Tracing Traditionalism to its Masonic origins

by T. Stanfill Benns | Sep 28, 2013

 2022 UPDATE! New information on Lefebvre and early CMRI

© Copyright 2013; revised  2022 T. Stanfill Benns (This text may be downloaded or printed out for private reading, but it may not be uploaded to another Internet site or published, electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author. All emphasis within quotes is the author’s unless indicated otherwise.)

Introduction

Some readers have objected to the “demonization” of Fr. Gommar De Pauw, (see first article under Canon Law at /vatican-2-theology-the-basis-for-traditionalists-stance/) who is hailed as the initial founder of Traditionalism in the U.S. They insist this man was entirely orthodox in his beliefs with no ties to the Novus Ordo church other than those that can be explained by the rampant confusion then existing. But while DePauw may have been the first “Traditionalist” in this country, he was a far cry from being truly Catholic, and none of the Traditionalist organizations that followed in his train were any better. In fact they all were far more sinister in their origins than is actually known, and it is high time Traditionalists faced up to this salient fact.

In 1964 De Pauw separated himself from the Novus Ordo to begin the Catholic Traditionalist Movement (CTM). He operated under the displaced Chinese bishop Blaise S. Kurz, a Franciscan. But unfortunately Kurz wrote on De Pauw’s behalf: “The aim of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement is simply the FULL implementation of ALL decisions of the recent Ecumenical Council, including the one providing the people with a choice between the old Latin liturgy and the new vernacularized one,” (“Declaration,” para. 7, http://www.latinmass-ctm.org/about/ourleader/1966.htm). Bishop Kurz ordained one priest, Gunther Storck, who later joined the Thucites. Des Lauriers “consecrated” Storck bishop April 30, 1984, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Storck).

At any rate it appears that in one way or another, all the founders of the early Traditionalist sects imbibed the pernicious spirit of change in the Church to varying degrees. This accounts for the adoption of their present views on Canon Law in general and jurisdiction, epikeia and other points of law in particular. In fact the non-Catholic philosophy they subscribed to existed before the false Vatican 2 council was ever convened; the council simply gave them the convenient “cover” needed to carry these false liberal and ecumenical ideas of Canon Law and Church teaching into the Traditionalist movement and communicate them to the faithful. But far from being born at the false Vatican Council, these ideas came from the lips of the Church’s avowed enemy, Freemasonry, which although it was funded by Zionism was well frequented by those calling themselves Catholic, including members of the hierarchy.

Early in the Traditionalist game (1975), Catholic writer William Strojie commented on De Pauw’s beliefs and affiliations and found them wanting. Strojie and Mary Lejeune, who wrote Sword of Truth were apparently the first among writers at the time to link DePauw’s Catholic Traditionalist Movement (CTM) to the Old Catholics and Gnostics. They also identified Fr. Francis Fenton’s John Birch Society-affiliated Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement (ORCM) as not only linked to the Old Catholics, but also to the Americanists, (the initials for the Old Roman Catholic Church are ORCC and Fenton’s group functioned in the U.S. much as that church functions both in Britain and here). Wikipedia rightly reports that Fenton founded the ORCM on the suggestion of and with the support of Joaquin Saenz Arriaga, a Mexican theologian. Arriaga Frankly admits in a dedication for his work The New Montinian Church that he is a member of the Order of St. John Jerusalem. This will become better understood below.

Whether the intentions of all those involved were to actively infiltrate and destroy the Church or whether they were simply used or misled is not the point here. These priests were bound to know better and to do better; the  results for the faithful were disastrous. They adopted Masonic philosophy and NO theology as truly Catholic under the guise of traditional or “orthodox” Catholicism. What Strojie says in his July 1975 newsletter below sheds additional light on Fenton and De Pauw’s orientation and makes it clear that at least in some way, the St. Pius X Society (SSPX), the CTM and the ORCM were actually agents acting for those infiltrating the Church.

Strojie on the OSJ, Old Catholics and the JBS

“About ten years ago I had thought of joining the John Birch Society (JBS), but luckily got hold of Welch’s Blue Book and changed my mind. It was obvious from the book that Welch was an agnostic with scant respect for what he calls ‘Christianity.’ That he was then a religious illiterate who held the masonic idea l of religious indifferentism is evident from the following statement in the Blue Book: ‘But I believe,” writes Welch, “there is a broader and more encompassing faith to which we can all subscribe, without any of us doing the slightest violation to the more specific doctrines of his own creed or altars of his own devotion. And I believe it is an enabling conception, equally acceptable to the most fundamentalist Christian or the most rationalistic idealist, because its whole purpose is to strengthen and synthesize the enabling characteristics of each man and the enabling impulses of his own personal religion. It is a conception which the Baptist John Birch, the Catholic Hilaire Belloc, and the agnostic Jefferson would alike have welcomed.’

This kindly spirit of tolerance can be found also in the Rosicrucian credo, as explained at http://www.rosicrucian.com/frc/frceng01.htm:

“Our opposition is not fanatical, or blind to the merits of the Catholic Religion, however. The Catholic is our brother as well as the Mason; we would not say a disparaging, irreverent word against this faith, or those who live by it, and should we seem to do so, in any passage, the wrong will be due to inadvertence. The reader is requested to note that we distinguish sharply between the Catholic Hierarchy and the Catholic Religion, but the former are also our brothers; we would not throw stones either physically or morally, for we know our own shortcomings too well to attack others. Thus our opposition is not personal, but spiritual, and to be fought with the weapon of the Spirit–Reason. We firmly believe it to be for the everlasting good of mankind that the Masons should win…”

Strojie continues concerning the JBS: “Any Catholic who will swallow that has an awful lot to learn about his religion. Anyone who has read the denunciations of Freemasonry, sworn enemy of the Catholic Church, by the Popes, will recognize that passage of Welch’s as pure Masonic doctrine.”

And as Pope Leo XII wrote: “What is definitely ascertained is that those different sects, despite the diversity of their names, are all united and linked by the similarity of their infamous plans,” (Quo Graviora). Below Strojie provides some facts on the Old Catholics and their offshoots:

“’On the Feast of the Holy Rosary, October 7, 1952, Mar Justinos (styling himself…Archbishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church of Germany), issued a ‘Bull’ in which he accepted into full communion the said  Diocese-Vicariate of  Niagara Falls, New York, as being the only true and legitimate Old Roman Catholic Church in the U.S.A. and Canada…’ This from Peter Anson’s Bishops At Large. Ac­cording to Anson, Mar Justinos says further: ‘We have condemned the spurious sect known as the North American Roman Catholic Church, and the persons named Rogers, Smith, Marchenna, Davis, Kleinschmidt, and G. Shelley.’

“I’ve read Anson’s thoroughly documented account of the various splits and successions among the ‘Bishops at Large’ of the Old Roman Catholic Church. I wouldn’t have any idea at all who among them might with some reason claim to have valid orders. No matter. What I’m interested in at the moment is that, “Ar­chbishop Shelley, still holding the office of Primate,” as Anson wrote, ‘had also acquired the rank of Grand Prior of a branch of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which had founded a Priory at Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, as long ago as 1906.’

“About six years ago I received a packet of literature from Shickshinny and was struck by their attack on the Jesuits, who, as we all know, were anathema to the Jansenists at Port Royal and elsewhere. Much later in time — only a few years ago -­- Father Wathen had the following to say in defense of Pichel, boss of the Shickshinny Knights: ‘Mr. Pichel maintains that the religious body known as the Old Roman Catholic Church was never legally nor justly excommunicated from the Church. He insists that the condemnation of the Jansenists in 1703 by Pope Clement XI was a terrible mistake. He says there is no such thing as Jansenism.’ Fr. Wathen spoke approvingly about Pichel. He did not dispute Pichel’s opinion on Jansenism.

“Need I say more about the “Knights” and Father Wathen. Or about their absurd claim to possess a “Privilege of Parallel Authority”, an independent Jurisdiction from a pope or popes way back. There are Catholics who can swallow this stuff. Having been thrown to the wolves by their bishops they turn in desperation to people like Schuckardt, Pichel, and others who offer them candles and incense, and jurisdiction. Recall my quoting Old Catholic Church Bishop Leadbeater: “Among those (who will be living at the time) there are sure to be some who love His older Church and its ritual, and the Old Catholic Church might well offer a convenient resting place for them.” The provision of chapels is the specialty of the Knights. And they have an Ecclesiastical Tribunal which is ‘coordinated into denominational Sections, such as the Roman Catholic Section, the Eastern Orthodox Section, the Old Roman Catholic Section, Lutheran Section, etc.’ This from Shickshinny, the “Maltese Cross Press”, which gives also this information:

‘The Tribunal or Committee confers by means of correspondence, sectional meetings, round table discussions, and may sit as a court in preliminary and/or final judgement upon all religious questions including the discipline, doctrine, morals, faith, rituals, liturgy, dogma, jurisdictions, etc., relating to each religious denomination, individually and/or collectively, when being discussed or considered for or applied to a projected Christian unity.’

“Well, a Catholic has got to have lost most of his marbles if he will go to within a city block of this Operation. But, as I have said, many are desperate for religious consolations; many more are of a Jansenistic cast of mind, including some who reject these desperate measures. So much for the Knights and the Old Roman Catholic Church.

“The CTM: I suppose it is mean of me to recall here that Fr. De Pauw, Doctor of Theology and Canon Law, fell into the Shickshinny trap some years ago. Anyway I might as well put in here my few lines on the ‘Catholic Traditionalist Movement, Inc.’. I have their Spring, 1975 publication in which Fr. DePauw speaks for 42 pages, strongly as usual, about the Novus Ordo being Bad, Bad, and Paul VI as not being good, then on page 43 he says this: “But what would we of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement do if tomorrow Pope Paul — or his successor would in­fallibly ‘Ex Cathedra’ rule in favor of the Validity of the ‘New Order of the Mass’ -­- even in its ‘as is’ vernacular version?” Answer: “Traditionalist Catholics would then do what Real Catholics always did when faced with an infallible ‘ex Cathedra’ definition or declaration: unreservedly and unqualifiedly accept It.“

“Rather disappointing this, coming from a theology and canon law professor. It contradicts the sense of his quotations of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci in his Spring issue, to wit, that (page 21) ‘The New Mass (is) Infidelity to that deposit of Doctrine to which the Catholic is bound forever.’ And on page 12, ‘Popes never contradict each other…in Essential Matters.’ Doesn’t Fr. DePauw know what essential matters are ? And (page 11) ‘Quo  Primum of St. Pius V….NOT REVOKED”. Page 22, ‘The New Mass …’A Denial of all Catholic claims to be the True Church’…Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci.”

“Back to page 43: ‘There remains, of course, always the possibility — and how we continue praying to see that happen during Paul VI’s reign — that the Supreme Shepherd, realistically appraising what the ‘liturgical renewal’ did to his flock, calls an end to the ‘New Mass’ experiment, and firmly orders his priests to return at once to the exclusive use of the so-called Tridentine Mass of St. Pius V…What a sigh of relief such a decision would bring to Catholic homes, rectories — Yes!­ bishop’s residences all over the world! And how such a decision could then turn Paul V I overnight from one of the most unpopular popes in history to one still capable of earning a respectable niche in the gallery of Roman Pontiffs.’

“Just like that, overnight. This is dream stuff. There isn’t the slightest sign of any yearning in rectories and among the bishops and the generality of Catholic laity for the true Mass. Most priests today don’t believe as Catholics about the Mass. They have become just what their actions signify, Protestant ministers. And is this one Command, contradictory to all he has said and done, all it would take to earn Paul V I  ‘a respectable niche among the Popes’? A whole generation of young people has been lost to the Church during Paul’s time — certainly not a ‘reign’ as Fr. De Pauw calls it. These are facts and it has been my main concern to show in this paper that most ‘traditionalists’ have been, wittingly or not, setting up smokescreens around the truth of what is being done to us and the Faith by this crooked man in the papal chair.

“With these few paragraphs on “CTM” I end my remarks on the main traditionalist confusers in the United States.”

As is evident from what is written here and based on personal experience, Traditionalists were involved in a number of shadowy organizations both patriotic and religious, including the John Birch Society, Posse Commitatus,  British Israel offshoots of various sorts, Orthodox religious sects, the Leonard Feeney/St. Benedict’s Center, including the patriot-oriented Shickshinny Knights of Jerusalem, Society of St. John, said to be a conservative (?) branch of the Sovereign Knights of Malta proper and fanatically anti-Communist. This last group obsessed over the Kennedy assassination and, of all things, the origin and existence of UFOs. The Society of St. John was founded in Shickshinny, Penn.  by the occultist and Fascist Louis Pichel the same year a fellow Fascist in France, Pierre Plantard, founded the Prieure de Sion. Coincidence?!  I think not…

Gallicanism, Jansenism and the Old Catholics

Several comments are in order here. First of all, it has been demonstrated elsewhere on this site that far from accepting the validity of Old Catholic orders the Church has routinely required that these heretics be retrained and ordained, at least conditionally, if she agrees to this at all. They must agree to be received back into the Church only as laymen, in nearly every case, as demonstrated here: (/articles/a-catholics-course-of-study/traditionalist-heresies-and-errors/true-status-of-schismatic-priests-and-bishops-ignored/status-of-those-ordainedconsecrated-by-schismatics/). And only the Church Herself may decide what rare exceptions may be made to this rule. Such exceptions, however, are made only if the one ordained was so ordained by a truly Catholic bishop with valid orders who belonged to or joined an heretical or schismatic sect; otherwise there is no conditional ordination, only admission to seminary training if this is deemed prudent by the hierarchy. Someone ordained by one whose own orders were received from some schismatic bishop twice removed, having been ordained and consecrated by men who received orders from actual Old Catholics passing on “orders” among themselves, without any initial connection to the Church, are considered doubtfully valid on the face of it, (see article above).

Concerning Wathen’s acceptance of the fact that Jansenism was never truly a heresy, this is a denial of the disciplinary authority of the Roman Pontiff, infallibly declared as possessed by him among his powers of supremacy and jurisdiction at the Vatican Council and by other popes, (DZ 1504, 1827, 2091). Those involved with the OSJ then are heretics also in this regard. The fact that the Jansenists were denounced by the Jesuits explains their antipathy towards that order, and the (Jansenist-based) Old Catholic influence found among certain Traditionalists explains why some of them today condemn the Jesuits out of hand.

The “parallel authority” privilege of the OSJ which Strojie cites is nothing less than pure Gallicanism. Here we see reference to the “ancient liberties” claimed by the French clergy and the Divine right they ascribed to the French (and English) monarchs. In other words, the Gallicanists believed that the faithful and clergy together have a power equal to and even exceeding that of the Roman Pontiff and therefore can convene in council and judge matters of faith and morals, even depose the pope. But it is only a man capable of being elected according to the laws of the Catholic Church and actually canonically elected who receives by Divine right the privilege of infallibility from God Himself (Canons 109, 219; also DZ 570d); no other human can claim this right.

We also see in DePauw’s naive assumption that Paul 6 could simply “snap out of it” and thereby become a true pope an echo of the material papacy theory, also emanating from Gallicanism. For it was the Gallicanists who believed that it wasn’t the pope himself who was infallible, but as A. Degert writes under Gallicanism in the Catholic Encyclopedia: “Only the line of Popes, the Apostolic See, was infallible; but each pope, taken individually,  was liable to error.” So for those embracing the material/formal papacy craziness, a “pope” can err even in matters of doctrine but when he recants, then presto chango, he is in like Flynn and is magically transformed into a true pope. But this is not what is decreed by Pope Paul IV in his bull, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio. It is also interesting that Degert states concerning the Gallicans: “Most of the partisans regarded Gallicanism…as a revival of the most ancient traditions of Christianity, a persistence of the common law,” which they claimed was based on ancient canons, previous ecumenical councils and the decretals. (Degert, however, traces these claims only to the false decretals.) He comments towards the end of his article: “Stricken to death, as a free opinion, by the Council of the Vatican, Gallicanism could survive only as a heresy. The Old Catholics have endeavoured to keep it alive under this form.”

Thus has Degert explained to us the origin of the “Traditions” for which these heretics have named themselves; also their disdain and dismissal of the 1917 Code Canon Law, which abrogated many of their ancient canons. In reality, Gallicanism was the beginning of state religion, something Degert also notes. “Thanks to these “Liberties”, the jurisdiction and the discipline of the Church were almost entirely in the hands of the civil power, and Fénelon gave a fair idea of them when he wrote in one of his letters: ‘In practice the king is more our head than the pope, in France — Liberties against the pope, servitude in relation to the king — The king’s authority over the Church devolves upon the lay judges — The laity dominate the bishops.‘” And so this philosophy eventually prevailed everywhere, even with the rise of democracy and its so-called separation of Church and State. The Church sank beneath the power of the civil governments and eventually the power of mob rule predominated. Historically it is interesting to note that the Gallicanist heresy arose not long after the disbanding of the Templars and the handing over of their holdings to the Hospitallers, later known as the Knights of Malta.

OSJ and Knights of Malta, Priory of Sion

The Dr. Shelley and Mr. Pichel mentioned above by Strojie also are mentioned on Anthony Cekada’s website as follows:

“In the mid-1960’s, the head of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement (CTM) in Westbury, New York, Father Gommar De Pauw, became involved with the OSJ. In a telegram to Mr. Pichel dated June 23, 1968, Father De Pauw… said that: ‘I have today informed His Holiness Pope Paul VI that, in virtue of the perpetual privileges granted by his predecessors to the Sovereign Order, we have today offered the first public traditional Latin Mass in the Ave Maria Chapel of the Greater New York Priory located in the Catholic Traditionalist Center in Westbury… The red and white flag of our Order once again waves in American skies.’ (http://www.orderstjohn.org/selfstyle/osjgml.htm)

“Father De Pauw signed himself as ‘Knight-Commander of Justice, Prior, Chaplain.’ OSJ literature published in 1968 noted that Father De Pauw was “Coordinator and Dean of the Roman Catholic Section” of the OSJ’s ‘Ecclesiastical Tribunal’ and that the Westbury Chapel was the ‘Roman Catholic Church of the Order for the Official Investiture of Knights in the Greater New York Priory.’ (The Coordinator of the ‘Old Roman Catholic Section of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal’ was listed as ‘The Rev. Dr. Gerard G. Shelley.’) Other OSJ literature published that same year notes that: ‘From the very beginning, all the speeches and writings of the Rev. Dr. Gommar A. De Pauw established his eagerness and true feeling of the spirit of sane Ecumenism as opposed to insane ecumania in the following words: ‘The time is overdue when Traditionalist Roman Catholics and conservative Protestants join hands and forces to save whatever is left of Christianity.’ Father De Pauw later left the OSJ, and continued to celebrate the traditional Mass for the CTM” (end of Cekada quote.) In his The Smoke of Satan, Michael W. Cuneo wrote in 1997: “For a brief period in 1967, (Fr. Gommar)  De Pauw entered into an alliance with a controversial organization called the…OSJ…”

So coming from several sources as it does, it seems De Pauw was publicly known to have been involved with the OSJ. And according to a link forwarded by a friend, DePauw had to have been aware of the OSJ through Bp. Kurz, so it cannot be said that he was tricked into affiliating with them. The OSJ itself claims, on its official stationery no less, that: “During the Second Vatican Council, our members attending the council as Cardinals, Bishops, with their “periti” priests realized there was going to be a great deal of confusion and disturbance afterwards. So under the brilliant and cogent leadership of our Grand Prelate Bishop Blaise S. Kurz and with the support of Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, WE started the Catholic Traditionalist Movement.” NOW THE TRUTH IS OUT! Freemasons conspired to “round up” the remnant and deceive them. And they founded the various Traditionalist groups to attract as many as possible. “Later, our prelate Norman Thomas Cardinal Gilroy, Archbishop of Sidney, Australia, strongly helped us behind the scene.” If this is true, and we know that Kurz and De Pauw began the CTM, it was founded by those affiliated with an interdenominational group of “knights”! It was never Catholic and never could be Catholic. Spellman already was the “grand protector” of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta (SMOM), “the most elite of Catholic lay orders,” (Penny Lernoux; People of God.). Lernoux also lists the other players who promoted SMOM, and details their shadowy activities.

Under Giovanni Baptiste Montini’s direction during the war years, SMOM worked hand in hand with the OSS/CIA and later the remnants of the Nazi SS to relocate Nazi war criminals and supposedly fight Communism. Cardinal Siri assisted them in this effort. Lernoux says Spellman and Montini both were deeply involved in SMOM and intelligence affairs, and this can be verified from other sources as well. Later several SMOM members would be identified as members of the P-2 Masonic lodge and also were players in the Sindona banking scandal. A disproportionate number of CIA/FBI and other government officials in Washington were and are members of SMOM. It is no surprise that Spellman, being closely associated with a “Catholic” lay organization turned Masonic, would also have ties to the ecumenical OSJ, which undoubtedly was Masonic as well. “Pope Pius XII ordered an investigation of this nominally Catholic organization in the 1950s. The Papal Commission charged, among other things, that the Order should not have the sovereignty of a state, and ordered modifications of the SMOM “to bring them into conformity with decisions of the Holy See.” However, Pius XII died before the Order could be fully reined in,” (http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3205_italy_black_prince.html).

And from “John XXIII and Masonry – The Pope of the Council,” (Sodalitium, Oct.- Nov. 1996):

“On November 14, 1951, Ludovico Chigi Albani della Rovere, Grand Master of the Order of Malta died in Rome. Normally, the Knights would have then convened to elect a successor; but they did not do so. They were unable to do so: Pius XII formally forbade them to do so. The Pope appointed a commission of Cardinals [Papal Commission] charged to reform (or suppress) the Order of Malta, and for the rest of the days of Papa Pacelli, the Knights would not have a Grand Master. All of that changed on June 24, 1961. On that date, the feast of Saint John the Baptist, patron of the Order (and of Masonry), John XXIII received the Knights at the Vatican, and to their great satisfaction, publicly issued the Brief by which the Commission of Cardinals instituted by Pius XII was suppressed,” (http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/post/pope_mason.html).

From this same site we now learn how SMOM interfaced with the OSJ: “But why had Pius XII, for so many years, left the Order without a Master, put it under the direction of a sole Lieutenant General, and under the surveillance of a Commission of Cardinals? The fact is that there were several problems. The Knights had preserved little to nothing of their original character of a religious order, and there were few members who professed their vows. Already in 1799, in the aftermath of the Revolution, a schismatic, the Czar of Russia, had been elected Grand Master (1799-1800). And also, a separate branch was founded in the last century, St. John’s Order, which was linked to the (very masonic) British monarchy. [This is the OSJ/British Israel branch founded by Shelley – T. Benns] A certain number of Anglican Knights were received by the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John. The ante litteram ecumenism of the Order was extolled by Brother Marsaudon himself.

But most unsettling was the infiltration of Masonry into the Order of Malta. This infiltration was confirmed by documents and admitted by the Masons themselves, for example, Marsaudon and Mola. This is why Cardinal Nicola Canali intervened. Cardinal Canali, who had contributed to Pius X’s anti-modernist battle, was alarmed by the masonic infiltration that we have already mentioned. So while Fr. Wathen tried desperately to make a case for any lack of Masonic affiliation of the Shickshinny Knights in his 1973 booklet Is the Order of St. John Masonic? none of what he said is relevant in light of all this. If even the functions of SMOM were suspended and in review prior to Pope Pius XII’s death, why would anyone think for one moment that a group a) established outside of regular channels, b) whose claims were never historically documented and c) with no official recognition by the Vatican, could ever be Catholic, when, as seen above, it was definitely tied to Freemasonry?!

“This is treated in the “Editorial Note” of Marsaudon’s book, L’Oecumenisme vu par un franc-macon de Tradition, written by Editor Vitiano: “Attacked under the Pontificate of Pius XII, by the integrist Roman clan, he [Marsaudon] resigned his office of Plenipotentiary of the Order, but was immediately promoted to the high office of Minister Emeritus, the only Knight of Malta to currently have that distinction. The Grand Magistrate of Malta, in his struggle against Cardinal Canali, never abandoned Baron de Marsaudon who, from his side, was constrained to continue to give his services to the diplomatic and hospitalier plans.” In fact, Marsaudon, a Freemason, was discovered to be in the Order, and that was the reason he was forced to resign.” Marsaudon – who was none other than Roncalli’s dear French comrade.

“Also, Franco Belligrandi’s disputed account of the episode does not seem at all unfounded, and did much to clarify at least some of the affair:

‘In this French period, an incident took place, ignored for the most part, which for a moment lifted the veil covering Roncalli’s presumed membership in the Masonic sect. A letter from Cardinal Canali, hard as a rock, was sent ( 9 ) to His High Eminence, Prince Chigi Albani della Rovere (10). Pius XII….had just learned….that the minister of the Order of Malta in Paris was a mason…He discovered that [Marsaudon] had been given “the Grand Magisterial Cross” on the recommendation of his predecessor [dePierredon] and, above all, as is known, on the recommendation of the Nuncio in Paris, Roncalli. The result of this first inquest was immediately referred to the Vatican, to Cardinal Canali who exclaimed: “Poor Roncalli. I am upset at having to embarrass him and I hope that it won’t cost him the Cardinal’s hat…” With the greatest circumspection, the Vatican decided to put the Order in Paris out to pasture, and sent a person to Paris who would attend to this highly delicate affair. In effect, three persons implicated in this period are of central interest: the Nuncio, because of his collaboration with the Order of Malta over some delicate affairs in Argentina; the Comte de Pierredon for the many years of his service, first in Bucharest and then in Paris; and Baron Marasaudon himself, for meritorious work in obtaining the official recognition of the Order by the French government.’” (End of Anglefire site quote.)

I have Belligrandi’s work in my e-book library. Also on this website there are several articles explaining why, from a canonical standpoint, Roncalli was a heretic and therefore could never be pope. This is the final nail in that coffin. Can anyone imagine the horror Pope Pius XII would have expressed had he foreseen Roncalli’s “election”? And can anyone now possibly doubt that Roncalli was invalidly elected?!

It should also be pointed out that SMOM, the OSJ, the early CMRI under Shuckardt (ordained by an Old Roman Catholic bishop claiming to have converted to Traditionalism; he later recanted and returned to his previous Old Catholic sect) and  especially the SSPX all referred to their chapel headquarters as priories. Being the international organizations they were and claimed to be, it is all too coincidental that another organization was also called a priory. Here we refer to the Priory of Sion, a “Catholic” version of British Israelism grounded in Gnosticism. This is the high-level Masonic organization which claims as its members Lefebvre and other Traditionalists and Novus Ordo believers, including John 23, said to be its head during his “pontificate.” This no doubt is and was the oversight group for “Catholic Freemasonry,” confirmed by Catholic and Protestant historians documenting the progress of Freemasonry to be a variety of Rosicrucianism. Despite any rumors to the contrary that the Priory of Sion was a hoax that never existed, this was only a smokescreen to prevent the faithful from piecing together the bigger picture, a tactic often used to escape detection. But too many other Masonic facts independently documented by these historians dovetail with each other and support this claim, giving it the lie.

Had these men been honest and truly Catholic, they would have cleared up any confusion on this matter by referring us to the following 1950 instruction from the Holy Office, quoted by Vicomte Leon de Poncins in his Freemasonry and the Vatican:

“Among the things which are springing up again with renewed vigor and not only in Italy is Freemasonry with its ever-recurring hostility to religion and to the Church. What appears to be a new feature in this Masonic renaissance is the rumors circulating in various social classes that a particular rite of Masonry might no longer be in opposition to the Church whereby even Catholics can enroll at their ease in the sect without fear of excommunication and reproach. Those responsible for propagating these rumors must surely know that nothing has been modified in the Church’s legislation relative to Freemasonry and if they continue this campaign it can only be in order to profit from the naivete of simple folk. The bishops know that Canon 684 and especially Canon 2335 which excommunicates those who have given their names to Masonry without any distinction between rights or as full in force today as they always have been; all Catholics ought to know this and remember it so as not to fall into this snare and also so as to know how to pass do judgment on the fact that certain simpletons believe they can call themselves both Catholics and Freemasons with impunity. This, I repeat, applies to all Masonic rites, EVEN IF SOME OF THEM IN VARYING CIRCUMSTANCES DECLARED THAT THEY ARE NOT HOSTILE TO THE CHURCH” (Most Reverend Mario Cordovani, Master of the Sacred Palace; printed in Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1950).

This more than proves that the resurgence of so-called “Catholic Freemasonry” was already in the works, even before 1950.

DePauw’s attempt to establish a Lefebvre-like organization

Those still wishing to champion De Pauw also should read the entire text of his letter to Paul 6 at http://www.latinmass-ctm.org/pub/archive.htm This letter clearly demonstrates De Pauw’s adherence to the Masonic Vatican 2 usurpers long after there was sufficient evidence to prove these men were false popes. Here are some pertinent quotes from the letter:

“In 1965 we respectfully petitioned Your Holiness to ensure that our American bishops correctly implement the newly promulgated Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, and to permit the retention of at least one Latin traditional Mass a day for the millions of Catholics of the “Latin” Rite who continued to find much deeper spiritual satisfaction in the traditional Mass than in any of the novelties now made available in their churches…

“We of the C.T.M. still refuse to join the increasing number of Catholics all over the world who accuse you of being part of the team out to destroy the Church. we once knew, and of being less interested in remaining the Supreme Pontiff of Christ’s one true Church than in becoming the Chief-Chaplain of a new one-world religion in the service of a one-world government…” DePauw asks Paul 6 to:

“Establish a new “Vernacularist Rite” for those interested in it, and publicly revitalize our now dormant centuries-old Latin Rite by eliminating from it the prelates and priests who planned its destruction… This rejuvenated Latin Rite will, of course, incorporate the doctrines of the traditional “Profession of Faith” as well as its concomitant Anti-Modernistic oath, and will live by the laws and liturgy that existed on October 9, 1958, the day the saintly Pope Pius XII went to his eternal reward…We respectfully request that Your Holiness appoint the Moderator of the C.T.M., the Most Reverend Bishop Blaise Kurz, the principal Ordinary of the Traditional Latin Rite in the U.S.A., and empower him to proceed with the immediate consecration of new bishops selected from the list of one hundred and fifty-six American priests who have joined me in this last all-out effort to save our Church.”

Basically DePauw was requesting permission for Bp. Kurz to do what Lefebvre himself would later do, under a quasi-obedience to the Church in Rome. But Paul 6, perhaps, already had promised that role to another a Masonic brother of the “Catholic” variety — Lefebvre — and Kurz lost out. The effort to make the OSJ the premier Traditionalist group failed and was assigned to a higher ranking member of the international group. But for however short a time, DePauw communicated with Kurz and belonged to a Freemasonic organization, publicly affiliating with the Shickshinny (Masonic) Knights as their chaplain, excommunicating himself and also incurring infamy of law. He could not say Mass or administer the Sacraments because a true pope never dispensed him from his irregularity, making certain he was abjured and had performed penance. Under Pius XII’s Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, even any attempt to perform ecclesiastical acts by one who has disobeyed a papal law is null and void during an interregnum.

Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, an infallible decree, is the parent law of Can. 2314. This canon declares those who communicate with non-Catholics legally infamous, a vindicative penalty that can be pardoned only by a true pope, so there is no question here that they thumbed their nose at this papal law. It should now be clearer to those just recently seeing the light about Traditionalism that Traditional priests did not recognize Pius XII as binding them, did not want others to learn of these interregnum restrictions and certainly had no intention of abiding by any such restrictions themselves. And this was another good reason to recognize Paul 6 as valid – regardless of their praise for Pius XII, Paul 6 could interpret or gainsay anything his predecessor said or did.

Those studying Freemasonry know that the enemy sets up both the “right” and the “left,” not only politically but from a religious standpoint, Traditionalism purportedly being to the right. No better example of this can be found than the OSJ’s claim to have “set up” Traditionalism under Spellman and Kurz, with the help of DePauw. Once shed of Kurz and following his resignation as chaplain, DePauw may well have regretted his affiliation with the OSJ. But there is no evidence to support this belief. To the best of this author’s knowledge, he never denounced the Vatican 2 usurpers and never gave proofs of any kind he possessed the jurisdiction necessary to operate his chapel, celebrate Mass and administer the Sacraments. He apparently was aware that he needed such jurisdiction, asking Paul 6 to place him under Kurz’ “jurisdiction”; after all he was a doctor of Canon Law. But he carried on independently without it, and that is the true acid test here. Only someone acting from ill will would proceed as he did, knowing what he knew.

As a seminary professor and professor of Canon Law, DePauw should have known better. That he didn’t is both frightening and disconcerting, but it tells us that men were being prepared long before Vatican 2 to train up priestly candidates with false ideas about the faith.  As Strojie says above, thanks to men like DePauw an entire generation — today make that generations — of would-be Catholics have been lost to the faith. It is not a matter of judging such men — we leave that solely to God. But it is a matter of admitting to ourselves, regardless of how difficult that may be, that evil existed in the Church and in men we thought were good priests. These men had to appear believable to remnant Catholics in order to function for their masters as a means to draw that remnant away from the true faith. We must simply judge what we know to be true concerning such men, and recommend their souls to God. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that this was a well-orchestrated maneuver that was very successful in way-laying, then neutralizing those who saw the errors of the false Vatican 2 council and its pretend popes. Catholic writer Hugo Maria Kellner explains this well in his Letter 72, July 1977, where he declares Lefebvre’s ordinations/consecrations invalid because of his own ordination/consecration by a recognized Freemason, Achille Lienart.

Let it just be noted here that this argument concerning Lienart’s Masonic ties (and Kellner does make a convincing case that he was a Mason) is really irrelevant in light of the infallible statement made in the opening paragraphs of Pope Pius XII’s Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis. For regardless of whether Lefebvre himself was validly and licitly ordained and consecrated or not, he incurred infamy of law by accepting Vatican 2 teachings, signing Vatican 2 documents and accepting the Vatican 2 antipopes. The same can be said of Peter Ngo dinh Thuc. They thereby cooperated with a non-Catholic sect publicly and incurred infamy of law, which can be dispensed from only by the pope. As such, according to Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, they either ignored the censure or were “dispensed” by others, which is not a possibility. This is a usurpation of papal authority during an interregnum, condemned in Pius XII’s constitution, which nullifies and voids even ATTEMPTS of those violating papal law to engage in ecclesiastical acts, (see /articles/a-catholics-course-of-study/canon-law/infamy-of-law-bars-the-valid-exercise-of-orders-received/ ).

New bombshell information on Lefebvre

A chance discovery recently of information regarding Marcel Lefebvre and his Masonic affiliations further strengthens the many grave doubts regarding his ability to have ever created anything even remotely resembling valid clergy, as discussed in our previous blog on tonsure. This reveal seems to confirm once and for all what this author exposed and warned against over 30 years ago in Will the Catholic Church Survive the 20^th Century? I have asked people not to read this work, since I later denounced what I believed in 1989 to be the laity’s duty to elect a pope and the subsequent “election” of “Pope Michael.” Much of the information in the book is directly quoted from solid Catholic sources, but the conclusions arising from what is stated by these sources are erroneous. I deeply regret my involvement in this fiasco and have repented for it ever since. What many may not know is what motivated me to arrive at the conclusion a pope should be elected in the first place, and why I firmly believed then that it was the only way to stem the hemorrhage in the Church.

Already in 1989, I had been a practicing pray-at-home Catholic for four years. I had written articles since 1983 decrying the damage done to families by Traditional groups and had witnessed this firsthand. I also had written articles asking those clergy and laypeople serious about unifying the Church to gather together to forge solutions to this lack of unity. I promoted The Sources of Catholic Dogma by Henry Denzinger and Canon Law as the only sure guide to what we are to follow in these times should such a convocation ever take place, but no one seemed interested in this. I had only just begun my study of the faith, so I did not then possess key pieces of information that would have deterred me from promoting an election. And in this I was assisted by certain individuals who either withheld such information or did not wish me to properly understand matters of faith.

I saw that the clock was ticking and then believed the only solution to the disunity in the Church was to elect a true pope. Already several more conservative-minded bishops and cardinals had passed away during or since Vatican 2, and I knew they were the ones who must lead such a charge. We contacted and often sent books to nearly every remaining valid clergy member during the period the book was being written and after its publication, but no one stood up to salute, least of all Traditional “clergy.” Who was going to save the Church, since the pope was necessary to Her very existence? Who would help Her, and why was no one willing to at least discuss these issues? Well of course we KNOW why, now, but then, as a younger woman with a husband and family I did not have the time, knowledge or expertise to sort all these things out as well as I should have. All I knew was that the Church had to survive, and the faithful were Her last line of defense. I would not realize until much later that despite the picture painted by the interpreters and promoters of private prophecy, there would be no resurrection of the Church — at least not the sort anticipated by Traditionalists — without a miracle from Heaven. And that miracle to this day has not been forthcoming.

In writing the book, the following points were made, points that have been further researched, expanded upon and clarified over the past 30 years:

• The necessity of developing certitude especially in relation to the validity of the sacraments.
• The absolute firm acceptance of Bd. Pope Innocent’s XI’s teaching that no one may use a probable opinion to justify reception of the Sacraments.
• The absence of jurisdiction of any kind among Traditionalists and the necessity of jurisdiction for the validity of Penance and other Sacraments.
• The inapplicability of the principle of supplied jurisdiction, epikeia and necessity knows no law.
• The loss of all offices hence all jurisdiction by Lefebvre, Thuc, Mendez, Siri, and others for recognizing the false popes, signing Vatican 2 documents and celebrating the Mass of John 23 and the Novus Ordo mass.
• The inability of Traditionalists to function during an interregnum
• The cultistic aspects of Traditionalism
• The invalid election of John 23 and subsequent invalidity of all succeeding elections.
• The explanation and prediction of such an event in Pope Paul IV’s bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio proving that a pope cannot commit heresy in office but can only appear to do so as a result of heresy pre-election, invalidating the election.
• The identification of Paul 6 as Antichrist and the abomination of desolation.
• The Masonic affiliation of Achille Lienart, who ordained and consecrated Marcel Lefebvre.
• Circumstantial evidence connecting both Marcel Lefebvre and John 23 with the Priory of Sion, a “Catholic” secret society (Will the Catholic Church Survive…, pages 100-109 and 188-192).

The fact that all these issues were addressed so long ago and yet received so little response is quite telling. It might also explain why all these years, despite a concerted effort on my part to correct any errors in reasoning and thinking, Traditionalists continue to discredit what has been written here and refuse to even attempt to provide proofs from the Continual Magisterium to justify their existence. The effort to dismiss the 1990 book and especially Pope Paul IV’s bull as the true explanation for why Roncalli could never be pope was a calculated maneuver. Such a reaction to the book, executed from the top echelons of whoever is really running the Traditionalist trap, was required to quell any insistence by the faithful en masse that would have convinced remaining bishops they were duty-bound to restore the papacy and force them to elect a true pope. That was the duty of the faithful, as outlined by Francis Cardinal Zabarella at the time of the Western Schism:

“It is the people themselves who have to summon the neighboring bishops for special purposes if the properly instituted bishop neglects his duty of summoning his colleagues.” In a case such as ours, Zabarella says, “good clerics and loyal believers and followers of the Church” would need to resolve the situation, and God would have to intervene, since the Church, “cannot not be” (The Origins of the Great Western Schism, Walter Ullmann, 1948). Traditionalists and others who jeer at pray-at-home Catholics, accusing them of denying that the Church as Christ constituted it must last until the consummation, themselves deserve to be subjects of ridicule. For claiming that Christ’s Church could be represented solely by bishops without one of these bishops being the Roman Pontiff is a heresy. As Adrian Fortescue explains under Mass in the Catholic Encyclopedia, yes, as the Anglicans cried in the 1500s, it is the Mass that matters. However, he goes on to explain that union with Rome is the bond between Catholics and the Mass is only the “witness and safeguard” of that bond; one cannot exist without the other. Sacramental and liturgical validity, integrity and efficacy are guaranteed only by the Roman Pontiff, who has jurisdiction over them all as Christ’s designated vicar. The Mass and the papacy must go hand in hand — this is the truth that propelled the writing of that first book, and everything written on this site since 2003.

The Priory of Sion, a history

Above, I mention Marcel Lefebvre’s affiliation with the Priory of Sion. To lay the foundation for what is to be discussed below, please reread my previous blog, taken largely form my 1990 book: https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/was-angelo-roncalli-the-real-founder-of-the-traditional-movement/ It should be noted, however, as some readers have observed, that the reference to the Templars’ involvement in the Priory of Sion in this link should be disassociated from the good Templars and the relentless fight they waged against the infidels during the Crusades. If any members of the Templars survived their dissolution by the Avignon Pope Clement V in 1312 to constitute the Priory, as some Masonic and other historians claim, it was the renegade members of the Knights who prompted the investigation in the first place. It is thought by some that these men were infected with the Cathar and Johannine heresies and that they had manifested these heresies and their beliefs and practices in initiation ceremonies held for certain chapters of the order. This was not proven by the subsequent (politically skewed) investigation of the allegations against the Knights, but as every organization has at times bad members and infiltrators among them, it is not illogical to assume this also was the case with the Templars. If these heretical members survived and continued to serve the Priory, they certainly were members in name only and should not be associated with the Templars proper. The Church has not decided on the Templars’ innocence or guilt as a whole, and the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the subject relates it is still a matter of debate among historians.

The above link to the Priory information will provide the background for what a Traditionalist website uncovered in 2019. In evaluating this evidence, the Traditionalists presenting the new information on this website treat it as a relatively new discovery. But Traditionalist clergy in positions of power all over this country and even in Europe were sent this book gratis in 1990 and without my consent or permission, the book has been for sale on the Internet since 2007. So certainly the information was still available and Traditionalists had every opportunity to evaluate the evidence against Lefebvre, also my grave reservations about the Thuc consecrations. These reservations were later mirrored in Clarence Kelly’s 1997 book, The Sacred and the Profane, as explained in the blog piece at https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/a-traditionalist-bishop-sanctioned-the-homealone-position-25-years-ago/

The links from the Traditionalist website below appear to confirm that:

• Both Lefebvre and probably Thuc were members of the Priory of Sion, Sovereign Religious Order of Jerusalem, as reported on a Society of St. Pius X website (now removed from the web). Tradition in Action web authors note the SSPX site reporting Lefebvre’s Masonic affiliations stood unchallenged for 10 years. St. Pius X Society supporters claim the site was not theirs.
• Lefebvre is not only listed as a member, but a Grand Master of the secret society.
• John 23 was a former Grand Master of the Priory (as reported in Will the Catholic Church Survive…).
• The material regarding the Priory of Sion on the now deleted (SSPX) website reveals that it is “modernist, traditional and ecumenical” and pages from the deleted (SSPX) site are provided to confirm this.
• A former SSPX seminarian, known to this author, testifies that Lefebvre’s Masonic affiliation was known even as early as 1972!
• TIA states they are not able to untie the canonical knots that will successfully resolve the controversy surrounding Lefebvre’s Masonic affiliations. We suggest they follow the teachings of the Church: One can never use a doubtful opinion regarding the validity of the Sacraments!

(In reviewing these links, please also hit the “next” button at the bottom, left, of each page.) https://www.traditioninaction.org/polemics/F_11_Lefebvre01.htm; https://www.traditioninaction.org/polemics/F_11_Lefebvre02.htm; https://www.traditioninaction.org/polemics/F_11_Lefebvre03.htm; https://www.traditioninaction.org/polemics/F_11_Lefebvre04.htm

Perhaps the above information provided in these links would not be so disturbing if it did not dovetail so closely with the founding of other Traditionalist sects in the 1960s, 1970s by members of what appears to be the second title of the Priory of Sion — the Sovereign Religious Order of Jerusalem, aka the Shickshinny Knights of Pennsylvania, addressed above. What is becoming increasingly clear is why the information regarding Roncalli’s election has never been evaluated or taken seriously. Both Pope Pius XII’s election law Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, Canon Law itself — also binding decrees issued by Councils and the Roman Pontiffs as well as factual accounts from various secular sources — clearly point to the gravely doubtful nature of Roncalli’s actual election. Doubts concerning his Catholicity were examined at length in the 1990 book and have since been expanded upon on this site. His questionable orthodoxy was later only confirmed by his behavior as “pope” and his promotion of Giovanni Montini (Paul 6) to the cardinalate. And yet a considerable number of Traditionalists regard him as a valid pope, celebrate the John 23 Missal and refuse to even consider the Church’s own estimation of him as, at the very least, a doubtful candidate for the papacy.

Given that Roncalli was recorded as grand master of the Priory during his “papacy,” Lefebvre and others spinning this web of Masonic deceits could scarcely fail to honor him as such. For not only was he their pope, the false pope of Traditionalism, he was owed obedience as a Masonic master, not just a “pope.” And remember, the other Traditional movements were part of this deceit as well, whether they celebrated the Pope St. Pius V Mass or not. This was the realization of the long-cherished dream of Masonry, to place at the head of the Church one of its own and have him accepted as a true pope. This is why he was not and cannot be discredited as such by the Traditional “hierarchy.” For of course there was a much more serious reason for such allegiance: it prevented the faithful from rallying and questioning Roncalli’s validity and effectively distracted and sidelined any remaining hierarchy from organizing and discussing a papal election. This was also the motive behind the suppression and disregard of Pope Paul IV’s 1559 bull, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, reported by Argentinian Prof. Carlos Disandro.

The Traditionalists Disandro chastised in 1979 would proceed to ignore his plea to remain faithful to the laws and teachings of the Church in all things. The St. Pius X Society’s South American equivalent to the Angelus, the publication Jesus Christo, ran a scathing rebuttal of Disandro’s evaluation of Cum ex… following its appearance. This in response to Disandro’s mention in his Doctrinal Precisions of Econe delegate to Argentina, Rev. Faure, who apparently was the first to oppose Cum ex… on the grounds it had been abrogated by the 1917 Code. Another Society professor claimed Pope St. Pius X’s constitution on papal elections, Vacante Sede Apostolica, abrogated the Bull as reported by Britons’ Catholic Library in their commentary. In Part 4 of his work, Doctrinal Precisions, Disandro comments regarding his communications with the SSPX:

“In spite of these crystal clear correspondences, the campaign against the Bull of Paul IV is increasing. Fr. Faure, of the LeFebvrist obedience, delegated from Econe to Argentina, in our land as in Mexico, together with other clerics and supposed teachers, uphold the nullity of the consistorial Bull Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio, which has been derogated (according to them) by the Code of Canon Law of Benedict XV, since it is not incorporated into that code. Consequently, one cannot speak of the cessation of legitimacy, or of the vacancy of the pontificate in the cases of John XXII and Paul VI (of ill-fated memory), and therefore starting with this (super-heretic, not confronted by any canonical disposition, upon the abolition of the Bull), and starting with this pseudo-pope (John XXIII — legitimate, according to them, from the beginning and legitimately functioning until his death), also the anti-popes Luciani and Wojtyla would be valid and functioning.

But it is not thus. It is a question either of confusion or a crass ignorance (of Faure or of any other.) To clarify other aspects of this panorama, let us make clear in the first place two different levels: a) the theological doctrine common to the Church, which, has its systematic, irrefutable expression in the thesis of St. Robert Bellermine. This level is previous and independent of any document, in force or not, of the Church; b) a Roman document, with the character of a consistorial Bull, that of Paul IV, which in line with this UNDEROGABLE DOCTRINE sanctions, discriminates, deposes. Here we are occupied with this second canonical level, apropos to the arguments of our contradictors (Progressives, mitigated Traditionalists, or Traditionalists a secas) understanding, however, that the Bull IS DEBTOR OF THAT DOCTRINE (EXPLICITLY IN THE DOCUMENT), and that then it is not merely disciplinary, as has been demonstrated in the preceding chapters.” Here Disandro refers to the fact that Can. 188 no. 4, which is the tacit resignation of one’s office for lapsing from the Catholic faith, is mentioned soecifically in both St. Pius X’s papal election law and Pope Pius XII’s Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, the replacement for that law, which retained it in nearly every part with a few additions.

So the SSPX, from the very beginning, fought and undermined Cum ex… and did all in their power to suppress it, for reasons that should now seem clear to everyone. This they continue to do today. Sedevacantists sidestep it by invoking their ridiculous material/formal papacy hypothesis, which denies papal and canonical teaching on the nature of heresy. No matter the pope or the papal document, Traditionalists reign supreme with their triumphant waving of necessity, epikeia and their self-imposed “duty” to administer the “sacraments.” But tear away their false claims by proving their invalid tonsure, inability to exercise any orders validly even had they been validly received owing to infamy of law and Pope Pius XII’s election law and they are stripped bare. And despite their followers’ protestations to the contrary, they cannot even offer the excuse that they proceeded in good faith in way of covering themselves.

When will those wishing to lead truly Catholic lives tire of this cruel charade, or more pointedly, run from it in terror of becoming further enmeshed in it and contaminated by it? Only two conclusions can be drawn from the fact that after all these years and literally reams of solid proofs they fail to do so. First, as suggested by a reader not long ago, they themselves are part of the secret societies their infamous leaders have embroiled them in, and they are unable to get out without great difficulty. Secondly, they could be actual working members of these societies and enjoy the drama and secrecy that surrounds them. One sect in particular comes to mind that has long held the secrets of the “hidden pope” and their cryptic communications with him or his security detail. And this is now becoming even more pronounced when one considers that many of the Traditionalist persuasion are actively being urged to go underground with their “priests” to escape the coming persecutions, and there live the life of the early martyrs in the catacombs. Thirdly, there are those who are wrapped up in some kind of psychic coercion, so strong that they cannot escape its grasp. And only the grace of God can deliver any of these people from their long-entertained delusions.

Those continuing to remain in Traditionalist sects are playing with hellfire. They stubbornly continue to commit idolatry and are following men who not only are not commissioned by Christ as His ministers but may very well be members of these secret sects — sects that deny His very existence and work to rob Him of the remaining members of His Church. This is not a matter of simply seeing things differently — of holding conflicting “positions” — as stated in our previous blog. This is a matter of spiritual life and death. Satan is battling Christ for your soul, and only you can decide who will win that battle.

Hugo Maria Kellner on the betrayal of the remnant

“Under these circumstances [new ‘mass,’ Vatican 2 innovations], it could be expected that the percentage-wise extremely small number of the non-apostatized Catholic priests and laymen would separate themselves from the apostate church and mould from their own orthodox Catholic communities. But Satan succeeded in his effort to make also those Catholics who had remained loyal to their faith subservient to his goals, by retaining most of them in the apostate ‘Catholic’ church organization to their spiritual harm, using the ‘traditionalist’ leaders as his instruments. They succeeded in making themselves and their adherents believe that a priest acting in the framework of the apostate Church who recognizes apostate Paul VI as the true Vicar of Christ on earth and who recognizes this apostate and the bishops subservient to him as the legitimate hierarchy of the Catholic Church, can celebrate valid Masses and effect valid sacraments if he only maintains the external Tridentine forms (matter and form in liturgical terminology). But they and their deceived victims do not see or do not want to see, to their spiritual harm, that these Masses and these sacraments cannot procure sacramental graces because the “traditionalist” priest does not act “in persona Christi,” i.e., in the true intention of Christ.

“It has to be said for the partial excuse of the founder of ‘traditionalism,’ Fr. Gommar A. De Pauw, that, at the time when he founded his CTM (1964/1965), the apostasy of the Catholic Church organization was not yet an accomplished fact. But this excuse does not apply to Fr. Francis E. Fenton (ORCM) and “Archbishop” Marcel Lefebvre who founded their respective organizations after the introduction of the “Novus Ordo Missae.”

“The CTM and later on the ORCM diminished in their significance obviously because of a lack of priests. But Satan found in ‘Archbishop’ Marcel Lefebvre an even better, ‘traditionalist’ tool to retain the conservative Catholics to their spiritual harm in the apostate ‘Catholic’ church organization and to prevent the organization of the Remnant Catholic Church. Marcel Lefebvre could, as an attraction for the ‘traditionalists,’ bring to bear his hierarchical position, his power of ordination, though it was illegitimate, and his spellbinding powers. As an indication of his conscious collaboration with the apostate, ‘Catholic’ church organization, he sought and found for his Sacerdotal Fraternity and for his seminary the permission of the Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg (Switzerland)…

“Satan’s intentions to retain the non-apostatized Catholics in the apostate “Catholic’ church organization by the machinations of the ‘traditionalist’ leaders and, in so doing, to prevent the organization of the Remnant Catholic Church can obviously not be successful much longer. For, the apocalyptic prophecy on the two ‘witnesses’ to be identified with the popes Pius IX and Saint Pius X indicates that their teachings will, after their extinction by the vast eschatological apostasy from the faith, soon be revived and that, therefore, the functions of the Catholic Church after their temporary shutdown by the vast defection from the faith, will again be at the disposal of the remaining faithful Catholics in the Remnant Catholic Church. This means that, in the near future, the collapse of Lefebvre’s “traditionalist” church has to be expected…

“After this proof which, at the present situation of the Church, has all the signs of a hint of Christ to begin the organization of the Remnant Catholic Church, the older, validly ordained, basically orthodox-Catholic priests who, so far, have served “traditionalist” communities should, together with their lay supporters, proceed to eliminate in their communities all “traditionalist” characteristics by which their membership in the apostate “Catholic” church organization is indicated in an open or veiled form. In particular, it has to be avoided to use in the canon part of the Mass the names of Paul VI and of the local bishop of the apostate “Catholic” church organization… The preaching and confessional practice has, of course, to be adapted to the new situation without any compromises and express the eschatological character of our time.”

Kellner did understand “Una cum” long before Sanborn wrote his piece on this heresy. But not being aware of vindicative penalties, he thought that these “true” priests and a possible bishop or two could go ahead and offer Mass and administer Sacraments after making public abjuration of their heresies. He did not understand that these men incurred infamy of law and cannot function until they are dispensed from this irregularity by a true pope and reinstated, (Can. 2294 and 2295). Doubtlessly he accepted the prevailing canard that Canons 209 and 2261:2 provided jurisdiction for these men to operate, not understanding that without the pope to supply, they could never appeal to these canons. The evidence that questioned Traditionalists’ claims to jurisdiction did not make its debut until 1984. And Kellner was far too optimistic in his predictions of the separation of Traditionalists from their slavemasters. We must agree with both Strojie and even Kellner that there is no indication whatsoever that these lay people will ever leave their leaders – after all, as he pointed out, there has been no mass exodus from Protestantism or the Orthodox for all these many centuries. Sadly Strojie himself would succumb to a mitigated version of the material papacy, even though he got nearly everything else right. While he did not participate with them in their heresies or services, he was influenced to a greater extent than he realized by their propagation of false theories based on post-V2 theology. Peer into the abyss long enough and it will peer back into you. Only a careful study of theology as taught by those theologians approved by Pope Pius XII and his predecessors can properly educate those seeking to discern the Church’s true teaching on dogma and Canon Law.

But one thing Kellner did hit spot on in his letter was the fact that Traditionalists failed to read the signs of the times and this is what caused them to go astray. “The ‘traditionalists’ in the apostate ‘Catholic’ church organization recognize correctly the falling away from the faith in the teachings of Vatican II, it is true, and they see correctly in the replacement of the Tridentine Mass by the Protestant “Novus Ordo Missae” the liturgical expression of the falling away from the faith introduced by the Council. But what they do not see in their incredible blindness agreeing with the blindness Scripturally predicted (St. Paul in 2 Thess. 2:10-12) is the apostatic character of this falling away from the faith which, according to Catholic doctrine, is irreversible (see, e.g., St. Paul in Hebr. 6:4-6) and is confirmed, e.g., by the fact that not one of the apostate Protestant sects has ever returned as a sect to the Catholic Church.

“They do not see the eschatological significance of this apostasy in the history of mankind. They do not see or do not want to see, not even their theologically educated leaders, that this apostasy is the concluding stage of the revolt of mankind against God and His commandments predicted in Holy Scripture which started with the Protestant ‘Reformation’ in the sixteenth century and now will lead to the Scripturally predicted, punitive annihilation of mankind. They are blind to the scientific fact known for several decades and, in recent years, discussed almost daily in the popular press, that this annihilation is unmistakably announced by the stockpiling of nuclear weapons by the military powers in quantities able to destroy mankind hundreds of times at any time.”

Kellner mentions the two witnesses above and later explains: “…According to the figurative language of the Apocalyptic prophecy, the bodies of the killed witnesses were not removed and buried, but were left on the streets and were soon revived, by God and taken to heaven. [This] is a prophetic indication that the true Catholic Church, represented by the orthodox Catholic teachings of the two popes concerned (Pius IX & Pius X), is presently not really dead, but only in a dormant state and will soon be revived and will perform its divine task with all its essential functions in the remaining eschatological time of the history of mankind according to Christ’s prediction in Matthew 16:18. But, because of the eschatological state of universal apostasy of mankind, the revived Catholic Church will be only an extremely small organization serving the few remaining true Catholics. For, only such a dwarf-like Church fits the words of Luke 18:8: ‘Yet when the Son of Man comes, will he find, do you think, faith on earth?’” (While this is not an interpretation of the two witnesses’ prophecy in Apocalypse 11 promoted by any of the commentators this author has read, the identification of the two popes as witnesses, at least, seems to be a possibility.)

“The preceding deliberations assume presently a specific significance in the face of the fact that, since 1970, former Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre pretends that, with the aid of his “International Priest-Brotherhood of Saint Pius X,” set up within the framework of the “Modernist-Catholic” church organization and dedicated to the fight against Modernism, he will eventually reconvert this “Modernist” church organization to the true Catholic faith. Due to the fact that Marcel Lefebvre uses one of the “witnesses” alluded to in the above-discussed chapter of the Apocalypse, i.e., Pope St. Pius X, as the patron saint of his priest-brotherhood, as its name demonstrates, even the impression could be created that he is destined by Divine Providence, in accordance with the above-discussed Apocalyptic text, for the revival of the Catholic Church in the end time of human history…Lefebvre’s activities serve an ecclesiastical bogus enterprise obviously contrived by Satan by which the latter, in a diabolic perversion of the above-discussed Apocalyptic prophecy increases the number of his victims in the apostate ‘Catholic’ church organization by either preventing the remaining true Catholics from leaving the apostate “Catholic” church organization or even by luring conservative Catholics who had already left this organization back into its soul-destroying sphere of influence and, in so doing, tries to prevent the organization of the remnant Catholic Church. In this scheme, Satan obviously makes use of the power hunger, the spell-binding pious attitude, and the apparent, but demonstrably non-existing ecclesiastical powers of conferring Holy Orders of ‘Archbishop’ Marcel Lefebvre.”

“…The immediate goal of Marcel Lefebvre consisted in gaining for his movement the official recognition as ‘the Latin Tridentine Rite’ within the present ‘Catholic’ church organization and, as a consequence, to secure for him the position of a kind of ‘secondary’ pope which would enable him to increase his dogmatic influence in the ‘Catholic’ church organization more and more and, finally, to realize his more far-reaching goals, ‘if his hour has come.’ The dogmatic impossibility of the reconversion of the apostate ‘Catholic’ church organization to the true Catholic faith was already discussed previously. This impossibility is an essential element of the present eschatological situation of mankind…This eschatological way of thinking is well-known to Marcel Lefebvre, as I shall demonstrate later on. But its consideration stands in the way of his ambitious, Satan-inspired plans to regain a position of power in the vast ‘Catholic’ church organization.” And how is this any different than the position held by DePauw? Or the ORCM? Or any of the Conclavist “popes”?

And today the suppression of these apocalyptic realities continue among the Novus Ordo and Traditional sects, who still pretend they are preserving the true Church, preventing the cessation of the Sacrifice, providing clergy necessary to continue apostolic succession…without the pope. But wait…some DO accept Paul 6 as a pope providing them with universal jurisdiction re the crackpot material papacy theory. So like the SSPX, Traditionalists are equally craven in turning to Antichrist for their jurisdiction and Gallicanism for the heresy that supports his “material papacy.” It is a never-ending scheme with a constant trickle of willing victims, among them even those who have been warned and should know better.

Conclusion

I have been reproached by those about the age of my own adult children for being too harsh and condemning concerning Traditionalists; this is why I have brought in these writers from 40 years ago, to demonstrate that I say nothing new here, although I can no longer say with Strojie that I believe most Traditionalists are of good faith. Why? Because 40 years ago there were no resources available like there are today; in those days anyone wishing to educate themselves had better hit the seminary libraries and not come up for air until they could find some good sources. I was fortunate; I found a library that would sell seconds of their books and bought as many as I could, at a very reasonable price. This was still a sacrifice, however, for someone raising a family on a limited income. But it was a necessary one.

Then began the study – and it lasted for all these years. I still study whenever I can. My articles are the result of those studies. Nearly all that is presented on my site is taken from papal documents, Canon Law and works completed before the death of Pope Pius XII – I try to let these authors do the talking for me because they represented the Church or were approved by the Church and I am not. You can argue with how I word something, but if you argue with who I quote you must prove they are unreliable sources by presenting evidence of their lack of credentials or the conclusions drawn stand. And you must present your own arguments, from equally sound sources, to do so. Today, thanks to myself and others, those sources are readily available; no one needs to make the monumental effort those of us made in the early days to find them, study them, digest them, cross-reference them, dissect them and present them – not to mention typing, editing and proofing the results. Just so those today know that very little is being required of them, in comparison, so there is really little to complain about.

The hunt today is largely effortless – just ask Google. I don’t mean to sound “all that” here; I am simply pointing out that we have worked hard to make it easier for others to access the truth and all they need to do today to check us out is retrace our steps. Yet still younger as well as older Traditionalists argue with what is presented without any basis for the argument and question not the organization or presentation of the material but the reasoning behind the men and women who wrote it.  (Fine; but no one can question papal documents. And substituting our own reasoning for that of approved theologians after we have been plied for nearly a century with ecumenist propaganda is, in my estimation, not prudent). They also play devil’s advocate, which has limited applicability in our situation. Remember: the definition of playing devil’s advocate is: “challenging a position or perspective about a topic about which there is debate by arguing for something you do not necessarily agree with,” (Wiki). Number one, most of what is presented on this site is Church law and teaching so is not up for debate, even hypothetically. This is why there is no discussion or “dialogue” board on my site. Two, the “devil’s advocate” position most present who use this tactic is their own, and one they sympathize with.

The adage, “no pain no gain” may apply here. Spoon feeding is never advisable when a child is old enough to hoist his own spoon. The problem is that writers faced with heresies to refute are obligated by Canon Law (Can. 1325) to write and others should be able and willing to read and confirm what is written. Sadly, many believe that with a limited background in the subject matter, a smattering of experience, scarcely any time in the books and a lot of hubris they are qualified to critique, and this is simply arrogance — not because of who or what I am but because of who I quote. I have been told that I must exercise “charity” and patience with others but after over 3o years of patience and 3,000 plus pages of research, that patience is wearing pretty thin. And even charity has its bounds, as those who have taken the time to read Rev. Sarda’s definition of charity will recognize.  Maybe the few just now coming on board need the “pain” of long-term research and study to appreciate the “gain” reflected in the results. Delivering the finished product may seem too pat and may raise questions concerning what has been missed, or not considered at all. This is understandable and should be investigated, as long as the Church-prescribed rules, printed under the scholasticism heading on this site are followed and the necessary ground is covered. But the time spent in study and meditation will take years to duplicate, and this speaks to the integral understanding of the faith so many are lacking today.

As St. Basil said: “Reprimand and rebuke should be accepted as healing remedies for vice and as conducive to good health. From this it is clear that those who pretend to be tolerant because they wish to flatter — those who thus fail to correct sinners — actually cause them to suffer supreme loss and plot the destruction of that life which is their true life.” Then there is the old standard: “Not to oppose error is to approve of it, and not to defend truth is to suppress it, and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them,” (Pope Felix III).  Also from Pope Leo I: “He who sees another in error ad endeavors not to correct it testifies himself to be in error.” And as posted on my website: “The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn’t angry enough,” (Bede Jarrett).

Traditionalism was never Catholic — it is and was Masonic and therefore apostate. I am not the only one demonstrating this; the evidence was all in long ago. I have only brought it up to date and pointed out the discrepancies found in the reasoning of early writers, who after all did not have access to the information we have today to arrive at better conclusions. Strojie and others were reporting on the actual accident scene that was the hijacking of the Church; they simply gave an account of the train wreck seen through their own eyes. Only later, after careful investigation and evaluation, would the actual disposition of those involved — causes, effects, and details — emerge. Strojie was right in quoting Rev. Coleridge to the effect that Christ Himself levied judgment on the Church and stopped its usual functions dead in their tracks; Veritas called this judgment Divine Interdict. Pope Pius XII’s Vacantis Apostolica Sedis states this cessation of the Church’s juridical activity during an interregnum clearly and infallibly. The existence of an extended interregnum and an accompanying abrogation of the Continual Sacrifice should have raised hairs on the neck of every genuine Catholic. But the Masonic agents rushed in to explain it all and gather us up — as hard as that may be for the followers or former followers of Traditionalists to accept.

I want everyone to save their souls and make no personal judgment of those who have gone before. I truly believe that God will have mercy on those who have been systematically brainwashed all these years. But I also know that “God who made us will not save us without us,” as St. Augustine taught.  And I firmly subscribe to this statement made by Henry Cardinal Manning in his “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost”: “Whensoever the light comes within the reach of our sight, or the voice within the reach of our ear, we are bound to follow it, to inquire and to learn; for we are answerable, not only for what we can do, by absolute power now, but for what we might do if we used all the means we have; and therefore, whensoever the Church of God comes into the midst of us, it lays all men under responsibility; and woe to that man who says, ‘ I will not read; I will not hear; I will not listen; I will not learn; ‘ and woe to those teachers who shall say, ‘ Don’t listen, don’t read, don’t hear; and therefore, don’t learn.’” As I have quoted from Holy Scripture numerous times before then, “Let him who reads understand.” And when they have understood, may God grant them the grace to exit from these unholy groups, before it is too late to save their souls.

++++++++++++++++

(Visit http://www.thirdorderofsaintdominic.org/ for a comprehensive summary of Freemasonry and all its evils. Notice that Pope Pius XII identifies this pernicious sect with apostasy and this long after his brush with Roncalli and Marsaudon, (see heading “Agents of Antichrist”). Read also http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01624b.htm under apostasy a fide or perfidae. That Freemasons incur the full range of these penalties automatically or ipso facto, without the need for any declaration is clear from Canons 2335 and 2336 § 1 and 2.)

https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/free-content/reference-links/4-heresy/tracing-traditionalism-to-its-masonic-origins/

by T. Stanfill Benns | May 13, 2022

The Fatima Cypher

by T. Stanfill Benns | Aug 19, 2022

The Fatima Cypher

© Copyright 2022, T. Stanfill Benns (This text may be downloaded or printed out for private reading, but it may not be uploaded to another Internet site or published, electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author. All emphasis within quotes is the author’s unless indicated otherwise.)

Introduction

While Fatima is an important issue, considering the prominent role it has played in the lives of Catholics for over 100 years, it is not, as many believe, the end-all, be-all predicator for our future. Nor can we place it on the plane of those things requiring our belief as Catholics, which many seem to have done. What Fatima has degenerated to, thanks to the usurpers in Rome and their mouthpieces, is a breeding ground for controversy, sensationalism and speculations that will forever remain unresolved. And those who have asked for sane responses to recent questions about the apparitions as well as those asking these questions must unfortunately be satisfied with the little that can be discerned (presented in a separate article) and what is presented here — a different way of evaluating what we already know.

Most of those who are familiar with Fatima think they know its primary import: prayer, especially the Rosary, penance and a proper Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to bring about the conversion of Russia. But what if this was never the real purpose of Fatima? What if the entire affair had been cleverly hijacked to present a false scenario entirely for political purposes? Can it be proven? There are enough existing facts and abundant clues left by the perpetrators to strongly suggest that this and even worse was exactly what was done, and that it was meant to facilitate and coincide with the destruction of the Church. Communism was a ruse used to distract the faithful from the real enemy in their midst, one that those traitors secretly working from within the Church were preparing to disarm. Fortunately Our Lady outsmarted them, as we are about to see, knowing the true secret would never be revealed. But to lay the background for this amazing tale, the real errors of Russia must first be understood.

What the infiltrators burrowing into the Church were anxious to conceal was the inroads made by secret societies into the Church and their deleterious effect on all Christian belief in general. It is generally unknown that Communism is a high-level degree on the Masonic pyramid. The majority, even among Catholics, are ignorant of this fact. The general population identifies Communism only as a political entity, not something associated with the occult. That a comprehensive understanding of Freemasonry and all its thousands of satellite organizations is crucial to understanding what Our Lady came to tell us at Fatima (and in other locations) will become increasingly clear to those reading this work. In fact, as will be shown below, Fatima told us far more about the dangers of Freemasonry in all its forms than is generally understood.

A look at Russia’s errors

It must be noted that when Our Lady told the children that Russia would spread her errors she spoke in the plural, and she did not specify what those errors were in the two parts of the secret revealed. Those interpreting her meaning in naming Russia as the font of these errors concentrated only on one glaring reality — Communism. Yet the Bolshevik Revolution had not even ushered in Communism at the time Our Lady appeared at Fatima! Nor did Communism correspond to the plural word errors which she communicated to the children. And over the decades it does not appear that this omission ever caught the eye of any of those well-known for chronicling Fatima, although authors writing in other languages, whose works were never translated into English may well have touched on this subject. A careful study of Russia’s history would have quickly shown the Blessed Mother’s true intent, but this was not forthcoming either. And so the seriousness of any other prevailing errors, including the Orthodox schism, was ignored. Understanding these clues was vital, especially given the absolute timeliness of Fatima’s message. But those manipulating Fatima most likely suppressed any other explanations in order to forever fix the apparitions in a strictly anti-Communist context, its chroniclers carefully molding this perception to fit the parameters of public opinion. From then on, the true meaning of Our Lady’s message was obscured.

Early Russian religious history

In the eighth century, a large number of Jews from Islam and Greece fled from various persecutions to what is now Russia. Known as Khazars or Ashkenazi Jews, they originated from early nomadic warrior tribes issuing from the Asian steppes dating to the fifth century. These tribes settled north of the Caucasus Mountains in what was then called Khazaria but is now present-day southern Russia. The British author, Zionist  Arthur Koestler indicates in his work The Thirteenth Tribe, (now verified as true by DNA analysis of migrating Jews) that the cultural developments which resulted from this migration were unforeseen but considerable, lasting until the forced dispersion of the Khazar Jews throughout northern Europe in the mid-13^th century by the Mongols, led by Ghengis Khan. This means, as Koestler relates, that these Jews were not Jews by blood, but only by religion. “The large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European — thus perhaps mainly of Khazar — origin. If so, this would mean that their (the Jews) ancestors came not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race, and that genetically they are more closely related to the Hun, Ugur, and Magyar tribes than to the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated.”

The reign of the Kahzars climaxed with the rise of Zionism and a Jewish messiah, David al-Roy, who even assembled an army to retake the Holy Land in the 12^th century. He was assassinated before he could achieve his dreams. Koestler says that, “the ‘six-pointed shield of David,’ which adorns the modern Israeli flag, started to become a national symbol with David al-Roy’s crusade. ‘Ever since,’ writes Baron, ‘it has been suggested, the six-cornered shield of David, theretofore mainly a decorative motif or a magical emblem, began its career toward becoming the chief national-religious symbol of Judaism. Long used interchangeably with the pentagram or the Seal of Solomon, it was attributed to David in mystical and ethical German writings from the thirteenth century on…’” Koestler, quoting Prof. A. N. Poliak concerning long-term Jewish influence in Russia, also observes that, “The introduction of Khazar-Jewish elements into exalted positions in the Muscovite State may have been one of the factors which led to the appearance of ‘the Jewish heresy’ among Russian priests and noblemen in the 16^th century…”

Certainly Rabbinic Judaism, which relied upon the doctrines of the false Kabbala and Talmud to direct its people, laid the foundation for the (much later) acceptance of Freemasonry over a period of centuries. Eventually the tension between the Khazars and other warring factions both from within and from without Russia, also Byzantium’s encroachment on Rome’s authority, resulted in Michael Cerularius’ departure from the Holy Catholic Church. This would explain why numerous entreaties from the Vatican to the Orthodox to return to communion with Rome fell on deaf ears.

The real source of the Orthodox schism

But independent of any Khazar Jewish influence, the real cause of the Orthodox schism came from an entirely different, although all-too-familiar source. Quoting from De Maistre, Tito Casini relates in his The Torn Tunic (Christian Book Club of America, 1967) that Russia’s gradual alienation from Rome began 200 years before her departure from the Church. “In the ninth century Pope John VIII over-indulgently allowed the Slavs their own tongue in the celebration of the liturgy. But on reading a later letter of the Pontiff’s, the 95^th, one hardly wonders at his admission of the many drawbacks of such a dispensation. In fact Gregory VII revoked it — but too late — too late to save the Russians — with what ultimate results only became evident in the course of time; Russia’s separation from Rome and the people falling under the sway of a succession of ‘popes’ all of whom, Stalin included, succeeded in being at the same time heads of state and heads of Church, despotically ruling Godless multitudes.”

Casini continues: “Schisms and heresies have always been against Latin — always pro-vernacular, nationalistic — except insofar as Latin has always at the same time been envied, for the evident barrenness of the branches cut off from the Vine compared with those that remained joined. National languages, national liturgies, are but the first step toward national churches, admitted, favored, fostered and desired, with enticements and threats…” And so we see the destruction later wrought by the Novus Ordo liturgy in English-speaking countries. With the Russians, it began with a longing for the use of their own language and customs in the service of the Church, effectively placing state over Church; a concession that bound them more closely to their heartland than to God and began to loosen the bonds of unity with the Church. This is reminiscent of the struggles of Jews in the Holy Land at the time of Christ to reconcile their spirituality with their burgeoning political aspirations. This practice of establishing a state religion would later result in the Reformation, the French Revolution, Kulturkampf and would spawn the Americanist heresy in this country.

A question few have asked, one buried in the commercialization and sensationalism of Fatima, is why the conversion of Russia and not some other country? And what does such conversion really mean? By placing the defeat of Communism as the object of such a conversion the spiritual value of what Our Lady meant by her very words is entirely lost. Surely she intended for such conversion to be the return of the Orthodox to the true Church, not the defeat of Communism and its suggested replacement by democracy. Russia’s schism was the oldest widespread schism in the Church, predating Anglicanism by nearly 500 years. Its errors were fully developed, embracing fragments of all the later heresies. Had Catholics prayed for the actual conversion of Russia to the true faith, not its abandonment of Communism as a political system, wouldn’t this have made much more sense, from a truly Catholic standpoint? True, atheistic Communism stood in the way of any possible conversion, and in order to even think about reversing the orthodox schism, it had to be defeated.  But that is no excuse for why the focus became the defeat of Communism versus the return of the schismatics to Rome. And once Communism was fully initiated and the Russian Orthodox clergy successfully infiltrated by the KGB, the idea of any type of conversion at all became a moot point.

ABC News correspondent in Moscow, Walter Rodgers, wrote in 2011: “Today, less than 20 years after the collapse of the officially atheistic Soviet Union, Russia has emerged as the most God-believing nation in Europe, more so than Roman Catholic Italy or Protestant Britain. The independent Public Opinion Fund poll discovered this spring that 82 percent of Russians now say they are religious believers… Russians never totally forsook their religious heritage; … The babushkas [grandmothers] … would not capitulate to Soviet bullying… the babushkas refused to allow the flame of faith to go out in Russia, even if it was only their own. The institutional church was re-created in later Soviet years to perpetuate the farce of religious freedom. But everyone knew the KGB had infiltrated the Orthodox clergy to make sure religion did not take root again. That may explain why adherence to organized religion (in particular the Orthodox church) lags far behind belief in God… Russian society owes an enormous debt to its babushkas.”

The time for Russia to be freed from the Communist threat was in the 1920s and upwards until the start of World War II. Only until this hideous system was abolished was there any hope of converting her people, which is why Our Lady requested the consecration before the Bolshevik Revolution ever took place. We see now how Russia and her clergy are being embraced as part of the Novus Ordo (NO) church by the usurper Francis in Rome, and why not? Today all the NO clergy has been seduced by Masonic and Progressive elements and there is no church to return to. Had Communism and the destruction of Russia been fought as it should have been; had the consecration been done by Pope Pius XI, mentioned by name in the messages to Lucia, in the 1920s, 1930s, this would have set Freemasonry and its plans for world domination back for several decades at least.

The toppling of Czar Nicholas II was the last obstacle for the establishment of atheism and the total control of the Orthodox clergy, such as they were, but Nicholas himself had laid the foundation for his own destruction.  The Communists were not after Russia’s government per se, they were after her soul, and the way to extinguish the remaining flame of faith in her people was through total government control And so we see the error Our Lady came to warn us about once Communism did take over: the infiltration of the clergy, with the same results we see today in the Novus Ordo. The groundwork for Communism had already been laid in advance, as explained below.

Masonic influence in Russia

Our Lady intended to use the entire course of the spiritual and political demise of Russia as an example of what the world could expect once it succumbed to Freemasonry. It must be remembered that Communism is a rather high degree of Masonry, being listed on the upper levels of Lady Queensborough’s Masonic pyramid; it is the last degree before those of the Illuminati proper. It did not simply appear out of thin air and assert itself. Its preparatory soil is occultism, rampant in Russia prior to the Revolution. According to author Fritz Springmeier, Czarina Alexandra’s spiritual advisor and sometime advisor to the Czar, Monsieur Philippe, was close friends with Claude Debussy, who in turn was the close associate “…of many of the top French occultists of his time. He is known to have been a close friend to both the notorious satanists Jules Bois and MacGregor Mathers. Mathers started the Order of the Golden Dawn. Debussy was also a friend of the infamous Papus (aka Dr. Gerard Encausse) and W.B. Yeats. Papus was one of the men who during his lifetime was part of the interlocking occult directorate of occult groups.”

When Monsieur Philippe died, the Czarina turned to the “mad monk” Rasputin, himself deeply entrenched in false mysticism and thaumateurgy who also was reputedly a sexual degenerate. Rasputin was largely responsible for many of the Czar’s disastrous policy decisions. These two advisors with ties to the occult corresponds to occultism on Lady Queensborough’s pyramid. Liberalism is next, encompassing all sorts of progressivist movements, including democracy, as does masons without the apron, another level on the pyramid. (Examples of this will be provided below.)  From there it is a gradual climb to Communism, following the death of the Czar and his family.

Freemasonry existed in Russia for nearly 200 years prior to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, reputedly a member of the Masonic sect and persecutor of the Church in Russia prior to his assassination. The first Freemasons in Russia were foreign merchants; in 1731 Captain John Philips of the English Grand Lodge was appointed Provincial Grand Master of Russia. In 1740 the same title was granted to the later Prussian Field Marshall James Keith, who served in the Russian army. The Russian Freemasons’ lodges consisted in those days of English seamen and merchants and some Russian aristocrats, (Valerian Obolensky, History of a Diaspora). Under Tsar Paul I and Catherine II in the 1700s, Freemasonry was first banned then monitored by the Russian authorities. Even before the 1917 revolution, another revolt erupted in the Russian lodges which was attributed to suspected Illuminati infiltration, perverting “useful” Masonry to establish “harmful” Masonry in its place. Those opposing this infiltration suggested to the emperor that he close the lodges, which Alexander I did in 1822 and Nicholas I continued. Following this closure, five members of these suppressed lodges joined forces and staged the Decembrist revolt in 1825.

But the lodges survived and operated underground until 1877, when the Grand Orient of France began establishing lodges in the country and agitating for the end of the autocracy and the institution of a democracy. Both Lenin and Trotsky were high-ranking Freemasons and Illuminati, obeying the International Masonic Council. By 1914 some 40 lodges existed in the country, most dominated by the Democratic Kadets. But strife and surveillance once again assailed the lodges and by 1917 only 28 were left. It was the Masonic Kadet Alexander Kerensky who first gained control of the provisional government and secured the resignation of the Tsar in its favor. Lenin, aided by German forces in the last days of World War I, fought and defeated Kerensky and the Socialist Gen. Kornilov. Kerensky then fled the country. The short-lived Democracy first used to excite the people to revolt was quickly replaced by full-blown Socialism, then Communism.

It is interesting to note that long before the rise of Fascism, anti-Semitism was rife in Russia. Thousands of Jews were killed in the 1905-1906 pograms. According to one Internet source: “The tsar’s regime reacted to the revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants [supported by Trotsky] with increasingly rabid anti-Semitic propaganda and the enlistment of extreme right-wing organisations. The infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was widely and systematically disseminated by the Tsarist government. The “Protocols”, written around the turn of the century by Sergei Nilus, propagated the theory of a “Jewish conspiracy” against Christianity and the threat of an imminent apocalypse. The book was later used by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. The Russian Orthodox Church was closely interwoven with the extreme right and openly propagated anti-Semitism… This state anti-Semitism was brought to an end only after the overthrow of the tsar in the February Revolution of 1917” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/29/semi-a29.html

However, later assessments of the Protocols question whether they ever really emanated from Jewish sources. In their Holy Blood, Holy Grail, (HBHG) authors Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent concede that the Protocols were based on an original text that was later altered, to what extent is unknown; that it was not Jewish, but Masonic and of French origin and that it more likely than not can be traced to high levels of Freemasonry that infiltrated the Catholic Church, an organization known as the Prieure de Sion, (the Priory of Sion) subtitled “Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and Traditionalist Union.” As HBHG reports, one of the most prominent member of this organization, French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was the founder of Catholic Traditionalism. Both the modern-day (1950s) promoters of the Priory of Sion and its sister organization, the Knights of St. John, Jerusalem, have been shown to have ties to Fascism. Thus is explained the true purpose for release of the Protocols. But there is more. As the authors observe, the Protocols are signed with one sentence: “Signed by the representatives of Sion of the 33^rd degree” (a top level of the Masonic pyramid). As has been noted in the article Traditionalism’s Masonic Origins, Traditionalist Lefebvre and the founders of other Traditionalist sects have this in common: they were either associated with the Priory of Sion, the Knights of St. John, Jerusalem, or both. And this is not just some strange coincidence.

The implications of all this are pretty profound. For if Russia was mentioned in the secret, this could point to the error of anti-Semitism as well as the infiltration of the Church. Notice the Russian Orthodox were right-wing anti-Semites, just as Traditionalists would later become. They were a schismatic church, a pope-less church, just as Traditionalists are today. And Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent note that those Catholic clerics who long ago bought into this “Catholic” Freemasonry, hold themselves to be more Catholic than the Pope. How much more Catholic than the pope could one be than to pretend to rule without the pope and claim that unity can be had without the existence of the papacy? Doesn’t the rise of the Protocols in Russia point to all those things that would presage Hitler’s rise, World War II, the final phase of the Church’s infiltration and the rise of Traditionalism? Was not this the very quintessence of Russia’s errors, which have been so successfully obscured?

It is important to remember here that the popes did not repeatedly condemn Judaism as responsible for working to destroy the Church and civil governments, particularly the remaining Catholic monarchies. The warnings they issued for over 200 years were against Freemasonry. The warnings of Our Lady of La Salette also pointed to Freemasons, not the Jews. Nor did Our Lady point to the symbols of Judaism in her Fatima apparitions or appear to the three children on the high Jewish holidays or make anything that could possibly be constituted as a reference to Judaism in her appearances or her messages. As seen above, the rise of Freemasonry in Russia seems to have come from outside more than from within. This is borne out by Catholic convert David Goldstein in his 1940 work Jewish Panorama, noting “Of the 25 or 30 key men in the Bolshevik Party organization at the time of the revolution (1917), about a third were Jews…The idea that the Russian Bolshevik revolution was a Jewish conspiracy …will not stand critical investigation.”

Goldstein goes on to explain that although it is generally alleged that Wall Street and wealthy Jews in general financed the Revolution, it was the establishment of the democratic Menshevik Republic in March 1917 that the U.S and Jewish financiers supported. When Tsar Nicholas II tendered his resignation as Tsar, Jewish and other financiers commended the U.S. government’s loan of millions to the Russians. They did so, Goldstein says, because up to that time, like the Catholics, their Jewish brethren had been persecuted by the Tsar and it was hoped that this persecution had ended for good. When the Bolshevists moved in to overthrow this democracy, Jewish banker Jacob Schiff withdrew even his moral support.” So to state that the Jews played a part in the Bolshevik Revolution and its subsequent government, and for that matter in the destruction of the Church is certain. That they were primarily or solely responsible for engineering these events — as a race and as a religion — is false. Kabbalism did lay the foundation; this is true. But Freemasonry has spread Kabbalism more effectively by far than the Jews. And while it cannot be denied that Jews fund Masonry and compose  a portion of its membership, the organization would never have become successful without the participation of Protestants and Catholics, even those among the clergy.

As will be seen below, Our Lady’s use of dates offers additional proofs that her mission was to warn us of Freemasonry’s seeming triumph. She came also to remind us that she has exterminated and yet will exterminate every heresy, and to demonstrate that all the heresies that plague us so sorely today have their roots in the paganism and Gnosticism inherent in Freemasonry. The history books tell us that despite Portugal’s consistent devotion to Our Lady, Masonic freethinkers had taken over her government as early as 1910. During the entire course of the apparitions the Freemasons poured out a flood of abusive propaganda aimed at discrediting the children and later the Solar Miracle of October 13. Unable to accomplish this, they bided their time until 1922, when they were able to destroy the first chapel erected to Our Lady at the Cova by bombing it. No one has dared to finger them as the very culprits singled out by Our Lady as the cause of the world’s evils, for fear of retribution. Yet we cannot tell the whole truth of the Fatima story unless we examine all the interconnections of the messages and expose to the light of day the works of darkness.

Our Lady used proximity in time, numbers and dates, as well as the words of her message and the symbolism of her Oct. 13 miracle, to indicate the content of the Third Secret. She implicitly asked us to study Russia’s errors and had we done so we would have known that:

1. Those Russians embracing Jewish cultural influences laid the foundation for the later introduction of the Kabbalistc philosophy inherent in Freemasonry.
2. Russian (Khazar) Jews became the founders of Zionism, which reappeared in earnest in 1887 and was given new impetus in 1917, when the Turks were driven from Palestine and Syria.
3. The initial use of the vernacular in Catholic rites had injured unity and led to schism, preparing for a national religion.
4. The schismatic spirit and nationalized religion erupted in full force with the Protestant Reformation, which in truth was the beginning of the Great Apostasy.
5. The Reformation inaugurated the Masonic sect, constructed from ancient religions which advocated Communism.
6. The Masonic sect would eventually consist of a “Catholic” branch, used to more effectively infiltrate the Church.
7. Promoting ideas of world rule and universal brotherhood, Freemasonry used ecumenism as the tool to usurp the papacy and level all religions, in order to syncretize them into their own and establish a New World Order.

Because no one has ever bothered to look more closely into the rich symbolism of the apparitions, the true import of the message has been obscured. This is why the real secrets of Fatima, in all their amazing symbolic detail, have yet to be unveiled.

The many hidden messages of Fatima

If we are to dismiss the Fatima and La Salette secrets as false, and what all indicators report to be the gist of the second and third secrets as erroneous as well, then we must ignore what we have seen come to pass with our own eyes in the last 50 years as though it never took place. We must also ignore the fact that biblical and other prophecies predict the very things contained in these secrets, and the common teaching of Church-approved theologians concerning these prophecies. It is interesting to note that in sweeping these two apparitions aside, Fatima doubters have focused on discrediting the seers who communicated them. Yet we know that in the case of the La Salette seers, Freemasons were definitely the source of the bulk of this discreditation and that they showed their hand early on in the Fatima apparitions. No one can truly say to what degree even the clerics who interviewed the children early on may have been influenced by the Masonic sect, especially given the fact members of the clergy were later discovered to be on Freemasonry’s membership rolls.

The best-known and most often quoted recent volumes examining Fatima are those compiled by “Brother Michael of the Trinity.” His work is presented in three volumes and amounts to over 3,000 pages. While this work is well-documented and quite useful in many respects, the three secrets of Fatima were by contrast so simple that uneducated peasant children had no difficulty understanding Our Lady’s meaning or carrying out her requests for prayer, sacrifice and the spread of devotion to the Immaculate Heart. Fatima had a great deal to say about spiritual childhood. This simple approach to the Fatima message has been so obscured by the controversy surrounding the Third Secret that the real meaning of the message and its influence in our daily lives is in danger of being overshadowed. In an effort to return to this simplicity, it is important to review this valuable message clearly, briefly and with as little fanfare as possible here. We also hope to shed some light on certain aspects of the Fatima message that have either been overlooked or misinterpreted altogether.

OBEDIENCE is owed to all lawful superiors, to the Will of God made known by way of the Ten Commandments, to the decrees of Popes and Ecumenical Councils, to Canon Law, which is based on conciliar and papal decrees as well as Divine law, to the constant teaching of the Church and Divine and ecclesiastical Tradition, to a rightly informed conscience and to genuine inspirations of grace. It is no accident that Our Lady first appeared to the Fatima children in the spring of 1917, at the very same time that Pope Benedict XV promulgated the Code of Canon Law. For the first time in the history of the Church, there was finally a codification of all those laws which Catholics and the hierarchy were obliged to obey. No longer could any object that the laws were doubtful or unknown to them. The obedience of the Fatima children in all aspects of the apparitions is a humbling reminder of this virtue, so necessary to salvation.

The children were asked to obey from the beginning, and their prompt obedience secured the graces necessary to receive Our Lady’s message and save their souls. The angel told them not to be afraid and to pray the prayers that he dictated to them, and they did. Our Lady told them not to be fearful at the first apparition and ordered Francisco to say his rosary if he wished to see her. The Blessed Virgin asked them to sacrifice themselves for sinners, to say the Rosary every day and to return on the thirteenth of each month for five consecutive months. They did as they were told. The children had to choose obedience to Our Lady over the commands of their parents to present themselves for the June 13^th vision, for their parents expected them to go to the festivities held in honor of St. Anthony that day. The command from Our Lady in this apparition was the insertion of the ejaculation, “O my Jesus…” at the end of each Rosary decade, and it was obeyed.

At the third apparition the children were ordered to sacrifice themselves for sinners and to say a prayer each time such a sacrifice was made. But the most important command of the Blessed Virgin at the July 13^th apparition was for the children to keep the secrets she entrusted to them. We know how well they obeyed her in all these things. Concerning the disposition of the money donated by the people and the building of the Fatima chapel, the commands were faithfully delivered to the parish priest and the bishop. The children moderated their use of a rope wrapped tightly about their waists as Our Lady instructed them to do. Francisco and Jacinta were resigned, also, to the fact that they would soon die, and Lucy dutifully accepted the cross of being parted from the little cousins she loved so much. The saintly death of Francisco, the lonely death of Jacinta and Lucia’s lifelong struggle to obey her superiors — while spreading the Fatima devotions and securing the consecration of Russia as Our Lady had requested — the virtue of obedience is stamped in golden letters on every page of the seers’ lives. Had the children’s obedience not been so prompt and so constant, their cooperation with grace so complete, we might not be able to speak of Fatima at all today.

DAILY DUTY is much misunderstood in today’s world, but a Prince of the Church, Massimo Cardinal Massimi, has provided us with a very good definition of just what these duties entail. The good Cardinal writes, “Law imposes and defines duty; the expounding of law means the detailed inspection of duties (which) can easily be reduced to several categories… duties to God …to ourselves …to others …to the family… the civil order and the Catholic order,” (Catholic Morality, 1943, St. Anthony Guild Press pg. 78). This only follows the Golden Rule of Christ in its order of importance. Cardinal Massimi has only repeated all that was said above on obedience. We must study our faith carefully, practice what it teaches consistently, and be willing to accept correction from others if we fail in belief or practice.

Unlike some who have criticized an emphasis on Canon Law and its observance as overly rigid, this Cardinal’s work on the law upholds the importance of obedience to ecclesiastical law. He writes: “…The Church is infallible in Her definitions of revealed truths, and therefore Her universal laws, which emanate from Her supreme authority, cannot contradict revealed truths, for otherwise the Church would practically teach error. Ecclesiastical legislation frequently reproduces divine positive laws, and at times precepts of the natural law…Eternal happiness is obtained and eternal sorrow avoided by observance of the law…In order to observe the law we must know it, which implies that we must study it,” (ibid., pgs. 15, 132).

As those theologians writing on the spiritual life unanimously teach, God’s will for us is first to be sought in His laws and in the commands of lawful superiors. Only in indifferent matters is it to be sought in the falling out of events in day-to-day life, such as whether this or that job should be taken or a certain course of action chosen, etc…, Because lawful authority has so long been undermined in the world, few govern their lives by anything other than the Ten Commandments and the more commonly known Canon Laws called the Six Precepts of the Church. This is the equivalent of rejecting the full teaching authority of Christ’s Church, and as long as those calling themselves Catholic refuse to make themselves more aware of these laws so that they might obey them, they reject Her Divine constitution, and the requests of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother will not be fulfilled. When we consider all these duties as enumerated above by Cardinal Massimi, it becomes clear just how difficult it has become to practice them in these times and why Our Lord said what He did.

PENANCE is not unrelated to daily duty. In a later apparition to Lucia, Our Lord clearly stated that the observance of daily duty was the PENANCE He now required from the faithful. Certainly He knew the sacrifices we would be required to make in order to observe His laws in these trying times. In refusing to regulate our daily duty according to ALL His laws, including the ones He promised to bind in heaven that were bound on earth by his Vicar, we not only fail to perform daily duty but presumptuously cast off the very yoke of penance as it was prescribed by Our Lord. We cannot expect mercy and miracles to save us when we fail so miserably to practice the virtues of obedience, fulfillment of daily duty and penance Our Lady implored us to embrace. As we have observed elsewhere, penance in the true sense of the word means a sincere turning away from sin, or a genuine conversion. We cannot claim to possess true contrition for our sins if we continue to commit the same sins over and over again without a sustained effort to rid ourselves of them. How many of us can honestly say we have done our best to rid ourselves of habitual sin? Yet unless such an effort is made, the penance sought as reparation to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary is left undone.

The ROSARY was one of the principal parts of the Fatima message. Our Lady promised to those who would faithfully recite it that all their sorrows and anxieties would be remedied, and their requests granted. “One day, through the rosary and the scapular, I will save the world,” (Our Lady to St. Dominic). Some call Our Lady’s rosary “the eighth sacrament, and in these times, when Mass and Sacraments are no longer available, this is certainly the case. Ten just men would have postponed God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, but only two Godly individuals could be found in the whole city. If sufficient numbers of Catholics comfort the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary by saying their rosary each day and offering it on the First Fridays and Saturdays of each month in reparation for sin, they will be fulfilling Our Lady’s requests. It appears that we live in the times the Blessed Virgin spoke of to St. Dominic, and that Our Lady will use the means of the Rosary and Scapular to save many souls who otherwise would be lost, as she indicated at Fatima.

SACRIFICE does not mean undertaking excessive physical mortifications as so many today mistakenly believe. The lives of the saints reveal that some of their choicest sacrifices were the interior trials that they suffered. St. Alphonsus Liguori almost despaired of being saved toward the end of his life; St. Therese of Lisieux was tortured by doubts of faith which she constantly had to reject; the Cure of Ars and St. Teresa of Avila were beset by the Devil himself and St. Catherine of Siena and St. Joan of Arc died fearing they had failed in fulfilling the missions entrusted to them by God. Our trials, too, are largely interior. Our greatest sacrifice is the unavailability of the Mass and Sacraments and the absence of spiritual direction. Second on our list, perhaps, is the isolation we suffer in the absence of friends, relatives and community as a direct result of our religious beliefs.

Thirdly, we suffer much torment simply from the wickedness prevailing in the world today, for we know how greatly it offends God and how easily it leads souls to eternal damnation. And fourthly our own weakness and sinfulness is a terrible cross to bear, for we know how little inclined to good we really are and we are truly terrified at how easy it would be to lose our way in such a wicked world. It is as Rev. Mateo Crawley-Bovey, who advocated consecration of the family to the Sacred Heart said: “Our own character is one of our heaviest crosses, one which cannot be changed from day to day, or left at home when we are on a journey or in public.”

How bravely and quickly the Fatima children responded to Our Lady’s request for sacrifice! If at times it seems to us that nothing we do is pleasing to Our Lord and we weary of carrying our burdens, we must remember to whisper a prayer to these courageous little saints and beg them to make their courage our own.

The three little seers

Three children were chosen to receive the Fatima message — two girls and one boy, just as two women and one man stood at the Foot of the Cross. These three represented, in a symbolic way, the entire world to which they would spread their message. Of these three, two would soon die; the same two who drank the Chalice of Our Lord’s Blood administered to them by the Angel. This may be seen as a symbolic fulfillment of Apoc. 14:10, where those who worship the beast are said to drink the wine of the Divine wrath. Although God did not “avenge” Himself on Jacinta and Francisco, their deaths may indicate a resignation to suffering and death, on the part of the faithful, during the time of Antichrist. The early death of the two younger seers may also prefigure the destruction of two-thirds of the world’s population, an event foretold by Zacharias the prophet, (Ch. 13, vs. 7), and also mentioned elsewhere in Scripture. After the death of her cousins, Lucia alone remained, and she was later confined to the cloister where she most likely suffered a painful spiritual, possibly even physical, martyrdom of many years duration. This signifies not only the fact that the faithful will be “hidden” from the world and suffer mental and spiritual torments, but that these faithful will mostly be women.

Jacinta could hear Our Lady but could not see her. Francisco could see her but could not hear her. Lucia alone could both hear her and see her. This, again, is an allusion to those who will perish, “That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they should be converted,” (Mark 4:12). Here Our Lady was anticipating the rejection of her message, for already the Gospel message of her Son was rejected by so many. Even the names of the children brought a hidden message to Fatima. Jacinta is the feminine Portuguese variation of St. Hyacinth, the missionary saint of Russia who will be mentioned in more detail below. Hyacinth flowers are blood-red, (and Greek mythology teaches that they sprang from a youth, beloved of the gods, who was accidentally killed by Apollo.) It was indeed fitting that St. Hyacinth evangelized the “Reds.” Another St. Hyacinth, this one a woman, was a religious who had a great devotion to Our Lady, practiced severe mortifications and was blessed with the gift of prophecy, and so Jacinta, so serious for a little child and so simple, was a close second to this patron saint.

The gentle saint, Francis of Assisi can easily be seen to resemble Francisco, but the “Portuguese” St. Francis (Borgia) was probably meant as his patron. St. Francis Borgia was the general of the Society of Jesus in the 16^th century. As most Catholics know, the Society of Jesus was founded to protect and defend the papacy. During his lifetime, St. Francis crusaded for the Catholic Renaissance, assisted Pope St. Pius V, and was responsible for establishing in the Vatican what would later become the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, (conversion of pagans and infidels). St. Francis Borgia died on a journey to Portugal, undertaken at the request of the pope. Because the saint knew that such obedience would probably cost him his life, owing to his ill health, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that this last act of his life was “a splendid act of obedience to the pope and devotion to the Church.” All the elements of the Fatima message are here — loyalty and obedience to the papacy, conversion and resignation to God’s will. The name Francisco means “free.”

St. Lucy was a virgin-martyr who narrowly escaped prostitution. Having taken a vow of virginity, she refused the hand of a suitor who then angrily denounced her to the authorities as a Christian. She was imprisoned and there suffered painful tortures for her faith. She was martyred in the fourth century, when the Gnostic heresies had reached their highest pitch. Her name means “light” or “first light (dawn)”, and she is often pictured holding her eyes on a plate (eyes that saw Our Lady). Lucia’s prison was her cloister. It is probable that she was often asked by her many interviewers to prostitute the Third Secret, and in the end even her faith, in favor of popular sentiments or personal opinions. She may even have cooperated to some degree either by force and fear or too great a fear of violating her vows of obedience.

Our Lady promised that she, too, would reach heaven, so she must certainly have suffered great mental and spiritual tortures at the hands of the bishop who silenced her and her own mother superior, who most probably became her captor at some point. Because she was to gain heaven, she could not possibly have denied her faith by accepting a false pope, or all that was introduced after the death of Pius XII. She might have appeared to do so for a time, for Our Lord foretold that if possible, even the elect would be deceived. We ourselves have suffered this same unfortunate deception. But she could not have died in this state of deception; in fact it is very likely that she died as a martyr for the truth, defending the secrets entrusted to her. We know today that an imposter Sr. Lucy was interjected at some point, probably in the late 1940s after the death or actual imprisonment/banishment of the true Sr. Lucy. Someday, perhaps, God will reveal her true fate to us. Hopefully then we shall finally understand how cruelly she was used by those very “lovers of men” who introduced imposters to make it appear  that she “kept the faith” with Babylon.

Another meaning can be wrung from the childrens’ names by reading the three of them together. (Francisco=free, Jacinta=blood-red and Lucia=light or dawn.) Understood in this way the cypher of these names might be telling us to “Free (yourselves and the world from the) bloody or blood-red (color of Communism and Satanism) dawn (of a New Age) or light (Illuminism of the Gnostics or Lucifer the light-bearer). Communism is often called the “red dawn” and many are familiar with the expression “the dawning of a New Age.” Or perhaps the meaning refers to some event in nature. One is reminded of the old sailor’s rhyme: “Red sky at morning, sailor take warning…”  The hidden symbolism is frighteningly clear. Had the world heeded the pleas of Our Lord and His Mother, the chastisement now upon us need never have happened.

The Angel

The Angel who appeared to the children was most probably St. Michael, although he never identified himself. St. Michael is the patron saint of Portugal. He is also the angel of the Eucharist and the Angel of Peace. His communication of the children signified two phases that the world would pass through, to be announced by the secret. The first would be one of the neglect of interior devotion in the reception of the Eucharist, a state observed by Pius XII in Mediator Dei and his 1958 instruction on Sacred Music. This phase would gradually evolve into the shameful rejection by Paul 6 of the dogma of Transubstantiation, and by bishops attending the false Vatican 2 council. The second phase would be one of total absence of the Sacraments, when only Spiritual Communion would be available. Lucia dos Santos told Fr. Formigao that she actually felt the Host on her tongue after the Angel had communicated her, causing some to doubt that Spiritual Communion was intended here. But then all of Fatima was a miracle — why should this communication of the children be any less so? Lucia was nine when the Angel appeared to the children, and already had received her First Communion. Because she had been unable to answer one catechism question, at first the parish priest would not let her communicate, even though Pope Pius X’s instructions on this matter had allowed great leniency in the knowledge required to receive. After another priest objected however, her pastor relented.

Francisco was eight and Jacinta was six when the Angel administered the Eucharist to them and had not yet received Holy Communion. It was the Jansenists who held early and frequent Communion in such horror, and while the children’s priest may not have leaned in this direction, he certainly appeared to oppose early Communion. In light of this fact, the children’s reception of the Eucharist from the Angel is significant. The Angel did for the children what the clergy neglected to do. He was not interested in whether they knew their catechism by rote or not; rather he seemed interested in three things: 1) whether they did as they were told; 2) their willingness to pray as he instructed them; and 3) the devotion with which they prayed. Obedience, prayer and reverence — these then seem to be what is important to God, (although this should not be taken to mean that knowledge of religious things and study are not valued equally.) The lesson in all this is that God will provide extraordinarily for the faithful should the ordinary means of grace be unavailable. In the vision, the chalice and Host were suspended in mid-air, just as Lucy saw them also suspended during the apparition of Our Lady when she came to request the consecration in 1929. Like then, the Blood of Our Lord flowed from the Host into the chalice.

It is an incontrovertible fact that with the introduction of the new sacramental rites in 1968 and the new liturgy, the Novus Ordo Missae in 1969, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass ceased to be validly celebrated publicly throughout the world. While a few exceptions to this general rule could possibly exist, it does not change the fact that the Mass of the ages, the Catholic liturgy with its 1400-year-old canon is no longer celebrated by certainly valid and licit clergy, even though the Church Herself teaches it must continue in perpetuity. Swiss Catholic author Michael Mottet commented in the 1980s: “The abolition of the Perpetual Sacrifice has clearly been predicted in Fatima in the apparition of the Angel of Peace carrying a Host and a Chalice and giving the Most Holy Communion to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. This is the clear prediction that a time will come when the Most Holy Communion will descend straight from Heaven and will only be possible under this form.  The Faith tells us moreover that this COMMUNION OF DESIRE is not only possible, but highly desirable, which is indeed normal for the most SPIRITUAL OF ALL SACRAMENTS, (sacrament meaning mystery),” (“Fatima: Apocalypse?,” Sangre de Cristo Newsnotes, Sept. – Dec., 1989).

It also is a striking fact that the Archangel Michael was the one to communicate the children; a fact that brings out more fully the great power and intercession of this saint. In his The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, (B. Herder Book Co., 1942) Rev. Dr. Nicholas  Gihr cites as probable the opinion that the angel who assists at Mass, he who is mentioned in the Canon as carrying our offerings “to Thy altar above”, is none other than St. Michael, guardian of the Church and of the Eucharist, (p. 663). In a Solemn High Mass, St. Michael is addressed as “standing at the right hand of the altar of incense” after the Lavabo. St. Alphonsus reminds us that even after the Sacrifice has ceased, “The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ will never cease, since the Son of God will always continue to offer Himself to His Father by an eternal sacrifice…even after the end of the world, he will always continue to offer in heaven this same victim that He once offered on the Cross…” (Ibid., p. 22-23)

As the Church teaches, Calvary is not renewed in heaven, but there Christ is eternally Victim, Priest and Altar. It is St. Michael who will bring us Spiritual Communion, if we but ask him, and his appearance to the children in this way must have been a preparation for the incredible events that would be revealed to them in the Third Secret — those of today. How else could they have understood the destruction of the Church it surely foretold, if they were also not given to understand that the faithful would be communicated and taken care of spiritually as they had been? And St. Michael’s action as our messenger to the heavenly altar has another side that connects him even more intimately to Fatima and our times. Rev. Gihr describes the heavenly altar as “the sweet-scented incense of praise, homage and thanksgiving, which the Church…in union with…Christ, offers always and eternally to the Triune God,” (ibid., p. 665). But what can we offer Our Lord, in true union with His own Sacrifice, that St. Michael can worthily present to Him? Fatima answered this question so well it would seem that the entire apparition revolved around this theme.

Our Lord came to earth to sacrifice Himself for us. Fatima asks us to sacrifice ourselves for sinners. He came to earth to give example of perfect obedience to His Father in heaven in offering this sacrifice for us. Fatima’s message is a supreme lesson in obedience — to Christ, and to His Vicar on earth. Holy Scripture tells us that obedience is better than sacrifices, (I Kings 15:22), and this is precisely what is intimated here. Our sacrifice would need to become our obedience, as Our Lord said. With what great joy we should approach the altars of our hearts, robed as priests and kings, to exercise this glorious lay priesthood of participation in the physical and spiritual sufferings of our dear Lord Crucified!

If we are to be crucified in His Mystical Body, to repair for the absence of the Holy Sacrifice on our altars, we must die to self-will, to human respect, to earthly comforts and riches, to the companionship of friends and relatives who castigate us for our beliefs. We must expect to suffer spiritually even more than physically all the torments of seeing so many sinners today so content to merit only hell as their eternal reward, despite any efforts we might make. For all this Christ suffered for us so much more intensely that we cannot comprehend it. Christ is referred to by St. John in his Apocalypse as a Lamb several times, and Rev. Gihr says that this is to remind us of the resignation, patience and meekness with which He suffered for us, and with which we must endure our own sufferings if any of our fellows at all are to be spared from the rod of His justice. This idea of such sufferings of Christ’s Mystical Body substituting for the offering of Holy Mass is not at all out of keeping with the Church’s teaching on the Mystical Body and is in perfect accord with the teachings of the Fathers.

Msgr. Capel, in his Faith of Catholics, Vol. II, Quotes from St. Cyprian: “Neither can any loss of religion or of faith be sustained, that among you (martyrs condemned to the mines) liberty is not now granted to the priests of God to offer and celebrate the divine sacrifices. Yea, do ye celebrate and offer a sacrifice to God, both precious and glorious, and which will avail you exceedingly towards obtaining the recompense of the heavenly rewards, seeing that the divine Scripture declares that “A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humble heart God will not despise…(Psalm 50:19),” (p. 413). Rev. de la Taille quotes Gehoth of Reichsburg, summing up the teaching of St. Augustine on the subject of sacrifice as follows:

“You have the tabernacle of the present Church, (but)… there is another altar, sublime, invisible, accessible to the good alone, unto which the just man enters only once. He does this when he is taken up to God, body and soul, as a holocaust…” (The Mystery of Faith, Vol. I, p. 226). St. Gregory likewise writes, after having been forbidden to exercise his priestly powers: “Will they forbid us their altars? I know of another altar, and the altars which we now see are but figures of it…One ascends to it by contemplation, upon it I shall make immolations pleasing to God, sacrifices, oblations and holocausts better than are offered now…No one shall cast me out from this altar.” De la Taille also quotes many ancient authorities to support the statement that “under Christ and in Christ, the Church is her own temple and altar…the heavenly altar is Christ…the Church…and the saints,” (p. 228).

Are we not now doing as St. Paul did, who wrote: “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church” (2 Cor. 11: 24). This is the perfect description of what Our Lady requested at Fatima — that we, who all are members of Christ’s Mystical Body, suffer for our brethren during the Passion of His Church on earth. In his writings, St. Augustine begs God to enkindle the fire of love for Him “on the altar of my heart.” It is from this altar of our hearts, through Mary, first tabernacle of Our Lord that St. Michael, our messenger, gathers the gifts of our mortifications to lay them before the heavenly altar. It is a poor substitute for the honor and glory due to Our Lord in the renewal of Calvary, but because it is the will of His Father in heaven that the Scriptures be fulfilled in these days, it is acceptable to Him. He Himself once asked that the chalice pass from Him, and so He understands our struggles with self — “Thy will be done.” St. Michael is defending us all in the battle today, holding sword in one hand and the paten with our sacrifices in the other, uplifted to heaven.

Was it not the prophet Daniel who foretold that in the days of Antichrist, Michael would stand up for the people, (Dan. 12:1)? And is it not St. Michael, in Apoc. 12:7, who now wages the battle for us in heaven? It is this Archangel’s sublime mission of acting simultaneously as the bearer of these gifts and the guardian of the Church that reveals so clearly the true import of the request by Our Lady for prayer and sacrifice. With our precious Sacrifice gone, and no assurance of its near return in sight, what else in this world can hope to appease the Divine wrath but the prayers and sacrifices of the just? It is most fitting that the very Angel who has always acted as the bearer of the praise and adoration of the faithful and the avowed adversary of Satan, now loosed amongst us, should be chosen to announce the coming of the cessation of the Sacrifice, a continuation of his role in a spiritual manner during this fearful time.

Prayer between the decades

As Our title suggests, Our Lady appeared to speak to the three children almost in cypher, much as Her Son spoke to the multitudes in parables during His earthly life. Even the Apostles were not always aware of what He was trying to tell them, as they did not, for example, understand that He would rise again on the third day. Neither did the three children understand the entire significance of what Our Lady conveyed to them. They were faithful and innocent messengers who relayed to the world what they were instructed to relay and kept secret what the Blessed Virgin forbid them to reveal. This is true of the secrets themselves as well as the symbolism they contained; also the prayers given them by the Angel and the prayer Our Lady asked them to recite between the decades of the Rosary.

This prayer has been the subject of much speculation. In defense of the objectionable “lead all souls to heaven” wording interjected at some unknown point, several priests writing on the Fatima message in the 1940’s and 1950s insisted the reference to “all souls” was the genuine intention of Our Lady transmitted by Sr. Lucy. These priests did not, however, examine the original words of Sr. Lucy in Portuguese as she repeated them from the lips of the Blessed Virgin. It would only be much later that anyone would bother to study these words to determine Our Lady’s true intent.

This study was referenced in an article two years ago which I should have read and duly noted but which somehow was lost in the flood of emails and other information I plod through daily. This article provides new evidence that the true prayer between the decades did indeed direct us to pray for the souls in Purgatory while reciting the Rosary. As observed in The Fatima Connection, the third secret may never have been released, but if the Fatima message is taken as a whole its true significance cannot be mistaken, and the third secret is revealed as the symbolism unfolds. The question is, why did our Blessed Mother wish is to pray for the Poor Souls rather than any other intention?

The Mother of God inserted that prayer into her Rosary for a specific purpose. She knew that the time was soon approaching when many would use her Rosary in place of the Mass, once the Latin Mass was officially abrogated by the Novus Ordo Missae on the order of Paul 6. Some Catholic authors have even referred to the Rosary as the eighth Sacrament. Catholics familiar with the Latin Mass know it is a magnificent prayer of propitiation for both the living and the dead. But it takes a knowledge of the nature of punishment in Purgatory to understand how essential the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is to the relief of those suffering there and their attainment of Heaven.

The Council of Trent, citing sacred Tradition and the teaching of previous councils, taught that “There is a Purgatory, and the souls there detained are aided by the suffrages of the faithful and chiefly by the Acceptable Sacrifice of the Altar…The Holy Council commands the bishops that they strive diligently to the end that the sound doctrine of Purgatory, transmitted by the Fathers and Sacred Councils, be believed and maintained by the faithful of Christ and be everywhere taught and preached” (Session XV, December, 1563). Furthermore, this same council teaches that it is “the greatest proof of love” on our part to offer up for the Poor Souls “temporal afflictions imposed by God and borne patiently by us” (Session XIV, November 1551).

Father F.X. Schouppe, in his classic work Purgatory, (1893), devotes no less than 11 chapters to the testimony of saints and holy people regarding the wondrous relief afforded the Poor Souls by the offering of Holy Mass for their deliverance. zOnce that marvelous Sacrifice ceased to be offered, their source of solace and best hope of release from their sufferings vanished from the face of the earth. The only possible substitute for those prayers was the recitation of the Holy Rosary by the remaining faithful and any other devotions to assist the Poor Souls they might make. But how few would remain to engage in these devotions. Previously there was the true Mass and a veritable army of devotees. But once Vatican II was held, many devotions went by the wayside, as did prayer in general.

In short, the Blessed Mother was telling the children and telling the world that the Holy Sacrifice would cease. There would be no more assistance for the Suffering Souls, save that from the faithful. This explains the storm of controversy over the wording of the prayer as well as its falsification by the ecumenists. Our Lady came to warn us that the Church was facing a dreadful crisis which could only be averted by prayer and sacrifice, particularly the recitation of the Rosary. She instructed the children and us to pray and make sacrifices for sinners, and this most especially includes the Church Suffering. not just those who are yet living, (The Church Militant). She could never intend, and did not intend, for us to offer our prayers and daily troubles for “all souls,” as the altered prayer states.

For this implies, as The Fatima Prayer article points out, that she endorses the idea of universal salvation, even of those now in Hell — a denial of all that the Incarnation was meant to accomplish on earth. This is a dreadful heresy. It is why Our Lady subtly revealed parts of her third secret to us in the very words she used, the circumstances of her appearance and the symbolism she employed, in the course of her Fatima apparitions; she knew her message would be falsified. Discovering what she revealed to us was the primary purpose for writing The Fatima Connection eight years ago. But the facts regarding the true translation of the Fatima prayer were not available then. This is why it needs to be explained now, and its true meaning for us must be fully understood and acted upon.

(Note: Theologians suggest this prayer between the decades be used only for private recitation of the Rosary.)

Numbers: Thirteen, six and three

Thirteen

Thirteen is the number of that chapter in St. John’s Apocalypse that describes the coming of Antichrist and his short-lived triumph. Given other references to Antichrist noted in the correlation of dates above, this seems to point to his advent. Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, made 13 at the table. The Jews murmured 13 times against God in the exodus from Egypt, the thirteenth Psalm concerns wickedness and corruption, and the bar mitzvah or Jewish rite of full-fledged initiation into Judaism occurred in the thirteenth year. There also are 13 rattles on a rattlesnake’s tail.

In Masonry’s initiation rites, the initiate is given a robe that represents the 12 signs of the zodiac plus the starry heavens, (12+1), equaling 13, (according to Pike’s Morals and Dogma, p. 506). In the Masonic pyramid, 13 courses can be counted, the highest or 13^th course being those who govern the world secretly. Masons view their secret rulers as gods, governing the earth by virtue of “divine illumination.” In astrology, the number 13 is said to correspond with that of femininity and to represent a time of confusion, uncertainty and transformation. (Read here all the LBGTQ chaos now prevailing.) The 13^th card in a Tarot deck is death, representing corruption, hopelessness and destruction. The 20 Tarot cards are said by some to render a sinister interpretation of the 20 chapters of St. John’s Apocalypse.

According to author Fritz Springmeier, there are 13 Illuminati bloodlines and their descendants, possibly corresponding with the council of 13 at the top of the Masonic pyramid, who more or less run the world. These include those of the Merovingian dynasty (Priory of Sion) and other British and Masonic “royalty” to include nearly all of the U.S. presidents and heads of state worldwide. The inclusion of U.S. presidents in this country in this group was proven in 2012 by 12-year-old BridgeAnne d’Avignon, of Salinas, California, with the help of her 80-year-old genealogy buff grandfather. d’Avignon created a ground-breaking family tree that connected 42 of 43 U.S. presidents to one common, and rather unexpected, ancestor: King John of England. Martin van Buren was the only president not traced to King John.

Others believe the number 13 symbolizes rebellion and apostasy, which corresponds to Freemasonry. The Protestant commentator E. W. Bullinger writes: “It occurs first in Gen.14:4, where we read, “Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and the thirteenth year they REBELLED.” Hence every occurrence of the number thirteen, and likewise of every multiple of it, stamps that with which it stands in connection with rebellion, apostasy, defection, corruption, disintegration, revolution, or some kindred idea. The second mention of thirteen is in connection with Ishmael, Gen 17:25. He was thirteen years old when Abraham circumcised him and admitted him into the covenant to which he was a stranger in heart, and which ended in his rebellion and rejection. We see it stamped upon the very forefront of Revelation. For while the opening statement of Gen 1:1 is composed of seven words and twenty-eight letters (4×7), the second verse consists of fourteen words, but fifty-two letters; fifty-two being 4×13 tells of some apostasy or rebellion which caused the ruin of which that verse speaks,” (“Numbers in Scripture.”). And we have seen that apostasy with our own eyes.

According to the work by Doctor Eng. Franco Adessa and Fr. Luigi Villa of Chiesa Viva, the use of 13 relates to the transformation of the Catholic priesthood into a political organization serving the world government and religion. As stated above, occultists use the number 13 to signify the transformation of man into “God,” another evil Our Lady used the number 13 to warn us about. These same occultists do not consider any transformation complete unless it involves a destruction of the “old man” and even the “old earth.” This corresponds with occult transformation and the Tarot death card.

Sixes and threes

Our Lady appeared six times to the children. As Mark Borcherding tells us in his Guadalupe CD, this is symbolic of the Sixth Sun, or sixth age of man that supposedly began in 2021. It also represents the number of man, for this “new age” today is HIS age. And of course, 666 is the number of the beast, who this author believes was Giovanni Montini, or Paul 6. It is the number of division. Certainly everyone in this age is divided on almost every issue.

The number three seems to be the only other recurring number in the apparitions. Like 13, this number seems to be a sign of both triumph and contradiction, but also fullness, or completion. Three Divine Persons exist in One God, and unless the Trinity as dogma is accepted on faith alone, God and His revelation cannot be comprehended as an historical continuity, from Adam to the present, in all its fullness. Those today who present God as a woman deny God the Father; the Modernists so numerous in the world today have robbed Christ of His Divinity by ranking Him only as another Jewish prophet, not God’s Only-Begotten Son; and the occultists have destroyed the true teaching on God the Holy Ghost by their proliferation of “charismatic” sects, which teach that all men are so favored by the “Holy Spirit” that no Divine teaching authority is needed in the world. This explains the Angel’s emphasis on the Trinity, for the denial of this dogma is the source of today’s errors. It is not a coincidence that the Albigensians also denied this dogma of the faith. And it is said of Antichrist that he will deny the dogma of the Trinity.

• Three times the prophet Elias went to look out over the sea that is the representation of mankind, before he saw the tiny footprint of Our Lady of Mount Carmel who Lucia dos Santos saw in the sky at the time of the Fatima miracle October 13. And after seeing this footprint, he ordered the enemies of God to be destroyed.
• Three times Our Lord asked His Father to let the chalice pass from Him in Gesthemane
• Three crosses on the hill that was Calvary — the good thief on the right of Christ, the bad thief on the left, representing the goats and the sheep, the just and the damned.
• Three children saw Our Lady. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there shall I be in the midst of them.” Two women and one man remained at the foot of the Cross during Christ’s physical Passion. These three children represented those who would remain faithful during the passion of His Mystical Body.
• The Angel appeared to the children three times, he encouraged devotion to the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity, and he repeated the prayers for the conversion of sinners and to the Blessed Trinity three times.
• One secret containing three parts was given to the children and during the solar miracle, Lucia saw what some have said represent the three sets of mysteries of the rosary—the Holy Family (Joyful), Our Lady of Sorrows (Sorrowful), and Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Glorious).
• Three stood with Our Lord at the foot of the Cross.
• Three went with Jesus to Gesthemane and three times there Our Lord asked them, who had professed to love Him best, to watch and pray with Him; but they slept instead.
• Three little children would atone for this neglect and the neglect of the inhabitants of the entire world.
• Three times Peter would deny his Master.
• Three times Our Lord fell while carrying His Cross, three crosses stood on Golgotha, three hours Our Lord hung there in agony, there to die at three o’clock.
• Some believe that the third secret of Fatima predicted the arrival of the three days of darkness

If there is a number that identifies the Passion of Our Lord, three must be that number. The Passion, also, of His Mystical Body would bear the number three, and Pope Pius XII, in his Mystici Corporis, verified that this Passion would be re-enacted in His Mystical Body. And yet three is the number of triumph, for three women went to Our Lord’s tomb, to find that He had arisen on the third day; Christ confirmed Peter’s faith three times, after his denial, when officially appointing him as pope; and following His Resurrection, Our Lord appeared to the Apostles three times before ascending to His Father in Heaven. As Christ foretold, His enemies would destroy the temple that was His Body, but in three days He would raise it up again. The third day is the one destined for this victory, and it is signified by the third or last secret, given by Our Lady to the children. This secret surely announced the third apocalyptic “woe;” the final persecution of the Church that will complete Christ’s Mystical Passion, that His Mystical Body might also rise again, either in a restoration of the Church or to dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem.

The three days of darkness many believe will take place when Christ comes to purge the earth of His enemies may be connected to a pole shift that is said to be nearing in the next year or two. Pole shifts are alluded to in the Bible.

Names and Places

Fatima was named after the Muslim wife of one of Portugal’s first national heroes. This historical Fatima converted to Catholicism, taking for her baptismal name “Oureana.” which means “heavenly one.” After Oureana’s death her husband, Don Goncalvo, became a monk. Some years after his profession, the abbot of his monastery had Fatima’s remains brought to a little church and a convent was built in honor of Our Lady. Hence the name Fatima — located in the heart or exact center of Portugal and playing a major role in the birth of that nation. Interestingly enough, Fatima also means “Lady” in Arabic, and one French etymological dictionary even gives, as the root meaning of this word, “She who brings peace.” Established as a nation by papal recognition, Portugal’s independence from the Moors was won by Alfonso Henriques in the 12^th century. Might this not symbolize the conversion of the Muslims?

Another national hero, (Bl.) Nuno Alvarez, fought to free Portugal from Spanish dominion during the era of the Western Schism, when Spain was championing the antipope Clement VII and attempting to place a pretender on the throne of Portugal. Bl. Nuno had Our Lady’s image placed on his standards and together with the King of Portugal, knelt before engaging in battle and promised Our Lady to build a magnificent monastery in her honor if she would favor him with victory. The vow to build the monastery was made August 13 and the victory won August 15! Battle Abbey was duly built at Ourem, and Alvarez was made Count of Ourem. Toward the end of his life he renounced all his titles and entered a Carmelite monastery in Lisbon, where he took the name Brother Nuno of Mary. There he built, in Our Lady’s honor, the grand Carmelite convent of Lisbon complete with a church that contained six chapels honoring Our Lady under different titles. Not content with this, he built six more churches and a hermitage in honor of Our Lady. He died in the service of his heavenly Queen, and upon his death his battle sword, engraved with the word Maria, was laid at the feet of the statue of the prophet Elias at the Carmelite monastery in Lisbon — Elias, who had first beheld the humble and pure little foot-cloud that symbolized Our Lady’s crushing of the serpent.

Portugal abounds in royal instances of honor of and dedication to Our Lady. Most impressive among all these incidents was the dedication, by King John IV, of Portugal to the Immaculate Conception in 1646. It was not by chance that Our Lady brought her message to Fatima; great graces had been won from her by that nation in a continuous flow for centuries. Nor was it by chance that that she chose to appear at the Cova de Ira. Fourteen centuries earlier, the holy virgin-martyr St. Iria — or Irene — had hallowed this ground by her blood, spilled at the hands of an assassin sent by her disgruntled suitor. Grace begets grace.

But we must not omit the most neglected link that the single word Fatima provides us with, for this is what all the commentators on the message have done for decades. Taking their name from Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima, there exists a secret sect called the Fatimites. Historically this sect is descended from the Muslim Karmathites and is parent group to the Muslim sect known as the Assassins. (This we have on the authority of the Cardinal of Chile and the conspiracy expert Nesta Webster.) This sect, swimming in the midst of so many similar sects today, would not be so remarkable if it were not for one small detail — the Fatimites are identified by both the Cardinal and Webster as the prototype group on which the Illuminati was modeled. Now any modern-day authority on Communism can quickly confirm the fact that Communism was masterminded by the Bavarian Illuminatists headed up by Adam Weishaupt.

The Cardinal of Chile relates, in his well-known work on Freemasonry, that the Karmathites, (from which the Fatimites are descended), practiced common ownership of goods and women (Communism), as did the Pythagoreans, Essenes and other pre-Christian groups warmly embraced by Freemasonry. He further relates that the Fatimites’ primary goal, (here he quotes Van Hammer) was to promote the destruction “of every principle of religion and morality.” Webster goes into great detail in describing the organization and functions of the sect in order to prove that this method of operation and initiation was the veritable foundation stone of European Freemasonry, and that the “ancient Egyptian wisdom” (Gnosis) of the Grand Lodge of Cairo was preserved. This helps explain why Communism appears on the Masonic pyramid as one of its thirteen levels of initiation.

One other note about the Assassins. It seems a little too coincidental that this particular group derives its name from the drug hashish, which the members of this group imbibed before being sent out on their gangland-style killing missions. It also is said that they were placed under a hypnotic trance and engaged in orgies while under the influence of the drug before receiving their orders — the murder of high-ranking individuals in rival sects. Three things come to mind here. First, this points to Masonic (Mafia and other) hit squads; second to the proliferation of marijuana use and its potential for murderous acts; and third to the control many cultistic sects and gangs (M-13!) exercise over their followers by encouraging drug use.

Research shows Shatter or hash oil, a marijuana extract, has a level of 70-90 percent THC content. Other types of marijuana extracts, also edible THC products today, can approach that “high.” The average high-end THC content is just under 30 percent. Doctors will readily admit that the body adapts to the THC eventually, meaning to obtain the same high more THC must be ingested over time. Does anyone out there really want to speculate, accounting for individual metabolic differences and personalities, just how much THC it would take to put the average user over the edge?  Or how long it will be before those now using the under 30 percent variety will advance to the extracts?

The Trinity

The Angel’s prayer to the Trinity is another indication of the number three used in reference to the Fatima message. Why is the Trinity singled out by the Angel as particularly outraged in these times? The heresies concerning the Trinity are generally assumed to have been resolved in the early days of the Church. Yet as we have already learned here, many of these heresies are with us once again, particularly those promoted by the Masonic sect. At the time Our Lady came to Fatima, a particularly pernicious heresy born of Jewish/Masonic origin was alive in the mind of a man who claimed to be a Catholic most especially devoted to Our Lady of Sorrows. That man was Leon Bloy — friend of Jacques Maritain, who in turn was the close friend of Giovanni Montini, (Paul 6). Bloy subscribed to an ancient Gnostic heresy which taught that God had a female counterpart to account for His acts of “generation,” (creation). This “creative activity” of God was identified with the Holy Ghost or “Holy Spirit” as those of Bloy’s persuasion prefer to call this entity today. The Gnostics identified her as Barbelo, and thus were called Barbelo-Gnostics.

The idea of God as a woman, popular with feminists today, can be traced to this teaching. As Gnosticism progressed and mingled with other sects, the teachings of the Ophites and Naassenes, who worshipped the serpent as the first created being who possessed all wisdom, were mixed in with Barbelo-Gnostic teachings. Mgr. Cristiani, in his book Satan in the Modern World relates that in 1957 a work appeared written by one R. Barbeau that identified Leon Bloy as a confirmed Satanist. Based on correspondence from Bloy himself, Barbeau revealed that Bloy revered Satan as the Holy Ghost. This new twist on Barbelo Gnosticism resulted from the influence of the above-mentioned sects that later introduced serpent worship. But Bloy takes the female spirit idea one step farther — he identifies this Barbelo spirit as Our Lady and Satan at the same time. This idea can be identified as Gnostic dualism, which later became Manichaean dualism and was carried on into Catharism. Today the Mormons espouse this same heresy.

It is the belief that God is both good and evil; that the “bad” God the Father created matter, all of which is evil, while the “good” God (Jesus) was pure spirit who only appeared to assume a human body, but who could not have done so because that body was evil. As a result, the Gnostics taught that the Resurrection never occurred because no physical body ever existed in the first place, so there could be no triumph over death. This of course denies that Christ ever had a human nature, another heresy of the early Christian era.

Our Lady is identified with the serpent by these heretics because she is the new Eve. Eve was the first to “communicate” with the serpent, and to receive all “knowledge” by eating the forbidden fruit. The implication is that this communication was of a sexual nature, but then the entire Gnostic “illumination” is centered around sexual functions. That such a horrendous thing could be insinuated about Our Lady is indeed monstrous, but then heresy is a truly monstrous thing. Bloy and his Gnostic friends understand Our Lady’s “triumph” over the serpent in an entirely different way than the Church herself understands it. Bloy believes that this triumph will be the winning, by Our Lady, of God’s forgiveness of Satan and the banishment of hell, a heresy condemned by Pope Vigilius in the sixth century (DZ 211). This heresy was formally taught by “Cardinal” Karol Wojtyla in the presence of Paul 6. Bloy believed that the “sorrow” exhibited by Our Lady in this last 100 years or so has been the expression of her sadness over the fact that Satan has been exiled from heaven and is so little appreciated, according to Bloy. Leon Bloy believed that he was the prophet of the Parousia (Second Coming) and that the “age of the Holy Spirit” was about to begin. This identifies this unfortunate man with yet another Trinitarian heresy—that of Tritheism.

Tritheism was first proposed by Abbot Joachim of Fiore about the same time that the Cathars/Albigenses had reached their most feverish pitch. To Abbot Joachim, the unity of the Trinity was not absolute but was rather generic. This left room, of course, for the admission that there might be other “applications” of the idea of “Three Persons-One God”, and the Abbot put forward such an application. He identified God the Father as having reigned over Old Testament times up to the time of Christ; God the Son as having reigned from His birth to the abbot’s time and then he assigns the Holy Ghost to a time of increased spiritual fervor, or “love,” which he believed would arrive sometime in the thirteenth century. In this “assignment” of ages to the Three Persons, the abbot succeeds in splitting up the Trinity in such a way that Divine revelation is no longer one, continuous process but rather a process which “develops,” having different functions in different ages. One Gnostic sect taught that the Old Testament was written by the “evil” (dualistic) God of matter and could therefore be ignored. Surprisingly, a recent Traditionalist work restates this very same heresy, condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council (after Abbot Joachim’s death) but not abandoned by the Cathars, who found it useful as an appendage to their own beliefs and political aspirations.

All this talk we hear today of a “coming New Age” has reference to this heresy and is but an echo of what has existed as the Masonic ideal for centuries. This is not as unconnected as it might seem, for the Freemasons claim they issued in some way from renegade elements of the Knights Templar, and it appears that many of the Knights Templar were infiltrated by avowed Cathars. It is a pity that so many “Catholics” have fallen into this trap of expecting the age of the Paraclete. They are totally unaware of the fact that devotion to the Blessed Mother has been so perverted that these false devotees can pretend to honor her while worshipping Satan and appearing to honor the Holy Ghost at the same time.

Bloy’s disgusting heresy is all the more lamentable because it has so effectively discredited the La Salette message. In 1907 Bloy wrote the book She Who Weeps, dedicating it to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. This book incorporated Melanie’s version of the secret, interpreted according to Bloy’s Gnostic “revelations.” For this reason Pope St. Pius X, in 1911, forbade the circulation of the book and any further interpretations of the secret. This is why we said earlier that this pope had a good reason for proceeding cautiously in approving devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is not by accident, perhaps, that Pius XII finally had the Third Secret of Fatima delivered to the Vatican April 16, 1957, the same year Barbeau’s book was released. Frere Michel de Trinite’s work The Whole Truth About Fatima, the Third Secret, (Vol. 3), notes that long before this date there had been a gradual cooling toward Fatima by Pius XII, a cooling which can be traced, in, part, to enemy forces working behind the scenes.

The misuse of the devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart lends itself easily to the promotion of a false peace that would correspond to the peace promised by Our Lady once Russia was converted. This peace could also be interpreted to be the “New Age” peace, which would follow the “forgiveness” of Satan by God. This false peace began with the “end of Communism” in Russia, corresponding with the reign of JP2. Bloy’s sacrilegious references to Our Lady as the Holy Ghost and Satan also explain why Pius XII did not formally title Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix: he did not wish to create any further confusion on this subject. But only the light of truth dispels darkness. This is the reason why we have now opened the discussion of these unsavory matters — to rightly distinguish between the misuse of what is contained in the La Salette and Fatima Secrets and to determine the bearing of the contents of these secrets on Catholic teaching and belief. We cannot neglect to perform what is requested by Our Lord and Our Lady simply because some might interpret it in an heretical manner, for this is human respect. Nor, when there is sufficient doctrinal basis for what is contained in these messages, can they be dismissed as unworthy of circulation or “optional,” especially when what is predicted comes to pass. Had the Popes themselves used the criteria of St. Thomas to judge these heavenly messages as true or false, these difficulties would have easily been resolved.

In her vision of the Trinity at Tuy, Spain in 1929, when Our Lady came to ask for the Consecration of Russia, Lucia dos Santos stated that she was given the grace to understand the Trinity in a supernatural way. This vision, as represented by artists, disassociates the Holy Ghost from Our Lady in any way save that which is taught by the Church. The picture shows God the Father hovering over the head of His Son’s cross, with the Holy Ghost as a Dove emanating rays from the Father’s chest which descend on Christ’s head. From Our Lord’s side issues the Sacred Blood and the water which symbolizes His union with the Mystical Body, the Church. Beneath this stream reposes the Host, suspended above a Chalice, into which the Sacred stream flows. Under the Chalice stands Our Lady of Fatima, the Sorrowful Mother, her rosary in her hand.

This is much like the vision of the Sacred Species the children saw when the Angel appeared, and the significance is unmistakable. Again the Host and Chalice are suspended in mid-air, but in the later vision of Lucia dos Santos, Our Lady sadly stands beneath the suspended Body and Blood of her Son, as though extending the rosary to her children, while pointing to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. This positioning and gesture are but further proof that the Holy Sacrifice will be suspended and the faithful will only have recourse to the rosary and the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. How much deeper the sorrows of Our Mother must run because of the odious insults offered to her and the Blessed Trinity by neo-Gnosticism and Tritheism. How much more does such a wound cry out for binding, for a true understanding of the interior devotion to these Hearts outside any pretended consecration of Russia.

The significance of dates used by Our Lady at Fatima

May 13, 1917

Eight days before the apparitions began, on May 5, 1917, Pope Benedict XV added the title “Our Lady, Queen of Peace” to the Litanies. In answer to this prayer, Our Lady came to (later) announce that WWI would soon end. Commenting on this “coincidence, Fr. Montes de Oca writes, in More About Fatima:

(Our Lady’s appearance) “was clearly the voice of heaven answering the voice of the Vicar of Christ.” On that same day, (May 13, 1917), Benedict XV also consecrated as bishop Eugenio Pacelli, later to become Pius XII, the “Pope of Fatima.” By using this date, Our Lady indicated the nature of her message from the beginning, as this date calls to mind the intercession of Our Lady as Queen of All Saints. For it was on this date in 1814 that Pius VII, having been held captive by Napoleon in France, re-entered Rome and there crowned Our Lady Queen under this title in thanksgiving for his deliverance. This date also later was assigned as the feast day of St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church; that great champion of the papacy and Canon Law whose De Romano Pontifice was used to formulate the decision rendered by the Vatican Council on infallibility.

St. Robert also defined the circumstances that would determine when a true pope departed from the faith. In his de Concliis, he taught that in the event of a vacancy of the papal throne in the absence of cardinals, true bishops could call an Imperfect Council, but only to elect a pope; it could decide nothing on doctrine. It is also St. Robert Bellarmine who gives us the definition of heresy that qualifies nearly all Traditional clerics now claiming to act on behalf of Catholics as heretics. And last but not least, this saint wrote at length on Antichrist, stating that: “Antichrist ought to be a very powerful king… In the time of Antichrist… all public offices and divine sacrifices will cease,” (De Romano Pontifice Liber III), giving the lie to Traditionalists who believe that they can continue the Church without a true pope. It was St. Cyril, quoted by Bellarmine who says: “Antichrist will obtain the monarchy which was beforehand of the Romans.”

To determine the Marian connections for this essay, we have referred to the Historical Calendar of the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, (taken from Abbe Orsini’s History of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, translation by Mrs. J. Sadlier, 1853). If that calendar is followed under the dates of the Fatima apparitions, an amazing pattern can be seen to emerge. As we have already observed, the world today has returned to a state of paganism even more egregious than that which existed at the time of Christ’s birth. In Christ’s time paganism had been perfected to such an extent that many pagan gods could be worshipped by paying tribute to only one such god, (polytheism). This state of affairs had developed as a result of syncretism, the combination of many different systems, including Judaism, into one system of belief. Having adapted all the old Gnostic heresies as well as other belief systems, the Freemasons have succeeded today in reproducing not only post‑Christian syncretism, but also the precise political and religious conditions which existed in Rome during the early centuries of Christianity. The infant Church’s valiant fight against the Gnostic heresies was waged in order to prevent the Gnostics from adding Christianity to the systems incorporated by pagan syncretism. This would have made Catholicism equal to all the other systems, and all the other systems as capable of obtaining salvation for the believer as Catholicism. This is the insanity that reigns today under the titles of religious indifferentism, liberalism, pantheism, irenicism and ecumenism.

Our Lady’s first apparition at Fatima fell on a date calculated to presage her triumph over this revived system, which she no doubt warned the children about in the Third Secret. For Our Lady was also honored as Queen of Martyrs on this date in 608 by Pope Boniface IV. This feast was established in Rome when a basilica was erected over the old Roman Pantheon where at one time, all the pagan gods had been gathered together for worship. This was Our Lady’s official triumph over paganism, and when the new paganism returned to earth, so did the Mother of God.

The little booklet first printed in December 1951 Devotion to the Sorrowful Mother, (no author; imprimatur on 10^th edition given as March 10, 1958, by Wiilliam J. Blacet, J.C.L, and John Cody, S.T.D), tells us: “The Church calls Mary the Queen of Martyrs because her martyrdom surpassed that of all others…St. Bernardine of Siena says the sorrow of Mary was so great that if it had been equally divided among all men, they would have died immediately… An Angel revealed to St. Bridget that, if our Lord had not miraculously sustained his mother, she could not possibly have survived her martyrdom… St. Basil says: ‘As the sun surpasses all the stars in luster, so the sorrows of Mary surpass all the tortures of the martyrs,” (pg. 6-7). Our Lady did not die the death of a martyr, but suffered agonies that should have cause her death a million times over. St. John, who was immersed in boiling oil and as an old man was condemned to labor in the mines, did not die either, owing to a special grace imparted by God. Both Our Lady and St John suffered “white martyrdom,” as many today on this earth, forced to endure so much evil all at once, seem to be suffering.

“[Jesus] willed that his mother should suffer, for as the Mother of the Redeemer, she was to participate in His work of redemption. No martyrdom has ever equaled hers! Yes, at the foot of the Cross, where the mercy of God celebrated its greatest triumph, Mary was made the Queen of Martyrs, and at the same time she became our Mother, the Comforter of the Afflicted, the Help of Christians and the Refuge of Sinners. Her one consolation at the sufferings of her Son was the knowledge that through His death we would be redeemed,” (Ibid, emph. in copy; pg. 8-9). St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows had a special devotion to her under this title, which prompted him to choose her name. “’My heaven is the dolorous heart of my dear Mother!’ he would often say. “Let us not forget her anguish, and at the hour of death, she will console and assist us,’” (pg. 25). He died at the age of 24, quickly sanctified by this devotion. He was canonized on May 13, 1920. “The person who has been devoted to the Mother of God, and especially to her sorrows, will not be deserted. Mary has rescued innumerable souls from Hell, even at the last moment…The evil spirit once declared by the mouth of a possessed person that no one who had practiced devotion to Mary Sorrowful had yet been lost,” (Ibid., emph. in copy, pg. 28). Our Lady would ask the Fatima children and the faithful to join her in her mission to help save souls from hell during the July apparition.

June l3, 1917

In the Marian calendar of dates, June 13 is given for the feast of Our Lady of Sichem. Sichem was the name of a temple erected by the Samaritans, a group of Jews who broke with orthodox Judaism some 500 years B.C. over the strict observance of Mosaic law. These schismatic Samaritans worshipped the one God under the form of two golden calves placed in the temple, an obvious return to the same idol worship Moses had condemned on his return to the Israelites with the Ten Commandments. A descendant of the Maccabees, John Hyrcanus, destroyed the Samaritan temple, and the Samaritans who survived the attempts by Hyrcanus to reunite the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Israel (by force, for political purposes) went on to found a group of pre-Christian gnostics known as the Essenes. This group worshipped the sun god but held to the bastardized variety of Judaism practiced by the Samaritans. It greatly contributed to Gnosticism proper and was probably the most outstanding example of syncretism in the Gnostic era. That the Essenes were the parent group of Freemasonry is readily learned from Masonic history and philosophy. The Grand Master Mason Pike lists the Essenes 22 times in the index to his “Morals and Dogma,” and speaks of them throughout his work in glowing terms.

In the early days of the Christian era, a chapel was erected to Our Lady on Mt. Garizem over the old Sichem temple site. In remembrance of this event, a church was dedicated to Our Lady of Sichem at Louvain, France on June 13, 1604. A statue of Our Lady placed in this church had first stood on the site of pagan worship in that area prior to the conversion of the Gauls. It was during the June apparition that Our Lady first asked for sacrifices to be offered for the conversion of sinners. The sins so offensive to God were the same sins of which the Samaritans were guilty — heresy, schism, rejection of authority, false worship and, finally, apostasy. Sichem could even be seen as a Jewish prototype of the Novus Ordo church. After all, isn’t the worship of unconsecrated hosts and the secular humanism that led to the institution of the Novus Ordo a return to the same sort of paganism? As Holy Scripture announces, “there is nothing new under the sun.” The conversion of sinners has ever been the foremost desire of Our Lady.

June 13 is also the feast day of St. Anthony, miracle worker and “Hammer of Heretics,” declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII in 1946. This good Saint was a native of Portugal, and even spent some time in a monastery near Coimbra, not far from where Lucia dos Santos would supposedly live in the Carmelite cloister. The Catholic Encyclopedia reports that he was given the title, “Hammer of Heretics” for his tireless campaign against the Albigenses / Cathars and the Patarines, in France and in Italy. (Again, we must stress the fact that the many allusions to the Albigenses which crop up in these external signs are NOT mere coincidence. Our Lady is pointing the way for her children to follow, but she will not carry them down this path when they make no effort to first find it for themselves, or are perfectly able to walk it.)

These heretics sound much like the “hippies” of the 1960s whose belief and practices have recently enjoyed a revival among young people. For the Albigenses denied Christ’s divinity as the Mormons and other deists do today; they did not see good and evil as God sees it; they spurned the belief in Hell and Purgatory and also did not believe in property rights, the legitimacy of war, and the validity of the death penalty. To top it off, they were animal rights activists and vegetarians. Sound familiar? This should explain why we are so hard-pressed to fight these heresies, since Albigensianism was considered one of the most virulent heresies in the history of the Church and one of the most difficult to extinguish. St. Anthony did all he could to stamp out this heresy and his preaching resulted in numerous conversions. But even his efforts were not enough in themselves to eradicate it. It survives secretly today in Rosicrucian rites, the Masonic Templar sect, and it is said that Tarot cards can be traced to this heresy.

Mabel Farnum relates that at one point, while St. Anthony was resting from his conversion labors, he saw that the small friary where he was staying did not have enough food to eat. He asked a good woman to send food from her garden and she delegated this task to her maidservant. At about the time she went to collect the vegetables and fruit, rain began coming down in torrents. The maid persevered however and delivered the vegetables to the friary. Both during her trip to the friary and back home, her clothes remained perfectly dry, just as those of the people who gathered to see the Miracle of the Sun Oct. 13!

Did St. Anthony have a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary? We scarcely know of a saint who did not, and Anthony was no exception. Fr. Louis Rohr, in describing the excellence of St. Anthony’s Scriptural commentary on passages treating of Our Lady, tells us: “To him the Blessed Virgin is the Queen of all creatures, and her prerogatives were constantly in his mind when he spoke to others.” One of the notable works of St. Anthony was his Concordantiae Bibliorum in Festivitatibus B. M. Virginis, a work that explores biblical references to Our Lady, (Catholic University of America, “The Use of Sacred Scripture in the Sermons of St. Anthony of Padua, Our Lady, Rev. Louis Rohr, 1948). In this collection of his sermons, St. Anthony defends the Blessed Mother’s purity and virginity, also her glory in heaven. He tells us that: “Mary is the ‘Refuge of Sinners,’ foreshadowed by the cities of refuge that God commanded to be established [in] Num. 33: 13… Here the Evangelical Doctor notes the difference between the cities of refuge of the Old Law and Mary, ‘the city of refuge’ in the New Law: the cities of the Old Testament were founded for the protection of those who had offended involuntarily; Mary, the new ‘Refuge of Sinners,” receives even those who have sinned through their own volition. Thus Mary is truly the ‘column that supports our weakness.’ She is the Star of the Sea which leads the way through the world to the safety of heaven,” (Ibid).

It was St. Anthony’s firm belief, in all his discourses with the Albigenses, that Our Lady was assumed body and soul into heaven. He was pondering this doctrine, not yet defined by the Church, on the way to his cell one day. When he arrived there, he saw a brilliant light. To his amazement, he beheld the Blessed Mother, who “had come to console and reassure him… ’Be assured my son that this body of mine, which has been the living Ark of the Incarnate Word, has been preserved from the corruption of the grave,’” she told St. Anthony. “’Be equally assured that three days after my death it was carried in the wings of angels to the right hand of the Son of God, where I reign as Queen,’” (St. Anthony of Padua, His Life and His Miracles,” by Mabel Farnum, 1948).  Therefore his fairest Queen not only chose to appear to St. Anthony in his lifetime; she honored him by appearing in his native country on his feast day as well. Surely it is Anthony’s love for Our Lady and the Infant Christ which he holds in his arms that caused her to recommend him in this way. Perhaps this saint, Hammer of Heretics and so famous for recovering things lost, will assist Our Lady in dispersing all heretics and in restoring to the world the faith it so desperately needs to survive.

Another servant of Our Lady, St. Anthony Mary Claret, (suggested also by Our Lady’s use of St. Anthony of Padua’s feast day), plays a large role in the Fatima story. St. Claret “was confided a substantial portion” of the Vatican Council research, according to his biographer, Fanchon Royer. If La Salette was suppressed, St. Anthony’s warnings were not, and Anthony had the assurance of Our Lord that his warnings were true, an assurance confirmed by the gifts of prophecy and miracles. Worn out by a lifetime of service as a missionary bishop and confessor to the Queen of Spain, Anthony knew when he arrived in Rome to do his research for the Council that it would be his last great contribution to the Church. It was a life spent in the service of Our Lady, for St. Anthony founded the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This religious congregation was officially established on July 16, 1849, pre-figuring Our Lady’s appearance as Our Lady of Mount Carmel during the miracle of the sun. It began with six missionaries, (including St. Anthony), who founded his congregation “in a simple seminary cell beneath an image of Our Lady,” (F. Royer).

St. Anthony had a wonderful revelation from Our Lord and His Blessed Mother concerning these Sons and himself, for first Our Lady told him that he must teach his sons religious mortification, so that they might save souls! This is the very message Our Lady brought to the Fatima children. Next Our Lord Himself audibly informed this holy prophet that he would become the eagle with the three woes in St. John’s Apocalypse, (Ch.8, vs.13), and would fly across the world to preach the coming chastisements. Our Lord made St. Anthony, as recorded in his autobiography, understand that these woes would be: “1) Communism and Protestantism; 2) “the four archdemons” — pleasure, money, reason and independence of will and 3) the great wars with their horrible consequences.” (Clearly Fatima was the confirmation of the first and third woes, for Our Lady came during WWI and warned of the approach of WWII if men did not amend their lives.)

Another aspect of St. Claret’s life as a missionary and prophet can be seen in Apocalypse 8:5, where a great earthquake is mentioned. St. Anthony had warned of this earthquake as a bishop in Cuba, several years before Our Lord’s revelations to him, (since verse five comes before verse thirteen). Chapter 8 describes in detail the woes that will be loosed by the archdemons, and the plagues that would follow. The Saint also predicted one of these plagues, (cholera), which killed 10 percent of Santiago, Cuba’s population in one year. The other plague Anthony saw was Spain’s loss of Cuba, which came in due time. Today the first woe he announced (Communism) has decimated the land of his many labors. Next Christ told St. Claret that he was also the angel in Apocalypse 10:1-3 with the rainbow about his head (a symbol of the Blessed Virgin according to St. Alphonsus in his The Glories of Mary) and that he and his spiritual sons were the Seven Thunders in Apocalypse 10:3-4. Apocalypse 10:7 says that when the seventh thunder shall begin to sound the trumpet, the mystery of God shall be finished. The significance of this revelation to St. Claret was explained above.

In light of Fatima, the Apocalypse verses referring to St. Anthony and his Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the Sons of Thunder are a remarkably clear prediction of Fatima and its secrets. To begin with, Rev. Leo Haydock comments on Apoc. 10:4 as follows: “St. John is not permitted to write, but is ordered to seal up the things which the seven thunders have spoken; which circumstances seem to insinuate that the things spoken by the seven thunders were seven particulars of antichrist’s persecution. As the word thunder is generally used in the Apocalypse to denote some disaster; and these seven particulars being most dreadful and severe, the Almighty chose to have them sealed up or kept concealed, lest the foreknowledge of them should too much terrify and damp the human mind.” Concerning verses 10: 5-6, Haydock states that, “according to the interpreters, all these things are not to be fulfilled until some short time before the end of the world.” Commenting on Apoc. 10:1 describing the sweetness of the book in St. John’s mouth but the bitterness of it in his belly, Haydock interprets as follows: “I was delighted to read and hear the victories and the glories of God’s faithful servants; but it became bitter in my belly when I considered the judgments of God upon so many sinners, who by their own willful blindness were lost for eternity. This mysterious book [is] presented to St. John between the sound of the sixth and seventh trumpet or rather between the irruption announced at the sound of the sixth trumpet and the persecution which is then to follow and precede the sounding of the seventh trumpet…” He relates the sweetness of the book to the ultimate conversion of the Jews following the sounding of the seventh trumpet, towards the end of the world. Haydock also says the little book refers to the gospels.

Haydock’s work was written in the late1800s and yet no one writing about Fatima, to our knowledge, has connected it to his interpretation, perhaps for the very reasons he intimates. Our Lady’s seventh visit allegedly was a private one to Lucia that took place shortly before her entrance into the convent, and yet surely she was mistaken that this was the actual seventh time Our Lady would appear. All the other visits were predicted beforehand and occurred publicly. Each of the six times she appeared to all three children and also left messages, but none were delivered when she appeared to Lucia alone. Surely the seventh visit would be public as well. The seven thunders may well be the seven times Our Lady promised to visit the earth in the course of her Fatima apparitions; the children reported that before she appeared they heard the sound of thunder and thought there was a storm approaching. In this author’s opinion, her seventh apparition, however, lies in the future and will occur in connection with the miracle she worked Oct. 13. All the symbolism contained in that miracle points to this.

Seven symbolizes completion and fullness; if we follow the course of Holy Scripture concerning the seven angels with the trumpets (the seven thunders), symbolic of the seven ages of the Church, we see that the seventh angel will sound his trumpet only when “the kingdom of this world is become our Lord’s and his Christ’s, and he shall reign forever and ever,” (Apoc.11: 15). Haydock comments that some believe this describes the end of the world, “but others expound this of the triumph of the Christian faith and Church, when the providence of God [will put] an end to the persecutions against the Christian religion.” Four verses later we find the opening verse to chapter 12: “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun…” St. Anthony and his sons spread the Fatima message long before Our Lady appeared to the three children. This is why our Lord identified them with the seven thunders; they warned of Communism, preached prayer and penance, promoted recitation of the Rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The little book in these Apocalypse verses related to St. Claret was given to the Fatima children in the way of messages simple Catholics could understand. St. John was not allowed to write down what Our Lady told the children in her third secret, yet at the order of her bishop, poor Lucia was forced to put her pen to paper and give the account. No wonder she agonized over this and could scarcely bring herself to do it. Pope Pius XII, like St. John, also chose to “eat” Lucia’s little scroll, which he had delivered to him sometime in 1956, rather than proclaim it. Many of his actions and papal teachings, however, show that he understood full well what was coming. The third secret was entrusted to the pope alone, who, possessing the powers of binding and loosing could warn the faithful of the terrible chastisements that awaited them. Pope Pius XII chose to keep the secret with St. John, but Our Lady had already shown us its essence for our own protection, if we trouble ourselves to read between the lines.

St. Claret was famous for his apocalyptic preaching, his numerous writings, his zeal for conversions, for a Catholic press, for a Catholic library apostolate, and last but not least for his thundering anathemas and excommunications of public sinners. Freemasons attacked him no less than 14 times, but he credited Our Lady for miraculously delivering him from these attacks. In so many ways this little bishop of Cuba was the epitome of what a Catholic bishop was meant to be; a gift from heaven to the Americas, although this great eagle with his woes was given scant attention and was little appreciated. His life and works read like a literal preview of the evils that would prevail in our own fateful times, the evils undoubtedly foretold in the third secret. For this reason his protection against Masonic attack, the persecutions of Antichrist and earthquakes should be frequently sought.

Saint Claret made his last contribution at the Vatican Council publicly, in declaring what his research had already been used to prove. Before the Council proceedings began, while yet involved in his research, St. Anthony uttered the following warning, (later to be reiterated by Cardinal Manning in his book on the Council): “May the Council prove the portal to shelter in the midst of the tempest which, already upon us, is increasing …(otherwise) woe to earth!” In affirming the definition in his speech before the Council, he announced: “The Supreme Roman Pontiff is infallible…The truth of papal infallibility would be clear to all men if Scripture were understood,” (F. Royer). St. Anthony then gave the three reasons listed above as why it is not understood, words later spoken by Lucia dos Santos concerning the Third Secret and the popes. From her mouth also we heard that what Our Lady announced at Fatima is contained in Chapters 8-13 of Apocalypse, and so we learn twice from Heaven itself that St. John’s mysterious book is being fulfilled before us today.

For two days following St. Anthony Claret’s death, a most brilliant aurora borealis was seen in the mountainous area (the French Pyrenees) in which he died — an area that at one time had been the last stronghold of the Cathars his patron saint had so zealously combatted. This angel of the Apocalypse died on the feast of St. Raphael, the archangel, (Oct. 24, 1870). On June 13, 1897, St. Claret’s body was returned to his native Spain. And so Our Lady, in the apparition on this date, honored both of her loving sons, especially the second who had so tirelessly prepared the world for devotion to her Immaculate Heart and had so abundantly prepared the way for her message by his work at the Vatican Council and the declaration of the woes.

Also, on this date already so rich in symbolism, the Sacred Congregation in 1675 issued a decree in Rome permitting the members of the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary to address Our Lady under the title, “Queen of the Holy Rosary.” In some countries also, the feast of Our Lady Refuge of Sinners is celebrated on this date, when the children saw the frightening vision of hell. The papacy, the Rosary, devotion to the Immaculate Heart, reparation, conversion — all these themes can be found in the letters of one date, as those themes were expressed since the very founding of the Church. This unfolding is yet another Fatima miracle, reserved for the faithful by Our Lady until today.

Also on this day in 1525, Martin Luther married a Catholic nun. This was a precursor of what would happen once the flight began from the Novus Ordo church.

July 13, 1917 

In the calendar of Marian dates, July 13 is listed as the feast of Our Lady of Chartres, in France. This feast has a remarkable history. One hundred years before the birth of Christ, the King of the Chartians, Priscus, ordered that an image of Our Lady be carved in an oak tree with the inscription, “the Virgin who is to bring forth.” St. Potentian, sent into France by St. Peter, blessed the image in 46 A.D. He found it in a Druid cave, exactly where it stood when it had first been carved. The Druidic worship was the most difficult of all the pagan religions to overcome in northern Europe. (Today there has been an alarming resurgence of Druidism in northern Europe and among those identifying as environmentalists because of growing occult influence. Many of the Druidic customs and ceremonies can be found preserved in various Masonic rituals.) The only way it could be combated was to sanctify the places as Catholic that had once been Druid, as was done with pagan temples in Rome and elsewhere. Because the Druids worshipped giant oak trees, the clergy began placing in the hollow trunks of these trees statues of Our Lady, since her image had first been miraculously carved in a Druid oak decades before her birth. (One of these statues was found by Malfada, Queen of Portugal.) Today the great cathedral built in the diocese of Chartres is known as Notre-Dame. Until its destruction, it harbored the remnant of the ancient oak bearing Our Lady’s image. Although there were olive trees growing in the Cova, Our Lady chose to appear over a holm oak. Once again, she announced through her choice of symbols the inevitable triumph of her Immaculate Heart over the forces of evil.

On this date in 1865, Pope Pius IX issued a condemnation of Freemasonry entered into the Acta Sancta Sedis, forerunner of the Acta Apostolica Sedis, the official repository of all documents binding faithful Catholics under pain of sin. He describes the sect as being undeniably inspired and directed by Satan himself, “Prince of this World,” and the “Supreme Architect” referred to in all Masonic documents. He furthermore tells Catholics that Satan especially inspires at least the leaders of these sects, and physically cooperates with them. It is no coincidence that so many 13s in Church history can be connected to Freemasonry and that they occurred long before Our Lady appeared at Fatima. This eerie prefigure and explanation of the symbolism she later employed demonstrates the significance of the number chosen to emphasize the importance of the messages she gave to the children.

July 13 also is the feast of Pope Pius XII’s patron, St. Eugenius, who was deposed by the Arians, treated cruelly and died in exile. The Arian persecution, occurring during St. Athanasius time, was much like that we experience today. St. Eugenius wrote to his flock: “I with tears beg, exhort and implore you, by the dreadful day of judgment and the awful light of the coming of Christ, that you hold fast the Catholic faith.” There is indication that in his final days Pope Pius XII also was under siege in the Vatican itself and twice was the victim of poisoning. He died at his summer residence Castel Gondolfo, outside of Rome.

On this date in 1870, the Vatican Council cast the first vote preparatory to the definition of papal infallibility. This council, having convened on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, (Dec. 8, 1869), had enjoyed Our Lady’s patronage and protection from the beginning. There is reason to believe that the definition of infallibility came partially as a result of a petition directed by Our Lady to Pius IX in the undisclosed portion of the Secret of La Salette reserved only for the pope. In her work, The Children of La Salette, Mary Fabyan Windeatt relates that Melanie, when writing down her secret for the pope, asked the priest how to spell the word “infallibly.” (p. 119). Yet the word infallibly appears nowhere in any of the versions of the secret released in 1879 by Melanie. The Vatican never released the version of the secret written for Pius IX by Melanie, who told her superiors she released only a part of her secret.

Our Lady had told her that she could reveal it in 1858, but Melanie dutifully waited for Rome to act. When it became clear that this was not going to happen, she must have released only the part of the secret that pertained to the faithful, not all the secret, and not any personal message which may have been entrusted to her by Our Lady for the Pope. All Pius IX ever said when questioned about the secret was: “If you wish to know the secret, it is quite simple; unless we do penance, we shall all perish,” and “I have less to fear from open impiety than from indifference and human respect.” (Ibid. p. 122) We are reminded here of the reticence of Lucia dos Santos and certain priests, in speaking about the Third Secret, because it was addressed personally to the (a) Pope. There is also another parallel here.

Because Gallicanism had once again reared its ugly head, fueled by the brazenness of Freemasonry, Pius IX had to call a council in order for the definition of infallibility to be accepted, in the sense in which it was truly defined, by the Universal Church. Manning and others speak of the Council’s work as a last chance sort of effort to batten down the hatches of Peter’s bark, so to speak, before the category five hurricane. This hints at an otherworldly sort of knowledge to which only those closest to Pius IX were privy to, a knowledge which most probably came from learning of the Secret. This would explain the unshakeable devotion to obtaining the definition, exhibited by Manning, St. Anthony Mary Claret and others, which the definition’s opponents complained about so bitterly. Broken up by impending war in Italy, the Council was never able to finish its work.

The definition of infallibility was assailed by Liberals, and later Modernists, and was watered down from the beginning. The definition of the Constitution of the Church would have shored up the definition on infallibility, but war and other woes preoccupied the popes, and not until the reign of Pius XI was there talk of reconvening the Council. Bro. Michael reveals in his work on Fatima that Pius XII fully intended to call a Council, but suddenly changed his mind. Wasn’t this the intent of Our Lady all along? If she had asked the Pope through Lucia dos Santos to consecrate Russia to her, at the same time, together with all the bishops of the world, how would this have been possible unless a Council had been called? Isn’t it likely that Our Lady asked Pius XII to finish the work of his predecessor, in order to deliver the Church from her enemies and fulfill her requests? Pius XII did indeed intend to call a council to finish the work left undone by the Vatican Council. Preparations for this council were made between 1950-52, but the pope, who already doubted the council would be successful, had to abandon the idea entirely when he grew ill in August of 1952. Pius XII died as Our Lord had warned — like Louis XIV of France, hedged in by his enemies, with the Masonic-inspired (New Age) Revolution already in the making. The same enemy was only too happy to call a council to dismantle the Church.

July 13 also happens to be the feast of Pope Anacletus, second successor of St. Peter and a martyr for the faith, whose name appears in the Canon of the Mass; the Canon which would be falsified by the usurper popes. Outside these few facts, little else is known about him. He is lost to us in that period when, hidden in the catacombs, the Church functioned as a closely-knit family and generously poured out its lifeblood that we might know the faith even today. Was Our Lady pointing to a return to those times of hiding, closeness and persecution? Already she has shown us so many things. We cannot help but notice, too, that there was also another Anacletus, an anti-pope who usurped Peter’s Chair while the true pope lived in exile. St. Bernard described this pope in his time as “antichrist.” This is the second allusion by Our Lady to such a situation. The contrast of the two Anacletus’ with our own times is almost too obvious. There are simply too many analogies here that have been omitted for such incomplete research to be called simple oversight. The heart of the Fatima message is the papacy, and the enemies of truth have suppressed it well.

Finally, in another reference to Communism, on July 13, 1944, according to an Office of Special Services document, Cardinal Giovanni Montini betrayed the location of clergy behind the Iron Curtain, sent there by Pope Pius XI, to Russian authorities. This ended both Pius XI’s and Pius XII’s attempts to comply with Our Lady’s wishes in securing the conversion of Russia, a mission successfully foiled by the future antichrist.

August 13, 1917

This was the date Our Lady was scheduled to appear, but the three children were imprisoned by Freemasons. This missed date is important because it is the feast day of St. Hippolytus, a third-century bishop who became an antipope but later resigned his position and returned to the Church, dying as a martyr. One of the few of his writings left is his lengthy treatise on the Antichrist. The saint predicts among other things that Antichrist will come as a false universal ruler, a deceiver. During his reign the sanctuaries will be desolate, there will be no public services in honor of God, Christ’s Body and Blood will not be shown. No service will be acceptable to God. He explains that to “accept” the idol (Antichrist), the temple first had to be desolated, as it handily was by the false prophet, Angelo Roncalli. Woe to those who have infants and are raising children in those days he laments, for this time shall be evil like no other, as foretold by Our Lord. St. Hippolytus also writes:

“O blessed Isaiah… let us mark what thou sayest about Babylon. “Come down, sit upon the ground, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit, O daughter of the Chaldeans; thou shalt no longer be called tender and delicate. Take the millstone, grind meal, draw aside thy veil, shave the grey hairs, make bare the legs, pass over the rivers. Thy shame shall be uncovered, thy reproach shall be seen: I will take justice of thee, I will no more give thee over to men. As for thy Redeemer, (He is) the Lord of hosts, the Holy One of Israel is his name. Sit thou in compunction, get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: thou shall no longer be called the strength of the kingdom. I was wroth with my people; I have polluted mine inheritance, I have given them into thine hand: and thou didst show them no mercy; but upon the ancient (the elders) thou hast very heavily laid thy yoke. And thou saidst, I shall be a princess forever: thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember thy latter end.

“Therefore hear now this, thou that art delicate; that sittest, that art confident, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and there is none else; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children. But now these two things shall come upon thee in one day, widowhood and the loss of children: they shall come upon thee suddenly in thy sorcery, in the strength of thine enchantments mightily, in the hope of thy fornication. For thou hast said, I am, and there is none else. And thy fornication shall be thy shame, because thou hast said in thy heart, I am. And destruction shall come upon thee, and thou shalt not know it. (And there shall be) a pit, and thou shalt fall into it; and misery shall fall upon thee, and thou shalt not be able to be made clean; and destruction shall come upon thee, and thou shalt not know it… These things does Isaiah prophesy for thee. Let us see now whether John has spoken to the same effect.” And here St. Hippolytus quotes St. John’s Apocalypse on the fall of Babylon.

So clearly the fall of Rome is predicted. And Our Lady used this date to remind those who would look further than the face value of her apparitions to find it. Also on this day is the feast of St. Maximus the Confessor, who vigorously fought the Monothelite heresy. He was a staunch defender of Pope Honorius, who was accused of teaching this heresy. This major obstacle to the definition of infallibility was finally resolved at the Vatican Council. St. Maximus suffered much for his faith and died for refusing to profess Monotheletism. From the lives of St. Hippolytus and St. Maximus we can draw the following conclusions: Nothing can corrupt the See of Peter, not antipopes, or accusations of heresy made by evil men. Peter will ever teach infallibly from his See, even if he is only reigning over us in union with Christ from Heaven.

And according to the Marian calendar, this day is the date of Our Lady’s death, in the presence of all the Apostles except St. Thomas; this according to the theologian Suarez. Death had no power over our Blessed Mother. Two days later she would be assumed body and soul into Heaven. Nor do the blasphemies and lies of the whore in Rome and those assailing her Immaculate Conception and many miracles and apparitions, including Fatima, have any power over her, or us, for that matter. For she is the one who will come to crush the serpent’s head, and they are the ones who will be thrown into the lake of fire.

August 19, 1917

Because the children were imprisoned on August 13, Our Lady appeared to them on this date instead. On the calendar of Marian dates, this date is recorded as the feast of Our Lady of Jerusalem. In Montecorvu, Portugal, a chapel was built in imitation of Our Lady’s Chapel in Jerusalem, and ancient records indicate that Our Lady herself dictated the plan of this chapel. If this feast has any significance, it must be that of Our Lady for the conversion of her own people, the Jews, who have languished so long in unbelief. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that the feast of St. Hyacinth is celebrated on August 17, and this saint himself died on the feast of the Assumption. St. Hyacinth, incredibly, was one of the first missionaries to “Red” or Lower Russia, as the Catholic Encyclopedia describes that country, the home of many Jews. As might be expected, Hyacinth had a tender devotion to the Blessed Mother. Once on the feast of her Assumption, Our Lady even appeared to him and told him she would answer all of his prayers. Once Hyacinth was forced to flee his monastery because the dreaded Tartar hordes were approaching. Rescuing the Blessed Sacrament from the Chapel, Hyacinth prepared to leave when an alabaster statue of Our Lady begged him to take her as well.

When Hyacinth protested that he could not budge the statue, Our Lady bade him pray to her Son to lighten the burden. This done, Hyacinth was able to carry the Sacred Species in one hand and Our Lady in the other. At his approach, the waters of the Dnieper River are said to have parted for him and his burden as the Red Sea once parted for Moses.

None have yet observed that in asking for the conversion of Russia, Our Lady was really asking for the conversion of the (Khazar) and other Jews there. The Catholic Encyclopedia and modern-day secular encyclopedias all record that Russia has the largest population of Jews in the world. Although recent migrations of Jews from Africa, Russia and the U.S. to Israel have lowered this number somewhat, Russia still houses the largest Jewish population worldwide. When the Brothers Lieberman proposed the mass evangelization of their people to the Vatican Council fathers, some of the bishops saw this as an attempt to bring about the end of the world, although St. Anthony Mary Claret supported this petition. Yet at Fatima Our Lady reportedly said Russia would be converted, and a certain period of peace would be given to the world. While we do not know for certain the duration of this peace, (all indications are that it will be brief), or whether it was dependent on enough Catholics engaging in prayer and penance, we do know that the world will not end immediately after this conversion. Is it possible that the Lieberman brothers could be styled as Enoch and Elias, since the task of this conversion has been especially entrusted to them in Holy Scripture? It was Elias who was the first in sacred history to see Our Lady in a vision.

The feast of St. John Eudes also is celebrated on this date. In St. John’s day, the Jansenist heresy was in full swing and the Jesuits were busily promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart to combat this rigorist plague. France, where St. John taught, is described in one biography of the saint as filled with deserted churches, peopled with lapsed Catholics who had fallen into practices of superstition and magic, disgraced by an ignorant and often corrupt clergy — in short, this saint lived in a period very similar to our own. It was the devotion to the Sacred Heart that God inspired amongst men to win them back from those times. Today it is devotion to the Sacred Hearts as one, in suffering and in will, that has been given to us, and it was first taught by St. John Eudes. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he “…established the Society of the Heart of the Mother Most Admirable — which resembles the Third Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic… St. Eudes dedicated the seminary chapels of Caen and Coutances to the Sacred Hearts. The feast of the Holy Heart of Mary was celebrated for the first time in 1648, and that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1672.He also was the first saint to promote devotion to the Immaculate Heart specifically, winning for Our Lady in 1643 the establishment of the feast of Le Sainte Couer de Marie (Fatima Hope of the World, Fr. Joseph Pelletier, 1954, p. 201).

It is Rev. C.C. Martindale who notes that St. John Eudes’ devotion was intended to combat the formalism of the Jansenists and promote interior devotion, “the inner life of Our Lord and His Mother.” Martindale states that St. John was most anxious to “rescue religion from the formalism into which it had so widely shriveled.” Martindale rightly observes that in this century Catholics had allowed themselves to become” satisfied” with the pomp and splendor of exterior religion only, neglecting true heartfelt (interior) adoration. It was St. John Eudes who said in his work, The Admirable Heart of Mary, that “All the holy Fathers agree that after the death of Antichrist the whole world will be converted.”.

Pius XII noted this same neglect of interior religion in his encyclical “Mediator Dei”, where he writes, “So far is the Sacred Liturgy from restricting the interior devotion of individual Christians, that it actually fosters and promotes it, so that they may be rendered like to Jesus.” Martindale’s most penetrating observation is that visual images are today so lurid and so commonplace, with motion pictures, television, and so on that, “Awe is not to be found in our mechanized world.” St. John Eudes’ devotion to the Sacred Hearts has now been revealed as the remedy for this painful scourge, a means of turning the gaze of Catholics to the Hearts they have so wounded by their disobedience and misplaced love. Love is first and foremost obedience — Christ Our Lord has revealed this to us. St. John Eudes gave, during his lifetime, a marvelous example of the kind of obedience this must be, for the Sacred Liturgy for his feast relates that “He preserved unalterable obedience towards the Chair of St. Peter.” Here again we see in evidence another reference by Our Lady to the papacy. Obedience to the Pope is obedience to her Son; the two cannot be separated.

All that was written earlier on this subject must be remembered here. Our Lord revealed to Lucia dos Santos that the obedience to His law was the sacrifice He now required from us, for unless we love Him, even though it be difficult to obey His laws, we cannot be saved. This includes all the shunning and ridicule, the isolation and even open hatred that loyalty to the teachings of Christ’s true Vicars — Peter through Pope Pius XII — necessarily brings. It is plain to see, all else considered, that this was what He intended here. It may have been in order to draw attention to the error of formalism that Our Lady chose this date, for her choice brings out the fact that it was St. John Eudes, many years before Our Lord’s apparition to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who composed the liturgy and Offices for the feast of the Sacred Heart, defended the devotion from sound doctrinal foundations, promoted the worship of Our Lord under this title, and joined the two Hearts to be honored together. Here we see the importance of doctrinal grounding for popular devotions also brought out by Our Lady.

Today the faithful practice many popular devotions that either have been refused approval by the Holy See in the past or that were never approved by the Holy See at all. Most Catholics don’t realize that such approval depended entirely on whether or not these devotions, (or messages, in the case of apparitions), contained anything contrary to Catholic doctrine. St. Margaret Mary’s message could not have been so easily promoted and the devotion of the First Fridays spread had it not been for St. John Eudes’ careful documentation of the orthodoxy of this devotion. Our Lady draws attention to this saint because Fatima was the completion of the devotion to the Sacred Hearts, as he taught it. The Lessons for St. John’s feast day in the Sacred Liturgy give him full recognition as the author of this devotion, while noting that the Saint’s work was accomplished “not without some divine inspiration.” In later visions to Lucia dos Santos, Our Lord made clear the fact that the victory was to be won by His Mother; Her Immaculate Heart would triumph. This would not be possible in terms of strict orthodoxy if we did not have the explanation of the two Hearts of Our Lord and Our Lady as one, given to us by St. John Eudes and the mystic Berthe Petit. It is not possible for anything on earth to happen without it being God’s Holy Will. Our Lady has won this victory over all heresies as a favor from Our Lord for us, by virtue of the excruciating suffering she underwent during His Passion. St. John Eudes explains, in his work “The Sacred Heart of Jesus,” that “The greatest torture that Our Savior suffered on the Cross…more painful to Him than His own bodily sufferings, was to see His most holy Mother whom He loved more than all creatures together, overwhelmed with sorrow,” (p. 18).

Thus Our Lady, as it were, is seen in her role as mediatrix and co-Redemptrix in a most illuminating way. It is best explained by St. Alphonsus Liguori in his The Glories of Mary. Speaking of that fateful day on Calvary, he writes: “God willed that on this day (Mary) should make a solemn sacrifice of herself by offering her Son to Him, …sacrificing His precious life to Divine justice. Hence St. Epiphanius calls her “a priest,” (p. 394). Later in this same work, this saint explains how, in fulfillment of Simeon’s prophecy, the same lance that pierced the heart of her Son pierced Our Lady’s very soul. Quoting St. Bridget, St. Alphonsus relates that “At the stroke of the spear, the heart of Jesus was divided into two… St. Bernard says, “The lance which opened His side passed through the soul of the Blessed Virgin, which could never leave her Son’s heart” (p. 527). St. John Eudes explains this melding of the two Hearts by revealing to us that, “Although the Heart of the Son is infinitely superior in excellence and sanctity to the Heart of the Mother, God has united these two Hearts so closely that they are always one single Heart in feeling, affection and will,” (Ibid., p. 173). Now we must remember that Our Lady, who is the Mother of Christ’s Mystical Body, is presently enduring Her own Passion by mystically enduring the re-enactment of her Son’s. An understanding of this relationship between Mother and Son is crucial to a true understanding of why this consecration must be made not only to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but also to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. We must digress here for a minute in order to explain why this is so.

It should also be noted that Aug. 20 is the feast of St. Bernard, who like St. Robert Bellarmine was yet another great champion of the papacy. It was St. Bernard who defined precisely how a pope should be determined to have been validly and licitly elected when a papal election is called into question. This he cited from an “ancient canon” in defending Innocent II. “The Church ordains that the preference shall always be given to him who, at the request of the people, with the consent and concurrence of the clergy, has been first placed by the cardinals in the chair of Peter,” (Life of St. Bernard, Ailbe J. Luddy, O. Cist, 1950, Gill). Sadly however, none would remember his words during the Western Schism, but this very Canon would be repeated almost verbatim by Nicholas II in 1059, when he revised the papal election laws.  St. Bernard knew all about popes and antipopes — he was the champion of the true pope, Innocent II in the 12^th century, when Anacletus II reigned from Rome. He tirelessly championed Innocent’s cause and finally succeeded in driving Anacletus from Rome and restoring Pope Innocent to his rightful throne. He said of Anacletus what Pope Paul IV would say in his bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio 500 years later: “We have seen the ‘abomination of desolation standing in the holy place’ (Matt. 24:15)…They that are of God willingly adhere to [Innocent] whilst opposed to him stand Antichrist [Anacletus II] and his followers…” St. Malachy of the famed papal prophecies died in St. Bernard’s arms.

Like St. Anthony of Padua, St. Bernard was a thamateurge; a wonderworker. Also like St. Anthony, he wrote at length about Our Lady. Calling Mary the “Star of the Sea,” he tells sinners to look up at this star and call upon Mary. “If troubled on account of the heinousness of your sins, confounded at the filthy state of your conscience, and terrified at the thought of the awful judgment to come, you are beginning to sink into the bottomless gulf of sadness and to be swallowed up in the black abyss of despair: Oh then think of Mary! In dangers, in doubts, in all your difficulties, think of Mary, call upon Mary…With her for guide, you shall never go astray; whilst invoking her you shall never lose heart; so long as she is in your mind, you are safe from deception; whilst she holds your hand you cannot stumble; under her protection you have nothing to fear; if she walks before you, you shall never grow weary; if she shows you favor you shall certainly reach your goal,” (Ibid. Luddy). It is only what St. Anthony and St. Gabriel have already told us.

St. Bernard and St. Anthony also share the privilege of having been visited by Our Lady. During a serious illness, St. Bernard asked a fellow religious to pray for him. He prayed to St. Laurence, St. Benedict and the Blessed Mother. At the time he was saying his prayer, St. Bernard beheld all three in his cell and they touched him, curing him of his illness. Later, at the Cathedral of Spires, while hymns were being sung to Our Lady, St. Bernard threw himself at her feet and said: “O merciful, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!” The crowd in the Church singing these hymns repeated them over and over again. Then, to their amazement, the statue of Our Lady bowed to St. Bernard, saying: “Bernard, may God bestow upon you His blessings,” (Visions of Mary, Peter Eicher, 1996, Avon Books).

Appearing so closely to St. Bernard’s feast day was no coincidence. Our Lady was drawing attention to his ability to work miracles, his devotion to her, his defense of and loyalty to the papacy and his crusade against the Muslims. All of these are themes which would re-emerge in our own day.

September 13, 1917

This is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Spain according to the calendar of Marian dates. Our Lady, then, was honored under this title long before her appearance in the New World to Juan Diego. The history of this statue probably goes back to the earliest centuries of Christianity. Pope St. Gregory the Great is said to have brought this statue to Rome as a young monk, prior to his election as Pope. He credited it with great powers to counteract evil, and when he became pope, he gave the statue to St. Leander of Spain to help combat the evils there. During the Moorish invasion the statue was hidden in a cave together with the body of St. Fulgentius, to escape being captured by the Moors. Later Our Lady directed a young shepherd to this cave by a river where it was discovered. This gave the statue (and the river) its name, for Guadalupe is Spanish for “hidden,” although it is also said to mean “Wolf River.”

These meanings do not contradict one another. Our Lady is a hidden channel of grace; almost her entire life was spent in seclusion. It has only been in these last four centuries that Our Lady has revealed herself to her children. She protects us, just as she did St. Gregory the Great, from all evil. But most especially she protects us from wolves in sheep’s clothing, that is from those pretending to possess the power to bestow the sacraments, (symbolized by water, or the river), but instead pillage the flock of Christ’s sheep. The Spanish Virgin was credited with the power to repel evil, as having driven the Moors from Spain, and the safe voyage of Columbus to America. The New World Virgin’s apparition was the cause of a miraculous mass conversion of the Indians, triumphing over the human sacrifice offered to the flying serpent-god, Quetzalcoatl, as well as the victory at Lepanto. The image survived the Masonic persecution of the 1920s and a bomb attempt. Modern technology enabled the discovery of another miracle connected to the image as welI — the mirror image, in the Virgin’s eyes, of Juan Diego and the bishop to whom Our Lady sent him, further confirming the miraculous nature of the Guadalupe tilma. The images of Guadalupe, then, both in the Old Spain and the New, would nourish the lambs of the flock and protect them from the wolves encircling the sheepfold.

September 12 is the feast of the Holy Name of Mary. On this day in 1683, Bd. Pope Innocent XI extended this feast, first established in Spain in 1513, to the entire Western Church. This he did in commemoration of the triumph of John Sobieski, King of Poland over the Turks. The Turks had launched a furious attack on Vienna, capital of Austria. During the attack, Bd. Innocent XI made an appeal to all Catholic monarchs to pray for victory. On Sept. 8, feast of Our Lady’s Nativity, John Sobieski and his soldiers went to the chapel of Our Lady to implore her aid, then the king made his plans for battle. On the day of the battle, the soldiers advanced against the enemy with this ejaculation on their lips: “Mary be our help.” Following the victory, Sobieski is quoted as saying, “I came, I saw and God conquered.” Thus through Mary’s help, all of Europe was saved from the Turks.

This date is also noteworthy because it calls our attention to the feast of Our Lady’s Seven Sorrows or Dolors on September 15, and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14. The proximity of these two feasts to each other remind us that Our Lady is united to the Heart of her Son by this suffering. This date was undoubtedly intended to call our attention to the importance of Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. It must be remembered that Our Lord was the one who appeared to Berthe Petit and requested that His Mother be honored under this title. Our Lady, in her innate humility, would never request this title for Herself, but can only indicate her wishes in her sorrowful countenance and by her tears. It was Our Lord who requested obedience from the faithful, and Our Lady who asked us to comfort the Heart of her Son, so wounded by sin. It should appear most humbling and touching to us that these two Hearts have each requested our help in consoling one another. As St. John Eudes taught, it is not enough that they should so love each other; they must involve us most intimately in that love as members of the Mystical Body. As loving children, how can we refuse such a plea?

October 13, 1917

On the calendar of Marian dates, this date is but another reminder of Portugal’s devotion to Our Lady. For on this date in 1142, King Alphonso I of Portugal bound himself and his successors to pay a monetary tribute to St. Bernard’s monastery at Clairvaux, dedicated to Our Lady also on this date. Already we have seen the importance of St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s contribution to the understanding of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and the blessing he received from Our Lady after his miraculous healing form a serious ailment, (see above). All this was only preparation of this great saint for his role as a tireless defender of the papacy, singlehandedly crusading to have Innocent II accepted as true pope over the antipope Anacletus II. He also championed the Jews against unjust persecution and with the other great saints of his day, was the fierce opponent of every heresy. Devotion to Mary is practically synonymous with his name, and so it is no wonder that she has chosen to honor him.

This day also is the feast of Our Lady of Iviron, a wonder-working Icon that is held to be the protectress of Moscow, The Icon is kept in a special chapel inside the gates of Red Square. The Icon was miraculously delivered to Georgian monks in Greece in the year 999. A copy of the image was brought to Russia in 1648 at the request of Tsar Alexis, then suffering from an undetermined illness, in the hopes it would cure him. When an instant cure was affected, the chapel to the image was built and many other cures were attributed to the Icon. Although the chapel was destroyed during the Bolshevik Revolution, the Icon was saved and once again resides in Moscow.

The feast of a holy English king, St. Edward the Confessor also falls on this date. Because he was considered a model king, Our Lady wishes here to bring the world’s attention to the fact that unless world leaders convert and institute truly Christian governments; unless Christian principles are upheld in every land; unless the form of government acceptable to Our Lord is established and He is made King of all Kings, there can be no true peace and no cessation of war. It is a hard pill for the lovers of democracy and “freedom” to swallow, for they cannot imagine owing obedience to any other authority than that of their conscience and the government that guarantees that their conscience alone is king. This is the bitter fruit harvested by the Masonic Revolutions, and only in bloody resistance will that wicked tree be torn up by its roots.

St. Edward, good and noble king, was all to England that her later kings were not. He reformed unjust laws, refused to levy taxes, distributed generous alms to the poor from his own coffers, harbored a great love for the Mass, and was loyal to the papacy. The democracies of today would do well to take note, seeing that this saint excelled in all they fail so miserably to accomplish. We fear, however, that the time for reform is past. Sadly, the governments of the world must rush headlong to their destruction, for already they have reached a point that does not allow them to return. But perhaps in using St. Edward’s feast day as the date of the solar miracle, Our Lady was pointing to the eventual reign of some great leader imbued with St. Edward’s qualities. We can only hope we have not forfeited this reign on account of our wickedness.

Most tellingly, on this date in 1307, Templar Jacques de Molay and several other Templars were seized and imprisoned by order of the French king and the pope, then living in Avignon, France. The prisoners later were burned at the stake on an island in the river Seine in France. The execution was carried out in the presence of French King Philip le Bel and Pope Clement V. De Molay is said by some to have cursed the king and pope from his funeral pyre and within a year’s time, both Philip and Clement V died mysterious deaths. In many ways, it seems the Church has suffered from this curse ever since. Certainly it is a large part of the reason why Freemasons were so intent on destroying the Church. That Our Lady would choose this date to work her miracle of the sun seems to be a direct indication that at some future time, most likely referenced in the Third Secret, she will win a signal triumph over this pernicious sect.

While the Church has been criticized for centuries in executing de Molay, from all accounts he and his men were condemned by Phillip and Clement for doing then what Freemasons are said to do today — worshipping idols, fouling the cross in their rites, unnatural sex practices and feigning allegiance to the Catholic faith. It is generally conceded that the king was “an unchristian man,” as one Catholic historian admits, and proceeded unfairly against the Templars. As a whole the knights were a noble group, but they had been infested by the Cathars and their renegade members appear to have later formed the masonic sect known by this name. All know what the Templars — and their descendants the Hospitallers and Teutonic knights — became. Whether this was the result of a vendetta waged against the Church or simply a continuation of their ancient practices matters little in light of history. The hold they have gained in the world today is responsible for the loss of faith we have witnessed in our lifetimes, and their admitted goal to destroy the Church has been realized for the time being. That Our Lady will reverse this destruction seems to be the hidden meaning in her use of the number 13 so prolifically in the apparitions. After all, it is her own number, (M is the 13^th letter of the alphabet). And in the end, her Immaculate Heart will triumph.

On this date in 1792, George Washington laid the (reportedly Masonic) cornerstone of what was termed the President’s House in Washington, DC. The name, White House, was not officially adopted until 1902. The house, designed by James Hoban, would be three stories tall with more than 100 rooms. Although a Mason in his early years, Washington later reportedly left Freemasonry and even warned his fellow countrymen against it. It has been rumored that he converted to Catholicism on his deathbed owing to his friendship with Bishop John Carroll. Washington is said to have experienced a vision concerning the fate of America, although its authenticity has been disputed. The vision seems to predict America will fight a second civil war on its own soil, but will ultimately be victorious.

Also on this date, several sources report that Pope Leo XIII experienced a vision. Two separate accounts of this vision have been reported in various Catholic works. The most common account given is that on October 13, 1884, Pope Leo XIII collapsed at the end of the Mass he was offering and lost consciousness. When he came to, he reportedly told those who had gathered around him that he had heard a noise near the Tabernacle, a guttural voice and a soft voice speaking. It was Satan addressing Jesus, and he told Him that if given enough time and the necessary power, he could destroy the Church.  Jesus asked just how much time and power he would need, and Satan replied that he needed 75-100 years and more influence over those inclined to follow him. Pope Leo XIII reported that Jesus told Satan that he had the time and power and could do with it what he would. As a direct result of this vision, the much-shaken pope penned both the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel said at the foot of the altar for over 85 years, until its withdrawal by Roncalli (John 23) in 1960. Pope Leo also wrote a long version of the prayer, intended for private use by priests. This long prayer disappeared from the Raccolta in 1934 to be replaced by a greatly abbreviated version. One of the most telling sections removed from the prayer reads as follows:

“Satan…this primeval enemy and slayer of men, has taken courage. Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, in order to blot out the name of GOD and of His CHRIST, to seize upon, slay and cast into eternal perdition souls destined for the crown of eternal glory…In the holy place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered. Arise then O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people pf Goda and give them the victory.” Surely this prayer anticipated the usurpation of the Holy See so feared by Pope Paul IV and set up St. Michael as the withholding force spoken of by St. Paul that would prevent the abomination of destination form being erected by Satan’s cohorts. Notice that this prayer was removed in establishing the “Novus Ordo Missae,” along with the Regina Coeli. Since that time, all can see what has happened to the Church.

The second and more believable version of the vision can be found in Rev. Carl Vogl’s Begone Satan. Rev. Vogl relates that one day following Mass, Pope Leo was in conference with his cardinals and suddenly collapsed. Doctors summoned to the scene could find no pulse or heartbeat. Yet suddenly Pope Leo recovered and recounted a vision he had seen while unconscious. Satan had gained the upper hand in the entire world and was poised for triumph; he had even established himself in the very heart of the Vatican, when suddenly St. Michael appeared “just in the nick of time” and cast him into the abyss with his cohorts. Rev. Vogel also reports another interesting fact in his work. He tells his readers that Rev. Theophilus Resinger, who successfully drove out the demon in the Earling possession case, predicted that Judas soon would appear as the Antichrist, who would be accompanied by the False Prophet.

Given these two reports on Pope Leo’s vision, it does not seem inappropriate here to conclude that this date chosen by Our Lady to perform her miracle relates directly to this triumph seen by Pope Leo over the forces of evil threatening the Church, and Her deliverance with the assistance of St. Michael. It is in fact most propitious that this vision fell on the same day the Church began to address the evils among the Templars that would later explode into full-blown Freemasonry and a blood vendetta against the Church. And God undoubtedly gifted Pope Leo XIII with this vision precisely because he had so courageously exposed these dangers in Humanum Genus, written in April of 1884. That Our Lady blessed the anniversary of the Pontiff’s vision with her Fatima miracle is a fitting tribute to all that has gone before, an unmistakable indication that in the final analysis, 13 is the number of triumph — her triumph.  All the Fatima naysayers today may be stopped dead in their tracks when, garbed in her white Fatima robes as Our Lady of Peace, she arrives to crush the head of the serpent, just as Holy Scripture has always foretold.