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26 June 2000:
Third Secret Revealed
But Not All Of It!
By Father Paul Kramer, M.Div.
Editor’s Note: Father Paul Kramer, who is no stranger to readers of
The Fatima Crusader, presents an extended commentary on what the Vatican
released on June 26, 2000 as the Third Secret. Here, Father Kramer discusses
the “official” flawed interpretation of the Secret, the attempt to
place the fulfillment of Fatima prophesies in the past and the fact that the
consecration of Russia has not been accomplished. He also discusses the
obligation to believe the Message of Fatima, and quotes other approved Marian
apparitions that predict a chastisement and crisis of faith. He closes by
explaining that the Fatima prophesies will only be events that are “part
of the past” when the Collegial Consecration of Russia is performed and
Russia is converted.
 At the end of
the Mass, celebrated by the Holy Father, John Paul II, at Fatima on May 13, the
Cardinal Secretary of State, His Eminence Angelo Cardinal Sodano declared:
“On the solemn occasion of his visit to Fatima, His Holiness has directed
me to make an announcement to you.” The Cardinal then, at the end of a
brief discourse announced the imminent disclosure, of the third part of the
secret revealed to the Fatima seers on July 13, 1917: “In order that the
faithful may better receive the message of Our Lady of Fatima, the Pope has
charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with making public the
third part of the secret, after the preparation of an appropriate
commentary.”
Nearly a month
and a half passed before the press conference finally took place, in which
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone presented their forty
two-page booklet entitled The Message of Fatima, in which it is stated
by Cardinal Ratzinger himself that the text of the Third Secret is
“published here in its entirety”. However, there is much evidence
that only part of the Third Secret has been published.
The First and Second Parts of the
Secret
The first thing
to consider is the nature of the Secret as a whole: namely, it consists of the
visible apparition of Our Lady, along with Her spoken words and visions of
other things.
The first part
of the Secret consists in the vision of Hell and concludes with Our Lady’s
words:
“You have seen Hell, where the souls of poor sinners
go.”
The second part
of the Secret consists of Our Lady’s words:
“In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the
world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If people do what I ask, many souls will
be saved and there will be peace. The war (World War I) is going to end. But if
people do not stop offending God, another even worse, will begin in the reign
of Pius XI.
“When
you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that it is the great sign
that God gives you that He is going to punish the world by means of war, hunger
and persecution of the Church and the Holy Father. To prevent this I shall come
to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion
of reparation on the first Saturdays.
“If they attend to My requests, Russia will be converted
and the world will have peace. If not, Russia will spread its errors throughout
the world, fomenting wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be
martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be
annihilated.
“In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy
Father will consecrate Russia to Me: it will be converted, and a period of
peace will be granted to the world.”
The Third Part of the Secret
The
third part of the Secret begins with the words, “In Portugal the dogma
of the Faith will always be preserved, etc ... ” The symbolic vision
described by Sr. Lucy, in her notebook, pertains to the essence of the Secret.
The third part of the Secret concludes with Our Lady’s words, “All of
this — tell no one, except Francisco, you may tell him.” The text
describing the vision of the Third Secret in Sr. Lucy’s words (in the
notebook) is what was published on June 26. The text of the Third Secret, i.e.,
the words of Our Lady entrusted to the three children, has never been
disclosed. Only the opening phrase and the final words of the Third Secret are
divulged in Sr. Lucy’s fourth memoir, while the substance of the words of
the Third Secret in the intervening text have been omitted and are indicated by
the Latin abbreviation “etc.”— ‘et cetera’, which
literally means “and the rest”, or “and so forth”. The
words of Our Lady indicated by the “etc.” were written in Sr.
Lucy’s letter to Bishop da Silva, on a single sheet of paper and sealed in
an envelope.
The next thing
to consider is the external evidence, which plainly demonstrates that there
exist two manuscripts: One, which contains the notes describing
the symbolic vision of the third part of the Secret; and, Two, the
letter which contains the words of the third part of the secret which
Our Lady spoke to Jacinta and Lucia. (Francisco could not hear the words, but
could only see the vision, so Our Lady instructed that Francisco should be told
the Secret.)
Father Schweigl,
who had been entrusted by Pius XII with a secret mission, interrogated Sr. Lucy
at the Carmel of Coimbra on September 2, 1952. Upon his return to the Russicum
in Rome, Father Schweigl related: “I cannot reveal anything of what I
learned at Fatima concerning the third secret, but I can say that it has two
parts: one concerns the Pope. The other, logically — although I must
say nothing — would have to be the continuation of the words: In
Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.”1
A superb study demonstrating the existence of two manuscripts of the Third
Secret appears elsewhere in this issue (Are There Two
Original Manuscripts on the Third Secret?). Thus, the details of this need
not be discussed here.2
May
13, 1981 is not the fulfillment of the prophetic vision of the 3rd
Secret. On that day, the Pope was wounded, not killed. He was shot by a lone
gunman, not soldiers. No others, bishops, priests, religious or laypeople were
killed or even shot at that day. |
A Flawed Interpretation
The
Vatican’s interpretation of the secret seems an attempt to place the
fulfillment of the Fatima prophecies in the past. Archbishop Bertone’s
exposition states “The twentieth century was one of the most crucial in
human history, with its tragic and cruel events culminating in the
assassination attempt on the ‘sweet Christ on earth’.”
Cardinal
Sodano’s distorted account of the vision of the Third Secret accommodates
the problematic interpretation of the vision — that it refers to the 1981
assassination attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II. In his May 13 address,
Cardinal Sodano stated: “‘the Bishop clothed in white’ who prays
for all the faithful is the Pope. As he makes his way with great difficulty
towards the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred (Bishops,
priests, men and women Religious and many lay people), he too falls to the
ground, apparently dead ...” By contrast, the actual text describes the
killing of the Pope by soldiers: “the Holy Father passed through a big
city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain
and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having
reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he
was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him ...”
The vision described in the text is a scene in which the Pope is shot dead by
soldiers, and then bishops, priests and so forth are killed in the same way,
one by one, after they have all gone through a half-ruined city. This clearly
has nothing to do with Pope John Paul II not being shot dead by Ali Agca.
Archbishop
Bertone seems to have attempted to make it appear that Sr Lucy has also
interpreted the vision of the third secret as depicting the assassination
attempt of 1981 by merely juxtaposing the two statements: 1) “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 ...”,
and 2) 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.”3 What
Sr. Lucy fully agrees with is only the belief that the Blessed Virgin guided
the bullet’s path, but there is no logical connection between the two. Sr.
Lucy stated quite plainly that she did not know the identity of the Pope
depicted in the vision who is shot dead. Archbishop Bertone himself quotes Sr.
Lucy on this point: “We did not know the name of the Pope; Our Lady did
not tell us the name of the Pope; we did not know whether it was Benedict XV or
Pius XII or Paul VI or John Paul II; but it was the Pope who was suffering and
that made us suffer too”.
Fatima Prophecy Passed?
The
Vatican is attempting to place the fulfillment of the Fatima prophecies in the
past, as Cardinal Sodano stated on May 13, “the events to which the third
part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima refers now seem part of the
past...”. Archbishop Bertone even goes so far as to make the incredible
claim that “The decision of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to make public
the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima brings to an end a period
of history marked by tragic human lust for power and evil ...” Yet it
is abundantly clear from the text of the Fatima message and the symbolic vision
of the Third Secret, that the chastisement of the world through war, hunger and
persecution of the Church and the Holy Father can only be averted by the
conversion and repentance of the human race and the solemn collegial act of
consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is also obvious to
anyone who is not completely out of touch with reality that the “period
of history marked by tragic human lust for power and evil” is still
very much ongoing.
In her letter to
Pope John Paul II dated 12 May 1982 (one year after the assassination attempt
on the life of the Holy Father), Sr. Lucy wrote:
“The third
part of the secret refers to Our Lady’s words: ‘If not [Russia]
will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of
the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to
suffer; various nations will be annihilated.4
“The third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation,
referring to this part of the Message, conditioned by whether we accept or
not what the Message itself asks of us: ‘If my requests are heeded, Russia
will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors
throughout the world, etc.’...
“ Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we
see that it has been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors.
And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfillment of the final part of
this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides.
If we do not reject the path of sin, hatred, revenge, injustice, violations of
the rights of the human person, immorality and violence,
etc...”
Our Lady’s Words
Let us consider
Sr. Lucy’s words very carefully (Our Lady’s words are in quotation
marks).
1) The third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation
... — These words refer to the vision described in Sr. Lucy’s
notes published by the Vatican on June 26.
2) ...
referring to this part of the message ... that is referring to the phrase
in the second part of the secret: “If not [Russia] will spread her
errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The
good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various
nations will be annihilated.”
3)
… conditioned by whether we accept or not what the Message itself asks
of us ... there exists two possibilities, the first: “If people do
what I ask, many souls will be saved and there will be peace … If they
attend to My requests, Russia will be converted and the world will have
peace.” The second: “If not, Russia will spread its errors
throughout the world, fomenting wars and persecutions against the Church. The
good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various
nations will be annihilated.”
4)
we did not heed this appeal of the Message ... if we have not yet seen
the complete fulfillment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going
towards it little by little with great strides.
The general
request which Our Lady asks is that people must stop offending God. Sr. Lucy
stated in her letter to Pope John Paul II that, “we did not heed
this appeal of the Message”. The Rosary and the Brown Scapular,
the devotion of the first Saturdays, making sacrifices and doing penance are
some of the means that can help to bring this about. Our Lady’s particular
request is the Consecration of Russia, which will bring about the conversion of
Russia and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary: “In the end My
Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me: it
will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.” It
is the Pope’s responsibility to carry out this act of consecration
in the manner requested by Our Lady of Fatima, in order to bring about the
conversion of Russia, world peace and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of
Mary. The consecration of Russia, as Sr. Lucy has stated (see below) has not
yet been done either.
Consecration of Russia Not
Accomplished
The
Vatican’s document on the message of Fatima presents no stronger evidence
in support of the position that the Consecration of Russia requested by Our
Lady has already been done than a computer generated letter that purportedly
bears Sr. Lucy’s signature. In the meeting of April 27, 2000 with Sr.
Lucy, Archbishop Bertone failed to ask Sr. Lucy if the Consecration had been
done correctly, and he failed to ask her if that was indeed her letter (yet he
verified from her the authenticity of other documents that she had written in
longhand). That dubious letter is the only piece of evidence that he
brings forth to support the claim that the consecration has already been done.
I have
written twelve articles specifically on the topic of the consecration of Russia
requested by Our Lady of Fatima. In my most recent article published in the
Spring 2000 issue (no. 63) of The Fatima Crusader, I briefly
demonstrated again that the act of consecration requested by Our Lady of Fatima
has not yet been accomplished:
“Here is
what Sister Lucy actually stated after the March 25, 1984, consecration of the
world. On July 20, 1987, Sister Lucy stated to Enrique Romero in a subsequently
published interview that the consecration of Russia requested by Our Lady of
Fatima is not yet done. In an interview which appeared in the September 1985
issue of Sol de Fatima, Sister Lucy was asked if the Pope fulfilled the
request made by Our Lady at Tuy when he consecrated the world on March 25,
1984. Sister Lucy answered: ‘There was no participation of all the
bishops, and there was no mention of Russia.’ The interviewer then asked,
‘So the consecration was not done as requested by Our Lady?’ Sister
Lucy answered: ‘No. Many bishops attached no importance to this act.’
These statements correspond precisely to the conditions which Sister Lucy
set forth in her official statement of March 19, 1983, to the Apostolic
Nuncio, Archbishop Sante Portalupi, in which she stated for the record, that:
‘the consecration of Russia has not been made as Our Lady has
demanded.’ She then set forth the conditions necessary to fulfill in order
to validly accomplish the consecration of Russia according to Our Lady’s
request at Tuy: 1) Russia must be clearly indicated as the object of the
consecration; and 2) each bishop must make a public and solemn ceremony
in his own cathedral.
“The
importance of the public and solemn participation of the world’s bishops
can be grasped when one considers the proper meaning of the words ‘in
union with all the bishops of the world’. What is meant by this phrase is
manifested in a parallel passage of Our Lady’s words in Tuy set forth in
writing by Sister Lucy:
“‘The moment has come in which God asks 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 ...’
5
“In view of
all this clear and precise evidence, one is compelled to seriously question the
authenticity of the alleged statements of Sr. Lucy that the consecration of
Russia has been accomplished.”6
To date, no one
has even attempted to refute the evidence and arguments I have presented. I
also mentioned in that article that the computer generated article that Sr.
Lucy had purportedly written, signed and sent to me was subsequently examined
by a court-accredited forensic scientist, who declared in writing that the
person who signed the letter was not the same individual who had signed the
documents in Sr. Lucy’s memoirs. The letter referred to by Archbishop
Bertone dates from the same time period and is of similar appearance to the
forged letter that Sr. Lucy purportedly sent to me, and I repeat, that is the
only piece of evidence that he produces in support of the position that
the consecration of Russia has been accomplished according to Our Lady’s
request.
Cardinal Ratzinger Interpretation
Unsound
Cardinal
Ratzinger’s attempt to interpret the secret seems to be as equally flawed
as the interpretation of Archbishop Bertone. Ratzinger would place the
fulfillment of the secret in the past. “What is the meaning,”
Ratzinger asks, “of the secret of Fatima as a whole (in its three parts)?
What does it say to us?” His answer: “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.” The Cardinal is emphatic and
unequivocal on this point: “Insofar as individual events are described,
they belong to the past.”
Cardinal
Ratzinger begins his commentary with a statement filled with errors:
“A careful reading of the text of the so-called third
‘secret’ of Fatima, published here in its entirety long after the
fact and by decision of the Holy Father, will probably prove disappointing or
surprising after all the speculation it has stirred. No great mystery is
revealed; nor is the future unveiled. We see the Church of the martyrs of the
century which has just passed represented in a scene described in a language
which is symbolic and not easy to decipher.”
First,
the claim that “the text of the so-called third secret of Fatima,”
has been “published here in its entirety”, is not accurate, as is not
only evident from the above considerations, but also can be seen from Cardinal
Ratzinger’s own previously published words, as I will demonstrate
later. Second, “No great mystery is revealed;” if the Cardinal
would recall his own words to Jesus magazine in November 1984, he would
not be able to say this, nor could he say, (third) “nor is the
future unveiled.” Fourth, “We see the Church of the martyrs of
the century which has just passed represented in a scene described in a
language which is symbolic and not easy to decipher.” The violent death of
a pope carried out by military personnel has not taken place in this twentieth
century, which will not have passed until the completion of December 31, 2000.
So when Cardinal Ratzinger asks, “Is this (the martyrs of the century
which has just passed) what the Mother of the Lord wished to communicate to
Christianity and to humanity at a time of great difficulty and distress?”,
the obvious answer is a resounding NO!
What Our Lady
wished to communicate to Christianity and to humanity is the punishment of the
world by war, hunger, the persecution of the Church and the persecution of the
Holy Father, clearly depicted in the vision, the “dangers to the faith and
the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world” if the human race
does not repent and stop offending God.
Similarly, if
the pastors of the Church and the “supreme shepherd” continue to
delay the execution of the heavenly command to solemnly consecrate Russia to
the Immaculate Heart of Mary, then they will undergo the very thing that is
depicted in the vision of the third secret.
“They Shall Follow Him Into
Misfortune”
It was Our Lord
Jesus Christ Who revealed this to Sr. Lucy at Rianjo in August, 1931 when He
declared: “Make it known to my ministers that given they follow the
example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My request, that
they shall follow him into misfortune.” Our Lord was referring to the
bloody execution of King Louis XVI by Masonic revolutionaries. Louis XVI
delayed the consecration of France to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, until after he
was deposed and incarcerated, and no longer in a position to be able to
carry out the solemn act. He unsuccessfully attempted to comply with the
Lord’s request, but he was unable to do so, and he therefore suffered the
tragic consequences. It seems that the pastors of the Church will only come to
believe and take seriously Our Lady’s request for the consecration of
Russia only after the massacre of the Pope and his prelates will have taken
place. It will be too late for those who will have perished by the violence of
the godless, but it will not be too late for Heaven to intervene and save the
world from annihilation through the intercession of the Immaculate Mother of
God. Thus, Our Lord said to Sr. Lucy on June 13, 1929 at the Novitiate of the
Dorothean Sisters in Tuy, Spain:
“Like the King of France, they will repent and do it, but it
will be late. Russia will have already spread its errors throughout the world,
provoking wars and persecution against the Church; the Holy Father will have
much to suffer.”
Hence, the
half-destroyed city represents human civilization: half the human race will
perish in the chastisement, as the centuries-old English tombstone prophecy
predicts:
When pictures
look alive, with movements free (television, movies), when ships like
fishes swim beneath the sea (submarines), when men, outstripping birds
can soar the sky (aircraft), then half the world deep drenched in
blood shall die.
But it still
will not be too late, because, as Our Lord said at Rianjo, “It will
never be too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary.”
After consigning
the fulfillment of the Fatima prophecies to the past, on page 40 Cardinal
Ratzinger indicates that the chastisement threatened in the Third Secret might
still take place in the future!
“The angel with the flaming sword on the left of the Mother
of God ...” the cardinal explains, “This represents the threat of
judgement which looms over the world. Today the prospect that the world might
be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems pure fantasy”. This
seems to be more in keeping with the statements about the ‘third
secret’ that the cardinal has made in the past. On November 11, 1984, the
Italian journal Jesus published an interview in which Cardinal Ratzinger
spoke about the content of the “third Secret”. Asked by the
interviewer, Vittorio Messori, if Ratzinger had read the Secret, His Eminence
answered: “Yes, I have read it.” While explaining the reason why he
thought it had not been publicly revealed, Ratzinger mentioned the topics with
which the Secret deals: “the dangers threatening the faith and the life of
the Christian, and therefore the world. And then the importance of the
‘last things’ ... the things contained in this ‘third
Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture, and has been
said again and again in many other Marian apparitions
...”
Akita Apparition
Let us now
examine what “has been said again and again in many Marian
apparitions”:
In the
ecclesiastically approved apparition in Akita, Japan, Our Lady revealed:
“If men do not repent and amend their lives, the Father is
going to inflict a terrible chastisement on all of mankind. It will be a
chastisement more serious than the Deluge ... fire will fall from the heavens
and annihilate a great part of humanity ...”
La Salette Apparition
At La Salette on
September 19, 1846, in another ecclesiastically approved apparition, Our Lady
revealed to Melanie:
“God will strike in an unprecedented way. Woe to the
inhabitants of the earth! God will exhaust His wrath upon them, and no one will
be able to escape so many afflictions together ... The Vicar of My Son will
suffer a great deal, because for a while the Church will yield to a large
persecution, a time of darkness, and the Church will witness a frightful
crisis."
Our Lady of Good Success
In
the ecclesiastically approved apparition of Our Lady of Good Success, which
took place on February 2, 1634, the Mother of God revealed to Mother Marianna
de Jesus Torres:
“... at the end of the 19th century and for a large part of
the 20th, various heresies will flourish on this earth …The precious
light of the Faith will go out in souls because of the almost total moral
corruption; in those times there will be great physical and moral
calamities, in private and in public.
“The little
number of souls keeping the faith and practicing the virtues will undergo cruel
and unspeakable suffering; through their long, drawn out martyrdom many of them
will go to their death because of the violence of their sufferings, and those
will count as martyrs who gave their lives for Church or for country.
“To escape
from being enslaved by these heresies will call for great strength of will,
constancy, courage and great trust in God, all of which are gifts from the
merciful love of My Divine Son to those He will have chosen for the work of
restoration . . . there will come moments when everything seems lost and
paralyzed, and just then comes the happy beginning of the complete restoration.
“... having gained control of all the social classes, the sects will tend
to penetrate with great skill into the heart of families to destroy even the
children.
“... The
innocence of childhood will almost disappear. Thus priestly vocations will be
lost, it will be a real disaster. Priests will abandon their sacred duties and
will depart from the path marked out for them by God. Then the Church will
go through a dark night for lack of a Prelate and father to watch over it
with love, gentleness, strength and prudence, and numbers of priests will lose
the spirit of God. thus placing their souls in great danger.
“...
And to scatter these black clouds blocking the brilliant dawning of the
freedom of the Church, there will be a terrible war in which the blood of
priests and of religious will flow ... that night will be so horrible that
wickedness will seem triumphant. Then will come My time: in astounding
fashion I shall destroy satan’s pride, casting him beneath My feet,
chaining him up in the depths of hell, leaving Church and country freed at last
from his cruel tyranny.”
Over 600,000 pilgrims joined the Holy Father in prayer to Our Lady of Fatima at
the very site She appeared to the three shepherd children 83 years ago. With
the continued support of our prayers and sacrifices, the Holy Father may well
soon bring about the fulfillment of Our Lady's requests. |
Sister Elena Aiello
Sister Elena
Aiello (†1961) who is of great renown for her prophecies was told by Our
Lady:
“My Heart
is sad for so many sufferings in an impending world in ruin ... The wrath of
God is near. Soon the world will be afflicted with great calamities, bloody
revolutions, frightful hurricanes and the overflowing of streams and the seas
... the world will be overturned in a new and more terrible war. Arms most
deadly will destroy peoples and nations. The dictators of the earth,
specimens infernal, will demolish the churches and desecrate the Holy
Eucharist, and will destroy things most dear. In this impious war, much will be
destroyed of that which has been built by the hands of man.
“Clouds
with lightning flashes of fire in the sky and a tempest of fire shall fall upon
the world. This terrible scourge, never before seen in the history of humanity,
will last seventy hours. Godless persons will be crushed and wiped out. Many
will be lost because they remain in their obstinacy of sin. Then shall be seen
the power of light over the power of darkness.
“...
some nations will be purified while others will disappear entirely.
“Russia will march upon all the nations of Europe, particularly
Italy, and will raise her flag over the dome of St. Peter’s. Italy
will be severely tried by a great revolution and Rome will be purified for its
many sins, especially those of impurity ...
“Another terrible war will come from the east to the west. Russia
with her secret armies will battle America; will overrun Europe. The
river Rhine will be overflowing with corpses and blood. Italy, also, will be
harassed by a great revolution, and the Pope will suffer terribly.
“Great
earthquakes will swallow up entire cities and countries, and will bring
epidemics, famine and terrible destruction - especially where the sons of
darkness are.”
It is clear from
Cardinal Ratzinger’s statement, published on November 11, 1984, telling us
that the Third Secret is to be found in other Marian apparitions, that there
are indeed extraordinary events foretold in the Third Secret. What is
absolutely clear is that the Third Secret deals with the great chastisement,
the punishment of the world for the crimes and iniquities of sinful
humanity.
Blessed Anna Maria Taigi
Blessed Anna Maria Taigi (†1837) wrote of the coming chastisement, saying:
“God will ordain two punishments: One in the form of wars,
revolutions and other evils, will originate on earth, the other will be
sent from heaven. There shall come over all the earth an intense darkness
lasting three days and three nights…the air will be laded with pestilence,
which will claim principally but not exclusively the enemies of religion
…”
Dangers to the Faith
It is equally
clear from the approved Marian apparitions, and Cardinal Ratzinger’s
reference to the “dangers to the faith”, that the secret deals with
the crisis of Faith in the Church. Thus, Father Joaquin Alonso, who was the
official archivist of Fatima for sixteen years explained that “It is
therefore completely probable that the text (of the Third Secret) makes
concrete references to the crisis of faith within the Church and to the
negligence of the pastors themselves,” and the “internal struggles in
the very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence of the upper
hierarchy.”7 Similarly, René Laurentin, a prominent
Mariologist, was quoted on May 21 saying: “I believe that the third secret
also spoke of crises and divisions within the Church since the Second Vatican
Council.”8
Secret Suppressed?
One is now no
longer left wondering why the Cardinal chose to downplay the Third Secret to
such an extent as to minimize it to the point of practically explaining it away
in his recent interview with La Repubblica: “There will be no new
surprises. What is more, I believe that, at the end, the secret will be
reduced to its exact dimension…because not that much can be expected from
these private revelations.” It seems it was never his intention to
publish the whole Secret, but to suppress the most important part of it. Our
Lady’s words have been suppressed from the Vatican’s partial version
of the Secret, and they even attempt to conceal the very existence of Her
words, in order to accommodate the Secret to their own interpretation!
If there
were nothing extraordinary revealed in the Third Secret, if it truly contained
“no new surprises”, one wonders why it had been kept secret for more
that fifty years, why Our Lady’s words are still kept secret. Bishop
Rudolf Graber of Regensburg wrote, “With what anticipation did not the
people await the year 1960, when the so-called ‘secret of Fatima’ was
supposed to be revealed.” The reasons given by Cardinal Ratzinger in the
1984 interview for the non-disclosure of the Secret are no less obscure than
his recent remarks about the contents of the Secret. When asked, “Why has
it not yet been revealed?”, the Cardinal answered, “Because according
to the judgment of the Popes, it adds nothing to what the Christian must
know concerning what derives from Revelation …”
Now really, are
we to believe that the Secret had not been disclosed for the mere reason that
it says nothing different from what we already know? Nothing new? That’s
why it had been kept under lock and key for more than fifty years, and the most
revealing part of it remains hidden? If there really were nothing new and
extraordinary in the Secret, then why does Cardinal Ratzinger say also (in the
1984 interview) that the Secret has not been revealed, “in order to
prevent religious prophecy from being mistaken for a quest for
sensationalism.” Now, would he have made a reference to sensationalism
if there were nothing extraordinary in the Secret? Even in his interview with
La Repubblica, Cardinal Ratzinger said, “I think it is important to
address these things in their correct terms, not to think of sensationalism,
or extraordinary things …”
If his Eminence
would like to disclose the whole Secret in its “historical frame of
reference,” then why all the obscurantism and double-talk that conceals
the very existence of the words Our Lady confided to the children as the third
part of the Secret? Is this situation not just one more symptom of the crisis
in the Church, and, in the words of Fr. Joaquin Alonso, the “internal
struggles in the very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence of
the upper hierarchy”? It seems that Our Lady of Fatima is the only one to
have spoken intelligibly, so that it is Her words that make up a telling
commentary on the faltering and fumbling pastors of the Roman Church, that is
why they have chosen to suppress Her words in the Third Secret.
Fatima Undermined
Cardinal
Ratzinger further minimizes the importance of the Secret and the message of
Fatima in general by treating it as a mere “private revelation”, no
different from the multitude of visions, locutions and messages that various
devout persons have received down through the ages. The general principle is
correct according to Ratzinger’s formulation: “There are no dogmas of
faith in matters of apparitions … Of course, one can not believe in
apparitions, I repeat, we are not talking about dogmas of faith.”
Firstly, we
must never confuse the obligation to believe with the assent of faith, with the
moral obligation to believe and obey the voice of God when He speaks to us. It
is true that the message per se does not pertain to the deposit of
Faith, but since it reveals things that are contained in sacred scripture, as
Ratzinger himself pointed out, we cannot simply dismiss it either. The mere
fact that the message does not pertain to the deposit of faith does not mean
that we are therefore free to reject it, because even if we are not required to
believe with an assent of faith, it can be shown that there does exist the
moral obligation to accept and obey the message that God has transmitted to the
entire human race through His Most Holy Mother at Fatima.
Bishop Rudolf
Graber of Regensburg explained:
“Oh yes, it
is quite true that the great revelation of God ended with Christ and the
Apostles, but this does not mean that God may no longer speak anywhere to us,
His own people. Every communication from God is something tremendous and
something holy, whether it be directed to a prophet of the Old Testament or a
peasant girl of our age, who can neither read nor write.
“Moreover,
did not the apostle Peter declare in his sermon on the First Pentecost, that
the Holy Spirit will be poured out over all flesh, that sons and daughters
shall prophecy and that old men shall dream, and that even servants and
handmaids shall receive of this spirit? And if these things were not to come to
pass, what reliability would there be in the word of God?
“Private
revelations are merely instances of fulfillment of this promise from the First
Pentecost, and also of the promise of Christ that He would be with us all days,
even unto the end of the world, fulfillment of the prophetic words: ‘shall
make a covenant with them and shall not cease to do good things for them.’
“A theologian of repute has furthermore pointed out that a careful
distinction should be made between personal revelations directed solely towards
the recipients of the message and those where the message is declared to be for
mankind at large. The former can with equanimity be ignored, but the latter
must be taken seriously, and Fatima belongs to this category.”9
Father Gruner has also elaborated this point:
“Is it not
true that ‘we must not despise prophecy, but test all things and hold fast
to that which is good’? (1 Thess. V, 19-22) And has not the Fatima Message
been tested and found to be good by five successive Pontiffs, including Pope
John Paul II? …Since it has been found to be good, must we not all hold
fast to it?”
In his
Encyclical Signum Magnum Pope Paul VI clearly suggests that the
“woman clothed with the sun” in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse
is Our Lady of Fatima. The great miracle of the sun which took place on October
13, 1917, was a clearly apocalyptic portent, and therefore Father Joseph de
Sainte Marie S.T.D. explained that “Fatima is the fulfillment of biblical
prophecy.” Our Holy Father had indicated the same in his beatification
homily on May 13, 2000, in which he declared: “According to the divine
plan, ‘a woman clothed with the sun’ (Rv 12: 1) came down from heaven
to this earth to visit the privileged children of the Father.” The
miracle was not merely a visual display, but the ankle deep mud and the
thoroughly rain saturated clothing of the vast crowd present at Fatima that day
were found to be dried after the brief but spectacular solar phenomenon. Such a
tremendous discharge of energy is clearly miraculous, and as such is the
unmistakable testimony of Almighty God that the message and what it commands
originates from Himself. Thus, we have the moral certitude that God has spoken
through His Mother at Fatima, and we are therefore morally obligated to believe
and obey.
“You Have Damned
Yourself”
When the Blessed
Virgin spoke to St. Joan of Arc, the Saint was not obligated to believe with an
assent of faith, but when she denied the divine origin of the heavenly messages
in order to save herself from capital punishment, Our Lady appeared to her and
said: “You have damned yourself” She then retracted her repudiation
of the messages, and was then burned at the stake. At her trial, when
questioned on obedience, St. Joan declared that if the Pope gave her a command,
and her Voices gave her a contrary command, she would disregard the Pope and
obey the heavenly Voices. (This can be found in the acts of the trial of
St. Joan of Arc) This is the example of a canonized saint, whose canonization
provides us with the infallible assurance that Heaven must be obeyed absolutely
when it has been determined with moral certitude that Heaven has spoken.
So even if
Fatima is not a dogma of Faith, we are still morally obligated to believe the
message and obey what God commands through Our Lady’s requests; therefore,
the Holy Father declared at Fatima on May 13, 1982, that the message of Fatima
is addressed to the entire human race, and that “The message of Fatima
imposes an obligation on the whole Church.”
Fatima Message Still Urgent
It
was Pope Pius XII who stated that “the time for doubting Fatima is
past”. Our Lady warns that in the coming chastisement, entire nations will
be annihilated, “various nations will be annihilated” if Her requests
are not carried out faithfully. Yet is not the message seriously distorted by
attempts to place the secret in an historical framework that would explain, in
the words of Cardinal Sodano, that “the events to which the third part of
the Secret of Fatima refers now seem part of the past”. The very text and
context of the first two parts of the Secret manifest that what is foretold in
the “secret" has yet to be fulfilled:
“If they attend to My requests, Russia will be converted and
the world will have peace. If not, Russia will spread its errors throughout the
world, fomenting wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be
martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be
annihilated. In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father
will consecrate RUSSIA to Me: it will be converted, and a period
of peace will be granted to the world.”
The mere fact
that Russia is at least, perhaps, no more corrupt and morally bankrupt than the
decadent nations of the west is by no means evidence of its conversion.
We will be in a position to say that the events of the Third Secret refer
to the past only when Our Lady’s requests will have been fulfilled and
Russia will have been solemnly consecrated by the Pope and the bishops, and
then the conversion of Russia will take place — and then the world will
desist from its denial of God and its rebellion against God — the nations
of the world will embrace the Catholic Faith and will be subject to the Divine
Law in public and private. When this will have taken place, then there will be
peace on earth and the “tranquillity of order” (St. Augustine) that
can only exist when the nations of the world are subject “under the mighty
hand of God” (1 Pet. 5:6) and are united by the bonds of communion: the
unity of Faith, unity of worship and unity of ecclesiastical governance —
and then there will be in the world “one flock and one shepherd”
(unus grex, unus pastor Jn. 10:16). When this will have taken place, then, and
not before, will take place the fulfillment of Our Lady’s words:
“In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph”, and
God’s will expressed in the fourth Gospel will then be fulfilled, that all
may be one: “ut omnes unum sint”. (Jn. 17:21)
The Holy Father
has ordered the publication of the Third Secret, as Cardinal Sodano has stated
in the Pope’s name, “In order that the faithful may better receive
the message of Our Lady of Fatima”. It is therefore high time for the Holy
Father’s subordinates to publish the rest of the Secret, the part of the
Secret that contains Our Lady’s words — to immediately cease and
desist from the obfuscation, and simply carry out the Pope’s order with
prompt and humble obedience, and publish the entire Secret.
Father
René Laurentin, considers the disclosure of the Third Secret
indispensable for the message of Fatima to be better studied and
understood.10 “In order that the faithful may better receive
the message of Our Lady of Fatima”, it is high time that the whole
Secret be revealed so that the serious study and discussion of the message
of Fatima by Catholic theologians and scholars throughout the world can finally
take place.
FOOTNOTES: (1) Frére Michel de la Sante Trinité The
Whole Truth About Fatima, Vol III (Immaculate Heart Publications, Ft. Erie,
1990) p.710. — (2) Andrew M. Cesanek, “Are There Two Original
Manuscripts on the Third Secret?”, Fatima Crusader, Summer 2000
(this issue), p.3. — (3) Pope John Paul II, Meditation from the
Policlinico Gemelli to the Italian Bishops, 13 May 1994 — (4) 13-VII-1917
— (5) cf. Frére Michel de la Sante Trinité The Whole
Truth About Fatima, Vol II, (Immaculate Heart Publications, Ft. Erie,
1989) p. 555. — (6) Father Paul Kramer, “Update on the Plot to
Silence Our Lady”, Fatima Crusader, Feb-Apr., 1986 (#19). —
(7) Frére Michel de la Sante Trinité The Whole Truth About
Fatima, Vol II, p. 704 — (8) “Third Secret Raises More
Questions”, New York Times, May 21, 2000. — (9) Bishop Rudolph
Graber, “Why this Pall of Silence Regarding Fatima?”, Fatima
Crusader, Feb-Apr., 1986 (#19). — (10) cf. Público, May
14, 2000, p.5.
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