"God is going to punish the world and it will be in a terrible manner."

... Sister Lucy of Fatima

God Have Mercy on Us All

by Father Nicholas Gruner, S.T.L., S.T.D. (Cand.)

       What is happening in the pedophilia scandals in the USA and Canada is a warning to us all:

       This crisis is the open chastisement of our society.

       This crisis is one of the last calls to penance before we are annihilated or enslaved or worse.

       This crisis is predicted in the Fatima Message, the part still hidden by the Vatican officials serving under Cardinal Sodano.

        We are, today, living through the terrible chastisement predicted at Fatima. The trouble is — most people have not yet recognized it for what it is — and the worst is yet to come. Our work is to tell you, on the authority of Our Lady, that She came to warn us and She tried to prevent what has happened. But the world and much of the Church, even to the top of the hierarchy, have not listened. Even so, the loving Mother that She is, She still holds out Her helping hand to us, to help prevent the final and more horrible chastisement that is about to befall us all.

        Before we proceed further, we need some background: about Fatima, about the world before Fatima, and about the world and the Church since Fatima.

1 The Context of the Present Crisis

        To understand where we are today, in the year 2002, we need to first understand where the world and the Church were before 1917.

        We need to realize that already, in 1917, the world was in very bad shape. Pope St. Pius X said at the beginning of his pontificate (about 1905) that the days were so evil that he thought the antichrist was already on the earth. World War I was inflicted on mankind as a chastisement. Our Lady at Fatima told us that "war is a punishment for sin."

        The good old days of the early 1900’s were really not that good at all. In fact, WWI was the worst war ever on the face of the earth for all of history up to that time.

        We need to understand that, already, in 1917 the world was very bad, if we are ever going to get a good perspective to set our moral standards straight. That is, people generally judge good and evil by the examples they see from their neighbors — or their forefathers. We need to find the right role models. Otherwise, we shall follow bad example — right to hell.

        Our Lady, seeing the situation in the Church and in the world, saw that man was on the wrong road and needed guidance. She realized we were in extreme need and out of Her Motherly love and care came to show the only way out of the moral morass that we found ourselves in.

        For most of us (who were born after 1917, eighty-five years ago), we obviously didn’t choose the evils of 1917 and we can’t be blamed for them.

        But we are guilty after 1917, if we ignore Fatima. The rules for judging our generation have changed ever since October 13, 1917 after the Miracle of the Sun. Seventy thousand witnesses testified to its stupendous power and glory. This testimony has come down to our days. Because it is irrefutable and undeniable, this miracle and the Message of Fatima imposes a solemn obligation on each and every one of us.

        The Church and the world have, as a whole, despised the Blessed Virgin and Her Fatima Message. This is a serious sin because it is against the Mother of Christ, and Jesus, good Son that He is, will not tolerate it. It is also a serious sin against the Holy Spirit because, by despising the public Miracle of the Sun, we are going against the known truth.

        Sister Lucy explains:

       "God always, before He is about to chastise the world, exhausts all other remedies. Now, when He sees that the world pays no attention whatsoever, then, as we say in our imperfect manner of speaking, He offers us with ‘certain fear’ the last means of salvation, His Most Holy Mother.

       "It is with ‘certain fear’ because if we despise and repulse this ultimate means we will not have any more forgiveness from Heaven because we will have committed a sin which the Gospel calls the sin against the Holy Spirit. This sin consists of openly rejecting with full knowledge and consent, the salvation which He offers. Let us remember that Jesus Christ is a very good Son and that He does not permit that we offend and despise His Most Holy Mother.

       "We have recorded through many centuries of Church history the obvious testimony which demonstrates by the terrible chastisements which have befallen those who have attacked the honor of His Most Holy Mother how Our Lord Jesus Christ has always defended the honor of His Mother."

        God is always just and the fundamental rules are the same. However, there is a new circumstance — God has given an unmistakable sign, the magnitude of the sign and the magnitude of the number of witnesses has never before been given in the history of mankind.

        As a result, we are more guilty for not paying attention to this message than at any time in human history, except for that generation that actually saw Christ walking on the face of the earth. And except for the Resurrection, there has been no greater miracle that God has given mankind than the Miracle of the Sun.

        This new circumstance imposes a greater obligation on our generation than any other time in history, except the generation that crucified Christ.

        Once we understand that, we can, with this article, understand the pedophilia scandal and the corruption of various members of the clergy and the crisis in the Church today. Not only will we understand, if we accept the lessons taught there, we have the solutions to the problems at our fingertips and they are not hard to apply.

        Now many of our regular 1,000,000 readers of The Fatima Crusader know these solutions and take them to heart. But there are vast millions of souls: who do not know the Fatima message, others who have forgotten it, others who even despise it, others who reserve judgement and do not believe Our Lady, others believe but do not obey Her. Some even profess to love Her while they actually go out of their way to stop others from believing and obeying.

        This despising of prophecy — disbelief, disobedience, obstruction of Fatima — is not without sin, and it is already being chastised in various parts of the world including North America right now — and it is going to get worse.

2 Why does God punish and why in our time?

        God does not punish like men punish. He does not do it out of anger or weakness and He will not punish if He can avoid doing so. But if we do not repent, if we do not amend, if we do not correct ourselves; then God will punish because it is necessary.

        When nothing else will work, God cannot be true to Himself, He cannot be All Good, if He continues to allow these sins to carry on forever on the face of the earth.

        Before God punishes, though, He does advise us and He does threaten us so that we have another opportunity to amend ourselves. When He starts carrying out the punishment, He wants us to recognize the punishment; to at least listen and start amending ourselves so He doesn’t have to carry out the punishment any further. "God threatens to chastise us in order to deliver us from chastisement."

        St. Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church, gives us further insight on God’s chastisement:

       "Ah! I will comfort Myself over My adversaries: and I will be revenged of My enemies." (Isa. 1:24)

       "Such is the language of God, when speaking of punishment and vengeance: He says that He is constrained by His justice to take vengeance on His enemies. But, mark you, He begins with the word Heu, "Ah!" This word is an exclamation of grief by which He would give us to understand that if He were capable of weeping when about to punish, He should weep bitterly at being compelled to afflict us, His creatures, whom He has loved so dearly as to give up His life through love for us ... God, Who is the Father of Mercies, and so much loves us, is not of a disposition to punish and afflict, but rather to pardon and console us. ‘For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of affliction...’ (Jer. 29:11) ... Let us then, my brethren, understand how the Lord at present appears in wrath, not with a view to our punishment, but in order that we may cleanse ourselves of our sins, and thus enable Him to pardon us."

       St. Alphonsus explains:

       "St. Basil tells us that God often appears in wrath because He wishes to deal mercifully with us; and threatens, not with the intention of chastising but of delivering us from chastisement. His threats do not arise from His inability to chastise, because He can be avenged when He wills; but He bears with us in order to see us penitent and thus exempt from punishment ... Neither does He threaten from hatred, in order to torment us with fear; God threatens from love, in order that we may be converted to Him, and thereby escape chastisement: He threatens, because He does not wish to see us lost ... He threatens; but notwithstanding bears with us and delays the infliction, because He wishes to see us converted, not lost. ‘He dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.’ (2 Pet. 3:9)

"Many sinners will not believe in the Divine threats
until the chastisement has come upon them."

       St. Alphonsus continues:

       "‘Except you do penance, you shall all likewise perish’ (Luke 13:5). God threatens: Stop, sinners, and do penance, because if not you shall damn yourselves, as so many others have done.

       "St. Procopius tells us that God ‘inspires one with fear, the devil takes it away.’ God only desires to terrify them by His threats, in order that they may depart from sin, and thus be saved. The devil wishes to destroy that fear, in order that they may persevere in sin, and thus be lost. Many are the wretches who believe the devil in preference to God, and are thus miserably damned.

       St. Alphonsus further teaches:

       "If we do not amend, the chastisement will come; if we do not put an end to our crimes, God will. When Lot was warned by the Lord that He was about to destroy Sodom, Lot at once informed his sons-in-law: ‘Arise! Get you out of this place, because the Lord will destroy this city (Gen. 19:14).

       "But they would not believe him: And He seemed to them to speak as it were in jest. They imagined that He wished to sport with their fears, by terrifying them with such a threat. But the punishment overtook them, and they remained to be the sport of the flames. My brethren, what do we expect? God warns us that chastisement hangs over us; let us put an end to our sins, or shall we wait for God to do it?

       "Hear, O sinner! What St. Paul says to you: ‘See then the goodness and the severity of God: towards them indeed that are fallen, the severity; but towards thee, the goodness of God, if thou abide in goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.’ (Rom 11:22)

       St. Alphonsus adds:

       "Consider, says the Apostle, the justice which the Lord has exercised towards so many whom He has punished, and condemned to hell; towards them, indeed, that are fallen, the severity. Consider the mercy with which He has treated you; but towards thee the goodness of God, you must abandon sin; if you change your ways, avoid the occasions of sin, frequent the sacraments, and continue to lead a Christian life, the Lord will remit your punishment, if you abide in goodness; if not, you shall perish, otherwise thou also shall be cut off. God has already borne with you too long, He can bear with you no longer. God is merciful, but He is just withal; He deals mercifully with those who fear Him; He cannot act thus towards the obstinate."¹

Has God warned us?
Has God advised us?

       Yes, God warned us and advised us at Fatima through His Holy Mother:

       "If My requests are not granted, Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated."^1a

        Sister Lucy told Father Fuentes:

       "Many times the Most Holy Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation."^1b

       God also tells us through the Message of Fatima that He will punish the world by four punishments — war, famine, persecution of the Church and persecution of the Holy Father.

       What most people do not know, including those in the Church, is that the persecution of the Church is what we are enduring right now. This is the terrible punishment. Holy Mother Church is now being persecuted by the infiltration of perverse men; heretical men; apostate men, such as Masons, communists; and especially by the pedophilia and homosexual network.

       The persecution of the Church is a spiritual chastisement which is much worse than all the material chastisements. It is this spiritual chastisement that is at the root of the pedophilia scandal in the Church today.

       Having this context, we can now understand why this is happening. We can also understand what we must do about it. This scandal is a terrible thing, outrageous, and we must protest against it at every level; in the Church, in public, and in private.

       We must also recognize that this scandal is a clear sign that we are all being chastised. Because God is angry with His people, He has allowed these evil clergy in among us.

       Therefore, we must all do penance. "Unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish." (Luke 13:3)

       We, all of us, have fallen away from the necessary sacrifices of penance. Very few Catholics really understand or even know the effect that the laxity in doing penance has played in the clerical scandals and negligence of priests.

       Because we are not doing penance socially, publicly (this obligation is explained at the end of this article, see pages 46ff), many priests are not getting the graces to lead their flock. The faithful are not doing penance — priests are not getting sufficient graces — consequently, the faithful are not getting led properly.

       We have the result of hypocrisy among some clergy and laity who pretend to be serving God but whose hearts are far from Him, thus the fulfillment of the biblical prophecies, taking place before our eyes.

       St. Paul, speaking to bishops and priests gathered together at Ephesus said:

       "After my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. And of your own selves shall arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them." (Acts 20:29-30)

       Apocalypse 12 describes the vision of the Woman clothed with the sun; and of the great dragon, Her persecutor:

       "And his tail drew the third part of the stars of Heaven, and cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the Woman Who was ready to be delivered; that, when She should be delivered, he might devour Her Son." (Apoc. 12:4)

       The stars of Heaven referred to in this passage are the Catholic Cardinals, bishops and priests. See Father Bernard Kramer’s book, The Book of Destiny, for a Catholic scholar’s very reasonable explanation of this Biblical passage (see pages 275-284).

       And St. John Eudes adds to this:

       "The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds …

       "When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, "Return, O ye revolting children … and I will give you pastors according to My own heart" (Jer. 3, 14:15). Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge visited upon the people in consequence of sin."²

       We have infiltration of all kinds into the priesthood because, among other reasons, many in the Church have stopped doing social penance. But it is also due to our collective sins. We do not pray and sacrifice enough for them. This scandal is a wake up call to each and every one of us, even the good, to do penance.

3 The "good" who think they serve God but serve the devil

       Even the "good" can be at fault. No one should consider himself blameless. It is the "good" who too often ignore the Fatima Message and who, in effect, despise prophecy. "Extinguish not the spirit. Despise not prophecies. But prove all things; hold fast that which is good." (1 Thes. 5:19-21).

       In Jesus’ time: It was not the scoffers, the mockers of religion; it was not the agnostics; it was not the pagans; it was not people believing in false religions or in no religion in the time of Jesus, who cried out, "crucify Him".

       It was the "religious" people who professed belief in the Old Testament; people of the true religion of that time, who, while thinking they served God, actually served the devil as they cried out for the death of Jesus. They gave too much confidence and trust to their religious leaders, rather than think for themselves; rather than recognize the obvious and evident miracles and signs that God had given them — that Jesus was truly a prophet and that they should follow Him rather than the corrupted religious leaders.

       In our time: It is not the Protestants, Jews, atheists, communists, Masons, pagans, Muhammadans; it is not any false religions; it is the Catholics who go along with their religious leaders and trust them more than the words of the Mother of God; trust them more than the evident signs and miracles that God has given, endorsing the Message of Fatima.

       As a result, they go along with the Cardinal Ratzingers (this is explained in the book The Devil’s Final Battle) of the world, the "pious devotees" who mistakenly say, "You don’t have to believe in the Message of Fatima. It is a nice thing to do, a pious thing to do, but you don’t have to obey the Message of Fatima and we, the leaders of the Church, don’t have to believe, don’t have to obey." Just as the leaders in Jesus’ time said, "We don’t have to believe or obey Jesus."

       And the people of our time go along with this thinking. How? They stopped giving donations to the full Fatima Message apostolate. They do not protest when Catholic priests who are promoting the Message of Fatima are kicked out into the street or are excluded from so-called Catholic papers.

       They do not protest when the Fatima Message is kicked off TV. They tell their friends and neighbors, "Don’t listen to Father Gruner; he is suspended," when it is obviously a lie. They don’t demand the publication of the suppressed 22 volumes of Fatima documentation collected by Father Alonso. This unpublished research of Father Alonso would dispel the many falsehoods disseminated about Fatima.

        They don’t sign petitions in the tens of millions to the Pope asking for the release of the full Third Secret; they don’t ask the Pope for the consecration of Russia. They are too interested in their football games and pleasing the bishop or Cardinal who is leading them to hell by telling them ‘Fatima’s prophecies are all in the past’; ‘you can safely ignore Fatima’.

4 The Sin of our Time: Fatima is Ignored

       The primary sin of our time, particularly within the Catholic Church, is unbelief in Our Lady’s appearance at Fatima and disobedience to Her requests.

        The sin of Jesus’ time is that people did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God because they did not believe, even after He had worked His miracles. Jesus Himself, in substance, said: "If I had not come and if I had not worked these miracles then they would be without sin. But because I have come and because I have worked miracles and they refused to accept them, then the sin is entirely theirs."

        Our Lord wept over Jerusalem because the people did not recognize the hour of their visitation and instead of accepting Him, they continued to do what their forefathers did; they murdered the prophets before Christ. The people of Jesus’ time murdered the King of all prophets.

       They did this at the instigation of the leading members of the clergy at that time: the Pharisees, the high priests, the scribes.

       The sin of our time is very similar to the sin of the time that Christ walked the face of the earth.

       In our time, they do not recognize the hour of their visitation, this moment of grace that God has given us with the Message of Fatima.

        Just like our learned men, the proud scribes of our time — the doctors of law, the university professors, the high priests — Cardinals Ratzinger and Sodano (as explained in the book, The Devil’s Final Battle) teach their people to despise the Queen of prophets and Her message and they do not recognize the hour of their visitation. They believe the leaders of the clergy, rather than believe the Queen of Heaven, and as a result, just as there was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., there will be the destruction of our society by the annihilation of nations that Our Lady of Fatima predicted.

       The full Third Secret (which the Vatican refuses to give us the text of) predicts an even more terrible chastisement, the apostasy in the Church. The clergy scandal is a chastisement from God, as is the Apostasy fomented by the corruption of the clergy. This is also explained well in the book The Devil’s Final Battle.

Proof — the Fatima requests are unfulfilled

       In St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians he admonished them to be constant in the faith of Christ and not to be terrified by the insinuations of false teachers. He bids them to hold firm to the traditions received from him orally or by epistle. He tells us the wicked one, that is the antichrist, shall be revealed:

       "Whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying. That all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity." (2 Thes. 2:9-11)

       Now for those who wonder at the teaching that God would send among us, "the operation of error to believe lying," for those who have not believed the truth, let me explain.

       In Psalm 17³ God is described as:

       "Toward the faithful You are faithful, toward the wholehearted You are wholehearted. Toward the sincere You are sincere, but toward the crooked You are astute.

        If someone seeks to cheat God by trying to outsmart Him, God will not be mocked. Those who profess publicly, and to themselves, how much they love God, yet their hearts are far from Him; those who hate the truth while professing to love the truth, will be deceived by the lies of evil persons, predecessors of the antichrist.

        We have already pointed out that the apostasy within the Catholic Church is a chastisement, for the lack on the part of too many in the upper hierarchy, for not believing, for not heeding, for not obeying Fatima. And also, it is a punishment for the laity and priests for not obeying Our Lady personally, that is, by many of us NOT praying the Rosary, NOT wearing the Scapular, NOT being devoted to Our Lady.

        We know that the urgent Message of Fatima has been ignored by the following indicators:

• Russia has not been consecrated according to the precise request Our Lady of Fatima gave us. Our Lady asked for Russia to be specifically consecrated. Now we all know that a bishop does not specifically consecrate a parish church or a Catholic cemetery to God’s service simply by consecrating his diocese, or even by consecrating a parish where the church or the cemetery are. No, the bishop must clearly indicate, by outward signs, what it is he intends to specifically consecrate. Thus he goes to the place where the church is, he names it, he makes the Sign of the Cross over it, etc. Similarly, a consecration of the world does not specifically consecrate Russia.
  Our Lady’s words must be followed exactly, in order to bring about the promised effect. After all, this grace of world peace is no small thing. Surely it is not too much to ask us to do exactly what She specified. To this day the consecration has not been adequately fulfilled. The Pope must, together with all the Catholic bishops of the world, on the same day, and at the same time, consecrate specifically Russia by name, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
  
• Russia has not converted. The errors of Russia are still spreading among us as Our Lady prophesied would happen if we did not obey Her requests. The widespread use of drugs, legalization of abortion and now euthanasia, all of these and more expose mankind to the increase of immorality and turning away from God. This is not conversion, which is the return to God and the One True Church of Christ.
• We do not have the promised peace in the world. There are still escalating wars and rumors of wars coming closer and closer to home, as it did with the Twin Towers in New York City; not to mention the present escalating threat of nuclear war.
• Sister Lucy asked Our Lord why He would not convert Russia unless, and until, the Holy Father consecrated specifically Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Jesus answered:
  
  "Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that Consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that later on, the Church will promote this devotion and place devotion to this Immaculate Heart beside devotion to My Sacred Heart."⁴

        In 1943, after Pope Pius XII consecrated the world (but not specifically Russia) to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Jesus spoke to Sister Lucy and said that He was pleased with this act, and as a result the days of "the present distress", meaning World War II, would be shortened, but that world peace would not result from it. This is clearly because Russia, according to the Fatima Message, must be specifically consecrated.

        On various occasions, Sister Lucy has clearly specified that Our Lady of Fatima did not ask for the consecration of the world to Her Immaculate Heart. For example, to Professor William Thomas Walsh "more than once and with deliberate emphasis," Sister Lucy said:

       "What Our Lady wants is that the Pope and all the bishops in the world shall consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart on one special day. If this is done, She will convert Russia and there will be peace. If it is not done, the errors of Russia will spread through every country in the world."⁵

        The errors of Russia have spread among us and so blatantly, such as gross ones like legalized abortion that kills 50,000,000 babies every year.

        Clearly, not only this apostolate, not only Sister Lucy, not only the Blessed Virgin Mary, but God, Himself, tells us why the Consecration of Russia must be made explicitly and without change. Yet, even after Heaven’s endorsement, Our Lady’s spiritual requests at Fatima remain ignored.

"Our Lady is sad no one has paid any attention"

        The urgent Message Our Lady gave us at Fatima has been ignored. Sister Lucy emphasizes Our Lady’s anguish in an interview with Father Fuentes:

       "Father, the Most Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her message, neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way but without giving any importance to Her Message. The bad, not seeing the punishment of God actually falling upon them, continue their life of sin without even caring about the message. But believe me, Father, God will chastise the world and this will be in a terrible manner. The punishment from Heaven is imminent."⁶

        "Tell them also Father, that my cousins Francisco and Jacinta sacrificed themselves because in all the apparitions of the Most Holy Virgin, they always saw Her very sad. She never smiled at us. This sadness, this anguish which we noted in Her penetrated our souls. This sadness is caused by the offenses against God and the punishments which menace sinners. And so, we children did not know what to think except to invent various means of praying and making sacrifices."⁷

       "We should not wait for an appeal to the world to come from Rome on the part of the Holy Father, to do penance. Nor should we wait for the call to penance to come from our bishops in our diocese, nor from the religious congregations. No! Our Lord has already very often used these means and the world has not paid attention. That is why now, it is necessary for each one of us to begin to reform himself spiritually. Each person must not only save his own soul but also (seek to save) all the souls that God has placed on our path.

       "The devil does all in his power to distract us and to take away from us the love for prayer; we shall be saved together or we shall be damned together."⁸

        That interview took place in 1957. In 1982, Pope John Paul II said at Fatima: "the world has gone in the opposite direction than the one indicated by Our Lady of Fatima". The world and many of the hierarchy in the Catholic Church have only ignored Our Lady of Fatima even more since that day.

5 We suffer the consequences

       In Jesus’ time: Our Lord warned the people beforehand that Jerusalem would be destroyed. He wept over the city of Jerusalem because they did not recognize the hour of its visitation, that the moment of Grace and Mercy had come to them and they refused. As Our Lord said,

       "How often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not?" (Matt. 23:37)

        As a result of refusing the help that God offered them at that time, the destruction of Jerusalem was unprecedented and is still seen to this day. Our Lord said that a time will come when your enemies will gather around you and they will throw up ramparts against your walls and they will destroy the city so that, "There shall not be left a stone upon a stone." (Mark 13:2)

        Even to this day, Jerusalem is not rebuilt where the old city of Jerusalem was and there is a monument to that destruction of Jerusalem. That is the wailing wall. There is one wall where a few stones are left on top of another and that is the only thing left of the whole of destroyed Jerusalem.

        And the people were carried off into slavery. Those who survived the destruction of Jerusalem were taken into captivity hundreds of miles from their homes to another language, another country. They spent the rest of their years in slavery and their children after them for centuries.

        That is what happened to the people then, because they followed their corrupt leaders and they would not listen to the prophet God gave them. Even though they thought they were serving God, they were serving the devil. Yet these were people belonging to the true religion at the time.

        Quite possibly they prided themselves in being of the true religion and said to themselves what they said in Jeremiah’s time. "Jerusalem is the holy city of God. It will never be destroyed." Just like the Catholics of our time pride themselves at belonging to the true faith and say, "since God has promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against it, nothing can happen to us." (Matt. 16:18)

        They deceive themselves with this thought, because, although the promise is true that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, they do not have a guarantee that they personally will be staying in the Church. By apostasy, by heresy, by schism, a person leaves the Church and therefore the promise does not apply to them anymore.

        In our time: The consequences have already been the enslavement of the peoples of Eastern Europe, Russia, China, and Cuba; the imposition of militant atheistic tyrannies, otherwise known as communism.

        These regimes, although some of them have changed their external appearance, are still in control of those countries. It is not simply the communist countries that have suffered this tyranny but the errors of communist Russia have spread to the West. Even in these so-called free democratic countries such as Canada and the U.S., parents proclaim their freedom to kill that which is the most valuable to them, their own children, and thank their government for supplying the means to do this.

        They feel that such a drastic action of killing their own children is necessary because they can’t afford to have children at this time. But they don’t seem to notice that their government is taking away up to 40% of their income, more than enough than they need to feed their own children.

        No voice of protest is heard about this. Rather, the outcry, "we want free abortion, we want the right to kill our babies enshrined in all the laws of our country." How blind they are. This is one of the errors that Russia has successfully spread throughout the world as the result of the people of our time ignoring Our Lady of Fatima’s message.

        In our time, the chastisement of our people is not yet over. We have the prophecies of Our Lady of Fatima to guarantee that if we continue to ignore Her, then the Church will be persecuted (even more than it is right now), the good will be martyred (even more than they are now), the Holy Father will have much to suffer (even more than he is now), and various nations will be annihilated, that is reduced to nothing.

        That has not yet happened but it is not far off. As Sister Lucy said,

       "My mission is not to tell the world of the material chastisements that are yet to take place if we do not amend. No, my mission is to tell everyone that we are all in danger of going to hell if we do not amend."^8a

        Sister Lucy also said (in 1957) that God will punish the world in a terrible manner. Already, by 1957, we had the enslavement of Poland, Hungary, Russia and China — one billion people, one third of the world’s population. Yet even though that is terrible, Sister Lucy said God will punish in a terrible manner, even worse than the enslavement of nations by the communist tyrants.

6 Signs of Apostasy

        What is that terrible punishment Sister Lucy is alluding to — worse than the annihilation of nations? That punishment is a spiritual punishment. That punishment is predicted in Sacred Scripture. That punishment has a name. It is called Apostasy. The Third Secret of Fatima predicts the Apostasy in our time of entire nations and possibly continents, away from the Faith (This too is explained in the book The Devil’s Final Battle).

        This chastisement is worse than any material chastisement because, while the people are thinking they serve God, they serve the devil. While they think they are reaping a reward in Heaven, they are reaping themselves a deep place in hell. This apostasy is the consequence of the people ignoring, not believing, disobeying, not fervently promoting the full Fatima Message.

        This sin is not simply for the bad people — the bank robbers, the murderers, the abortionists, other public sinners — but this sin of despising Our Lady of Fatima and Her prophetic Fatima Message is also to be laid at the feet of the good.

        In Jesus’ time: They had a king who, to pay the price of a lewd dance, cut off the head of St. John the Baptist. He did that in the middle of a feast, of people having a good time at a meal. This gives you an idea of just how depraved their civil ruler was, who had usurped power and who was totally immoral.

        The people did not recognize that this kind of ruler over their temporal affairs was already a sign of how bad the times were then and how much they, themselves, needed to do penance. They continued on their way, eating and enjoying themselves, instead of doing penance in sackcloth and ashes, as the people of Nineve did when they knew that God was angry with them.

        It is important to understand that apostasy does not happen all at once. It creeps up on you and if you don’t react vigorously when the signs are given to you that you are on the wrong road going down the slippery path to hell, then it just accelerates.

        Similarly, in Jesus’ time, those murderous high priests whose only interest was their own ambition and positions of authority and prestige, these men who conspired to crucify Jesus Christ, just didn’t become evil overnight.

        It must have been evident. Their hypocrisy was pointed out by Jesus Himself, yet they refused to repent. Such evil cannot but manifest itself to those who are willing to see. That kind of leadership in their Church at the time is also a sign to the people of the great need they had to do penance. Such evil men in positions of leadership in the Church, as in the State, is one of the punishments that God uses to wake people up, but instead the people continued to sleep and go along with it.

        In our time: Without commenting on the civil rulers who follow the example of Herod, who murdered the Holy Innocents, we have similar rulers in our time who murder the innocent unborn in the hundreds of millions.

        Since 1984 alone, it is conservatively estimated that over 800,000,000 babies have been murdered worldwide either directly by the governments or by the connivance, the encouragement, the approval of the Herod-like governments. That kind of government in our time is certainly a chastisement.

        Yet most people, including most Catholics, do not recognize it and have not reacted by at least putting on sackcloth and ashes, and by at least paying attention to Our Lady of Fatima’s request to pray five decades of the Rosary every day. This lack of vigorous reaction whereby we turn to God in penance, repentance, and supplication is culpable on our part.

       "In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great Apostasy in the Church will begin at the top."

        These are the very words of Cardinal Ciappi (personal Papal Theologian to Pope John Paul II). The result of "the great Apostasy" starting "at the top" is corruption of the clergy and the laity in doctrine, in morals and in liturgy.

        Today, the Church is in great crisis. Its very leaders — priests, bishops, and even Cardinals — cause scandal within and without the Church; heretical statements are proclaimed and immorality practiced — such as homosexuality, pedophilia, abortion, contraceptives, and divorce, just to mention a few.

        The fact that bad priests are a chastisement is testified to by St. John Eudes. We recall that he told us God will send bad priests when He is angry. God is very angry with His people because He is not only sending us bad priests, He has also apparently sent us bad bishops and bad Cardinals too.

        Pope John Paul II at Fatima, on May 13, 2000 told us that:

       "The message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the "dragon" whose "tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven and cast them to the earth." (Apoc. 12:4)

        To put that statement in plain English, Pope John Paul II is saying as follows: Do not follow the one-third of the Cardinals, one-third of the Catholic bishops, and one-third of the Catholic priests, who have been dragged down by the devil from their exalted position of leading the faithful to Heaven.^8b

        In other words, the Holy Father is telling us what the Message of Fatima is warning us about today. That is that one-third of the clergy (who are the stars of Heaven) have been dragged down by the devil and his co-workers — the Masons, communists, homosexual networks — and are now working for the devil himself; not for God, not for the Church of Christ, but for the devil.

        Very plainly, that is what is in the Third Secret that has not been revealed by order of Cardinal Sodano and the connivance of Cardinal Ratzinger. This last statement is explained in the book which you must read, The Devil’s Final Battle (to order, see "The Apocalyptic Answer For Our Times").

        Because we are not doing penance socially, publicly, many priests are not getting the graces to lead their flock. Many faithful are not doing penance, many priests are not getting sufficient graces to be as holy and enlightened as they need to be, thereby many faithful are not getting led properly.

        What should our attitude be in the light of these scandals? What does the Message of Fatima tell us about these things? What should we do?

        It would be easy, and even seem justified to some — the worldly, those outside the Church, those weak in faith, those enemies of the Church — to conclude: "We told you so. Give up celibacy, give up the religious life, give up leaders of the Church. Give up and be like the world. Be like us, don’t seek to serve God. We need anti-clericalism."

Neither Anti-clericalism nor Clericalism is the Answer

        They lecture a priest obedient to the Magisterium because he does not obey "their magisterium". This anti- clericalism is rampant in various spectrums; among the conservative, liberal, modern, and ‘Vatican II - as super council’ type Catholics.

        This self-deception that passes for humility, for respect for the clergy, will not be enough to save millions of souls. Possibly even someone that you know very well.

        The most serious business of life, the salvation of our own individual soul from the fires of hell for all eternity, requires a more conscientious approach. It is not sufficient to feel you are informed by reading newspaper headlines, or retrieving the latest party line from Cardinal Sodano (See "The Party Line", The Fatima Crusader Issue 69, pg. 10) or local bishops or priests. The Party Line is certainly not enough to save your soul.

        This crisis in the Church is a wake up call to each and every one of us. This crisis is one of the signs of the devil’s last battle for your soul and the soul of every Catholic living today.

        Sister Lucy, in an interview with Father Fuentes in 1957, had this to say:

       "Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin. And the devil knows what it is that most offends God and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God because in this way, the devil will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.

       "That which afflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Heart of Jesus is the fall of religious and priestly souls. The devil knows that religious and priests who fall away from their beautiful vocation drag numerous souls to hell ... The devil wishes to take possession of consecrated souls. He tries to corrupt them in order to lull to sleep the souls of laypeople and thereby lead them to final impenitence. He employs all tricks, even going so far as to suggest the delay of entrance into religious life. Resulting from this is the sterility of the interior life, and among the laypeople, coldness (lack of enthusiasm) regarding the subject of renouncing pleasures and the total dedication of themselves to God."^8c

        To generous souls, we remind you that you can help save many souls. Our Lady of Fatima said:

       "Many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them."^8d

        You, O generous soul, you can pray and make many sacrifices and thereby help save many souls.

7 How the Clergy Reacted to the Prophets

        In Jesus’ time: The Pharisees and the chief priests conspired together to murder Jesus and they did it with the appearance of legal justification. The end result was they killed Jesus through the Romans, acting under pressure from the crowd (manipulated, controlled and aroused by the chief priests and Pharisees). They engineered it, they conspired it, they carried it off. And this also includes the betrayal for 30 pieces of silver by Judas, one of Jesus’ own disciples.

        In our time: The Silencing of Sister Lucy: The chief priests today conduct the "murder" of Sister Lucy by having silenced her for 42 years now, by hemming her in with impossible restrictions so that she does not tell the whole Message of Fatima to the public, even though it was consigned to her to give to the people. So it is like a living death for her to have this secret in her heart, in her mind, and for them to pretend it is released and for her to know it is a lie.

        She is bound by the appearance of law, that is "holy obedience" to maintain her silence and this is also carried out, this lie, by the Judas’s in the clergy and for the same purpose that the Pharisees did in Our Lord’s time, in order to curry favor with the secular rulers of their time. Today they are seeking to please the Masons and communists and the secular humanists and worldly governments of our time.

The declaration of Father Gruner as a non-person

        Whereas they cannot silence Father Gruner because he has seen through their false reasoning and their false laws, they declare him to be a non-person just like Stalin did to dissenters in the Soviet Union. So they come out with false statements about Father Gruner’s ecclesiastical status. Again, it is a character assassination carried out by the high priests in the Vatican in order to silence the voice of prophecy. For more details of this, see Chronology of a Cover-up on our website or call us (at 1-905-871-8041, or toll-free at 1-800-263-8160) for your free copy. See also the book The Devil’s Final Battle on this point.

8 "Sin has institutionalized itself"

        We have more sin going on in the Church and world today than at any time in history. As Pope John Paul II at Fatima put it in 1982: "Sin has institutionalized itself".

        Widespread abortion, contraception, divorce, infidelity among Catholic laypeople who continue to go to Holy Communion without repentance, without confession, draws down God’s anger on us.

        When sin increases without any repentance, then God chastises. God is all good. The following generations have to see that God is not pleased with such bad examples so He has to make an example of such a sinful generation, similar to what He did at Sodom and Gomorrah.

        Following are some examples of sin gone rampant as a result of the faithful being misled by the silence or the ignorance of the clergy. We choose these examples because they are easy to understand, easy to document, easy to prove. For those over the age of 45, you will recall that the teaching was the exact opposite of what you have today. Those under 45 are urged to ask your parents, your elders, and they will confirm this.

        It may seem that these examples are being picky and of insignificant importance. I trust by the end of this reading you will recognize otherwise. The Holy Spirit, Himself, in Sacred Scripture warns us: "He that despises small things shall fall little by little." (Ecclus. 19:1)

A. Abstinence from eating meat on Friday

       Contrary to what you have been led to believe, contrary to what you have been told is in Vatican Council II, contrary to whatever impression or statement that was given you by a Cardinal, bishop, priest or whole council of them — the fact is that you are still, today, obliged, under pain of mortal sin⁹, to abstain from eating meat on Friday if you have reached the age of 14. The only concession is for the sick who are excused from observance.

        The law of the Church is:

        (1) We must not eat meat on Friday. It is based on the divine precept, that is the Divine command by Christ Himself, that you must do penance. To quote Our Lord directly, He said, "Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish." Since we are bound to try to save our soul, we are bound to do penance.

        (2) We must, in strict justice and gratitude, acknowledge and continuously acknowledge the debt we owe to Our Lord for dying on the Cross to save us from our own personal sins. This acknowledgment is not simply a private one between us and God (although that is important), it also must be public, that is, acknowledged before your fellow man, at least those within the household of the Church, the household of the Faith, our fellow Catholics.

        The Church, in its wisdom over the centuries, has compressed these two solemn obligations that each of us personally has, into a simple law which the Church has the authority to impose on each member. Namely, that we abstain from meat on Friday as a penance as acknowledgment for the suffering and death that Christ endured for our salvation on Good Friday. That law of the Church is still in effect to this very day.

        I am sure that some of you must be protesting, "this is not true, it was changed at the Council". Well, I will tell you what was changed. In February of the year 1966, Pope Paul VI promulgated an Apostolic Constitution (17 Feb. 1966) entitled Paenitemini in which he said that the law of the Church still says to abstain from meat on every Friday throughout the year.

        However, he gave permission to go against the letter of the law if the conference of bishops of a particular country petitioned the Holy See, the Pope, for permission for their people to do another penance on Friday in place of not eating meat. So, in those countries whose bishops have gone through the channels to petition the Pope for permission to substitute another penance instead of not eating meat on Friday, those individuals in those countries can substitute another penance.

        But what you have not been told, and no one seems to know, is that you still have the obligation to do another penance on that Friday and you are still bound under pain of mortal sin.

        So now, if you think that you can continue to eat meat on Fridays because your neighbor — even if he goes to Church every day, even if he happens to be your pastor or your bishop — does that, and you do not substitute another penance in place of the penance of abstinence on Friday, then you will commit a mortal sin (unless you have a legitimate dispensation) and go to hell for it unless you repent and confess your sin, or in the absence of the possibility of going to the Sacrament of Confession before you die, you make an Act of Perfect Contrition. Otherwise, you will go to hell. Now going to hell is not a small matter, I am sure you will agree.

        You can see that many of the flock have been misled by the one-third of the clergy spoken of in the Apocalypse. What can we do?

        We are living in the prophesied time of confusion. We should not, therefore, be angry with our clergy. It is our obligation to point out the errors; bring to those who seek the truth, sound Catholic literature and Biblical truths. We should point out to them what you have learned here. And remember, you are not primarily quoting Father Gruner or The Fatima Crusader — you are reminding them of the truths contained in the teachings of the Catholic Church and the Holy Bible. Just as Our Lady of Fatima came not to give us new doctrine, but to remind us of the doctrine already contained in Sacred Scripture and the perennial Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

        Also, we must correct our own actions, set a good example. We must pray and keep our hearts and minds open to what the Holy Spirit tells us to do. We must avoid those third of the clergy that will not listen or repent and, above all, we must not follow their path to hell.

        You must pray Rosaries to find at least one holy priest out of the two-thirds of the clergy who are still faithful to God, to guide you properly.

B. Communion in the hand

        The law of the Church to this day, 2002, still is that you must receive Communion on the tongue. That practice goes back to the time of Christ and the apostles. Christ taught it to the apostles, as the Council of Trent teaches us the practice of Communion on the tongue is of apostolic origin.

        There are many doctrinal reasons to tell you why it is so important but we will now deal with the Law of the Church which is based on that doctrine and historical origin.

        The law says very simply that in the Latin Rite, that is, all those that are not of the Eastern Rites, the manner of receiving the Blessed Sacrament is that the priest is to give the Sacred Host on the tongue of the recipient. That law has not changed during Vatican II, has not changed after Vatican II, and it is still the law of the Church to this day.

        I will tell you what has been promulgated regarding this matter by Pope Paul VI in 1969 in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, pages 546 and 547 (A.A.S. 1969). Pope Paul VI says Communion on the tongue is still the law of the Church.

        However, he gives permission to go against the letter of the law if two principles and seven rules are followed. If either one of these principles is not followed or if any one of the seven rules are not followed then Communion in the hand cannot be given but only on the tongue. Those conditions are published in a number of places, including Appendix V in Fatima Priest, edition 1 and 2, and Issues 7 and 28 of The Fatima Crusader. We will summarize them here for you.

       Principle 1: The Faithful must not be scandalized by the practice of Communion in the hand.

       Principle 2: There must be no danger of irreverence or sacrilege to the Sacred Hosts and Particles if Communion is given in the hand. There must not even be the appearance of irreverence.

        Let us now look at Rule #3. The practice of Communion in the hand must increase that person’s faith in the Real Presence, who seeks to receive Communion in the hand. If it does not, then that person cannot receive Communion in the hand. Coupled with that rule is that the minister who actually gives Communion must make that judgement on the spot, that this practice increases the faith of the person receiving Holy Communion.

        To be explicit, it is not the Pope, bishop, chancery office or pastor, but only and exclusively the priest minister who gives Communion, who must make that judgement and who is, of course, personally responsible to God Himself. The priest giving Communion is directly answerable to God. He could commit a mortal sin for giving Communion in the hand to even one unworthy person.

        The next thing about Communion in the hand is it is entirely the option of the minister. The minister cannot give Communion in the hand if the rules and principles are not followed. Even if they were followed, the minister is still at liberty to not give Communion in the hand. That liberty cannot be taken away by anyone, not even the Pope, simply because the minister has the obligation to answer to God for each and every Host he dispenses.

There are Seven Rules to be followed

        How many know that there are seven rules that must be followed? Ask your local parish priest, your bishop, your Cardinal. I expect that none of them know.

        So how can they follow the rules if they don’t even know that the rules exist? Many souls are quite likely to receive Communion in the hand and are breaking the law of the Church and don’t even know it.

        One of the seven rules is simply this: When Communion is received in the hand, care must be taken that no fragment of the Host be allowed to drop on the ground. Did you know that you, as recipient of Holy Communion in the hand, have the obligation to look in your hand every single time and see that you don’t drop one speck of the Host on the ground?

        If you let that happen, you have committed a sacrilege. You have committed a sacrilege even if you did not intend it to happen. Do you want that sacrilege on your soul and be judged by God for it on Judgement Day? You will count yourself fortunate if you are only sent to Purgatory because your ignorance might have excused you in the past. It will no longer excuse you now. It is not a small matter to fall into the hands of the living God.

        I urge you to read the decree of Pope Paul VI on the subject, dated May 1969, Memoraile Domini. You can find the text on our web site at www.fatima.org or call or write The Fatima Center (see our telephone number and addresses in "Help Us Spread the Fatima Message!") for a copy.

C. Lack of Modesty and Respect

        It is a divine injunction contained in Sacred Scripture in two different places commanding that women cover their heads in church or when they attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This command, this precept, cannot be changed, abrogated, canceled, excused, by the Pope, the bishop, your parish priest or your personal confessor because they do not have jurisdiction to change this law.

        This may seem petty, but if God commands it, that should be good enough reason for you. However St. Paul does give two reasons for it and I will dwell on just one of them. It is generally conceded by most men and women that God has created women as more attractive, as more beautiful than men, as a general rule.

        St. Paul, commenting on a woman’s beauty, says that her hair is her crowning glory. As a result of this gift of God, women have the obligation to cover their heads in church because the beauty of their hair would be such as to distract some men into looking at a woman’s hair rather than recollecting themselves and giving their full attention to Jesus during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and His Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

        That is why St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote in Sacred Scripture that it is incumbent, obligatory to women to cover their head, their hair, at Mass and in church, and during their public prayers. He says that if a woman does not do this, she dishonors herself by not covering her head at Mass.

        In the last 30 years or thereabouts, I have not heard of any priest telling the women in their parish to cover their heads at Mass. Some of them, no doubt, think that this was changed at Vatican II or in the few years following Vatican II. The fact is, in 1969, at a press conference given in the Vatican, a journalist asked the Vatican spokesman if there was any change with regard to the law of women wearing hats in church and the spokesman said there is no change; a perfectly legitimate and correct answer.

        However, the journalists reporting in their newspapers worldwide, interpreted this response as they no longer have to wear hats in church. They published this falsehood to the world on the front pages with major headlines in so-called Catholic newspapers. The following week, at the next press conference, the Vatican spokesman corrected the world’s journalists and a little retraction of one inch wide and one inch deep was printed in some of the newspapers somewhere in their paper.

        Many Catholic priests, bishops and newspapers have not served you well in telling you the truth. Instead, either because of ignorance or fear or wanting to change the law themselves, they didn’t tell you. The fact is, you have been misled for the past 30 plus years.

        Now he that despises little things will fall little by little. You, ladies, are not getting all the benefit of the prayers and pious works when you go to Mass on Sundays without covering your head in church. For all your efforts and all your good will, you are not getting the benefit you should because you have not been told it is displeasing to God.

        It is important for us then to pray for our priests, bishops, Cardinals and the Pope that they do their job well; that they tell us the whole truth we need to know so that we can all rejoice together in Heaven instead of finding ourselves cast little by little down to hell. As Sister Lucy says, "We will be saved together or we will be damned together."

        If it is true that God is so concerned with modesty to the point of covering your head in church so that the priests and men in the congregation will not be distracted by the natural beauty of a woman’s hair, then what should we say about a woman exposing herself anywhere in public, but above all in church, whether it is by tight tights, short shorts, tank tops, short skirts, necklines that are not as high as they should be, or any other hundreds of devices the devil has provided to help make man sin in his own heart with that woman.

        Our Lord says that if a man looks after a woman with the intention of lusting after her in his heart, he has already sinned and is worthy of hellfire. St. John Chrysostom points out, "Who is more guilty of murder; the man who drinks the poison and kills himself or the person who prepared the poison for him so that he would drink it?"

        The poison of seeing immodestly dressed women which, by deliberate lustful desires, kills the souls of the men who look at them is enough to make the man guilty of mortal sin. But the woman who prepares the poison to kill the man’s soul is more guilty of murder than the man himself is. That is what immodesty in dress does. It kills the souls of men and it kills your own soul. It is a sacrilege when it is done in church and at Mass, apart from the sin of impurity.

        For those who think that wearing slacks is more modest than dresses or other clothes that expose the skin, and therefore without sin, it should be pointed out that it is not only the amount of skin that is showing, it is also how much the form of a woman’s body that shows, that can cause lustful thoughts and desires. Hence almost all slacks, if not all of them, show too much of a woman’s form. As a result, a woman wearing slacks often is an occasion of sin to the healthy, normally fit, unwarped mind. If the man doesn’t sin it is because of grace and he turns his eyes away, but this does not excuse the woman.

D. Falling away from the Purpose of Marriage

        Many Catholics do not know the fullness of the Church’s teaching with regard to marriage and the use of the sacred faculty of procreation by men and women. The sacred faculty of procreation is commonly referred to as sex.

        The Sacred Scriptures, as well as Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, teach that the sacred power that a man and a woman have together to bring new human life into the world belongs to God.

        This teaching is based on the foundational truth that God is the Creator of each and every human being. This truth is the cornerstone of Catholic teaching and Catholic morality. In fact, all religions that claim the Bible as the inspired word of God, teach the same thing.

        If God did not create each of us then we would not be His creatures. Just as we recognize the right of a workman to the fruit of his labor, and we recognize the right of the owner of a piece of property to own what is extracted from that property, such as a mine taking out gold, so also we must recognize that God, as a Creator, Who created the world out of nothing and created each and every one of us, has rights of ownership too.

        In fact, God’s rights of ownership are absolute. The rights of a human owner are only relative. The rights of a human owner cannot claim a greater jurisdiction of ownership than the Creator Himself.

        To use an example: the hand at the end of my arm is, in a sense, mine. It belongs to me, not my neighbor. However, it is not mine in another sense. I did not create this hand. I did not make it, I did not create the materials from which it came, I did not create the parents from whom it was inherited. It belongs to God. But God has made me the steward, and caretaker of it.

        I am only the steward, the caretaker of it for God, so I must use my hand according to the laws of God. I must use it to do good. I must not use it to do evil. So just as my hand belongs to God in the absolute sense because He is the Creator, so does the rest of me belong to God.

        But that’s not just true for me, it’s true for every man, woman and child who ever was or will live on the face of the earth; even those who might be in a rocket ship somewhere in outer space.

        Just as the capacity to lift things, to hold things with my hand, is a capacity that God gave me, that I must use according to His laws, the capacity He gave me to bring human life into the world also belongs to God. It is a sacred trust that must be used according to God’s law.

        God has clearly taught in Sacred Scripture, in Sacred Tradition and in the sacred solid teachings of the Pope and the solid Magisterium of the Church over the last 2000 years, how this sacred capacity to procreate can and cannot be used.

        To speak clearly in a brief paragraph, we can summarize this capacity or power that God has given us and how it is to be used in the following way:

        God allows the use of procreation (sex) to be used and enjoyed only in very limited and restricted circumstances. Namely, it can only be used between a man and a woman for the purpose of bringing new human life into the world within the holy bonds of Matrimony. If one spouse or the other is barren or infertile, that does not prohibit them from using this sacred capacity as long as they leave it up to God and not do anything to prevent God from sending an offspring to the fruit of that union.

        This capacity is not a right to use, it is not an instrument of pleasure that we can insist is ours to do what we want with it. It can only be used within marriage between a man and woman who are married to each other.

        But that is not the extent of it. Even in marriage this capacity can be abused by one spouse having relations with someone who is not their spouse; or by one divorcing one’s first spouse and marrying a second one while the first one is still alive; or by abusing the capacity for procreation by using mechanical or chemical or surgical means to prevent God from sending an offspring to that union. This latter sin is called contraception.

        Even the use of Natural Family Planning (NFP) to prevent having more children when there is not a sufficient reason for using NFP is also a serious sin. As one priest, to summarize the obligation of a married couple, said: "Just as individuals have a vocation before God, so do married couples have a vocation before God." "Woe unto you," he said, "if on Judgement Day you do not have all the children that God intended you to have," referring obviously to those people who live in marriage, enjoy the privileges of marriage and refuse to accept all the children that God wants to send them.

        St. Raphael advises the young Tobias, in Holy Scripture, that the devil has power over certain couples of married people.

       Then the angel Raphael said to him: Hear me, and I will shew thee who they are, over whom the devil can prevail.

       For they who in such manner receive matrimony, as to shut out God from themselves, and from their mind, and to give themselves to their lust, as the horse and mule, which have not understanding, over them the devil hath power. (Tobias 6: 16,17)

        When the Archangel Raphael says, "Give themselves to their lust, as the horse and the mule," he is referring to those who use the privilege of marriage with no intention of bearing children, or with the intention of severely limiting their capacity to conceive children. This is clear from the fact that the horse and the mule together can not have offspring.

        Such is the sin of sterilization of either the man or the woman. The married couple that has a sterilized partner is one who has tried to rob God of His due. Just as we are bound to restore to our fellow man what we have stolen, similarly, a person who enjoys the use of marriage but who is sterilized has the obligation to restore to God what he has stolen from Him.

        In other words, if a person robs a thousand dollars from his employer or someone else, he must restore that one thousand dollars. If he can’t restore it all at once he must restore it in increments as he can. If he is destitute and totally incapable of ever restoring it, then God will forgive him the obligation to restore. But as long as he has the capacity to restore what he has stolen, he has the obligation to restore it.

        If a man has stolen from God by going through a sterilization operation so that he cannot cause children to be conceived and then uses this capacity by procreation, he has the obligation to restore to God that capacity by having this operation reversed. If such an operation would kill him, then God would not expect him to restore it under those circumstances.

        Similarly, the use of the capacity for procreation before marriage is also forbidden because God wants all children conceived to be born to parents who are married to each other so that the child has a stable environment to be raised in for his temporal as well as his spiritual well-being.

        So all use of the marriage faculty before marriage is strictly forbidden under the pain of mortal sin. Furthermore, since the capacity for procreation is such a powerful force, one cannot even, so to speak, start the process and then interrupt it, and not, as they say, go all the way. To do such a thing is not only an occasion of greater sin, it is also a sin in itself because one is taking the pleasure connected with the marriage act when it is reserved only for those who are in the marriage state.

E. Homosexuality

        Thus it should be very clear to anyone that homosexual acts between two men or between two women are always wrong for the simple reason that they cannot bring about, cause the procreation, of a human life. Therefore they are not only sinful because they are outside marriage but because they frustrate the very purpose for which God gave the faculty of procreation.

        To summarize, each man and each woman is a creature of God. As such, God owns them body and soul, totally. All the members of their body belong to God. They cannot use any part of their body in a way that God forbids them to do. They must use their various faculties according to the purpose for which God made those faculties.

        Concerning the sacred power of procreation (human sexuality), this capacity must be used according to the strict teaching of God as found in the Holy Bible and in the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church and the Solemn and Ordinary, Universal Magisterium of the Church. As such, sex can only be between a married man and his wife and only when it is open to bringing forth new human life to the world. Any other use of sex is a mortal sin. Thus even immodest touches, looks and dress are all sins.

        Our Lady of Fatima said, "More souls go to hell for sins of the flesh than for any other reason." St. Alphonsus teaches that these sins against human sexuality are one of the four major doorways or gates to hell. Sacred Scripture tells us that there are four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. One of them is homosexuality and another is the deliberate taking, killing of innocent human life.

        We see that both these sins have increased a thousand fold in this present generation through the sins of abortion and the legalization of the same, as well as the propaganda and legalization in favor of homosexuality. And so, it’s another sign that we are in a crisis and are about to be chastised by God.

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

        What should our attitude be with regard to homosexuality and other sins and other kinds of sinners? It is well summarized by St. Augustine that we should love the sinner and hate the sin, so it would be wrong for us to pretend that sins are not sins.

        As Sacred Scripture tells us and as each and every bishop when he is consecrated bishop is reminded, we must not call good "evil" and we must not call evil "good". This is worse than hypocrisy.

        There are three levels of evil. The first is to know that something is evil and to do it knowing it is evil. The second is to do evil but pretend to your fellow man that you don’t do that evil and that you really are good and don’t commit those sins. That is hypocrisy. Doing one thing while claiming to do another. That is worse than simply doing evil and not making false claims about it.

        The third kind of evil is worse than the hypocritical one and that is to do the evil thing and call it good. For people who commit murder or who rob banks or who commit sins against purity including sins of homosexuality and then to say, "Yes, I commit this sin and I’m proud of it, it’s a great thing I’m doing", that is a great abomination in the sight of God and it is worse than those who commit sins knowing their acts are evil or those who commit them and pretend they don’t. We must not call evil "good"; we must not call good "evil".

        With regard to homosexuals, we must, with the prophets and Sacred Scripture and the solemn 2000-year teaching of the Catholic Church, say that acts and deliberate desires of homosexuality are sins. Each such act is a serious sin. It is a grave sin. It is a mortal sin. If one commits this sin even just once and does not repent of it — and that means that he must confess this sin, be resolved not to commit it again, and be sorry for it (unless he is at the point of death and no priest is available to hear his confession when he repents, in which case he must make an Act of Perfect Contrition to be saved) — that sin, unrepented, will send him into the fires of hell for all eternity.

        I would not be loving my neighbor, my homosexual neighbor, if I did not speak the truth of this matter to him. This is true because if I am able to convince him of the error of his ways and bring him to repentance, I have just done him the greatest favor — namely, saving him from the fires of hell. If no one ever persuaded him to stop and repent of this sin, then it is certain that he would certainly go to hell, condemned by God to those eternal pains for that sin. He could not claim ignorance on Judgement Day. He may think he can today but it will not excuse him on Judgement Day.

        There is never an exception to this rule because St. Paul tells us in Romans, Chapter One, "the effeminate (the practicing homosexual) will not enter the kingdom of God." It is not just those practicing homosexuals that realize their homosexual acts and desires are wrong who will go to hell, but every one of them, because this law is written in their hearts and God has placed it in their hearts.

        No book needs to teach them, no preacher needs to teach them. Even if the Pope or a Cardinal or bishop tells him otherwise, that will not excuse him on Judgement Day and they need to know that. As painful as it is for us to have to say this, they are not being served and helped by our silence or false teaching.

        We must point out that to say "homosexual acts or deliberate homosexual desires are mortal sins," is not to hate a person who is afflicted with this temptation nor to hate a person who even practices this sin. We do not hate the sinner. We hate the sin. Because we love the sinner, we must tell him the truth so he can help save his soul by repenting, by using the means of grace such as praying his rosary every day, by going to frequent confession to call down God’s graces on his soul, and by sending him to persons who can counsel him as to what he can do and what he should do to avoid this temptation in the future.

        Like all other sins of weakness of the flesh, by avoiding the occasions of sin, almost all sins of this nature can be avoided too. A good confessor, a good priest, a good counselor inspired by the laws of God, by the Bible, can help anyone avoid this sin in the future, especially if he is a Catholic and uses the means of grace that are found in the Catholic Church.

        Everyone can at least pray three Hail Mary’s every day and resolve to pray those Hail Mary’s every day from this day forward to the end of their lives. If they persevere in this practice to the best they can, Our Lady will deliver them from this sin in time. That’s a start.

        The attitude we must take confronted with the sins of our time is one of humility, and that is to recognize that, but for the grace of God, there go I. We should take the attitude of the children of Fatima who, knowing that many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray for them and make sacrifices for them, took on heroic sacrifices and penances, joined with their prayers, for the salvation of many sinners.

        We, too, must do our part by our prayers and sacrifices for the conversion of sinners. As Jesus said, "To those to whom much has been given, much is expected." If, by the grace of God, we have been able to avoid these terrible sins, we must thank God for His special graces and protection in this time and we must pay Him back by offering prayers and sacrifices for the conversion of sinners. Certainly, we should not have the attitude of hatred towards any sinner. Rather, we must love them as Christ loved the sinners in His day.

9 What We Must Do

        As you can see from these five examples, the vast majority of the Catholic faithful have not been taught on some very simple points that affect the well-being of their soul and the souls of those around them. This is not to pass judgement on the clergy. Quite possibly, many well-intentioned ones are guilty of not doing their duty in calling the Faithful to their solemn obligations in these matters because of being misled by the false propaganda so widespread today.

        I point these things out, not in anger or recriminations against the clergy, but to point out the signs of the times that we are living in, that all of us are deceived to a greater or lesser extent because we see others around us doing the same thing, or not doing the same thing, and we therefore conclude that it must be okay because everyone else is doing it.

        This is not a sufficient way of looking at things, especially in our time. The people at the time of the flood similarly consoled themselves that everything was okay because everyone else was doing the same thing. But the whole of mankind, that is millions and millions of souls, were chastised by God because they were breaking His fundamental laws, and only eight people out of all mankind survived the flood. All the rest were wrong.

        We are living in an age of apostasy and we need to guide ourselves by the prophetic Message of Fatima for our time. By ignoring it, by disobeying it, by listening to the priest who tells us we can, with impunity, not heed the Fatima Message; know that you may well be on your way to hell if you believe him or anyone else who tells you to ignore this warning.

        When the Blessed Virgin says to each of us in the Fatima Message, "Only Our Lady of the Rosary can help you," She means it literally. We need Her, we need Her message and we need to obey it. Failure to do so is at the peril of our own salvation. We must also pray for our priests. We must make sacrifices.

        "Many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them."¹⁰

        You must pray and make sacrifices also. We must be devoted to Our Lady. We must be devoted to Her Immaculate Heart. That way we will call down God’s protection and Our Lady’s protection on us.

       "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge, My Immaculate Heart will be your comfort and the way that will lead you to God. Those that practice devotion to the Immaculate Heart will be as flowers placed by Me before the throne of God."¹¹

        If anyone ever needed the protection of the Immaculate Heart, it is you and I living in this perverse generation. If ever anyone needed to pray the Rosary every day, it is you, it is I, living in this perverse generation. God help us all.

        But the flame of our faith and the light of Fatima are still alive. We do not have to stand back helplessly and witness millions of souls sliding into hell. We were chosen to be here in this grave time of crisis in the Church and the world. We were chosen to live in the era of the saving grace of Fatima.

        We know what we can and what we must do. But let me help you along the Fatima-lit path to the glorious triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and of the Church, and of peace for the whole world. We choose to witness for those who love the truth unto the salvation of souls, not the loss of millions of souls into eternal hell.

        Here is what we must do — and now!

• Obey the Commandments of God.
• Obey the Precepts of the Catholic Church.
• Accept and embrace the Apostolic and Ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church.
• Pray the Rosary daily.
• Wear the Brown Scapular.
• Consecrate ourselves and our family to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
• Do the Five First Saturdays.
• Do our act of charity, love of Our Lady and fellow man by making the Fatima solution known, thereby bringing down further blessings on us.
• Recognize and support that there are many good priests. Two-thirds are good, according to Sacred Scripture. Pope John Paul II tells us that the Fatima Message says we are in the time of prophecy (Apoc. 12:3-4) with one-third of the clergy being bad.
• Do the penance required by your state in life.
• Avoid occasions of sin: styles of dress; styles of thought; and persons, places and things likely to cause us to sin. St. Alphonsus tells us that if men and women avoided all the occasions of sin, then almost every mortal sin now committed would not be committed.
• Avoid bad TV, movies, games.
• Read spiritual books, lives of the saints.
• Strive for perfection. All of us — laypeople, priests, religious — are called to strive for perfection. "Be you therefore perfect, as also your Heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5:48) "Bear ye one another’s burdens; and so you shall fulfill the law of Christ". (Gal. 6:2) This crisis is an occasion for our sanctification. Let us ask daily in prayer to be generous with God and persevering in grace. Do some acts of penance voluntarily, and each week, even daily. Don’t protest, "I am not called to that". Yes, you are called to be a saint.
• You can do something, so do it. "To him therefore, who knoweth to do good, and doth it not, to him it is sin." (James 4:17)
• Do all you can to bring about the consecration of Russia as Our Lady requested.
• Ask for the release of the full Third Secret because it will give Our Lady’s counsel to us at this time of apostasy in the Church, of corruption in the clergy, of error spread within the Church and the world.

        Sister Lucy sums it up for us:

       "The two means to save the world are prayer and sacrifice. Regarding the Holy Rosary, look, Father, the Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or, above all, spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families, of the families of the world, or of the religious communities, or even of the life of peoples and nations, that cannot be solved by the Rosary.

       "There is no problem I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary. With the Holy Rosary, we will save ourselves. We will sanctify ourselves. We will console Our Lord and obtain the salvation of many souls."

       "Finally, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Our Most Holy Mother, consists in considering Her as the seat of mercy, of goodness and of pardon and as the certain door by which we are to enter Heaven."¹²

        It is time to save ourselves, our friends, our loved ones, our neighbors, our Church and the world. It is time to give due homage to God and His Holy Mother.

        Fatima leads the way. It is time to return the talents God gave us.

        Even those of us who think we’re on a good path need to re-examine whether we are doing all we can in our time today to obey and promote the Fatima Message — by our prayers, by our sacrifices, by our conversations with our friends and neighbors, by our insisting that the Pope and bishops obey Fatima, by defending Fatima apostles, by financially contributing to spreading the Fatima Message, by our volunteer time, by any other means that God puts at our disposal to use.

Footnotes:

(1) Taken from Miscellany by St. Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church.

(1a) Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume I: Science and the Facts, (Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, New York, 1989) p. 182.

(1b) Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume III: The Third Secret, (Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, New York, 1990) p. 505.

(2) Saint John Eudes, The Priest: His Dignity and Obligations, (P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, 1947) pp. 9-10.

(3) Various translators translate these verses differently and, in fact, there are two Latin translations of this passage. See The Hours of the Divine Office in English and Latin, Volume Three, (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minn., 1964) p. 267; and Biblia Vulgata, (Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid, 1985), p. 462.

(4) Letter of Sister Lucy of May 18, 1936 (from Pontevedra) to Father José Bernardo Gonzales, S. J., Memorias e Cartas da Irma Lucia, (Father Antonio Maria Martins, editor, Porto, 1973), p. 415.

(5) William Thomas Walsh, Our Lady of Fatima, fourth printing, (The MacMillan Company, New York, 1947), p. 226.

(6) The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume III, p. 504.

(7) Ibid., p. 506.

(8) Ibid.

(8a) Ibid.

(8b) This is explained in my 3-part article "Pope John Paul II Gives Us the Key to the Real Third Secret" in The Fatima Crusader, Issues 67, 68 and 69.

(8c) The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume III, p. 505.

(8d) Taken from the words of Our Lady on August 19, 1917.

(9) The obligation to observe these days and times of fast is generally grave (cf. Apostolic Const. Paenitemini II,2,17-02-1966, AAS 58 (1967) 183, CLD6 (1963-1967) 675; Reply of the S. Cong. of the Council of 24-02 - 1967, AAS 59 (1967) 229, CLD 6 (1963-1967) 684-685). The most important days of penance — Ash Wednesday and Good Friday — entail the obligation of fasting and abstinence; on others — every Friday for the year — the obligation is only that of abstinence; for the rest — all the other days of Lent — there is a general obligation to do some act of penance (cf. c. 1249).

(10) See footnote 8d.

(11) Taken from the words of Our Lady on June 13, 1917.

(12) The Whole Truth About Fatima — Volume III, p. 508.

Return to
Table of Contents