Fatima

Inside Story – I

Inside Story – I on October 18, 2014

After 1917 it was made clear to the world by Our Lady of Fatima that the salvation of Church and world (“a period of peace”) depended upon two things: not only upon the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart by the Pope with all the bishops of the world, but also upon Catholics making reparation to her Heart by receiving Confession and Communion and by meditating for 15 minutes and praying a rosary on each first Saturday of the month. Therefore let no Catholic think that there is nothing they can do to help Church and world out of their present appalling crisis. Every single Catholic responding to her second request will help the Pope to respond to her first request.

But this response has not yet been sufficient. For instance in the 1930’s, Pope Pius XI was well aware of Our Lady’s first request, but he never performed the Consecration of Russia. Why not? According to Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity in the second of his excellent three volumes on The Whole Truth About Fatima, it was because Pius XI was engaged at that time in diplomatic contacts with the Russian authorities in Moscow, and he thought that his own diplomacy was a better way of dealing with Communists than Our Lady’s Consecration. He preferred the human to the divine way of dealing with the problem, and so of course the problem remained unsolved. The world plunged into World War II, and the Church was broken from within by Vatican II.

Now in the 2010’s a parallel story has been coming to light of Our Lady appealing through a messenger to Bishop Fellay for the Society of St Pius X to organize a Rosary Crusade to pray for the Consecration of Russia to take place. If this story is true (as I believe it is, and some other priests also believe), it is worth telling in a few issues of these Comments, not to discredit Bishop Fellay (whose preference for human means is as understandable as that of Pius XI – God is their judge), but in order to emphasize how urgent the Consecration of Russia remains, and especially the devout practice of the five first Saturdays, even nigh on 100 years later. But is the story true? In particular, how reliable is the messenger?

I myself have met with her several times, and I believe her story has every likelihood of being true, firstly because she is a serious adult person who gives every sign of telling the truth, but mainly because what she tells is an inside story that corresponds to, and explains, a large number of public facts and well-known events on the outside, so to speak. As to the messenger, readers are entitled to distrust my personal judgment, but as to the perfect correspondence between inside story and outside facts, readers can judge for themselves.

The story begins on Good Shepherd Sunday of 2004, when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the messenger and gave her a message to be passed on to the Bishop of the Society of St Pius X. In it she asked for the SSPX to lead the faithful in a Rosary Crusade for the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, that same Consecration that Heaven has been asking for since the 1920’s. The understanding in the 2000’s was that if this were done as she asked, it would at last obtain, through her, the graces to bring about the much needed Consecration.

In June of 2006 the messenger gave the message in person to Bishop Fellay. He discussed it with her, but did not yet know that it was in fact a directive from the Mother of God. And so on his way back to Switzerland he took a first important decision. As Americans say, “Stay tuned”!

Kyrie eleison.

Fatima Contested

Fatima Contested on November 9, 2013

At the outset of the 20 th century surely God gave to the modern world two great lights: for theory, through Pius X, the Encyclical Pascendi in 1907, to denounce the key error of subjectivism; for practice, through his Mother, the apparitions of Fatima in 1917, to provide a remedy for the monstrous plague of Communism. But the Devil deflects attention from Pascendi, and raises a series of objections to discredit Fatima. Here are a few of the main objections:—

* How can we take seriously Cardinal Ottaviani’s version of the third part of the Fatima Secret when supposedly Our Lady says there that a third World war will start in the latter part of the 20 th century? The year 2000 has come and gone, and there has been no third World War. There is an interesting parallel here between the second and third parts of the Secret of Fatima. In the second part Our Lady said that a worse war than WW I would start under the reign of the next Pope, which was Pius XI. Yet Pius XI died in the spring of 1939 and WW II was only declared in the autumn when Pius XII was Pope. Did Our Lady get her calendar wrong? No, she was simply going by the reality instead of by the appearances. In reality WW II started in 1938 when Stalin was deciding to make a pact with Hitler so as to liberate Hitler to make war on his western front. See in the May, 2000, Rector’s Letter (on eleisonkommentar.blogspot,com) the whole fascinating story of this real start to WW II. Now whether or not the Ottaviani version is or is not the true “Third Secret,” may the reality not be that WW III began in the Middle East before the year 2000, for instance with the first invasion of Iraq in 1991? Things are not always how they appear.

* In WW II we saw horrific bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki. What will be new here? Total WW II deaths are reckoned usually at some 66 million, in the tens of millions. If one reads rightly several warnings of Our Lady, and not only in Fatima, casualties from WW III and the Chastisement will be reckoned in the thousands of millions. Of the order of 100 times worse.

* But what material Chastisement could be worse than the spiritual chastisement of our own days? True, next after the Fall of Adam and Eve, Vatican II was the worst disaster in all the history of mankind. Yet the mass of men see it as a great liberation. “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is the old saying. Spiritual punishments are in themselves much greater, but it takes material things for us men to understand (cf. Mt. IX, 6, and Jn. XX, 27).

* Our Lady of Fatima promised a period of peace if the Pope performed a certain consecration. Popes since then have performed several such consecrations, but we have had no peace. True, there have been several consecrations inspired no doubt by Our Lady of Fatima, but never yet exactly as she required: by the Pope, of Russia, to her Immaculate Heart, in union with all the bishops of the world. One or other of these four conditions has always been lacking.

* Our Lady of Fatima told us of “nations being annihilated” and of “a period of peace.” We saw nations annihilated in WW II, and a period of peace in the 1950’s. Her prophecies have happened. What nations have remained annihilated since WW II, and just how much peace was there in the Cold War of the 1950’s? Our Lady of Fatima spoke of far greater events than have yet happened.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy upon us. Immaculate Heart of Mary, intercede for us.

Kyrie eleison.

Fatima Secret

Fatima Secret on September 28, 2013

Yet another reconstruction has come to light of the third part of the Secret of Fatima, revealed by the Mother of God to Sister Lucy in July, 1917. The Blessed Virgin wished it to be made public in 1960 at the latest, but the perfidious churchmen controlling Rome pretended that she had merely allowed it to be published from 1960 onwards, and it has been locked away ever since. From hints of its contents revealed by the few churchmen that have been able to read it, several attempts have been made to reconstruct it. This latest attempt has much in its favour. Here is its story.

Cardinal Ottaviani (1890–1979) was a high churchman under Popes Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI, main protector of the Faith from 1959 to 1968. Given to read the Secret, but bound by secrecy, he found a way to reveal it without revealing it. Adding material to make the original Secret two to three times as long, he allowed the elongated version to be published, notably in a German magazine called Neues Europa. But the Vatican authorities could easily dismiss it as a fake, as it is now regarded, because the original Secret was known to be only 25 hand-written lines.

However, the Cardinal had a friend, Don Luigi Villa (1918–2012), a valiant priest and defender of the true Church, especially against Freemasonry. At some point the Cardinal revealed to Fr. Villa exactly which parts of the longer version came from the original Secret, and Don Villa in turn told the same to his faithful lay collaborator, Dr. Franco Adessa, who has just put the same information into Chiesa Viva, an Italian periodical. Here then would be the original “Third Secret”:—

“A great chastisement will come down on the whole of mankind neither today, nor tomorrow, but in the second half of the 20th century. Nowhere in the world is there order, and Satan rules in the highest places, determining the course of events. He will even manage to work his way up to the top of the Church. For the Church too will come the time of its greatest trials. Cardinals will oppose cardinals, bishops will oppose bishops. Satan will march in their midst, and in Rome there will be changes. What is rotten will fall, what falls will not get up again. The Church will be darkened and the world overwhelmed in terror. A great war will be let loose in the second half of the 20th century. Fire and smoke will fall from Heaven, the oceans’ waters will be turned into steam, the foam of the sea will rise up, overwhelming and flooding everything. Millions and millions of men will die from one hour to the next, while those who survive will envy the dead. Death will be everywhere because of the errors committed by the madmen and henchmen of Satan, who then and only then will reign over the world. Finally while those who survive these events are still alive, they will proclaim once more God and the glory of God, and they will serve him as men used to do when the world had not yet become so perverse.”

Fr Nicholas Gruner, an expert on Fatima, thinks that this version of the Secret may be incomplete, lacking mention of the Apocalypse and of recommended action. One may also object that the second half of the 20th century has come and gone with no World War. But have not madmen been stirring up war in the Middle East, continuously, from well before 2000 down to today? And it is worthy of note that every phrase in this version of the Secret does occur in the Neues Europaversion (accessible on the Internet), amidst material drawn or imitated from other pious sources.

In any case, may God truly have mercy upon us all, and let us pray the Rosary without ceasing.

Kyrie eleison.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories on November 5, 2011

Following on the recent “Eleison Comments” on deicide (EC 222), some readers may hope that “Eleison Comments” will often mention the part played by Jews in world affairs, but they risk being disappointed. In 225 issues that have appeared so far, I doubt whether the Jews have been mentioned by name in much more than half a dozen. For, whatever problem they may or may not represent, they are certainly not the primary problem. The primary problem is the godlessness of modern man, which I hope most readers find is the central concern of “Eleison Comments.”

Conspiracy theories, like that of the Jews conspiring to dominate the world, are plentiful, but there are two exaggerations between which it is wise but not easy to hold the right balance. Most people follow the media in holding that all conspiracy theories are nonsense and the only people who believe in them are “conspiracy nuts.” On the other hand a small minority of people, but with strong convictions, hold that all world events are to be explained by some conspiracy or other, especially a Jewish conspiracy. The essential truth was best told by a famous Church writer 1800 years ago.

Tertullian (160–220) said that the Catholic Faith and Jewish power are like the two pans of a pair of scales: as Catholic Faith goes up, so Jewish power goes down, and as Catholic Faith goes down, so Jewish power goes up. But the Faith overtops the power. That is why the primary problem is not the Jews, but the increase or decrease of the Faith amongst men. That is why conspiracies do exist, they have an important part to play and they are not to be merely scorned, but the central problem is men turning away from the true God in his one true Church. In brief – and here is the crucial point – the Gentiles have only themselves to blame if Jewish power is today so great.

Therefore whoever begins to see what notably Disraeli and Woodrow Wilson hinted at but could hardly say openly, namely that there is a dark power behind the scenes directing world events, let them not lose their balance in cursing the Illuminati or the Jews or the Freemasons or whoever, but let them realize the wisdom of the words of Pius X: “Let every man do his duty, and all will be well.” That is because our first duty is towards God, as the First Commandment indicates, so that if we all did our duty and made our way back to God, it would be mere child’s play for him to undo that present power of his various enemies which he alone let them have in the first place by not intervening to prevent it.

Thus before Our Lady appeared at Fatima in 1917, the anti-Catholics had brought the government of Portugal completely under their control, but when virtually the entire Portuguese people prayed and did penance as Our Lady had asked, then she simply dissolved the anti-Catholics’ power in a bloodless revolution. Portugal became, in the godless 20th century with Communism triumphing everywhere, the showcase of a Catholic State.

The most intelligent of God’s enemies are well aware that they are serving him as a scourge to be laid across the backs of his unfaithful people. If only God’s friends would understand how they are being scourged by his enemies to help all souls to turn to him and so get to Heaven, then conspiracy theories would all drop into place: neither more, nor less, important than they really are.

Kyrie eleison.