The anti "Fatima Crusader" campaign has not stopped at mere innuendos. In a newsletter of that organization it is not enough for one of their writers to write that "the Fatima Crusader is extremist", refusing to elaborate further. (Perhaps he means that it is extremely objective, truthful and faithful to the magisterium.) He insists that in spite of its very Catholic appearance, still "you cannot trust the publication." He fails to write why exactly he makes this statement. (Perhaps he means that you can't trust The Fatima Crusader to distort the truth in order to carry that organization's "party line".) A priest, in another recent newsletter of that organization, with the insignia of that organization attached, issued the overtly libelous claim that, "The Fatima Crusader perpetuates and encourages rebellion and mistrust of the hierarchy."

Pope John Paul II, with expression of serious interest, receives a copy of The Fatima Crusader. The Pope also continues to receive from The Fatima Crusader, thousands of Petitions for the Collegial Consecration of Russia which we have gathered from around the world. We have been advised that "the Holy See is studying attentively your petitions concerning the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

       In reality, The Fatima Crusader promotes exactly the contrary: it encourages resistance against all who rebel against the Pope, the Magisterium or Canon Law, regardless of their ecclesiastical dignity. It is the universal and perpetual teaching of the Church that when the clergy, or even bishops rebel against the Pope, or the laws of God or the Church, it is not only the right but also the duty of the faithful to oppose them. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that bishops are not to be obeyed in all things, since sometimes the directives of bishops go against the law of God, and in such a case, "it is necessary to obey God rather than men." A bishop's order can directly oppose the Law, in which case, the subject is bound to obey the greater authority. Furthermore, a subject is not obligated to obey his superior "if he is given an order in a matter in which he is not subject." (Summa Theol. 2-2. 104.5)

       Cardinal Gagnon, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, in the well-known 1983 interview in The Wanderer, spoke on the subject of legitimate dissent and opposition to erring bishops. On this topic Gagnon said, "much of the fight has to be fought by the lay people in the places, the dioceses and parishes, where the particular distortions have taken hold," and he encouraged groups and associations, "to fight and be ready to work at the parish and diocesen level."

The deliberate policy of distorting Our Lady of Fatima's Message causes gross ignorance of it. This ignorance results in disobedience to the Command God gave to the Church through Our Lady. This disobedience has most tragic consequences. Pictured above is only one such consequence. If the distortion and disobedience is persisted in, then as Sister Lucy has stated. "many nations will disappear from the face of the earth" shortly.

       That organization has suggested that it is somehow wrong to present reasoned discussions about Church matters which are subject to revision. Church history and Theology both prove that in matters of administration, the Bishops and Cardinals and even the Pope can make errors. The Fatima Crusader together with Pope John Paul II have found under further study that the Vatican-Moscow Agreement is contrary to the salvation of souls and the good of the Church.

       The Fatima Crusader has demonstrated this,¹ but that organization's editor has stated in a published letter to Hamish Fraser as well as in a letter to Father Gruner that the Vatican-Moscow Agreement is good for the Church. To quote that editor's letter to this magazine "You can be sure that Nikodim and Cardinal Tisserant were making an agreement which will ultimately serve not militant atheism, but the promise of Our Lady of Fatima ... that Russia will be converted." The editor of that publication, in his letter to Hamish Fraser, editor of Approaches, apparently infers that the Vatican-Moscow Agreement should be kept secret.

       The apparent policy of the oft-referred-to organization of blind obedience to some ecclesiastical dignitaries is not only contrary to the teaching of the Church, but it is an essentially Communist principle. The Second Vatican Council expressly prescribes "reasoned obedience" to the legitimate ecclesiastical authority. That organization, like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, tolerates no dissent from the official "party line" - no matter how reasonable that dissent, no matter how grave the abuse of authority. The idea that you must never oppose the bishops who are in serious error, or that you must never recognize any voice that is not "official" has its parallel in the policy of Lenin: "All power to the Soviets" - recognize no one else.

       The organization's subtle and professional methods of spreading disinformation and smears against their perceived opponents, and attempts to silence any voice that deviates from their own "party line", bear a striking resemblance to the practices of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB). I am not here suggesting that the referred to lay association has been infiltrated and taken over by the sinister forces of the Left (although suspicions to that effect may be justified), but I am merely pointing out the conspicuous fact that their policies and practices, far from showing any basis in Christian principles, reflect an affinity to Marxist tenets, and a politicization that has turned the organization into an efficient tool of the Ostpolitik that was founded on the Vatican-Moscow Agreement.

       Do not be surprised when you find them quoting the head of the Soviet government to support their suggested proposition, repeated more than once, that the conversion of Russia has already begun - thereby lessening the urgency of the Fatima Message. (See their publication pg. 4, May/June 1986.) They thereby at the same time help perpetrate the gross deceit of the Moscow and the Communist "party line", by suggesting that it might be about to cease its war against God and the Catholic Church. This is an obvious falsehood.

       Our Lady of Fatima warned us that "Russia would spread its errors throughout the world". Would you have expected them to be spread under Our Lady of Fatima's name? It would be a masterstroke of the devil.

       In the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church, to a great extent, is but an instrument of the Secret Police. Oleg Penkovskiy, a Colonel in the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) confirmed this fact in his papers as have many KGB officers who defected to the West. Alexander Sakharov, (not the dissident Andrei) a Soviet diplomat and agent of the KGB who defected to the U.S.A. revealed that Archbishop Kashnovetsky was himself an agent whose task was to influence the clergy in Africa toward a pro-Soviet outlook and to recruit agents for the KGB. Captain Alexei Myagkov, a KGB intelligence officer who defected to the U.S.A. produced secret documents which plainly stated the KGB objective to infiltrate anti-Communist and Church organizations in order to neutralize them and transform them into instruments of Soviet foreign policy.

       In promoting and defending the Vatican-Moscow Agreement, the organization has ordered its policies in a direction that brings it into conformity with Soviet foreign policy. Already in 1971, that organization had dealings with agents of the KGB. In that year, only one out of fifteen National delegates to an International conference of their organization opposed the invitation to the well-known Soviet agent Nikodim. That Nikodim was a Soviet agent is beyond doubt. Major Peter Deriabin, who served the Kremlin Guard Directorate, and later served as Rezident in charge of Soviet espionage activities in Vienna testified, after his defection to the U.S.A., that "every priest is an agent of the secret police. Even the second ranking official in the Russian Orthodox Church of Moscow is an agent." (Chronicle-Telegraph of Elyria, Ohio, July 20, 1961.) Nikodim served for one year as assistant to Metropolitan Nikolai, who was the second ranking churchman in the Soviet Union referred to above. Nikolai was succeeded by Archbishop Nikodim at the end of his one year's service as Assistant. He was at that time extremely young for that office, only 31 years old. He was placed in that position by Kruschev.

       Although Nikolai denied, as the Associated Press reported on June 6, 1956, that he "had ever collaborated with the Communists," Major Deriabin testified before the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (May 5, 1959), that under instructions from the KGB, he himself had collaborated with their agent Nikolai, and that when a Soviet delegation to the Vienna Conference for Peace was to arrive in Vienna, Colonel Kovalev referred to him a telegram with the order "to take care of the delegation," and that "Metropolitan Nikolai is an agent of State Security."

       Apparently after Nikolai had been exposed he had to be replaced. Nikodim was his replacement. Like Nikolai, Nikodim was assisted by Soviet officials when his delegation attended conferences abroad. When the Russian Orthodox Church was admitted into the World Council of Churches in New Delhi (November 1961) Nikodim's delegation, according to the report of the Daily Telegraph of London (November 22), was "accompanied by a Russian Government courier who is responsible for their comfort and all their expenses."

       Nikodim was also an accomplished liar who trumpeted out Communist propaganda as directed by his Soviet government mentors. At a press conference in New Delhi, he repeated one lie right after another - all proven falsehoods which reflected the official line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In that conference Nikodim said: "Along with the other civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the U.S.S.R., the full freedom of religious worship is enjoyed by all people in the U.S.S.R."

       The Catholic Church in the Ukraine has been suffering a most bloody persecution since 1946, when the so-called "Synod of Lviv" unilaterally abolished the Ukrainian Catholic Church, and incorporated it into the Russian Orthodox Church. "With no Catholic Bishops present at that synod (they were all imprisoned) and the majority of the faithful opposed, the unity of the Ukrainian Catholic Church with Rome was never broken and the return of this Church into the bosom of the 'Mother Church of Moscow' never took place." (Alexis Ulysses Floridi, S.J., Moscow and the Vatican, Ardis Publishers, 1986, p. 246.)

       In spite of all these facts, the managing editor of the oft-referred-to publication writes, in a signed published letter to Hamish Fraser, "and Nikodim walked a very fine and difficult line with his Soviet masters. They could never really know whether he was another Thomas More or not. But he was."² Overflowing with adulation, that editor goes on to express how deeply he was impressed by the edifying appearance of the Soviet agent Nikodim when the same Nikodim visited the organization's house.

       In a report of Cardinal Slipyj (28 July 1980, See Fatima Crusader No. 8, "The Church of the Martyrs"), the primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church declared that ten bishops, more than 1,400 priests, 800 sisters and tens of thousands of the faithful, "sealed their loyalty to the Pope, the Apostolic See and the Universal Church with the sacrifice of their lives." These things were happening while Nikodim was Metropolitan.

       The official position of the Patriarchate of Moscow and Nikodim's Department of External Relations was and remains that no one's religious liberties are violated anywhere in the Soviet Union, and that the bloody suppression of the Ukrainian Catholic Church is strictly an internal affair of the Orthodox Church of the U.S.S.R.³

       The organization is currently promoting a Martin Sheen film, "State of Emergency". Sheen, who narrated left-leaning documentaries about Central America and radical leftist ex-priest Daniel Barrigan, has not been converted from his Communistic views. In September, 1985, Sheen assumed a leading role in a "Teach-In" at California State University, Northridge (L.A.), in which, "he had nothing but praise for the (Communist) Sandinista leaders," who, according to Sheen, are "humane, just and democratic." (Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1985.) It is the same Communist government which publicly insulted Pope John Paul II when he visited Nicaragua. The bishops of Nicaragua are currently protesting against the suppression of religious and civil rights by that Communist government which Sheen calls "humane, just and democratic." The general reaction of the organization's personnel to Sheen's film, according to their own publication, was "enthusiastic". Presumably the men in the Kremlin are also enthusiastic about the steady leftward drift of that seemingly innocuous lay association.

FOOTNOTES:

1. See The Fatima Crusader Issue No. 16, "The Fatima Crusader Comments on the Vatican-Moscow Agreement", "Pope John Paul II Denounces Communist Regimes for Persecuting Catholics", "The Present - Day Persecution of the Church by Communist Russia Seriously Threatens Your Eternal Salvation"; No. 17, "The Catholic Church Betrayed", "Why the Vatican-Moscow Agreement Must Be Repudiated", "We Must Get Russia Properly Consecrated"; No. 18, "Today's Crisis Within the Church Is Because Russia Is Spreading Her Errors".

2. See Approaches. Issue No. 88 Supplement "Postscript To Rome Moscow Agreement".

3. Russell P. Moroziuk, Politics of a Church Union (Church Herald, Chicago) 1983 p. 112 .

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