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-13th 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 12th 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 16th 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 95th, 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 33rd 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:
- Those Russians embracing Jewish cultural influences laid the foundation for the later introduction of the Kabbalistc philosophy inherent in Freemasonry.
- 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.
- The initial use of the vernacular in Catholic rites had injured unity and led to schism, preparing for a national religion.
- The schismatic spirit and nationalized religion erupted in full force with the Protestant Reformation, which in truth was the beginning of the Great Apostasy.
- The Reformation inaugurated the Masonic sect, constructed from ancient religions which advocated Communism.
- The Masonic sect would eventually consist of a “Catholic” branch, used to more effectively infiltrate the Church.
- 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 13th 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 13th 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 16th 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 13th 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 13th 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 12th 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 10th 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 12th 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 13th 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.
by T. Stanfill Benns | Feb 8, 2022 | New Blog
+St. John of Matha+
A long overdue and important update to the Masonic origins of Traditionalism article is now available here: https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/?s=Masonic+Origins. What follows in this blog piece is directly related to and attributable to that article and should be kept in mind while reading what is written below. It renders even more questionable those dubious “orders” received and conferred by Traditionalists. And it places in an entirely different light the entire purpose and intent of founding Traditionalism altogether. Below we will delve into the circumstances surrounding the examination of Anglican orders by Pope Leo XIII to further demonstrate that the claims of ALL Traditionalists are seriously flawed and incapable of being considered as certainly valid. It does not take a rocket scientist to seriously study Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae and conclude that those today who present as validly ordained and consecrated Traditionalist priests and bishops, for lack of a right intention, manifested externally, possess the same doubtfully valid orders and episcopal consecrations as the Anglicans Pope Leo XIII considered in his bull.
What is the intention required for the Sacrament of Orders? The Catholic Encyclopedia answers: The common doctrine now is that a real internal intention to act as a minister of Christ, or to do what Christ instituted the sacraments to effect, in other words, to truly baptize, absolve, etc., is required. Can Traditionalists become true ministers of Christ if they deny the necessity of observing His command that they obey His vicar on earth? Rev. Bernard Leeming S.J., in his 1955 work Principles of Sacramental Theology, explains that heresy of itself does not destroy the validity of the one conferring Orders provided that a contrary internal intention has not somehow been manifested. That was one of the things emphasized in Pope Leo XIII’s decision on Anglican orders: their intention was made clear in their alteration of the rite, not just the essential form.
Leeming tells us that it is now the universal opinion of theologians that a Sacrament is invalidated by a contrary intention, even a secret one, “contrary to the substantial nature of the Sacrament” (p. 484). He remarks that if the minister is “…so convinced that Christ does not will a particular effect of the Sacraments that they absolutely exclude this from their intention,” then the presumption that they validly confer the Order is seen to fail (p. 493). Traditionalists, from the beginning, have been convinced that bishops alone minus their head, the Roman Pontiff, can constitute Christ’s Church on earth, even though this is clearly belief in the Gallicanist heresy, as proven many times over from Church teaching. In receiving episcopal consecration and executing their episcopal duties, they must intend obedience to the Pope and be included in the Apostolic College. And it is clear from what we see and what is explained below that they absolutely exclude any intention of such inclusion or obedience.
Before we begin, let us remind readers of what Pope Pius XII said in his infallible constitution on Holy Orders. The Pope mentions “essential words,” regarding the form, indicating this is the bare minimum needed for validity. Furthermore, Pope Pius XII states, “It shall be in no way right to understand from what we have declared and ordained above as to matter and form, that it would be lawful to neglect in any way or to omit the other established rites of the Roman Pontifical. Indeed, We ever command that all the prescribed details of that Roman Pontifical be religiously observed and carried out… in case any doubt arises, it is be submitted to this Apostolic See. Below we will go point by point and consider Traditionalist orders versus Anglican Orders.
From Apostolica Curae
Pope Leo: “Paul IV issued his Bull Praeclara Charissimi on June 20 of that same year [1555]. In this, whilst giving full force and approbation to what [Cardinal] Pole had done, it is ordered in the matter of the Ordinations as follows: “Those who have been promoted to ecclesiastical Orders … by anyone but a Bishop VALIDLY AND LAWFULLY ORDAINED are bound to receive those Orders again.”
Comment: Was Marcel Lefebvre validly and lawfully ordained? Could and did Peter Martin Ngo dinh Thuc validly and lawfully ordain anyone? There are grave doubts regarding the valid ordination and consecration of Lefebvre by the Freemason Lienert as well as his own membership in a secret society (see link above). And the validity of the Thuc ordinations and consecrations, owing to Thuc’s mental state was sufficiently demonstrated by Clarence Kelly in his work, The Sacred and the Profane. Without a decision from the Holy See, such doubts are not capable of being resolved, as Kelly admits.
“Where [the Church] judges that the previous orders were certainly valid it permits their use, supposing the candidate to be acceptable; where it judges the previous orders to be certainly invalid it disregards them altogether, and enjoins a re-ordination according to its own rite; where it judges that the validity of the previous orders is doubtful, EVEN THOUGH THE DOUBT BE SLIGHT, it forbids their use until a conditional ceremony of re-ordination has first been undergone” Cath. Encyc., Anglican Orders. And such re-ordination/consecration is not satisfied by simply appealing to a different schismatic Traditionalist, Old Catholic or other sect; a decision must be received from Rome regarding the status of the orders given. Note that even those orders considered valid presume the fitness of the candidate, and as demonstrated on this site in numerous places, very few if ANY Traditionalist candidates for the “priesthood” satisfied requirements laid down by the Sacred Congregation of Rites prior to 1958.
And according to the Very Rev. P. Pouratt, V.G. : “In the administration of the Sacraments, the safest course must ever be followed. According to Benedict XIV, “When there is reason to believe that a sacrament which cannot be repeated and is of great importance, v. g. Baptism or Holy Orders, has been very probably conferred by a minister who had not the interior intention, that sacrament is to be repeated conditionally, unless time allows to consult Rome on the line of conduct to be followed. Rome’s answer will almost always be that Baptism or Ordination must be repeated conditionally” (Theology of the Sacraments, B. Herder, 1910).
The theologian Jean-Marie Herve also comments: “[Regarding] the sacrament of Holy Orders …the public good demands that the unworthy applicant, even if he be secret, be repelled though his offense cannot juridically be proved. The reason is that in this case the reception of the Sacraments is considered to be inferior in worth to the worthy exercise of the sacred functions and the public good of the Church. Moreover, says Pesch, the public good cannot effectively be defended without injury to the latter…” (Manual of Dogmatic Theology, Sacraments, Vol. I-II). So much for the Traditionalists’ pretended concern for the cura animarum!
Pope Leo: “But who those Bishops not ‘validly and lawfully ordained’ were had been made sufficiently clear by the foregoing documents and the faculties used in the said matter by the Legate; those, namely, who have been promoted to the Episcopate, as others to other Orders, ‘not according to the accustomed form of the Church,’ or, as the Legate himself wrote to the Bishop of Norwich, ‘the form and intention of the Church,’ not having been observed.”
Comment: The “intention of the Church” is to consecrate bishops who will obey the pope and rule their flocks under his direction. No one, not Lefebvre, not Thuc, not any other bishop consecrating without the papal mandate could possibly have consecrated bishops with this intention. The following is the consecration form taken from:
The Traditional Catholic Rite of Consecration of a Bishop According to the Roman Pontifical dated 30 March 1892, + Michael Augustinus Archiepiscopus Neo-Eboraci:
The first part includes the form of ascertaining solemnly that the Bishop-elect has the right to Episcopal consecration; of receiving his oath of submission to the Holy See, the centre of unity… NO ONE is to be consecrated unless first the Consecrator shall be sure of the commission to consecrate, either by apostolic letters, if he be outside the curia, or by verbal commission given by the Sovereign Pontiff to the Consecrator, if the Consecrator himself be a cardinal.
“Most Reverend Father, our holy Mother the Catholic Church, asks that you promote this priest here present to the burden of the episcopate.” The Consecrator says:
“Have you the Apostolic Mandate?” The senior assistant bishop answers:
“We have.”
The Consecrator says: “Let it be read.”
Then the notary of the Consecrator, taking the mandate from the assistant bishop, reads it from the beginning to the end: in the meanwhile all sit with heads covered. The mandate having been read, the Consecrator says: “Thanks be to God.”
Or, if the consecration is made by virtue of Apostolic letters [used only in the case of titular or auxiliary bishops, which is not under consideration here] by which even the reception of the oath to be made by the Bishop-elect is committed to the Consecrator, these letters being read, before the Consecrator says anything else, the Bishop-elect coming from his seat, kneels before the Consecrator and reads, word for word, the oath to be taken according to the tenor of the aforesaid commission, in this manner, viz:
Form of Oath
“ I N., elected to the Church of N., from this hour henceforward will be obedient to Blessed Peter the Apostle, and to the holy Roman Church, and to our Holy Father, Pope N. and to his successors canonically elected. I will assist them to retain and to defend the Roman Papacy without detriment to my order. I shall take care to preserve, to defend, increase and promote the rights, honors, privileges and authority of the holy Roman Church, of our Lord, the Pope, and of his aforesaid successors. I shall observe with all my strength, and shall cause to be observed by others, the rules of the holy Fathers, the Apostolic decrees, ordinances or dispositions, reservations, provisions and mandates. I shall come when called to a Synod, unless prevented by a canonical impediment. I shall make personally the visit ad limina apostolorum every ten years, and I shall render to our Holy Father, Pope N., and to his aforesaid successors an account of my whole pastoral office, and of all things pertaining in any manner whatsoever to the state of my Church, to the discipline of the clergy and the people, and finally to the salvation of the souls which are entrusted to me : and in turn I shall receive humbly the apostolic mandates and execute them as diligently as possible.
“But if I shall be detained by legitimate impediment, I shall fulfil all the aforesaid things through a designated delegate having a special mandate for this purpose, a priest of my diocese, or through some other secular or regular priest of known probity and religion, fully informed concerning the above-named things. I shall not sell, nor give, nor mortgage the possessions belonging to my mensa [by mensa is understood the real estate or investments set aside for the proper support of the Bishop], nor shall I enfeoff [exchange land for service] them anew or alienate them in any manner, even with the consent of the chapter of my Church, without consulting the Roman Pontiff. And if through me any such alienation shall occur, I wish, by the very fact, to incur the punishments contained in the constitution published concerning this matter.”
And in questions asked by the one consecrating there is this:
5.) Will you exhibit in all things fidelity, submission, obedience, according to canonical authority, to Blessed Peter the Apostle, to whom was given by God the power of binding and of loosing, and to his Vicar our Holy Father, Pope N. and to his successors the Roman Pontiffs? (https://bishopjosephmarie.org/doctrine/EpiscopalConsecrationRite.html).
The entire portion of the ceremony above involving the reading of the mandate was necessarily omitted by Traditionalists, or something was inserted in its place, depending on the one “consecrating.” (No written form of the “consecrations” now in use could be found on the Internet or elsewhere.) Note that NO ONE is to be consecrated without the apostolic mandate. The section of the oath highlighted above will be addressed later below.
Pope Leo: “That ‘form’ [in ordination] consequently cannot be considered apt or sufficient for the Sacrament which omits what it ought essentially to signify. The same holds good of episcopal consecration. For to the formula, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost,’ not only were the words ‘for the office and work of a bishop.’ etc. added at a later period, but even these, as we shall presently state, must be understood in a sense different to that which they bear in the Catholic rite… As the Sacrament of Order and the true sacerdotium of Christ were utterly eliminated from the Anglican rite…and hence the sacerdotium is in no wise conferred truly and validly in the episcopal consecration of the same rite, for the like reason, therefore, the episcopate can in no wise be truly and validly conferred by it, and this the more so because AMONG THE FIRST DUTIES of the episcopate is that of ordaining ministers for the Holy Eucharist and sacrifice.
Comment: Traditionalists intend to receive the episcopacy in “a sense different to that which they bear in the Catholic rite…” because they deny the necessary subordination of bishops to the Roman Pontiff. Here Leo is speaking of the essential form, yes, but in the context of “the Catholic rite.” The final word on the full extent of this subordination of bishops to the Roman Pontiff was not defined until Pope Pius XII wrote Mystici Corporis. While ordaining ministers is “among” the first duties of the episcopate, a bishop’s first and primary duty is obedience to the Roman Pontiff and inclusion in the Apostolic College. Otherwise he cannot even hope to tend to be assigned a diocese or ordain priests — the rite itself says he cannot be raised to the episcopacy without the necessary mandate.
The words uttered by Traditionalists receiving the Sacrament and conferring it mean nothing. And without that sense, the Sacrament is null and void. This is true of those words uttered by Traditionalists promising allegiance and obedience to the Pope, which, quite frankly, is an outright lie. No truly Catholic man could be considered a bishop who never planned to submit to the Roman Pontiff, be obedient to him as the head bishop, and thereby constitute a part of the Apostolic College. Only those in communion with the Roman Pontiff are considered to be true bishops.
Pope Leo: “All know that the Sacraments of the New Law, as sensible and efficient signs of invisible grace, ought both to signify the grace which they effect, and effect the grace which they signify.
Comment: How can it possibly be that men never rightly vetted as candidates for the priesthood, never trained in properly approved seminaries that preserved and rigorously developed holiness of life, never taught theology and so many other subjects by truly Catholic superiors, who confessed to men having no jurisdiction over them, so were never forgiven their sins or released of any impediments or irregularities, possibly be fit subjects to receive the grace of ordination, far less episcopal consecration?! Has anyone ever heard the tales that come from these so-called seminaries, told by those who have departed from them in disgust???
Pope Leo: “For once a new rite has been initiated in which, as we have seen, the Sacrament of Order is adulterated or denied, and from which all idea of …” (in our case, obedience to the Roman Pontiff and “his successors canonically elected;” also defense of the papacy and the rights, honor and privileges of the Roman Church) have been removed, the rite becomes “words without the reality which Christ instituted.”
Comment: Here we must mention the absolute hypocrisy of Traditionalists who continually demonize the Novus Ordo for changing the rites of the Sacraments, when the very oath of obedience to the Pope above has been entirely eliminated from the Novus Ordo rite (https://www.hrcac.org.uk/Comparison-of-Old-and-New-Consecration-Rites-2.pdf). Christ never intended to institute the episcopacy without Peter as its inseparable head, to whom the bishops owe strict obedience. This is defined by the Vatican Council (DZ 1821). This is an obedience and subservience dictated by Divine authority. Rev. Leeming says that “If the rite is changed, then the minister who uses that rite is presumed to conform his intention to that of the body which uses the changed rite” (p. 495), and an investigation must be conducted; but by whom? Traditionalists then must be ordaining in the Novus Ordo, or Old Catholic rite or the rite of some other schismatic sect, but they are not consecrating bishops in the Catholic rite!
As Rev. Alan McCoy O.F.M., J.C.L. wrote in his 1944 dissertation, Force and Fear in Relation to Delictual Imputability and Penal Responsibility, (Catholic University of America, 1944), under the general heading of “Delictual Acts Interdicted by Divine Authority,” anytime that “…an act is intrinsically evil, or involves contempt of the faith or of ecclesiastical authority, or works to the detriment of souls… imputability is not taken away in such cases since in these instances the observance of the law still urges under the pain of sin, even though the most severe personal hardship or danger, or also the greatest private harm might come from such observance. And the reason for this is that some spiritual good, either of God or of the Church or of individual souls is involved… There is consequently always grave guilt in the deliberate transgression of such a law.” Certainly the use of the consecration formula as it stands involves at the very least contempt of the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman Pontiff, if not contempt of the faith itself.
On page 97, under the heading “Acts that Work to the Detriment of Souls,” McCoy writes: “These are all acts which draw people away from the faith or from the practice of Christian morals and thus expose them to the danger of eternal damnation… Those acts which, by their nature, work to the detriment of souls are listed particularly in Titles XVI and XVII of the fifth book of the Code…bearing the headings: ‘Offenses Committed in the Administration or Reception of Orders or the Other Sacraments’ and ‘Offenses Against the Obligations Proper to the Clerical and Religious State.’” Among the offenses McCoy lists that work TO THE DETRIMENT OF SOULS are: “…the administration of Sacraments to those who are forbidden to receive them…the consecration of a bishop without a papal mandate…the reception of Orders from unworthy prelates…the negligence of a pastor in the care of souls.”
These are the Church’s ideas of what constitutes contempt of faith and a true detriment to souls. So rather than working to save souls, Traditionalists, by acting without the papal mandate and resorting to unworthy prelates are endangering these souls. Given the above, no one pretending to receive a Sacrament and falsely swearing to defend the papacy and work “for the salvation of souls,” as the episcopal consecration states, could receive the very graces they spurn by administering consecration or accepting the same from a doubtfully ordained and consecrated schismatic without the papal mandate. It is ludicrous to presume, as some Traditionalists do, that Pius IX’s allocution Luctuosis exagitati — reluctantly granting bishops dealing with the civil government permission to satisfy the civil demands in certain countries — applies to them today. The allocution intended to facilitate “the care and salvation of souls, which is the supreme law for us, and which were called into open risk” in specific cases only, where bishops unquestionably validly ordained and consecrated and in communion with Rome were experiencing difficulties. These pseudo-clerics are grasping at straws, and they know it.
The situation Pope Leo is addressing here in Apostolica curae deals with an altered rite which denied the existence of a sacrificing priesthood, able to consecrate the Eucharist. Yes, the alteration affected the actual form, but Pope Leo was considering the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, the Consecration of the Eucharist, and the intent to create a sacrificing priesthood. This is not what we are considering here. Here we are considering only the episcopal consecration, The situation regarding Traditionalists concerns a fictitious swearing to a pope who does not even exist and who the men “consecrated” know full well they will not restore to his throne. They promise an obedience they will never be held to and commit to things they will never be required to execute, since they will never be assigned to a diocese. A mockery is made of the entire ceremony. And lest it be thought that this also could be said of schismatics and heretics consecrating validly in their own sects without the said mandate, this distinction must be made: TRADITONALISTS ARE MEN CLAIMING TO BE AND REPRESENTING THEMSELVES AS THE SURVIVING MEMBERS OF CHRIST’S TRUE CHURCH ON EARTH, not as members of a schismatic sect, although in reality that is all they truly are. This is not true of heretical and schismatic sects who generally give only a passing recognition to Rome, if that, and never claim Church membership. Given such chicanery, how could the grace necessary for the effect of the Sacrament be presumed?
Pope Leo: “With this inherent defect of “form” is joined the defect of “intention” which is equally essential to the Sacrament. The Church does not judge about the mind and intention, in so far as it is something by its nature internal; but in so far as it is manifested externally she is bound to judge concerning it. A person who has correctly and seriously used the requisite matter and form to effect and confer a sacrament is presumed for that very reason to have intended to do (intendisse) what the Church does. On this principle rests the doctrine that a Sacrament is truly conferred by the ministry of one who is a heretic or unbaptized, provided the Catholic rite be employed. On the other hand, if the RITE be changed, with the manifest intention of introducing another rite not approved by the Church AND OF REJECTING WHAT THE CHURCH DOES, AND WHAT, BY THE INSTITUTION OF CHRIST, BELONGS TO THE NATURE OF THE SACRAMENT, then it is clear that not only is the necessary intention wanting to the Sacrament, but that the intention is adverse to and DESTRUCTIVE OF THE SACRAMENT…
Comment: The audacity of Traditionalists to claim validity outside the authority of the Roman Pontiff is definitely external proof of their lack of intention. How could they possibly “seriously” use the form when there is no Roman Pontiff and they can reasonably foresee there will not be one?! Whenever the rite is altered, especially when in the rite itself consecration without the mandate is expressly forbidden, then intention comes into question. There can be no doubt that in omitting the necessary mandate those pretending to consecrate reject what the Church does in demanding that Her bishops be approved by the Roman Pontiff, to protect the faithful. And they likewise reject precisely what belongs to the nature of the Sacrament — that necessary inclusion of all bishops as members of the Apostolic College, and subsequently in subjection to the head bishop of that College, the Roman Pontiff.
Clearly the intention of these men in their attempt to become bishops is adverse to the Sacrament and destroys it, since there is never any intent of that necessary subjection to the Roman Pontiff. And in fact their actual intent, condemned by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei and elsewhere as schismatic and leading to schism (DZ 1506, 1507, 1508), is to act OUTSIDE the supervision of the Holy See entirely. And of course this is aside from the proven fact that the authority of the Roman Pontiff and his necessity for the Church’s existence is entirely ignored by Traditionalists, which is heretical as the Vatican Council defines.
Pope Leo: Wherefore, strictly adhering, in this matter, to the decrees of the pontiffs, our predecessors, and confirming them most fully, and, as it were, renewing them by our authority, of our own initiative and certain knowledge, we pronounce and declare that ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void.”
Comment: And likewise those of Traditionalists as well, for lack of intention and alteration of the rite. Of course the cry will be raised, as it always is, “But this cannot apply to our case, we are not the Anglicans,” (or the Chinese, in the case of Ad Apostolorum Principis, or the Germans, in the case of the Old Catholics or the English re the Old Roman Catholics). It doesn’t matter. Protest all you want, you cannot exercise the disputed orders without a decision from the Holy See. And if you don’t have a Holy See to appeal to, you have no one to blame but yourselves.
Pope Leo: “We decree that these letters and all things contained therein shall not be liable at any time to be impugned or objected to by reason of fault or any other defect whatsoever of subreption or obreption of our intention, but are and shall be always valid and in force and shall be inviolably observed both juridically and otherwise, by all of whatsoever degree and preeminence, declaring null and void anything which, in these matters, may happen to be contrariwise attempted, whether wittingly or unwittingly, by any person whatsoever, by whatsoever authority or pretext, all things to the contrary notwithstanding.”
Comment: And from the Catholic Encyclopedia under Anglican Orders: “What may be safely assumed is that it [Apostolica Curae] fixes the belief and practice of the Catholic Church irrevocably. This at least Leo XIII must have meant to signify when in his letter to Cardinal Richard, of 5 November, 1896, he declared that his “intention had been to pass a final judgment and settle (the question) forever” (absolute judicare et penitus dirimere), and that “Catholics were bound to receive (the judgment) with the fullest obedience as perpetuo firmam, ratam, irrevocabilem.” Rome has spoken and the case is closed.
(Note: Of course the above is no official “pronouncement” against the Traditionalist sect, but it is a carefully reasoned conclusion based on Church teaching and Church practice. In the end, only a canonically elected Roman Pontiff can decide the validity of ordinations and consecrations, but we have no doubt that at the very least all would need to be conditionally re-ordained and that the episcopal consecrations would be completely ignored. And as we continue to insist, Pope Pius XII’s Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis infallibly declares all these attempted ordinations and consecrations, performed during an interregnum, NULL and VOID.)
But there is much more…
The Church, in Her practice both before and since Apostolicae Curae was issued, has continued to demonstrate her rejection of anyone claiming episcopal orders outside the papal mandate. The first of these can be found in Pope Paul IV’s Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, where he condemns all those professing heresy, apostasy or schism, be they bishop, archbishop or even one appearing to be pope, forever deprived “ipso facto and without need for any further declaration …of any dignity, position, honor, title, authority, office and power.” Because so much doubt has been raised concerning the laws regarding heresy, Canon Law tells us under Can. 6 §4 that we must adhere to the old law governing those canons, which is listed in the footnotes for the Canons on heresy, and Cum ex… is contained in those footnotes. This alone should disqualify all Traditionalists, but of course they will not hear of it. Then we also have Pope Pius VI’s Charitas, stating that: “For the right of ordaining bishops belongs only to the Apostolic See, as the Council of Trent declares; it cannot be assumed by any bishop or metropolitan without obliging Us to declare as schismatic both those who ordain and those who are ordained thus invalidating their future actions” (see Can. 2265 §1 [2-3]). So as schismatics they lose all power under Pope Paul IV’s bull, which later was ratified by Pope St. Pius V in his Intermultiplices.
Then we have the declarations against the Old Catholics and the Old Roman Catholics issued by Popes Pius IX and St. Pius X. Pope Pius IX teaches: “They have chosen and set up a pseudo-bishop, a certain notorious apostate from the Catholic faith, Joseph Hubert Reinkens. So that nothing be lacking in their impudence, for his consecration they have had refuge to those very Jansenists of Utrecht, whom they themselves, before they separated from the Church, considered as heretics and schismatics.. But… no one can be considered a bishop who is not linked in communion of faith and love with Peter, upon whom is built the Church of Christ; who does not adhere to the supreme Pastor to whom the sheep of Christ are committed to be pastured… Therefore, by the authority of Almighty God, We excommunicate and hold as anathema Joseph Hubert himself and all those who attempted to choose him, and who aided in his sacrilegious consecration. We additionally excommunicate whoever has adhered to them and belonging to their party has furnished help, favor, aid, or consent. We declare, proclaim, and command that they are separated from the communion of the Church. They are to be considered among those with whom all faithful Christians are forbidden by the Apostle to associate and have social exchange to such an extent that, as he plainly states, they may not even be greeted” (in other words, the pope condemned him as a vitandus).
So it is clear that no one is considered a bishop who is not in communion with Peter. And Traditionalists may want to think about supporting these impersonators given the excommunication pronounced above. Moreover, this is not even taking into consideration the many decisions from Rome regarding the need for unconditional and conditional ordination, decisions from the Roman Congregations which are binding on Catholics, found here under the subheading “Valid and Licit”: https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/articles/a-catholics-course-of-study/traditionalist-heresies-and-errors/true-status-of-schismatic-priests-and-bishops-ignored/status-of-those-ordainedconsecrated-by-schismatics/ .
Well Traditionalists, are you going to ignore the commands of Pope Pius IX on the pretext no one has personally excommunicated YOUR pseudo-bishop? Of course you will, because no one can exact obedience from your all-hallowed intellects. And likewise you will ignore Pope St. Pius X’s bull Cravi Iamdiu Scandalo, issued Feb. 11, 1911, excommunicating the Old Roman Catholic Arnold Harris Mathew and two other bishops. In this bull he denounces Mathew for “arrogating unto himself the title of Anglo-Catholic Archbishop of London [and] all others who lent aid, council, or consent to this nefarious crime, by the authority of Almighty God, we hereby excommunicate, anathematize and solemnly declare to be separated from the communion of the Church and to be held for schismatics.” This bull called Mathew a pseudo-bishop and condemned him as a vitandus. And of course CMRI pseudo-bishop Pivarunas has explained away the meaning of Pope Pius XII in Ad apostolorum principis, condemning such consecrations, by stating the following:
“When there is a true Pope, no bishop may be consecrated without papal authorization, much less to establish a “hierarchy” for a schismatic Church… Some may claim that those who perform or receive episcopal consecrations during the present interregnum have incurred excommunications according to Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis of June 29,1958. However, those who claim this fail to understand the very nature of law and the principles of Canon Law… Pope Pius XII in his encyclical was addressing the situation in China in which the Communist government had established a schismatic Church to rival the Catholic Church. When there is a true Pope, no bishop may be consecrated without papal authorization, much less to establish a “hierarchy” for a schismatic Church… There is certainly no parallel between the situation in China in the 1950’s and that of traditional Catholics today.”
Ad apostolorum principis is not Canon Law, which is indirectly infallible, but a specific papal law, entered into the Acta Apostolica Sedis (AAS), which is directly infallible. Anytime a papal document appears in the AAS, it is considered a document for EVERYONE, a teaching of the ordinary magisterium, as Msgr. J. C. Fenton has explained numerous times before in documents on this site. Entry into the AAS as authoritative was defined by Pope Pius XII in his infallible encyclical Humani generis, also an AAS document. There doesn’t need to be any “parallel.” And speaking of parallels, this is what blows Pivvy clear out of his little mud puddle here. Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, written 13 years prior in 1945, tells us that there is no way for anyone to change the laws of the Church or usurp papal jurisdiction when there IS NO TRUE POPE, not just when the pope is reigning. This also is entered into the AAS and has been available on my website for years: https://www.betrayedcatholics.com/free-content/reference-links/1-what-constitutes-the-papacy/apostolic-constitution-vacantis-apostolicae-sedis/. Moreover, this papal election constitution clearly states in para. 3 that it is issued with “Our Supreme authority,” a clear hallmark of papal infallibility. Of course no mention is made of this constitution on any of the Trad websites unless it is to be dismissed as inapplicable “in our times.”
So do the many Traditionalist pseudo-bishops, all emanating from the same questionably valid sources (Lefebvre, Thuc and others consecrating without the papal mandate), really receive episcopal consecration? Not according to Pope Leo XIII’s definition given above in Apostolicae Curae and all the succeeding and preceding decisions of the Roman Pontiffs. Had the Traditionalist founder bishops been truly Catholic and performed their sacred, bounden duty to the Church, they would have provided Her with a head, but this obviously was not God’s plan for these times. For the VERY FIRST DUTY of any truly Catholic bishops remaining in the Church was NOT to ordain and consecrate priests and other bishops, but to re-establish the head, the center of unity and the source of all jurisdiction in the Church. That they did not do so, and as will be shown below DELIBERATELY refused to do so is even further proof of their true intent — not to continue the Church as She once existed, but to establish yet another counter-church, one without even the appearance of a true pope.
The rest of the story…
Below are excerpts from the first book I wrote in 1990, promoting a papal election. While that book and the “election” it prompted has been the object of sneers, derision, ridicule, falsified accounts and countless ad hominem attacks, even physical threats, there is a reason for this. It was not the “election” itself they objected to, but the basis for calling such an election. After proving that Roncalli and Montini were heretics and offering proofs they were members of secret societies, after carefully explaining from Canon Law itself that Roncalli had been invalidly elected and was never Pope, nor Montini following him, I then observed that all this had long ago been predicted by Pope Paul IV in his 1559 bull, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, and a remedy for the situation provided. The SSPX especially, and others, then renewed their attacks against the bull, which had begun following its first appearance in Spanish in 1978. They continue to malign it today, despite irrefutable proofs that it was completely incorporated into Canon Law under the laws governing heresy and related matters.
No, these Gallicanist pseudo-bishops wanted to hear none of that and they had to make certain that the entire idea of a papal election was beat into the ground, as well as anyone promoting such an enterprise. Even though I long ago left the false pope elected and spent two years on the Internet refuting the errors of his sect, the malicious calumnies and slander continue. I welcome it as proof that the sore point I hit on so long ago actually yet causes them pain for deceiving so many of those intended to be the elect. It is time that some at least become aware of their true episcopal status, what could and should have been done and why it was not done, so that they may understand that this is precisely why we find ourselves in the dire straits we face today. Please read the statements below and ask yourselves why such an election was not conducted immediately following the institution of the Novus Ordo Missae and destruction of the Sacraments in 1968.
It is clear to all save Traditionalists apparently, ignorant of their faith and eager to follow anyone wearing the precious collar or the purple, that every society must have a head. This is considered an indisputable necessity in the Catholic Church since Christ left us this head to speak in His name — this Head and no other, not even, without him, the “body of bishops.” This is explained well by Rev. Clement H. Crock in his Discourses on the Apostles’ Creed:
“In every well-regulated society, some head is necessary. You can call him by whatever name you will — mayor, governor, president, prince, or king. Without such a head, it is impossible to preserve peace and order, much less develop any activity for the upbuilding of a community. Should then, the Church of Christ alone be lacking in what the whole world acknowledges to be a prime necessity for every other institution? Should the Church of Christ spread through the whole world for the purpose of keeping all nations, all countries in the unity of faith and life and not be protected against the unrelenting attacks of enemies and infidels by some visible head? God owed it to His wisdom and His providence to give His Church a visible chief to preserve intact, the deposit of faith and guide the faithful until the end of time. Napoleon, his profound knowledge of men and his genius for organization, saw the absolute necessity for a supreme head of the spiritual world. Hence, to him, is credited the saying, that if the papacy did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. But this provision was made by a greater genius than Napoleon; Christ Himself, when He said: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (pp. 220-221.)
During an interregnum, bishops can only elect a pope
(Some of the following information has been expanded upon and added to the quotes originally contained in the 1990 book Will the Catholic Church Survive…)
“Indeed, Holy Writ attests that the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven were given to Peter alone, and that the power of binding and loosening was granted to the Apostles and to Peter; but there is nothing to show that the Apostles received supreme power without Peter, and against Peter. Such power they certainly did not receive from Jesus Christ. Wherefore, in the decree of the Vatican Council as to the nature and authority of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, no newly conceived opinion is set forth, but the venerable and constant belief of every age (Sess. iv., cap. 3)” (Satis Cognitum, Pope Leo XIII)
“A body without a head is not that (body) to which Jesus Christ, gave the Episcopate full and sovereign. He conferred it on the College of the Apostles, INCLUDING SAINT PETER, who was made superior to all the Apostles” (Henry Cardinal Manning, The Pastoral Office)
- Reverend J. Wilhelm, S.T.D., Ph.D — “A council… acting independently of the Vicar of Christ… is unthinkable in the constitution of the Church… such assemblies have only taken place in times of great constitutional disturbances, when either there was no pope, or the rightful pope was indistinguishable from anti-popes. In such abnormal times, the safety of the Church BECOMES THE SUPREME LAW, and the first duty of the abandoned flock is to find a new shepherd, under whose direction the existing evils may be remedied.” (Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, Councils, IV.)
- Reverend William Humphrey, S. J. — “The function of the electors, whoever they may be — the cardinals, as at present, or others, as in times past — is to designate the person who is to occupy the vacant See of Rome. The mode of designation has not been determined by God by any divine law and so it remains free to be determined by ecclesiastical law.:. (Urbs Et Orbis, p. 272.)
- The Archbishop of Grenada — (speaking at the 22d session of the Council of Trent): “…When any bishop is elected Supreme Pontiff, either by cardinals, or by the clergy, or by the people according to the times, from whom does he obtain the supreme power of jurisdiction? From Christ, of course…. ” Concilium Tridentuum. Editio Goerresiana, Vol. IX, No. 50; Frieburgi Br. 1919.)
- St. Robert Bellarmine — (Here St. Robert is considering the case of a Pope “held captive among infidels, dead, effectively insane or [who] has repudiated the papacy.” He writes): “For the Church without doubt has the authority of providing itself with a head although it is not able without the head to decide about many things… In no case would a true and perfect council be able to be convoked without the authority of the Pope, of which kind of council here we do not dispute; because obviously it would have the authority of defining questions of the faith. For there is a special authority in the head, that is in Peter, who is ordered that he confirm his brethren, and for this also our Lord prayed for him that his faith might not fail (Luke 22).
“Nevertheless, in these [above] cases an imperfect council will be able to be gathered, a council which would be sufficient for providing for the head of the Church. For the Church without doubt has the authority of providing for itself a head, although it is not able, without the head, to decide about many things which it is able [to decide] with the head, as Cajetan rightly teaches in his little work about the power of the Pope (Ch. 15 and 16).“…Previously presbyters of the Roman Church taught [this] in the epistle to Cyprian which is in the 7th book in the works of Cyprian. But that imperfect council will be able to happen if either it is called by the College of Cardinals or bishops of their own accord, who come together in one place” (De Conciliis, Chap. 14, under Certain Doubts Are Explained).
“And in another place, St. Robert Bellarmine writes: “But if a papal election is really doubtful for any reason… [and the pope] refuses to resign, it becomes the duty of the bishops to adjust the matter, for although the bishops without the pope cannot define dogmas nor make laws for the universal Church, they can and ought to decide, when occasion demands, who is the legitimate pope; and if the matter be doubtful, they should provide for the Church by having a legitimate and undoubted pastor elected. That is what the Council of Constance rightly did.” (De Concilio, II, 19). Bellarmine says this because in his lifetime Pope Paul IV, in his 1559 bull, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, gave even the cardinals an indefinite amount of time to determine such things. Paul IV wrote in his Bull that, “It shall be lawful for all and sundry…even for those who participated in the election of one straying from the Faith, or of a heretic or schismatic to the Papacy, or who otherwise presented and pledged him obedience and paid him homage… to depart with impunity at any time from obedience and allegiance to said promoted and elevated persons and to shun them as sorcerers, heathens, publicans, and heresiarchs [without fear of censure]…” (para. 7).
- Francis Cardinal Zabarella — In his work The Origins of the Great Schism (1948), Walter Ullmann relates that Cardinal Zabarella deplored the “incalculable damage… inflicted upon the Faith and the Church if the latter were in the hands of an heretical pope,” something we have witnessed in our day. Ullmann reports that Zabarella favored the calling of a Council by the Emperor and presumed that “good clerics and loyal believers and followers of the Church” would support such a council; and they did. Indeed, the Emperor Sigismund insisted on the calling of Constance, following Zabarella’s reasoned line of thinking. The Church thereby recognizes that whenever several papal claimants exist, the best plan is abdication and the only other recourse is a declaration that such men were never popes. As Cardinal Zabarella wrote: “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.’” This should have been the sole purpose of Catholic Action in our day; instead, no one was even aware of the rights and obligations of the laity to force any true bishops who remained to provide the Church with a head.
- Rev. Charles Journet — (Professor at the Major Seminary at Fribourg): “During the vacancy of the Apostolic See, the Church… possesses only the power of proceeding to the election of a new pope, either through the cardinals, or in default of them, by other ways….” (The Church of the Word Incarnate, p. 480.) Journet asks: “In whom does the power to elect the Pope reside?” Cajetan answers: “The Pope can settle who the electors shall be and change and limit in this way the mode of election.” Journet, in summarizing Cajetan’s arguments writes: “In a case where the settled conditions of validity have become inapplicable, the task of determining new ones falls to the Church by devolution, this last word being taken, as Cajetan says (Apologia, Chap. xiii, No. 745), not in the strict sense (devolution is strictly to the higher authority in case of default the lower), but in the wide sense, signifying all transmission, even to an inferior” (p. 480). And the order for this devolution is given by Cardinal Cajetan below.
Journet tells us that it was during the course of the disputes concerning papal authority versus the authority of an Ecumenical Council in the 15th and 16th centuries, that questions of who was invested with the power to elect the pope were brought up. He records Cajetan’s thinking on this subject as follows: “…The power to elect the Pope, resides in his predecessors eminently, regularly, and principally… the Church, in her widowhood, [is] unable to determine a new mode of election, save ‘in casu,’ unless forced by sheer necessity…. During a vacancy of the Apostolic See, neither the Church nor the Council can contravene the provisions already laid down to determine the valid mode of election. However… if the Pope has provided nothing against it, or in case of ambiguity (for example, if it is unknown who the true cardinals are, or who the true Pope is…), the power ‘of applying the papacy to such and such a person’ devolves on the universal Church, the Church of God”(Caietan: De Comparata, Cap. xiii, No. 202- )04; also, Apologia, Cap. xiii, No. 736).
Next, [Cardinal] Cajetan affirms through Journet’s reasoned explanation: “…When the provisions of canon law cannot be fulfilled, the right to elect will belong to certain members of the Church of Rome. In default of the Roman clergy, the right will belong to the Church universal, of which the Pope is to be bishop….” John of St. Thomas says: “…The concrete mode in which the election is to be carried out… has been nowhere indicated in Scripture; it is mere ecclesiastical law which will determine which persons in the Church can validly proceed to election.” (Journet, pp. 280-281. Journet and Wilhelm both agree that the only function the Church can perform in a sede vacante is that of the election of the Roman Pontiff. It also should be noted here, however, that a papal election law which is infallible, i.e., Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, is not just ecclesiastical law, but a law binding on all Catholics for belief; see the link to this document above. John of St. Thomas wrote long before the reign of Pope Pius XII.)
(End of Will the Catholic Church Survive …quotes).
Comments on the above
Attempts to organize an imperfect council prior to the election push were unsuccessful. The documents I had published at the time explaining how such a council could be convened (in John Beauclair’s Francinta Messenger, Boise, Idaho) and other information were plagiarized and used in the early 1990s to promote the imperfect council idea in South America and this country, to no avail. Had bishops used St. Robert Bellarmine’s opinion alone, and the precedent provided by the Council of Constance, there could have been a valid election using Can. 20 as a template. But this was never what Traditionalists intended. And it is useless to cite the necessity of the papacy — that Peter must have perpetual successors as the Vatican Council and other papal teachings decree (DZ 1825, 638-39, 654); or that denial of the necessity to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is a heresy (DZ 469). It hardly needs to be said that a vacancy of the Holy See is dangerous and rife with the possibility of untold harm to the Church. We have witnessed that firsthand. And the fact it was maliciously allowed to continue by those pretending to rule the Church in the place of the Roman Pontiff is undeniable.
Vicomte Leon de Poncins explains in his Freemasonry and the Vatican that Freemasonry sets up both sides of the spectrum in infiltrating various organizations — the right and the left. This is as true here of the Church as it is in modern-day politics, something we have seen ample evidence of just recently. The left set up the counter-Church in Rome, the right set up its own counter-Church, Gallicanist/Gnostic Traditionalism, and here we are today. Proof of this can be found in the link provided at the beginning of this article on Freemasonry. So all the wasted rantings and ravings over the terrible Novus Ordo and the constant updatings regarding the antics of the usurper clowns have only been a distraction. And it succeeded in preventing the unwary from properly assessing and then questioning the authority and validity of Traditionalists and their organizations. This when Traditionalism is even more offensive to God than the Novus Ordo, claiming as it does to represent the Church we lost when it does nothing of the sort, being only one more accursed heretical sect.
False basis for episcopal supremacy
How do we know Traditionalist clergy actually discouraged a papal election? Well first we have the case of Lefebvre, who was all too happy to blast the usurpers from his lofty throne, while using them to “legitimize” his seminary and sanctioning their John 23 missal, also marital and other policies. You can scarcely consider a papal election when you’re playing pattycakes with the enemy. And then we have the Thuc bunch, plagued from the very beginning with scandal, fraud and disorganization. A recent Internet find shows us exactly who and what all these people were — and remember, Lefebvre and Thuc were bosom council buddies — and what they really believed. Below are excerpts from an April 30, 1983 letter by the Mexican layman Alvaro Ramirez Arandigoyen to Moises Carmona. Carmona, a follower of Rev. Joaquin Saenz Arriaga (an admitted member of a secret society), was one of two Mexican priests “consecrated” by Thuc. The translation of the letter was first printed in the German publication Einsicht. Ramirez is asking Carmona to clarify “the essential complex of questions of the episcopal powers and their importance in the framework of the Church.” Ramirez writes as follows:
“The Bishop of Rome… possesses the universal power of jurisdiction as well as the infallibility, a privilege, which, by tradition, is being recognised and defined for the Bishop of Rome as follower of St. Peter and the Vicar of Christ. But in the strict sacramental sense of the Church, as administrator of the Holy Mysteries, the Bishop of Rome possesses no greater power of office than the other bishops, as followers of the Apostles… It is therefore clear that the Bishop of Rome is entitled to the universal jurisdiction for the election of all bishops of the local jurisdiction. But this election is in no way essential for the episcopal power of consecration in the sacramental sense.
“Meanwhile the bishop, who consecrates new bishops without required apostolic mandate, commits an illegal act of consecration, illegal consecrations and an extremely grave sin, which, by canonical right, is punished with excommunication. But this illegality does not affect in any way the internal value and the sacramental validity, as the bishop has the distinguishing feature of a sacramental authority of power, a MYSTERIOUS, ALL VALID AND ABSOLUTE POWER, which is neither less than the one belonging to the Bishop of Rome, it does not proceed from him, nor can it be essentially been brought about through him.”
“A curve of the Church’s decadence of the latest centuries proves that it always occurs when the bishops cease to exercise their power of authority. The holy episcopal powers, received from the Apostles and carried on through tradition, are of divine right. And here we ask the question which forces itself to be solved, regarding the Roman and Apostolic Church in our historical hour of the present crisis and worldwide apostasy: there is no doubt, that the Roman Pontiff, bishop of Rome, is competent — through holy tradition — to appoint the bishops sees according to his own right of universal jurisdiction. This is undisputable and must not be violated… It is an elementary truth, which cannot be proclaimed loud enough, that the holy, Catholic, visible and hierarchical Church is not founded solely on Peter, but Peter and the Apostles, united in the community of faith in Jesus Christ. According to the divine right it is therefore a duty in conscience for a bishop, who has still remained faithful in the world, under the threat of losing his salvation, to exercise his apostolic powers without restrainment, fully und wholly, so to continue the Church of Christ….
“The bishop…, as well as the new bishops consecrated by him, would certainly not be authorised to elect the Bishop of Rome, because this right belongs to the local church in Rome, which is, today illegally usurped by a heresy (heretic). They also are not authorised to occupy the usurped bishoprics held by the heretics of the whole world, but in agreement with tradition, they may found new churches and provide them with the necessary powers of office.*)… WHAT THESE BISHOPS SHOULD NOT DO, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, IS TO ELECT A NEW POPE, also not to found any kind of sect and also not to adopt an universal jurisdiction by founding a modern religious order, which would not be in accordance with the apostolic intention, (as Lefebvre does). What they should do, is just this: to act the way the Apostles did — and nothing else.
* Editor’s note: Mgr. M.L. Guêrard des Lauriers has published an explanation, which refers also to this subject and its first part has been published already in the SAKA-INFORMATIONS of January 1984, the second part has now followed in the February issue. We shall also try to find authors, who can give us an information about the election of a Pope as such, about its possible realisation under today’s circumstances. Then the suggestions made by Mr. Ramirez would have to be reconsidered. (The editor listed for this article is one G. Resch.)
It can only be assumed that what Ramirez said above was fully adopted, from that point on, by Traditionalists. Shall we begin by enumerating the heresies?
Heresy 1: “But in the strict sacramental sense of the Church, as administrator of the Holy Mysteries, the Bishop of Rome possesses no greater power of office than the other bishops, as followers of the Apostles.” From the Vatican Council: “If anyone thus speaks, that the Roman Pontiff has only the office of inspection or direction but not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only in things which pertain to faith and morals but also in those which pertain to the discipline and government of the Church spread out over the whole world; or that he possesses only the more important parts but not the whole plenitude of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate or over the Churches altogether and individually and over the pastors and the faithful all together and individually let him be anathema” (DZ 1831; see also Satis Cognitum above).
Heresy 2: “The bishop has the distinguishing feature of a sacramental authority of power, a MYSTERIOUS, ALL VALID AND ABSOLUTE POWER, which is neither less than the one belonging to the Bishop of Rome.” (See again DZ 1831; also the decision regarding bishops made by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis and Ad sinarum gentum, that bishops, for all their powers, are still subordinate to the Roman Pontiff.) The mysterious and all valid absolute power he accredits to these bishops is reminiscent of the “magic of apostolic succession,” referred to by Peter Anson in his book Bishops at Large, (p. 296). There Anson chronicles the plethora of sects, many of them Gnostic and occult in origin, which proceeded from schismatic and other unauthorized consecrations in the 20th century. Anson also notes: “All over France, especially in the South and West, little groups of neo-Gnostics flourished. Most of them had their own priests and bishops, for it was believed that the magical rites could only be effective with an Apostolic succession guaranteed to be valid” (p. 309.)” Also the “divine right” episcopacy mentioned by Ramirez smacks of Gallicanism, as does his entire letter.
Heresy 3: “…The holy, Catholic, visible and hierarchical Church is not founded solely on Peter, but Peter and the Apostles.” From the Vatican Council: “The primacy of jurisdiction over the entire Church of God was promised and was conferred immediately and directly upon the blessed apostle Peter by Christ our Lord… Upon Simon Peter alone Jesus, after His resurrection, conferred the jurisdiction of the highest pastor and rector over his entire fold saying, ‘Feed my lambs feed my sheep… To this sacred teaching of Holy Scripture… as always understood by the Catholic Church… are opposed openly the vicious opinions of those who perversely deny that the form of government in His Church was established by Christ the Lord; that to Peter alone before the other apostles, whether individually or altogether, was confided the true and proper primacy of jurisdiction by Christ” (DZ 1822).
“The bishop…, as well as the new bishops consecrated by him, would certainly not be authorised to elect the Bishop of Rome, because this right belongs to the local church in Rome, which is, today illegally usurped by a heresy (heretic).” Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, already available in Spanish as early as 1978, resolved this entire issue, and resolved it infallibly. All heretics lose their offices, and these offices cannot be restored to them. (See the excerpt from this bull above). Obviously Ramirez didn’t do much research regarding the papal election business. The right to elect devolves, as Cardinal Cajetan explains above, and this is apparent from what happened at the Council of Constance, as St. Bellarmine notes. Of course it could never devolve on Thuc or Lefebvre or any of those they attempted to elect, all of them being heretics and schismatics disqualified by Paul IV’s bull, Canon Law and Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis.
The editor’s note to this letter is interesting, and perhaps provides a motive for why Guerard des Lauriers felt the need to arrive at his absurd material/formal theory regarding the papacy. A papal election was not what these “bishops” wanted — they wished to reign as mini-popes in their own little fiefdoms. And therefore today they continue to do so, despite the fact that without the pope they had no other function but to elect a true successor of St. Peter. Having failed to do this when it was possible, they have doomed the Church to Her present state and forever lost the opportunity to remedy this situation. God alone will now resolve it, at His own pleasure and in His own good time.