, by the year 2000 the
Message of Fatima had been firmly subjugated to the demands of the new
orientation. It had already been determined by certain members of the Vatican
apparatus that Russia was not to be mentioned in any consecration ceremony the
Pope might undertake in response to the Virgin’s requests. In the November 2000
issue of Inside the Vatican, a leading Cardinal, identified only as
"one of the Pope’s closest advisors," is quoted to the effect that
"Rome fears the Russian Orthodox might regard it as an ‘offense’ if Rome
were to make specific mention of Russia in such a prayer, as if Russia
especially is in need of help when the whole world, including the
post-Christian West, faces profound problems ..." The same Cardinal-advisor
added: "Let us beware of becoming too literal-minded."
In
other words, "Rome"—meaning a few members of the Vatican apparatus
who advise the Pope—has decided not to honor the specific request of Our Lady
of Fatima for fear of giving offense to the Russian Orthodox. "Rome"
does not wish to give the impression that Russia should be converted to the
Catholic Faith through its consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for
this would be quite contrary to the new "ecumenical dialogue" launched
by Vatican II. The consecration and conversion of Russia called for by the
Mother of God would also be contrary to the Vatican’s diplomatic agreement (in
the 1993 Balamand Declaration) that the return of the Orthodox to Rome is
"outdated ecclesiology"—a claim that, as we have shown, flatly
contradicts the infallibly defined Catholic dogma that heretics and schismatics
cannot be saved outside the Catholic Church. In keeping with this blatant
departure from Catholic teaching, the Vatican’s own apostolic administrator for
Russia, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, stated publicly in January of 1998
that "The Second Vatican Council has declared that the Orthodox Church is
our Sister Church and has the same means for salvation. So there is no reason
to have a policy of proselytism."3
Given
this de facto abandonment of the Church’s constant teaching that
heretics, schismatics, Jews and pagans must be added to the Catholic flock if
they are to be saved, a consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart to bring
about the conversion of Russia would, of course, be out of the question—at
least so far as those who promote the new orientation of the Church are
concerned.
Thus,
on May 13, 1982 and again on March 25, 1984, the Pope had consecrated the world
to the Immaculate Heart, but with no mention of Russia. In neither case had the
bishops of the world participated. Thus, neither of the two requirements
attested to by Sister Lucy throughout her life had been met. Clearly
recognizing this, the Pope himself had made telltale remarks during and after
the 1984 ceremony. During the ceremony, before 250,000 people in Saint Peter’s
Square, he spontaneously added to the prepared text the following:
"Enlighten especially the peoples of which You Yourself are awaiting
our consecration and confiding."4 Hours after the ceremony, as
reported in the Italian Catholic bishops’ newspaper Avvenire, the Holy
Father prayed inside St. Peter’s, before 10,000 witnesses, asking Our Lady to
bless "those peoples for whom You Yourself are awaiting our act of
consecration and entrusting."5 Russia has not been consecrated
to the Immaculate Heart, and the Pope knows it. Evidently persuaded by his
advisers, the Pope had told Bishop Cordes, head of the Pontifical Council of
the Laity, that he had omitted any mention of Russia because "it would be
interpreted as a provocation by the Soviet leaders."6
The Emergence of the "Party Line"
on Fatima
But
the faithful would not simply abandon the Consecration of Russia, for it was
obvious that during the period 1984-2000 Russia had failed to experience the
religious conversion the Virgin had promised as the fruit of a proper
consecration to the Immaculate Heart. Quite the contrary, despite certain
political changes, Russia’s spiritual, moral and material condition had only
deteriorated since the "consecration" of 1984.
Consider
these proofs, which provide only a sketch of the gravity of Russia’s situation
as of the year 2000 (and it has only become worse since then, as we shall see):
- Some 16 years after the Consecration, Russia has the
highest abortion rate in the world. Fr. Daniel Maurer, CJD, who spent the
last eight years in Russia, says that statistically, the average Russian
woman will have eight abortions in her childbearing years—though Fr.
Maurer believes the actual number is about 12 abortions per woman. He has
spoken to women who have had as many as 25 abortions. A major reason for
these dreadful figures is that other contraception methods (which are
immoral anyway) have not been introduced in Russia, nor are they trusted.
This leaves abortion as the "cheapest way to limit the family
size". Presently in Russia, abortions are free, but births are not.7
- The Russian birth rate is plummeting and Russia’s
population is dropping at the rate of 700,000 people each year—an
unprecedented event in a civilized nation during "peacetime."8
- Russia has the highest alcohol consumption in the world.9
- Satanism, occultism and witchcraft are on the rise in
Russia, as even the Russian Orthodox patriarch, Alexy II, publicly admits.10
- Homosexuality is rampant in Moscow and throughout the
country. In fact, in April 1993, nine years after the 1984
"consecration", Boris Yeltsin had allowed homosexuality to be
de-criminalized. Homosexuality is now "legal" in Russia.11
- Russia is a leading world center for the distribution of
child pornography. The Associated Press reported on a Moscow-based
child pornography ring linked to another child pornography ring in Texas.
To quote AP: "Russian law does not distinguish between child
pornography and pornography involving adults, and treats the production
and distribution of either as a minor crime, said Dmitry Chepchugov, head
of the Russian Interior Ministry's department for high technology crimes.
Russian police often complain about the legal chaos that has turned Russia
into an international center of child pornography production. 'Unfortunately,
Russia has turned into a world trash bin of child pornography,'
Chepchugov told reporters in Moscow."12
- Russians now avidly watch "reality-based" TV. On
the most vile "reality-based" shows, cameras film the intimate
personal lives of Russian "couples," including their sexual
activity. Despite grumbles of disapproval from old hard-line Communists,
Russian viewers "cannot get enough" of this pornography. The
program "boasts an audience share of more than 50% and thousands of
Russians have endured sub-zero temperatures and queued for more than an
hour to catch a glimpse of it through a window of the flat. Millions have
logged on to the website, which has crashed frequently under the weight of
traffic."13
- As for the standing of the Catholic Church, in 1997 Russia
enacted a new law on "freedom of conscience" which gave
privileged status to Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism as
Russia’s "traditional religions," while requiring Catholic
parishes to obtain approval from local bureaucrats for their very
existence. As a result:
- The miniscule Catholic priesthood in Russia, some 200
priests, consists almost entirely of foreign-born clerics many of whom are
given only three-month entry visas, while businessmen receive six-month
visas.14
- There are a mere ten Russian-born priests in the whole
country—five in Siberia and five in Kazakhstan. Ninety-five percent of the
priests and nuns in Russia are foreign born. In Archbishop Bukovsky’s
frank opinion the Catholic Church "is small ... and will always be
small."15
- Catholics comprise less than one-half of one percent of
the Russian population, and Russian Muslims outnumber Catholics by more
than 10-to-1. According to a report by Radio Free Europe, in Russia
Catholicism is seen as "a kind of unexplainable eccentricity — why
should a Russian be Catholic?"16
- According to the Vatican, there are 500,000 Catholics in Russia,
and most of these are in Siberia, where Stalin sent their grandparents.17
Given
this kind of evidence, the question whether the Consecration of Russia had been
done in the manner requested by Our Lady of Fatima was simply not going to go
away. Therefore, from the perspective of the executors of the Church’s new
orientation—the Church’s Adaptation to the world—something had to be done about
Fatima. And, in particular, something had to be done about a Canadian priest by
the name of Father Nicholas Gruner, whose Fatima apostolate had become a
sounding board for millions of Catholics who were convinced that the
Consecration of Russia had been derailed by the plans of certain men in the
Vatican. Quite simply, Fatima and "the Fatima priest" had to be
buried once and for all.
The process began as early as 1988, when, Frère François recounts: "[A]n
order came from the Vatican addressed to the authorities of Fatima, to Sister
Lucy, to diverse ecclesiastics, including Father Messias Coelho, and a French
priest [evidently Father Pierre Caillon] very much devoted to Our Lady,
ordering everyone to cease pestering the Holy Father with the Consecration of
Russia." Fatima devotee Father Caillon confirmed the issuance of this
order: "An order came from Rome, obliging everyone to say and think: ‘The
Consecration is done. The Pope having done all that he can, Heaven has deigned
to agree to this gesture.’"18 It was around this time,
1988-1989, that many Fatima Apostolates who had maintained that the consecration
of Russia had not been done suddenly reversed themselves and declared that the
1984 consecration fulfilled the desires of Heaven. Sadly, even Father Caillon
soon afterwards changed his testimony and began to say that the 1984
Consecration had fulfilled the Virgin’s requests.
It was also at this time that typewritten and computer-generated letters,
purportedly from Sister Lucy, began to circulate. Typical of the manifestly incredible
letters was the one dated November 8, 1989, to a Mr. Noelker, which contains
the statement by "Sister Lucy" that Pope Paul VI consecrated the
world to the Immaculate Heart during his brief visit to Fatima in 1967—a
consecration that never happened, as Sister Lucy certainly knew because she
witnessed the entire visit.19
Thus emerged the Party Line on the Message of Fatima. What, precisely,
do we mean by "the Party Line"? Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once said:
"The lie is sacred and deception will be our principal weapon." Thus
it was no surprise that Pravda, when it was the official organ of the
Soviet Communist Party, was filled with lies, even though the Russian word Pravda
means "truth." A newspaper whose name is "truth" was always
filled with lies, because, as Lenin said, "the lie is sacred and deception
will be our principal weapon".
Now,
a liar will not convince anyone of his lies if he wears a big placard on his
chest that says "Liar!" Not even a fool would believe such a man. For
the liar to convince people that his lies are truth, the truth must be
redefined. This is what is meant by Lenin’s phrase "the lie is sacred
…" The lie becomes the "truth" and is slavishly adhered to in
place of the truth. As Scripture says, pronouncing the curse in the book of
Isaias, "Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for
light, and light for darkness". (Is. 5:20) The darkness of
falsehood is given the appearance of the light of truth, and this is one of the
principal errors of Russia.
But this trick of turning a lie into the "truth" did not originate
with Russia, or with the Communists; it originated with the devil, who is the
Father of Lies. St. Paul speaks of the devil under the guise of the angel of
light. To be more specific, he refers to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:
"But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides
that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema." (Gal. 1:8) It is
the devil, appearing under the guise of an angel of light, who gives the
appearance of truth in order to deceive by means of the lie. This is where the
error "the lie is sacred" and "falsehood is truth"
originated.
Father Paul Kramer relates a conversation he had with General Daniel Graham, a
general in the US Army. "General Graham said that he had once been in
Russia with a Soviet official and the Soviet official asked him, ‘Don’t you
want peace?’ And the General answered: ‘No! Because I know how you define
peace. I do not want that kind of peace.’ As they were conversing, they drove
by a huge billboard that showed soldiers with their rifles. On the billboard
was the caption: ‘Pobieda kommunista eta mir’. Which is, in English, ‘Communist
Victory is Peace.’"
According to Marxist teaching, the Communist State wages war to make revolution
and uses every possible means of deception—total war—in order to subjugate the
entire world to Communism. And once total war has been waged and Communism is
victorious over the entire planet, then there is the Communist version of
"peace". But what is peace in reality? It is best defined by
St. Augustine: "Peace is the tranquillity of order." Which definition
is correct? It is not a matter of subjective evaluation. St. Thomas Aquinas
explains: "ens et verum convertunter", which is a
scholastic way of saying that truth is convertible with reality. That which is
objectively real is, for that very reason, objectively true. In
other words, truth is that which is, whereas a lie is that which is
not. That which is not cannot be true. Therefore, if someone
declares, for example, that white is black, the claim that white is black is a
lie—no matter how high the authority of the one making the claim.
According to Marxist doctrine, however, truth is that which promotes the
Communist revolution. And what is it that promotes the Communist
revolution? It is whatever has been decided to be the Party Line. What the
Party dictates to be true becomes the "truth" even if, in reality, it
is a lie. Thus, if the Party Line is that black is white, then that is what
all Party members must believe, simply because it has been decided by the Party
that black is white.
Just
as there has been a kind of "Stalinization" of the Church, in the
sense of an Adaptation of the Church to the world, so also must there be a kind
of Stalinist Party Line on Fatima—a version of Fatima dictated from on high to
which all the members of the Church of the post-conciliar Adaptation must
adhere. In essence, the Party Line on Fatima comes down to this: The
"Consecration of Russia" is over and done with, and everyone must
cease asking for it. We have "peace" as predicted by Our Lady of
Fatima. Russia is undergoing the "conversion" Our Lady promised.
Therefore—so the Party Line goes—nothing in the Message of Fatima remains to be
accomplished, and Fatima now belongs to the past.
As
we shall see, all of the terms in quotation marks—"consecration of
Russia", "peace" and "conversion"—have been redefined
to accommodate the Party Line on Fatima. Where Fatima is concerned, we are now
being asked to believe the equivalent of "black is white," for that
is the Party Line.
The Dictatorship of the Vatican Secretary of
State
Now
every Party Line requires a dictator, a head of the Party, to impose it. From
where, exactly, within the Vatican apparatus did the Party Line on Fatima
originate? The evidence is overwhelming that it originated with the Vatican
Secretary of State. On this point some brief background is in order.
First
of all, in the proper state of things—what St. Augustine called "the
tranquillity of order" or peace—the Church is not a dictatorship.
Dictatorship is a barbaric institution. As Euripides says "among the
barbarians all are slaves but one." Our Lord said "the princes of the
Gentiles lord it over" their subjects. (Mt. 20:25) He said to His apostles
"with you it is not to be this way." Yet the tranquillity of
order—the peace of the Church—has been disturbed enormously in the
post-conciliar period. What we see in the Church today is that the hierarchs of
the Roman Curia (not the Pope, but a few of his Vatican ministers) lord
it over their subjects with an oriental despotism. To be more precise, they
lord it over certain subjects, who buck the Party Line, while the Church
at large suffers from a near-collapse of faith and discipline which these same
potentates ignore.
How
did this come to pass? Since the restructuring of the Roman Curia, around 1967,
by order of Pope Paul VI—which was actually designed and carried out by
Cardinal Jean Villot—the heads of the various Roman dicasteries have been able
to behave like dictators. Before the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Curia
was structured as a monarchy. The Pope was the Prefect of the Holy Office,
while the Cardinal in charge of the day-to-day business of the Holy Office was
the second-in-command. The other dicasteries were of lower rank. And while
having their own authority and jurisdiction, again in accordance with that
principle of subsidiarity,20 they were subordinate to the Holy
Office, and the Holy Office was directly under the Pope. This arrangement was
entirely in keeping with the Divine Constitution of the Church. The Pope, the
Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, was at the head of the chain of command.
But
after Vatican II, Cardinal Villot engineered the restructuring of the Roman
Curia. Long before Gorbachev announced his program of perestroika in the
Soviet Union, the Church underwent its own perestroika in the Roman
Curia. The Holy Office was renamed—but far more significant, the Holy Office
lost its supreme position in the Curia. The Curia was restructured in such a
manner that the Cardinal Secretary of State was placed over all the other
dicasteries, including the former Holy Office. Renamed and restructured, it was
now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and the Pope
was no longer the Prefect. But it (the CDF) is now under a Cardinal Prefect
(today it is Cardinal Ratzinger) and he is under the authority of the Secretary
of State.
According
to the previous arrangement under the Pope and his Holy Office, faith and
morals were the preeminent factors determining curial policies. In the
post-conciliar arrangement, however, under the Cardinal Secretary of State and
his dicastery, the Secretariat of State, it is the Party Line—the
politics of the Secretary of State—that is the supreme determining factor in
the formulation of Church policies. Even the former Holy Office, now the CDF,
is subordinate to the Secretary of State. As a result of this restructuring,
the Holy Father, the Supreme Pontiff, is reduced to a figurehead who gives his
approval, as a rubber stamp, to rulings presented to him as a fait accompli
by the Secretary of State. This bears repeating: The Pope has been reduced to
a figurehead in the service of the dictatorship of the Secretary of State.21
In
the Masonic registry required by Italian law, one did find the name of Jean
Villot—the same Villot who oversaw the curial reorganization. After Cardinal
Villot died, in his private library was found a handwritten message from the
Grand Master of Villot’s Masonic Lodge, praising Villot for upholding Masonic
traditions.22 As a French priest living in Rome said: "At least
in one area he was traditional."
The Use of False "Obedience" to
Impose the Party Line
In
1917, the very year Our Lady appeared at Fatima, Saint Maximilian Kolbe was in
Rome, where he saw the Masons showing their open hostility to the Catholic
Church and carrying placards announcing their intention to infiltrate the
Vatican so that satan would rule from the Vatican and the Pope would be his
slave.23 They also boasted at the same time that they would destroy
the Church. The intention of the Masons to destroy the Church fits in perfectly
with the well-known Masonic dictum, "We will destroy the Church by
means of holy obedience." As we showed in an earlier chapter, Bishop
Graber of Regensburg, Germany, collected other such testimonies of Masonic
luminaries, and the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita itself
boldly declared "let the Clergy march under your standard, always
believing that they are marching under the banner of the apostolic keys."
That is, the demand for "obedience" would be used in dictatorial
fashion to undermine true obedience and the faith itself.
And
the curial reorganization of 1967 would be instrumental in accomplishing that
aim by subjecting the whole Church to the Party Line of the Secretary of
State—including the Party Line on Fatima—under the guise of a false "obedience"
to an authority who has clearly exceeded the bounds established by God Himself.
As we will demonstrate shortly, it was Cardinal Sodano who literally dictated
the "interpretation" of the visional aspect of the Third Secret of
Fatima, which has been published without the Virgin’s own words to explain it.
The Secretary of State Targets the Message
of Fatima
This
brings us to the precise role of the Secretary of State in imposing the Party
Line with respect to Fatima. As we have noted, this process would involve the
Message of Fatima in general and, in particular, perhaps its foremost proponent
in the Church: the Fatima apostolate of Father Nicholas Gruner.
As
early as 1989, the Secretary of State at the time, Cardinal Casaroli (the great
"architect" of Ostpolitik) had communicated to Father Gruner’s
bishop at the time, His Excellency Gerardo Pierro of the Diocese of Avellino,
Italy, what the Bishop had called "worried signals" about Father
Gruner’s Fatima apostolate. Father Gruner had been ordained in Avellino in 1976
for a Franciscan community that did not form as expected. Since 1978 he had
been residing in Canada with the Bishop’s permission, where he had become the
leader of a small Fatima apostolate that had since grown into the largest of
its kind in the world. But after the Party Line concerning the
"consecration" of 1984 had been imposed by the anonymous order of
1988, it was inevitable that Father Gruner’s apostolate and the Secretary of
State would collide—just as the traditional orientation and the new orientation
of the Church have collided after Vatican II.
The
basic technique for trying to get rid of Father Gruner had been to create a
bogus canonical scenario in which, having been ordered to find some other
bishop to incardinate him outside of Avellino, Father Gruner’s incardination
anywhere else would be blocked through unprecedented arm-twisting behind the
scenes, so that Father Gruner would be forced to "return" to Avellino
and abandon his apostolate. Having blocked Father Gruner’s incardination by
three successive benevolent bishops who were friends of Fatima, the Vatican
apparatus (in a complex proceeding beyond the scope of this book24)
had finally lowered the boom: Father Gruner must "return" to Avellino
or be "suspended" for "disobedience." In essence, Father
Gruner was under a threat of "suspension" for having failed to do
what his very accusers had systematically prevented him from doing—namely, find
another bishop to incardinate him.25
As Father Gruner’s various canonical appeals from these unprecedented actions
against him wended their way through Vatican tribunals, his Fatima apostolate
continued to flourish. By the year 2000 the apostolate, particularly through
its journal The Fatima Crusader, had become the strongest and
most persistent voice in the Church for both the Consecration of Russia and
disclosure of the Third Secret.
Furthermore,
the Pope himself had complicated the Fatima picture with his decision to beatify
Jacinta and Francisco in a ceremony at Fatima on May 13, 2000. His intention to
beatify the two children was made known as early as June of 1999, and this
development had clearly triggered an internal struggle within the Vatican
apparatus. This is shown by the curious on-again, off-again nature of the
beatification ceremony, which is most unusual for the Vatican. First, the
Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, announced in October 1999 that the
beatification of Jacinta and Francisco would take place on April 9, 2000 in St.
Peter’s Square, along with four other beatifications. The Patriarch of Lisbon
is quoted in the Portuguese press as having been informed by the Vatican that
it was "quite impossible" for the Pope to come to Fatima for the children’s
beatification and that the question was "closed." The Patriarch told
Portuguese journalists that he was convinced this "impossibility" of
the Pope coming to Fatima was exclusively due to a decision by none other than
the Vatican Secretary of State.
But
the Pope had other ideas. In November of 1999 His Holiness—obviously bypassing
Cardinal Sodano—informed Bishop Serafim, the Bishop of Fatima, directly that he
should announce that the Pope would indeed come to Fatima on May 13 to perform
the beatifications. Bishop Serafim did not make the new announcement until
December 1999. And then, in March of 2000, the Bishop also let it slip that
"the Pope will do something special for Fatima." This prompted
furious speculation in the press that the Pope was, at last, going to reveal
the Third Secret. Bishop Serafim was immediately rebuked in public by the
Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, possibly under orders from somebody in the employ
of the Vatican Secretary of State, who did not wish anyone to know that the
Pope was contemplating revelation of the Secret. But the proverbial cat was out
of the proverbial bag.26
And
so the Pope went to Fatima on May 13, 2000 to beatify Jacinta and Francisco.
The papal appearance was a kind of living demonstration of the conflict between
the two visions of the Church we have been discussing. Evoking the Church of
all time, the Pope delivered a sermon after the beatifications. In this sermon
many things the Church seemed to have forgotten over the past forty years were
suddenly recalled again:
According to the
divine plan, "a woman clothed with the sun" (Apoc. 12:1) came
down from Heaven to this earth to visit the privileged children of the Father.
She speaks to them with a mother’s voice and heart: She asks them to offer
themselves as victims of reparation, saying that She was ready to lead them
safely to God. …
Later Francisco, one
of the three privileged children, exclaimed: "We were burning in that
light which is God and we were not consumed. What is God like? It is impossible
to say. In fact we will never be able to tell people". God: a light
that burns without consuming. Moses had the same experience when he saw God
in the burning bush. …
"Another portent
appeared in Heaven; behold, a great red dragon" (Apoc. 12:3). These words
from the first reading of the Mass make us think of the great struggle between
good and evil, showing how, when man puts God aside, he cannot achieve
happiness, but ends up destroying himself. …
The Message of Fatima
is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the
"dragon" whose "tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven,
and cast them to the earth" (Apoc. 12:4).
Man’s final goal is
Heaven, his true home, where the heavenly Father awaits everyone with His
merciful love. God does not want anyone to be lost; that is why 2,000 years ago
He sent His Son to earth, "to seek and to save the lost" (Lk.
19:10). …
In Her motherly
concern, the Blessed Virgin came here to Fatima to ask men and women "to
stop offending God, Our Lord, who is already too much offended". It is a
mother’s sorrow that compels Her to speak; the destiny of Her children is at
stake. For this reason She asks the little shepherds: "Pray, pray
much and make sacrifices for sinners; many souls go to hell because they
have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them".
The
Pope’s direct linkage of the Message of Fatima with the Book of the Apocalypse,
and his likening of the Fatima seers’ encounter with God to that of Moses
before the Burning Bush, comprised a stunning papal authentication of the
Fatima apparitions as divinely given prophecies for our time. All of a sudden,
Fatima was squarely before the eyes of the whole Church again.
There
was, first of all, the Pope’s astonishing reference to the Message of Fatima as
a Biblical moment, the very fulfillment of chapter 12, verse 1 of the
Apocalypse, which speaks of the "Woman clothed with the sun." Here
Pope John Paul II echoed Pope Paul VI, who, in his apostolic letter Signum
magnum, delivered at Fatima on May 13, 1967, declared:
The great sign which
the Apostle John saw in Heaven, "a woman clothed with the sun," is
interpreted by the sacred Liturgy, not without foundation, as referring to the
most Blessed Mary, the mother of all men by the grace of Christ the Redeemer. …
On the occasion of the religious ceremonies which are taking place at this time
in honor of the Virgin Mother of God in Fatima, Portugal, where She is
venerated by countless numbers of the faithful for Her motherly and
compassionate heart, we wish to call the attention of all sons of the Church
once more to the indissoluble link between the spiritual motherhood of Mary …
and the duties of redeemed men toward Her, the Mother of the Church.
Even
more astonishing, in his sermon Pope John Paul II had explicitly linked the
Message of Fatima to Apocalypse, chapter 12, verse 4, which prophesies that the
"tail of the dragon" will sweep one-third of the stars from Heaven
and cast them down to the earth. As Father Gruner would later note: "In
the language of the Bible, the ‘stars of Heaven’ are those who are set in the
heavens to illumine the way for others to go to Heaven. This passage has been
classically interpreted in Catholic commentaries to mean that one-third of the
clergy—i.e. Cardinals, bishops, priests—fall from their consecrated state and
are actually working for the devil." For example, the Haydock
Commentary to the Douay-Rheims Bible notes that the image of one-third
of the stars of Heaven has been interpreted to refer to "bishops and
eminent persons who fall under the weight of persecution and apostatized … The
devil is always ready, as far as God permits him, to make war against the
Church and the faithful servants of God."
In
this connection Father Gruner, Gerry Matatics—the Catholic Biblical scholar
(and former Presbyterian minister)—and others have cited the commentary on
Apoc. 12:3-4 by Father Herman B. Kramer, in The Book of Destiny. This
work was published with an imprimatur, providentially enough, in 1956,
only six years before the opening of Vatican II. In reference to the symbol of
one-third of the stars of Heaven, Father Herman Kramer notes: "This is
one-third of the clergy" and that "‘one-third’ of the stars shall
follow the dragon"—meaning one-third of the clergy, who are the
"stars", the consecrated souls in the Church.27 That is,
one-third of the Catholic clergy will be in the service of the devil, working
to destroy the Church from within. Father Herman Kramer’s commentary points out
that the red dragon—a sign of the devil which could also symbolize Communism
because red is Communism’s emblematic color—brings the Church into great
distress by undermining it from within.
The
commentary goes on to say that, by means of these apostate clergy, the devil
will probably enforce upon the Church "the acceptance of unchristian
morals, false doctrines, compromise with error, or obedience to the
civil rulers in violation of conscience." In addition, he suggests that
"The symbolic meaning of the dragon’s tail may reveal that the clergy who
are ripe for apostasy will hold the influential positions in the Church, having
won preferment by hypocrisy, deceit and flattery." The clergy who will
follow the dragon — i.e. the devil — would include those "who neglected to
preach the truth or to admonish the sinner by a good example, but rather sought
popularity by being lax and the slaves of human respect," as well as those
"who fear for their own interests and will not remonstrate against evil
practices in the Church" and bishops "who abhor upright priests who
dare to tell the truth".28 Father Herman Kramer also observes
as follows concerning the state of the Catholic Church in the times prophesied
by Apoc. 12:3-4:
"The
apostolic democracy founded by Our Lord may have given way to an absolute
monarchy, in which the episcopate rules with oriental despotism. The priests
may be reduced to a state of servility and fawning sycophancy. The rule by
reason, justice and love may have been supplanted by the absolute will of the
bishop, whose every act and word are to be accepted without question, without
recourse to fact, truth or justice. Conscience may have lost its right to guide
the actions of the priests and may stand ignored or condemned. Diplomacy,
expediency and other trickery may be upheld as the greatest virtues."29
But
none of this is mentioned in those parts of the Message of Fatima which have
thus far been revealed. Had the Pope, then, with his startling reference to
Apocalypse 12:3-4, just given the world a glimpse into the contents of the
Third Secret? Would he now reveal the Secret in its entirety?
But,
alas, the sermon ends. It is not the Pope who will discuss the Third Secret. As
quickly as it began, the Pope’s momentary return to the vision of the Church of
all time is over, and a chief exponent of the new vision rises to his feet. It
is Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State—the same Cardinal
Sodano who had tried, but failed, to prevent the Pope from going to Fatima to
beatify Jacinta and Francisco. For some strange reason it is Sodano, not the
Pope, who will announce that the Pope has decided to reveal the Third Secret of
Fatima:
On the solemn
occasion of his visit to Fatima, His Holiness has directed me to make an
announcement to you. As you know, the purpose of his visit to Fatima has been
to beatify the two "little shepherds". Nevertheless he also wishes
his pilgrimage to be a renewed gesture of gratitude to Our Lady for Her
protection during these years of his papacy. This protection seems also to be
linked to the so-called "third part" of the secret of Fatima.
And
then what had seemed so strange suddenly became quite explicable. Cardinal
Sodano’s task would be to prepare the faithful to accept the notion that the
Message of Fatima, including the Third Secret, was now to be considered a thing
of the past. The process would begin with the Cardinal’s
"interpretation" of the Third Secret:
That text contains a
prophetic vision similar to those found in Sacred Scripture, which do not
describe with photographic clarity the details of future events, but rather
synthesize and condense against a unified background of events spread out over
time in a succession and a duration which are not specified. As a result, the
text must be interpreted in a symbolic key. …
According to the
interpretation of the "little shepherds", which was also recently
confirmed by Sister Lucia, the "Bishop clothed in white" who prays
for all the faithful is the Pope. As he makes his way with great effort towards
the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred (bishops, priests, men
and women religious and many lay persons), he too falls to the ground, apparently
dead, under a burst of gunfire.
As
the faithful will soon learn, this is simply a lie. The "Bishop dressed in
White" in the vision is not "apparently dead" but is killed—as
the text of the vision clearly states—in the manner of a military execution,
along with many bishops, priests and religious, outside a half-ruined city.
Why,
then, insert the word "apparently" into the
"interpretation"? Cardinal Sodano immediately tips his hand:
After the
assassination attempt of 13 May 1981, it appeared evident to His Holiness that
it was "a motherly hand which guided the bullet’s path", enabling the
"dying Pope" to halt "at the threshold of death". …
The successive events
of 1989 led, both in the Soviet Union and in a number of countries of Eastern
Europe, to the fall of the Communist regime which promoted atheism. …
Even if the events to
which the third part of the Secret of Fatima refers now seem part of the
past, Our Lady’s call to conversion and penance, issued at the beginning of
the Twentieth Century, remains timely and urgent today.
Quite
simply, Sodano was preparing the way for an "interpretation" of the
Message of Fatima that would bury it once and for all: the Message culminated
with the 1981 assassination attempt and the "fall of Communism" in
1989—events which "now seem part of the past." To insure this result,
a "commentary" would be prepared before the actual text of the Third
Secret would be released:
In order that the
faithful may better receive the message of Our Lady of Fatima, the Pope has
charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with making public the
third part of the secret, after the preparation of an appropriate commentary.
But
why had this commentary not been ready in time for the May 13 ceremony? After
all, news of the Third Secret’s impending disclosure had been circulating since
at least March of 2000. In that month, Bishop Serafim had announced that the
Pope had told him during a visit to Rome that the Pope would "do something
special for Fatima"30 when he went there for the beatification
ceremony in May 2000.
Curiously
enough, the Pope had urged Bishop Serafim to say nothing about this while he
was in Rome, but to wait until he returned to Fatima. But the subject was on the
Pope’s mind since the previous November, so why had no "commentary"
been prepared during the period November 1999 to May 2000? Surely, such a
commentary could easily have been completed in that time.
Two
conclusions suggest themselves. Either the Pope had not told Cardinal Sodano of
his intention concerning disclosure of the Third Secret—in which case the Pope
does not trust Sodano—or the Pope did tell Sodano, whereupon Sodano assumed
that he would somehow be able to prevent disclosure at the May 13, 2000
ceremony. This would explain why Sodano had not arranged for a commentary
beforehand: he thought it would not be needed because he would be able to
prevent any disclosure of the Third Secret. But the Pope had pressed ahead, and
now the Secret had to be "managed" in such a way that the question of
Fatima could be laid to rest.
A Press Conference to Announce the Sodano
Party Line
We
thus arrive at the fateful date of June 26, 2000. On this date the Third Secret
is "disclosed" at a Vatican press conference, along with a commentary
prepared by Cardinal Ratzinger and Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of the
CDF, entitled The Message of Fatima (hereafter referred to as TMF).
In TMF the Party Line on Fatima would be officially promulgated—by the
direct command of Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
First
of all, the faithful were told that the following text of a vision seen by
Sister Lucy is all there is to the Third Secret of Fatima:
After the two parts
which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we
saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out
flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died
out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her
right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a
loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. And we saw in an immense light that
is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in
front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the
Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep
mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of
a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through
a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with
pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way;
having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big
Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him,
and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests,
men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.
Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels, each with a crystal
aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and
with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
The
immediate reaction of millions of Catholics could be summarized in two words: That’s
it? Clearly, something was amiss, since nothing in this text corresponded
to what Cardinal Ratzinger himself had said about the Third Secret in 1984—a
point to which we shall return shortly. Nor did it contain anything that would
have explained its mysterious suppression since 1960.
Most
important, this obscure vision, written down on four sheets of notebook paper,
contained no words of Our Lady. In particular, it contained nothing that would
complete the famous phrase spoken by Our Lady at the conclusion of the recorded
portion of the Message of Fatima as faithfully transcribed by Sister Lucy in
her memoirs: "In Portugal the dogma of the faith will always be preserved
etc." Sister Lucy had added this phrase, including the "etc.",
to her fourth memoir as part of the integral text of the Message. This addition
had led every reputable Fatima scholar to conclude that it signaled the
beginning of the unrecorded Third Secret, and that the Third Secret pertained
to a widespread dogmatic crisis in the Church outside of Portugal. Clearly, the
Virgin had more to say that was not written down because Sister Lucy had been
instructed to keep it secret—until, as we have seen, 1960.
In
a curious maneuver, however, TMF had avoided any discussion of the
telltale phrase by taking the text of the Message of Fatima from Sister Lucy’s third
memoir, where the phrase does not appear. TMF justifies this as follows:
"For the account of the first two parts of the ‘secret’, which have
already been published and are therefore known, we have chosen the text written
by Sister Lucia in the Third Memoir of 31 August 1941; some annotations
were added in the Fourth Memoir of 8 December 1941." Annotations?
The key phrase concerning the preservation of dogma in Portugal was no
"annotation" but an integral part of the spoken words of Our Lady,
after which She had said: "Tell this to no one. Yes, you may tell
Francisco."
Having
deceptively mischaracterized an integral part of the Message of Fatima as an
"annotation", TMF then buries it in a footnote that is never
mentioned again: "In the ‘Fourth Memoir’ Sister Lucia adds: ‘In Portugal,
the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc. ...’."
Why
are Sodano/Ratzinger/Bertone so leery of this key phrase that they would so
obviously go out of their way to avoid it by using an earlier and less
complete memoir of the text of the Message? If there is nothing to hide in
this phrase, why not simply use the Fourth Memoir and attempt an explanation of
what the phrase means? Why did the authors of TMF so obviously pretend
that the phrase is a mere "annotation", when they know full well that
it appears in the integral text as part of the spoken words of the Mother of
God? We shall return to this suspicious behavior in a later chapter.
Another
grounds for suspicion was that the vision of the "Bishop dressed in
White" was not at all the one-page "letter … in which Sister
Lucy wrote down the words which Our Lady confided as a secret to
the three shepherds of the Cova da Iria"—as the Vatican itself had
described it in the aforementioned 1960 press release. The text of the vision
spans four pages of what appear to be ruled notebook paper.
Another
suspicious circumstance is that on June 26 Cardinal Sodano’s falsehood of May
13 was clearly exposed: the Pope is killed by soldiers who fire upon him
as he kneels at the foot of a large wooden Cross outside a half-ruined city.
The Pope is not "apparently dead", as Sodano had falsely asserted in
May; the Pope is dead. The vision, whatever it means, clearly has
absolutely nothing to do with the 1981 assassination attempt. The faithful had
already been duped in May, and now the process of duping them was clearly continuing.
The
dozens of discrepancies raised by this text—prompting Catholics around the
world to doubt that we have received the Secret in its entirety—will be
addressed in a later chapter. For now, we consider the Ratzinger/Bertone
"commentary" in TMF on the Fatima Message as a whole.
Cardinal Sodano Dictates the
"Interpretation" of the Third Secret
First
of all, TMF is a virtual admission that the "interpretation"
of the Message of Fatima which Cardinal Ratzinger and Msgr. Bertone will "attempt"
(to use Cardinal Ratzinger’s word) has been dictated by none other than
Cardinal Sodano. No fewer than four times, TMF states that it is
following Sodano’s "interpretation" of the Third
Secret—namely, that Fatima belongs to the past:
Before attempting an
interpretation, the main lines of which can be found in the statement read by Cardinal
Sodano on May 13 of this year …
For this reason the
figurative language of the vision is symbolic. In this regard Cardinal
Sodano stated …
As is clear from the
documentation presented here, the interpretation offered by Cardinal Sodano,
in his statement on 13 May, was first put personally to Sister Lucia. …
First of all, we
must affirm with Cardinal Sodano that the events to which the Third Secret
of Fatima refers now seem part of the past.
And
just in case the reader still has not gotten the point, the basic aim of TMF
is driven home once again:
Insofar as individual
events are described, they belong to the past.
Is
it not curious that the interpretation of the Virgin of Fatima’s vital message
to the world had been given over, not to the Pope, nor even to the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith (which was merely aping Cardinal Sodano’s
opinion), but to the Vatican Secretary of State? What authority does
Cardinal Sodano have to impose his view upon the Church? None, of course. But
Cardinal Sodano had arrogated that authority to himself in keeping the overall
post-conciliar ascendancy of the Vatican Secretary of State to the status of de
facto Pope when it comes to the daily governance of Church affairs.
Here
it would be opportune to provide another very telling example of this
usurpation of authority by the Secretary of State. In an article entitled
"The Pope, the Mass and the Politics of the Vatican Bureaucrats" (The
Latin Mass magazine, Winter Supplement, January 2002), Italian journalist
Alessandro Zangrando recounts an incident in which the Vatican Secretary of
State blocked publication in L’Osservatore Romano of the Pope’s praise
of the traditional Latin Mass. The praise had been expressed in a papal message
to an assembly of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the
Sacraments: "In the Roman Missal of St. Pius V, as in many Eastern
liturgies, are very many beautiful prayers with which the priests express the
most profound sense of humility and reverence before the Holy Mysteries, the
prayers revealing the Substance Itself of each Liturgy."
Zangrando
noted that while papal messages to Vatican congregations are routinely
published soon after their release, this one was not. It was only after the
Pope’s praise of the traditional Mass was published in the secular Italian
newspaper Il Giornale that the Vatican Secretary of State suddenly
(within 24 hours) released the text of the Holy Father’s message through the
Vatican Press Office—more than a month after its issuance by the Pope. But to
this day, and contrary to normal practice, the Pope’s message to the
Congregation has not been published in L’Osservatore Romano, the Pope’s
own newspaper. Zangrando quoted the conclusion of the renowned
"Vaticanista" (specialist in Vatican affairs) Andrea Tornielli:
"The very fact that 24 hours after the publication of the article [in Il
Giornale] the Vatican Secretariat of State made public the text of the Holy
Father’s letter, proves that a real attempt had been made at ‘censoring’ the
Pope’s words... The operation backfired with unintended results"—that is,
the Pope’s praise of the traditional Mass ended up gaining even wider publicity
in the secular press.
Here
we see how another key element of the Church’s new orientation—the abandonment
of Her traditional Latin liturgy—was enforced by the Secretary of State, who
tried to censor the Pope’s praise for the traditional Mass. Who knows how many
other papal utterances have been censored—successfully—by the Vatican
Secretariat of State? This incident is only typical of the way Church
governance operates today, especially given the Pope’s declining physical
health.
Cardinal Ratzinger Executes the Sodano Party
Line
Returning to the "commentary" with these facts in mind, one can see
that the press conference of June 26, 2000 had one overriding purpose: to carry
out Cardinal Sodano’s order concerning the "correct" interpretation
of the Message of Fatima. By the time the reporters left that room, the Message
of Fatima—all of it—was to be buried. And once buried, the Message would no
longer impede Cardinal Sodano and his collaborators in their relentless pursuit
of the Church’s new, post-Fatima orientation, which includes (as we shall see)
the important Church business of lauding, dining and hobnobbing at the Vatican
with the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, having the Pope apologize to the Red Chinese
regime, pressuring Romanian Catholics to surrender to the Orthodox church the
local Catholic Church’s rights to the properties stolen by Josef Stalin,
supporting and even contributing money to a godless, unaccountable
International Criminal Court under United Nations auspices that could try
Catholics of any nation for unspecified "crimes against humanity",
and other such "triumphs" of Vatican diplomacy.
In other words, every last holdout in the Church must be brought along to the
Vatican’s new way of thinking and speaking to the world, which does not square
well with Our Lady of Fatima’s prophecy of the triumph of Her Immaculate
Heart, the spread of devotion to Her Immaculate Heart and the consequent
conversion of Russia through the intervention of the Immaculate Heart.
This sort of talk just won’t do anymore, even if it does come from the Mother
of God. So, the precise task entrusted to Cardinal Ratzinger and Msgr. Bertone
on June 26 was to find a way to detach the faithful once and for all from the
explicitly Catholic aspects of the Message of Fatima, which all too clearly
remind us of the "triumphal" Church of the "pre-conciliar dark
age". As the Los Angeles Times would observe in its headline
of June 27, 2000: "Catholic Church Unveils Third Secret: The Vatican’s Top
Theologian Gently Debunks a Nun’s Account of Her 1917 Vision That Fueled
Decades of Speculation." The effort was so blatant that even a secular
newspaper could not help but notice it. Let us provide the proof of this crime
against the Virgin of Fatima and the saintly seers God chose to receive Her
message.
First there was Cardinal Ratzinger’s attempt in TMF to dispose of the triumph
of the Immaculate Heart:
I would like finally
to mention another key expression of the "secret" which has become
justly famous: "my Immaculate Heart will triumph". What does this
mean? The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than
guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart,
has changed the history of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the
world—because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world and
remains so for all time.
The attentive reader will notice immediately that Cardinal Ratzinger has
conveniently removed the first three words from the Virgin’s prophecy: In
the end. This clearly deliberate censorship of the very Mother of God was
necessary for Cardinal Ratzinger’s revisionist "interpretation" along
the lines dictated by Sodano: namely, that Fatima belongs to the past.
Thus, "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph" is—after
the expedient removal of the first three words—now to be understood as follows:
"2,000 years ago My Immaculate Heart triumphed." Our Lady’s prophecy
of what will happen in the end is blatantly falsified into a mere
acknowledgment of what had already happened 20 centuries ago at the beginning
of Christian history. Four future events—the triumph of the Immaculate Heart,
the consecration of Russia, Russia’s conversion, and the resulting period of
peace in the world—are cunningly converted into one event 2,000 years ago!
This tampering with a message God Himself sent to earth through His Blessed
Mother should cause any member of the faithful to rise up and demand justice in
the name of Heaven. But Cardinal Ratzinger’s butchery of the Message of Fatima
does not end here; it is far worse than even this. Concerning Our Lady’s call
to establish devotion to Her Immaculate Heart throughout the world as
"God wishes," Cardinal Ratzinger offered this mockery:
According to Matthew
5:8, the ‘immaculate heart’ is a heart which, with God’s grace, has come to
perfect interior unity and therefore ‘sees God.’ To be ‘devoted’ to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of heart,
which makes the fiat—your will be done—the defining centre of one’s
whole life.
Notice, first of all, the quotation marks Cardinal Ratzinger places around devoted
and immaculate heart, which he strips of its upper-case I—a sure sign
these words are about to acquire a new meaning.
Thus, "God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate
Heart" is now to be understood as: "God wishes everyone to do His
will." In fact, everyone whose heart is open to God’s will acquires an
"immaculate heart" of his own. So, devotion to the Immaculate Heart
of Mary means opening one’s own heart to God, not spreading devotion to Her
heart in order to make the world (especially Russia) Catholic. Immaculate with
a capital I becomes immaculate with a lower-case i, and Her Heart becomes
everyone’s heart, at least potentially. As a magician would say: "Presto,
change-o!"
There is, of course, only one word to describe the demotion of the one and only
Immaculate Heart—conceived without Original Sin and guilty of no personal sin
whatsoever—to the level of the heart of any person who turns away from his sins
and finds interior unity with God. The word is blasphemy. More will be
said about this particular outrage in the next chapter.
The conversion of Russia was a bit more difficult to make disappear.
There is not much one can say to obscure the Mother of God’s very clear
statement that "the Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, which will
be converted." But, as we have demonstrated abundantly, the conversion
of Russia is no longer acceptable to the Vatican apparatus. The solution to
this problem was simply to avoid any discussion of the subject in TMF,
although Our Lady’s words are quoted without comment. The conversion of Russia?
What conversion?
The crowning insult was Cardinal Ratzinger’s citation of only one
"authority" on Fatima in TMF: the Flemish theologian Edouard
Dhanis, S.J., whom Cardinal Ratzinger identifies as an "eminent
scholar" on Fatima. Cardinal Ratzinger of course knows that Dhanis, a
modernist Jesuit, made a veritable career out of casting doubt on the Fatima
apparitions. Dhanis proposed that everything in the Secret of Fatima beyond a
call for prayer and penance was cobbled together in the minds of the three
children from things they had seen or heard in their own lives. Dhanis thus
categorized as "Fatima II" all those things which the "eminent
scholar" arbitrarily rejected as fabrications—without ever once
interviewing Sister Lucy or studying the official Fatima archives.
As Dhanis put it: "All things considered, it is not easy to state
precisely what degree of credence is to be given to the accounts of Sister
Lucy. Without questioning her sincerity, or the sound judgment she shows in
daily life, one may judge it prudent to use her writings only with
reservations. … Let us observe also that a good person can be sincere and prove
to have good judgment in everyday life, but have a propensity for
unconscious fabrication in a certain area, or in any case, a tendency to
relate old memories of twenty years ago with embellishments and considerable
modifications."31
Dhanis, who refused to examine the official Fatima archives, cast doubt on
every aspect of the Message of Fatima which did not accord with his
neo-modernist leanings: the prayer taught by the Angel he called
"inexact"; the vision of hell he called an "exaggeratedly
medieval representation"; the prophecy of "a night illumined by an unknown
light" heralding the advent of World War II he described as "grounds
for suspicion." And as for the consecration of Russia, Dhanis flatly
declared that: "Russia could not be consecrated by the Pope, without this
act taking on the air of a challenge, both in regard to the separated
hierarchy, as well as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This would
make the consecration practically unrealizable …" Thus, Dhanis
declared that the consecration of Russia would be "morally impossible by
reason of the reactions it would normally provoke."32
Dhanis’ deconstruction of the Message of Fatima is a typical example of how
modernists undermine Catholic truths based upon premises they themselves
invent. Since (invented premise) the consecration of Russia is morally
impossible, how could Our Lady of Fatima have requested it? Having thus stacked
the deck against Sister Lucy, Dhanis states the "inevitable"
conclusion: "But could the Most Holy Virgin have requested a consecration
which, taken according to the rigor of the terms, would be practically
unrealizable? … This question indeed seems to call for a negative response.
… Thus, it hardly seems probable that Our Lady asked for the consecration
of Russia. …" Based entirely on the premise Dhanis invented, Sister Lucy’s
testimony is pronounced a fraud.
That is precisely the line adopted by Cardinal Sodano and his Vatican
apparatus: the Mother of God could not possibly have requested anything as
diplomatically embarrassing as a public consecration of Russia: and so we must
do away with this embarrassing notion once and for all. And it is this line,
the Party Line, that Cardinal Ratzinger endorsed in his "commentary"
by praising Dhanis as an "eminent scholar" on Fatima. Cardinal
Ratzinger, following the Party Line, suggests that the Third Secret in
particular consists of "images which Lucia may have seen in devotional
books and which draw their inspiration from long-standing intuitions of
faith." In other words, who can really say which parts of the Third Secret
are authentic and which are merely personal memories or "intuitions"?
And if that were true of the Third Secret, it would also be true of the rest of
the Message of Fatima.
Cardinal Ratzinger’s stealthy attempt to undermine Sister Lucy’s credibility,
while professing great respect for the Message of Fatima, will be taken up
again in the following chapter. Here it suffices to say that Cardinal
Ratzinger’s evident agreement with Dhanis that all the specifically prophetic
elements of the Message are unreliable serves to disqualify him from making any
"interpretation" of the Third Secret, or any other part of the Fatima
Message. Quite simply, Cardinal Ratzinger does not believe that the
Mother of God called for the consecration of Russia, the conversion of Russia
to the Catholic Faith, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, and the
establishment of the specifically Catholic devotion to the one and only
Immaculate Heart throughout the world. That being the case, the Cardinal had a
duty to reveal his bias and abstain from the matter, instead of pretending to
give an "interpretation" that is really an attempt to debunk and
discredit that which he purports to "interpret."
What was left of the Message of Fatima after Cardinal Ratzinger and Bertone got
done with it on June 26? On this point, Cardinal Ratzinger, Msgr. Bertone, and
Fr. Dhanis all agree: "What remains was already evident when we began our
reflections on the text of the ‘secret’: the exhortation to prayer as the path
of ‘salvation for souls’ (sic) and, likewise, the summons to penance and
conversion." On June 26, 2000 the Message of Fatima became Fatima Lite: a
watered-down prescription for personal piety without any specific relevance to
the future.
For this the Mother of God came to earth and called down the Miracle of
the Sun? It is interesting to note that even in presenting this minimalist
version of the Message, Cardinal Ratzinger could not write about salvation for
souls without bracketing those words with the same squeamish quotation marks he
used to distance himself from the words devotion, triumph and immaculate
in his commentary. It seems even Fatima Lite is not quite light enough in
Catholic content for the ecumenical palates of modern churchmen.
As for Our Lady’s prophetic warning that "various nations will be
annihilated" if the consecration of Russia were not done, this we are
apparently supposed to forget. There will be no annihilation of nations,
"Fatima is all in the past." Cardinal Sodano says as much. Cardinal
Ratzinger agrees.
The Party Line on the Consecration of Russia
We have mentioned Archbishop Bertone’s role in TMF. His principal
contributions to the farce were two:
First, Bertone issued the "command" (binding, of course, on no one)
that the faithful must cease asking for the Consecration of Russia: "Hence
any further discussion or request [of the Consecration] is without basis."
To support this claim, Bertone cited exactly one piece of evidence: the manifestly
fake "letter of November 8, 1989" from "Sister Lucy" to Mr.
Noelker, which we have already mentioned—the same letter in which "Sister
Lucy" writes about a consecration of the world by Pope Paul VI at Fatima
which she never witnessed because it never happened. Tellingly enough,
Bertone fails to identify the addressee of the letter. Nor does he provide the
world with a copy to examine, lest anyone notice the fatal blunder concerning
Pope Paul’s nonexistent "consecration of the world." Even more telling,
TMF contains absolutely no direct testimony by Sister Lucy herself
concerning the Consecration, even though Bertone himself had interviewed her
about the Third Secret only two months earlier, and she was readily available
to Cardinal Ratzinger and the entire Vatican apparatus during the beatification
ceremony in May.
Small wonder. TMF’s version of the "consecration of Russia"
—which is to say Cardinal Sodano’s version—flatly contradicts a lifetime of
testimony to the contrary by Sister Lucy. We consider a few examples here.
Over 55 years ago, on July 15, 1946, the eminent author and historian, William
Thomas Walsh interviewed Sister Lucy, which is recounted in his important work,
Our Lady of Fatima, which sold over one million copies. At this
interview, which appears at the book’s end, Mr. Walsh asked her pointed
questions about the correct procedure for the Collegial Consecration:
Finally we came to
the important subject of the second July secret, of which so many different and
conflicting versions have been published. Lucia made it plain that Our Lady did
not ask for the consecration of the world to Her Immaculate Heart. What
She demanded specifically was the consecration of Russia. She did not
comment, of course, on the fact that Pope Pius XII had consecrated the world,
not Russia, to the Immaculate Heart in 1942. But she said more than once, and
with deliberate emphasis: ‘What Our Lady wants is that the Pope and all the
bishops in the world shall consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart on one
special day. If this is done, She will convert Russia and there will be peace.
If it is not done, the errors of Russia will spread through every country in
the world’.33
Sister Lucy is clear and forthright. The collegial consecration requested by
Heaven is the Consecration of Russia, not the world, which must
be done by the Pope in union with the world’s bishops on the same day.
Then there is the little-known revelation of Our Lady to Sister Lucy in the
early 1950s, which is recounted in Il Pellegrinaggio Della Meraviglie,
published under the auspices of the Italian episcopate. The Virgin Mary
appeared to Sister Lucy in May 1952 and said "Make it known to the Holy
Father that I am always awaiting the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate
Heart. Without the Consecration, Russia will not be able to convert, nor will
the world have peace."34
Thus, 10 years after Pope Pius XII’s 1942 Consecration of the world, we have
the report of Our Lady reminding Sister Lucy that Russia will not be converted,
nor will there be peace, unless Russia is consecrated by name.
Thirty years later, in 1982, Sister Lucy’s testimony remains steadfast. On May
12, 1982, the day before the attempted 1982 consecration, the Vatican’s own L’Osservatore
Romano published an interview of Sister Lucy by Father Umberto Maria
Pasquale, a Salesian priest, during which she told Father Umberto that Our Lady
had never requested the Consecration of the world, but only the
Consecration of Russia:
At a certain moment
I said to her: "Sister, I should like to ask you a question. If you cannot
answer me, let it be. But if you can answer it, I would be most grateful to you
... Has Our Lady ever spoken to you about the Consecration of the world to
Her Immaculate Heart?"
"No,
Father Umberto! Never! At the Cova da Iria in 1917 Our Lady had
promised: I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia ...
In 1929, at Tuy, as She had promised, Our Lady came back to tell me that the
moment had come to ask the Holy Father for the Consecration of that
country (Russia)."
This testimony was confirmed by Sister Lucy in a handwritten letter to Father
Umberto, which the priest also published. (See photographic reproduction
below.) A translation of the letter reads:
Reverend Father
Umberto, in replying to your question, I will clarify: Our Lady of Fatima, in
Her request, referred only to the Consecration of Russia ... — Coimbra 13 IV
- 1980 (signed) Sister Lucia
Again, on March 19, 1983, at the request of the Holy Father, Sister Lucy met
with the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Portalupi, Dr. Lacerda, and Father Messias Coelho.
During this meeting, Sister Lucy confirmed that Pope John Paul’s Consecration
of 1982 did not fulfill the requests of Our Lady. Sister Lucy said:
In the act of
offering of May 13, 1982, Russia did not appear as being the object of the
consecration. And each bishop did not organize in his own diocese a public and
solemn ceremony of reparation and Consecration of Russia. Pope John Paul II
simply renewed the consecration of the world executed by Pius XII on October
31, 1942. From this consecration we can expect some benefits, but not the
conversion of Russia.35
She concluded, "The Consecration of Russia has not been done as Our
Lady had demanded it. I was not able to say it because I did not have the
permission of the Holy See."36
A year later, on March 25, 1984, Pope John Paul II made an act of offering
wherein he again consecrated "the world", not Russia. As with the
1982 Consecration, "each bishop did not organize in his own diocese a
public and solemn ceremony of reparation and consecration of Russia".
Concerning this ceremony Frère François writes: "In the months which
followed the act of offering of March 25, 1984, which was only a renewal of the
act of 1982, the principal scholars of Fatima agreed in saying that the
consecration of Russia had not yet been done as Heaven wished it."37
Such was also the conviction of Father Antonio Maria Martins,38 and
of Father Messias Coelho who, on the eve of March 25, 1984, had announced in Mensagem
de Fátima, of which he is the publisher-editor, "Consecration of
Russia: It will not be done yet this time." He further explained, "It
is certain the more contains the less. Apparently therefore, the ‘Consecration
of the world’ will perhaps give the impression of having the power to take the
place of consecrating specifically Russia. However, the problem cannot be
resolved in logical terms, nor even in the light of systematic theology."39
These theologians based their statements not only on the bald fact that a
consecration of Russia needs to mention the word "Russia", but also
on the testimony of Sister Lucy herself.
On Thursday, March 22, 1984, two days before the act of offering, the Carmel of
Coimbra was celebrating Sister Lucy’s seventy-seventh birthday. She received on
that day, as was her custom, her old friend Mrs. Eugenia Pestana. After
extending good wishes to her Carmelite friend, Mrs. Pestana asked, "Then
Lucy, Sunday is the Consecration?" Sister Lucy, who had already received
and read the text of the Pope’s consecration formula made a negative sign and
declared "That consecration cannot have a decisive character."40
The "decisive character" which is the stamp of the proper
consecration is the miraculous conversion of Russia. Although the new "ecumenical
orientation" of the Church has confused the issue, the conversion of
Russia means conversion to Catholicism. This is not only a matter of
common sense, but it is also found in the testimony of Father Joaquin Alonso,
probably the foremost Fatima expert of the 20th Century. Father Alonso, who had
many interviews with Sister Lucy, wrote in 1976:
... we should affirm
that Lucia always thought that the ‘conversion’ of Russia is not to be
limited to the return of the Russian people to the Orthodox Christian
religions, rejecting the Marxist atheism of the Soviets, but rather, it
refers purely, plainly and simply to the total, integral conversion of Russia
to the one true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church.41
In a 1985 interview in Sol de Fatima, Sister Lucy was asked if the Pope
fulfilled the request of Our Lady when he consecrated the world in 1984. Sister
Lucy replied: "There was no participation of all the bishops, and there
was no mention of Russia." She was then asked, "So the consecration
was not done as requested by Our Lady?" to which she replied:
"No. Many bishops attached no importance to this act."42
Even Father Rene Laurentin, a comrade of the progressivists, admitted in 1986
that "Sister Lucy remains unsatisfied43 ... Lucy seems to think
that the Consecration has ‘not been made’ as Our Lady wanted it."44
Then on July 20, 1987, Sister Lucy was interviewed quickly outside her convent
while voting. Here she told journalist Enrique Romero that the Consecration of Russia
has not been done as requested.45
More of Sister Lucy’s affirmations that the 1984 consecration did not fulfill
Heaven’s conditions could be cited,46 but the point is made: Msgr.
Bertone and Cardinal Ratzinger, following Sodano’s Party Line, were relying entirely
on a single, manifestly bogus letter to overcome more than fifty years of
unwavering testimony by Sister Lucy on Heaven’s requirements for an effectual
consecration of Russia. They had not dared to ask Sister Lucy about the matter
themselves—or, if they had, she had not provided answers consistent with the
Party Line.47
The Party Line on Fatima and World Peace
This brings us to Msgr. Bertone’s second contribution to the farce. It came in
the form of this statement:
The decision of His
Holiness Pope John Paul II to make public the third part of the
"secret" of Fatima brings to an end a period of history marked by
tragic human lust for power and evil, yet pervaded by the merciful love of God
and the watchful care of the Mother of Jesus and of the Church.
It is difficult to find words to express the offensiveness of this absurd
claim. Here Sodano’s Party Line seriously proposes that an entire era of human
lust for power and evil has been brought to an end with the Vatican’s
"disclosure" of the obscure vision of the "Bishop dressed in
White." In which case, why did the Vatican wait forty years to bring on
world peace, when all it had to do, according to Msgr. Bertone, was stage a
press conference in 1960 to publish this vision?
Cardinal Sodano evidently recognized that he must provide the faithful with
some sort of counterfeit to take the place of the triumph of the Immaculate
Heart, which had never materialized following the 1984 "consecration of
Russia." The press conference of June 26, 2000 was thus presented as the
great culmination of the Message of Fatima!
But somehow Msgr. Bertone and Cardinal Ratzinger alike had managed to ignore
the obvious implications of Sister Lucy’s letter to the Pope of May 12, 1982,
which they themselves had (in part) photographically reproduced in TMF:
And if we have not
yet seen the complete fulfillment of the final part of this prophecy, we are
going towards it with great strides.48 If we do not reject the
path of sin, hatred, revenge, injustice, violations of the rights of the human
person, immorality and violence, etc. And let us not say that it is God
who is punishing us in this way; on the contrary it is people themselves who
are preparing their own punishment.
This 1982 letter makes absolutely no reference to the 1981 assassination
attempt; much less does it characterize the attempt as any sort of fulfillment
of the Third Secret. Clearly, a year after the attempt Sister Lucy remained
worried about a global chastisement in consequence of the Church’s failure to
heed the imperatives of the Fatima Message. She certainly was not writing to
the Pope about the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, but rather the annihilation
of nations.
Also very curious is that the same letter from Sister Lucy (which Ratzinger and
Bertone tell us was addressed to Pope John Paul II) contains the phrase:
"The third part of the secret that you are so anxious to know (que
tanto ansiais por conhecer)". Why would the Pope be "so anxious to
know" the third part of the Secret if he already had the text in his
possession at the Vatican, where it has been lodged since 1957? Why would His
Holiness be "so anxious to know" what he had already read in 1981 (as
Bertone/Ratzinger claim), or as early as 1978, as papal spokesman Joaquin
Navarro-Valls told the Portuguese press?
It is highly suspicious that the phrase "you are so anxious to know"
is deleted from every Vatican translation of the original Portuguese letter
in the various language versions of the Cardinal Ratzinger/Bertone commentary.
Even the Portuguese language version of TMF omits the phrase "you
are so anxious to know" from the Portuguese typeset reproduction of
the original letter. Clearly, the Vatican apparatus wanted to avoid a storm of
questions about how the Pope could be anxious to know something he already
knew. But by the time reporters could compare their translations with the
original Portuguese letter, the press conference was over and no further
questions could be asked.
Two conclusions are possible: Either the letter was not really written to the
Pope, or there was something more to the Secret which the Pope really did not
know as of May 12, 1982, the date of the purported letter from Sister Lucy. As
Sir Walter Scott’s famous aphorism goes: "Oh! what a tangled web we weave,
when first we practice to deceive."49 The first lie—that Fatima
belongs to the past—leads to a tangled web of other lies in order to cover up
the first.
Targeting Father Gruner
But there was more to be done in this campaign to bury Fatima in the past. What
about "the Fatima priest", whose apostolate’s publications and
broadcasts were persistently and quite effectively hammering home the point
that the Vatican apparatus, pursuing its new vision of the Church, had turned
its back on the Virgin’s requests? At the end of the June 26 press conference,
Cardinal Ratzinger went out of his way to mention Father Nicholas Gruner by
name, stating that Father Gruner must be "submissive to the
Magisterium" on the question of the Consecration of Russia, which (so the
Party Line goes) was now over and done with. But the Magisterium—the
authoritative teaching office of the Church—had taught nothing of the kind.
There was only the Sodano Interpretation of Fatima, and TMF’s
non-binding "attempt" to explain away all of the specific prophetic
content of the Fatima Message50 (leaving only prayer and penance).
Ratcheting up this persecution, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy had,
only days before the June 26 press conference, sent Father Gruner a letter
containing the astounding threat that he would be excommunicated from the
Catholic Church. This letter was followed up with a communiqué to the bishops
of the Philippines (where Father Gruner’s apostolate is strongly supported),
advising that Father Gruner would be excommunicated unless (among other things
demanded) he "reconciled himself to Church authorities"—that is,
return to the Diocese of Avellino, close down his apostolate and bow to the
Party Line on Fatima. For his own part, the Bishop of Avellino had never needed
Father Gruner’s services, never supported him financially since 1978, and had
never taken any steps to secure a proper immigration visa for the "return"
to Avellino. The Bishop of Avellino was nothing but a pawn in the Secretary of
State’s chess game. (We will have more to say about this travesty in later
chapters.)
In his remarks about Father Gruner at the end of the June 26 press conference,
Cardinal Ratzinger had also noted that Father Gruner was no doubt suffering
from angoscia—the Italian word for extreme mental anguish. Cardinal
Ratzinger obviously knew of the threat of excommunication, which would indeed
cause angoscia in any faithful priest who loves the Church. But Father
Gruner’s plight is only emblematic of the plight of the Church as a whole in
the post-conciliar epoch: a priest who has committed no offense against faith
and morals is personally threatened with excommunication by the very head of the
Congregation for the Clergy, while throughout the Church predators in Roman
collars molest altar boys or spread heresy as their bishops move them from
place to place or conceal their activities and protect them from punishment;
and the Congregation for the Clergy does nothing.
What is to explain this outrageous disparity of justice? There seems to us only
one sensible explanation, based on what we have shown thus far: In the Catholic
Church of the post-conciliar Adaptation the one unforgivable offense, just as
in Stalinist Russia, is to buck the Party Line. And Father Gruner had bucked
the Party Line on Fatima.
Exit Our Lady, Enter Gorbachev
We have claimed that this mockery and obscuration of the Fatima Message—the
Party Line on Fatima—was intended to bury it once and for all, so that Cardinal
Sodano could get on with his pursuit of the Church’s new orientation. Here is a
particularly compelling example of what we mean:
Fatima having been "gently debunked" (to quote the Los Angeles
Times) by Cardinal Ratzinger and Msgr. Bertone on June 26, the Vatican
apparatus, led by Cardinal Sodano, immediately got down to what it considers
the serious business of the Church. The very next day Mikhail Gorbachev was seated
as a guest of honor between Cardinals Sodano and Silvestrini at a Vatican
"press conference." What was the purpose of this press conference? It
was called to celebrate one of the key elements of the Church’s new
orientation: Ostpolitik, the policy of "dialogue" and
accommodation with Communist regimes (including Red China) that persecute the
Church. The immediate occasion for the press conference was the posthumous
publication of the memoirs of Cardinal Casaroli, the grand architect of Ostpolitik
and Cardinal Sodano’s predecessor in enforcing the Party Line of the Secretary
of State.51
In true Stalinist fashion, no questions from the press were permitted at this
curious "press conference"—a press conference with no questions from
the press! Evidently the Vatican wanted to be sure that no one bucked the Party
Line with any questions about Fatima, or why the Vatican was honoring the likes
of Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who admits he is still a Leninist and whose
tax-free foundations are promoting the use of abortion and contraception to
eliminate four billion people from the world’s population.52 This is
not even to mention this blood-drenched character’s public defense of the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when he was still head of the Soviet Communist
Party—a genocidal campaign that included planting bombs disguised as toys, so
that Afghan children would have their limbs and heads blown off.53
Could there be a more dramatic demonstration of the fundamental opposition
between the Church of all time and the Church of the Adaptation? On June 26,
2000 Our Lady of Fatima was shown the door, Her heavenly message audaciously
censored and revised by men who would dare to consign it to oblivion. Then, a
day later, Mikhail Gorbachev entered the Vatican to celebrate the Church’s new
orientation, as implemented by the late Cardinal Casaroli and by his successor,
Cardinal Sodano.
Gorbachev, leader of the culture of death, was honored by the Vatican again on
November 4, 2000 when he addressed the Pope and other prelates at the
"Jubilee of Politicians"—a dinner gala for about 5,000 of the world’s
rulers of godless secular republics. The photographers captured the Pope
listening very attentively to a speech by this key promoter of the abortion
holocaust.54 This grotesque mixture of a Jubilee—a spiritual
tradition in the Church derived from an Old Testament custom—with speeches by
pro-abortion politicians on secular matters, is only typical of the new
orientation, which constantly seeks to merge the Church with the world in the
great Adaptation of Roman Catholicism to "modern civilization".
|
Gorbachev
admits that he is still a Leninist, and he continually promotes abortion,
population control and his Leninist principles through his State of the World
Forum. Gorbachev was invited by Cardinal Sodano to sit beside him at the
Vatican press conference of June 27, 2000 to promote Cardinal Casaroli's
memoirs upholding the Vatican policy of Ostpolitik, which refuses to
denounce the errors of Communism and state atheism. Pictured above is
Gorbachev, invited to the Vatican in November 2000 to address the Pope and
other Vatican curial officials and politicians at the "Jubilee of
Politicians". |
Footnotes
1. "The Moscow Patriarchate and
Sergianism" by Boris Talantov, from Russia’s Catacomb Saints, (St.
Herman of Alaska Press, Platina, California, 1982) pp. 463-486.
2. "The Moscow Patriarchate and Sergianism: An
Essay by Boris Talantov," found at
www.orthodoxinfo.com/resistance/cat_tal.htm.
3. Remarks of January 17, 1998 at Aid to Church in
Russia Conference,
www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Faith/1998-03-04/Russia.html. Reprinted in The
Catholic Dossier, March/April 1998, p. 4.
4. L’Osservatore Romano, March 26-27, 1984,
pp. 1, 6.
5. Avvenire, March 27, 1984, p. 11.
6. Father Fabrice Delestre, "Fatima: Why Isn’t
the Mother of God Being Obeyed as She Should Be?", Angelus, June
2000, Vol. 23, No. 6. See also Frère François de Marie des Anges, Fatima:
Joie Intime Événement Mondial, (French edition, Contre-Réforme Catholique,
France, 1991) pp. 363-364; Frère François de Marie des Anges, Fatima:
Tragedy and Triumph, pp. 168-172.
7. Father Maurer’s remarks appeared in an interview
in Catholic World Report, Feb. 2001. A synopsis and commentary on
this interview was published in "The Myth of a Converted Russia
Exposed", Marian Horvat, Ph.D., Catholic Family News, March 2001.
8. See Mark Fellows, "This Present
Darkness" Part III, Catholic Family News, October 2000.
9. Regarding alcohol in Russia, researchers
concluded: "Russia’s rate of alcohol consumption, traditionally among the
highest in the world, and rising significantly in the 1990s, is a major
contributor to the country’s health crisis ... alcoholism has reached epidemic
proportions, particularly among males ... A 1995 Russian study found that
regular drunkenness affected between 25 and 60 percent of blue-collar workers
... In 1994 some 53,000 people died of alcohol poisoning, an increase of about
36,000 since 1991." In the ten years since the alleged conversion of
Russia, there has also been a sharp increase in illegal drug use: "In 1995
an estimated 2 million Russians used narcotics, more than twenty times the total
recorded ten years earlier in the entire Soviet Union, with the number of users
increasing 50 percent every year in the mid-1990s." From Mark
Fellows, "This Present Darkness", Part II, Catholic Family News, Sept.
2000.
10. "Satanism on the Rise in Russia"
compiled by John Vennari. See www.fatima.org/satanism. html.
11. "Russia Legalizes Homosexuality", United
Press International, May 28, 1993. To quote the beginning of the article:
"Russia’s homosexual activists Friday celebrated a major victory for gay rights
in post-Soviet Russia following the repeal of Article 121 of the Soviet
criminal code, which outlawed consensual sex between men. ‘This is great news
for gays and lesbians in Russia,’ said Vladislav Ortanov, editor of the Moscow
gay magazine Risk."
12. "Activist Says Child Porn Prosecutions
Will be Difficult in Indonesia, Russia", Christine Brummitt, Associated
Press, Aug. 9, 2001. (Emphasis added)
13. "Big Brotherski goes too far for Staid
Russians", Mark Franchetti, Sunday Times (London), November 25,
2001.
14. "New Visa System Seen Choking Russia’s
Catholic Parishes", Russia Reform Monitor, No. 485, July 28, 1998.
Also, "Catholic Clergy in Siberia Face Growing Visa Difficulties", Catholic
World News, November 19, 1997.
15. Sarah Karush, "Foreign Priests Spark
Controversy", Associated Press, February 12, 2002.
16. Radio Free Europe Report, June 20, 2001.
17. Ibid. See also Catholic News Service, February
17, 2002.
18. Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, pp.
189-190.
19. For a good treatment of the falsehood of the
Noelker letter, see Mark Fellows, "This Present Darkness" Part II, Catholic
Family News, Sept. 2000.
20. The principle which requires that authority be
exercised at the lowest possible level to avoid tyranny through excessive
centralization of government. For example, the budget of a town should be
determined by the town Fathers, not by the state or federal government.
21. Under the old structure, before 1967, the Pope
presided over the Roman Curia. Under the new structure, since 1967, it is the
Vatican Secretary of State who presides over the Roman Curia. The reader is
invited to check the Annuario Pontificio both before and after 1967 to
see the change in the structure of the Roman Curia.
22. A French priest showed the Masonic document to,
among others, the American priest Father Paul Kramer.
23. Paul Fisher, Their God is the Devil,
(American Research Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1990) p. 40.
24. See Francis Alban and Christopher A. Ferrara, Fatima
Priest, Fourth Edition (Good Counsel Publications, Pound Ridge, New York,
2000), Chapters 12, 14, 17-22; App. I, App. II.
25. For the details of the long and tortuous
"proceedings" to silence Father Gruner, the reader may consult: Fatima
Priest (Fourth Edition), A Law for One Man (both available from the
Fatima Center, 17000 State Route 30, Constable, New York 12926) or visit the
Fatima web site at www.fatima.org.
26. Regarding the on-again, off-again beatification
ceremony and related matters, see: the daily newspaper Correio da Manhã
of 14 October 1999, the article on p. 12; the weekly newspaper Jornal de
Leiria of 14 October 1999, p. 24; the weekly newspaper A Ordem on 21
October 1999, p. 1; the official weekly of the Patriarchate of Lisbon Voz da
Verdade on 31 October 1999, on p. 6, the article entitled "The
Beatification of the Little Shepherds Definitely Will Be At Rome"; the
official weekly of the Patriarchate of Lisbon Voz da Verdade on 5
December 1999, entitled "The Pope Will Return to Portugal; Fatima is the
Place of the Beatification"; article in Euronoticias on 24 March
2000, p. 8, entitled "Bishop of Leiria-Fatima" March 21 press
conference; weekly Euronoticias of 24 March 2000, on p. 8, "Crisis:
The Bishop of Leiria-Fatima Creates A Mystery Around the Visit of the Pope
Without Telling the Patriarch What It Concerns, Will the Pope Reveal the Third
Secret?"; Euronoticias of 24 March, an article on p. 9 entitled
"Analysis: Persons Who Have Studied the Apparitions Say That the Third
Secret Could Concern the Destruction of the Faith. A Crisis in the Interior of
the Church Would be the Third Secret".
27. Father Herman Bernard Kramer, The Book of
Destiny, (first published 1955, republished by TAN Books and Publishers,
Inc., Rockford, Illinois, 1975) pp. 279-284.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. On this point we refer the reader again to the
following articles: in Euronoticias on 24 March 2000, p. 8, entitled
"Bishop of Leiria-Fatima" March 21 press conference; weekly Euronoticias
of 24 March 2000, on p. 8, "Crisis: The Bishop of Leiria-Fatima Creates A
Mystery Around the Visit of the Pope Without Telling the Patriarch What It
Concerns, Will the Pope Reveal the Third Secret?"; Euronoticias of
24 March, an article on p. 9 entitled "Analysis: Persons Who Have Studied
the Apparitions Say That the Third Secret Could Concern the Destruction of the
Faith. A Crisis in the Interior of the Church Would be the Third Secret".
31. Dhanis’ entire thesis against Fatima is
explained and critiqued in Frère Michel, The Whole Truth About Fatima -
Volume I, Part II, Chapter 1. All quotations concerning his false theory
are from this source.
32. Ibid.
33. William Thomas Walsh, Our Lady of Fatima,
(Image-Doubleday, New York, Imprimatur 1947) p. 221. Emphasis in the
original.
34. Il Pellegrinaggio Della Meraviglie, p.
440. Rome, 1960. This same work, published under the auspices of the Italian
episcopate, affirms that this message was communicated to Pope Pius XII in
June. Also, Canon Barthas mentioned that apparition in his communication to the
Mariological Congress of Lisbon-Fatima, in 1967; see De Primoridiis cultus
marianae, Acta congressus mariologici-mariana in Lusitania anno 1967 celebrati,
p. 517. Rome, 1970. See Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, pp. 21 and 37.
35. Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, p. 165.
36. Reported within an article by Father Pierre
Caillon of Centre Saint Jean 61500 Sees, (Orne) France. This article was
published by the monthly periodical Fidelite Catholique, B.P. 217-56402.
Auray Cedex, France. English translation from The Fatima Crusader, Issue
13-14, (Oct.-Dec., 1983) p. 3.
37. Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, p. 172.
38. See Fatima e o Coraçao de Maria, pp.
101-102.
39. Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, pp.
172-173.
40. Ibid., pp. 167-168.
41. La Verdad sobre el Secreto de Fatima, Fatima
sin mitos, Father Joaquin Alonso, (2nd edition, Ejercito Azul, Madrid,
1988) p. 78. English translation by Joseph Cain. Original Spanish reads:
"... podriamos decir que Lucia ha pensado siempre que la
"conversión" de Rusia no se entiende solo de un retorno de los
pueblos de Rusia a la religion cristiano-ortodoxa, rechazando el ateismo
marxista y ateo de los soviets, sino que se refiere pura y llanmente a la
conversion total e integral de un retorno a la unica y verdadera Iglesia, la
catolica-romana."
42. Sol de Fatima, September 1985.
43. Chrètiens-Magazine, March 1987, #8.
Cited from Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, p. 189.
44. Father Laurentin, "Multiplication des
apparitions de la Vierge aujourd’hui, p. 45, Fayard, September,
1988. Cited from Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, p. 189.
45. This testimony of Sister Lucy was reported in
the early August (1987) edition of Para Ti published in Argentina. See World
Enslavement or Peace ... It’s Up to the Pope, Father Nicholas Gruner
(Immaculate Heart Publishing, 1989), pp. 212-213.
46. For more testimony, see Chapter VI of Fatima:
Tragedy and Triumph.
47. The reported November 17, 2001 interview
between Archbishop Bertone and Sister Lucy is treated at length in Chapter 14,
"Let us Hear the Witness, For Heaven’s Sake".
48. The Vatican translation "we are going
towards it little by little with great strides" is clearly defective. The
words "little by little" do not appear in the handwritten Portuguese
original published on p. 9 of TMF provided by the Vatican itself. We
have thus provided our own accurate translation.
49. "Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field",
Canto 6, stanza 17. Poem by Sir Walter Scott.
50. It should be noted that Cardinal Ratzinger
himself said regarding the Vatican’s interpretation of the Third Secret,
"The Church does not want to impose an interpretation". This
quotation was reported in: "Final Secret of Vatican Published by
Vatican", Boston Herald, June 27, 2000; "Vatican’s
Secret is Out", The Express, June 27, 2000; "Vatican Unease as
it Reveals the Full Third Secret of Fatima", Financial Times (London), June
27, 2000; "Fatima ‘Snapshot of Martyr’s Past Century’", The Irish
Times, June 27, 2000.
51. News of June 27, 2000 press conference.
"Gorbachev Helps Introduce Casaroli Memoirs", Catholic World News,
June 27, 2000.
52. In September 1995, Gorbachev held his
"State of the World Forum" in San Francisco. Over 4000 of the world’s
"elite" paid $5,000 per person to attend the 5-day event. In a
closing plenary session of the forum, a philosopher/author named Sam Keen
provided a summary and concluding remarks on the conference. It reveals the
Forum’s anti-life, anti-Christian ethos. To the conference participants, Keen
said: "there was very strong agreement that religious institutions have to
take the primary responsibility for the population explosion. We must speak far
more clearly about sexuality, about contraception, about abortion, about the
values that control the population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is
the population crisis. Cut the population by 90 percent and there aren’t
enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage." See
"World’s elite gather to talk depopulation," John Henry Western, The
Interim, April 1996.
53. See interview with Afghan official Abdul Shams
in Review of the News, July 1985.
54. Photograph published in Catholic Family
News, January 2001, p. 13.
Chapter 10
Naming Names
It is now opportune for us to summarize what the evidence has shown so far, and
whom it implicates in the crime at issue.
Thus far the evidence has shown the following:
- The Message of Fatima is a divinely given prophecy for our
time, authenticated by an unprecedented public miracle and vouched for by
a series of Popes, including the currently reigning Pope.
- The prophetic warnings in the Message have mostly come to
pass, save for especially the annihilation of nations that would be the
consequence of failing to effect the Consecration of Russia in time.
- God has already demonstrated the benefits of a national
consecration to the Immaculate Heart in the case of Portugal in 1931,
whose miraculous overnight transformation from an atheistic, Masonic
republic into a Catholic country was seen by the Portuguese hierarchy
itself as a foretaste of what God would bestow upon the world after the
Consecration of Russia.
- Instead of following the path marked out at Fatima, the
leaders of the Catholic Church chose a different path—the path of a new
orientation of the Church initiated at Vatican II, including an
"opening to the world" and "reforms" of the Church
which have fulfilled the dreams of Her worst enemies, who admitted that
their goal was to bring about precisely such changes in the Church.
- In taking this path of a new orientation, the Church’s
leaders have disregarded the repeated warnings of the pre-conciliar Popes
(including Blessed Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI and Pius XII)
that the Church’s enemies were plotting to remake Her in the very manner
She has in fact been remade in the post-conciliar period.
- The changes began in 1960—the very year in which Sister
Lucy had insisted the Third Secret be revealed, because it would be
clearer then.
- The result of these changes has been a catastrophic loss
of faith and discipline in the Church which appears to be foretold in that
part of the Great Secret of Fatima which begins with the words: "In
Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc."—a
phrase that remains mysteriously incomplete, despite the Vatican’s claimed
disclosure of the entirety of the Third Secret.
- Rather than admitting these incalculable blunders and
their ruinous consequences for the Church, the current Vatican apparatus
has obstinately pursued the new orientation, which is obviously inconsistent
with the expressly Catholic imperatives of the Fatima Message: namely, the
establishment of devotion to the Immaculate Heart in the world, the
consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart, the conversion of Russia
to the Catholic Faith, and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart,
accompanied by a period of world peace in a Catholic social order.
- To the contrary, the Vatican apparatus has willfully and
deliberately refused to consecrate Russia by name to Mary’s Immaculate
Heart, but has instead conducted a systematic campaign to neutralize the
Message of Fatima in order to subjugate it to the Church’s new
orientation—Her Adaptation to Masonic and Communist ideals—while
persecuting loyal Catholics who do not follow the Party Line.
- The Vatican apparatus, led by the Secretary of State,
deliberately scorns the prophecies, imperatives and warnings of the Fatima
Message in favor of "enlightened" new ecclesial policies, which
include avoiding any offense to Russia by a public consecration of that
nation.
- In consequence of these monumental errors of judgment,
Russia has failed to convert, the Church is suffering an unprecedented
crisis of faith and discipline, and the world continues to spiral downward
in a cycle of violence and rebellion against God and His Holy Church—in
response to which, the Vatican apparatus only redoubles its efforts to
follow the utterly fruitless new orientation of the Church.
Especially in view of the events of June 26-27, 2000 and during the months
following, the proof now suffices to identify the four men we must in
conscience accuse in this book. They are:
Cardinal Angelo Sodano
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone
Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos
Why these four men and not others? As we have already shown, it is these men
who have taken the lead in attempting nothing less than the murder of the
Message of Fatima, and with it the Heaven-sent hope of the world in our time.
They have combined and conspired, and then acted publicly, to impose upon the Church
a version of the Fatima Message that bears no resemblance to the Catholic
prophecy the Mother of God delivered to the world for the aid of all humanity.
While these four men obviously have many collaborators in what Pope Paul VI
rued as the "auto-demolition" of the Church, it is they who have
specialized, as it were, in the demolition of Fatima. Thus they deserve to be
identified as the principals of the crime we allege here.
But there is much more evidence of this crime, and our case is far from
complete. We will now examine in more detail the basic elements of proof we
have outlined so far. We will begin, in the next chapter, with a more detailed
examination of Cardinal Ratzinger’s "interpretation" of the Third
Secret of Fatima, a key element of the effort to bury the Fatima Message once
and for all.
Chapter 15
Counting the Cost
"In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will
consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will
be granted to the world." So the Mother of God promised at Fatima.
But something has gone wrong. The Fatima prophecies, fulfilled unerringly in
every other respect, have not been fulfilled here. Did the Mother of God
mislead us? Or is it, rather, certain men who have misled us?
On March 3, 2002, Time magazine reported that "a month after the
Sept. 11 attacks, top federal officials feared a nuclear weapon obtained from
the Russian arsenal was being smuggled into New York. The White House’s Counterterrorism
Security Group, part of the National Security Council, was alerted to the
danger through a report by an agent code-named DRAGONFIRE, according to the
magazine, but New York officials and senior FBI officials were not informed in
an effort to avoid panic."
Although the report later proved to be inaccurate, in Washington, D.C. a
"shadow government" has been installed in underground bunkers, and
nuclear detectors have been arrayed at key locations throughout the United
States in anticipation of what the President and his advisors believe to be an
inevitable, and far more deadly, attack by Islamic terrorists. As The
Washington Post reported on March 3, 2002: "Alarmed by growing hints
of al Qaeda’s progress toward obtaining a nuclear or radiological weapon, the
Bush administration has deployed hundreds of sophisticated sensors since
November to U.S. borders, overseas facilities and choke points around
Washington. It has placed the Delta Force, the nation’s elite commando unit, on
a new standby alert to seize control of nuclear materials that the sensors may
detect."
Based on fallible human intelligence reports, political leaders show sufficient
prudence to prepare for the worst, which they know is coming. But the Fatima
revisionists in the Vatican apparatus, following the Sodano Party Line, tell us
that we may safely disregard heavenly intelligence from an infallible source,
which warns us of the annihilation of nations. Worse, they hide from the Church
a vital portion of that heavenly intelligence report—the still-missing words of
the Third Secret—while assuring us that everything has been revealed. And it
seems that as the world hurtles towards disaster, there is no short supply of
useful idiots in the Church, who are only too happy to parrot the Party Line
while helpfully denouncing anyone who questions it.
Consider that as of this writing, it has been eighteen years since the supposed
consecration of Russia on March 25, 1984—in a Vatican ceremony from which any
mention of Russia was deliberately omitted. Over the past eighteen years there
has been no triumph of the Immaculate Heart, and Russia has not converted.
Quite the contrary, during the same period of time the Vatican apparatus has
openly repudiated, as "outdated ecclesiology", any attempt to seek
Catholic converts in Russia.
In Russia and throughout the world the abortion holocaust burns ever higher in
the sight of God. There have been at least 600 million victims of the war on
the unborn since the "consecration" of 1984, the blood of every
victim crying out to Heaven for vengeance.
Yet it seems that not even the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, or the threat
of worse to come, will deter the Vatican apparatus from its pursuit of the new
"post-Fatima" orientation of the Church. Instead of the consecration
of Russia, the Vatican staged another pan-religious prayer meeting: the World
Day of Prayer for Peace at Assisi on January 24, 2002. Catholics, Orthodox,
Protestants, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, African animists, Buddhists, Shintoists,
Confucians, Tenrikyoists and Zoroastrians were shuttled from the Vatican to
Assisi in what L’Osservatore Romano called "a peace train."
The "representatives of the world’s religions", including a witch
doctor, all gave sermons on world peace from a large wooden pulpit set up in
the lower plaza of the Basilica of Saint Francis. As part of the event, each
non-Christian "religion" was given a room in the Sacred Convent of
Saint Francis to perform pagan rituals and offer prayers for peace to various
gods and spirits. At the end of the event, the "representatives of the
world’s religions" placed little burning oil lamps on a table to symbolize
their supposed commitment to interreligious brotherhood and world peace, and
then went home.
Afterwards there was, of course, no peace. On the very next day the Israelis
began bombing Palestinian targets, as the Arab-Israeli conflict continued to
hurtle toward all-out war, while India tested a nuclear missile. Over the next
few weeks, the Hindus and Muslims whose "representatives" had gone to
Assisi to deposit their oil lamps on the table began slaughtering each other in
western India; the death toll in just three days of riots was nearly 300.1
No peace in the world, and no peace in Russia. Rather, as Pope John Paul II
said at Fatima in 1982, we are confronted with "almost apocalyptic menaces
looming over the nations and mankind as a whole." This is the consequence
of ignoring the warnings in the heavenly intelligence report conveyed to the
world at Fatima.
And what of peace within the Church Herself? Here too the Virgin of Fatima gave
us a warning. Here too it was disregarded by the men who tell us that the Third
Secret of Fatima "belongs to the past." Today the corruption and
collapse of the Church’s human element over the past forty years is erupting
into full view for the entire world to chronicle daily and mock to scorn. This
is happening because churchmen themselves have spurned the Message of Fatima,
which gave us the means to know in advance and take measures to avoid the
homosexual infiltration of the priesthood that is now raging out of control.
It has long been known that the majority of Catholics, the victims of decades
of senseless liturgical and ecumenical "reforms", no longer possess a
faith in the Holy Eucharist and no longer regard their Church as any different
in essence from a Protestant denomination; nor do they feel obliged to follow
the Church’s teaching on marriage and procreation. But in the year 2002 the
Church would suffer another devastating blow to Her credibility.
As this book was being written, the press was exposing the massive pedophile
scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston—where Cardinal Law had been hiding the
activities of priestly predators for decades. Evidently in a panic over
potential liability, diocese after diocese in North America has suddenly begun
submitting lists of priests suspected of sexual abuse to law enforcement
authorities—after years of hiding this information from the victims and their
families and shifting the perpetrators from one place to another. The
diocese-by-diocese review of priestly sexual abuse of little boys was provided
in cover stories by Newsweek and National Review and in a host of
stories in national and local newspapers. One can only imagine what lies
beneath the tip of this iceberg.
The seminaries and convents of North America and Europe are practically empty
or closed, except for those operated by small "traditionalist" orders
(like the SSPX and the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter) which follow
"the old ways". There are not nearly enough vocations to replace the
older priests who are dying or retiring in the "mainstream" Church.
And it is widely known that among the few men who do enter
"mainstream" seminaries that adhere to the post-conciliar
"reforms", a very large percentage is homosexual. Father Donald
Cozzens, head of Saint Mary’s Seminary in Cleveland, Ohio, was only admitting
what everyone can see when he observed in his book The Changing Face of the
Catholic Priesthood that:
At issue at the
beginning of the 21st century is the growing perception that the priesthood is,
or is becoming, a gay profession … Heterosexual seminarians are made
uncomfortable by the number of gays around them. … The straight seminarian
feels out of place and may interpret his inner destabilization as a sign that
he does not have a vocation for the priesthood. … The sexual contacts and
romantic unions among gay seminarians create intense and complicated webs of
intrigue and jealousy.2
The plague of sexual abuse and perversion among the priesthood is hardly
limited to North America. England, France and Spain have their own scandals
involving homosexual and pedophile priests, and even a leading Polish
Archbishop has been turned over to the Vatican by the fellow priests he has
sexually extorted and abused. And in Africa, a vast scandal involving the
sexual abuse of nuns by African priests has been reported in the world press
and admitted by the Vatican. Vatican spokesman Father Bernardo Cervellera
(director of Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news service) offered the
outrageous defense that "the problem was limited to sub-Saharan Africa and
related to negative cultural views there of women and of the value of celibacy
... These are not cases of ‘psychopathic’ violence against women, but instead a
‘cultural way of living’ that is common throughout the region …" The abuse
of nuns by African priests is "a cultural way of living" in Africa!
African priests simply don’t appreciate the "value" of celibacy!
According to Reuters, the Vatican is "monitoring the situation … but no
direct action has been taken."3
No direct action by the Vatican against priests who sexually abuse nuns; but Father
Nicholas Gruner has been declared "suspended" in the Congregation for
the Clergy’s only public announcement concerning the
"discipline" of any of the Church’s 260,000 diocesan priests in
2001—for the crime of spreading the authentic Fatima Message. Such are the
Vatican’s priorities in the new orientation of the Catholic Church.
Although the Church’s new orientation is a disastrous failure in every respect,
producing nothing but the bitterest of fruits, the members of the Vatican
apparatus who hound Father Gruner persevere in their pursuit of ruinous
novelties. So far as they are concerned, there will be no return to the
"model" of the Church represented by the Message of Fatima. There
will be no "embarrassing" public consecration of Russia. There will
be no "outdated" conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith. There
will be no triumph of the Immaculate Heart, for this would be a setback to
"ecumenical dialogue" with the Protestants and the Orthodox. And so
Russia has not converted, and there is no peace in the world, and the Catholic
Church remains in a state of near-chaos—no doubt as predicted in the Third
Secret.
In Russia, after some forty years of feckless "ecumenical dialogue,"
the Russian Orthodox are fiercer than ever in their rejection of the papal
primacy and their opposition to the Catholic Church. The Russian Orthodox
hierarchy exploded in outrage when the Vatican announced in February 2002 that
its "apostolic administrations" in Russia would be designated as
dioceses. These would not even be dioceses in the traditional Catholic sense.
There would, for example, be only an "Archdiocese of the Mother of God at
Moscow"; and the Archbishop in charge of this structure will not be called
the Archbishop of Moscow, lest the Vatican give offense to the Russian Orthodox
Partriarch of Moscow, the ex-KGB agent, Alexy II.
After creation of the Catholic "dioceses", the anti-Catholic rage of
the Russian Orthodox hierarchy—illicit heirs of Catholic parishes and Catholic
believers stolen from the true Church at gunpoint by Josef Stalin—has become
uncontainable. Cardinal Kasper’s visit to Moscow was cancelled in protest over
the creation of the dioceses. In his written statement announcing the
cancellation, Orthodox Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk, who was to lead the
Russian Orthodox delegation in yet another round of futile
"ecumenical" negotiations, angrily declared that "we have
nothing to say to each other." A fitting conclusion to an enterprise that
was worthless to begin with. On March 2, 2002, the Pope conducted a Saturday
prayer service that was broadcast from the Vatican by satellite into Russia.
The broadcast was totally blacked out by the same Russian television networks
now under Vladimir Putin’s thumb. Only by shipping special equipment into the
country (that was held up at customs until the last moment) could a few
thousand Catholics see the Pope on television screens set up at Assumption
Cathedral in Moscow. The BBC reported that "Patriarch Alexy of the Russian
Orthodox Church said it (the satellite broadcast) was an ‘invasion of Russia’
and referred to the Polish occupation of Moscow in the early 17th Century.
John-Paul is of Polish origin."4 After 40 years of Ostpolitik
and "ecumenical dialogue", the Orthodox hierarchy will not even
tolerate a video image of the Pope in Russia. This is the conversion of
Russia promised by Our Lady of Fatima?
Trying to put a happy face on the debacle in Russia, Archbishop Tadeusz
Kondrusiewicz, the new head of the "Archdiocese of the Mother of God at
Moscow", claimed that "It’s all a misunderstanding." The
Catholic Church has no intention of making converts among the Orthodox; no
intention of seeking the conversion of Russia. After all, this was the same
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz who had publicly declared in 1998 (as we have noted)
that "The Second Vatican Council has declared that the Orthodox Church is
our Sister Church and has the same means for salvation. So there is no reason
to have a policy of proselytism." An Associated Press story on
Kondrusiewicz’s reaction to Orthodox hostility noted that "Parishioners
have come to Kondrusiewicz in tears recently, complaining that the indignant
rhetoric by Orthodox leaders on national newscasts since Feb. 11 has made them
afraid to practice their faith."5 While Orthodox prelates blast
the Catholic Church on national newscasts, "ultranationalists have joined
forces with the Russian Orthodox Church in criticizing the Catholic Church for
its ‘proselytism’ [and] a parliamentary panel plans an investigation."6
It is not as if the Orthodox prelates of Russia were defending a vibrant Church
of their own. Nearly all of those who designate themselves Russian Orthodox do
not practice their religion. The Economist notes that "Russia is
suffering a crisis of faith. According to the magazine, 94% of Russians aged
18-29 do not go to church."7 The moral degeneration of Russian
society we have already mentioned continues unabated: two abortions for every
live birth (an average of five to six abortions for each Russian woman),
rampant alcoholism and premature death from disease and violent crime, a
burgeoning AIDS epidemic following the legalization of homosexuality by Boris
Yeltsin, a flourishing child pornography industry, and so forth.
But the Catholic Church will not be allowed to fill the spiritual vacuum that
Russian Orthodoxy cannot fill. Russia’s 1997 law on "freedom of
conscience" continues to grant special legal status to Russian Orthodoxy,
Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, while forbidding Catholic "proselytism"
and requiring registration of Catholic churches with local bureaucrats. The
Catholic Church keeps such a low profile in Russia that the Moscow office from
which Archbishop Kondrusiewicz conducts Church affairs is "tucked behind a
military commandant’s office and bears no signs saying it houses the Catholic
Church’s Russian leadership."8
As of the year 2002, Catholics remain a tiny, benighted minority in Russia.
There are perhaps 500,000 nominal Catholics in a nation of 144 million people.
The small percentage of Catholics who even go to Mass on Sunday (most of them
in Siberia) is dependent almost entirely on non-Russian priests, who are
allowed into Russia only with visitor’s visas that require a departure from the
country every three months to seek renewal, which can be denied at any time and
for any reason or for no reason at all. The very secretary of the Catholic
Bishops’ Conference in Russia, Father Stanislaw Opiela, was denied an entry
visa three times without explanation: "I don’t think I’ll try again. It’s
just not worth it," he said. "Maybe there will be some kind of
protest."9 And then, in April of 2002, Bishop Jerzy Masur,
assigned by the Vatican to administer to the vast (but sparsely populated)
region of Siberia was expelled from Russia, his entry visa confiscated without
explanation. Bishop Masur learned that he had been added to a secret
"list" of those who are considered "undesirables" and will
no longer be allowed to enter Russian territory.
All of these developments in Russia prompted Archbishop Kondrusiewicz to issue
a formal protest on behalf of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia,
entitled "Religious Liberty in Russia Is in Serious Danger." The
protest declares:
Catholics in Russia
ask themselves: What will happen next? Are the constitutional guarantees valid
also for them, including liberty of conscience and of the right to have their
own pastors, which comprises inviting them from abroad, not forgetting that for
81 years the Catholic Church was deprived of the right of forming and ordaining
its own priests? Perhaps the State really considers Catholics second-class
citizens? Are they (the State) returning to the times of persecution of the
faith? … The expulsion of a Catholic bishop who has not violated any law,
surpasses all imaginable limits of civilized relations between the State and
the Church. … With grave worry, we express our decisive protest in respect to
violation of the constitutional rights of Catholics.10
In fact, by the end of 2002 the Pope’s own spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls,
declared that the actions against the Catholic Church by Russian authorities
had reached the level of "an authentic persecution." So, while
Cardinal Sodano and the followers of his Party Line insist that Russia was
consecrated to the Immaculate Heart some 18 years ago and that the current
state of affairs in Russia is the "miracle" of "conversion"
brought about by this "consecration," both the leading Catholic prelate
in Russia and the Pope’s personal spokesman publicly decry the persecution
of the Church in Russia, and warn that religious liberty for Russian
Catholics is in serious danger. The only word to describe this situation is
insane.
It is even worse for the Catholic Church in the neighboring "former Soviet
republics." In Romania, at least eleven Catholic parishes stolen by Stalin
have been bulldozed to the ground rather than returned to their rightful owners
after the "fall of communism" in 1990.11 In Belarus,
Catholic World News Service reported on January 10, 2002 that there are
"disturbing new indications of hostility to the Catholic Church" and
that "the broadcasting of Sunday Mass on the state radio service has been
canceled without warning." As CWN noted, "Belarus is officially a
secular state … [I]ts authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, although he
proclaims himself to be an atheist, nevertheless looks to the Orthodox Church
for support in his policy of the ‘integration’ of Belarus with Russia."
The examples of persecution of the Catholic Church in Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Moldova, Romania, Transylvania and elsewhere in "the former Soviet
Union" could be multiplied endlessly.
And where is Russian President Vladimir Putin in all of this? He has been busy
reassembling the never-quite-dismantled elements of a Soviet-style
dictatorship. As reported by the London Times online edition of January
12, 2002, "Russia’s last independent television station was closed
yesterday, leaving the country’s entire broadcast media under Kremlin
control"—the same broadcast media that have been denouncing the Catholic
Church over the question of dioceses in Russia. As if by a prearranged
schedule, the same thing is happening in the Ukraine. On December 21, 2001
WorldNetDaily reported that "The torch of liberty has grown dimmer in the
former Soviet republic of Ukraine—as it has across most of the territory of
the old USSR—with the government’s silencing of the last independent media
outlet and the continuing controversy surrounding the murder of a popular
outspoken journalist." There have been many murders and fatal
"accidents" involving journalists since the "fall of
communism."
In conjunction with his systematic takeover of the mass media under the guise
of "debt collection" and "tax evasion", Putin has restored
the Soviet national anthem, consolidated Kremlin control over Russian provinces
and signed a military and diplomatic "friendship" treaty with Red
China. Putin has even ordered the production of a commemorative calendar glorifying
the Soviet era, Lubyanka Prison (capstone of the Soviet gulag) and the
Soviet-era butcher Felix Dzerzhinsky, who founded the KGB, authorized the
torture and execution of Catholic priests, and presided over Lenin’s
liquidation of the Russian middle class. The calendar is for use in the offices
of the KGB, which has been strategically renamed the FSB.
As if by magical coincidence, a national cult of Vladimir Putin is
"spontaneously" emerging. As reported in the Electronic Telegraph of
May 8, 2001:
[T]he cult of
President Putin received new impetus yesterday when thousands of students
celebrated the first anniversary of his inauguration under the Kremlin walls.
The rally, where many wore T-shirts decorated with Mr. Putin’s face, plumbed new
depths of grovelling to the former KGB colonel, who is already immortalized in
children’s books, sculpture and obsequious coverage in the media. Speakers
tried to outdo each other in their praise of the great leader. Their rhetoric
yielded new insights into the thinking of Putin loyalists, who now dominate the
bureaucracy, parliament and state broadcasting.
All of these developments were summed up by Yelena Bonner, widow of the Soviet
dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov: "Under Putin, a new stage in the
introduction of modernized Stalinism has begun. Authoritarianism is growing
harsher, society is being militarized, the military budget is increasing."
Bonner warned that "under the present government our country can expect,
in the foreseeable future, destructive upheavals that could affect surrounding
countries as well." She also drew clear parallels between
"converted" Russia and Stalinist Russia: "about a third of the
population worked for either nothing or symbolic wages during the Stalin era. In
modern Russia two thirds of the population are on the verge of poverty. The
health care system is worse today than it was in the Fifties. Stalin murdered
about 20 million [actually more like 50 million] people, while in today’s
Russia the population is falling by a million people a year."12
As Russia embraces a modernized Stalinism, putting the lie to the claim that
Russia has been "converting" since the 1984 consecration of the
world, Cardinal Sodano continues his program of aligning the Catholic Church
with the forces of the emerging New World Order. Catholic news organs reported
with dismay that the Vatican Secretariat of State actively supports the newly
created International Criminal Court (ICC), even to the extent of making a
financial contribution to its coffers.13 Catholic commentators,
joined by secular political commentators, have long warned that the ICC is a
direct threat to the rights of sovereign nations and their peoples because it
will assert jurisdiction to conduct politically motivated trials—from which
there will be no appeal—of the citizens of any nation, based on an
ever-expanding list of prosecutable "offenses".14 These
trials would be conducted without any of the procedural safeguards on admission
of evidence and the right to confront witnesses which are essential to due
process of law.15
Everywhere—in the Church, in Russia, in the world—the practitioners of Cardinal
Sodano’s Party Line on Fatima see the evidence of its failure. Yet Sodano’s
collaborators in the Vatican apparatus, and their Fatima revisionist dupes
throughout the Church, continue to insist that Russia was consecrated to the
Immaculate Heart 18 years ago, that recent events in Russia are "a
miracle", that the Third Secret and the Message of Fatima as a whole
"belong to the past" and need no longer concern us. Catholics like
Father Gruner, who continue to point out the obvious, are being subjected to
the equivalent of a Stalinist purge for their lack of fidelity to the Party
Line. They are denounced as "disobedient", "schismatic",
and their "loyalty to the Pope" is questioned, even though the Pope
has never personally endorsed or imposed Sodano’s Party Line on Fatima but has
rather given compelling indications of its utter falsity.
How does one count the cost of the insane conspiracy to do away with the
prophecies of the Mother of God at Fatima? The cost in temporal suffering and
harm to souls is already beyond all human calculation: the misery of the
Russian people and the continuing State persecution of Russian Catholics; the
holocaust of abortion in every nation; a rising tide of violence throughout the
world; the loss of countless souls through destruction of their Catholic Faith
and the corruption of the Catholic clergy now on display before the whole
world. And yet all of this was undoubtedly predicted in that part of the Third
Secret we have not been allowed to see; and all of it could have been
avoided if the men who rule the Church today had followed, rather than
despised, the Virgin of Fatima’s simple requests.
But what will be the cost in the coming days, if the course which the accused
have set for the Church is not corrected soon? Our Lady of Fatima has already
answered that question: wars and persecution of the Church, the martyrdom of
Catholics, the suffering of the Holy Father, the annihilation of nations, the
loss of millions more souls.
Those who have engineered the Church’s new orientation and imposed the Party
Line on Fatima insist that we ignore these divine warnings, even though they
were delivered by the Mother of God Herself and authenticated by a public
miracle without precedent in human history. No, we cannot ignore the warnings. The
time has come to declare that it is not the Message of Fatima, but the
all-too-fallible human advice of these men that we must ignore. By their
fruits ye shall know them, and the fruits of their policies and judgments are
there for all to see: the Church is in the depths of Her worst crisis in 2,000
years, and the world is headed toward an apocalypse.
We have made our case as best we can; we have discharged our duty of conscience
before the Church and the bar of history. Now, we submit, a duty descends upon
you, the reader. We ask you to consider the evidence we have presented and
render your verdict—a verdict that good cause exists to ask that the highest
authority in the Church judge and correct the actions of these men, repairing
the damage they have done and thus doing justice to the Church and the world.
But while we wait for justice to be rendered, we must do whatever is in our
power to protect ourselves, our loved ones, our fellow Catholics, and the world
at large from further harm.
This means, first of all, that we must reject the false counsel of those in
authority who have tried to replace the words of the Mother of God with their
own words, and Heaven’s plan for peace with their own plan. We have seen the
ruinous results of their fallible human wisdom, which they continue to try to
impose upon the Church against the evidence of our senses, the dictates of our
reason and the very words of the Mother of God Herself. With all due respect to
their offices in the Church, we must say of these men that insofar as the
Message of Fatima and its implications for the Church and the world are
concerned, they have forfeited their own credibility. We should no longer
follow them.
As we have seen in Cardinal Newman’s apt description of the Arian crisis, the
present crisis in the Church would not be the first time in Her history that
the laity were left to carry on the Faith without the help of the upper
hierarchy or even most bishops, relying instead on their own sensus
catholicus and a few good priests and prelates who did not succumb to the
reigning confusion. During the Arian crisis nearly the entire hierarchy lost
sight of something as fundamental as the divinity of Christ, and the laity, for
the safety of their own souls, had to cease following those in authority for at
least 40 years. It is manifest that a comparable situation has arisen today.
Can anyone looking objectively at the present condition of the Church seriously
deny that She is undergoing a crisis of faith and discipline no less severe
than that in the time of Arius?
In Reform of the Roman Liturgy, the renowned liturgist Msgr. Klaus
Gamber, lamenting the ecclesial destruction caused by the liturgical
"reforms" of Pope Paul VI, observed as follows:
Great is the
confusion! Who can still see clearly in this darkness? Where in our Church are
the leaders who can show us the right path? Where are the bishops courageous
enough to cut out the cancerous growth of the modernist theology that has
implanted itself and is festering within the celebration of the most sacred
mysteries, before the cancer spreads and causes even greater damage? What we
need today is a new Athanasius, a new Basil, bishops like those who in the
Fourth Century courageously fought against the Arian heresy when almost the
whole of Christendom had succumbed to the heresy.16
Until such leadership emerges in the Church, until the current crisis has ended
and things are set right again, we must educate ourselves and others about the
Faith, defending it as best we can. In our time, this task requires that we also
defend the Message of Fatima; for as Saint Thomas teaches, in every age God
sends prophets, not to give a new doctrine, but to remind the faithful of what
they must do to save their souls. The great prophet of our age is Our Lady of
Fatima. As Sister Lucy herself said in the famous interview with Father Fuentes
in 1957:
Father, the Most
Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her Message,
neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way, but without
giving any importance to Her Message. …
Tell them Father,
that many times, the Most Holy Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as
well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth.
She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to
punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that
poor nation.
The conversion of Russia has not been obtained. Anyone with any sense can
recognize this. That being the case, the annihilation of nations is surely
coming, unless the men who govern the Church change course, abandon their
destructive novelties, and simply do what the Mother of God requested at
Fatima. We simply can no longer risk relying on the advice of those who are determined
to ignore the true signs of the times; the signs of a gathering apocalypse
foretold by the Virgin at Fatima. Imploring the grace of God, we will have to
advance the cause of true peace in the world without the help of our own
superiors, so many of whom have been blinded in their pursuit of a new and
alien vision of the Church.
In this undertaking we must gather together under the mantle of Our Lady of
Fatima, praying incessantly for Her intercession in this time of great
confusion, and never forgetting Her unbreakable promises to the Church and the
world.
Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for Us!
Footnotes
1. New York Times, March 2, 2002.
2. Donald Cozzens, The Changing Face of the
Catholic Priesthood, (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2002) p.
135.
3. CNN, March 21, 2001.
4. BBC Online, March 2, 2002.
5. AP News, March 1, 2002.
6. Zenit News, February 17, 2002.
7. Zenit News, December 22, 2000.
8. AP report and photograph, February 28, 2002.
9. Catholic News Service Report, May 8,
2001.
10. National Catholic Register Online Web
Edition, April 28 - May 5, 2002.
11. CWNews, March 2, 2002.
12. Electronic Telegraph, March 2, 2000.
13. Zenit news report, July 3, 2002, "Vatican
Contributes to International Criminal Court."
14. "World Court Now A Reality" by Mary
Jo Anderson, April 11, 2002, WorldNetDaily, and "Stopping the
International Criminal Court," by Mary Jo Anderson, at
(www.catholiceducation.org/articles/social_justice/sj0003.html).
15. "The International Criminal Court vs. the
American People," by Lee A. Casey and David B. Rivkin, Jr., a Heritage
Foundation Report dated February 5, 1999, which can be found at
(www.heritage.org/Research/ InternationalOrganizations/BG1249.cfm).
16. Msgr. Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman
Liturgy, (Foundation For Christian Reform, Harrison, New York, 1993)
p. 113.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 16
Framing an Indictment
Great is the calamity that now
afflicts Holy Church and the world at large. In these extraordinary times, just
as in the time of the Arian crisis, the laity must shoulder burdens that in
ordinary times would not be theirs.
As members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we have a duty to take positive
measures to oppose the crisis, according to our stations in life. In doing so
we cannot be deterred by that false appeal to piety which urges us to indulge in
the gross presumption that "God is in charge of the Church", if this
is taken to mean that rank-and-file Catholics must do nothing to oppose error
and injustice perpetrated by members of the hierarchy, but rather blindly
submit to every decision of authority, no matter how destructive its
consequences.
Our
Duty in Justice and Charity
That is not the Catholic way. That is not what the laity and faithful clergy
did during the Arian crisis, and it is not what we should do today. Our
silence and acquiescence in the face of this ongoing disaster would, first of
all, be an injustice to the Church and a betrayal of our solemn duty in justice
as confirmed Catholics, as soldiers of Christ.
Then, too, there is our obligation in charity toward our fellow Catholics,
including our superiors in the hierarchy. We have a duty in charity to our
superiors to oppose what is happening in the Church, even if that means
taking the extraordinary step of having to rebuke our own superiors in public.
As Saint Thomas Aquinas taught: "if the faith were endangered, a subject ought
to rebuke his prelate even publicly." Why is it both just and
charitable for a subject to rebuke his prelate, even publicly, in such
cases? St. Thomas here observes that the public rebuke of a prelate "would
seem to savor of presumptuous pride; but there is no presumption in thinking
oneself better in some respect, because, in this life, no man is without
some fault. We must also remember that when a man reproves his prelate
charitably, it does not follow that he thinks himself any better, but merely
that he offers his help to one who, ‘being in the higher position among you, is
therefore in greater danger,’ as Augustine observes in his Rule quoted
above."1 Of course, there is also danger to our fellow
Catholics—the gravest possible danger—from the current course of destructive
innovation being followed by certain members of the Vatican apparatus, who have
turned their backs not only on the Message of Fatima but on the Church’s entire
past.
The teaching of Saint Thomas on the duty to rebuke our superiors when their
actions threaten harm to the faith reflects the unanimous teaching of the
Saints and Doctors of the Church. As St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the
Church, taught in his work on the Roman Pontiff, even the Pope may be
rebuked and resisted if he threatens harm to the Church:
Just as it is licit
to resist the Pontiff that aggresses the body, it is also licit to resist the
one who aggresses souls or who disturbs civil order, or, above all, who
attempts to destroy the Church. I say that it is licit to resist him by not
doing what he orders and by preventing his will from being executed; it is
not licit, however, to judge, punish or depose him, since these acts are proper
to a superior.2
Likewise, the eminent Sixteenth Century theologian Francisco Suarez (whom Pope
Paul V praised as Doctor Eximius et Pius, or "Exceptional and Pious
Doctor") taught as follows:
And in this second way
the Pope could be schismatic, if he were unwilling to be in normal union with
the whole body of the Church, as would occur if he attempted to excommunicate
the whole Church, or, as both Cajetan and Torquemada observe, if he wished to overturn
the rites of the Church based on Apostolic Tradition. … If [the Pope] gives
an order contrary to right customs, he should not be obeyed; if he
attempts to do something manifestly opposed to justice and the common good, it
will be lawful to resist him; if he attacks by force, by force he can be
repelled, with a moderation appropriate to a just defense.3
If even the Pope may legitimately be resisted when he takes actions that would
harm the Church, all the more so the prelates whom we must accuse here. Quite
simply, as Pope St. Felix III declared: "Not to oppose error is to approve
it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it." Members of the laity and
lower-ranking clergy are not exempt from that injunction. All the members of
the Church are subject to it.
We thus have a duty to speak out. We have a duty to bring to the Pope’s
attention what we believe in conscience is a well-founded accusation that the
prelates named in this book (and their many collaborators) have caused, and
imminently will cause, grave harm to the Church and the world by their attack
on the Message of Fatima. We have a duty to petition the Holy Father for
redress of the crime that we believe these men have committed.
We are about to submit our case for your consideration as fellow members of the
Holy Catholic Church. We will now summarize briefly what the evidence has shown
in general, and what it shows as to the particular actions of those we have
accused here.
In general, we have proven the following:
First, the Message of Fatima is a true and authentic prophecy of vital
importance for the Church and the world in this epoch of human history. The
Message was delivered in person by the Mother of God, authenticated by
indisputable public miracles witnessed by tens of thousands of people, has been
pronounced worthy of belief by the Church, and has received the explicit
endorsement of a series of Popes, including Pope John Paul II. In short, the
Message of Fatima simply cannot be ignored. As Pope John Paul II himself
has said, the Message of Fatima imposes an obligation on the Church.
Second, the Message of Fatima calls for the establishment in the world
of devotion to the Immaculate Heart—and thus the Catholic Faith—throughout
the world. To that end, God Himself has decreed these things for our
time: the solemn public consecration of Russia—specifically and only Russia—to
the Immaculate Heart by the Pope and the bishops together, the conversion of
Russia to Catholicism, and the consequent Triumph of the Immaculate Heart in
Russia and elsewhere.
Third, the Third Secret of Fatima (in that portion yet to be revealed)
predicts what Catholics see all around them today: a catastrophic loss of faith
and discipline in the Church—heresy, scandal, apostasy reaching into nearly
every corner of the Catholic world. Aside from the mountain of other evidence
we have presented on this point, one piece of evidence standing alone proves
this: the crucial phrase in the Message which the accused have buried and tried
to make everyone forget: "In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always
be preserved etc."—in Portugal, yes, but not in other countries, as we
have seen.
Fourth, Sister Lucy insisted that the Third Secret be made public by
1960, because in that year it would be "much clearer."
Fifth, by 1960 the Second Vatican Council had been called. The men who
have governed the Church since 1960 have given the human element of the Church
an entirely new orientation. They have done this by means of an "opening
to the world" through which "dialogue" with heretics,
schismatics, Communists, atheists and other opponents of the one true Church
has de facto replaced the Church’s once fierce opposition to error and
Her obligation to pass on to all the following generations the Catholic Faith
whole and inviolate, as Christ commanded them to do. Not content with ignoring
their own solemn duty to keep and pass on the Faith, they also persecute those
who seek to adhere to that duty.
Sixth, as early as 1973 Pope Paul VI was forced to admit that "the
opening to the world has become a veritable invasion of the Church by worldly
thinking"—that is, by liberalism. This invasion of the Church by
liberalism, and the consequent collapse of faith and discipline within the
Church, represents the cherished goal of organized Masonry and Communism: not
the complete overthrow of the Church, which they know is impossible, but the adaptation
of the Church to liberal ideas. The present state of the Church is precisely what
these forces boldly predicted they would achieve, and precisely what a long
line of pre-conciliar Popes warned was the object of their conspiracies.
Seventh, instead of fighting against the new orientation that adapts the
Church to liberal ideas, post-conciliar churchmen, including those we accuse
here, have unswervingly pursued the new orientation by taking and implementing
decisions in the name of Vatican II, including (a) Ostpolitik, a policy
by which many members of the Church are made to avoid any condemnation of or
active opposition to Communist regimes; (b) the "ecumenical venture"
and "interreligious dialogue", which de facto abandon both the
conversion of non-Catholics to the one true religion and the dogma that the
Catholic Church is the one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation;
(c) the introduction of novel and ambiguous terminology in conciliar and
post-conciliar documents which (like the formulas of the Arians in the 4th
Century) undermine belief in the dogmas of the Faith; (d) a totally
unprecedented "reform" of the liturgy by abandoning the traditional
Latin Rite; (e) permission or toleration for various forms of heteropraxis
(unsound practices) such as communion in the hand, altar girls, removal of the
tabernacle from the altar, etc., which undermine belief in the Holy Eucharist
and the sacrificial priesthood.
Eighth, the Message of Fatima, with its simple call for the public
consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart by the Pope and bishops, the
conversion of Russia to Catholicism and the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart
(and with it the Catholic Church) throughout the world, cannot be reconciled
with the new orientation of the Church, in which Ostpolitik,
"ecumenical dialogue" and "interreligious dialogue" prevent
the Church from publicly declaring that Russia must be consecrated and
converted to the true religion for the good of that nation and the world.
Ninth, the churchmen who implement the new orientation, including the
accused, have attempted to revise the Message of Fatima to make it conform to
the new orientation. They have done this by insisting upon an
"interpretation" of the Message that eliminates (a) any consecration
of Russia by name (which they regard as an intolerable "ecumenical"
offense or "provocation" to the Russian Orthodox), (b) any conversion
of Russia to the Catholic Faith (which they have expressly abandoned as
"outdated" ecclesiology), and (c) any Triumph of the Immaculate Heart
throughout the world (which they regard as "triumphalistic",
embarrassing and "non-ecumenical").
Tenth, the present Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano, who has
assumed de facto control of the daily governance of the Church since the
reorganization of the Roman Curia by the Masonic Cardinal Jean Villot
(Secretary of State of Pope Paul VI), has dictated a Party Line on Fatima,
according to which the Message of Fatima in general, and the Third Secret in
particular, are to be buried by means of an "interpretation" that
eliminates its prophecies of future events, converting them into past events,
and reduces its specifically Catholic content to mere generic
"Christian" piety that will not offend the Russian Orthodox or the
Protestants.
Eleventh, the Secretary of State’s Party Line on Fatima was cited no
less than four times in the commentary on the Message of Fatima and the Third
Secret published by Cardinal Ratzinger and Monsignor Bertone on June 26, 2000.
Twelfth, in accordance with the Party Line on Fatima, the Third Secret
has been only partially disclosed, and the vision of the "Bishop dressed
in White" being executed by soldiers outside a half-ruined city has been
"interpreted" to mean nothing more than the failed attempt on the
life of Pope John Paul II by a lone assassin 21 years ago.
Thirteenth, that portion of the Third Secret which contains the
"words of the Virgin" referred to by the Vatican itself in 1960—the
words which almost certainly follow the incomplete phrase "In Portugal the
dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc."—has been withheld from
the faithful.
Fourteenth, the Third Secret has in fact been revealed in its essence
not only by the testimony of numerous witnesses, but by Pope John Paul II
himself, who has twice (in sermons at Fatima) explicitly linked the Message of
Fatima to the Book of the Apocalypse, and in particular to the fall of
one-third of the stars (consecrated souls) from Heaven after they are dragged
down by the "tail of the dragon" (Apoc. 12:3,4)—an event nowhere seen
in the first two parts of the Message, and therefore undoubtedly seen in the
Third Secret.
Fifteenth, in a vain attempt to quell legitimate doubts about the Party
Line on Fatima, the Vatican apparatus has conducted a secret
"interview" of Sister Lucy—for which there is no transcript or other
complete record—in which it appears that she was essentially induced to
"agree" that she likely concocted those elements of the Fatima
Message that contradict the Party Line, and was further induced to repudiate
(without the slightest explanation) her unwavering testimony for 60 years that
the Consecration of Russia requires explicit mention of Russia and the
participation of both the Pope and the world’s bishops in a joint public
ceremony.
Sixteenth, those who do not hew to the Church’s new orientation,
including the Party Line on Fatima, are subjected to persecution and
"purging" by means of "suspension", threats of
"excommunication" and other forms of unjust discipline, while those
who are faithful to the new orientation and the Party Line on Fatima are left
alone, or even rewarded, even if they are promoting heresy, engaging in open
disobedience to liturgical or other Church laws, or committing unspeakable
sexual scandal. As in the time of the Arian heresy, we are facing the same
situation lamented by Saint Basil the Great: "Only one offense is now
vigorously punished: an accurate observance of our fathers’ traditions. For
this cause the pious are driven from their countries and transported into deserts."
Seventeenth, as the direct result of this concerted effort to revise,
obscure and bury the Message of Fatima in favor of the new orientation, Russia
has not been consecrated, Russia has not converted but has only further
degenerated, the Church is in the depths of an unprecedented crisis, many souls
are at risk. For the Virgin of Fatima said: "If people do what I ask, many
souls will be saved." And Our Lady also said: "Many souls go to hell
because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them." Regarding
her own mission, Sister Lucy said to Father Fuentes on December 26, 1957:
"my mission is not to indicate to the world the material punishments which
are certain to come if the world does not pray and do penance beforehand. No!
My mission is to indicate to everyone the imminent danger we are in of losing
our souls for all eternity if we remain obstinate in sin." In consequence,
the world is facing the annihilation of various nations that Our Lady of Fatima
warned would be the consequence of spurning Her requests.
Now, as to the prelates we have been compelled to accuse by name before the
Church, the following has been established by substantial evidence:
As to Cardinal Angelo Sodano
First, as Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano is
literally the most powerful figure in the Church today, given the
reorganization of the Roman Curia under Pope Paul VI; and, as such, Cardinal
Sodano is the de facto ruler over the daily affairs of the Church,
especially given the failing health of the Supreme Pontiff.
Second, owing to the same curial reforms of Pope Paul VI,
Cardinal Sodano stands at the head of every Vatican dicastery, including the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which (when it was called the
Holy Office) was formerly headed by the Pope.
Third, it is Cardinal Sodano who has dictated what we have called
the Party Line on Fatima: i.e., the falsehood that the Message of Fatima,
including the Third Secret, belongs entirely to the past, and that no one may
request any longer the Consecration of Russia. We know this because,
- it was Cardinal Sodano, not the Pope, who announced to the
world on May 13, 2000 that the Third Secret would be revealed, but only
after a "commentary" had been prepared by the CDF, which, again,
is subordinate to him, and
- it was Cardinal Sodano’s "interpretation" of the
Third Secret that was cited no fewer than four times in the CDF’s
commentary The Message of Fatima (TMF).
Fourth, Cardinal Sodano, as the de facto ruler of daily
Church affairs, has vigorously enforced the new orientation of the Church in
the matter of Fatima. We know this because,
- Cardinal Sodano took control of the
"interpretation" of the Third Secret and its false reduction to
a thing of the past, along with the rest of the Fatima Message.
- One day after the publication of TMF, Cardinal
Sodano pointedly demonstrated his adherence to the new orientation by
inviting Mikhail Gorbachev, the pro-abortion, ex-Soviet dictator, to the
Vatican for a bogus "press conference" (no questions allowed),
during which Cardinal Sodano, Gorbachev and Cardinal Silvestrini sat
together to heap praise on a key element of the new orientation, developed
by Cardinal Sodano’s predecessor, Cardinal Casaroli: namely, Ostpolitik,
under which the Church "dialogues" with Communist regimes rather
than opposing them, and observes diplomatic silence in the face of
Communist persecution of the Church.
- Cardinal Sodano’s representative, Cardinal Cassidy, negotiated
the Balamand Declaration (1993) which declares that the return of the
Orthodox to Rome is "outdated ecclesiology"—as is, therefore,
(according to Cardinal Sodano) the conversion of Russia to the Catholic
Faith called for by Our Lady of Fatima.
- Cardinal Sodano has overseen the persecution of Father
Nicholas Gruner, perhaps the Church’s leading exponent of the authentic
Fatima Message, as shown by the following facts:
|
|
Father Gruner’s
groundless "suspension" was announced "by mandate of a higher
authority" (the Vatican term for the Secretary of State) on September
12, 2001. |
|
|
Documents falsely
denouncing Father Gruner and pressuring priests and bishops to shun his
apostolate’s conferences have been circulated throughout the world over the
years by apostolic nuncios, who are ecclesial "diplomats" attached
to the Secretary of State. |
|
|
The persecution
of Father Gruner began in 1989, with what his bishop at the time called
"worried signals" from the Vatican Secretary of State. |
As to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
First, Cardinal Ratzinger, in his capacity as head of the CDF,
has on innumerable occasions stated his commitment to the new orientation of
the Church, which he described as "demolition of bastions" in a book
published after he had become head of the CDF.
Second, in accordance with this "demolition of
bastions", Cardinal Ratzinger has openly declared his view that Blessed
Pius IX and St. Pius X were "one-sided" in their solemn, infallible
condemnations of liberalism, and that their teaching was "countered"
by Vatican II. He further declares that the Catholic Church no longer seeks to
convert all the Protestants and schismatics, and that it has no right to
"absorb" their "churches and ecclesial communities," but
must make a place for them in a "unity of diversity"—a view that is
obviously irreconcilable with the consecration and conversion of Russia to the
Catholic Faith. Cardinal Ratzinger’s view is, to say the least, suspect of
heresy.
Third, one of the "bastions" Cardinal Ratzinger
has sought to "demolish" is the traditional Catholic understanding of
the Message of Fatima.
Fourth, Cardinal Ratzinger sought to demolish the bastion of
Fatima in TMF, which he published under the control of Cardinal Sodano.
Fifth, TMF attempts to destroy the authentic Catholic
prophetic content of the Message by the following exegetical frauds:
- Cardinal Ratzinger removed the words "In the
end" from the Virgin’s prophecy "In the end, My Immaculate
Heart will triumph."
- Cardinal Ratzinger also cropped the immediately following
words from the Fatima prophecy: "The Holy Father will
consecrate Russia to Me, and it will be converted, and a period of
peace will be granted to the world."
- Having deliberately tampered with the words of the Mother
of God, Cardinal Ratzinger then declared that the (predicted future)
Triumph of the Immaculate Heart means only Mary’s fiat, 2,000 years
ago, in consenting to be the Mother of the Redeemer.
- Cardinal Ratzinger thus deliberately ignored the Virgin’s
prophecy of four future events surrounding the consecration and
conversion of Russia, and deliberately reduced them all to one event—Her fiat
in 1 B.C.
- Concerning devotion to the Immaculate Heart, which Our
Lady of Fatima announced that God wills to establish in the world,
Cardinal Ratzinger dared to say that devotion to the one and only
Immaculate Heart of Mary means nothing more than following Mary’s example
by achieving an "immaculate heart" of one’s own, through
"interior unity" with God.
- By means of this grotesque and blasphemous
"interpretation", Cardinal Ratzinger debases the Mother of God
Herself in order to sever any link between devotion to the Immaculate
Heart in the world, and Our Lady of Fatima’s call for the
conversion of Russia to the Catholic religion, which must precede true
devotion to the Immaculate Heart in that nation since the Russian Orthodox
religion does not recognize the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
Sixth, Cardinal Ratzinger, following Cardinal Sodano’s Party
Line, stated in TMF that "we must affirm with Cardinal Sodano: ‘...
the events to which the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima refers now seem
part of the past’", and (according to Cardinal Sodano’s
"interpretation") that the Third Secret culminated with the failed
assassination attempt in 1981.
Seventh, in adopting the Sodano Party Line on the Third
Secret, Cardinal Ratzinger flatly contradicted his own testimony in 1984—three
years after the assassination attempt—that the Third Secret is a
"religious prophecy" concerning "dangers to the faith and the
life of the Christian, and therefore the world", on which occasion
Cardinal Ratzinger made no suggestion that the Secret pertained to the 1981
assassination attempt or any other past event.
Eighth, in furtherance of the Party Line, Cardinal Ratzinger went
out of his way to criticize Father Nicholas Gruner at the press conference of
June 26, 2000, advising the world press that Father Gruner "must be
submissive to the Magisterium" and accept the alleged 1984 consecration of
the world as a consecration of Russia. That is, according to Cardinal
Ratzinger, Father Gruner must submit to Cardinal Sodano’s Party Line. Cardinal
Ratzinger’s claim is false because there has been no binding, authoritative
pronouncement of the Magisterium—not the Pope, not a Council, not the Ordinary
and Universal Magisterium.
Ninth, in sum, Cardinal Ratzinger, carrying out the Party Line, deliberately
used his position as head of the CDF to lend the false appearance of
theological weight and validity to a shameless "deconstruction" of
the Message of Fatima—an effort so blatant that even the Los Angeles Times
sub-headlined its coverage of TMF and the June 26, 2000 press conference
as follows:
The Vatican’s Top
Theologian Gently Debunks a Nun’s Account of Her 1917 Vision That Fueled
Decades of Speculation.
As to Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone
In his capacity as Secretary of the CDF, Msgr. Bertone also carried out the
Party Line dictated by Cardinal Sodano.
First, Msgr. Bertone perpetrated a demonstrable fraud by
asserting in TMF that "Sister Lucia personally confirmed that this
solemn and universal act of consecration [of the world in 1984] corresponded to
what Our Lady wished (‘Sim, està feita, tal como Nossa Senhora a pediu,
desde o dia 25 de Março de 1984’: ‘Yes it has been done just as Our Lady
asked, on 25 March 1984’: Letter of 8 November 1989). Hence any further discussion
or request [for the Consecration of Russia] is without basis."
Second, the fraud is demonstrable since the cited "letter of
8 November 1989" was printed out by a computer that the aged Sister Lucy
does not use, and contains an error of fact that Sister Lucy could not have
made—namely, that Pope Paul VI performed a consecration of the world during his
visit to Fatima in 1967, when Pope Paul never consecrated anything during his
fleeting appearance at the Cova da Iria.
Third, Msgr. Bertone deliberately relied solely upon the patently
bogus "letter of 8 November 1989", even though he (and the rest of
the Vatican apparatus) had complete access to Sister Lucy in April-May 2000 and
could have asked her to confirm that the 1984 consecration of the world
sufficed for a consecration of Russia—contrary to her consistent testimony for
decades.
Fourth, Msgr. Bertone, truckling to the Sodano Party Line that
Fatima "belongs to the past", dared to state in TMF that
"the decision of His Holiness Pope John Paul II" to publish the Third
Secret on June 26, 2000 "brings to an end a period of history marked by
tragic human lust for power and evil"—a reckless, preposterous and
fraudulent claim that ignores reality and contributes to the present endangerment
of the Church and the whole world.
Fifth, in response to growing public doubt about the completeness
of the Vatican’s disclosure of the Third Secret and the Consecration of Russia,
Msgr. Bertone staged a secret "interview" of Sister Lucy at her
convent in Coimbra, the alleged results of which were not produced for more
than a month.
Sixth, although the "interview" is alleged to have
lasted more than two hours, Msgr. Bertone offered only forty-four words
from Sister Lucy related to the Consecration of Russia and the Third Secret,
which words are presented without any surrounding context, so that it is
impossible to tell exactly what Sister Lucy was asked, and how exactly she
answered.
Seventh, among other incredible things, we are asked to believe
that during this two-hour interview, of which we are given only forty-four
relevant words,
- Sister Lucy repudiated a lifetime of unwavering testimony
that Our Lady asked for the Consecration of Russia by the Pope and
all the world’s bishops, not the consecration of the world by the Pope and
a few bishops.
- Sister Lucy "confirms everything that is
written" in TMF, including its suggestion that she concocted
the Third Secret vision from things she had seen in books, and that
Edouard Dhanis is an "eminent scholar" on Fatima, even though
Dhanis asserted that Sister Lucy concocted virtually every prophetic
element of the Fatima Message.
- Sister Lucy "confirms" that the Triumph of the
Immaculate Heart has nothing to do with the consecration and conversion of
Russia, but only the Virgin Mary’s fiat 2,000 years ago.
Eighth, no transcript or other record of the two-hour
"interview" has been produced, but only an Italian-language summary
in L’Osservatore Romano, signed by Msgr. Bertone and (purportedly) by
Sister Lucy, who does not even speak Italian. (Sister Lucy’s
"signature" does not appear on the English translation of the
"summary.")
Ninth, Msgr. Bertone conducted the "interview" even
though he had a vested interest in coercing Sister Lucy to support the Party
Line, and to defend his own preposterous claim that the press conference of
June 26, 2000 "brings to an end a period of history marked by tragic human
lust for power and evil …"
As to Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos
The principal role of Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos in this matter has been to
carry out the Party Line and serve the new orientation of the Church by
seeking, in his capacity as head of the Congregation for the Clergy, to crush
the Fatima apostolate and destroy the reputation of Father Nicholas Gruner, who
represents the largest pocket of "resistance" to the effort to bury
the Message of Fatima. The evidence shows that,
First, the new orientation of the Church has allowed the Catholic
clergy to be thoroughly infiltrated with homosexuals, pederasts and heretics
who bring disgrace upon the Church—to the detriment of the many good priests
who, like Father Gruner, have kept their vows and kept the faith.
Second, despite a crisis in faith and discipline among the clergy
that is raging on every continent, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos has issued public
condemnations, notices of "suspension" and even a threat of
excommunication regarding only one priest in the entire Catholic Church: Father
Nicholas Gruner, who has committed no offense against faith or morals, has kept
his vow of celibacy, has kept the faith, and has done absolutely nothing to
warrant any punishment, let alone the cruel and unusual punishment imposed upon
him by Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos under the direction of Cardinal Sodano, who
has arrogated the papacy to himself de facto.
Third, the only priests Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos has subjected
to immediate and harsh disciplinary measures during his tenure are
"traditionalist" priests he deems insufficiently "inserted"
into the "ecclesial reality of today" and "the present-day
Church"—i.e. the new orientation, which he enforces far more diligently
than the doctrinal or moral integrity of the priesthood.
Fourth, in his letter to Father Gruner of June 5, 2000, Cardinal
Castrillón Hoyos threatened Father Gruner with excommunication—only days before
the June 26, 2000 press conference called to "gently debunk" the
Message of Fatima, under the direction of Cardinal Sodano.
Fifth, on February 16, 2001, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos sent
Father Gruner another letter, renewing the threat of
"excommunication" and demanding that he "publicly retract"
criticism of Cardinal Sodano, and other matters of free opinion in the Church,
found in certain articles in The Fatima Crusader—an unprecedented
demand, and one that is quite ludicrous considering the profusion of heretical
literature promoted by unfaithful priests and even bishops today, about which
Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos does nothing.
Sixth, in the same letter, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos revealed his
motive of furthering the Party Line when he castigated Father Gruner for not
accepting the new version of Fatima: "the Blessed Mother appeared to the three
little visionaries in the Cova da Iria at the beginning of the century, and marked
out a program for the New Evangelization which the whole Church finds
itself engaged in, which is even more urgent at the dawn of the third
millennium."
Seventh, Our Lady of Fatima said nothing about any "New
Evangelization", but only the consecration of Russia, the conversion of
Russia to Catholicism, and the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart—all of which
Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos studiously ignores, along with the other accused.
Eighth, in a Church beset by widespread clerical corruption that
he generally tolerates, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos has attempted to destroy the
life’s work and good name of Father Nicholas Gruner, a faithful priest, simply
and only because Father Gruner will not accept a counterfeit of the Message of
Fatima, dictated by Cardinal Sodano.
As to All of the Accused
The evidence we have presented shows that all four of the accused—Cardinal
Angelo Sodano, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Msgr. Tarcisio Bertone, and Cardinal
Dario Castrillón Hoyos—have combined and conspired to take various actions that
make no sense unless they are viewed through the prism of the motive we have
proven here: the motive of eliminating the Message of Fatima, understood in a
traditional Catholic sense, from the memory of the Church, in order to make way
for a new ecclesial orientation that cannot coexist with what the authentic
Message says.
The accused have attempted to dispose of the Message of Fatima at precisely
that moment in history when the Church’s correspondence to its requests would
avert what anyone can see is a coming global catastrophe. The civil authorities
of the world, armed with only the fallible intelligence reports of their human
operatives, are wise enough to prepare for the worst. But the accused, who are
in possession of an infallible heavenly intelligence report about the coming
annihilation of nations, tell us that the report mentions only past events, is
probably not reliable, and can in any event be safely disregarded.
At the same time, the evidence is overwhelming that the accused are still
concealing from us a part of that heavenly intelligence report pointing
directly at their own actions and omissions as the cause of an unprecedented
crisis in the Church, a crisis whose terrible effects are now visible to the
entire world, which looks on with a mixture of mockery and contempt.
Eleven Lies
The evidence shows that the accused have perpetrated at least eleven distinct
lies. These lies have already caused grave harm to the Church and mankind at
large, and they imminently threaten even graver harm to every man, woman and
child, as the Virgin of Fatima Herself has warned us.
These lies are as follows:
|
Lie #1: |
The vision of the "Bishop
dressed in White" published on June 26, 2000, is all there is to the
Third Secret of Fatima. |
This lie criminally deprives the Church and the world of the obvious prophetic warnings
in the vision, which can only be explained by the missing words of the Blessed
Virgin. The missing words would not only explain the vision but also tell us
how to avoid the future catastrophe it depicts, which includes the execution of
a Pope (or a bishop dressed in white) by a band of soldiers outside a
half-ruined city.
In a display of gross duplicity, the accused tell us, on the one hand, that the
vision must be interpreted "figuratively" (as representing the
persecution of the Church during the 20th Century), while on the
other hand they themselves interpret it literally as a depiction of the failed
assassination attempt against the Pope in 1981. They simply ignore Sister
Lucy’s own explanation in the published text of the vision that "the Pope is
killed". They also ignore Sister Lucy’s purported letter of May 12,
1982—which they themselves offer as evidence in TMF! In that letter,
supposedly written a year after the assassination attempt, Sister Lucy
warned: "And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfillment of
the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it with great strides."
By withholding the words of the Virgin which are clearly missing from the Third
Secret, the accused deprive us of precious heavenly guidance in this time of
unprecedented crisis in the Church, while attempting to hide their own role in
causing the crisis, which the Secret in its entirety no doubt reveals.
|
Lie #2: |
The Third Secret depicts events
that "belong to the past," including the failed attempt on the life
of Pope John Paul II. |
The effort to "interpret" the vision of a future disaster befalling
the Pope and the hierarchy (including a public execution) as nothing more than
a failed assassination attempt more than 20 years ago is the most
blatant fraud involved in the crime at issue. As we have shown abundantly, this
lie is the most dangerous aspect of the crime, since it would lead the entire
Church down the primrose path to ruin by telling all the faithful to have no
concern any longer about vitally prophetic warnings—including the annihilation
of various nations—which have clearly not yet come to pass.
This fraud—almost laughable in its audacity—is exposed by none other than
Cardinal Ratzinger’s own description of the contents of the Third Secret in
1984. At that time the Cardinal said nothing of his current
"interpretation" (clearly dictated by Cardinal Sodano) that the Third
Secret culminated in the 1981 assassination attempt. This "interpretation"
is obviously a recent fabrication designed by Cardinal Sodano (and carried out
by the other accused) to misdirect and mislead the faithful.
|
Lie #3: |
The Message of Fatima offers no
specific prescription for the current crisis in the Church and the world beyond
generic piety in the form of prayer and penance and being "pure of
heart." |
The accused and their collaborators wish to pretend that Our Lady of Fatima did
not specifically request, by the will of Almighty God Himself: the
Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Pope together
with all the Catholic bishops of the world at the same time; and the Five First
Saturdays devotion, including the Holy Communions of Reparation for man’s sins
against Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, numbered among which are all of man’s
blasphemies against the Immaculate Heart.
The evidence shows that these requests from Heaven have been buried and ignored
by the accused and their collaborators because such things are too explicitly
Catholic for the new "ecumenical" and worldly orientation of the
Church which they obstinately pursue and promote. Thus the very means God has
ordained to obtain special graces in our time for the salvation of souls from
hell are criminally removed from view.
|
Lie #4: |
The requests of the Virgin of
Fatima have all been honored. |
On the contrary, Her requests have been spurned by the accused. The accused and
their collaborators have arrogantly substituted a consecration of the world, in
which very few bishops participated, for the Consecration of Russia which must
be done by the Pope together with all the world’s Catholic bishops in a solemn
public ceremony. They have "adjusted" what the Mother of God
requested on the authority of Her divine Son in order to fit their failed and
worthless human plans and initiatives, including an utterly fruitless
"ecumenism" that has produced nothing but continued contempt for the
Pope on the part of an unconverted, Kremlin-controlled, Russian Orthodox
hierarchy.
Instead of seeking the conversion of Russia, the Triumph of the Immaculate
Heart, and reparation for sins as God commanded them at Fatima, the accused
have participated in the fraudulent repackaging of the Message of Fatima as a
bland and meaningless "program for the new Evangelization" (to recall
Cardinal Castrillón’s ridiculous assertion in this regard).
As we have shown, "the new Evangelization" abandons the constant
teaching of the Church that not only the Russian Orthodox but also all
schismatics and heretics must return to the Catholic Church, and that Moslems,
Jews and pagans also need conversion, faith in Jesus Christ and Baptism to be
saved from hell. "The new Evangelization"—much in the manner of
Communist slogans—means the opposite of what it says. That is, "the new
Evangelization" means no evangelization—of anyone!—and thus no
honoring of the Virgin’s requests concerning the conversion of Russia.
|
Lie #5: |
The alarming state of the Church and
the world is the best we can expect from the falsely claimed
"obedience" to the Message of Fatima. |
It is criminal to attempt to deceive the faithful by telling them that the
current state of Russia and the world at large represents in any way the
fulfillment of the promises of the Mother of God at Fatima. The Church and the
world are thus robbed of the untold temporal and spiritual benefits that God
would bestow if the Message of Fatima were respected and obeyed. We have been
given a demonstration of those benefits in the case of Portugal, a nation
miraculously transformed into a Catholic social order following its
consecration to the Immaculate Heart in 1931—a result the head of the
Portuguese hierarchy explicitly declared would occur throughout the world if
Russia were likewise consecrated. It also savors of blasphemy to attribute the
horrendous spiritual and moral condition of Russia and the world to the triumph
of the Immaculate Heart.
|
Lie #6: |
The Message of Fatima offers no
concrete solution to the crisis in the Church and the world beyond prayer and
penance. |
Here the specific requests of the Mother of God are deliberately and
fraudulently concealed so that no one will petition Church authorities to
undertake them. This fraudulent concealment of Heaven’s prescribed spiritual
helps for our time has caused untold losses to the Church and the world.
|
Lie #7: |
We can do nothing to avoid the
great chastisement foretold by Our Lady of Fatima, including the annihilation
of various nations, besides offering individual prayer and penance. |
The accused thus deliberately and willfully hide from the Church and the
world two precise means that Heaven has ordained for protection from temporal
harm and the obtainment of extraordinary graces in this epoch of Church
history: namely, the Consecration of Russia and the widespread practice of the
First Saturdays devotion.
The accused thus coldly, deliberately and ruthlessly place the Church and civil
society alike on the same path as that followed by the unfortunate kings of
France, who failed to heed Our Lord’s command that France be consecrated to His
Sacred Heart in a solemn public ceremony.
The execution of the King of France by French revolutionaries in 1793 mirrors
the fate that awaits the Pope and many members of the hierarchy, as seen in the
Third Secret vision: that is, the execution of the Pope and his ministers by
soldiers, outside the half-ruined city. This future event the accused
criminally attempt to misrepresent as a failed assassination attempt
against the Pope alone more than 20 years ago!
|
Lie #8: |
The Message of Fatima is a mere
"private revelation" that does not impose any obligation on the members
of the Church to believe it or to follow it. |
As Cardinal Ratzinger claims in TMF, the Message of Fatima is nothing
more or less than "a help which is offered, but which one is not
obliged to use." That is, Cardinal Ratzinger openly declares that the
Church is not obliged to heed the requests of the Virgin of Fatima—including
the Consecration of Russia and the Five First Saturdays. The other accused
agree.
Yet while the accused tell us that no one need believe or heed the Message of
Fatima, the Pope himself has declared that the Message of Fatima "imposes
an obligation on the Church." To demonstrate this, the Pope has had a
Feast of the Virgin of Fatima inserted into the new Roman Missal, which the
universal Church will celebrate on May 13 each year. Thus, according to the
fraudulent claim of the accused, the Church celebrates a feast day in honor of
an apparition in which no one has to believe!
To hold that heavenly warnings about a great chastisement, that "various
nations will be annihilated" and the loss of millions of souls need not be
given credence if we choose to disbelieve them—even though the warnings were
authenticated by an unprecedented public miracle witnessed by 70,000 people—is
the height of human folly. We will all suffer terrible chastisements including
the annihilation of various nations—and have already suffered World War II, the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, etc. as well as the war on the unborn with more
than 600 million murders of innocent children—all of these and more are the
consequences of this arrogant demotion of the counsels of the Mother of God at
Fatima.
|
Lie #9: |
The Message of Fatima is
ultimately of little importance in its prophetic particulars, while the Third
Secret contains "no great mystery", "no surprises" and no
warnings about the future. |
By this lie the faithful are criminally deprived of heavenly warnings and
prescriptions of utmost importance for the Church in our time. Had the Message
of Fatima been heeded, incalculable temporal and spiritual harm could have been
avoided. By continuing to perpetrate this lie, the accused leave the Church and
the world powerless to avoid the great chastisement which will affect gravely
every man, woman and child—namely the literal "annihilation of various
nations" and the enslavement of the whole surviving populations of the
world, not to mention the loss of millions of souls in hell for all eternity.
Our Lady warned this would be the ultimate consequence of failing to heed Her
requests.
|
Lie #10: |
The accused themselves are
believers in the authentic Message of Fatima. |
While they hide behind a false appearance of belief in the Message of Fatima, the
objective words and deeds of the accused reveal a systematic attempt to
undercut and destroy all credence in the explicitly Catholic prophetic content
of the Message. They reveal their true intention by citing Dhanis as an
"eminent scholar" on Fatima, when Dhanis cast doubt on every
prophetic aspect of the Message. By citing Dhanis as their great authority, the
accused signal their fellow "illuminated ones" (but not the
uninformed general public) that they regard the Message of Fatima as essentially
the pious concoction of Sister Lucy, whose claim to have spoken with the Virgin
about the consecration and conversion of Russia, and so forth, cannot really be
taken seriously by the "enlightened" men of the post-conciliar
Church.
The failure of the accused to admit openly that they really do not believe in
the authentic Message of Fatima, even as they purport to "interpret"
it for us, is not only gross hypocrisy but an outrageous fraud upon the Church.
Just as in the court of law, judges and potential members of the jury must
disclose any possible prejudices they may have regarding the case at hand, so
too should the accused reveal their prejudices openly before they pretend to be
unbiased judges of the Fatima Message.
|
Lie #11: |
Catholics who do not agree with
the accused concerning the Message of Fatima are "disobedient" to
"the Magisterium." |
By "Magisterium" the accused mean nothing more than their own
opinions about the Message of Fatima, which opinions in fact contradict what
the Pope himself has said and done to vouch for the authenticity of the
Message—most recently with his institution of the Feast of the Virgin of Fatima
in the Church’s liturgical calendar.
Thus, ironically enough, it is the accused who are disloyal to the
Magisterium when they seek to demote Fatima to the status of "private
revelation" that may be disregarded by the entire Church with complete
safety.
A Crime Beyond Calculation
How can one assess the magnitude of the crime committed by those who would
bury, in misrepresentation and concealment, a precious Message from Heaven,
delivered by the Mother of God Herself for the temporal and eternal welfare of
Her children? This crime is beyond all calculation, because it involves not
only temporal calamity but also the loss of countless millions of souls, which
could be avoided by heeding the Virgin’s request for the Consecration of Russia
and Her other requests at Fatima (including the First Saturday devotion, which
the accused and their collaborators refuse to promote). The Virgin of Fatima
Herself indicts them: "If My requests are granted, many souls will be
saved and there will be peace." Her requests have not been granted, and
these men (along with their collaborators) are responsible for the consequences
to the Church, to the world, and to countless millions of souls who have been
robbed of the graces Our Lady of Fatima came to provide them in the name of Her
Son.
A Mystery of Iniquity
Why are the accused and those who labor with them in pursuit of the Church’s
new orientation so adamant in their refusal to allow the Pope and the bishops
to do the simple thing that Our Lady of Fatima requested? Why do they move
mountains to prevent the utterance of one word—Russia—in a public
consecration of "that poor nation"? What do we have to lose by
carrying out the Virgin’s request to the letter, without amendments imposed by
Vatican diplomats and ecumenists? Nothing. What do we have to gain? Everything.
There is simply no legitimate explanation for such perverse resistance to the
Consecration of Russia by name. Something unnatural is at work here. Without
judging the subjective motives of the accused, one is driven to the conclusion
that their otherwise inexplicable and seemingly senseless refusal to allow the
utterance of one simple word—the one word Our Lady of Fatima requested—is the
result of a preternatural intervention into the Church. It is an
intervention by the Adversary himself, who, as Sister Lucy herself has said, is
"in the mood for engaging in a final decisive battle against the Blessed
Virgin." This final battle has involved the penetration into the Church of
the organized forces that have long sought to bring Her to ruin. In the face of
this awful development, even Pope Paul VI was compelled to lament publicly that
"the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God."
Whether they subjectively intend it or not, the accused have acted in a way
that only serves the aims of the Church’s worst enemy. The results of their
actions speak for themselves. "By their fruits ye shall know them."
(Mt. 7:16) What are the fruits of their governance of the Church? Simply look
at the condition of the Church today and you will know the answer.
Along with many others in high positions in the hierarchy, the accused have
presided over the worst crisis of faith and morals in Church history. In their
pursuit of the ruinous novelties that have brought on the crisis, the accused
spurn a heavenly prescription that would restore the Church to health and bring
peace to a warring world. Instead of listening to the advice of the Mother of
God at Fatima, they press on with their utterly fruitless
"ecumenism", "interreligious dialogue", and "dialogue
with the world"; their hobnobbing with men of blood like Mikhail
Gorbachev, whose presence desecrated the Vatican only one day after the accused
attempted to dispose of the Message of Fatima. As the accused and their fellows
palaver endlessly with the forces of the world, countless souls in need of the
light of Christ for their salvation in Russia and elsewhere are allowed to
remain in darkness. The enemies of the Church delight in seeing Her thus
rendered almost powerless to oppose them.
The Church retreats as the forces of the world continue to advance against Her.
Yet the accused and their collaborators persist in their suicidal attempt to
embrace the world instead of conquering it spiritually for Christ the King, as
Our Lady of Fatima would have them do. The men who control the Vatican
apparatus today do not wish to offend the Russian Orthodox or anyone else with
a show of Catholic militancy, which they view as embarrassing and
"outdated"—to use one of their favorite words. The Church’s abject
retreat from battle warms the hearts of the Masons and the Communists, who
labored for generations in the hope of seeing the Church reduced precisely to
this pathetic condition.
And yet the accused and their collaborators are not without militancy of a
sort. While over the past forty years they have done almost nothing to stop
infiltrators of the Church from spreading heresy and moral corruption with
virtual impunity, they relentlessly hound, denounce and ostracize anyone who
opposes too effectively their disastrous policies of "reform",
"openness" and "renewal." For the accused and the other
members of the upper hierarchy who have presided over the post-conciliar
debacle, it seems that the only remaining "heresy", the only offense
warranting harsh punishment, is to question their judgment in imposing the new
orientation upon the Church, an orientation from which they have utterly and
definitively excluded the Message of Fatima in its traditional Catholic
sense—or so they think.
The Remedies to Which the Faithful Are
Entitled
What is it that we seek from the Holy Father as remedies for the acts and
omissions of the men we have identified? We seek the following:
First,
The Consecration of Russia—
There Is Still Time
By this we mean precisely what Our Lady of Fatima requested: The immediate
Consecration of Russia—by name and without equivocation—to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary, in a solemn public ceremony by the Pope together with
all the Catholic bishops of the world.
We ask the Pope to command under pain of excommunication all the Catholic
bishops (except those prevented by imprisonment or serious illness) to
consecrate solemnly, publicly and specifically Russia, according to the
requests of Our Lady of Fatima, together with the Pope on the same day and at
the same hour specified by the Pope.
Some will say it is already too late to obtain the Consecration and that it is
pointless to go on requesting it. That is simply not so. As Our Lord Himself
revealed to Sister Lucy in the revelation at Rianjo in August of 1931:
Make it known to My
ministers that given they follow the example of the King of France in delaying
the execution of My command, they will follow him into misfortune … They [the
ministers of the Catholic Church] did not want to heed My command. Like the
King of France they will repent of it, and they will do it, but it will be
late. Russia will already have spread her errors throughout the world, causing
wars and persecutions of the Church. The Holy Father will have much to suffer.4
And yet, as Our Lord also revealed to Sister Lucy on that occasion: "It
will never be too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary." That is,
even though we are now suffering the consequences of delay in the execution of
Heaven’s command, the worst of those consequences, including the annihilation
of various nations, may yet be avoided if the command to consecrate Russia is
heeded, however belatedly.
It is outrageous that human respect—fear of offending the Russian Orthodox—has
been allowed until now to prevent the Church’s fulfillment of Heaven’s plan for
peace in our time. As members of the Church militant, we can no longer allow
those who claim to speak for our ailing Pope to declare that "the Pope"
has pronounced unequivocally, authoritatively, and definitively the
consecration to be accomplished. We have shown how the Pope himself has
publicly said quite the opposite. We must implore His Holiness to reject the
manifestly bad advice he has been given by those who surround him, and to
follow Heaven’s advice instead.
Second,
Disclosure of the Full and Integral
Third Secret of Fatima
This disclosure would have to include the text of the words of the Blessed
Virgin explaining the vision that was published on June 26, 2000. That such a
text exists has been proven to a moral certainty by a mountain of direct and
circumstantial evidence, every piece of which points to a missing text of one
page and some 25 lines in letter form, containing the words of the Virgin
Herself.
The Church and the world have the right to know the contents of the Third
Secret, which obviously contains salutary warnings about the current crisis in
the Church. The Holy Father’s clear indications that the Secret relates to the
apostasy and fall of consecrated souls described in the Book of the Apocalypse
tell us that he himself has been constrained not to reveal the Secret in its
entirety, but rather has been reduced to hinting at its contents. Meanwhile,
those who actually control the daily affairs of the Church—first and foremost
Cardinal Sodano—continue to bury the truth about their own failed governance of
the Church.
Third,
A Call for Daily Recitation of the Rosary
The Rosary is infinitely more powerful than any weapon devised by man. There is
no difficulty that cannot be overcome, no battle that cannot be won, with the
aid of the Holy Rosary. If enough Catholics pray the Rosary with the correct
intention, the enemies of the Church will be routed from their strongholds
within Her and driven out. As Fatima itself shows us, by the will of God the
Virgin Mary is our refuge and our strength in times of crisis. In this gravest
of crises, the whole Church must seek recourse to Her through daily recitation
of the Rosary.
While we need not wait, and should not wait to institute a perpetual Rosary
Crusade at all levels in the Church where we can and as soon as possible, we
also can petition the Pope to institute such a campaign throughout the Church
by writing encyclicals on the Rosary every year like Pope Leo XIII, by
appointing a dicastery headed by a Cardinal to promote the Rosary by various
initiatives through the network of Catholic shrines and Marian priests (both religious
and diocesan). Such initiatives, of course, must be entirely in keeping with
authentic Catholic doctrine and practices promoting all the great privileges of
Our Lady.
The Rosary should, of course, include the prayer prescribed by Our Lady of
Fatima as an addition to the Rosary: "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins,
save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most
in need." During the "entrustment" of the world to the
Immaculate Heart in October of 2000, however, the public recitation of the
Rosary at the Vatican conspicuously omitted this prayer, even though Sister
Lucy said the prayer in her convent on that occasion. This is yet another sign
of the new orientation, which abhors any reference to hell and damnation.
Fourth,
Promotion of the Five First Saturdays Devotion
Those who have undertaken to "revise" the Message of Fatima have
attempted to bury in silence this part of the Message, along with all its other
explicitly Catholic elements. Indeed, the whole concept of man making
reparation to God and the Blessed Virgin Mary for blasphemies and other sins
has been gravely diminished in the Church’s new orientation. (One of the key
elements obscured in the new liturgy is that the Mass is a propitiatory
sacrifice to make reparation to God for sin, not merely a "sacrifice of
praise.")
The First Saturday devotion is one of Heaven’s chosen means to restore in our
time a sense of the need for reparation for sin by the members of the Church.
Who can doubt that now, more than ever before, the Church must renew Her effort
to offer reparation to God and to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, thus
staying the execution of God’s wrath? Yet the wrath of God is another thing of
which we hear nothing from modern churchmen. By promoting the First Saturday
devotion, the Holy Father will marshal the Church’s power to offer reparation
for sin at this critical time in world history.
Fifth,
Reestablishment Throughout the Church of Devotion
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Cardinal Ratzinger’s shameful attempt to equate the one and only Immaculate
Heart to the heart of anyone who repents of his sins is only typical of the new
orientation, which abhors the concept of Original Sin as much as it does hell
and damnation.
Only the Immaculate Heart of Mary was preserved free from all stain of Original
Sin and was never under the dominion of Satan. In contemplating the glory of
the one and only sinless Immaculate Heart of Mary, we are drawn also to be
aware of our own wretchedness and the need for Baptism and the other sacraments
of the Church to preserve us in a state of grace.
The uniquely Catholic devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a rebuke to
the new orientation of the Church, whose "ecumenism" downplays the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception (and the Assumption) out of human respect
for the sensibilities of non-Catholics. That is precisely why, as Our Lady of
Fatima told us, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to Her
Immaculate Heart. God wishes the world to see that it is the Catholic Church,
and none other, which is the ark of salvation.
Sixth,
The Resignation of the Accused and Their Collaborators
As we have proven, Cardinal Sodano, Cardinal Ratzinger, Cardinal Castrillón and
Archbishop Bertone have combined and conspired to do away with the Message of
Fatima in its traditional Catholic sense. They have tampered with the meaning
of the very words of the Mother of God, buried in silence and obscuration all
of the explicitly Catholic and prophetic elements of the Message, and
persecuted those who have offered a principled opposition to their revisionist
program, their Party Line on Fatima. By so doing, the accused have already
caused untold damage to the Church and have exposed both the Church and the
world to the gravest possible dangers, including the loss of millions of souls
and the annihilation of various nations foretold by Our Lady of Fatima as the
consequence of failing to heed Her requests. For as She cautioned the Church:
"If My requests are not granted, Russia will spread her errors
throughout the world raising up wars and persecutions against the Church, the
good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various
nations will be annihilated." She also promised: "If My
requests are granted, many souls will be saved and there will be peace."
The course of conduct in which the accused obstinately persist imminently
threatens the Church and the world with incalculable harm. For the good of the
Church these men should be directed by the Holy Father to resign their offices,
immediately.
Some will object, however, that it is the height of arrogance for mere members
of the laity to petition the Pope for the removal of such high-ranking prelates.
On the contrary, it is our duty as Catholics to petition the Pope for
the removal of errant prelates who endanger the flock.
The Example of St. John Gualberto
No less than a canonized saint of the Catholic Church gives us the example to
follow when the faithful are confronted with a wayward prelate who is harming
the Church.5
St. John Gualberto lived in the 12th Century. He is not only a saint
but founder of the Val Ambrosian Benedictines. His feast day is July 12 in the
old calendar. St. John’s heroic Christian virtue is demonstrated by his having
forgiven the murderer of his own brother. Encountering the weaponless and
defenseless killer in a blind alley, St. John (who was not yet a monk) was
moved to forgiveness when the man put up his arms in the form of a cross and
asked for mercy for the sake of Christ crucified. St. John forgave the man even
though he had been searching for him with a band of soldiers in order to exact
vengeance. That very day, which was Good Friday, St. John saw the image of
Christ on a crucifix come alive and nod His head toward St. John. At this
moment, Our Lord imparted to St. John an absolutely extraordinary special
grace, because he had forgiven his own brother’s murderer. It was that moment
of grace which led St. John to become a monk.
Now, as we can see, St. John Gualberto was the very model of Christian
forgiveness. If he could forgive his brother’s own murderer, he could forgive
any offense. He was also a man of considerable importance in the hierarchy of
the Church, having gone on to found a monastery and an order of monks that
still exist to this day. The order had—and still has—charge of a church in
Rome, the Church of St. Praxedes, wherein nothing less than the column at which
Christ was scourged is to be found. The church, literally just around the
corner from St. Mary Major, also contains a painting of St. John Gualberto
forgiving his brother’s murderer—clearly, a very significant event in Church
history.
Yet despite his exemplary Christian mercy and forgiveness and his great stature
in the Church, St. John Gualberto did not hesitate to seek the removal of a
corrupt prelate of his own day. St. John went to the Lateran (where the Pope
resided in those days before the creation of the Vatican enclave) to ask that
the Archbishop of Florence be removed because he was unworthy of his office.
The grounds for St. John’s petition were that the Archbishop had paid money to
certain persons of influence in order to have himself appointed Archbishop. That
is, he had purchased his ecclesiastical office, which constitutes a grave sin
of simony.
After the Pope’s officials in the Lateran—including no less than St. Peter
Damian—would take no action to remove the Archbishop, citing a supposed lack of
proof, God gave St. John a special inspiration: In order to demonstrate that
St. John was telling the truth about the Archbishop, God would give a sign. One
of the brothers in St. John’s order, Brother Peter, would walk through a
bonfire from which he would emerge miraculously unscathed, to testify to the
truth of St. John’s accusation against the Archbishop. St. John called all the
townspeople together and told them to construct a huge bonfire with a narrow
passage in the middle. He explained to them what was about to happen and why.
Then Brother Peter, under holy obedience, walked through the narrow, fiery
passage and emerged at the other end without injury. For his own great faith,
Brother Peter was beatified (his feast day is on February 8 in the Roman Martyrology).
When the lay faithful saw this miraculous sign, they arose as one and literally
drove the Archbishop out of Florence. The Archbishop had to flee for his life,
and the Pope had to appoint an honest replacement.
The Removal of Wayward Prelates in Our Own
Time
What does this event in Church history tell us about our own situation today?
It teaches us that the laity have the right and the duty to protect themselves
from wayward prelates who are harming the Church and souls by their misconduct.
And in this time of unparalleled crisis in the Church, we are hardly alone in
seeking this extraordinary remedy from the Pope.
Consider that in March of 2002 the Pope received a canonical petition from
various members of the faithful in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, seeking the
removal of Archbishop Flores from his office on grounds that he had covered up
criminal acts of sexual abuse by homosexual priests under his charge and paid
millions of dollars in "hush money" to silence the victims of these
predators. The petition to the Pope charges that Archbishop Flores has
"been grossly negligent in the exercise of his episcopal office, has
failed to protect the temporal goods of the archdiocese, and has endangered
the faith of the people entrusted to his care by allowing sexual predators
within the clergy free rein."6 In like manner, thousands of
members of the faithful have called for the resignation of Cardinal Law of the
Archdiocese of Boston because of his complicity in shielding dozens of homosexual
predators from exposure and punishment.7
Would anyone accuse the faithful of the Archdiocese of San Antonio or the
Archdiocese of Boston of arrogance for exercising their canonical and God-given
right to seek the removal of prelates whose acts and omissions have caused so
much damage to the Church and to countless innocent victims? By what peculiar
standard of justice, then, are prelates who work in the Vatican apparatus
exempt from accountability to the Pope for their actions? Clearly, they are not
exempt. And while the sexual abuse of members of the flock by their very
pastors is among the gravest of scandals, justifying a movement of the laity
against the priests who commit these unspeakable acts and the bishops, and even
Cardinals, who shield the offenders, there is a scandal even greater than this.
We mean the scandal of spurning the very prescriptions which the Mother of God
Herself gave to the Church at Fatima—prescriptions which, had they been
followed, would have prevented not only the sexual scandal now racking the
Church but indeed the entire ecclesial and world crisis we now see. We mean
also the scandal of a Vatican apparatus that does nothing to combat the true
enemies of the Church in Her very midst, while it persecutes faithful
traditional clergy for the "offense" of being too staunchly Catholic
for the "ecclesial reality of today"—to recall once again the
telltale phrase of Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos. For no other reason than to
prevent the collapse of faith and discipline which we now witness did Our Lady
come to Fatima. Yet it is precisely the Message of Fatima which the accused
have devoted so much time and effort to burying, while they do virtually
nothing about the ecclesial crisis that is raging all around them.
The example of St. John Gualberto teaches us also that when God gives a sign
through a chosen messenger, the laity are entitled to rely upon that sign, even
if the highest prelates in the Church choose to ignore it. Such is the case
with the Message of Fatima, for there could be no greater sign from Heaven than
the Miracle of the Sun. The Message of Fatima clearly involves a warning of
apostasy and malfeasance among the members of the upper hierarchy, as well as
the fall of many consecrated souls from their stations. We are witnessing the
fulfillment of that prophecy at this very moment. We are entitled to rely upon
the sign of Heaven that authenticates that prophecy beyond all reasonable
doubt, no matter what the Message of Fatima’s "debunkers" in the
Vatican may claim.
Knowing what Heaven has told us at Fatima, it is our duty as members of the
Church to try to convince the Pope to remove the errant advisors who surround
him, especially the accused, and to follow instead the advice of the Mother of
God at Fatima. We must plead with the Pope to perform the consecration of
Russia to the Immaculate Heart exactly in the manner She requested, without
alteration by any worldly-wise member of the Vatican apparatus. Further, we
should ask the Pope to remove from office, if necessary, any prelate in the
Vatican who attempts to prevent the Pope from carrying out the Virgin’s
requests.
Likewise, we must petition the Pope to remove from office those, including the accused,
who have conspired to prevent full disclosure of the Third Secret of Fatima.
The Third Secret is obviously of the utmost importance in understanding and
combating the crisis in the Church, while protecting ourselves from its
devastating spiritual effects—of which the unspeakable crimes committed by so
many priests are but one manifestation. The faithful are entitled to know
what Heaven Itself wishes them to know for their own spiritual safety. The
coordinated actions of those who prevent full disclosure of the Third Secret
are grave offenses against the Church and the Blessed Virgin Mary and are
crimes against Almighty God Himself.
The Church’s Urgent Need for Militant
Prelates
Today the Church needs more than ever true soldiers of the Church—men possessed
of an unabashed Catholic militancy, who are not afraid of a confrontation with
the forces of the world, which invaded the Church while the accused and their
many collaborators in the Vatican apparatus stood by and did nothing, except to
encourage the invasion. The Church needs men who will act decisively to root
out the pandemic heresy and scandal in the Church, instead of hounding and
oppressing traditional Catholic clergy who decline to be "inserted"
into Cardinal Castrillón’s "ecclesial reality of today." The Church
needs spiritual warriors, not practitioners of "dialogue",
"ecumenism" and Ostpolitik.
The Message of Fatima itself is a call to spiritual warfare—to a battle that is
to culminate in the consecration and conversion of Russia and the triumph of
the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The accused regard such things with the
squeamishness of those who seem to think themselves more enlightened than all
the generations of Catholic saints, doctors, martyrs and popes whose militancy
down through the centuries is a living testament to the very words of Christ
Himself:
"If the world
hates you, know ye that it has hated Me before you. If you had been of the
world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but
I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." (Jn.
15:18-20)
"Do not think
that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword.
For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter
against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a
man’s enemies shall be they of his own household." (Mt. 10:34-36)
For too long the Church has suffered under the governance of those who would
have us believe that there is no spiritual combat between Christ and His Church
on the one hand, and the world on the other. For too long these men have been
allowed to pursue and promote their false vision of a Church reconciled to the
world, rather than a world reconciled to the Church. For too long these men
have yoked the Church to the utopian notion of worldly peace among men of all
religions or no religion at all, rather than the true peace that can come only
when the souls of men are conquered by the grace of Christ the King, which He
deigns to mediate to men through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and through the
Holy Roman Catholic Church.
Fatima shows us the way to this true peace in the world. Yet the men we name
have blocked our progress along that way, exposing the Church and the world to
the risk of an ultimate calamity. If the victims of the scandal of sexual abuse
by clergy have the right to seek the removal of the prelates whose negligence
brought about the scandal, all the more are we entitled to seek that same
remedy as to the prelates who have presided over the scandalous campaign to
nullify the Message of Fatima. It is the men who have thwarted fulfillment of
the Fatima Message, not ordinary Catholics, who are lacking in vision. It is
they, not we, who are narrow-minded. It is they, not we, who are being
unrealistic. They must step aside for the good of all humanity.
|
Sister Lucy has corresponded with
the present Holy Father at various times, and has had several face-to-face
meetings with His Holiness Pope John Paul II. Yet after all the letters and
meetings, Pope John Paul II has never claimed that Sister Lucy told him
Russia had been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as requested by
Our Lady of Fatima. To this day, Sister Lucy is still under an order of
silence (see pages 267-268 and footnote 5 on pages 299-300). Sister Lucy is
the only Catholic out of one billion Catholics who is under such a gag order.
According to this order, Sister Lucy needs the permission of Cardinal
Ratzinger to speak to anyone about the Consecration of Russia or the Third
Secret or anything else that is not already in her pre-approved writings on
Fatima. If the Consecration of Russia were truly performed and if the Third
Secret were completely released, then there would be no real purpose for such
an order of silence. |
Footnotes
1. ST, Q. 33, Art. V, Pt. II-II.
2. St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice,
Book II, Chapter 29.
3. De Fide, Disp. X, Sec. VI, N. 16.
4. The Whole Truth About Fatima - Vol. II: The
Secret and the Church, pp. 543-544. See also Toute La Vérite sur Fatima
- Vol. II: Le Secret et L’Église, pp. 344-345.
5. See Coralie Graham, "Divine Intervention",
The Fatima Crusader, Issue 70, Spring 2002, p. 8ff.
6. "Abuse Victims File Petition Seeking
Removal of Archbishop", The Wanderer, April 4, 2002.
7. "Internal church documents showed that from
the mid--1980’s and into the 90’s Cardinal Law and his top aides were aware of
the problems of Father Geoghan, who was eventually accused of molesting more
than 130 children over 30 years. In February, he was sentenced to 9 to 10 years
in prison for fondling a 10-year-old boy. After the church’s role [that is, the
Boston Archdiocese’s officials’ role] in protecting Father Geoghan became
known, the Cardinal gave local prosecutors the names of more than 80 priests
accused of sexual abuse over decades." Quoted from "As Scandal Keeps
Growing, Church and Its Faithful Reel", New York Times, March 17,
2002.