The Vatican’s Fatima deception

Our-Lady-of-Fatima windowAs promised yesterday, I’m offering here brief commentary (albeit in a lengthy post) on certain portions of the CDF document, The Message of Fatima, that points rather clearly to the tangled web of deceit that is woven therein.

Please bear in mind that my comments are far from a comprehensive review of this convoluted document; there are many other abnormalities to be discovered beyond the ones mentioned here.

Little in this post will come as a shock to most of the regular commenters on the blog, but I suspect that of the larger group there are many who just never stopped to consider the numerous contradictions and inaccuracies that litter the Vatican’s “official” statement.

Perhaps you might share this with others who fit that description in the hope that they will at least take the time to examine the matter more closely on their own.

For those unaware, it is important to know that the public record of quotes offered by those who had read the Third Secret prior to June of 2000 – including the likes of Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), Cardinal Oddi, Cardinal Ciappi and even Cardinal Ratzinger – indicate very clearly that it concerns a crisis of faith within the Church; warning of a great apostasy that reaches even to the highest places in Rome.

With this in mind, one notes that the CDF document immediately attempts to cast doubt on this fact with an introduction written by (then) Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone which reads in part:

Throughout history there have been supernatural apparitions and signs which go to the heart of human events and which, to the surprise of believers and non-believers alike, play their part in the unfolding of history. These manifestations can never contradict the content of faith…

It is true enough that authentic apparitions of Our Blessed Lord and Our Lady can never contradict the content of faith, and yet, the more perceptive among us cannot help but sense that His Excellency doth protest too much.

You see, for the contributors to this document (Archbishop Bertone, Cardinal Sodano and Cardinal Ratzinger) the “content of faith” is not synonymous with the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine so carefully transmitted throughout the centuries.

These men are fully committed to the novelties of Vatican Council II and thus determined to treat the conciliar propositions as dependable representations of the “content of faith,” even to the point of taking precedence over all of the conflicting magisterium that preceded it.

Anything, therefore, that might cast doubt on their conciliar ideology is, to them, anathema, and must be nipped in the bud.

It is for this reason, one senses, that these men are so loathe to publicly reveal Our Lady’s words, as all indications are that her warning points directly to the Church’s “suicide of altering the faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul” (as noted by Cardinal Pacelli in reference to Our Lady of Fatima’s warnings); events that all but the most deluded recognize as having begun to unfold in earnest at Vatican Council II.

Archbishop Bertone states:

John Paul II, for his part, asked for the envelope containing the third part of the “secret” following the assassination attempt on 13 May 1981.

Simply from the standpoint of common sense, this strains credulity.

We are being asked to believe that this pope whose motto, Totus Tuus, was chosen to reflect his deep Marian devotion; a man most certainly well aware of the air of controversy and anticipation surrounding the Third Secret of Our Lady of Fatima, waited nearly three years after his elevation to the papacy to read the text.

Hogwash.

In any event, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, in a statement made just the month prior to the release of the CDF statement, said that Pope John Paul II first read the secret within days of assuming the papacy in 1978.

This makes a great deal more sense, does it not?

Setting aside for the present discussion any speculation as to why the architects of the CDF statement chose to claim otherwise, one can hardly fail to recognize, on a merely practical level, that something is amiss.

In other words, it should be clear already that the contents of the CDF document are less than trustworthy, and only a fool will simply accept them without scrutiny. Obviously, if the persons involved cannot be trusted to speak with integrity concerning relatively small details, much less can they be trusted in matters substantial.

Turning his attention to the consecration of Russia, Archbishop Bertone maintains that it was done as Our Lady requested on 25 March 1984, in Saint Peter’s Square:

The Holy Father, in spiritual union with the Bishops of the world, who had been “convoked” beforehand, entrusted all men and women and all peoples to the Immaculate Heart of Mary…

Before commenting on the text of that entrustment, it is important to note the words of Our Lady as written by Sr. Lucy in a letter to her confessor:

Our Lady said: ‘The moment has come in which God asks of the Holy Father to make, and to order that in union with him and at the same time, all the bishops of the world make the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart.

In a separate letter to Fr. Pierre Caillon (the head of the Blue Army in France), Sr. Lucy explained in more detail the necessity and manner of the participation of the world’s bishops:

So that the bishops of the world be united to the Pope in this Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Pope must either convoke all the bishops to Rome, or to another place – to Tuy, for example – or else order the bishops of the entire world to organize, each in his own cathedral , a solemn and public ceremony of Reparation and of Consecration of Russia to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Clearly, none of this happened on 25 March 1984.

For one, the bishops of the world did not participate as required, and this in spite of Archbishop Bertone’s deliberate use (more properly, misappropriation) of the word “convoke.”

More obviously, that entrustment didn’t mention Russia by name even once!

Of the 1984 consecration, Archbishop Bertone declared:

Sister Lucia personally confirmed that this solemn and universal act of consecration corresponded to what Our Lady wished (“Sim, està feita, tal como Nossa Senhora a pediu, desde o dia 25 de Março de 1984”: “Yes it has been done just as Our Lady asked, on 25 March 1984”: Letter of 8 November 1989). Hence any further discussion or request is without basis.

At best, this is the result of the deliberate manipulation of a cloistered nun; at worst a wholesale fabrication.

For the most part, I will leave it to readers to discover in their research why this assertion is utterly untenable. Suffice it to say that there is much to consider in the way of evidence to the contrary.

I do wish to mention that Sr. Lucy was adamant in confirming, in relatively short order, that John Paul II’s previous consecrations of 1981 and 1982 were insufficient. This, of course, is what made the 1984 attempt necessary in the first place.

It should be noted that the 1981 and 1982 attempts are essentially the same as that which took place in 1984, and yet no explanation is offered as to what rendered that which all concerned understood as insufficient suddenly sufficient.

In other words, one wonders what changed?

Apparently, the only thing that changed is the level of hubris in Rome, which by the year 2000 had reached the breathtaking point where no further discussion of Our Lady’s simple, and as yet unfulfilled, request would be tolerated.

Furthermore, we are being asked once more to believe the incredible; namely, that it took Sr. Lucy five full years to confirm the status of this latest attempt.

All of this having been said, one of the most obvious and accessible indications that the 1984 consecration did not in fact correspond to Our Lady’s wishes are the words of Pope John Paul II himself.

Later that same evening, in a farewell prayer, he said while addressing Our Lady:

We wanted to choose this Sunday, the third of the Lent of 1984, still within the Holy Year of Redemption, for the act of custody, the consecration of the world, of the great human family, of all peoples, especially those who are in such need of this consecration of this reliance, of those people for whom you yourself are awaiting our act of consecration and entrustment. [emphasis added]

[Note: This prayer is available on the Vatican website in Italian.]

Here, John Paul II is confirming, in no uncertain terms, that he knows very well that Our Lady is still, even after his prayer of consecration offered earlier that day, “awaiting” the consecration of Russia as she had requested it.

Moving on to the Third Secret, the official interpretation of which maintains that the vision of a “bishop dressed in white” who is killed corresponds to the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Bertone states:

Sister Lucia had already given an indication for interpreting the third part of the “secret” in a letter to the Holy Father, dated 12 May 1982:

He then provides the contents of that letter.

One should note that even though this letter was written just one day shy of a full year after Pope John Paul II was shot, Sr. Lucy, in providing what Archbishop Bertone labeled an “indication for interpreting” the Third Secret, doesn’t mention this event at all.

In other words, it seems rather obvious that Sr. Lucy saw no connection between the vision of the “bishop dressed in white” and the 1981 attempt on John Paul’s life.

Even so, the CDF statement asserts the implausible notion that Sr. Lucy wholeheartedly approves of their conclusions, as we shall see.

The document goes on to provide a report of a private meeting that took place between Sister Lucia, Archbishop Bertone, and Bishop Serafim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva (Bishop of Leiria-Fatima) on 27 April 2000. It states:

When asked: “Is the principal figure in the vision the Pope?”, Sister Lucia replied at once that it was…

Really?

That’s not what she wrote in her (just mentioned) letter of May 1982, much less is this what she conveyed when she committed the vision to paper wherein she plainly stated that she and the other two visionaries had the impression that it was the pope.

In any case, the CDF statement goes on:

As regards the passage about the Bishop dressed in white, that is, the Holy Father—as the children immediately realized during the “vision”—who is struck dead and falls to the ground, Sister Lucia was in full agreement with the Pope’s claim that “it was a mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path and in his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death” (Pope John Paul II, Meditation from the Policlinico Gemelli to the Italian Bishops, 13 May 1994).

Again, the children most certainly did not “immediately realize” that the bishop dressed in white is the Holy Father.

Secondly, Pope John Paul II was not, obviously, “struck dead.”

Furthermore, even if Sr. Lucy fully agreed with Pope John Paul II that the hand of the Blessed Mother saved his life in 1981, there is no indication whatsoever that she related the 1981 event to the vision attached to the Third Secret.

The Vatican apparatus is clearly at pains to give the impression that Sr. Lucy is fully on board with the official interpretation, and yet, at the very same time, the CDF document attempts to play both ends against the middle by minimizing her competency in the matter.

For instance, the CDF attributes to Sr. Lucy the following statement:

I wrote down what I saw; however it was not for me to interpret it, but for the Pope.

One will note, however, that the “official” interpretation offered by the Vatican does not come from the pope at all; rather, it comes most directly from Cardinal Sodano!

The contradictions continue to pile up as we come, at last, to the rather lengthy portion of the CDF document that was written by Cardinal Ratzinger, the same who confirmed on more than one occasion (prior to the great deception under discussion here) that the Third Secret pertains to a crisis of faith in the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Ratzinger begins his treatment of the Third Secret by insisting:

No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled.

Seriously?

The official interpretation itself very clearly indicates that Third Secret pertains to future events; namely, (and lamely) the attempt on John Paul II’s life in 1981.

Furthermore, no one contests the fact that the future was “unveiled” when Our Lady foretold of World War II in the second part of the message, even going so far as to name the future pope, Pius XI, on whose watch the war would break out.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s intent here is plain; he wishes to imply (as he will explicitly state later on) that while the Third Secret did pertain to the future, that future is now well confined to the past; i.e., it’s time to move on.

Of course, this assertion naturally leads one to question why, if indeed the Third Secret pertained so directly to the shooting of John Paul II, did it take the Holy See more than nineteen years to make it known?

The answer seems obvious enough; it took that long for the masterminds of this deception to concoct their plan for putting to rest for good a warning that speaks very directly to the loss of faith in post-conciliar Rome; a crime for which they themselves bear guilt.

Cardinal Ratzinger, to his great shame, then went on to cast aspersions upon the reliability of Sr. Lucy’s account, asking rhetorically, but nonetheless pointedly:

Or are these only projections of the inner world of children, brought up in a climate of profound piety but shaken at the same time by the tempests which threatened their own time?

One gets a sense for the treachery involved here when considering the comments offered by Cardinal Ratzinger prior to his participation in the scam of 2000.

For instance, he said that the Third Secret, the contents of which he had read, concerns:

…the dangers threatening the faith and life of the Christian, and therefore the world. And also the importance of the last times. … If it is not published—at least for the moment—it is to avoid confusing religious prophecy with sensationalism. But the things contained in this Third Secret correspond to what is announced in Scripture and are confirmed by many other Marian apparitions, beginning with the Fatima apparitions themselves in their known contents.

Did you get that?

He said that it pertains not only to dangers threatening the faith, but also to “the importance of the last times.”

So much for his suggestion that it doesn’t concern the future.

He also very clearly confirmed that the Third secret does indeed concern “religious prophecy,” even warning that its contents, if known, may be confused with “sensationalism.”

In a separate statement, Cardinal Ratzinger even went so far as to confirm that the Third Secret of Fatima and the warning issued by Our Lady at Akita, Japan (another approved Marian apparition) are essentially the same.

At Akita, Our Lady warned, among other things:

The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see Cardinals opposing Cardinals, Bishops against other Bishops. The priests who venerate Me will be scorned and opposed by their confrerers. Churches and altars will be sacked. The Church will be full of those who accept compromises, and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.

Imagine the agonizing memories that must haunt the so-called “Pope Emeritus” as he witnesses this vision coming into ever sharper focus with every passing day.

One can only hope that his guilt will become so overwhelming at some point prior to his death that he will be moved to unburden his soul by setting the public record straight.

After a lengthy dissertation on the nature of private revelation, clearly intended to minimize the importance of Our Lady’s message at Fatima, Cardinal Ratzinger continues:

For one terrible moment, the children were given a vision of hell. They saw the fall of “the souls of poor sinners”. And now they are told why they have been exposed to this moment: “in order to save souls”—to show the way to salvation.

Odd, is it not, that Our Lady was moved to explain this all-too-obvious vision of hell to the children, and yet we are being asked to believe that she spoke not one syllable in explanation concerning the complex vision attached to the Third Secret.

Getting to the meat of the matter, Cardinal Ratzinger continued:

Thus we come finally to the third part of the “secret” of Fatima which for the first time is being published in its entirety. As is clear from the documentation presented here, the interpretation offered by Cardinal Sodano in his statement of 13 May was first put personally to Sister Lucia.

Sister Lucia responded by pointing out that she had received the vision but not its interpretation. The interpretation, she said, belonged not to the visionary but to the Church.

After reading the text, however, she said that this interpretation corresponded to what she had experienced and that on her part she thought the interpretation correct.

More contradiction: Did Sr. Lucy provide an “indication for interpretation,” or not?

Previously, the document quotes Sr. Lucy as saying, “I wrote down what I saw; however it was not for me to interpret it, but for the Pope;” not “the Church.”

Even so, the present document is concerned very specifically with “the interpretation offered by Cardinal Sodano,” who no one in their right mind imagines to be synonymous with “the Church.”

In either case, why are Cardinal Ratzinger and his collaborators so intent on making a point of Sr. Lucy’s alleged agreement?

Again, one cannot help but get the sense that these men protest too much.

Cardinal Ratzinger goes on to assert:

… we must totally discount fatalistic explanations of the “secret”, such as, for example, the claim that the would-be assassin of 13 May 1981 was merely an instrument of the divine plan guided by Providence and could not therefore have acted freely, or other similar ideas in circulation. Rather, the vision speaks of dangers and how we might be saved from them.

This is most assuredly a straw man argument, deliberately crafted to create the false perception that Sodano’s interpretation is both widely accepted and incontrovertible.

There was no groundswell of public opinion from 13 May 2000 when Sodano first floated his “interpretation,” and the issuance of the CDF text some six weeks later, asserting that the would-be assassin of 1981 was merely “an instrument of the divine plan.”

This is entirely bogus.

As to what “similar ideas” the cardinal specifically has in mind is anyone’s guess, but the point appears to be, nonetheless, that anything other than what the “oracle” Sodano provided is to be dismissed as “fatalistic.”

Cardinal Ratzinger is correct, however, in saying that the Third Secret “speaks of dangers and how we might be saved from them;” namely, it is those dangers to the faith of which he once spoke with relative candor.

Perhaps knowing that he offered at least a tidbit of truth amidst all of the fabrications is how he comforts (and deceives) himself this very day…

In any case, Cardinal Ratzinger offers more contradiction when he states:

We must always keep in mind the limits in the vision itself, which here are indicated visually. The future appears only “in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor 13:12).

Again, recall that he opened his reflection by saying of the Secret, “No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled.”

So, which is it?

He repeats this very same sort of contradiction on a number of other occasions in this document. I will pass over them from here on out as the point has presumably been made.

Cardinal Ratzinger then attempts to further discredit Sr. Lucy, saying:

The concluding part of the “secret” uses images which Lucia may have seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration from long-standing intuitions of faith.

How shameful it is to call into question the credibility of this holy nun who was most certainly under obedience not to comment publicly in her own defense.

Furthermore, the implication itself is laughable.

Cardinal Ratzinger is suggesting that Our Lady, who was so determined to make certain that all would know that her message comes from heaven that she provided the miracle of the sun, witnessed by upwards of 70,000 people, many of whom were previously skeptical, and yet she has left transmission of this most important part of her message to the limitations of a child’s imagination.

Coming to the punch line, Cardinal Ratzinger, referring back to the ludicrous interpretation given by Cardinal Sodano for the fourth and final time, said:

First of all we must affirm with Cardinal Sodano: “… the events to which the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima refers now seem part of the past”.

As of this writing, the 1984 consecration that allegedly fulfilled Our Lady’s request was performed just over 31 years ago, and the conversion of Russia and the period of peace that she promised in return are nowhere to be found.

So, there you have it; either the collective masterminds of this document, or the Blessed Virgin Mother, have been duly painted a liar.

I, for one, am crystal clear as to which one is which.

aka-signal

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