THE THIRD LETTER OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA
John Médaille
> Dear All,
> THE THIRD LETTER OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA
[snip]
> (Please help me disseminate this message from our Lady of
> Fatima, forward it to all persons you know... thank you.)
Please state you source and authority for this.
--
John C. Médaille
"A dead thing can go with the stream...
but only a living thing can go against it."
-G. K. Chesterton
Kevin Monteiro
THE THIRD LETTER OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA
faithful another
part of the Virgin of Fatima's message. The Blessed Virgin
appeared to three children in 1917. This has been
verified. For
one of the three, named Lucia, yet lives as a nun in Rome.
Sister
Lucia gave her message to His Holiness, Pope Pious XII, who
was
trembling once he read it, guarded this message and kept it
hidden. Pope John XXIII did the same for fear that the
revelation
would cause chaos and desperation. Now this part of the
message
is revealed, because the faithful should know these things
in order
to be prepared.
The Virgin said to Lucia: "Go, my child, tell the world
what will
happen between the years 1950 and 2000. Man is not putting
into
practice the Commandments our Lord has given us. The Devil
is
guiding the world, laying the seeds of hate and corruption
everywhere. Man will create deadly weapons that will
destroy the
world in minutes. Half of all humanity will be destroyed
horribly.
The war will begin against Rome. There will be conflicts
between the
religious orders. God will permit all manners of natural
phenomena,
such as cold, smoke, hail, water, fire, floods, bad weather
and
earthquakes. Terrible disasters and coldest winters will,
little by
little, destroy the earth. All of these things will happen
before
the year 2000. Those who choose not to believe what, with
love and
caring, the symbols of true Christianity, will suffer from
these
disasters greatly."
"Those who are happy only from material things, the
egotists, those
who care not for their brothers, those who would not love
each other
as my Son loved them, millions upon millions of them will
lose their
lives in seconds."
"All those of this description who do survive, will wish
they had
died,
for the punishment that await although the unimaginable,
will surely
come. Our Father will fiercely punish those who do not
believe in
Him, those who scorned His name, those who did not have the
time
for Him. I am calling out to all to come towards my Son,
Jesus
Christ. God will help the world, but those who do not bear
witness
of fidelity and loyalty to Him will be destroyed in ways
worse than
imagining."
Father Agustin of Rome, living in Fatima, was given
permission by
Pope Paul VI to visit with Sister Lucia, who sadly spoke to
him and
said: "Father, Our Lord is deeply saddened, for no one has
taken
Her prophecies of 1917 to heart. The good of the world
must
sacrifice much, walking along a narrow path, while the evil
walk a
broad one that leads them to their own destruction. And
believe
me, Father, this punishment comes quick, many souls will be
lost
and many nations will vanish from this earth. If, in the
middle of =
all this, man reflects upon his condition, prays and
performs good
deeds, the world can be saved. If, on the other hand, man
insists on
his evil ways, the world and one, to do penance for their
sins, to
sacrifice themselves and pass on the message of the Virgin
of
Fatima to their family, their friends, indeed, to the whole
world.
We are approaching the last minute of the last day, and the
catastrophe
draws near...."
"Because of this catastrophe, many will return repentant to
the open
arms of the Catholic Church which they one day turned away
from.
Among those who will return is England, Russia, China,
Protestants
and Jews. All will return to adore and believe in the
Lord, Our
Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Blessed Virgin
Mary." It is
said that the Pope and his Bishops are now awaiting another
message that speaks to them of repentance and prayer.
WHAT AWAITS US?
Although peace and tranquility are spoken much in the
world, the
punishment will come. A man of great importance will be
assassinated and this will provoke a war, a cold war. A
powerful
army will sweep across Europe, and the atomic war will
begin.
This war will destroy all. Darkness will fall over the
earth for 72
hours (3 days), and the one-third of humanity, which
survives this 72
hours
of darkness, will begin to live in a new era. These will
be the good
souls of humanity. On a very cold night, ten minutes
before
midnight, a terrible earthquake will strike and shake the
world for
eight hours. This will be the third sign that God governs
all that
happens on the earth. The good of humanity and those who
have
propagated the message of the Virgin of Fatima should not
suffer
fear, or doubt.
WHAT TO DO
Kneel and beg for God's forgiveness. Do not go outside, and
let no
stranger into your home. Only the good will escape the
power of evil
and survive the catastrophe.
So that you may prepare and stay alive, as the beautiful
children of
mine you are. I will give you these signs to look out
for. The
night will be very cold and the strong winds will blow;
there will be
great
trepidation and in a short time the earthquakes will begin,
and the
whole world will tremble. You must close all doors windows
in your
home and speak to no one not in your home. Avert your eyes
from
the outside; be not curious, for this is the ire of Our
Father.
Light your Holy candles, for no other source of light will
brighten
for three days.
The movement will be so violent as to transform the earth,
moving it
23 degrees and returning it to its original state. There
will come an
absolute and total darkness that will cover the entire
earth. All
manners of unholy spirits will be loosed upon the world,
tearing at
the souls of those who did not choose to hear this message
and to
those who would not repent.
All you faithful souls remember to light your holy candles,
prepare a
sacred altar with the Crucifix, to communicate with God and
ask for
his infinite mercy. All will be dark, except for a Great
Mystical =
Cross which will appear in the sky to remind all of the
price Our Lord
paid
for our salvation. The only other possible source of light
will be =
the fire of the holy candles, the flame once lit, nothing
can put out
until the three days of darkness have passed. You should
also keep
with
you holy water, which should be abundantly rubbed
throughout the
entire house,especially over doors and windows. Our Father
will
protect the property of the chosen.
Kneel before the all-powerful cross of My Divine Son, pray
the
Rosary and after each Ave Maria, repeat the following: "O
My God,
forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and
lead all =
souls into Heaven, especially those who need most of thy
mercy.
Virgin
Mary, protect us, we love you. Save us and save the world."
Pray 5 prayers and the rosary, which is the secret of my
Immaculate
Heart.
Those who believe my words and carry my message should fear
nothing on the Grand Day of Our Lord. Speak to as many
souls as
possible while there's still time. Those that remain silent
now will
be responsible for the countless lives lost because of
ignorance. All
those ho humbly pray the rosary will earn the great
protection of
Heaven and I will let them die in peace and enter, blessed,
into the
world.
It is my wish that the faithful go to Church every first
Saturday,
and every first Friday of each month, to confess and take
communion,
and, in this way, assure that the world will be saved from
complete
and total destruction. When the earth ceases to tremble,
those who
still refuse to believe in Our Father will die horribly.
The wind =
will bring a toxic gas and spread it everywhere, and then
the sun will
appear again. There is still time to ensure you will
continue to live
after this catastrophe. Do not forget that the punishment
of God is
blessed, and once it has begun, "Do Not Look Outside for
Any
Reason", for he does not want any of his children to see
Him
punishing the sinners of the world. It must be understood
why God
allows this to pass. It is because he wants the best for
His
children.
Election
the first and second letters? Your I.P is pink one.net? Think about that in
correlation to your message.
Kevin Monteiro wrote in message <383a...@pink.one.net.au>...
PrayDivMer
http://www.bluearmy.com
http://www.fatima.org
http://olrl.org
This seems important to verify, since, so many messages, such as the end of
World War I, etc. seemed prophetic.
>Subject: THE THIRD LETTER OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA
>From: "Kevin Monteiro" mon...@one.net.au
>Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic
>Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 14:58:25 +1100
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PrayDivMer
Read Carefully!
The Third Secret of Fatima
and
The Post-Conciliar Debacle
(Part One)
By Christopher A. Ferrara, Esq.
Webmaster's Note: Last October 13th marked the 80th anniversary of the great
Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. Though eight decades have passed, the world has
yet to receive Fatima's complete Message. Part of the Message, the Third
Secret, remains suppressed despite Our Lady's request that it be revealed "no
later than 1960". Many Fatima experts, believe that the contents of the Third
Secret refer to the great loss of Faith in the Church and in the world. In this
special five part series which originally appeared in Catholic Family News,
Christopher Ferrara presents a historic overview of the events leading up to
the crucial year of 1960, and a portrait of the chaos in the Church and world
that immediately followed the repression of the Third Secret.
On October 11, 1962, two days before the 45th anniversary of the final
apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima and the Miracle of the Sun,
Pope John XXIII addressed the opening session of the Second Vatican Council.
Pope John was pleased to announce to the assembled bishops that the calling of
this Council "was completely unexpected, like a flash of heavenly light,
shedding sweetness in eyes and hearts"(1)
What is more, this unexpectedly-called Council would make no effort to condemn
any of the errors threatening the Church and the world, including communism,
because "Nowadays ... the spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine
of mercy rather than the arms of severity. She considers that she meets the
needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather
than by issuing condemnations.(2) Considering that Pius XII had issued scathing
condemnations of communism and neo-modernism, along with interdicts and
automatic excommunications reserved to the Apostolic See, by "nowadays" Pope
John presumably meant the four years which had elapsed since his predecessor's
death.
The "flash of heavenly light" which impelled Pope John to call his Council had
occurred during a stroll in the Vatican gardens at the end of 1958, when he
experienced "the first sudden bringing up in our hearts and lips of the simple
words: ecumenical council' ". On January 25, 1959, Pope John announced his
sudden inspiration to the Sacred College of Cardinals. Their reaction was
stunned silence.(3)
Eight months after he had committed himself and the Church to the Council, Pope
John would read the Third Secret of Fatima those 23 lines on a piece of
notebook paper in the handwriting of Sister Lucia dos Santos, the last
surviving seer of Our Lady's apparitions at the Cova da Iria in 1917. The first
two "secrets" had already been disclosed to the world in 1942 in the form of
Sister Lucy's memoirs, but Sister Lucy had entrusted the sealed text of the
Third Secret to the bishop of Fatima-Leiria, who could have disclosed it at any
time. By 1957, however, the sealed envelope had found its way to the Vatican
where it was kept in a wooden safe in the papal apartments of Pius XII. It is
generally supposed that Pius XII had not read The Third Secret before he died
in 1958.
Sister Lucy had made the Bishop of Fatima-Leiria promise that the Secret would
be read to the world at her death, but in no event later than 1960, "because
Our Lady wishes it so." As Sister Lucy would later explain to Cardinal
Ottaviani and Canon Barthes (a renowned Fatima expert), Our Lady told her that
the Secret must be disclosed by 1960 "because it will be clearer." In 1946
Cardinal Cerejeira, the Patriarch of Portugal, publicly promised that the
Secret "will be opened in 1960." Rome voiced no objection. On the contrary,
Cardinals Ottaviani and Tisserant publicly echoed the promise of Cardinal
Cerejeira, as did numerous other Church authorities over the years.(4) There
was even an American television show entitled "Zero 1960", which took its theme
from the universally expected disclosure of the Secret. Produced by the
once-militant Blue Army, the show was so popular it received a "star" rating in
The New York Times.(5)
And so, as 1959 drew to a close, Catholics around the world waited eagerly for
the imminent completion of the Message of Fatima. The Marian devotion which had
flourished during the reign of Pius XII reached new heights in anticipation.
But it was not to be. On February 8, 1960, the faithful received the
devastating news: Acting through the double blind of a Portuguese press agency,
anonymous "Vatican sources" let it be known that the Third Secret would not be
disclosed that year and "would probably remain, forever, under absolute
seal."(6)
Obviously humiliated, Cardinal Cerejeira publicly declared: "I affirm
categorically that I was not consulted." The Blue Army's spokesman at the time,
John Haffert, would later express the mourning of the faithful:
"1960 came and went and the Pope to whom the Secret had been entrusted did not
make it public. He did not even make known the fact that he had opened it. The
silence from Rome lay heavily on all of us. People began to murmur that Fatima
must have been a fake, that there was no secret, that the 1960 secret was a
hoax' [By 1964] the effect of the long silence concerning the 1960 Secret still
seemed to hang over us like a pall."(7)
The Secret carried to earth by the Blessed Virgin Mary had been buried by those
to whom it was entrusted. The Message of Fatima would remain incomplete. Two
years after Pope John had read the Secret and placed it "under absolute seal",
the Second Vatican Council convened. The liberal media of the day were abuzz
with rumors of great changes about to occur in the Church. The Council, with
its unprecedented non-Catholic "observers" and its strangely ambiguous
documents, did not disappoint them. As for the Council's implementation, it
would exceed their wildest dreams.
The Writing Down of the Secret
Bishop da Silva was greatly afraid that Sister Lucia dos Santos who had been
ill for several months, would die at the convent in Tuy, Spain that October in
1943. In the days before antibiotics a case of pleurisy could easily become a
terminal illness. If she died now, she would have left undone a task of immense
importance.
In 1941 Sister Lucy had written her third and fourth memoirs, committing to
writing the first two parts of the great Secret of Fatima, which she had
already conveyed in substance in a note to Pius XII. We know well the first two
parts of the Secret Our Lady disclosed to the seers:
"You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God
wishes to establish devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is
done, many souls will be saved. The war [World War I] is going to end, but if
people do not cease offending God, a worse one [World War II] will break out
during the Pontificate of Pius XI [who had not yet been elected]. When you see
a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given
to you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of
war, famine and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father."
"To prevent this, I will 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 [Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and
persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father
will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated."
We know also that every prophecy contained in the first two parts of the Secret
(except for the annihilation of nations) has been fulfilled. And that the
predicted punishments are still being suffered by the Church and the world. Of
course, there would have been little reason to doubt that the prophecies were
true, for Sister Lucy had been granted by Heaven a singular prophetic
credential: No one in the history of the world, not even Moses, has ever
correctly predicted the precise date and time of a public miracle except for a
little girl named Lucia dos Santos. Some 70,000 people, atheists included, had
seen the Miracle of the Sun at the very time and place Our Lady had told Lucy
it would occur. To suggest that God would waste this unprecedented credential
on an unreliable witness would be little short of blasphemy.
Given the divine corroboration of Sister Lucy's testimony, there could be no
question that the great Secret of Fatima would be assimilated into the life and
patrimony of the Church. And so, to this day we practice the Communion of
Reparation on the First Saturdays, and our Rosaries include the very prayer Our
Lady had dictated to Sister Lucy just after the second part of the Secret was
concluded: "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, and save us from the fires of
Hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need."
But what of the third part of the great Secret, the part which has come to be
called, in itself, "the Third Secret of Fatima"? In her third memoir Sister
Lucy has made it clear that "the secret is made up of three parts, two of which
I am going to reveal." In her fourth memoir she restated the first two parts,
leaving out once again "that part of the Secret which I am not permitted to
reveal at present." Yet in the fourth memoir Sister Lucy did reveal one
additional fragment of the Secret which had not appeared in the third memoir:
Before the "O my Jesus", and after the end of the second part of the Secret, we
find this curious sentence, obviously deprived of its context -
"Em Portugal se conservera sempre o doguema da f‚." - "In Portugal, the dogma
of the Faith will always be preserved."
The first two parts of the Secret say nothing about the loss of dogma anywhere
in the world, so why this reference to the preservation of dogma in Portugal?
Does the Third Secret warn us, then, of a loss of dogma throughout the rest of
the world?
As Sister Lucy's ordinary, Bishop da Silva undoubtedly perceived his obligation
to insure that she did not die without disclosing the remainder of that great
Secret which had already so greatly affected the life of the Church and the
course of human history. This was no mere exercise in reminiscence; it was a
grave duty to the Church and the world. What if she died?
In September of 1944, Bishop da Silva suggested that Sister Lucy write down the
text of what we now refer to as the Third Secret, but she said that she could
not take that responsibility upon herself without a formal, written order. Even
when the order was given a month later, the seer who had written freely of
wars, famines, persecutions and the annihilation of nations, could not commit
to paper a prophecy that was evidently far more disturbing to her than these
events. She, who had lived a life of obedience to her superiors, literally
could not make her hand move across the paper. She attributed this paralysis to
a preternatural cause.(8)
Finally, on January 2, 1944, Sister Lucy was able to write down the text of the
Secret in the chapel at the convent of Tuy. According to the account of Canon
Martins dos Reis, she was able to proceed only "after Our Lady appeared to her
to tell her to write the famous secret ... in conformity with what had been
asked of her."(9)
On January 9, 1944, Sister Lucy wrote to Bishop da Silva to tell him that the
Third Secret of Fatima had been written down and placed in a sealed envelope.
On June 17, 1944, the envelope was delivered to Bishop da Silva, by Sister
Lucy's bishop confessor in Tuy. The five month delay had resulted from Sister
Lucy's unwillingness to entrust the envelope to anyone but a bishop not even a
priest would do. Bishop da Sliva offered to forward the envelope to the Holy
Office. Rome rejected the offer. The burden of the Secret would remain on
Bishop da Silva, who made the famous promise to Lucy that the envelope would be
unsealed and the Secret revealed not later than 1960.
After an urgent interrogation of Sister Lucy by Cardinal Ottaviani in May 1955,
the Holy Office rescinded its earlier rejection of the text of the Third Secret
and requested it be delivered to Rome by the Nuncio in Lisbon. Just before the
envelope was brought to the Nuncio, Bishop da Silva's auxiliary, Bishop
Venancio, held it up to the light: He could clearly discern the 23- lines in
Sister Lucy's handwriting which comprise one of the greatest mysteries in the
history of the modern world. By the spring of 1957 the Third Secret of Fatima
had been delivered to the Vatican.
The Spreading of Russia's Errors
The years between the writing of the Third Secret and its transmission to Rome
were, of course, one long fulfillment of Our Lady's warning that Russia would
"spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against
the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer
..."
At Yalta, in February 1945, Roosevelt delivered the Catholic peoples of
Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the Ukraine into the hands of
the Bolsheviks, in return for Stalin's worthless promises of respect for
religious freedom. Stalin then proceeded to butcher, torture, starve to death
and imprison tens of millions of Catholics. The Greek Catholic Church was
destroyed by its forcible transplantation into the KGB-controlled Orthodox
Church, which simply appropriated to itself Catholic parishes and cathedrals
after the Catholic clergy had been killed or imprisoned. The Orthodox hierarchy
itself had been reduced from 50,000 priests and bishops to a mere 500 KGB
spy-clerics.
At Potsdam, in July and August of 1945, after having ordered the bombing of
Hiroshima and the Catholic city of Nagasaki, Truman gifted Stalin with
Manchuria and North Korea down to the 38th parallel, opening the way for Mao
Tse Tung and the Cultural Revolution, with its 30 million additional victims.
Mao defeated Chiang Kai-shek with the abandoned Japanese weapons Stalin had
obligingly stockpiled and left behind for his Red Chinese comrades.
While the Third Secret remained in its sealed envelope, the errors of Russia
swiftly infected the whole world. By the beginning of the reign of John XXIII
in 1958, one-third of mankind had been enslaved by communism, as the rest of
the world dallied with socialism, its cousin, and began succumbing to the
regime of contraception and abortion first spawned in Soviet Russia. Abortion
alone, among Russia's errors, would claim the lives of 600 million innocent
children around the world, and more than 38 million in America casulaties far
vaster than those suffered by all the armies in all the wars in history; vaster
than even the casualties of indigenous Russian and Chinese Communism combined.
In his encyclical Divini Redemptoris, Pius XI had denounced communism as
"intrinsically perverse" and warned that "no one who would save Christian
civilization and the social order may collaborate with it in any undertaking
whatsoever." On June 13, 1949, Pius XII reaffirmed the Church's implacable
opposition to communism by decreeing through the Holy Office that those who
joined or aided communists in any way, or even read communist literature, would
be denied the sacraments; and that those who profess the doctrine of the
communists "incur, by the law itself, as apostates from the Catholic faith,
excommunication especially reserved to the Holy See." With the whole world
infected by communism, would these condemnations hold fast? Or was it possible
that the errors of Russia would spread even into the human elements of the
Church herself?
On December 4, 1957, Bishop da Silva died. On October 9, 1958, Pius XII died,
apparently without having read the Third Secret, which had remained locked away
in a small wooden safe in his papal apartments.
In 1960, Pope John read and then suppressed the Secret, consigning it a drawer
in his writing desk. No sooner had the drawer closed, than the Church's
opposition to the errors of Russia began to soften. And then things began to go
terribly wrong within the Church Herself wrong in ways which had never been
seen in Her entire history.
The opening session of the Second Vatican Council was attended by two
"observers" from the Russian Orthodox spy-church: Vitali Borovoy and Vladimir
Kotlyarov. Their attendance had been secured at the cost of the Vatican's
incredible promise that the Council would refrain from any condemnation of
communism. The "Vatican-Moscow Agreement" had been reached in secret at Metz,
France, after negotiations between the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan, Nikodim,
a KGB agent, and Cardinal Tisserant.(10)
The Vatican-Moscow Agreement was the personal initiative of John XXIII, at the
suggestion of Cardinal Montini, who would later become Pope Paul VI and preside
over the remainder of Pope John's Council. When he was still a Monsignor,
Montini was suddenly dismissed from his position as Pro-Secretary of State
under Pius XII and sent off to be Archbishop of Milan. This sacking of Montini
by promotion-removal occurred after Pope Pius had been presented with
documentary proof that Montini had undertaken clandestine diplomatic relations
with the Soviets without the Pope's knowledge.(11) The vans which contained
Montini's possessions were searched by Vatican officials before they departed
for Milan.(12)
The future Pope's sudden dismissal capped a career of secretive disobedience to
papal directives. In the 1930's, for example, had hoarded in his apartment and
given out to trusted friends copies of Karl Adam's quasi-heretical book The
Spirit of Catholicism, which had been banned in Rome.(13) His admiring
biographer, Peter Hebblethwaite, notes that "When theologians were being
condemned in the early 1950s, they would always get a friendly reception from
[Montini] in the Vatican and a shrug of the shoulders at the latest Ottaviani
incident."(14) Ottaviani was then the Prefect of Pius XII's Holy Office. He is
always cast as the great villain in the liberals' fable of the post-conciliar
"renewal", and Montini as the great hero, who kept the fires of liberty burning
during the Dark Age of pre-conciliar "persecutions".
In removing Montini to Milan, Pius XII had declined to make him a Cardinal,
although Milan was traditionally a cardinalate See. Pius thereby kept Montini
out of the line of Papal succession. But Montini would be the first Cardinal
created by John XXIII, who upon his election joked that he was keeping the
Chair of Peter warm for Montini.
Two months before his death in 1963, Pope John issued his encyclical Pacem in
terris, which undermined the entire teaching of his predecessors condemning any
involvement of the faithful with communism. Drawing a novel distinction between
evil ideologies and the historical movement they spawn, Pacem in terris
suggested that one could licitly join the Communist movements in various
countries without necessarily subscribing to communism's condemned principles:
"Who can deny that there are in those movements, in so far as they conform to
the dictates of right reason and are interpreters of the lawful aspirations of
the human person, contain elements that are positive and deserving of
approval?"(15) In other words, one could participate in a Communist movement so
long as one did not become a Communist!
But what of the teaching of Pope Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris? Pope John's
predecessor had warned Catholics to shun precisely those Communist-influenced
movements which have "elements that are positive":
"In the beginning, Communism showed itself for what it was in all its
perversity, but very soon it realized that it was thus alienating people. It
has therefore, changed its tactics and strives to entice the multitudes by
trickery in various forms, hiding its real designs behind ideas that are in
themselves good and attractive ... Under various names that do not suggest
Communism ... [t]hey try perfidiously to worm their way even into professedly
Catholic and religious organizations ... [t]hey invite Catholics to collaborate
with them in the realm of so-called humanitarianism and charity; and at times
make proposals that are in perfect harmony with the Christian spirit and the
doctrine of the Church ... See to it, faithful brethren, that the Faithful do
not allow themselves to be deceived."
The warning of Pius XI was only one of a series of papal warnings by Pius IX,
Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII which, by some strange process of forgetfulness,
the Popes after 1960 no longer seemed to recall: warnings against modernism,
against Communism, against the false doctrine of "religious liberty" for all
sects, against any Catholic participation in the "ecumenical movement", against
tampering with the Sacred Liturgy.
Shortly before the promulgation of Pacem in terris, Pope John allowed himself
to be photographed shaking the hand of Nikita Krushchev's son-in-law, Alexi
Adjubei, in the Vatican. Before the meeting took place, Pope John had worried
about its effect on Italian politics, but he proceeded anyway.(16) In the
Italian elections of 1963, the Italian Communist Party gained a million votes,
and the Christian Democrats suffered a corresponding reversal.(17)
John XXIII and Paul VI would preside over a Council that would teach us that we
must read "the signs of the times". But the Council itself would ignore the
greatest sign of evil in the world which surrounded it, doing so under a secret
agreement with the very perpetrators of that evil. The Council would also
ignore perhaps the greatest of the "signs of the times" in our century: the
Message of Fatima, including that portion of it which had been suppressed by
Pope John only two years before.
"Disastrous Conditions of Humanity"
From the perspective of Fatima what occurred during and after the Second
Vatican Council should have been no surprise. Indeed, Pope Pius XII had
predicted it with eerie prophetic accuracy, in 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 and Her liturgy. 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 Magdalen, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask Where
have they taken Him' "(18)
Surely "the Virgin's Messages to Lucy of Fatima" had figured in Pius XII's
decision not to proceed with his own plans for an ecumenical council. Inded,
the Pope's own emissaries, including Cardinal Ottaviani, had interrogated
Sister Lucy in 1955, before plans for a council were scrapped. Had she told
them of the Third Secret? Perhaps, too, His Holiness was mindful of the famous
advice of the great Cardinal Manning (quoting Cardinal Pallavicini) that "to
convoke a General Council, except when absolutely necessary, is to tempt God."
Pope Pius must also have pondered whether, at his advanced age, he would be
able to control the very forces within the Church which his predecessor, Pope
St. Pius X, had labored so mightily to contain. It was Pius XII himself who had
canonized his great predecessor. Following in Pius X's footsteps, he had
condemned the neo-modernists in Humani generis. He knew, as Pius X knew, that
modernists were still at work "almost in the very veins and heart of the
Church", and that although a modernist might "bow his head for a moment" when
rebuked, "it was soon uplifted more arrogantly than ever".(19) Would not a
Council improvidently called by an aged Pope, therefore, be an invitation to
precisely what Pius XII feared "the suicide of altering the Faith and Her
liturgy"?
Even a cursory reader of the great encyclicals of the pre-conciliar age will
notice that the alarm expressed by Pius XII was part of a veritable Magisterium
of admonition developed in the pronouncements of the great 19th and 20th
Century Popes, until John XXIII. Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius
XI and Pius XII were of one voice in warning that the world's embrace of the
false principles of modernity was bringing civilization to its ruin, and that
the Church herself was threatened as never before by what Pius X had described
in Pascendi as the "partisans of error".
In his inaugural encyclical, E Supremi, issued fourteen years before the first
apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, Pius X sounded perhaps the most dramatic
warning of impending calamity for the Church and the world:
"We felt a sort of terror considering the disastrous conditions of humanity at
the present hour. Can we ignore such a profound and grave evil, which at this
moment much more than in the past is working away at its very marrow and
leading it to its ruin? ... Truly whoever ponders these things must necessarily
and firmly fear whether such a perversion of minds is not the sign of
announcing, and the beginning of the last times ... So great is the audacity
with which religion is mocked everywhere, and the dogmas of the faith are
fought against ... [M]an, with unspeakable temerity, has usurped the place of
the Creator, lifting himself above everything that bears the name of God."
Pius XII would echo this theme of an unprecedented deterioration in the state
of the world in his letter of February 11, 1949: "We are overwhelmed with
sadness and anguish, seeing that the wickedness of perverse men has reached a
degree of impiety that is unbelievable and absolutely unknown in other
times."(20)
John XXIII did not share the alarm of his predecessors. On the contrary, in a
world vastly more depraved than the one observed by Pius X, Pope John was
somehow hugely optimistic. Indeed, it is reported that upon reading the Third
Secret with the aid of a Portuguese translator, he had declared: "This does not
concern the years of my pontificate."(21) In his opening address to the
Council, Pope John expressed positive annoyance with those who "say that our
era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse ... We feel we must
disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as
though the end of the world was at hand." So much for Pope St. Pius X!
The Second Vatican Council would proceed, with Pope John euphorically
exclaiming that "it rises in the Church like daybreak, a forerunner of a most
splendid light. It is now only dawn." In the darkness of Pope John's desk
drawer, the Third Secret of Fatima lay hidden from the world.
Footnotes:
1. Council Daybook, National Catholic Welfare Conference, Washington, D.C.,
Vol.1, p. 26.
2. Ibid. p. 27.
3. Davies, Michael. Pope John's Council Angelus Press, Kansas City, Missouri
(1992), p. 2.
4. Frere Michel de la Sainte Trinite. The Third Secret. Immaculate Heart
Publications, Buffalo, NY (1990), p. 528.
5. A complete review of the overwhelming evidence that the Secret was to be
disclosed not later than 1960 can be found in The Third Secret, the work cited
above, at pp. 470-478.
6. Ibid. p. 586.
7. Ibid.
8. The Third Secret, p. 45.
9. Ibid. p. 48.
10. Amerio, Romano. Iota Unum. Sarto House, Kansas City, MO (1996), pp. 75-77.
Amerio was a peritus at Vatican II, and was intimately familiar with its
documents and the havoc they have caused in the Holy Catholic Church. He died
in January of this year.
11. The Third Secret, pp. 454-60.
12. Hebblethwaite, op cit. p.
13. Hebblethwaite, Peter. In The Vatican, Oxford University Press, p. 35.
14. Ibid.
15. Pacem in terris, No. 159.
16. Hebblethwaite, Peter. Paul VI, The First Modern Pope. Paulist Press, NY
(1993), p. 317.
17. Pope John's Council, p. 144.
18. Devant l'histoire, p. 52-53, quoted in Inside the Vatican, January 1997, p.
7.
19. Pascendi, No. 3.
20. Frere Michel, op cit. p. 269.
21. Ibid., p. 557 [quoting the account of Father Alonso]
>Subject: THE THIRD LETTER OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA
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PrayDivMer
The Third Secret of Fatima
and
The Post-Conciliar Debacle
(Part Three)
By Christopher A. Ferrara, Esq.
Part OnePart Two
In his book Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, Council Father Bishop Rudolf
Graber observed that "the great revolutions ... are preceded by a subterranean
phase, which is followed by a second, that of incubation, before the eruption
then takes place."(43) (emphasis added)
For nearly sixty years the neo-modernist revolution had been held in its
incubation phase, prevented from erupting by the stern measures Pope St. Pius X
had imposed with the full weight of the Petrine office. In his monumental
encyclical Pascendi, Pius X had taught that the only way to deal with
modernists is to expose them, root them out of the Church and suppress their
works, because if left at liberty "there is no part of Catholic truth which
they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt."(44) In his
decree Lamentabili the last canonized Pope declared that the world's bishops
must "trample underfoot all fleshly imprudence and, heedless of the outcry of
the wicked, proscribe and tear from the hands of the faithful all bad books and
writings." language which even so-called "conservative" Catholics today find
embarrassing.(45) For the protection of the faithful, Pope St. Pius had ordered
the erection of diocesan vigilance committees, the careful examination and
censorship of all publications which contained modernist theses or even savored
of modernism, the placing of modernist texts on the Index of Forbidden Books,
and the removal of all modernists from religious orders, seminaries and
university faculties. And, in his Motu proprio entitled Sacrorum antitistum,
His Holiness commanded that every priest and theologian in the Catholic Church
be required to sign the Oath against Modernism which he composed. Despite a
storm of protest, to which Protestant theologians added their outrage, only two
dozen priests throughout Europe refused to sign the Oath.(46) The revolution
was routed for more than 50 years.
Then came Pope John XXIII. We have seen that in his opening address to the
Council Pope John disparaged "those prophets of gloom [including Pius XI], who
are always forecasting disaster". Riding a wave of euphoria induced by the
magnificent spectacle of the assembled bishops, Pope John described his Council
as a "new Pentecost". On the final day of its First Session in 1962, His
Holiness exclaimed that "the heavens are opened above our heads, and the
splendor of the heavenly court shines down upon us."(47)
Six months later Pope John was dead, but the Council went on ... and on and on.
Once the Council had finally ended in December of 1965, however, it did not
take long to discover that the "prophets of gloom" had been right, and that far
from being a "new Pentecost", Vatican II was in truth a self-inflicted wound in
the Body of Christ, through which neo-modernist agents of destruction had
gleefully entered the bloodstream of the Church, declared victory, and begun to
do precisely what Pope St. Pius X warned they would do if they were ever given
liberty: spread their poison "in the very veins and heart of the Church".(48)
It is a fact of history that Vatican II was largely an exercise in tearing down
the bulwark Pope St. Pius X had erected. To confirm this one need look no
further than the eyewitness testimony of Msgr. Rudolf G. Bandas, himself a
Conciliar peritus. Only two years after the Council had ended Msgr. Bandas was
constrained to ask: "How could our Church be so profoundly blighted in so short
a time?"(49) Answering his own question, Msgr. Bandas cited progressivist
Bishop Helder Camara's praise of Pope John for his "courage on the eve of the
Council in naming as conciliar experts many of the greatest theologians of our
day. Among those whom he appointed were many who emerged from the black lists
of suspicion" that is, from the censures and condemnations of Pius XII and the
Holy Office.
Two of those who emerged from the "black lists of suspicion" to take key roles
at the Council were Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Kung. It was Schillebeeckx
who wrote the crucial 480-page critique employed by the "Rhine group" bishops
to coordinate their public relations campaign against the wholly orthodox
preparatory schemas for the Council, which led to abandonment of the Council's
entire meticulous preparation.(50) Schillebeeckx was later placed under Vatican
investigation for his outrageously heterodox views on the historicity of the
Virgin Birth, the institution of the Eucharist, the Resurrection, and the
founding of the Church. He dared to argue that the words "This is My Body ...
This is My Blood" were never actually spoken by Our Lord, and that Our Lord
never planned to found a Church.(51) Despite his fulminating heresy, this
leading peritus of Vatican II has never been subjected to any canonical
penalty. Kung, of course, was finally condemned after an eleven year
investigation and stripped of his license to teach theology in 1979. Yet he
remains a priest in good standing who is still an academic.
Looking back on the Council, Monsignor Bandas was forced to conclude that the
amnesty Pope John had naively extended to "great theologians" like
Schillebeeckx and Kung was a catastrophic mistake:
"No doubt good Pope John thought that these suspect theologians would rectify
their ideas and perform a genuine service to the Church. But exactly the
opposite happened. Supported by certain Rhine' Council Fathers, and often
acting in a manner positively boorish, they turned around and exclaimed:
Behold, we are named experts, our ideas stand approved.' ...When I entered my
tribunal at the Council, on the first day of the fourth session, the first
announcement, emanating from the Secretary of State, was the following: No more
periti will be appointed.' But it was too late. The great confusion was
underway. It was already apparent that neither Trent nor Vatican I nor any
encyclical would be permitted to impede its advance."(52)
In other words, Pope John had played with dynamite. The resulting explosion was
uncontainable. Immediately after the Council, the Oath Against Modernism was
abolished, along with the Index of Forbidden Books a decision that Bishop
Graber rightly describes as "incomprehensible".(53) Yesterday's heretics became
today's executors of the Council.
A Conciliar Disclaimer
By Providence the Council had expressly disclaimed the note of infallibility.
In an utterly unprecedented nota praevia (preliminary note), the conciliar
Theological Commission described the Council as "pastoral", and assured the
Council Fathers that they were not defining doctrine unless they openly
professed to be doing so:
In view of the conciliar practice and pastoral purpose of the present Council,
the sacred Synod defines matters of faith and morals as binding on the Church
only when the Synod itself openly declares so.(54) [emphasis added]
Never in the history of the Catholic Church had a Council taken pains to
declare that it was not teaching infallibly. In fact, nowhere in any of its
documents did the Council "openly declare" that the faithful were bound to
adhere to any of its ambiguous and confusing formulations, especially those
relating to "ecumenism", "collegiality" and "dialogue" novel terms which elude
any precise definition. Nor could the assent of faith, or even an assent of
prudence, be demanded for the manifestly dubious sociological and geopolitical
assertions of Gaudium et spes, which claims that mankind is experiencing "an
advance toward maturity" and that there is a duty to establish a "universal
public authority" with "effective power to safeguard, on the behalf of all,
security, regard for justice and respect for rights".(55) No one in possession
of his senses believes that mankind has advanced in maturity during the past
century (the very notion of a maturing human race implicitly contradicts the
doctrine of Original Sin and explicitly contradicts Sacred Scripture). Nor is
the Magisterium competent to prescribe world government as the solution to our
temporal problems.
The nota praevia undoubtedly relieved the anxiety of many Council Fathers about
what exactly they were propounding in some of the Council's verbose and
ambiguous documents. This is borne out by the testimony of Bishop Thomas
Morris, which at his request was not unsealed until after his death:
"I was relieved when we were told that this Council was not aiming at defining
or giving final statements on doctrine, because a statement of doctrine has to
be very carefully formulated and I would have regarded the Council documents as
tentative and liable to be reformed."(56)
Bishop Morris also testified to the manner in which the liberal periti
manipulated the sentiments of the Fathers toward acceptance of the novel texts
they had drafted to replace the "rigid" and "sterile" schemas prepared by the
Curial Fathers before the Council:
"A speech was written, perhaps of a Council Father (he was the only one who
could speak), but all the periti were massed in the lobby or on the stairs to
hear this statement. They would applaud vigorously and the Presiding Chairman
would say No applause in Church', but that was all stage-managed."(57)
Change from Above
This is not to say that the post-conciliar debacle has been the work of a few
neo-modernist conciliar periti let loose upon the Church. On the contrary,
every one of the disastrous innovations which make up "the great confusion" now
afflicting us from the new Mass, to communion in the hand, to altar girls, to
interfaith prayer meetings has been approved by either Pope Paul VI or his
successor in the name of the Council, and implemented by post-conciliar curial
commissions acting with papal authority. Indeed, it was Paul VI himself who
declared in L'Osservatore Romano that a vast program of innovation was the very
purpose of the Council:
"The important words of the Council are newness and updating ... the word
newness has been given to us as an order, as a program."(58)
Following this program of newness, Paul VI presided, first of all, over what
Msgr. Klaus Gamber has rightly described in his Reform of the Roman Liturgy as
"the real destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman rite
with a history of more than one thousand years".(59) It must be noted here that
the French preface to Gamber's book was written by none other than Cardinal
Josef Ratzinger, who called Gamber "a true prophet" with "the courage of a true
witness ..." In his recent memoirs Cardinal Ratzinger agrees that the
imposition of the new Mass was a "break in the history of the liturgy, the
consequences of which could only be tragic ... [S]uch a development had never
been seen in the history of the liturgy ..."(60)
In his general audience address of November 26, 1969, Pope Paul offered a
public justification for his unprecedented act of destruction. His words are
amazing and profoundly disturbing, for no Pope in the history of the Church has
ever dared to say such things.
The address begins with an almost incredible admission:
"A new rite of Mass: a change in the venerable tradition that has gone on for
centuries. This is something that affects our hereditary religious patrimony,
which seemed to enjoy the privilege of being untouchable and settled. It seemed
to bring the prayer of our forefathers and our saints to our lips and to give
us the comfort of feeling faithful to our spiritual past, which we kept alive
to pass it on to the generations ahead." [emphasis added]
The Pope then explains that what seemed to be traditional, venerable,
untouchable, a link with our past and part of our heritage as Catholics, is in
reality quite dispensable and will now be dispensed with:
"This change will affect the ceremonies of the Mass. We shall become aware,
perhaps with some feeling of annoyance, that the ceremonies at the altar are no
longer being carried out with the same words and gestures to which we were
accustomed [!] ... This change also touches the faithful. It is intended to
interest each one of those present, to draw them out of their customary
personal devotions or their usual torpor."
So the Mass would be changed to draw the faithful out of the "torpor" in which
they had been languishing for centuries.
"We must prepare for this many-sided inconvenience. It is the kind of upset
that is caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits.
Never in the entire history of the Catholic Church had the Roman Pontiff ever
attempted to impose a "novelty that breaks in on our habits" that is, disrupts
the settled form of divine worship in the Church.
"We shall notice that pious persons are disturbed most, because they have their
own respectable way of hearing Mass, and they will feel shaken out of their
usual thoughts and obliged to follow those of others. Even priests may feel
some annoyance in this respect."
A "novelty" that disturbs pious persons most, and annoys even priests! The
Church must brace herself:
"So what is to be done on this special and historical [!] occasion? First, we
must prepare ourselves. This novelty is no small thing. We should not let
ourselves be surprised by the nature, even the nuisance, of its exterior forms.
As intelligent persons and conscientious faithful, we should find out as much
as we can about this innovation ...
But why must we have this nuisance, this innovation? Because of an unfounded
claim that Our Lord Himself and the Holy Spirit are demanding a new rite of
Mass!
"It is Christ's will, it is the breath of the Holy Spirit, which calls the
Church to make this change. A prophetic moment is occurring in the mystical
body (sic) of Christ, which is the Church. This moment is shaking the Church,
arousing it, obliging it to renew the mysterious art of its prayer."
But that is not all. "Conservatives" never tire of claiming that Sacrosanctum
Concilium, the conciliar decree on the liturgy, "mandates" the use of Latin in
the Mass. In truth, Bugnini's craftily worded document actually opened the way
to the complete vernacularization of the liturgy.(61) Thus, Pope Paul, dropping
any conciliar pretense of preserving intact the Latin Mass, declared in his
address that the "prophetic moment" now "shaking" the Church required that
Latin be abandoned immediately as the language of divine worship:
"It is here that the greatest newness is going to be noticed, the newness of
language. No longer Latin, but the spoken language will be the principal
language of the Mass. The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a
great sacrifice for those who know the beauty, the power, and the expressive
sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries;
we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred
utterance. We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable
artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant. We have reason for regret,
reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language
of the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. Why? What is more
precious than these loftiest of our Church's values?
Why indeed? Here is the Pope's answer:
"The answer will seem banal, almost prosaic. Yet it is a good answer because it
is human, it is apostolic. Understanding of prayer is more important than the
silken garments in which it is royally dressed. Participation by the people is
worth more particularly participation by modern people, so fond of plain
language which is easily understood and converted into everyday speech."
So we must have a new Mass for the "human" (yet "apostolic"!) reason that we
did not understand the Mass that Holy Mother Church had already given us! The
sacred liturgy of the Catholic Church was incomprehensible to her own members!
But was it really? As Cardinal Ottaviani had noted in his famous intervention
protesting imposition of the new Mass, the people themselves "never, absolutely
never, asked that the liturgy be changed or mutilated to make it easier to
understand."(62) Indeed, had not Pope Paul himself admitted in the very same
address that the people, especially the pious, would find the changes
disturbing, annoying, inconvenient and even a nuisance? What is more, did not
the Roman Missal already contain a faithful vernacular translation for those
who could not follow in the Latin? What in heaven's name was motivating this
sudden change, which the faithful themselves had never asked for?
Examining the text of Pope Paul's address today, one can scarcely believe that
it was uttered by the Roman Pontiff, divinely appointed guardian of Tradition
and the common good of the Church.(63) It defies comprehension that the Vicar
of Christ could, in such ironic tones, exhort us to behave "like profane
intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance"; to abandon "the
language of the angels"; to reject something of "priceless worth", the
"loftiest of our Church's values"; and to accept instead a new rite of Mass
concocted by an obscure Monsignor named Bugnini, with the aid of a liturgical
committee assisted by six Protestant advisors!(64)
The mystery deepens even further when one considers that only a year before
this address Pope Paul had lamented the "auto-demolition" of the Church in the
aftermath of the Council. Did Pope Paul think that this process of
auto-demolition would be arrested by what Gamber called "the real destruction
of the traditional Mass"? Stranger still, three years after he had imposed the
Bugnini rite upon the Church, Pope Paul would lament that, "From somewhere or
other the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God."(65) From somewhere or
other.
The Debacle at a Glance
When viewed from the perspective of Fatima, the uncanny papal address of
November 26, 1969 calls to mind several apparently unrelated events: the
mysterious suppression of the Third Secret in 1960; Sister Lucy's repeated
statements that Our Lady wished the Secret to be revealed not later than that
year; and Pius XII's declaration shortly before his death in 1958 that the
Message of Fatima is "a divine warning against the suicide of altering the
Faith and [the] liturgy."(66) Did the Third Secret of Fatima predict the very
act that Paul VI committed in 1969? Does it also predict the tidal wave of
unprecedented reforms which has swept the Church since the Council?
We must remember that the post-conciliar debacle is certainly not limited to
what Gamber called "the real destruction of the traditional Mass" as if that
were not enough. Although, as Cardinal Ratzinger observes in his memoirs, "the
ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in great part on the
collapse of the liturgy"(67), this great debacle extends beyond that event to
include what even "conservatives" admit was a "series of changes in ...
official worship and practices which have scarcely left a single Catholic
unaffected; and which, in many respects, have changed the external image of the
Church ..."(68)
Far abler commentators than this author have assessed the full extent of the
debacle with unimpeachable documentation for example, Michael Davies in his
definitive trilogy on the Council and its reforms, and Romano Amerio in his
master-work Iota Unum. For present purposes, a brief look at the empirical
evidence, especially in the U.S., will suffice to demonstrate the utter
catastrophe which has befallen us since that year when the Third Secret of
Fatima was suddenly suppressed.
Beginning in 1960 every vital sign of the Church in America began to decline
precipitously, and none of them has ever rebounded to pre-conciliar levels, or
even near those levels. Consider the following data:
Weekly Mass attendance in the U.S. has declined from 71% of all Catholics in
1963 to only 25% in 1993 an astonishing 65% decline since the Council. The
situation in Europe is even more catastrophic, with Mass attendance having
declined since the Council to single digits.(69)
In 1960 the number of converts made in the U.S. was 140,000. By 1965 the number
had dropped to 120,000, despite the population increase in the same period of
time.
By 1970, with the population continuing to grow, conversions in the U.S.
continued to plummet; there were only 90,000 conversions that year.
By 1975 conversions had plummeted still further, to only 80,000 per year.
Despite a brief surge to 85,000 in 1985, by 1995 the number of annual
conversions had plunged to an abysmal 75,000-80,000 in the entire nation
practically one-half the pre-conciliar level, even though the U.S. population
has greatly increased since then.(70)
Despite the claim of some "conservatives" that the conversion of a number of
American "evangelicals" signals the long-awaited "renewal" of Vatican II, it is
undeniable that overall the Church has been suffering hemorrhagic losses of
Catholics by the millions to the evangelical sects, especially in Latin
America. Furthermore, The Wanderer reports that American evangelicals are now
"pouring into the Antioch Orthodox Church" because they are drawn to its
traditional and majestic forms of worship and its ancient doctrine! Meanwhile,
Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I, after 30 years of "ecumenical dialogue" with
the Vatican, chides the Catholic Church for "shun[ning] the correct glory of
God".(71) It is, ironically, the Bugnini "ecumenical" rite which poses the
greatest obstacle to any possible reunion of the Orthodox churches with Rome,
and which is now diverting evangelicals into Orthodoxy.
As we all know, the decline in conversions since 1960 has been accompanied by
an unparalleled exodus from the priesthood, the seminaries, the monasteries,
convents and Catholic schools. Here are some of the data:
In 1965 there were some 57,000 priests in America. By 1995, after 30 years of
population growth, the number of priests had declined to only 49,000, leaving
8,000 fewer priests than there were 30 years ago. Many of the remaining priests
are nearing retirement age. In fact, the number of priests per 10,000 Catholics
has declined from 7.87 in 1965 to 5.46 in 1995, which means that there are 30%
fewer priests available today than there were in 1965.
At the close of Vatican II in 1965, there were approximately 12,000 brothers.
By 1995 there were only 6,000.
At the close of the Council there were approximately 180,000 sisters. By 1995
there were only 100,000.
Some 4,200,000 students attended Catholic elementary schools in the Council's
final year. By 1995 there were only 1,800,000.
The situation is equally disastrous in the world as a whole. By the end of 1995
there were actually 44,000 fewer priests in the world than there were 25 years
ago despite a doubling of the world's population in that time. [Source:
L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, August 13/21 1997]
Defenders of the post-conciliar state of affairs claim, however, that
ordinations in the Third World have recently produced a dramatic rise in the
number of priests worldwide, and that this, at last, is the hoped for
"renewal". Not so.
Between 1989 and 1995 the number of priests in the entire world increased by a
grand total of 289! Priestly defections worldwide all but negated the
additional few thousand ordinations in all of Africa, Latin America and
Southeast Asia.
The proponents of the "great renewal" may say what they will, but the empirical
data make a mockery of their claim that the Council has ushered in a new era of
vitality for the Church. For the first time in her entire history, the Holy
Catholic Church has ceased to grow and is undergoing a severe and prolonged
contraction. [Even the loss of members during the Protestant revolt in the 16th
Century was more than offset by the conversion of 7 million Mexicans through
the miraculous intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe.] As the world's
population increases, the Catholic Church decreases.
It is no wonder both Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger have spoken in
recent interviews of a "qualitative renewal" in the Church since the Council.
But this is a most peculiar way to explain such a great loss of sheep (not to
mention shepherds) over the past 35 years. How does one determine the "quality"
of the souls who have remained in the Church? And how could the "quality" of
these souls make up for the loss of so many other souls?
In any case, it is none other than Cardinal Ratzinger who said on a different
occasion: "Certainly the results of [Vatican II] seem cruelly opposed to the
expectations of everyone ... I am repeating here what I said ten years after
the conclusion of the work: [It] is incontrovertible that this period has
definitely been unfavorable for the Church."(72)
Yet the defenders of the current state of affairs perversely claim there is no
proof of any causal connection between the Council, the reforms it engendered
and the subsequent decline in the vital signs of the Church. Post hoc, non ergo
propter hoc, they say. Please! The debacle indicated by the statistics tracks,
measure for measure, with the entire program of Conciliar aggiornamento:
The reform of the Mass was followed by an unprecedented and quite sudden
decline in Mass attendance, and a loss of belief in the Real Presence by those
Catholics who still bother to attend Mass.
The reforms of the priesthood, including seminary formation, were followed by
the sudden defection of thousands of priests and the virtual elimination of new
vocations, so that there are fewer priests today than before the Council.
The reform of the religious orders was followed by the sudden emptying of
monasteries and convents.
The abolition of Pius X's Oath against Modernism and the Index of Forbidden
Books was followed by a vast profusion of heresy in the seminaries, Catholic
academies and associations of laity and priests, who openly defy and undermine
Magisterial teachings around the world.
The implementation of the new "ecumenism" which eschews any frank effort to
convert non-Catholics was followed by a drastic decline in conversions, the
massive defection of Catholics into Protestant sects, and a widening of the
doctrinal differences between Catholicism and multiform Protestantism. For
example, after 30 years of "ecumenical dialogue" between Rome and the
Anglicans, the Anglican "church" decided to "ordain" women, deny the torments
of Hell, and approve illicit cohabitation between unmarried couples. No
Protestant sect has changed any of its false doctrines even one iota in
response to more than 30 years of "ecumenical dialogue". On the other hand, the
majority of Catholics who still occupy the pews in parish churches have become
functional Protestants. Not only are they encouraged by their priests, and even
the Vatican, to pray with Protestants and participate with them in joint
liturgical services, they have adopted a wholly Protestant attitude toward the
authority of the Magisterium, choosing to "disagree" with the Pope on birth
control, divorce and remarriage, gay rights, priestly celibacy and a host of
other issues.
As Bishop Graber observed, since the Council the Catholic Church has undergone
a "kind of Copernican revolution", a revolution which he demonstrates was
predicted and labored for by the leaders of the Masonic societies condemned in
dozens of papal pronouncements before the Council.(73) As that revolution
unfolded, its effects were joyously hailed by Communists and Masons around the
world in their various publications. Perhaps the most striking example of how
the enemies of the Church were delighted by the fruits of the Council is the
gratuitous advice given to Pope Paul VI by Izvestia, the newspaper of the
Soviet Communist Party, on how to deal with, of all people, Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre:
"Be conscious of the danger that Lefebvre represents. And continue the
magnificent movement of approach begun with the ecumenism of Vatican II."(74)
In view of this sort of praise of the post-conciliar Revolution by the Church's
sworn enemies, Bishop Graber was constrained to observe that "If in the face of
these unambiguous admissions anyone still holds the opinion that the events in
the Church are marginal phenomena or transitional difficulties which will die
down of their own accord in time, he is simply beyond hope. But all the greater
is the responsibility of the leading men in the Church if they do not occupy
themselves with these questions and imagine ... that everything can be repaired
by patching it up here and there. No, it is a question of the whole thing: it
is the Church that is at stake ..."(75)
Footnotes:
43. Graber, Rudolf. Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, Christian Book Club
of America (Hawthorne, CA: 1974), p. 32; [quoting Pierre Virion]
44. Pascendi, n. 3
45. Quoted in Rhodes, Anthony. The Power of Rome. Franklin Watts: New York
(1983), p. 196
46. Davies, Michael. Partisans of Error, Neumann Press, Long Prairie, Minnesota
(1988), p. 74.
47. Hebblethwaite, Peter. Pope John XXIII, Image Books (Garden City, NY 1987),
pp. 465-66
48. Pascendi, n. 3
49. Wanderer, August 31, 1967, p. 7
50. Wiltgen, Ralph M. The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, (Augustine Publishing
Company: 1978), p. 23
51. Bernstein, Carl and Politi, Marco. His Holiness (Doubleday, New York:
1996), p. 417
52. The Wanderer, Ibid. at p. 7
53. Graber, op cit. p. 54
54. Addenda to Lumen Gentium, Explanatory Note of the Theological Commission,
Documents of Vatican II, Abbot translation. (America Press: 1966), p. 97-98
55. Gaudium et Spes, nn. 77 and 82
56. Catholic World News, January 22, 1997
57. Ibid.
58. L'Osservatore Romano, July 3, 1974, quoted in Iota Unum, by Amerio Romano,
Sarto House [Kansas City, 1996], p. 112.
59. Gamber, Klaus. Reform of the Roman Liturgy. Una Voce Press, San Juan Capist
PrayDivMer
The Third Secret of Fatima
and
The Post-Conciliar Debacle
(Part Two)
By Christopher A. Ferrara, Esq.
Editors Note: In the first installment of this five-part series, Mr. Ferrara
surveyed the history of the Third Secret of Fatima, including its transfer to
the Vatican in a sealed envelope in 1957 and its mysterious suppression by Pope
John XXIII in 1960, the year it was to have been disclosed to the faithful. Mr.
Ferrara also traced the progress of communism and the spread of Russia's errors
throughout the world, as predicted by Our Lady of Fatima, in the years leading
up to the Second Vatican Council. He also recounted the eerie prophecy of Pope
Pius XII, who said that the Message of Fatima was "a divine warning against the
suicide of altering the Faith and [the] liturgy." Pius XII, evidently fearing
the worst, scrapped his own plans for an ecumenical council.
The first installment ended with Pope John XXIII declaring to the opening
session of the Second Vatican Council that "we must disagree with those
prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster ..." Under the
"Vatican-Moscow Agreement" negotiated in secret before the Council, the council
fathers would be prevented from denouncing Communism.
In this second installment, Mr. Ferrara sketches the subversion of Vatican II
by liberal reformers, the apparent indifference of Pope Paul VI to the Third
Secret, his refusal to speak with Sister Lucy, and the great debacle which
followed the Council.
As Paul VI himself recognized, Cardinal Ottaviani and his fellow defenders of
Tradition in the Roman Curia had expressed "astonishment and apprehension at
the sudden summoning of the Council ..."(22) The history of the past 35 years
shows that their apprehension was more than justified. The members of the Curia
could only have been apprehensive about the Council because they understood
that the charism of infallibility does not attach to everything a council might
say or do. Today's "conservative" Catholics (a group which did not exist before
the Council) would not have shared the Curial apprehension. "Conservatives"
generally make the extravagant claim that the Holy Spirit positively guided all
of the Council's acts and proceedings, rather than providing what the charism
of infallibility strictly entails that is, a negative restraint against the
solemn authoritative definition of explicit error as Catholic teaching, rather
than a positive inspiration to produce perfect documents.
An Opening is Exploited
While the Third Secret of Fatima lay hidden from the world in the papal
apartments, the conciliar liberals were preparing assiduously to take advantage
of the opening presented by Pope John's sudden calling of an ecumenical
council.
We know from Fr. Wiltgen's definitive account in The Rhine Flows Into The
Tiber, and also from their own boasting, how the liberal bishops of the
so-called "Rhine group" (so named because their home countries bordered the
Rhine River) planned to junk the Council's carefully prepared agenda, seize
control of the conciliar drafting apparatus and produce new conciliar documents
more to their liking. The story has been told in great depth not only by Fr.
Wiltgen, who is no "traditionalist", but also by Michael Davies, Cardinal
Heenan and many others. A brief sketch suffices here.
The first initiative of the "Rhine group" was to insure that its members were
elected to a controlling number of seats on each conciliar commission. This was
accomplished after Cardinal Li‚nart blocked a vote on the Curia's slate of
168 candidates by seizing the microphone in a gross violation of the Council's
own rules of procedure, demanding out of order that the Curial slate be
discarded rather than voted upon. Li‚nart's "inspired" action was pronounced
a triumph by the press. The Bishop of Lille declared that Li‚nart had
"deflected the course of the Council and made history." The bishop was
right.(23) The date was October 13, 1962 the 45th anniversary of the final
apparition of Our Lady of Fatima.
Once the curial slate was discarded, Rhine group candidates were able to
capture 49 percent of all elective seats on the commissions overall, 50 percent
of the seats on the crucial Theological Commission, and 56 percent on the even
more crucial Liturgical Commission. "After the election," writes Wiltgen, "it
was not too hard to foresee which group was well enough organized to take over
leadership at the Second Vatican Council. The Rhine had begun to flow into the
Tiber."(24)
The next phase of the liberals' plan was to dispose of the Council's
preparatory schemas, whose "rigid" and "sterile" formulations precluded the
liberalizing outcome they had in mind for the Council. But to discard the
schemas would require a 2/3 vote of the Council Fathers under the procedural
rules promulgated by Pope John. Bowing to pressure from the liberals, Pope John
agreed to change the rules in the middle of the game, allowing a bare majority
of the Council Fathers to reject the schemas.
Through skillful lobbying and speeches full of applause lines aimed at the mass
media, a majority of the Council Fathers was persuaded to discard all of the
preparatory schemas, except one: the schema on sacred liturgy, which was very
dear to the liberals. The liturgy schema was a collection of liturgical land
mines to be detonated after the Council by its principal draftsman, the
infamous Annibale Bugnini.
Once the Council had been stripped of its entire carefully prepared agenda in
itself a wholly unprecedented event in Church history the Council's new agenda,
and all of its documents, would be created ab initio by the conciliar
commissions which were now effectively controlled by Rhine group members and
their periti. As Michael Davies has noted, the liberals objected to the agenda
being imposed upon them at the Council by way of the preparatory schemas, and
then proceeded to impose an agenda of their own.
It is no surprise that after the liberals succeeded in stripping the Council of
its agenda, they agitated for and obtained immediate consideration of the
remaining preparatory schema: the schema on the liturgy. Cardinal Ottaviani had
perceived the destructive potential of the Bugnini schema in the hands of
liberals, and sounded the alarm: "Are we seeking to stir up wonder, or perhaps
scandal, among the Christian people, by introducing changes in so venerable a
rite, that has been approved for so many centuries and is now so familiar? The
rite of Holy Mass should not be treated as if it were a piece of cloth to be
refashioned according to the whim of each generation."(25) As we know today,
Cardinal Ottaviani's warning was not heeded; the Bugnini schema quickly became
the Council's Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, adopted on December 7, 1962, the
day before the first session of the Council ended.
Bugnini himself would implement the liturgy Constitution as Secretary of the
Concilium established by Paul VI after the Council. As Klaus Gamber wrote in
his Reform of the Roman Liturgy:
"The Council Fathers, when publishing the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy,
simply did not expect to see the avalanche they had started, crushing under it
all traditional forms of liturgical worship, including the new liturgy they
themselves had created."(26)
With the blessing of Paul VI, who cited the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy as
his authority(27), Bugnini's Concilium concocted a new rite of Mass which was
imposed upon the Church in 1969, followed by new forms for all of the other
sacraments. In short, the Pope himself had ignored what Pius XII described as
Fatima's "divine warning against the suicide of altering the ... liturgy."
Yet Paul VI had read the Third Secret almost immediately after his election to
the papacy. Like John XXIII, he had relegated it to oblivion, dispatching
Cardinal Ottaviani to offer excuses for its non-disclosure at a Mariological
conference in Rome in 1967, two years before he gave permission for Bugnini's
destruction of the Roman Rite.(28)
Unprecedented Documents
By the end of the fourth and final session of the Council, the Catholic Church
had been presented with a set of sixteen conciliar documents containing a
number of strangely ambiguous formulations, the likes of which have never been
seen in the entire history of the Magisterium. The conciliar documents,
especially Lumen Gentium (on the Church), Unitatis Redintegratio (on
"ecumenism"), Dignitatis Humanae (on religious liberty), Gaudium et Spes (on
the Church in the "modern world") and, of course, Sacrosanctum Concilium (on
the liturgy), clearly reflect a tremendous struggle between the forces of
neo-modernism unleashed by the suddenly convoked Council, who were trying to
inject their ambiguous verbal "viruses" into the Mystical Body, and the Curial
"immune system" which fought fiercely to restrain them. The result of that
struggle was "consensus" documents in which ambiguous "viruses" are surrounded
with traditional "antibodies" designed to counteract them. One can see the
documents veer away from and then toward Tradition within the space of a few
paragraphs, or even a few words.
In his definitive study The Battle for the American Church, Msgr. George Kelly,
a "conservative" who can hardly be accused of "traditionalist" leanings, put it
this way: "Gregory Baum, who was at the Council, once thought that Pope John
smiled in two directions. Critics of Pope Paul suggest that he prayed the same
way. The problems of the post-conciliar Church reflect this predicament. The
documents of the Council contain enough basic ambiguities to make the
post-conciliar difficulties understandable."(29) What Msgr. Kelly does not
discuss is the incredible fact that an ecumenical council of the Holy Catholic
Church had been induced to produce such ambiguous documents in the first place.
No wonder the members of the Curia were apprehensive about the sudden calling
of the Council.
Only by the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit had certain of the most
troublesome parts of the conciliar texts been preserved from the catastrophe of
defining outright error as truth. Corrections and footnotes inserted at the
eleventh hour by the papal fiat of Paul VI prevented that from happening in
certain passages. These interventions outraged the liberals, who complained
that such acts of papal supremacy violated their new-fangled notion of
"collegiality". They spoke of a "Black Week" at the Council marked by several
crucial papal interventions and the Pope's proclamation of Mary as Mother of
the Church, which particularly enraged them.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of how the Holy Spirit operated in this way
at the Council was the nota praevia which Paul VI ordered to be added to Lumen
Gentium to clarify its highly ambiguous and confusing text on "collegiality" a
text which, among its other problems, seemed to equate the power of binding and
loosing given by Christ to the Apostles with that conferred individually and
specially upon Peter as His Vicar, and also to grant some sort of juridical
status to the posited "college of bishops". Pope Paul made this intervention
literally moments before the text was to be approved, after having wept over
incontrovertible documentary proof that the liberals were planning to use the
text to undermine the doctrine of papal primacy after the Council.(30)
As Romano Amerio, a peritus at the Council, observes in his masterwork Iota
Unum: "[I]t seems inexplicable, after so many consultations, corrections and
revisions, and the acceptance of so many amendments, that the council should
issue a doctrinal document so imperfect as to require an explanatory note at
the very moment of its promulgation."(31)
During the Council Paul VI met with Metropolitan Nikodim, Moscow's KGB
negotiator of the Council's silence on communism. In private remarks, the
Ukranian Catholic Major Archbishop, Josef Slipyi, denounced Pope Paul for
"clasping the blood-stained hands of the murderers of the Greek Catholic
Church."(32) In 1978 Nikodim would drop dead while having coffee in the papal
apartments of John Paul I. Ten days later John Paul I himself would die, on the
thirty-third day of his reign.
Our Lady Sacrificed to "Ecumenism"
Even worse than its failure to denounce Communism, Paul VI and the Council had
eschewed a marvelous opportunity to effect the Consecration of Russia to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary by the world's bishops in union with the Pope, as
requested by Our Lady in the "second" part of the great Secret of Fatima.
In fact, it was all the defenders of Tradition could do to keep the reformers,
led by Karl Rahner, from completely stripping Our Lady of Her perennial titles.
The compromise adopted on the battlefield of the Council floor was yet another
"consensus" formulation: Our Lady would be described simply as "Mediatrix" (of
what?), and the key theological phrase "of all graces" dropped from her title.
She would be stripped of Her traditional title of Co-Redemptrix. Even the
redacted title "Mediatrix" would be consigned to the end of a list of other
titles "Advocate", "Helper", "Benefactress" so as to make it less offensive to
the delegations of non-Catholic "observers" attending the Council.(33)
Cardinal Bea, President of the newly created Secretariat for "Christian Unity",
had objected even to the limited title "Mediatrix"; but Italian Archbishop
Mingo condemned the foreshortened title, calling it part of a "radical
mutilation" of the original text of the schema devoted to Mary, which was
drastically reduced in scope and relegated to a segment of Lumen Gentium. Even
the arch-liberal Cardinal Suenens, departing for once from the "Rhine group"
line, objected to the manner in which the truncated text minimized the
importance of Mary, "a tendency which today constitutes a real danger."(34)
In a revoltingly obsequious address to the non-Catholic "observers" at Rome's
Columbus Hotel on October 15, 1962, four days after the Council began, Cardinal
Bea had begged his "dear brothers in Christ" to "tell us very frankly ...
everything that you dislike, to share with us your positive criticisms, your
suggestions and your desires."(35) And so they had. The Church's veneration of
the Blessed Virgin Mary was no doubt high on their list to "everything that you
dislike." Those "dear brothers in Christ", it must be said, represented
"churches" which approved of contraception and divorce at the time of the
Council, and have since approved of such "Christian" doctrines as the
permissibility of abortion and the ordination of women as "priests".
Although Paul VI had proclaimed Mary as Mother of the Church during the
Council, he would refrain throughout the remainder of his pontificate from
referring to Her even as simply Mediatrix, thereby serving the new "ecumenical
venture" inaugurated by Unitatis Redintegratio and administered by Cardinal
Bea. In the years which would follow Cardinal Bea's fawning speech at the
Columbus Hotel, the "churches" of the "dear brothers in Christ" would not, of
course, move one millimeter closer to an acceptance of the doctrines of the
true Faith which they had impudently rejected long ago on their own authority.
On the contrary, they would only move further away from the truth in the
process of decomposing like corpses.
Yet the "ecumenical venture" launched by the Council would continue unabated,
with the Vatican propping up these dead churches and giving them the appearance
of life, like the deceased at an Irish wake. Some thirty-four years after
Cardinal Bea's little speech, the "ecumenical" Theological Commission of the
Pontifical International Marian Academy, including an Anglican and two
Lutherans, would unanimously advise Pope John Paul II not to proclaim
infallibly the dogma that Mary is what She has always been called by the
Church: Mediatrix of All Graces. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls would
add that it is "crystal clear" that the dogma would not be defined by John Paul
II because the Commission had deemed it "inopportune to abandon the path marked
out by Vatican II."(36)
The "path marked out by Vatican II" has led the Church away from bestowing upon
the Mother of God the full honors due to Her. Following that path, the Holy
Catholic Church now consults heretics and schismatics for their opinion on the
Marian dogmas, and even on what aspects of the papacy may be dispensed with for
the sake of "Christian unity".(37) The same path has led the Church away from
the heavenly Message Our Lady delivered to earth at Fatima.
The Council Ends
In his address at the end of the Council's Fourth Session on December 7, 1965,
Paul VI appealed to the secular humanists of the world to recognize that "we,
also, more than anyone else, have the cult of man." The next day the Council
would formally close.
According to Cardinal Casaroli, Vatican Secretary of State and Great Architect
of the new policy of Ostpolitik which began with the Vatican-Moscow Agreement,
it now appeared that the Soviet "aims of disarmament and easing of
international tensions correspond with her [the Church's] own mission of
peace".(38) Yet Our Lord told us that He had not come to bring "peace"
(especially the "world peace" of the Soviets), but the sword. Our Lord
predicted that His teaching would cause division and bring down the hatred of
the world upon the members of His Church, not amiable "dialogue" with her
enemies. And He warned the world that "he who believes not shall be condemned."
Nevertheless, after the Council, the Church's implacable opposition to any
collaboration whatsoever with Communists was officially abandoned. The era of
an endless "dialogue with the world", including communists, had begun. The
Church, seemingly out of embarrassment at her past "triumphalism", would cease
describing herself as mater et magister mother and teacher and assume the role
of merely one party to a "dialogue" with her partners in building the
"civilization of love". The results of that "dialogue" are the continued
persecution of the Church in Russia and Red China, 600 million abortions, and a
civilization whose descent into barbarity has only accelerated since the
"dialogue" commenced.
Paul VI Ignores the Warnings of Fatima
In May 1967 Paul VI made a brief pilgrimage to Fatima, giving an address which
reduced the Message of Fatima to a call for prayer and penance stripped of its
divine warnings. His Holiness made no mention of the errors of Russia, which
were at that very moment devouring the world; nor did he mention the most
unecumenical notion that Russia be converted through Consecration to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary.
In a pathetic scene, Sister Lucy presented her little hand-made gift to the
Pope, who allowed her to approach him on the proscenium where he had delivered
the address. She then pleaded repeatedly to speak privately with the Vicar of
Christ. Did she wish to speak to him about the Third Secret? "You see, it is
not the time", he replied, "And then, if you wish to communicate something to
me, tell your bishop ... Be very obedient to your bishop."(39) As the crowd
gave its ovation to Sister Lucy, she stood beside the Pope, weeping
disconsolately in full view of the television camera. The last surviving seer
of Fatima; the bearer of the Third Secret; the prophet who had predicted the
Miracle of the Sun this chosen messenger of God had been reduced to a
crowd-pleasing prop at a media spectacle.
In 1957 Sister Lucy had confided to Father Fuentes that "the Most Holy Virgin
is very sad because no one has paid attention to Her Message, neither the good
nor the bad."(40) Ten years later, even though the Pope had come to Fatima, it
was still the same. Hidden away in the Vatican, the Third Secret was still
being kept from the faithful. But soon the euphoria of the Council would give
way in the mind of Paul VI to the dread of an unprecedented disaster.
The Smoke of Satan
Nineteen months after he had refused to speak with Sister Lucy at Fatima, Pope
Paul would declare in a speech to the Lombard College that "The Church is in a
disturbed period of self-criticism, or what could be better called
self-demolition. It is an acute and complicated upheaval which nobody would
have expected after the Council. It is almost as if the Church were attacking
herself." On June 30, 1972, Pope Paul would utter his frightening lament that
"from somewhere or other the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God ...
In the Church, too, this state of uncertainty reigns. It was believed that
after the Council a sunny day would dawn, but instead there came a day of
clouds, storms and darkness."(41)
Six years later Paul VI was dead. Shortly before his death he had wept over the
establishment of an abortion mill in Rome. Three years before his death he had
sacked Bugnini, mastermind of the destruction of the Roman rite, sending him to
a useless titular post in Iran within hours of being presented with a dossier
on Bugnini's Masonic affiliations, as Bugnini himself admitted in his
autobiography.(42)
By the time Paul VI had passed from this world in 1978, the Roman liturgy had
been reduced to a shambles; priests and nuns were defecting by the tens of
thousands; vocations and conversions had abruptly decreased from a
pre-conciliar torrent to a post-conciliar trickle; Mass attendance was
plummeting like a stone.
The greatest debacle in the history of the Holy Catholic Church was well
underway.
Footnotes:
22. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI the First Modern Pope, p. 345
23. Amerio, Iota Unum, p. 85
24. Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber, p. 19
25. Ibid., p. 28
26. Gamber, Klaus. Reform of the Roman Liturgy, Una Voce Press, San Juan
Capistrano/Foundation for Catholic Reform, Harrision, NY (1993), p. 21
27. Cfr. Apostolic Constitution of Paul VI, April 3, 1969.
28. Frére Michel, The Third Secret at p. 721
29. Kelly, Msgr. George A. The Battle for the American Church. Image Books,
Garden City, NY (1981), p. 20
30. Wiltgen, op cit., p. 232
31. Amerio, op cit. p. 91
32. Hebblethwaite, op cit., p. 337
33. Lumen Gentium, n. 62
34. Wiltgen, op cit. pp. 155-156
35. Council Daybook, Vol. II, p. 39
36. Catholic World News, June 24, 1997; Catholic New York, August 21, 1977, p.7
(quoting L'Osservatore Romano)
37. On December 2, 1996 the Catholic World News service reported the incredible
news that Cardinal Ratzinger, with the blessing of John Paul II, would chair a
theological conference to answer the question: "What are the essential elements
of the Catholic understanding of papal primacy, and what elements could
possibly be adapted to fit the needs of ecumenical progress?" The conference
includes "Leading theologians from three different Christian communions
Lutheran, Anglican, and Orthodox", who will "join Catholic scholars in
examining the issues involved in the papacy." The conference report has yet to
be issued, but Cardinal Ratzinger has promised that it will be forthcoming, as
an aid to "ecumenical progress".
38. Floridi, S.J., Fr. Alexis. Moscow and the Vatican. Artis Publishers, Ann
Arbor Michigan (1986), p. 41
39. From the declarations of Father Almeida, Portuguese translator for Paul VI
at the event. Broadcast on Vatican Radio, May 15, 1967 and recorded in
"Documentation Catholique", 1967, columns 1242-1243.
40. The Third Secret, p. 504
41. Amerio, op cit., p. 6
42. Davies, Pope John's Council, p. 172
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PrayDivMer
The Third Secret of Fatima
and
The Post-Conciliar Debacle
(Parts Four and Five)
By Christopher A. Ferrara, Esq.
Part OnePart TwoPart Three
The Emergence of Conservative Catholicism
The post-conciliar debacle cannot be assessed without some discussion of its
most remarkable epiphenomenon: the emergence of “conservative” Catholicism.
Indeed, the appearance since the Council of the three distinct modes of
Catholicism — “traditionalist”, “conservative” , and “liberal”
— is a development never before seen in Church history. The very usage of
these terms in modern Catholic parlance is empirical confirmation that there
has been a rupture of external unity of cult in the Church during the
post-conciliar period, at least in the Roman Rite.
Before the Council there was no need, of course, for special terminology to
differentiate strains of Catholicism, for there was only one strain: every
Catholic in good standing was a “traditionalist”. That is, every Catholic
worshiped strictly in accordance with the untouchable ancient rites of the
Church, regarding as unthinkable any compromise of ecclesiastical traditions
for the sake of “unity” with non-Catholics, much less any form of worship
in common, which the Church had always strictly forbidden as a grave danger to
the Faith.
Regarding the liturgy, the preconciliar Catholic believed what the Popes had
always taught him, up to and including Pope John XXIII in Veterum Sapientiae:
that the form of the Mass, including its ancient language, is a work of the
Holy Ghost over the ages and is not subject to innovations.
As for Christian unity, the preconciliar Catholic regarded his Church precisely
as Catholics had always been taught to regard her: The one true Church to which
the separated brethren must return, not merely the most perfect of many
“Christian churches and ecclesial communities” moving toward “full
communion” at some unknown terminus of the “ecumenical movement”. Only 35
years before the bronze doors opened on Vatican II, Pope Pius XI forcefully
restated the traditional teaching on true Christian unity in his encyclical
Mortalium animos, which condemned the developing “ecumenical movement” as a
threat to the very foundations of the Christian faith, and forbade any Catholic
participation in it:
“So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed
its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics; for the union of
Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church
of those who are separated from it ... Let them therefore return to their
common Father, who, forgetting the insults heaped upon the Apostolic See, will
receive them in most loving fashion. For if, as they continually state, they
long to be united with Us and ours, why do they not hasten to enter the Church
...”(76)
Then came the Council and what Paul VI described as its “command” and its
“program” of “newness”, including the new liturgy and the new
ecumenism. It was especially the liturgical reforms which provoked the
unparalleled division of Catholicism into the three modes we now see.
The liberal Catholics, unleashed upon the Church by the Council’s abandonment
of all condemnations and the Vatican’s sudden rehabilitation of numerous
suspect theologians, were naturally delighted with the reforms. They demanded,
and usually got, Vatican approval for a seemingly endless series of additional
changes in the liturgy, including altar girls. The liberal Catholics of today
correspond roughly to the old canonical category of excommunicati tolerati
(those who remain within the Church despite a sentence of excommunication),
except that today no sentence of excommunication is ever pronounced against
them by Vatican authorities. Since the Council only one local bishop, Fabian
Bruskewitz of Nebraska, has issued a latae sententiae sentence of
excommunication against a few practitioners of the liberal mode of Catholicism
within the jurisdiction of his diocese, but liberal Catholicism is otherwise
universally tolerated in the Church today. It has come to subsist as mode of
Catholic praxis and belief, at least in the external forum, where we must
presume that the liberals remain members of the Church because they have not
been excluded by any sentence of ecclesiastical authority.
As we know, traditional Catholics, who have come to be called
“traditionalists”, opposed the post-conciliar revolution from its
inception. The “traditionalist” position regarding the liturgy in
particular was expressed in 1969 by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci in their
famous “intervention” against the New Mass: The reforms of Paul VI were a
“striking departure” from the theology of the Mass codified by the Council
of Trent; “an incalculable error” producing a “crisis of conscience”
among those who could not simply abandon a liturgical tradition more than 1,500
years standing.(77)
Rather than submitting with docility to the destruction of the Roman rite, the
traditionalists have been guided by the axiom of moral theology stated in the
Ottaviani Intervention: that subjects of a legislator, even subjects of the
Pope, “have always had the right, nay the duty, to ask the legislator to
abrogate the law, should it prove to be harmful.” The traditionalists have
never ceased to exercise that right and duty, and to this day have never
embraced the post-conciliar reforms — especially the reform of the liturgy,
which they regard as an utterly unprecedented abuse of papal authority that no
Pope prior to Paul VI would have dared to impose upon the Church. Here it must
be noted that in his monumental work Reform of the Roman Liturgy, Msgr. Klaus
Gamber (with the approbation of Cardinal Ratzinger) devoted an entire chapter
to defending the traditionalist position that the Pope’s supreme legislative
power in disciplinary matters is not an absolute power which would allow the
Pope to destroy the liturgy of the Roman rite. As Gamber notes, the popes prior
to Paul VI “repeatedly observed that the [Roman] rite is founded on apostolic
tradition.” It follows that not even the Roman Pontiff has authority from God
to abolish the received and approved form of divine worship in the Catholic
Church, although the act of abolition cannot be appealed to any human
authority.(78)
Into the gap between the liberal and the traditionalist position emerged what
is now called “conservative” Catholicism. It is based in large measure upon
confusion between the Pope’s supreme and full power to rule the Church (plena
et suprema potestas), on the one hand, and absolute power on the other, which
not even the Vicar of Christ possesses. The “conservatives” wrongly deduce
that since there is no appeal to any human authority from a decision of the
Roman Pontiff, his authority must for all practical purposes be regarded as
absolute, and the faithful must therefore not only docilely accept but embrace
all of the papally-approved post-conciliar reforms. There could perhaps be a
polite, private entreaty for reconsideration, but no resistance or opposition
whatsoever.
The Error of Papalotry
The fundamental problem with this aspect of the “conservative” position is
that it is simply not Catholic. It makes of the Pope precisely what the
Protestants falsely claim he is: a despot, whose decrees must be carried out to
the letter even if they harm the common good of the Church. Responding to this
Protestant caricature of papal authority, Saint Robert Bellarmine, a doctor of
the Church, stated the truly Catholic position:
“Just as it is licit to resist the Pontiff who attacks the body, so also is
it licit to resist him who attacks souls, or who disturbs the civil order, or
above all, him who tries to destroy the Church. I say that it is licit to
resist him by not doing what he orders and by impeding the execution of his
will; it is not licit, however, to judge him, to punish him or depose him, for
these are acts proper to a superior.”(79)
Of course, the teaching of St. Bellarmine is nothing other than the teaching of
Sacred Scripture itself: In St. Paul’s epistle to the Galatians we read that
when Cephas — Peter — refused to sit at table with the Gentiles, St. Paul
rebuked the first Pope for jeopardizing the mission of the Church by
scandalously shunning the very souls they had been commissioned to convert:
“But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he
was to be blamed.” (Galatians 2:11) Some 1,300 years later French theologians
would likewise rebuke Pope John XXII for teaching from the pulpit that the
souls of the faithful departed do not see God until after the Last Judgement.
Shortly before his death John XXII retracted his erroneous opinion, which by
the protection of the Holy Ghost he had never pronounced ex cathedra.(80)
For the “conservative” Catholic any attempt to rebuke, resist or impede the
Pope in any matter whatever is unthinkable. The Pope is king, and that is that.
One “conservative” Catholic leader, who shall in charity remain nameless,
even attempted to demonstrate that the “Cephas” rebuked by Paul in
Galatians was not Peter! Even Holy Scripture itself must yield to the
exigencies of papolatry! The “conservative” becomes a modernist/revisionist
exegete! (See “Resisting Wayward Prelates” on p. 7.)
For the “conservative” Catholic the principle of papal authority trumps
everything, even the common good of the Church — although, as we shall see,
the conservative’s adherence to papal authority curiously weakens when it
comes to the definitive anti-modernist pronouncements of any Pope before 1960.
Michael Davies captured “conservative” Catholic attitude perfectly when
discussing how “conservative” clergy, following the latest instructions
from their superiors, embrace the very things they once condemned, and condemn
what they once taught:
“The prevailing attitude among so many of the clergy is to accept a
particular belief or attitude not because it has an inherent and enduring truth
or value, but because it happens to be the current policy. Thus the very clergy
who would have denounced (and rightly so) any layman who had attended a
Protestant service before the Council will now denounce any layman who suggests
that the faith would in any way be compromised by attending such services ...
Thus a matter touching upon the very nature of the Church Christ founded is
seen in itself as something neutral; all that matters is the current
instruction ...”(81)
As we have seen, Cardinal Ratzinger admitted in his recent memoirs that Paul
VI’s attempt to abolish the traditional Mass caused “grave damage” to the
Church, damage whose “consequences could only be tragic”. If that is true
— and it manifestly is true — then the Pope’s subjects had not only the
right but the duty to use all licit means, short of judging or deposing him, to
minimize the damage that was about to be inflicted on the Church. For
traditionalists licit resistance to the Pope meant simply refusing to abandon
the traditional rite of Mass in favor of the new Mass, or to practice any of
the other novelties which appeared in the Church during the 1960s. History has
already demonstrated that they were right to do so, as Cardinal Ratzinger’s
recent statements will attest.
A False “Middle Way”
“Conservative” Catholicism is a far more complex phenomenon than this
discussion might suggest. Within “conservative” Catholicism there is range
of praxis and opinion, with some “conservatives” coming rather close to the
traditionalist position, so that generalizations are difficult. But in all of
its variations, “conservative” Catholicism attempts to forge a middle way
between liberalism and traditionalism, presenting itself as the domain of sound
orthodoxy lying between the two extremes of the post-conciliar era. It purports
to see an equivalence between liberals and traditionalists — an equivalence
which is quite false, as Dietrich Von Hildebrand has noted, because even the
most “extreme” traditionalist does not hold any view which contravenes an
article of the faith.(82)
“Conservative” Catholicism claims to be motivated by “true” fidelity to
Tradition and “true” obedience to the Magisterium, even if that fidelity
and obedience have required a series of humiliating about-faces which have
undermined the very credibility of the Church. As Cardinal Ratzinger has stated
regarding the suppression of the traditional Mass by Paul VI: “A community
that suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest
possession is strictly forbidden, and makes the longing for it seem downright
indecent, calls its very self into question.”(83) Yet the “conservative”
Catholic is not disturbed by this. He simply follows the Pope, no matter what:
“I would rather be wrong with the Pope than right without him” is one of
the more asinine “conservative” Catholic bromides.
It needs to be stressed, however, that it would be unjust to condemn
“conservatives” en bloc because they have more or less accommodated
themselves to the post-conciliar revolution. The question of opposition to
papal acts is a matter of conscience in which no member of the faithful can
claim infallibility. Indeed, the very emergence of neo-Catholicism reflects an
unparalleled situation which has caused vast confusion about what to do in the
current crisis: While there have always been would-be innovators in the Church
and traditional Catholics to oppose them, never in the history of the Church
have the innovators been the Popes themselves.
As Msgr. Gamber observed in Reform of the Roman Liturgy: “It is most
certainly not the function of the Holy See to introduce Church reforms. The
first duty of the Pope is to act as primary bishop, to watch over the
traditions of the Church — her dogmatic, moral and liturgical
traditions.”(84) But what happens when the popes, for the first time in
Church history, demand reforms which destroy or suppress a number of those
traditions? “Conservative” Catholicism seeks an answer to that question —
we must presume in good faith — even if history is demonstrating that it is
the wrong answer.
Self-Contradiction and Denial
Mindful of the grave duty to preserve the Church’s patrimony, yet unwilling
frankly to question papal acts, the “conservative” Catholic seeks to
relieve the insupportable tension of his own position, thereby falling into
self-contradiction. He will say, for example, that a new rite of Mass in the
vernacular is “not what the Council intended”. But, as we have already
seen(85), Paul VI declared that it was precisely the Council which provided the
mandate for his revolutionary new vernacular rite of Mass; and it was Pope Paul
himself who approved the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, making
it his own act as supreme legislator of the Church. Thus, while insisting that
papal reform of the liturgy be accepted with utter docility, the conservative
implicitly accuses the Pope of gravely erring in the interpretation and
implementation of his own document!
Another device which conservatives use to relieve the tension of their position
is to assign all of the disastrous effects of the post-conciliar innovations
and reversals to “abuses” committed by faceless “liberals”, without
ever acknowledging that the “abuses” are nearly all permitted under Vatican
guidelines. The conservative often finds himself decrying what the Vatican
itself approves or encourages, even as he insists that there be no public
criticism of the Holy See.
For example, the neo-Catholic might well lament the current state of the
liturgy in a general way. But he will not confront the fact that the spectacle
of a charismatic guitar Mass with babbling parishioners, “slaying in the
Spirit”, people falling backwards onto the floor of the sanctuary, altar
girls, female “lectors”, communion in the hand, and readings by a
Protestant minister, conducted in a church used jointly by a Catholic parish
and a Protestant sect, is entirely “permissible” under guidelines approved
by Paul VI and John Paul II, including the utterly astounding 1993 Directory on
Ecumenism.(86)
To give another example, neo-Catholics can often be heard complaining about the
scandal of “sex education” in Catholic schools. Yet they will never mention
that for 30 years the Holy See has been well aware of the pornographic content
of “Catholic” sex-ed curricula and has taken no action to remove them from
Catholic schools, much less punish the bishops, priests and nuns who force
these vile curricula upon innocent children.(87)On the contrary, despite the
teaching of the pre-Vatican II Magisterium condemning any form of “sex
education”(88), Cardinal Ratzinger declared that there was no problem from
“the doctrinal point of view” with the obscene “New Creation” course,
then passed it over to Cardinal Baum, who likewise approved it and sent it back
to America, where it has been destroying the innocence of children ever
since.(89) While the Vatican goes on allowing little children to be scandalized
in Catholic classrooms around the world, the “conservatives” heap lavish
praise on a toothless 1995 Vatican document, issued 30 years too late, which
contains the laughable advice that “it is recommended that respect be given
to the right of the child ... to withdraw from any form of sexual instruction
imparted outside the home.”(90) Recommended? It is an intolerable outrage in
the first place that a Catholic child should have to withdraw from a Catholic
classroom in order to preserve his innocence!
The same refusal to place the blame where it belongs characterizes the
“conservative” Catholic’s approach to the post-conciliar Vatican program
of “collaborating” with the very forces of secularism the preconciliar
popes condemned. Thus, “conservative” Catholics will decry Ted Turner’s
gift of a billion dollars to the godless United Nations, as did Mother Angelica
at one of the conservatives’ widely publicized “Call to Holiness”
conferences. Yet they never mention that the Vatican, a permanent observer at
the U.N., is one of that organization’s staunchest supporters, despite
measured “reservations” about particular U.N. policies or activities which
it otherwise subscribes to. [For example, the Vatican is a signatory to the
deplorable U.N. Convention on the “Rights of the Child”.(91)] Neither will
“conservatives” mention that the Conciliar document Gaudium et spes called
precisely for establishment of a world government(92), or that in the very
midst of the Council Paul VI traveled to New York to pay tribute to the United
Nations as “this lofty institution”, and the “last great hope for concord
and peace”, declaring: “Let unanimous trust in this institution grow, let
its authority increase ...”. Nor will conservatives breathe a word about the
fact that Pope John Paul II, a major contributor to Gaudium et spes, expressed
the same sentiments as his predecessor in his own address to the U.N. thirty
years later. On that occasion the current Pope proclaimed the “esteem of the
Apostolic See and of the Catholic Church for this institution” and pronounced
the U.N. — worldwide promoter of contraception, abortion and atheistic
humanism — “a great instrument for harmonizing and coordinating (!)
international life”.(93) God forbid.
There is still another device by which conservatives seek to resolve the
tension between the continuity of ecclesial traditions and obedience to the
current program of unprecedented innovation: Some of them pretend that there is
no tension at all by simply declaring that anything whatever the Pope decrees
is by definition traditional: “[W]hat the Church approves is, by definition,
compatible with Catholic Traditions; for the Church, especially the Holy See,
is ... the arbiter and judge of Tradition.” [The Pope, the Mass and the
Council, p. 71-72]The problem with this argument is that it deprives Tradition
of any objective content, reducing it essentially to whatever the Pope desires.
The result is pure nonsense: altar girls, for example, become
“traditional”, even though they were forbidden for the entire 2,000 year
history of the Church, and were even forbidden by Pope John Paul II until he
abruptly reversed his own prior decree.
The abandonment of the traditional Mass in favor of a new vernacular Mass also
becomes “traditional”. In fact, innovation itself becomes
“traditional”. The truth of the matter is that the Pope is not the
“arbiter” of Tradition, but its custodian, as Gamber observed with the
approbation of Cardinal Ratzinger. When Pius IX declared that “I am
Tradition!”, he meant that he represented Tradition, not that Tradition was
his to determine. Tradition does not need an “arbiter” because Tradition is
a manifest fact: the sum total of what Catholics have always believed and
practiced in their faith and worship. None of that had changed in any material
respect before 1965. To say, therefore, that the changes of the past 35 years
are “compatible with Tradition” is to deny reality; it is even to deny what
Paul VI himself said when introducing the new Mass on November 26, 1969: “We
must prepare ourselves. This novelty is no small thing.”
In order to maintain his position, therefore, the “conservative” Catholic
must live in a constant state of denial about the ultimate source of the
current crisis in the Church. This assumes the conservative is willing to admit
that there is a crisis to begin with. As already noted, many conservatives
insist that we are in the midst of a “great renewal”.
The “conservative” wants to believe — and wants us to believe — that
the liturgical revolution and the “ecumenical venture” imposed upon us by
Rome are good in themselves, and that the problem, if any, lies with
“abuses” in the application of these unexampled novelties at the pastoral
level. He stubbornly refuses to concede the possibility that the vast program
of aggiornamento directed from the Vatican over the past 35 years is flawed in
principle, even though it has been accompanied by the manifest devastation of
the entire landscape of the Church.
Selective Deference
When we examine the “conservative” approach to the pre-Vatican II
Magisterium, we find a further tendency to self-contradiction in the
“conservative” position: Many of the same conservatives who counsel blind
obedience to the reforms of Paul VI and John Paul II are curiously ambivalent
when it comes to the definitive anti-modernist teaching of the great
preconciliar popes, which does not square well with the Vatican’s current
non-infallible pastoral program.
A remarkable example of this is to be found in the writings of prominent
“conservative” Alan Schreck, a professor of theology at the Franciscan
University of Steubenville, which has acquired a reputation for uncompromising
orthodoxy. In discussing the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, which non-liberal
theologians regard as a probably infallible condemnation of the very principles
of modern civilization, Schreck opines that:
“Unfortunately, the Syllabus condemned most of the new ideas of the day and
gave the impression that the Catholic Church was against everything in the
modern world ... The Catholic Church looked like it was becoming a fortress
Church, standing in opposition to the modern world and rejecting all new
ideas.”(94)
But, of course, a fortress against the ideas of the world is precisely what the
Catholic Church is meant to be by her divine Founder. The Church has no need of
the world’s “new ideas” (which are really old heresies with new faces)
since she is the repository of everything that has already been revealed to us
by God. Schreck’s slighting of the Syllabus, which appears in Denzinger as
binding Catholic doctrine, is in stark contrast to the obsequious obedience
conservatives display toward every non-infallible pastoral directive of the
post-conciliar era.
Schreck’s assessment of the definitive acts of Pius X against the modernists
is even more revealing of this self-contradiction within the “conservative”
idea:
“It is probably true that Pius X overreacted (!) against the threat of
Modernism, which led to the stifling of creative (!) Catholic research,
especially in the area of biblical and historical studies, over the next fifty
years ...”(95)
So, then, Pope St. Pius X, perhaps the greatest Pope in Church history and the
only Pope to be canonized in the past 500 years, is blithely accused of
“overreacting” by professor Schreck of Steubenville! Yet
“conservatives” like Schreck would never dream of accusing Paul VI of
“overreacting” in his quest for “Christian unity” when he suddenly
imposed on the entire Church a new rite of Mass, concocted with the aid of six
Protestant advisors under the guidance of a suspected Mason who was later
dismissed and packed off to Iran!(96)
Another striking example of this self-contradiction is to be found in The Pope,
the Mass and the Council, a celebrated book-length defense of the
“conservative” view that we must embrace each and every one of the
post-conciliar reforms, including the abominable ICEL translation of the Mass
into English approved by Vatican bureaucrats. The authors concede that the
Catechism of the Council of Trent clearly teaches that the words of Our Lord
over the Cup of His Blood are to be translated pro vobis et pro multis — for
you and for many — because the Church has always taught that the fruits of
the Sacrifice of the Mass benefit only the elect, not all men.(97) Yet ICEL
mistranslates “for many” as “for all”.
Faced with this undeniable conflict between a solemnly promulgated Catechism of
the universal Church and a currently approved vernacular translation of the
Mass, the authors give the Catechism the heave-ho: “[I]t [the Catechism] was
not issued by the Council of Trent but was only prepared afterwards at the
request of the Council.”(98) But the authors fail to mention that the
Catechism of the Council of Trent was solemnly promulgated by the authority of
Pius V, a canonized saint! In further support of a mistranslation which alters
the very theology of the Mass and contradicts Trent, and which Msgr. Gamber
rightly calls “scandalous”, the authors cite a liberal theologian who
claimed in 1963 that “Christ had no intention of establishing a rigid
formula.”(99) Thus, the “conservative” will even resort to the opinions
of liberals to justify the unprecedented innovations of the current program.
For many “conservatives”, then, absolute obeisance to papal pronouncements
ends at the chasm marked by the year 1960. Beyond that chasm, their allegiance
to the constant teaching of the Magisterium seems to wane; the preconciliar
popes become for them hazy figures, whose encyclicals and solemnly promulgated
catechisms may be minimized as the outdated artifacts of a bygone era to the
extent that they conflict with post-conciliar novelties. Two thousand years of
traditional teaching and praxis become a closed book, or at least a book which
must be edited and revised in accordance with the new and separate book of
Vatican II.
The Malice of Some
The elements of denial and self-contradiction in “conservative” Catholicism
are not the only problem with this phenomenon. Some “conservatives”,
particularly a number of the more prominent ones, seem discontent to remain
immured in the compromises of their own position while leaving others to their
own approach to the crisis. For these conservatives there is an unfortunate
tendency to denounce those who have refused to join them: namely, the
traditionalists.
Thus we are treated to the spectacle of certain conservatives who timidly
decline to name any of the liberals demolishing the Church before their very
eyes, yet fearlessly name and publicly condemn traditionalists whose only
offense is to continue to practice the Faith precisely as it was always
practiced before 1965.
A notable case in point is Karl Keating’s ruthless persecution of Gerry
Matatics, the renowned convert from Presbyterianism who was once a
“conservative” but joined the traditionalist movement in 1992. Keating, a
“conservative” Catholic apologist from San Diego, was not content merely to
denounce Mr. Matatics in the Catholic press as “a sad example of how schism
leads very quickly to heresy.”(100) Pressing his attack ever further, Keating
spent the next two years systematically ruining the good name and apostolate of
Mr. Matatics — publishing article after article against him, contacting
bishops and others who had endorsed his apostolate to urge them to withdraw
their endorsements, and recommending that he not be permitted to speak at
parishes and other “conservative” venues. Yet Mr. Matatics, the father of
eight children, has never ceased to be a Catholic in good standing, and is
currently professor of Sacred Scripture at a traditional seminary in good
standing with Rome.
(continued)
>Subject: THE THIRD LETTER OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA
>From: "Kevin Monteiro" mon...@one.net.au
>Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic
>Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 14:58:25 +1100
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PrayDivMer
This reveals another aspect of the malignity of certain conservatives toward
traditionalists: traditionalists are easy targets, unlike Billy Graham or such
liberal prelates as Cardinal Mahony, who endorses Keating’s work. The
conservative leader who publicly denounces traditionalists can “defend the
faith” without fear of reprisal or loss of support for his “middle way”
apostolate. Indeed, Keating has not been sated by the persecution of one
traditionalist with a wife and eight children. At a recent “Defending the
Faith” conference at (where else?) Steubenville, Keating announced that he is
writing an entire book about “dissenters on the right.” The Church burns
while Keating fiddles on about “extreme traditionalists”, “illicit”
Latin Masses, “rigorists” and “Feeneyites”.
Watchdogs of the Revolution
As the Keating affair demonstrates, there is a kind of Soviet-style purge in
store for traditionalists who disrupt the conservative’s state of denial, and
who suggest by their own repudiation of the post-conciliar debacle that the
conservative is an accessory to it. The traditionalist victim of conservative
repression is cast into outer darkness, declared a “schismatic” — the
conservative Catholic’s equivalent of the Soviet “non-person” — so that
the conservative cohort can continue to accommodate itself to the debacle
without further disturbance. In the case of Mr. Matatics, the purge has even
extended to the clumsy deletion of his name from programs re-broadcast on EWTN
concerning prominent evangelical converts to the Faith, and the announcement on
EWTN radio that Mr. Matatics has left the Church. For the “conservative”
establishment Mr. Matatics has ceased to exist; he has “gone over”; he has
abandoned the “great renewal” to embrace instead the constant traditions of
the Church which began to disappear so mysteriously in 1960, when the Third
Secret of Fatima was locked away in a desk drawer by Pope John XXIII.
We can see, then, how “conservative” Catholicism has vastly complicated
the current crisis. Unwitting watchdogs of the post-conciliar revolution, the
conservatives slumber while an army of burglars ransack the household of the
Faith, but now and then leap to their feet to run upstairs and yap at
traditionalists who have taken refuge in the attic with their few remaining
possessions, including some “illicit” Latin Masses. Meanwhile, the burglars
continue their work without hindrance.
Thanks to the emergence of “conservative” Catholicism, for the first time
in Church history staunch Catholic traditionalism has become an epithet. The
very existence of a false “conservative” middle-ground between revolution
and tradition has permitted the revolutionaries to emarginate traditionalists.
As arch-liberal Richard P. McBrien put it in his book The Remaking of the
Catholic Church: “Criticism of the extreme right by moderate conservatives is
far more effective than by moderate progressives.”(102)
Indeed it is. The conservatives, however unwittingly, have served the
revolution well. Yet it was Pope St. Pius X, ten years before Our Lady appeared
at Fatima, who warned the faithful of the growing potential for revolution in
the Church, and who reminded us all that “the true friends of the people are
neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are the traditionalists.”(103)
Neo-Catholicism
As our brief discussion of "conservative"Catholicism should make clear, the
term is really a misnomer. A conservative is by definition one who conserves,
with reverent devotion, and even with a certain fierceness, whatever he has
received in the sound traditions of his community. This is all the more so in
the Holy Catholic Church, a community whose founder is God Himself, and whose
traditions reflect as much as possible the perfect conservatism of this
immutable God.
For century after century those traditions, especially the liturgy, nourished
and instructed the faithful in an abode set apart from time and human
“progress”, where the eternal “I am” could be heard clearly in the
silence and seen in the majesty of rituals by which man strove to give God not
one iota less than what He is due.
St. Peter Canisius, Doctor of the Church, expressed the essence of true
Catholic conservatism in his Summae Doctrinae Christianae: “It behooves us
unanimously and inviolably to observe the ecclesiastical traditions, whether
codified or simply retained by the customary practice of the Church.”(104)
The duty to preserve traditional praxis, whether or not it is strictly
Apostolic, is so crucial to the common good of the Church that it was set forth
in the profession of Faith promulgated by Pope Pius IV:
The apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other observances and
institutions of that same Church I most firmly admit and embrace ... I also
receive and admit the received and approved ceremonies of the Catholic Church
used in the solemn administration of all the aforesaid sacraments.(105)
Why is the preservation of ancient praxis so vital to the Church that it
pertains to the very profession of the Faith? Because the practices of the
Faith enshrine the supernatural realities of the Faith, visibly manifesting and
affirming their power and truth. To change abruptly - or worse, abolish -
practices which have grown up gradually around a doctrine or a sacrament as a
work of the Holy Ghost over centuries, is to run the risk that the faithful
will lose belief in the doctrine or the sacrament. To change or abolish not one
or two, but many ancient customary practices in the Church, is to run the risk
of mass defections from the Faith.
We recall that it was Pope Pius XII who spoke prophetically of the suicide of
altering the liturgy, predicting the day when sanctuary lamps would no longer
be seen in many Catholic churches, and we would ask ourselves “Where have
they taken Him?” His Holiness did not use the word suicide lightly. The fear
of ecclesial suicide (in a relative sense, of course, since the Church cannot
die) is precisely why the postconciliar innovations were utterly unthinkable to
the preconciliar popes, including the very last of them. In Veterum Sapientia
John XXIII called for a massive rededication to the Church s unbroken Latin
tradition, and warned: Let no innovator dare to write against the use of Latin
in the sacred rites ... nor let them in their folly attempt to minimize the
will of the Apostolic See in this matter.”(106) [It is utterly astonishing
that only months later this apostolic letter of a Supreme Pontiff was
completely ignored — trampled underfoot in the uncontrollable stampede of
reform which Pope John himself had unleashed by calling the Council.]
We have already noted that even "conservative"Catholics are constrained to
admit that after the Council “the Catholic Church embarked on a series of
reforms and changes which have scarcely left a single Catholic unaffected; and
which, in many respects, have changed the external image of the Church”(107)
But when the "conservative"remarks this fact, he remarks it blandly - as if it
were not an outrage beyond words that those entrusted with preserving the
common good of the Church would dare to alter the very image of the Bride of
Christ, stripping her of her immemorial liturgy and a host of other precious
traditions almost overnight. Surveying the vast effects of this incalculable
disaster some thirty years later, the -conservative” Catholic professes to
wonder what the traditionalists are fussing about.
We find a particularly egregious example of this "conservative"attitude in the
recent remarks of prominent "conservative"Pat Madrid in the "conservative"organ
New Oxford Review.(108) Madrid, one of the so-called “new breed” of
Catholic apologists, writes condescendingly of the “stultifying anger”,
“smoldering resentment” and “anti-Vatican II agendas” of many
traditionalists who attend “indult” Masses. And Madrid is referring here to
his traditionalist friends! [It should come as no surprise that Madrid was
until recently a close colleague of Karl Keating, the relentless inquisitor of
Gerry Matatics and others he considers “extreme traditionalists”.](109)
In a typical display of the self-contradiction inherent in the -conservative”
idea, Madrid admits that he has abandoned the Novus Ordo for the Eastern Rite
to escape liturgical abuses. He even admits that in the Novus Ordo “the fire
of the Faith is sputtering in the hearts of the people in the pews.” Yet,
although Madrid recognizes that the Roman rite is now a disaster area, he does
nothing but run from the scene — while hurling insults over his shoulder at
those who have remained behind in an effort to repair some of the damage by
restoring the traditional liturgy at “indult” parishes. Madrid surrenders
without protest his entire heritage as a member of the Roman Rite, and then has
the amazing temerity to belittle in public his own supposed friends because
they refuse to join him in surrender. And, in a kind of perverse loyalty to the
revolution, Madrid declines to reclaim some small part of his heritage even
when it is offered to him by way of an “indult” Mass. He cannot bear to
worship with those unpleasant traditionalists, who have the bad taste to
display righteous anger over the destruction of the Roman Rite! One would
dearly like to ask Mr. Madrid if Our Lord was guilty of “stultifying anger”
when He drove the profaners of the Temple into the streets with a whip.
Madrid s flight into the Eastern Rite is not the path chosen by most
“conservatives”, who have simply accommodated themselves to the debacle. We
have already noted that some “conservatives” actually see the postconciliar
reforms as nothing less than cause for rejoicing. "Conservative" Peter Schreck,
a great proponent of the "charismatic renewal", opines in his Compact History
of the Catholic Church that the postconciliar years are “a new Pentecost”
marked by thousands of Catholics being “baptized in the Holy Spirit”. In
regard to the sudden eruption of “Catholic ecumenism” at Vatican II,
Schreck offers the following remarkable observation: "This document [Vatican II
s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio] truly began a new era in the
relationship of the Catholic Church with other Christians. Throwing off all
triumphalism of the past, the Catholic Church openly acknowledged its (sic)
share of the blame for the division of Christianity.(110)
It does not seem to occur to "conservatives" like Schreck that this kind of
talk destroys belief in the Church. For if the Church was wrong to be
"triumphal" throughout the centuries and must now "throw off" her imposture;
and if her ancient untouchable liturgy had gone wrong after 1,965 years and
needed suddenly to be "thrown off" as well, then perhaps the Church, being
wrong in her triumphalism and in her liturgy, is wrong about other things as
well. And if that is the case, then perhaps the Church is not the divinely
founded institution she had always claimed " triumphally" to be. At least that
is what many of the once faithful Catholics in the pews (or gone from the pews
in ever-increasing droves) were led to believe by the bewildering series of
reversals which began almost immediately after the Third Secret of Fatima was
consigned to oblivion in the papal apartments of John XXIII.
The Conservative Idea
We must remember that generalizations about "conservatives" at the subjective
level of the individual are perilous. Many Catholics are “conservatives”
only because the Novus Ordo is all they have ever known, or because it is all
they have access to in their dioceses. These "conservatives" have never
consciously rejected their heritage as members of the Roman Rite - on the
contrary, many of them may long for a return to integral Tradition. Nor
is it possible for anyone but God Almighty to judge the personal holiness of
anyone, "conservative" or traditionalist.
The focus of this discussion is the idea of "conservative" Catholicism as a
system of novel practices and attitudes which began to appear in the Church
during the 1960s. The "conservative" idea is exemplified by such
"conservative" leaders as Schreck, Keating and Madrid, who embrace it in spite
of the ample historical evidence that it has caused, and continues to cause,
incalculable damage to the Church. Based on the objective words and deeds of
some of the more prominent “conservatives”, we can safely generalize about
the "conservative"idea. Particular applications aside, it is the idea that with
the advent of the Second Vatican Council a new mode of orthodoxy suddenly arose
in the Church - an orthodoxy stripped of any vital link to ecclesial traditions
(especially the Roman liturgy) once considered an untouchable sacred trust. It
is the idea that by virtue of Vatican II the Church has in some manner, never
clearly defined, progressed beyond what she was before the Council to a new
mode of existence, and that this progression requires an assent on the part of
the faithful which is somehow different from the assent required to the
constant teaching of all the previous councils.
When conservatives like Madrid say that traditionalists are "anti-Vatican II",
they are saying more than they seem to realize. They are saying that our Faith
has come to be defined by a particular Council and the revolutionary reforms
and new attitudes it engendered. What this means is that the "conservative"
idea is nothing more or less than a form of progressive or liberal Catholicism
- whether a given "conservative" knows it or not, or is, subjectively speaking,
a liberal by intent. For the distinctive legacy of Vatican II which the
"conservative" celebrates and demands that we "embrace" does not consist in
doctrine, but in liberalizing reforms and attitudes many of which were
explicitly condemned before the Council.
If this verdict on "conservative" Catholicism seems harsh and uncharitable, let
the verdict be confirmed by a leading "conservative" himself. In a recent
article in Crisis magazine, entitled “Sensibly Center-Right”,
"conservative" luminary George Sim Johnston praises the book Being Right:
Conservative Catholics in America, a compendium of the views of a host of
Johnston s fellow "conservative"Catholic leaders, lumped together with pieces
written by doctrinaire liberals. In the process of praising the book, Johnston
lays bare the whole truth about the "conservative" idea:
The featured players [James Hitchcock, Helen Hull Hitchcock, George Weigel and
James Sullivan, formerly of Catholics United for the Faith] do not locate
themselves on the theological ‘right. They embrace Vatican II, don t pine for
the Tridentine liturgy, and support the historically radical ecumenism of John
Paul II. By any historical measure, the ‘conservatives in this volume are
progressive Catholics. Unlike the Sadducees on the Catholic left and the
Pharisees on the truly Catholic right, the ‘conservatives in this volume
understand the pontificate of John Paul II because they understand the Second
Vatican Council. They understand that Christ founded a teaching Church whose
doctrines are not subject to whim and manipulation. But they also realize that
the Church, being human and organic, has to change"”(111)
There we have it all: The destroyed Roman Rite is a mere Tridentine artifact
not worth "pining" over. Liberals are Sadducees, traditionalists are Pharisees,
while the progressive “conservatives” are “sensibly center-right”. The
Church just has to change, you see. Johnston even refers to his own kind as
"neo-conservative Catholics", who "are not looking for a nostalgia driven
restoration" - as if the ancient ecclesial traditions of the Holy Catholic
Church were mere nostalgia pieces to be discarded like the detritus of popular
culture.
According to Johnston, the "conservatives" and the "historically radical"
ecumenist, John Paul II, understand each other because they all "understand"
Vatican II. The Council has become a kind of secret hermeneutical key to the
practice of the Faith. Johnston even claims that the Pope is serving as the
"guide and inspiration [for] a genuine Catholic renewal" which he describes as
"a populist phenomenon ... unfolding outside the official Catholic
apparatus"” (This "populist phenomenon" does not include any traditionalists
or Tridentine Masses, of course.) So the Pope and his sensibly center-right
commandos — the only people in the Church who really "understand" Vatican II
- are going to "renew" the Church outside of her own "official apparatus"! What
sort of gnostic-progressivist nonsense is this? It is the "conservative" idea
in full flight, cut loose from the ecclesiastical traditions and
institutions which were overthrown by the postconciliar revolution. Notice also
yet another example of the "conservative" Catholic s inevitable tendency
to self-contradiction: While "conservatives" like Johnston readily condemn
traditionalists for working outside the "official apparatus" of the Church,
Johnston sees nothing wrong with a “populist” movement of his fellow
"conservatives" which does precisely the same thing, but with no intention of
restoring lost traditions which the "conservatives", in their Vatican II
gnosis, consider mere nostalgia.
The Pope Card
Now, the doctrinaire "conservative" has a ready reply to this verdict on his
way of thinking; an argument from authority the mere recitation of which he
seems to think must end the case in his favor: If I am a liberal, the
"conservative" will declare with a flourish, then so is Pope John Paul II! But
in playing the Pope card, all the "conservative"does is to expose precisely why
there has been a postconciliar debacle in the first place. For it is undeniable
that "by any historical measure" to use Johnston s own phrase — John Paul
II's pontificate has been quite liberal in certain matters of discipline,
prudential judgment and private opinion. Even Johnston admits that the Pope's
wholly unprecedented ecumenism is "historically radical". Indeed, Johnston's
very point is that the Pope, like the "conservatives", is a progressive by
preconciliar standards. That progressivism is evident in the Pope s ecumenism,
his interfaith prayer meetings, his approval of altar girls, his call for
greater "inculturation" of an already fragmented liturgy, his attendance at
rock concerts, and his views on matters such as evolution and the application
of the death penalty, which do not pertain to the charism of papal
infallibility.(112)
It is impossible to mount a serious argument that papal acts such as the World
Day of Prayer at Assisi or the permission for altar girls are the marks of a
conservative papacy. Nor is it conceivable that Pius XII, Pius X or any other
preconciliar pope could have written an encyclical like Ut Unum Sint, which
calls for the establishment of a commission (since formed) to examine which
aspects of the papacy can be done away with for the sake of "Christian unity".
Indeed, the altar girl fiasco showed many "conservatives" that the Pope is
actually more liberal than they are in certain matters. The mere sight of girls
assisting at the altar of God for the first time in Church history was enough
to drive a number of "conservatives" into the traditionalist movement. [Most
conservatives, however, followed their characteristic syndrome of denial,
suddenly deciding that altar girls were not that important an issue after all,
even though only months before they had condemned the demand for altar girls as
the worst sort of modernism.]
It must be stressed that although John Paul II has followed a largely liberal
program in the realm of prudential decisions and non-infallible pronouncements
and opinions, no member of the Faithful has the right to judge his person. Nor
should any Catholic, despairing over the current condition of the Church, allow
himself to wander into the fever swamp of sedevacantism, where the devil
ensares good Catholics in the terrible delusion that they can decide who is the
lawful occupant of the See of Peter.
The fact remains that John Paul II is our Pope, and that whenever it was
necessary to make a definitive pronouncement to prevent an actual defection
from the deposit of the Faith (on women s ordination, for example), he held the
line. Nevertheless, honesty compels us to admit the evidence of our senses: The
overall drift of this pontificate, and that of Paul VI, is simply not in line
with the course charted by every Pope before 1960. It is ultimately this fact
which explains why the Roman Rite has become such a spiritual disaster area
that even “conservatives” like Madrid feel compelled to flee from it.
A New Name for Conservatives
We have shown that the failure of the "conservative"idea is that it has largely
reduced the practice of the Faith to a false middle ground lying between two
supposed extremes, when the duty of Catholics is precisely to be extreme,
refusing to sacrifice even one iota of the sacred patrimony of the Church to
the demands of modernity. If one is to apply political terminology to the
practice of the Faith, as Johnston does, then the duty of Catholics is not to
be “sensibly center-right” but radically “right-wing”, yielding
absolutely nothing to the radical Left. For if we (or even the Pope) should
yield ground to those who would destroy us, we are lost. No less than Pope Pius
XI, who condemned the “ecumenical movement” and established the Feast of
Christ the King, expressed the matter in these very terms:
“The crisis we are experiencing is unique in history ... It is no longer
permitted to be mediocre. Everyone has the imperative duty to remember that he
has a mission to fulfill ... each within the limits of his activity, to bring
the world back to Christ. Only by being radicals of the right will Catholics
have the dynamism to withstand the radicals of the left and to conquer the
world for Christ.”(113)
Because it is largely a compromise with the forces of revolution in the Church,
"conservative"Catholicism necessarily lacks the dynamism Pius XI expected of
the faithful. Though it contains no heresies, and many of its practitioners may
be pious individuals, "conservative"Catholicism was, and remains, woefully
short of a radical response to the revolutionaries who swarmed out of that
Trojan Horse in the City of God known as the Second Vatican Council.
"conservative"Catholicism is mediocre. It splits the difference between
Tradition and revolution — settling for, and even praising, a hopelessly
ruined liturgy, while offering an enfeebled evangelization which shrinks from
declaring that the very salvation of souls depends upon their conversion to the
one true religion. The “conservative's” version of militancy is limited to
complaining about some of the wildest excesses of the revolution, but without
daring to suggest that there be a counter-revolution to restore the Church to
her perennial state before the Council.
What is more, on a whole range of matters pertaining to the Faith
"conservative"Catholicism has given ground to neo-modernism: on the liturgy; on
sacred music; on the anti-modernism of the preconciliar popes; on the
preconciliar papal warnings regarding Masonic conspiracies against the Church
(which many “conservatives” find faintly amusing); on the constant
condemnation of worship in common with non-Catholics; on the duty of the State,
as well as the individual, to profess the Catholic Faith; on the consecration
and conversion of Russia; on the literal truth of the Bible as history,
especially the first three chapters of Genesis; on evolution; on classroom sex
education, and even on the virtue of modesty itself. [This last item is amply
demonstrated by a recent “Life on the Rock” call-in show on EWTN, hosted by
"conservative"Jeff Cavins. The “teen” callers were allowed to ask explicit
questions about sexual sins on the air, during a show whose ostensible theme
was modesty and purity! Matters best left to the confessional were broadcast to
the world on live television as topics for casual conversation.]
"conservative"Catholicism lacks the fighting spirit of the Church militant as
exemplified by the people of Vendée, who shed their blood and gave their
substance in the battle to defend Tradition against the French revolutionaries.
Confronted by what Cardinal Suenens himself admitted was the French Revolution
in the Church, the "conservative"Catholic offered no resistance to the
disastrous changes, even though he could have licitly resisted with complete
safety to his membership in the Church, as the growing traditionalist movement
demonstrates.
In sum, the "conservative"Catholic is richly deserving of a new name; for in
truth he has conserved nothing but what the revolution has allowed him to keep.
He does not seem terribly interested in conserving even what little the
revolution might be willing to return to him from his stolen patrimony. He is
just as likely to sniff at it with disdain, as Madrid does. The
"conservative"has largely buried his own past, seeming no longer to remember
that traditionalists are nothing other than what he himself once was, not so
long ago.
The “conservatives” should be described, therefore, by a name which
reflects what they really are, and what “conservatives” like Johnston
demonstrate they are: They should be called neo-Catholics, who practice
neo-Catholicism. When the counter-revolution is won, when unity of cult is
restored to the Roman Rite, when the word Catholic has recovered the same
meaning and the same sense for every member of the Faithful, there will no
longer be any need for such terms. But for now, there is a need. The
neo-Catholics cannot in justice be allowed to continue claiming for themselves
the mantle of sound orthodoxy. Nor should they be permitted any longer to
portray traditionalists as extremists for worshiping as Catholics have always
worshiped and believing as Catholics have always believed.
The Civilization of Love
Eighty years after Our Lady appeared at Fatima, the Faithful who still remember
the Church as she appeared only 35 years ago now survey an alien landscape they
could never have envisioned before the Council. The liturgy of the Roman Rite
has collapsed, as Cardinal Ratzinger admits, shattered into hundreds of
ever-mutating vernacular fragments in the various nations. The high altar has
been replaced by a table; the marble tabernacle on the altar by a wooden box in
a side room. The altar boys have given way to altar girls, and the majesty of
Gregorian chant to the bathos of a strumming guitar or a tinkling piano.
For many years now the Vatican, like the new liturgy, has ceased speaking to us
about the Four Last Things: death, judgment, Heaven and Hell. Yet it was the
loss of Heaven and the torments of Hell which Our Lady was sent to earth to
show the seers of Fatima, at the dawn of this century of rebellion against God.
It seems that the more the world rebels, the less the Vatican speaks of the
eternal hellfire which is the punishment for that rebellion.
As the Four Last Things recede from the pronouncements of the Holy See, the
Social Kingship of Christ is being replaced by something called "the
civilization of love" — a phrase coined by Paul VI which has become a kind of
Vatican advertising slogan.(114) A reading of various Vatican statements over
the years reveals that this “civilization of love” is a largely
U.N.-administered project of building a new world of tolerance and respect for
human dignity out of more or less equal parts of Christianity, Islam, Judaism,
Hinduism, Buddhism and assorted pagan mystery religions.
The signal event of the new program was the infamous “Word Day of Prayer for
Peace” at Assisi in October 1986, a Vatican initiative underwritten by the
globalist National Wildlife Foundation. According to L Osservatore Romano, the
Pope had summoned practitioners of “the world s great religions” to
assemble in Assisi in order to celebrate the “harmony of spirits in the
pluriformity of choices”.(115) Cardinal Arinze, head of the Vatican
Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions, declared that “for building world
peace we need the United Nations”, and he praised the Pope s "unprecedented
step" in calling "leaders of all world religions, Christian and otherwise, to
Assisi to pray for peace in the world"”(116)
Citing Vatican II s teaching on religious liberty, Cardinal Arinze exclaimed
that “it is a beautiful thing that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus,
Buddhists, African Traditional Religionists, Shintoists, Confucianists, Sikhs
and other believers can come together to express a common concern for peace in
the world.”(117) The Pope himself declared that for the first time in history
we have come together from everywhere, Christian Churches and Ecclesial
Communities, and World Religions in this sacred place dedicated to St. Francis,
to witness before the world, each according to his own conviction, about the
transcendent quality of peace.”(118) But what sort of peace could come from a
bizarre gathering of false religions in a sacred Catholic place a gesture any
preconciliar pope would have regarded as unspeakably scandalous? What sort of
peace has the world enjoyed since the World Day of Prayer for Peace at Assisi?
Certainly not the peace of Christ nor even a worldly peace.
The Vatican produced an official book of the event, setting forth in
alphabetical order the prayers that were uttered by representatives of the
world's great religions” in the plaza outside the Basilica of St. Francis of
Assisi: from the Buddhist Prayer for Peace to the Zoroastrian Prayer for peace.
Oddly enough, the book does not include a Catholic Prayer for Peace, but only a
generalized Christian intercession.(119 Is the Holy Catholic Church now a mere
denomination of the larger Christian religion?
(continued)
PrayDivMer
the Rosary, make the first Saturday reparations to the Immaculate Heart.
I saw an extremely high number of members of the Blue Army of Fatima.
Combine this with the fact, some Convents and Monasteries pray all the time and
one can see, that Prayer is a great power in the world. If in 1917, the World
had amended its sinful ways, perhaps World War II could have been averted!
>Subject: THE THIRD LETTER OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA
>From: "Kevin Monteiro" mon...@one.net.au
>Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic
>Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 14:58:25 +1100
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>
PrayDivMer
The Faithful were assured that despite all appearances, the event was not a
scandal, because while the "world s great religions" had come together to pray,
they had not actually prayed together, but rather one at a time a distinction
that would make a Jesuit blush. And so yet another novelty has taken its place
in the life of the postconciliar Church: the "Spirit of Assisi". In 1996
Cardinal Etchégaray, president of the Pontifical Commission for Peace and
Justice, issued a statement celebrating the phrase, which the Pope himself
coined. The statement concludes with this strange and disturbing invocation:
"Spirit of Assisi come upon us all!"(120)
At Assisi in 1986 Cardinal Etchégaray declared in the presence of the Pope
that "Each of the religions we profess has inner peace and peace among
individuals and nations as one of its aims. Each one pursues this aim in its
own distinctive and irreplaceable way"”(121) Is the "Spirit of Assisi" a
spirit which leads Cardinals to believe that the false religions of the world
are irreplaceable in the pursuit of inner peace and world peace? Is not every
false religion which darkens the soul of man completely and instantly
replaceable by the true religion founded by Jesus Christ, the very Prince of
Peace?
The Affluent of Apostasy
In 1910 Pope St. Pius X was confronted with the Sillon Movement, a group of
utopian Catholics in France advancing a thesis remarkably similar to this
"Spirit of Assisi". The movement s leader, Marc Sangier, was teaching that
Catholics must build a new civilization through the cooperation of all “men
of good will”, regardless of their creed. Piercing this movement's apparently
benign facade, Pius X condemned it as “a miserable affluent of apostasy being
organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church”.(122)
His Holiness called instead for a return to Christendom, to the Catholic
confessional state of pre-revolutionary Europe, as the only sound foundation
for a just civilization:
"The City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be
built up unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no,
civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built
on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian
civilization, it is the Catholic City"”(123)
Pius X condemned the Sillon movement precisely because it exhibited the
“Spirit of Assisi”. As His Holiness observed with just contempt, the Sillon
proposed to leave "to each one his own religion or his philosophy", and had
abandoned the principle that "Democracy will be Catholic”"in favor of
"Democracy will not be anti-Catholic, any more than it will be anti-Jewish or
anti-Buddhist ...” The movement, he noted further, brashly "appealed to the
workers of all religions and sects ... to share the same social ideal, to
respect all creeds, and to bring with them a certain supply of moral force"”
This great sainted pope called the Sillon "a miserable affluent of apostasy"
because he knew, with all the wisdom of the Church s perennial teaching, that
"there is no true civilization without moral civilization, and no true moral
civilization without the true religion"”(124) He knew, as his successor Pius
XI had proclaimed in Quas Primas, that “When once men recognize that Christ
is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty,
well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.”(125) And he knew, as Pope Leo
XIII taught us in Annum Sacrum, that the Kingship of Christ "includes not only
Catholic nations, not only baptized persons ... but also all those who are
outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to
the power of Jesus Christ"”(126) Is this not what Our Lady came to tell us at
Fatima?
Today the Vatican no longer speaks to the world of the social Kingship of Our
Lord Jesus Christ over all men and all nations. It speaks of a pluralistic
civilization of love. What is more, Cardinal Ratzinger freely admits that the
Vatican has abandoned the traditional teaching for all practical purposes, and
will now be content to promote a non-Catholic civilization based on common
"human" values:
"I think the tendency to identify a certain society with Christianity will fade
... We hope and will do all we can to ensure that at least the fundamental
tenets are retained, the values which underpin human existence, the things that
lead to true humanism"”(127)
Cardinal Ratzinger did not mention on this occasion that Pius IX's Syllabus of
Errors condemned the opinion that "in the present day it is no longer expedient
that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to
the exclusion of other forms of religion"”(128)
In a theology text he authored, however, Cardinal Ratzinger observed that the
documents of Vatican II, especially Gaudium et Spes, comprise a "counter
syllabus" designed to "correct"... the one-sidedness of the position adopted by
the Church under Pius IX and Pius X”, and are an "attempt at an official
reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789"”(129)
That is, the documents of Vatican II are an attempt to overrule the definitive
pronouncements of two great Popes and embrace the principles of the French
Revolution: liberty for all religions, true or false; equality for all men,
regardless of merit; fraternity of all men, whether or not they recognize
Christ the King.
Before 1960 the popes understood that God s grace can make possible, even in
the "modern world", attainment of the Catholic City praised by St. Pius X as
the only truly just society. Yet today the Vatican surrenders the Catholic
ideal because it no longer sees it as practical, settling for a human
compromise with the increasingly rebellious rabble of modern societies.
As the Kingship of Christ is abandoned of favor of a "true humanism", the
evangelism of old, which produced a growing stream of converts until 1960, has
given way to a kind of vast ecclesial public relations campaign. The Vatican
calendar is full of media events which promote peace, justice and solidarity,
but never mention the ultimate salvation or damnation of souls for all
eternity: World Youth Days with human chains and rock music; a Year 2000
Jubilee with a contest for the best logo; a Eucharistic Congress in Bologna
featuring Bob Dylan in concert (for which the Faithful paid $350,000); and,
almost monthly it seems, another motorcade to a stadium full of papal fans, who
wave, cheer, go home and generally ignore whatever teaching of the Magisterium
crimps their global village lifestyles.
In the 13 years which have passed since the last failed attempt to consecrate
Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as Our Lady requested at Fatima, 600
million children have been murdered in the womb, with no end of the slaughter
in sight. Legalized mercy-killing has already arrived and will soon become a
new holocaust. Russia has passed a law discriminating against the Catholic
Church and in favor of Islam, Judaism and Hinduism. China has driven the Church
underground. All of Europe is being merged into a commonwealth of abortion,
contraception, divorce and homosexual rights. The United Nations, to which the
Popes now pay tribute, busily coordinates emergence of the one-world government
called for by Gaudium et Spes (#81).
As we observe the astounding wreckage of the Church we once knew; as the
nations of the world are inexorably integrated into a new world order applauded
by the Vatican itself, we recognize a truth which sums up the social and
religious trends of the past two hundread years which a long line of
preconciliar popes heroically resisted: The civilization of love and the
culture of death are one and the same thing — despite all the efforts of the
current Pope to pry them apart. They are one and the same thing because they
are inseparably conjoined in what Pius X contemptuously described as the
Sillonist utopia of: "a Democracy which will be neither Catholic nor
Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion ... more universal than the
Catholic Church, uniting all men as brothers and comrades at last in ‘the
Kingdom of God "”(130)
It is indeed the civilization of love but only a human love, and only for those
deemed worthy of that love.
And in this brave new civilization, when the people disagree on whether
children in the womb, or the old or the infirm, should be loved or killed, or
whether men may marry each other, or whether any imaginable evil under the sun
may be enshrined in law, they do not place the matter before the Church for her
judgment. They place it instead upon the altar of their own volition. And then
they confect the Great Sacrament of this new religion "more universal than the
Catholic Church"- they cast their votes upon the altar, sacrificing the newest
victim of their sovereign will.
Looking upon the visible ruin of our once majestic Church, and the consequent
ruin of the world, one can hardly disagree with Dietrich von Hildebrand s
observation in 1973 that "the poison of our epoch is slowly seeping into the
Church herself, and many have failed to see the apocalyptic decline of our
time"”(131) Pope Paul VI himself said as much in that same year, when he
admitted that the Council s “opening to the world became a veritable invasion
of worldly thinking"”(132)
St. Francis of Assisi began his great apostolate by rebuilding with his bare
hands a fallen-down church in Assisi. He went on to seek the conversion of the
Saracen infidels from Islam to the one true religion. Nearly 800 years later,
at the invitation of the Pope, a Muslim cleric intoned alien prayers outside
the Basilica of St. Francis — along with assorted Indians, Buddhists, Hindus,
Shintoists and Animists. Eleven years to the day after Cardinal Arinze s
announcement of the eventwas published, earthquakes rocked the Basilica,
causing its altar to be crushed.(133) Yet the lower basilica in which the body
of St. Francis is found miraculously escaped damage, as did the frescos
depicting his likeness.
In Assisi another church has fallen down and must be rebuilt. Will another St.
Francis come soon to rebuild it?
Return to Fatima
Only a few years before the Second Vatican Council began, Pope Pius XII uttered
the prophecy with which we began:
“Suppose, dear friend, that Communism was only the most visible of the
instruments of subversion to be used against the Church and the traditions of
Divine Revelation ... 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 and her liturgy. A day
will come 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 sanctuary lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene,
weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask: ‘Where have they taken Him? '
What did Pius XII see in the Message of Fatima which led him to say these
extraordinary things? As we have seen, the first two parts of the Great Secret
of Fatima, already revealed, say nothing of the “suicide of altering the
Faith and her liturgy.” Nor is there any reference in the first two parts to
the striking detail of the missing sanctuary lamp, so typical of the
postconciliar parish church. But what of the third part of the Message? What of
the Third Secret of Fatima?
As we witness the fulfillment of Pius XII's prophecy, our minds return again
and again to the sealed envelope dispatched by Sister Lucy to the Vatican in
1957; the envelope that was meant to be opened, for us, in 1960. In 1960 it
would be clearer, Sister Lucy said. By 1960, Pope Pius XII was dead and the
Second Vatican Council had been convoked. Was it, then, the Third Secret of
Fatima which so alarmed the suffering Pope whose earthly life ended at the edge
of that great spiritual chasm marked by the year 1960? Was it there that the
details of his remarkable prophecy were suggested to him, or even stated
explicitly, by the Queen of Heaven?
For 37 years the Vatican has offered ever-shifting explanations for the
suppression of the Third Secret. With each new explanation the mystery
deepens. The original explanation, in that anonymous ANI press release of
February 8, 1960, claimed that nameless "Vatican sources" had decided that "the
Church ... does not pledge herself to guarantee the veracity of the words which
the three little shepherds claim to have heard from Our Lady" - an absurd
claim, given that the Church had already approved as worthy of belief the first
two parts of the Fatima Message, which had been confirmed by a public miracle
of a kind never before seen in the history of the world. It is even more absurd
when one considers that all the faithful, including the Pope himself, were
praying in their Rosaries the very prayer dictated by Our Lady to Sister Lucy,
and practicing the First Saturday devotions Our Lady had prescribed at Fatima.
In November 1984 Cardinal Ratzinger, ignoring the laughable disclaimer of 1960,
stated in an interview published to millions in Italy, that the Secret speaks
of "The dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian, and
therefore the world, and also the importance of the last times. (134) But in a
subsequent publication of the same interview in the famous Ratzinger Report
this language was mysteriously deleted. In the same November 1984 interview,
the Cardinal said that the Third Secret had been suppressed “to avoid
confusing religious prophecy with sensationalism.” But in a press conference
twelve years later the Cardinal declared that the Secret contains “nothing
new ... nothing apocalyptic, and nothing essential for the faith.”(135) If
that is so, then why has this non-essential, non-apocalyptic secret been
suppressed, when Marian apparitions of decidedly apocalyptic content have been
freely disseminated with the approval of the Vatican? In an era when the Index
of Forbidden Books has been abolished, when any sort of Marian apparition, true
or false, may be freely circulated, only one writing in all the world is
censored by the Vatican: the Third Secret of Our Lady of Fatima. Why?
In March of 1990, Cardinal Oddi confirmed the belief of many that in the Third
Secret "the Blessed Virgin was alerting us to the apostasy in the Church", and
that the date for its revelation, 1960, indicates that "the Secret had
something to do with the convocation of Vatican II.” (136) But in October
1996 Cardinal Ratzinger continued the theme that the Third Secret contained
nothing of any great moment: “The secret, in fact, has nothing to do with the
history of the world, informing about something that could one day happen to us
...”(137) Yes, but what about something that has already happened to us? He
added: “It is not a teaching about the future, but a help and an education in
faith” So, for 37 years the Third Secret of Fatima has been kept from the
Faithful because it would help and educate us!
The mystery of this non-essential, non-apocalyptic, helpful and educational
secret, which contains nothing new yet cannot be revealed, continues to deepen
with each attempt to explain it away. In November of 1997 an article appeared
in Inside the Vatican recounting the belief of Vittorio Messori and Rene
Laurentin that the phrase in Lucy s fourth memoir, “In Portugal the dogma of
the Faith will always be preserved,” suggests a loss of dogma throughout the
Church, and that Pope John XXIII, seeing that the Secret contradicted his
"optimism at all costs, decided to consign it to the Vatican archives"”(138)
Messori concludes that Pope Paul VI and John Paul II are “prisoners of John s
decision. In fact, how can they admit that, not heeding even divine warnings,
Roncalli did not take prudent measures to head off the predicted crisis in the
Church?”(139)
When told of Messori s conclusion, Pope John's personal secretary, Archbishop
Loris Capovilla, now 82, did not contradict Messori, but gave an entirely new
and startling hint about the contents of the Secret, which he has read: The
Secret “does not concern the Church only, "but also predicts "an absolutely
exceptional event, a manifestation of the supernatural”. Asked for his
view, Cardinal Ratzinger dismissed the Messori/ Laurentin comments as "all
fantasies" (without actually saying they were false), but most significantly
did not deny the new revelation of Archbishop Capovilla, which must now be
added to the growing body of facts which suggest the probable content of the
Third Secret.(140)
Thirty-seven years of shifting explanations have only increased the number of
the Faithful who share the view of Cardinal Oddi and Vittorio Messori that the
Third Secret of Fatima must point with embarrassing precision to the events
which have transpired since its suppression by Pope John. What else could
explain the Vatican s otherwise inexplicable refusal to disclose a secret which
Cardinal Ratzinger says is not apocalyptic, not essential, nothing new and not
a prediction of the future, but rather an education and help in the Faith?
The conviction grows, therefore, that the Third Secret of Fatima mentions the
Pope, a Council and a loss of faith and discipline throughout the Church
beginning around 1960 — in short, a great apostasy. If this is true, then we
are entitled to know it for our own spiritual safety; and those whose acts and
omissions the Secret may mention are obliged in justice to unseal the heavenly
indictment, if that is what it is. On the other hand, if the Secret makes no
mention of the Council and the debacle which followed, what better way to
defend the conciliar aggiornamento than to reveal that Our Lady had nothing
negative to say about it at Fatima? But that question in itself suggests why
the Third Secret has remained a secret.
No matter what the Secret says, it is manifest that Our Lady did not come to
Fatima to deliver a private communique to a few Vatican bureaucrats, or even
the Pope. She came to speak to the world at large, to warn all mankind of
looming perils in this century of matchless insanity. If it were not so, then
why did She call down the Miracle of the Sun for the whole world to see? Was it
to authenticate a Message we were not to be given?
Our Lady's message at Fatima had three parts, two of which the world has long
since received. What of the third part? It seems increasingly likely that the
Third Secret is a light to guide us out of the great and terrible darkness of
the postconciliar debacle. Are we not entitled to see this light which our
Mother came to give us? We must never cease entreating Rome to tell us, in
full, exactly what our Mother wanted us to know.
The Third Secret Will Be Revealed
When Annibale Bugnini had finished destroying the Roman Rite, he turned his
attention to devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Having “renewed” the
Mass, he offered his modest proposal for "renewal" of the Rosary: The Rosary
was to be shortened and rearranged, with the Our Father recited only once at
the beginning, and the Hail Mary edited to include only "the biblical portion
of the prayer" - whatever that means. The "Holy Mary Mother of God" would be
said "only at the end of each tenth Hail Mary.” There would also be a new
"public" version of the Rosary, consisting of readings, songs, homilies and "a
series of Hail Marys, but limited to one decade"”(141)
Paul VI responded to this preposterous proposal through the Vatican Secretary
of State:
... the Faithful would conclude that ‘the Pope has changed the rosary and the
psychological effect would be disastrous ... Any change in it cannot but lessen
the confidence of the simple and the poor.”(142) So, the rite of Holy Mass
dating back to the time of St. Gregory could be hacked to pieces on a few weeks
notice to the Faithful, but the Rosary would not be touched! That was going too
far. It was as if Our Lord, having suffered the disfigurement of the Mass at
the hands of "profane intruders", would not permit the slightest damage to be
done to the traditional form of devotion to His Mother, out of tender
solicitude for Her.
Only the willfully blind cannot see that we are living by Our Lord's fiat in a
Marian age, the age of Fatima: "God wishes to establish devotion to My
Immaculate Heart in the world ... If people do what I ask, many souls will be
saved and there will be peace." So Our Lady said at Fatima; so it will be. "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 granted to
the world." Some would say these words are a mere relic of triumphal
Catholicism, which has passed away in favor of the civilization of love. Yet
the Faithful know that heavenly promises never pass away, but are always
fulfilled in the end.
Perhaps we will live to see the inevitable triumph of the Immaculate Heart of
Mary and the miraculous reversal of the greatest debacle in the history of the
Church and through that miracle the restoration of Christendom. Perhaps before
these things have come to pass we will learn, from those who no longer have
anything to hide, the mystery of the Third Secret of Fatima.
And once we learn this precious Secret, will we not understand that we had
known it all along? For the passing of time uncovers all secrets, exposing the
misdeeds that men have labored so diligently to conceal.
Our Lady of Fatima! Pray for us!
Footnotes:
76. Mortalium animos, nn. 10-11.
77. The Ottaviani Intervention, Tan: Rockford, Illinois (1992) pp. 28, 55.
78. Reform of the Roman Liturgy. Una Voce Press: San Juan, Capistrano (1993),
p. 34-35.
79. St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, Book II Chapter 29.
80. Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910 edition, pp. 432-33.
81. Davies, Michael. Pope John’s Council. Angelus Press: Kansas City (1977),
p. 17-18.
82. Von Hildebrand, Dietrich. The Devastated Vineyard, p. 17.
83. The Salt of the Earth, Ignatius Press, San Francisco (1997).
84. Gamber, op cit, p. 38.
85. See Part III of this series, Catholic Family News, December 1997, p. 13
86. See, Directory for Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, n.
138, which authorizes shared ownership of church premises if the Bishop deems
it financially or otherwise appropriate, and there is “a good ecumenical
relationship” with the Protestant co-owners — whatever that means. In such
case, “consideration” should be given to removal of the Blessed Sacrament
from the jointly owned sanctuary, in order to accommodate the
“sensitivities” of “those who will be using the building.” (n. 139) In
his encyclical Ut Unum Sint Pope John Paul II confirms that the Directory was
“issued with my approval” as the basis for applying ecumenism in “the
pastoral sphere.” (Ut Unum Sint, n. 16)
87. The author is currently serving as legal counsel to Catholic parents whose
ten-year-old daughter was expelled from a “Catholic” school in the
Archdiocese of Miami because the parents refused to allow their little girl to
study the details of sexual intercourse in the classroom — including explict
names of private parts and sexual actions.
88. See, for example, Pius XI’s 1929 encyclical Divinis Illius Magistri,
condemning all forms of classroom sexual instruction, and cautioning that if
“some instruction” is to be given in private, that it not descend to
details.
89. Catholic Family News, October 1997, p. 3.
90. The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, n.120.3 (1995).
91. See “Children Rights”, Catholic Family News, April 1997, p. 1.
92. Gaudium et spes, nn. 77 and 82.
93. See, Pope Paul’s Address to the United Nations (1965), and Pope John Paul
II’s address to the United Nations on October 5, 1995.
94. Schreck, Alan. The Compact History of the Catholic Church. Servant Books:
Ann Arbor (1987), p. 95.
95. Ibid., p. 105.
96.See Michael Davies, Pope Paul’s New Mass, Chapter 24.
97. Catechism of the Council of Trent, Christian Book Club: Hawthorne, CA.
(1829), p. 220.
98. Likoudis, James and Whitehead, Kenneth, D. The Pope, the Mass and the
Council. Christopher Publishing House: Hanover, Mass. (1982), p. 106.
99. Ibid., p. 103.
100. Wanderer, February 16, 1995, p. 7. It must be noted that, when presented
with proof of Mr. Matatics’ orthodoxy, the Wanderer justly and charitably
restored access to its pages for the promotion of Mr. Matatics’ apostolate.
101. Mr. Keating was invited to confirm or deny this report by an E-mail
inquiry to which he never responded.
102. McBrien, Richard P. The Remaking of the Church. (1973), p. 146.
103. Letter of Pope Pius X on the Sillon Movement, August 25, 1910.
104. Quoted in “The Present Legal Status of the Traditional Latin Mass”,
Fr. Paul Leonard, B.Ph., S.T.B., M.Div.
105. Denzinger, 995-996.
106. Veterum Sapientia, par. 32.
107. The Pope, the Mass and the Council, p. 11.
108. Quoted in Latin Mass Magazine, Winter 1997, p. 67. The accompanying
comment by editor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. notes that today's top Catholic
apologists” are almost unanimously hostile toward traditionalists.
109. Keating s public and private persecution of traditionalist Gerry Matatics
was discussed in Part IV of this piece. For a complete discussion of the
Keating-Matatics affair, see this author s article on the Una Voce America web
site at http://net2.netacc.net/~bbasile/ news.htm.
110. Schreck, op. cit, p. 123.
111. Crisis, May 1996, p. 6.
112. In typical "conservative" fashion, leading “conservatives” attempted
once again to distance the Pope from his own words and actions, claiming that
his statement of October 22, 1996, that the theory of evolution is “more than
a hypothesis” should have been translated from the French (plus qu une
hypothese) as "more than one hypothesis"” The proposed translation was
nonsensical in context, as the English edition of L Osservatore Romano later
noted in a correction providing the proper translation. [See Catholic World
Report, February 1997, p. 4]. The official Italian language translation in L
Osservatore Romano was correct from the beginning: The Pope said “more than a
mere hypothesis” (piu che una mera ipotesi). In any case, the Pope has given
a long series of statements favoring the theory of evolution. As just one of
many examples, on April 26, 1985, the Pope addressed a symposium entitled
“Christian Faith and the Theory of Evolution”, praising the assembled
evolutionists for their work, and declaring: “[B]elief in evolution and the
properly understood teaching of creation do not stand in one another s way.
Creation represents itself in the light of evolution as an event extending
through time ...Therefore I welcome this symposium ...” L Osservatore Romano,
April 27, 1985, p. 4, Italian edition (“ ...la Creazione si pone alla luce
dell evoluzione come un avvenimento che estende nel tempo ...”).
113. Letter to Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, quoted in Latin Mass Magazine,
Winter 1998, p. 63.
114. See, for example, L Osservatore Romano, May 14, 1997, p. 4, reporting
remarks of John Paul II, citing Gaudium et Spes; Declaration at World Summit on
Social Development in Copenhagen by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo
Sodano, March 12, 1995; “The Family, The Heart of the Civilization of
Love”, address by Cardinal Trujillo, December, 1994; Pope John Paul II s
address on Reconciliation in Croatia, January 31, 1997; Discourse to Plenary
Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture by Pope John Paul II, January
15, 1985.
115. L Osservatore Romano, September 17, 1996.
116. Assisi: World Day of Prayer for Peace, published by Pontifical Commission,
Justitia et Pax (1987), p. 39, 49.
117. Ibid.
118. Ibid.
119. Ibid.
120. The entire statement is available from the Vatican archives at
http://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/ju_mag_june-sept-1996_et
chegaray-assisi
121. Assisi: World Day of Prayer for Peace, at 110.
122. Letter on the Sillon Movement.
123. Ibid.
124. Ibid.
125. Quas Primas, n. 19.
126. Annum Sacrum, n. 3.
127. “How a Cardinal Ratifies Our Views”, Fr. Charles Fiore, The Wanderer,
July 24, 1997.
128. Syllabus of Errors, Condemned Proposition n. 77.
129. Ratzinger, Josef Cardinal. Principles of Catholic Theology. Ignatius: San
Francisco (1987), pp. 381-82.
130. Letter on the Sillon Movement.
131. Von Hildebrand, Dietrich. Devastated Vineyard. Chicago:1973, p. 35.
132. Iota Unum, pp. 9-10, quoted papal address of November 23, 1973.
133. New York Times, September 28, 1997.
134. Jesus Magazine, “Ecco Perché La Fede É In Crisi” (Here Is Why the
Faith Is In Crisis), November 1984, p. 75.
135. CRC, No. 289 Oct. 1996, p. 6.
136. The Fatima Crusader Magazine, Issue 33, p. 14; reprinting an interview in
Il Sabato of March 17, 1990.
137. Catholic World News report, October 1996, available under keyword
“Fatima” at News section of EWTN Web site.
138. Inside the Vatican, November 1997, “Focus” section.
139. Ibid.
140. Ibid.
141. Bugnini, Annibale. The Reform of the Liturgy. Liturgical Press:
Collegeville, Minnesota (1990), p. 876.
142. Ibid.
Election
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Michael Dean
Michael Dean
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