WHEREVER CONFUSION ABOUNDS Satan can be found in close vicinity. The Father of Lies and promoter of division is a master of deceit; his deceit however is detected by divisive confusion, such as the confusion engendered by radical traditionalists who insist that the Message of Fatima has been perverted by the Pope and Papal Curia. Some traditionalists are so opposed to the idea that Russia has abandoned Communism and is embracing Christianity that they have no problem accusing the pope of deception, conspiracy, falsifying the Message of Fatima, apostasy and covertly presenting the world with a false Lucia while crushing the real Luca behind bars suppressed by an order of silence.
Fortunately, their fabricated stories and accusations are finally unravelling. To avoid the embarrassment of looking ridiculous in the face of overwhelming evidence attesting to the magnificent and unexpected changes occurring in Russia and throughout Europe, in the face of this voluminous data, they are being forced to alter and change their convoluted stories, forced to admit that Russia is indeed being converted. However, because they are unable to relinquish their stone-cold commitment to an apparently pre-conceived script, a script that requires an imminent and Great Chastisement, they continue to insist that although Pope John Paul II’s intent to consecrate Russia was sincere, Russia was nonetheless not consecrated correctly and therefore remains a grave threat to world peace..
To fathom their perverted script, and its recent alteration, it is necessary to understand that these “Fatimites” (self-proclaimed Fatima experts) make at least six fundamental errors (three explored in this article) leading to and regarding their faulty presentation of the Message of Fatima:
They try to blemish Vatican Council II by using it as the reason for the “Smoke of Satan” entering the Church when in fact this noxious vapor entered on the tails of Communism (as Our Lady warned)
They set themselves up as sole authorities of dogma thereby disregarding what the Church has stated and therefore tumble into egregious error
They adopt an arrogant and fundamentalist attitude toward the message and thereby misinterpret and misconstrue the words of Our Lady” “Russia” and “Converted”
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Vatican Council II
In the years following the French Revolution Catholic patriots harbored hopes that a counter-revolution could be launched and the “ancien regime” (Catholic Church, Catholic King and Catholic Aristocracy) restored. As the years slipped by this hope became more and more remote. Realizing that Napoleon had successfully carried the banners of anti-Catholic Liberalism across Europe followed by the defeat and dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the fall of the Papal States in 1870 accompanied by the rapid spread of anti-Christian Modernism, realizing the longevity of all these things Pope Leo XIII initiated a rapprochement with the modern world, a rapprochementthat has continued right up to the present time.
In effect, the Church was forced to admit that it had lost the temporal battle with Modernism, that the temporal Kingdom of Christendom had been ransacked by victorious liberal forces and thus forced to acquiesce, forced to accept the new ideas of liberal democracy, the free market and other secular and liberal ideas. Church leaders soon realized that its modus operandi was outdated; without its temporal sword, condemnation and anathemas were no longer or little effective. The world had been inundated and infested with liberal ideas that had become the cultural mindset of its children and the milieu in which they moved, had in effect become what John Paul II would later refer to as “Structures of Sin”. Realizing the pervasive power and broad influence of internalized cultural values facilitated and inculcated by public education, mass media, and modern technology, church leaders slowly acquired a new vision, a vision necessary for survival and effective evangelization in a rapidly changing and increasingly hostile world. The words of St Paul slowly but inevitably dawned upon them:
“I made myself the servant of all, that I might gain the more….To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all. And I do all things for the gospel’s sake: that I may be made partaker thereof” (1 Corinthians 9:19).
Realizing the need to become all things to all men with a view of winning them to Christ, realizing that the church must make itself more modern (without adopting the errors of “Modernism”) that it might gain modern men and women, Pope John XXIII called for Ecumenical Council, Vatican II. John hastened to address this dynamic tension (fidelity to dogma and fidelity to serving man in the modern context) in his Opening Speech to the Council:
“From the renewed, serene and tranquil adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness, as it still shines forth in the acts of the Council of Trent and First Vatican Council, the Christian, Catholic and apostolic spirit of the whole world expects a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciences in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the Deposit of Faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another…, everything being measured in the forms and proportions of a magisterium which is predominantly pastoral in character.”
John XXXIII clearly understood that the Church must remain loyal to its bedrock dogmas but find new ways to encounter modern man, to emphasize a magisterium that was predominantly pastoral but firmly committed to the Deposit of Faith. Certain regressive elements in the church, however, those favoring aristocracy and a return to Catholic traditionalism, were blind to the fact that they were living in a nostalgic fantasy land, a bygone Era out of sync with modern democracy. Unlike the Medieval world of the ancien regime, the modern world had been infested by an explosion of occultism, of secret societies, and the return of gnostic forces and the evils of Communism. The minds and hearts of modern men had been severely altered by this Communist and Masonic onslaught. To survive; moreso to reach modern souls infected with liberalism and socialism, the church had to alter its approach; it had to take several steps downward and backward out of love for souls; it had to descend so that modern man might slowly ascend:
“If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them should go astray: doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the mountains, and go to seek that which is gone astray” (Matt 18:12).
The situation by 1960 had grown so very severe that it was not ninety-nine safe and one lost sheep, but moving toward one safe sheep and ninety-nine lost; something clearly had to be done. The one good sheep left alone in order to save the ninety-nine stray and lost might feel abandoned (as some Traditionalists do); nonetheless, they should be praying that the shepherds are successful and also engaged in penance for the souls of the lost sheep the shepherds are trying to rescue and save. Specifically, the good traditionalists should be engaged in “Penance, Penance, Penance”, as the angel in the Third Secret of Fatima loudly proclaimed, not penance for themselves, but a specific form of penance known as “Reparation” of the good for the bad, penance for the lost sheep destined for hell as Our Lady pleaded for at Fatima. Instead they are often bitter, disconsolate and condemning, judgemental and demanding justice rather than mercy and compassion that lead to acts of reparation. Only a merciful heart full of compassion and love can offer reparation penance; a judgemental and condemning heart at war with the church and the world, such a heart will have great difficulty fulfilling Our Lady’s request for reparation. Those who judge and condemn, those who call for justice rather than patient mercy for sinners act contrary to the Mind and Heart of Jesus who came to die for sinners, the Jesus who assured His followers that
“There shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance.” (Luke 15:7)
“The church needs more and better pastors, not theologians but pastors – a good PASTOR loves and does what is necessary to save his sheep! Nonetheless, some on the extreme right insist on an outdated intellectual approach to the modern world, a rational approach from the head to a world (rightly or wrongly) living by its emotional heart. This outdated approach is both non-pastoral and ineffective. The modern mind tends to be liberal, thus it is prudent to adopt a merciful pastoral approach while simultaneously remaining faithful to unchanging dogma. St. John Bosco, Shepherd of Wayward Youth and lover of souls, often remarked:
“I would dance with the devil, if it meant saving a soul.”
The great St. Francis de Sales, whom Don Bosco named his Salesian Order after, de Sales understood that hardened hearts and stubborn souls are more successfully approached by love and mercy:
Some radical traditionalists rightfully upset by abuses associated with the new liberal pastoral approach rooted in mercy and compassion wrongfully decided to engage in war, not with the world, the flesh and the devil, but a war with the Church for allegedly not seeing things their way. Possessed with overly-brilliant minds, they rebelled and soon felt themselves competent to judge the Vicar of Christ, to find him guilty of heresy, and pass a sentence of sedi vacanti thereby denying him his rightful seat as the successor of Peter. In their minds Pope Saint John XXIII, Blessed Paul VI, Saint John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI are all apostates or heretics; Pope Francis is most likely an anti-pope, while they stand aloof as the sole repository of Catholic truth.
They incorrectly accuse popes of heresy and schism as if they were the guardians of Catholic truth, while many of them are “material” and some “formal” artisans of deceit themselves; it is often they who are the schismatics. It is not surprising that their animus for Vatican Council II and the modern papacy has caused them to jump all over Pope Paul VI’s utterance that the “Smoke of Satan has entered the Temple of God.”
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False Accusations about Vatican Council II and the “Smoke of Satan”
It is not the errors of leftist liberalism that is the cause of the “Smoke of Satan” infesting the church. No, the cause is more diabolical and treacherous than that mere simplicity. It is not the supposed errors of Vatican Council II that brought the Smoke of Satan into the Church, but the errors of Communism as Our Lady had warned. Communism is a “Conflict Theory”, a theory built around the dialectic of manufactured conflict. A bad idea like Communism is easily detected. Thus, its architects know that it is best advanced by admixing it with much truth and simultaneously juxtaposing it to an equally bad idea. They are able to shroud its negative tenets by exaggerating the negative tenets in its manufactured opposite while simultaneously extolling the good of the truths with which it has enshrouded itself. Any advanced student of social science should know this.
Thus, the true “Smoke of Satan” is not merely liberal bishops, clergy and prelates on the extreme left. For Communism to make steady advances, its architects also need ultra-conservative prelates, bishops and clergy on the extreme right. Many candidates to the seminary had been infected by simple osmosis, that is they picked up the errors of Communism through socialization and then carried them into the seminary. Worse than these was entrance due to infiltration by ersatz Catholic agents trained and equipped with the ability to advance the false precepts of Communism through conflict, the manufactured conflict caused by juxtaposing extreme opposites. Depending on the lens being used, Radical Schismatic Traditionalism looks good when compared to Radical Schismatic Liberalism and conversely; no matter which one is preferred, Communism, which requires the abolition of authentic Catholicism, is advanced because they are both flawed and contrary to unity in the Church.
In this regard, when asked about the seeming opposites, Communism and Capitalism, Saint Padre Pio unexpectedly stated that they are both “indescribably evil”:
In the East they deny God from the head to the belly button (atheistic materialism or scientific socialism) while in the Wast they deny God form the belly button to the feet (hedonistic materialism or sexual, organs-pleasure).
The advance of Capitalism was aided by continually alluding to the evils of Communism. Conversely, Communism was advanced by continually pointing out the abuses of Capitalism. No matter which surfaced as victor, materialism, a false idea, also advanced. The two are juxtaposed, when in fact both are gravely erroneous and detrimental to human well being.
Ultra-Liberals, like Judas, hide behind the veil of helping and loving the poor. Ultra-conservatives hide, like Jansenists, behind the veil of piety. We know what happened to Judas and the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith exposes the veil of piety assumed by schismatic ultra-traditionalists:
Some radical traditionalist looks at MANUFACTURED LITURGICAL ABUSES and rejects the Novos Ordo Mass, even a reverent recitation that adheres to approved rubrics. Some radical liberals, on the the hand, looks at the individualistic components of the Tridentine Mass and embraces the exaggerated communal dimensions of a false reform.
What they both miss is the authentic nature of the reform initiated by Vatican II.The truth is, the authentic reform intended by the Council has not been realized. This led Saint John Paul II to bequeath the future implementation of the Council to the next generation in his “Last Will and Testament“:
“Being on the threshold of the Third Millennium “in medio Ecclesiae,” I wish once again to express gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of Vatican Council II… I am convinced that once again and for a long time it will be given to the new generations to draw from the riches that this Council of the 20th century has lavished.”
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“As a Bishop who has participated in the conciliar event from the first to the last day, I wish to entrust this great treasure to all those who are or will be in the future called to realize it. For my part, I thank the eternal Pastor who allowed me to serve this great cause in the course of all the years of my pontificate.”
There is an authentic element in the Church that is balanced, steadfast and loyal to unchanging dogma and also growing perfect in love thereby able to express truth in charity, able to embrace sinners with mercy and compassion and thereby slowly and patiently, but surely, accompany and lead the blind and disabled sheep (those lost ones so far gone that are unable to held themselves) back to Christ. These authentic Catholics embrace the Mercy of God; they seek to prayerfully encounter fallen humanity and lead it, one by one, to conversion and then Communion by offering to God what the spiritually blind are unable to offer for themselves thereby securing them an unfathomable torrent of Divine Grace a potent spiritual power obtained from what Our Lady referred to as “REPARATION” necessary for lost souls to find their way back to God. To these belong the future. Unfortunately, there are few of these souls, many reside on the left or right, many more are confused by the manufactured conflict, fake news, and sustained efforts to keep them confused.
Although extreme elements work together to undermine church unity (consciously or inadvertently) as planned by the speculative adepts of Communism, the concern of these articles is the stealthy and adroit attack from the far traditional right. It is not surprising that their distorted understanding of Vatican Council II and the modern papacy has morphed into a disdain for the papal response to the Message of Fatima as well..
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Traditionalists and the Message of Fatima: faulty Interpretation of The Words “Russia” and “Converted”
Because they often presume authority to act as judges of popes and as the sole arbiters of truth about dogmatic matters, it is not surprising that they also presume to set themselves up as arbiters of truth pertaining to private revelations such as Fatima. Their biggest contentions revolve around Our Lady’s July, 1917 request that Russia be consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart and the “Third Secret.”
After revealing to the three Fatima visionaries a glimpse of hell and relating the horrors to be caused by a future World War II, the Virgin Mary told them:
“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 My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she 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.
Unfortunately, her requests were not heeded, there was a Second World War and Communism spread throughout the globe. Nonetheless, Our Lady promised that despite the global spread of Communism, in the end, the Church would experience a definitive victory associated with Her Immaculate Heart:
”In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world..”
The consecration was not implemented correctly until Pope John Paul II Consecrated the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25, 1984 igniting a spiritual fire beginning in Poland leading to the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism in one Eastern European nation after another accompanied by astounding changes throughout Russia. Disregarding these obvious changes, many ultra-traditionalist Catholics want to continue an increasingly ludicrous refrain that Russia has not been converted because Saint John Paul II did not specifically mention “Russia” in his concentration.
According to Cardinal Ratzinger, before and after he became Pope Benedict XVI, according to Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II as well as ranking prelates in the Vatican Curia, according to all these high ranking Princes of the Church and according to Sister Lucia herself, Russia has been properly consecrated. lDisregarding the fact that the both Sister Lucia, the seer, and the highest authorities in the Catholic Church have proclaimed the validity of Pope John Paul II’s consecration of Russia, certain traditionalists errantly and arrogantly stick to their arcane script that Russia has not been consecrated and therefore remains a grave threat to world peace.
Traditionalists, led by the vagus a divinis suspended priest by the name of Father Gruner (now deceased), continue to distort, fabricate and mislead unsuspecting inquirers about the Message of Fatima. Article II will examine the extent of their disinformation campaign. Here it suffices to point out that these “Fatmites” boldly and falsely deny that Russia was properly consecrated contrary to the highest and most reputable authority of the Fatima Message, Sister Lucia herself. The VIDEO BELOW IS A BOMBSHELL SHOWING (contrary to false assertions of Father Gruner) SISTER LUCIA CLARIFYING WHAT THE VIRGIN MARY MEANT BY CONSECRATION AND AFFIRMING THE CONSECRATION OF RUSSIA BY POPE JOHN PAUL II
Full Version of Video at Bottom of Page – It is Well Worth Time Invested to Garner the Truth about Russia’s Consecration & Conversion
Related to the error about Russia’s consecration is the equally false accusation that Russia is not being converted because it has not become Catholic. Father Gruner and company harbor the strange idea that Russia is supposed to magically be transformed overnight into some type of Catholic utopia. Russia’s conversion is taking place after seven decades of Communist propaganda, terror, atrocities and a cultural pogrom of unprecedented proportion and they expect an instantaneous change; moreover, they expect that their readers will be foolish enough to believe them! As shown above, Sister Lucia clearly specified that Our Lady never said that Russia would be converted to Catholicism, but that the term “Conversion” refers to the end of Communism and the cessation of wars and persecutions perpetrated in its name. It refers to the end of evil and a move toward the good, to the establishment of religious freedom and the ability to freely choose to follow Christ unencumbered by threats of death and torture, a freedom denied to Russian for seventy years of horrendous persecution and all out war against the faith.
Significantly, the Most Reverend Paolo Pezzi, Catholic Archbishop of Moscow, leader of the Roman Catholic Church situated in the capital of Russia itself, repeats the necessary truth: Our Lady never said Russia would become Catholic! (see video below 30 sec – 1:35):
“We should not interpret Our Lady of Fatima as foretelling the conversion of Russia to Catholicism. Absolutely not; she never said anything to that effect. The Mother of God called — and continues to call — Russia to convert to Christ. But she did not say what form that conversion should take.”
OUR LADY DID NOT SAY RUSSIA WOULD BE CONVERTED TO CATHOLIC FAITH!
Paolo Pezzi, Archbishop of Moscow, Repeats the Necessary Truth: Our Lady Never said Russia would become Catholic! (30 sec – 1:35)
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Radical Traditionalists disillusioned by Vatican Council II and emboldened by their attack on the modern papacy have purposefully extended their attack into the realm of Fatima. This blatant attack has more than significant eschatological ramifications to be explained in future reports. NOW, It is both necessary and timely to put a stop to the Communist-Masonic disinformation campaign, a campaign intended to discredit and falsify the Message of Fatima to advance a Grand Deception,which is the object of their arcane purposes. The fact is, Russia has been properly consecrated and is being converted. By conversion, Our Lady meant the end of Communism and rebirth of Christianity, a conversion or turning away from something extremely bad toward the good which is Christ. Like the Father of the Prodigal Son who from “A FAR” saw His son turning away from sin, saw him returning from a distance, like this loving Father, the Lord sees Russia turning from its error and is pleased, pleased even if it still has a long travel to the Father’s house:
“And when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and running to him fell upon his neck, and kissed him. And the son said to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, I am not now worthy to be called thy son. And the father said to his servants: Bring forth quickly the first robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat and make merry:Because this my son was dead, and is come to life again: was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry” (despite his still being a long way from home) (Luke 15: 20 – 24).
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FULL VIDEO BOMBSHELL SHOWING SISTER LUCIA AFFIRMING THE CONSECRATION OF RUSSIA BY POPE JOHN PAUL II
Go to Part II
End of Communism & New Age Occultism: Triumph of Immaculate Heart Part III
The errors of Communism might be subsiding, but the world was so inundated with the filth of Communism (intertwined with Liberalism and New Age Occultism) that, despite its defeat, the planet is still enthralled in darkness. Our Lady asked for the Consecration of Russia in 1925, but it was not carried out until 1984. Thus, even though there is overwhelming evidence that Russia is being converted, liberalism and New Age Occultism are infesting the air. As the Virgin Mary lamented to Sister Lucia:
“They (the popes) did not wish to heed my request!… They will repent and do it, but it will be late.
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“Russia will have already spread her errors throughout the world, provoking wars, and persecutions of the Church: the Holy Father will have much to suffer.”
Since the response to Our Lady’s requests were continually prolonged, the world is now drowning in a Sea of Sin, sin that is less the result of liberalism than of New Ageism, an offshoot of Communism. However, because Communism is dying, the prognosis for the defeat of liberalism and New Age Occultism is greatly enhanced, esp. if men and women cooperate with Our Lady who promised: “In the end my Immaculate Heart will Triumph.” She will triumph not only over Communism, but also over liberalism and New Ageism. However the latter two, unlike defeated Communism, will require both current and future battles, battles from which the Church will arise victorious, battles against a significantly weakened enemy, battles that will be more assuredly won due to the participation of the Virgin Mary who has been invited by the pontiff to participate in the advance in a determinate fashion due to the consecration of the world to Her Immaculate Heart. She waited a long time for the papal invitation accompanied by the prayers of her children (First saturday Devotion). As St. Louis de Montfort foresaw, the battle before us is to be led by the Virgin Herself:
“Towards the end of the world… Almighty God and his holy Mother are to raise up great saints who will surpass in holiness most other saints as much as the cedars of Lebanon tower above little shrubs…These great souls filled with grace and zeal will be chosen to oppose the enemies of God who are raging on all sides. They will be exceptionally devoted to the Blessed Virgin. Illumined by her light, strengthened by her food, guided by her spirit, supported by her arm, sheltered under her protection, they will fight with one hand and build with the other. With one hand they will give battle, overthrowing and crushing heretics and their heresies, schismatics and their schisms, idolaters and their idolatries, sinners and their wickedness.”
This prophecy of de Montfort is NOT a depiction of the 20th Century; the Church has not yet overcome schism and wickedness, but has been racked with them. Moreover, instead of building and expanding the Kingdom, as de Montfort foresaw, in the 20th century the church suffered a retraction and serious setback. The scene depicted by Saint Louis is not a depiction of the 20th century, the “Century of Martyrs”, a century that saw Communism and its spawn, New Age occultism, victorious and spread everywhere. However, following the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1984, the tide is turning, a victory is imminent. But as de Montfort indicated, it will entail a great battle, a battle in which “sinners”, “schismatics”, “heretics”, and “idolaters” will be overcome at the same time that those engaged in combat simultaneously build the Kingdom of God leading to the promised Triumph of the Immaculate Heart and an Era of Peace.
Before this victory can occur, the church must engage in a crucial battle with both Liberalism and Occultism, but especially with New Age occultism, which is the spawn of Communism. New Age devotees are themselves at war with the economic and political aspects of Liberalism; Liberalism has two forces working against it. Although New Agers use Catholic vocabulary such as “Men and Women of Goodwill”, human dignity, justice, charity, becoming perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect, spiritual growth, soul, sanctity, saints, angels, even the names of Jesus and titles such as “Christ”, they have very different meanings; the two are diametrically opposed forces.
At its basis, Communism is an evolutionary paradigm, a biological, cultural and spiritual paradigm rooted in the mystical historical philosophy of Marx’s companion, Friedrich Hegel – who believed in spiritual evolution within the context of human history, within the context of the cosmos which, according to Hegel is involved in the process of spiritual evolution itself. This multifarious Communist evolutionary paradigm, aided by mass propaganda and control of education, found its way into the respectable realm of academia as a result of the reputable work of Russian scientist like Ivan Pavlov and Alexander Oparin, who was the “Father” of Primal Soup Theory, that is of Chemical Evolution, the forerunner of Charles Darwin’s theory of Biological Evolution, which is cousin to the more advanced and esoteric or arcane Spiritual Evolution of Theosophy and the New Age, which is also the product of Communism. Although all three are products of Communism, the latter one (spiritual evolution) is the most insidious; it is intimately related to propagation of homosexuality, feminism, hermaphroditism, spiritism, demonism and of the immense aberrations affecting the West today. They were perpetrated by Communist apparatchiki and their liberal allies in the West who took up the anti-Christian banner under a different name.
As stated above, Communism is at its basis an evolutionary theory of human progress; it therefore incorporates all aspects of human evolution, biological, chemical, social-cultural and New Age spiritual evolution as well. New Age Theosophy was nurtured by Madame Blavatsky (the Russian Matriarch of the New Age) and Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, the ersatz Russian Orthodox monk who was a student and practitioner of the occult, which he used to promote the Bolshevik Revolution among the Russian aristocracy. The list of those following in the footsteps of these esoteric occultists include General Secretaries of the Communist Party: Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Alice Bailey, founder of United Nations affiliated publishing house, Lucifer Trust (now Lucis Trust), savant of Freemasonry, and a “Matriarch of the New Age” attested to the link among Russia, Communism and the Occult:
Bailey claimed that she received revelations channeled from a Tibetan ascended “spiritual master” (a human being who purportedly evolved and ascended to the spiritual “ethereal plane” of Shambhala, a mystical dwelling place for spiritual masters supposedly existing in the celestial ether hovering somewhere over Tibet or the Gobi Desert), a master named Djwhal Khul.
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SHAMBALLAH: Mystic Dwelling Place of “Ascended Masters” on Etheric Plane (the edge of physical reality) above Gobi Desert
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Valentin Kuklev (Soviet philosopher of the occult), has corroborated Bailey’s knowledgeable assertion that the New Age movement had its origins in Russia:
“The roots of the New Age movement are undoubtedly in Russia.” He predicted that a “third culture” that is different from and superior to Marxism and liberalism will evolve out of Communism”.
“Open interest in the occult surged in the Gorbachev years.”
As a New Age devotee, Gorbachev believes in religious syncretism, that the religions of the world should unite around a core of common beliefs.
“We need a new synthesis (Gorbachev says) that incorporates democratic, Christian and Buddhist values, which affirms such moral principles as the sense of oneness with nature and each other a kind of (new) Ten Commandments that provides a guide for human behavior in the next century and beyond.”
According to Gorbachev, the moral precepts recorded by Moses are outdated, the evolving world requires a new guide for the next Aquarian Century and beyond. Gorbachev, employing the Hegelian evolutionary paradigm, had the percipience to realize that the long evolutionary road to full Communism included a stage known as the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a temporary evolutionary phase that under his leadership had reached its apex and was about to morph into the next stage of human development: full blown Communism-the idyllic brotherhood of man promised by Communist, Theosophical, Gnostic and New Age evolutionary paradigms. Gorbachev alienated the Communist Old Guard by his forward march toward full Communism, which meant that things had to change if progress was to be made. He argued that only those Communist Adepts wise enough to realize that the moment had come for a global shift, for the long-awaited historical and evolutionary dawn, only those adepts could be trusted with the paramount task of global renewal. Marx’s promised brotherhood of man was at hand, a New World Order.
“…is driven by a profound commitment to engaging hearts and minds of eminent political figures, experts, journalists and civil society leaders to raise global awareness of the need to herald a new world order.”
Accompanied by a shift of evolutionary consciousness, Gorbachev became a global leader of the New Age and in so doing, the supposed materialist tipped his esoteric hand! He believed in God after all. His god however is not the Orthodox or Catholic Trinity; Gorbachev is an advocate of Theosophic panentheism or pantheism. Thus, according to Gorbachev (1997) some form of pantheism or nature god is preeminent:
“Look at the sun. If there is no sun, then we cannot exist. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. “Nature Is My God.”
As a New Age devotee committed to a new paradigm shift, he subsequently announced that
Consequently he organized, sponsored, and presided at The State of the World Forum,” an international gathering of global elites sponsored by none else that the Gorbachev Foundation. Sensing the demise of Communism and the apropos chance to launch a global initiative upward into the New Age, the theme of their inaugural meeting was appropriately advertised: “Toward a New Civilization: Launching a Global Initiative”.
Gorbachev’s idea for a new civilization is evident in the Earth Charter of which he is a major contributor and signatory. The Earth Charter Initiative is a “global movement of organizations and individuals that embrace the Earth Charter and use it to guide the transition towards a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. According to Maurice Strong, Gorbachev’s Co-Founder of the Earth Charter:
“The ideas and values in the Earth Charter reflect the influence of a great variety of intellectual sources and social movements. These include the wisdom of the world’s religions and great philosophical traditions and the new scientific worldview being shaped by, among other disciplines, cosmology and ecology.”
Interestingly, not one of these supposed-savants is an Roam catholic or Orthodox Christian. Thus, it is not surprising that they should advocate the creation of a new Ten Commandments. The real goal of the Earth Charter, Maurice insists is:
“That it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Gorbachev and Strong agree on the Ten Commandments theme and style themselves among the elite cohort of future lawgivers necessary for the progress of humanity.
Thus, according to the Charter:
“Humanity must undergo a global “change of mind and heart.” “The Earth Charter provides a very valuable educational instrument. It encourages us to search for common ground in the midst of our diversity and to embrace a global ethic that is shared by an ever-growing number of people throughout the world.”
Eliminating discrimination in all its forms, such as that based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, language, and national, ethnic or social origin (liberalism).
Promoting the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations (socialism).
Prevention of cruelty to animals kept in human societies and protecting them from suffering with no mention of human babies or abortion (Culture of Death).
Promotion of a culture of tolerance, nonviolence, and peace (liberalism, war on old thinking, i.e., Christian Culture, immigration etc.)
Affirming inherent dignity of all human beings.” (however, UN agencies support euthanasia and abortion for those not capable of a “quality” life.)
As said above, Gorbachev would like to institute a new Ten Commandments beginning with “Do not do unto the environment of others what you do not want done to your own environment.” He also expects the Earth Charter to become a new “Sermon on the Mount'” that “provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century.”
And in what should the Earth Charter, the new Ten Commandment be housed? nothing else than a new Ark build according to the biblical Ark that held the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses. Gorbachev’s Ark, known as the Ark of Hope contains the world’s New Age Temenos Books and the new Ten Commandments, the New Age Earth Charter.
In attempt to grace the World Forum and annual Earth Charter meetings with much needed enlightenment, Gorbachev has invited a veritable Who’s Who List of New Age savants to act as spiritual advisors. Some of his invitees include:
As an imbiber of New Age Enlightenment, Barbara Marx Hubbard believes that Lucifer is the true benefactor of humanity, while the God of Genesis is a vindictive tyrant imprisoning men and women in ignorance:
“The serpent symbolizes an irresistible energy that is leading us toward life ever-evolving. First the serpent tempted Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil…. Then self-awareness came….”Evil — the devil — is evolution’s selection process that constantly weeds out the weaker from the stronger.”
Corollary with her adulation of Lucifer, Hubbard boasts that a spirit guide who identified itself as “Jesus” told her to “love Satan, my fallen brother”.
Hubbard is simply confirming what the Russian Madame Blavatsky conveyed about Lucifer:
“The Fall was the result of man’s knowledge, for his ‘eyes were opened.’ Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the ‘Fallen Angel.'”
Robert Muller, the former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, would like to assure that these esoteric teachings are stealthily included in formative education of children (more explicit as they mature by degrees and initiations). Muller garnered the UNESCO award for his contribution to Peace Education (without mention of the Prince of Peace), the “World Core Curriculum” . This world curriculum is to be introduced into schools worldwide beginning with the Robert Muller School. According to Muller,
“The underlying philosophy upon which The Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey” (the matriarch who opens our eyes to the supposed truth that Lucifer is the benefactor of humanity).
Bailey, as indicated above, received her teachings from a medium who channeled the voice of a Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, residing on Shamballa. According to his and other occultic voices, the new united world religion must be universal, all New Age initiates must profess their sole spiritual allegiance to “the global spirituality (not Jesus Christ) and to the health of this planet”. Muller harbors an animus toward Protestantism: He insists that fundamentalism must be “tamed”. Muller also favors eradication of loyal Catholics and thanks the French Revolution for having begun the job, which still needs to be finished: “Two of the worst principles and words still used on planet Earth are: “fundamentalism” and “infallibility.”
“At the beginning the UN was only a hope. Today it is a political reality. Tomorrow it will be the world’s religion.”
Muller admonishes us to look to Gorbachev and Communism for answers to the future.
“We should ask an honest man like Mikhail Gorbachev to tell us what was good in certain cases in communism and which would be useful for humanity.”
The apostate priest Matthew Fox believes in a “Cosmic Christ” and wants us to envision a coming Vatican Council III called explicitly to define a new dogma about the “Cosmic Christ” a new and evolved understanding of the Christ rooted in New Age theosophy. Fox envisions future papal imposed re-education camps for members of the episcopate who refuse to adopt the new cosmic ideas:
“Still another action taken by this (future cosmic) pope has been to gather non-conforming members of the Catholic Episcopate on one island where they are to undergo a two-year spiritual retreat that includes a critique of the history of fascism and Christianity on the one hand and an inculcation of creation spirituality on the other.”
These are the men and women Mr. Gorbachev calls friends, the brain trust that he and Maurice Strong et al chose to enlighten their global forums. Thus, it is little surprise that the ideas advanced by such authors of the Earth Charter include:
The Charter states that “A dramatic rise in population has increased the pressures on ecological systems and has overburdened social systems” (Old over-population argument – population must be reduced somehow – abortion, contraception, or ?).
Ensuring “universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction. (contraception abortion, artificial insemination etc.)
Nor is it surprising that Gorbachev was committed to radical economic, political and spiritual change As Bruce Kettler asserts:
“What was Gorbachev as a leader if not “New Age”? Yes, and he was a part of the New World Order movement. What a radical change he brought about!… Sudden and radical change.”
A change that includes attack on the family and God’s command to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28).” Gorbachev seems to prefer the old Chinese approach: Speaking in 1997 about the transition to a New Global Order, Gorbachev commented:
“For a certain transitional period families should limit themselves to one child.”
“New Age spiritual leaders have a firmly entrenched anti-Christian worldview, and many of them harbor a special hatred for the Catholic Church. Many believe that the Fall was really man’s ascent into knowledge, assisted by Lucifer — whom they hail as the bringer of light and wisdom. Many expect an imminent, apocalyptic transformation that will lead humanity into the New Age. By acts of men or by an act of “spirit,” earth will be cleansed of those who refuse to evolve.”
As an evolutionary spiritual paradigm, older religions have played their role in the past ascent of the human race and now must give way to more advanced forms spirituality, especially Christianity and Judaism which are considered “separative” and “obsolete”; they are a drag on human development and must be transformed or eradicated.
Using overpopulation as a drag on evolution argument, New Age adepts and change agents plan to usher in more deaths than those caused by Communism. Barbara Marx Hubbard, a friend and colleague of Gorbachev, quoted above, was an organizer of the 1988 Soviet-American Citizens’ Summit in Alexandria, Virginia. “She coordinated with the Soviet Peace Committee…established by Stalin to carry out penetration and subversion of foreign countries.” This same Ms. Hubbard states that she and others are“establishing Evolutionary Circles throughout the world to support small groups in their emergence as universal humans, founders of a new global civilization.” She boasts that:
“We, the elders, have been patiently waiting until the very last moment before the quantum transformation, to take action to cut out this corrupted and corrupting element in the body of humanity. It is like watching a cancer grow; something must be done before the whole body is destroyed . . . the self-centered members must be destroyed. There is no alternative. Only the God-centered (New Age devotees) can evolve. . . . We will use whatever means we must to make this act of destruction as quick and painless as possible to the one-half of the world who are capable of evolving” (painless for evolving New Age, not those to be euthanized) (Hubbard, pp 60-61).
Perhap Gorbachev’s New Age, anti-Christian values can be assessed from his close association with George Soros, the contemporary Patriarch and purveyor of liberal Globalism. Speaking of Gorbachev, Soros stated:
The link between Gorbachev, Communism and the New Age is aptly stated by Alice Bailey:
“The true communistic platform is sound; it is brotherhood in action and it does not — in its original platform — run counter to the spirit of Christ.”
This was the platform that Gorbachev was committed to advancing, advancing from the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to full blown Communism including a New Age spiritual leap forward. Fortunately, Our Lady had other plans. Fortunately, Gorbachev was forced from power; he was followed by a liberal lackey who paved the way for Vladimir Putin, a political leader who set Russia on a different course than that planned by his New Age predecessor. Consequently, New Age Globalists led by men like Soros, are vilifying Putin; he is striking at their roots. Christians should be thanking God for Putin who is under attack by anti-Christian globalists apparently steeped in the occult. According to Putin:
“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”
Pat Buchanan, the Conservative Paleocon journalist and once US Presidential Candidate, recognizes the transformation wrought by President Putin, recognizes where the future is going. It will not be into a Luciferian New Age. Thanks to the reawakening of Christianity in Russia and beyond, it will be a promised Marian Era of Peace:
“In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia`s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.”
Our Lady of Fatima indicated that Communism was the cause of the world’s woes. Her remedies: the Consecration of Russia, the Rosary, Brown Scapular and true Marian Devotion leading to Eucharistic Devotion heralded by the World Apostolate of Fatima.
St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, aware of Communism in the East, identified the enemy in the West as Freemasonry. His remedies: the Rosary, Miraculous Medal and authentic Marian Devotion leading to Christ in the Eucharist heralded by the Militia Immaculata.
With New Age Globalism having one Communist foot in the grave, it is up to the crippled Masons alone to peddle dying liberalism and New Age Occultism. Masonry is facing the combined forces of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches, and of the spiritual special forces headed by the Militia Immaculata and the World Apostolate of Fatima, greatly emboldened by the Queen of Heaven, Theotokos, the Heaven sent Ark of the Covenant (Rv 11:19-12:2) to assure all the graces necessary to defeat a crippled enemy and usher in an Era of Peace.
As Saint Louis de Montfort foresaw:
“Towards the end of the world… Almighty God and his holy Mother are to raise up great saints who will surpass in holiness most other saints as much as the cedars of Lebanon tower above little shrubs…These great souls filled with grace and zeal will be chosen to oppose the enemies of God who are raging on all sides. They will be exceptionally devoted to the Blessed Virgin. Illumined by her light, strengthened by her food, guided by her spirit, supported by her arm, sheltered under her protection, they will fight with one hand and build with the other. With one hand they will give battle, overthrowing and crushing heretics and their heresies, schismatics and their schisms, idolaters and their idolatries, sinners and their wickedness.”
THE FIRST PART OF THIS ARTICLE concluded with an implicit message: The chastisement foretold by Our Lady at Fatima is notthe eschatological chastisement of Anti-Christ to come at the end of the world, but a 20th century chastisement of Communism, a chastisement that is abating. The 20th century was plagued by two World Wars followed by other atrocious wars fought all over the globe, wars accompanied by gruesome tortures, death camps and gulags where priests and nuns were brutalized along with innocent women and children, churches desecrated by the tens of thousands, nuclear holocaust at the door and the mainstream media would have us believe that a cohort of paid for terrorists, poverty stricken men without a country, men driving jeeps paid for by American and Saudi dollars, jeeps equipped with nothing but machine guns and IEDs, we are to believe that such feeble forces are somehow a match for the world’s superpowers, somehow equal to or greater than the evils of Communism. The threat of terrorism is minimal compared to the atrocities of Communism, which was a real chastisement, not a manufactured one.
A review of the Twentieth Century should provide a powerful antidote to the manufactured false consciousness (that a chastisement sent by God and led by Russia is imminent) resulting from false news narratives, which are both (the consciousness and the narrative) indicative signs of the times. Such a review should convince thinking people that Russia is being converted, that the world has just passed through a horrendous chastisement of unprecedented and colossal proportion as a punishment for its sins. The chastisement foretold by Our Lady at Fatima is rapidly becoming a thing of the past – it is not a future event. Russia is no longer a Communist nation, and is swiftly becoming a Christian one:
“The continual work of the Russian Orthodox Church will effect the revival of Christianity in our nation. Thanks to the Orthodox faith Russian culture through the years has acquired Biblical values on which the system of moral ideals for our nation is built”
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“When we celebrated the millennial anniversary of the Baptism of Russia twenty years ago it was the beginning of churches being rebuilt and the restoration of the integrity of the Orthodox Church”.
Proof of a 20th Century Chastisement: A Review of Some of the Atrocities Committed in the name of Communism in the 20th Century
The first and most obvious indicator of a divine chastisement inflicted by God in the twentieth century was the global conflagration caused by two world wars, wars that were a “punishment for sin”. Thus, Our Lady told Sister Lucia prior to the outbreak of World War II:
“When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.”
And who would be the instrument of God’s chastisement, Russia. Thus, Our Lady in order to mitigate or prevent the chastisement told Sister Lucia:
“To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart”, and that if this request were fulfilled, Russia would be converted and a period of peace given to the world.
However, she said, if my requests are unheeded,
“Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations will be annihilated.”
Since Our Lady’s requests went unheeded, Russia became the instrument of God’s vindictive justice: causing wars, martyrdom of the good, persecution of the Church, the Holy Father and the annihilation of nations. The list of war death and casualties is astounding: Over 90,000,000 dead!
DEATHS BY COUNTRY IN BYGONE WWII
Country
Military Deaths
Total Civilian and Military Deaths
Albania
30,000
30,200
Australia
39,800
40,500
Austria
261,000
384,700
Belgium
12,100
86,100
Brazil
1,000
2,000
Bulgaria
22,000
25,000
Canada
45,400
45,400
China
3-4,000,000
20,000,000
Czechoslovakia
25,000
345,000
Denmark
2,100
3,200
Dutch East Indies
—
3-4,000,000
Estonia
—
51,000
Ethiopia
5,000
100,000
Finland
95,000
97,000
France
217,600
567,600
French Indochina
—
1-1,500,000
Germany
5,533,000
6,600,000-8,800,000
Greece
20,000-35,000
300,000-800,000
Hungary
300,000
580,000
India
87,000
1,500,000-2,500,000
Italy
301,400
457,000
Japan
2,120,000
2,600,000-3,100,000
Korea
—
378,000-473,000
Latvia
—
227,000
Lithuania
—
353,000
Luxembourg
—
2,000
Malaya
—
100,000
Netherlands
17,000
301,000
New Zealand
11,900
11,900
Norway
3,000
9,500
Papua New Guinea
—
15,000
Philippines
57,000
500,000-1,000,000
Poland
240,000
5,600,000
Rumania
300,000
833,000
Singapore
—
50,000
South Africa
11,900
11,900
Soviet Union
8,800,000-10,700,000
24,000,000
United Kingdom
383,600
450,700
United States
416,800
418,500
Yugoslavia
446,000
1,000,000
WORLDWIDE CASUALTIES*
Battle Deaths
15,000,000
Battle Wounded
25,000,000
Civilian Deaths
45,000,000
SOURCE: National World War II Museum *Worldwide casualty estimates vary widely in several sources. The number of civilian deaths in China alone might well be more than 50,000,000.
In addition to deaths attributed to World War II, the chastisement of Communism included the spread of atheistic errors and the death by martyrdom (or social ostracism) for those who openly resisted, especially of Christians and those harboring religious ideas contrary to the Revolution, as Vladimir Lenin gloated:
“Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness,” and must therefore be combatted.”
Josef Stalin emulated his predecessor Vladimir Lenin and made Lenin’s malicious boast his own:
“We are…the real revolutionaries—we are going to tear the whole thing down! We shall destroy and smash everything, ha-ha-ha, with the result that everything will be smashed to smithereens and fly off in all directions, and nothing will remain standing! Yes, we are going to destroy everything, and on the ruins we will build our temple!…The ultimate truth lies in communism, which must now be brought into existence…And don’t talk to me. It is better for you if you don’t talk, for I shall attack mercilessly anyone who smells of counter-revolution. Against the counter revolutionaries, whoever they are, I shall employ Comrade Uritsky, ha-ha-ha. Do you know him? It will be better for you, I think if you don’t make his acquaintance”.
As a student of Karl Marx and a disciple of Lenin, Stalin identified religion and especially Christianity as the enemy of violent revolutionary progress. He therefore viciously attacked the Church and anything that smacked of counter-revolution. In an attempt to eradicate Christianity and prepare the foundations for a new temple (the Temple of Anti-Christ), he was responsible for the death of over 20,000,000 people in his own country alone. He is aptly referred to by many as the most evil man in human history and consequently appears on virtually every iniquitous list, such as the following, which contains the ten most evil men of all time. Of these ten,five lived in twentieth century.
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This corps of iniquitous reprobates instituted and led a global slaughter of religion and a cultural pogrom the results of which are still reverberating today. Nearly every atrocity conceivable to the human mind was perpetrated in the name of Communism or supposed anti-Communist Liberalism and in unprecedented numbers including:
Cruel death by production and dissemination of deadly diseases.”Historian Sheldon H. Harris of California State University estimates that more than 200,000 Chinese were killed in germ warfare experiments (and millions in other ways), while many others died in related blights.”
Premeditated murder of Polish men, women and children by Hans Frank, the “Butcher of Poland.” “It was under his rule that millions of lives were taken… Frank boasted that if “a poster was made for every seven Poles I shot, the forests of Poland would not be sufficient to manufacture the paper.”
Obscene sexual abuse and torture committed by order of SS Special Commando Oskar Dirlewanger “one of the most depraved persons to wear a Nazi uniform… He was an alcoholic and drug addict, a child molester, and a man prone to severe violence…. His preferred method of mass execution was to herd the local population inside a barn, set it on fire, and then shoot anyone who tried to escape with machine guns. Dirlewanger is estimated to have killed at least 30,000 people during his Belarus tour alone.”
The intensive fire bombing of civilians in Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, and most controversially, of Dresden, but also including 500,000 deaths and the displacement of five million additional civilians in the Pacific region. “The most infamous of these raids happened from March 9 to 10, when raids over Tokyo killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, marking it the most deadly single assault on civilians during the Second World War.”
Rape of Nanking — an evil debauching of 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians including the rape of 20,000 women.
Experimentation on living human subjects by Nazi sadists such as Josef Mengele who collected the eyes of his murdered victims.” He conducted a wide spectrum resulting in the death of many of his “test subjects” . Others who did not die were “murdered in order to facilitate post-mortem examination”.
Inhuman elimination of tens of thousands of Yugoslav citizens (men, women and children) and deportation of myriads more to invidious death camps by Italian fascist General Mario Roatta, nicknamed “the black beast” by his own men.
The above bullet points are but a mere trifle compared to additional lethal atrocities unleashed during the twentieth century. Others include the harvest of tears resulting in over 4,000,000 deaths by starvation of Catholic peasants in the Ukraine while their crops were looted to feed the urban populations of Russia.
“Families who did not flee were often rounded up and sent to the Gulag. To prevent people from leaving the farms or escaping, roadblocks were set up by armed soldiers and police…It was not uncommon for entire villages to be littered with corpses laying in the streets, and witnesses recall seeing dogs gnawing on lifeless limbs. Some people were tortured by hunger and resorted to cannibalism, either by exhuming buried victims or kidnapping children.”
By the end of 1930 over 50,000 Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches were desecrated and destroyed in the Soviet Union alone. This campaign against religion spread to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Mexico, Ukraine, Lithuania Nicaragua and beyond – each nation sadly possessing their own archive of atrocities against the Church, against the Eucharist; priests, nuns, religious and faithful laity who were eliminated not by thousands or by tens of thousands but by millions and tens of millions. In all these places, as in Russia, priests and other members of religious clergy were executed and often brutally tortured.
“We must carry along with us 90 of the 100 million of Soviet Russia’s inhabitants. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.” And they were, often at the hands of the Cheka, the secret police formed by the early Communists and who, in the chaos following the Revolution, behaved with lawless abandon.”
“By the time Mongolia’s terror ended in the mid-1950s after periodic spasms of bloodshed, as many as 100,000 people had been executed a heavy toll in a country that even today has only 2.4 million citizens.”
Dr. Genden Tserendulam has collected names of 28,185 persons killed in 1937-39 alone. Some 17,000 were Buddhist clergy, whose influence the communists feared.” These crimes spread to China and resulted in the purge of over 50,00,000 Chinese caught up in the “Cultural War” unleashed by Chairman Mao Tse Tung, who vies with Russia’s Stalin as the “Deadliest Leader of all Time.”
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https://youtu.be/q7iDZnkn1xo
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This above video of the 20th century under communism is so perverse as to require nothing but the mention of equally heinous crimes of communism, crimes committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia, atrocities in Vietnam ( where the total death toll on all fronts of the war from 1959 to 1975 is estimated to be approximately 3-4 million) and throughout the Third World in Africa with special mention of Rwanda and the Soviet sponsored African National Conference (ANC):
Pol Pot governed Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. His regime was responsible for an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians who “died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork. One detention center, S-21, was so notorious that only seven of the roughly 20,000 people imprisoned there are known to have survived. In Africa
“The crimes committed by the ANC in the name of liberation are legion. First, there was the practice of “necklacing,” in which a gasoline-filled tire is placed around the neck of a victim and set ablaze — an action carried out by Winnie Mandela and her minions. Another horror was the “Church Street Massacre,” in which Nelson Mandela approved of a bomb set to explode at rush hour to maximize casualties of Afrikaner women, children and babies.” l
Through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the gulags of northern Angola…the ANC has admitted that torture and “staggering brutality” were committed at their Angolan re-education camps in the 1980s and “could have caused prisoner deaths.” In an internal report, the ANC documented 17 eyewitness accounts of detainees who survived the camps.”
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“The ANC routinely violated its own code of conduct with physical and psychological torture,” said the report. One detainee has written a book about the camps, which he referred to as “a scene from [the film] ‘Spartacus.”
The Virgin Mary said that the errors of communism would spread throughout the world, no continent was spared! Thus, communist atrocities and tentacles reached into Latin America where the CIA was complicit in crimes against humanity in the name of anti-Communism as were the communists in the name of Communism.
“The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (2) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an “American Holocaust.”
Perhaps the best known CIA setback in the war against communism was the Bay of Pigs:
“The CIA sends 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade Castro’s Cuba. But “Operation Mongoose” fails, due to poor planning, security and backing. The planners had imagined that the invasion will spark a popular uprising against Castro -– which never happens. A promised American air strike also never occurs. This is the CIA’s first public setback, causing President Kennedy to fire CIA Director Allen Dulles.
All in all the death toll from Communism in the 20th century is staggering. According to Stéphane Courtois author of “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression” over 94,000,000 people died at the hands of communists not to mention the greater number that were imprisoned and others who were tortured but lived to tell the story. In the introduction to this book, Courtois stated that “Communist regimes… turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government.” He wrote that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movement. The following are non-inflated estimates that represent the number civilians killed or starved to death Communist governments since 1918. These numbers do not include the war dead listed above. TOTAL: Civilian Deaths due to Communist Chastisement: 149,469,610.
Rank
Flag
Country
1
People’s Republic of China Body Count: 73,237,000
1949-Present (57+ years and counting)R.J. Rummel originally estimated China’s body count between between the years of 1949-1987 to be 35,236,000 (Rummel 1994). This excluded 38,000,000 million that died of famine during the Great Leap Forward. After the release of Mao: The Unknown Story, Rummel became convinced that the Chinese government was directly responsible for the famine, thus increasing his original estimate by 38,000,000 (Rummel 2005). 1,000 was added for Tienanmen Square in 1989 (Courtois 1999).
2
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) Body Count: 58,627,000
1922-1991 (69 years)The body count only covers the years 1923-1987 (Rummel 1996).
3
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic Body Count: 3,284,000
1918-1922 (4 years)This body count does not include the 6,210,000 killed in the civil war (Rummel 1996).
4
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Body Count: 3,163,000
1948-Present (58+ years and counting)1,663,000 is attributed between 1948-1987 excluding the Korean War (Rummel 1994). 2,500,000 is the mid-estimate for those who starved to death between 1995-1998 (U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea 2006).
5
Cambodia Body Count: 2,627,000
1975-1987 (12 years)The body count estimate is complete (Rummel 1994). The offical country name was Democratic Kampuchea during Pol Pot’s reign and then known as People’s Republic of Kampuchea afterwards.
6
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan Body Count: 1,750,000
1978-1992 (14 years)The body count estimate is complete (Courtois 1999).
7
Vietnam Body Count: 1,670,000
1975-Present (30+ years and counting)The body count covers the years 1945-1987 for Vietnam/North Vietnam and excludes 1,062,000 from the Vietnam War (Rummel 1994).
8
People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Body Count: 1,343,610
1974-1991 (17 years)The body count includes 10,000 political assasinations during 1977-1978, 1,000 children killed in 1977, 110 massacred in an Orthodox church in 1975, 80,000 during the civil war between 1978-1980, 250,000 that died in 1982 through Transit Camps, and 2,500 killed in a bombing raid (Courtois 1999). Another 1,000,000 is added for the famine during 1984-1985 (BBC News 2000).
9
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Body Count: 1,072,000
1945-1992 (47 years)The body count only covers the years 1945-1992 excluding 100,000 from the Tito Partisans between 1941-1944 (Rummel 1994).
10
Chinese Soviet Republic Body Count: 700,000
1931-1934 (3 years)The body count only includes the Jiangxi and Fujian provinces (Chang 2005). Although Mozambique has 700,000 to its name, the Chinese Soviet Republic produced more bodies in a shorter time period and the estimate is low.
11
People’s Republic of Mozambique Body Count: 700,000
1975-1990 (15 years)100,000 civilians murdered between 1986 and mid-1988 (Young 1991) and 600,000 starved to death between 1975-1985 (Courtois 1999).
12
Socialist Republic of Romania Body Count: 435,000
1947-1989 (42 years)The body count only covers the years 1947-1987 (Rummel 1997).
13
People’s Republic of Bulgaria Body Count: 222,000
1946-1990 (44 years)The body count only covers the years 1948-1987 (Rummel 1997).
14
People’s Republic of Angola Body Count: 125,000
1975-1992 (17 years)The body count only covers the years 1975-1987 (Rummel 1997).
15
Mongolian People’s Republic Body Count: 100,000
1924-1992 (68 years)The body count only covers the years 1924-1987 (Rummel 1997).
16
People’s Socialist Republic of Albania Body Count: 100,000
1946-1991 (45 years)The body count only covers the years 1944-1987 (Rummel 1997).
17
Republic of Cuba Body Count: 73,000
1961-Present (45+ years and counting)The body count only covers the years 1959-1987 (Rummel 1997).
18
German Democratic Republic Body Count: 70,000
1949-1990 (41 years)The body count only covers the years 1948-1987 (Rummel 1997).
19
Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia Body Count: 65,000
1948-1990 (42 years)The body count only covers the years 1948-1968 (Rummel 1997).
20
Lao People’s Democratic Republic Body Count: 56,000
1975-Present (31+ years and counting)The body count only covers the years 1975-1987 excluding 47,000 war dead (Rummel 1997).
21
Hungarian People’s Republic Body Count: 27,000
1949-1989 (40 years)The body count only covers the years 1948-1987 (Rummel 1997).
22
People’s Republic of Poland Body Count: 22,000
1948-1989 (41 years)The body count only covers the years 1948-1987 (Rummel 1997). Excludes 1,585,000 from ethnic cleansing between 1945-1950 (Rummel 1994).
23
People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen Body Count: 1,000
1969-1990 (21 years)The body count only covers the years 1969-1987 (Rummel 1997).
If Russia is to be the cause of a future chastisement, how in heaven’s name do we understand that which the world just went through?
Communism also spread to Western Europe and even into America as its economic and philosophical principles slowly ascended into the once hallowed halls of American and European universities where the errors of liberalism are regent today. Communism did not limit itself to political repression; it also employed increasingly sophisticated psychological warfare which greatly enhanced efforts to dehumanize human beings. Humans were to be reduced to and treated as animals motivated and controlled by biological reflexes paired with associated ideas planted in the mind using advanced psychological weapons employing light and sound waves in multi-media production. Employing the media as the basis for psychological warfare entered its infancy during the reign of Lenin; today it has reached heights that even he would not have dreamed possible (see video below).
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Fortunately, Communism is being defeated thanks to a supernatural tidal wave unleashed by the Consecration of Russia by Pope John Paul II on March 25, 1984. Today Gorbachev is a fossil, liberalism is in decline, the Communist Chastisement has been ended and Russia, the scourge of humanity is being converted as we head step by step to an Era of Peace.
The consecration was repeated in churches throughout Poland. The people united under the leadership of the Polish episcopate, statesmen and military leaders raised their voices:
“Immortal King of Ages Lord Jesus Christ, we Poles stand before you to acknowledge your reign, surrender to your law, and entrust our homeland and the whole nation to you.”
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“Humbly bowing our heads before you, King of the Universe, we acknowledge your dominion over the Polish nation, those living in the homeland and throughout the world. Wishing to worship the majesty of Thy power and glory, with great faith and love, we cry out: Rule us, Christ!”
Prior to this Pope John Paul cried out:
“The hour has come when the message of Divine Mercy is able to fill hearts with hope and to become the spark of a new civilization: the civilization of love. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, Homily, August 18th, 2002
“Mankind will not have ‘peace’ until it turns with trust to My mercy.”
He told her to:
“Speak to the world about My mercy; let all mankind recognize My unfathomable mercy. It is a sign for the end times; after it will come the day of justice. … You will prepare the world for My final coming (Diary, 848 and 429).
He also told Faustina, that the spark for the Hour of Mercy precipitating the Era of Peace, both conterminous and ancillary to His “final coming”, the spark He said would come forth from Poland. It has!
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Yes, the world is a mess, yes here is a great amount of work to be done, yes the stench of Communist errors are enveloping the atmosphere, but the curse of communism has been abated, these forces are weakening, signs of the promised triumph are all around, but they arenot being reported. Newera News, however, is committed to high quality news, to the truth about the Virgin Mary, about the Hour of Mercy and the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, please take time and review some of the many news stories we have published during the past year.
THE WORLD AND THE CHURCH have both lived through and barely survived a calamitous twentieth century, a century often referred to as “A Century of Martyrs”, a century in which the Church experienced the largest and most heinous onslaught in the history of humanity, a century characterized by world wars, apostasy, persecution of the good, and global chastisement as foretold by Our Lady of Fatima. Father John Hardon lamented the colossal blood-soaked global chastisement of the 20th century:
“On the bloody side, our century has had more Christians who were martyred for Christ than in all the centuries from Calvary to nineteen hundred included.”
Pope John Paul II also recognized the fury unleashed against the Church in the 20th century:
“In our own century the martyrs have returned….The Church has once again become a Church of martyrs. The persecutions of believers —priests, religious and laity—has caused a great sowing of martyrdom in different parts of the world” (Tertio Millennio-Adveniente).
The scope of 20th Century Christian Martyrdom, was so broad that it moved Pope John Paul II to devote more ink to the topic than any other pope in human history:
Fortunately, this century, this abominable century, has ended, but few seem to have taken notice of the global improvement; they are too focused on the sea of evils that the media place before them on a daily basis in order to perpetrate a nefarious deception, a deception intended to keep them from knowing the truth, keep them from realizing that Communism is dying, Russia is being converted and that we are headed for an “Era of Peace” as promised by the Mother of God at Fatima. The media is engaged in a collusion of silence and a distortion of the truth about Russia. Russia’s ongoing conversion must be distorted because it is related to the consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by Pope John Paul II and the subsequent Triumph promised by the Virgin Mary at Fatima.
When Sister Lucia asked Our Lord why the Holy Father had to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart, why He, as King of Kings and High Priest, could not forego the papal consecration and convert Russia without the input of a pope? Jesus responded that it is His will that His entire Church attribute the conversion of Russia to His Mother’s Immaculate Heart so that the Church would thereafter raise devotion to Her Immaculate Heart next to devotion to His Sacred Heart. In His own words, Jesus told Lucia:
Jesus, in obedience to the fourth commandment, wants His Mother honored – He wants her honored because He loves her. It is she who gave Him His Body, the Body that died and rose from the dead, the Body that is the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the New Israel, the Church. Thus, as Mother of His Body; she is the Mother of all the faithful, who in accordance with scripture, shall call her blessed forever. Since all prophetic scriptures are to be fulfilled, “all generations” (even this perverse generation), will call her blessed (Luke 1:48). To help assure the fulfillment of Luke 1:48 in this generation, Jesus wished to stress the intimate connection linking the conversion of Russia to the Immaculate Heart. He wants His entire Church to recognize that the conversion of Russia is the direct result of the consecration to her Heart, thereby motivating the Church to elevate devotion to this Heart by placing it along side of His own.
Because the Consecration of Russia is associated with the victory of Mary’s Immaculate Heart and Russia’s conversion as foretold at Fatima, because of this, Russia must be vilified, the truth about its conversion must be distorted and twisted to hide the fact that Russia, rather than helping advance global liberalism, is in fact now opposing the hegemony of the globalists. RUSSIA’S CONVERSION, THE PAPAL CONSECRATION, AND THE VICTORY OF THE IMMACULATE HEART ARE INTIMATELY CONNECTED; therefore, all hell is opposed to the truth about the papal consecration and subsequent events that are occurring in Russia. In this regard, renowned media professor Marshall McLuhan wrote:
“The modern media are engaged in Luciferian conspiracy against the truth.”
Lucifer is at perpetual war with the Virgin Mary (Gen 3:15; Rev 12: 13-15). It thus behooves him to sequester, camouflage, pervert and disguise knowledge about Russia’s conversion, to dissociate that country’s conversion from the Immaculate Heart. His cohorts therefore distort information about the consecration and about change underway in Russia and throughout the world, change that clearly indicates that the triumph she promised is occurring. Her triumph and the promised conversion of Russia must be kept hidden from all the world. The legions of hell and their adepts are ceaselessly working through such clandestine apparatus as fake news, staged political events, false apparitions and diabolical chicanery to obfuscate and confuse all mankind in order to railroad or steal the promised Era of Peace. Father John Hardon elucidating McLuhan’s meaning stated:
“Millions of words are published every day and heard over the radio and television. Consciously and deliberately, much of this written and spoken communication is not true. It is estimated that ninety percent of the books borrowed from American libraries are fiction. Whole nations are living in a dream world created by the media, and the dreams are scientifically calculated to keep the human mind from contact with reality.”
Father Hardon wrote the above before the turn of the last century, what would he say today? If the diablerie of the past century are allowed to slip from memory, it is easy to fall prey to the deceptive propaganda coming forth from legions intent on spreading their confusing message, intent on keeping men and women oblivious to what is really going on. These legions, capitalizing on manufactured ignorance and historical amnesia, would have everyone believe that Russia is still a furtive communist nemesis playing possum, a feigned sleep from which it will awake to devour the world in an onslaught of evil militarism. In the near future, Russia will be at the forefront of a colossal chastisement, which, they would have us believe, is looming on the horizon. Media allies in the Catholic Press and supposed advocates of Fatima are seemingly working hand in hand with the purveyors of “fake news” to advance the theme of an heretical pope and a great chastisement led by Russia and the monster Vladimir Putin; they are doing this to misrepresent and steal the Era of Peace and advance their long planned eschatological scenario in its stead. But, no matter how hard they try, they cannot alter the historical facts; they cannot pawn of past events as future events.
In truth, we have just lived through a chastisement led by Russia, a chastisement unparalleled in the annals of human history, a chastisement that has abated with the Consecration of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by Pope John Paul II (March 25, 1984). In truth, in the wake of this consecration, we are rapidly heading toward an Era of Peace. We are heading toward an Era of Peace, but the doomsayers are still focusing on chastisement despite the fact that we just lived through a hundred years of living hell, a hell which they would like us to forget so that they can advance their idea that a false pope (if you follow this or any of the following links please exercise caution, the articles are loaded with distortions – see if you can find some of them) and accompanying chastisement are imminent. These so-called pundits claim that a false-church is rising around Pope Francis, when in fact, they themselves, are most likely the false church, the false church that they surreptitiously warn everyone against – the accuser is usually a crafty liar, a liar guilty of the things he falsely accuses others of (Rev 12:10; John 8:44).
Pope John Paul II, a pope who knew Mary’s promise was contingent upon the consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, this pope of the 20th century did NOT think that a chastisement was imminent. Rather, filled with a deep understanding and experience of the horrors of the bygone 20th century, this pope consecrated the World to Mary’s Immaculate Heart as she had requested and afterward stated:
“After purification through trial and suffering (inflicted by atheistic communism), the dawn of a new era is about to break. (POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II, General Audience, September 10, 2003).
In other words, the world had already passed through the chastisement spoken of by Our Lady at Fatima. As a Son of Poland, Saint John Paul had imbibed the words of his mentor Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski who often told him:
“Victory when it comes, will be a victory of the Most Blessed Mother”.
Like Wyszynski, Wojtyla had suffered through the pogrom, the great chastisement of Communism linked to the 20th century. He lived to see the Red Flag come down from the Kremlin, he lived to see the rebirth of Christianity in Poland (video below) and in Russia as well, he lived to see the beginnings of a rebirth that foreshadows the Triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart, a rebirth associated with the conversion of Russia and the defeat of liberalism that is underway worldwide. This is a rebirth that the global media is straining all its might to suppress. A chastisement is notimminent; the chastisement foretold at Fatima has already been lived through; it has ended as Our Lady promised with the consecration of Russia. The horrors we are currently witnessing are the frantic outcries of the dying breath of liberalism, a mad dog penned up against the wall and frothing at its mouth – angry and dangerous, but nearing defeat.
The consecration was repeated in churches throughout Poland. The people united under the leadership of the Polish episcopate, statesmen and military raised their voices :
“Immortal King of Ages Lord Jesus Christ, we Poles stand before you to acknowledge your reign, surrender to your law, and entrust our homeland and the whole nation to you.”
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“Humbly bowing our heads before you, King of the Universe, we acknowledge your dominion over the Polish nation, those living in the homeland and throughout the world. Wishing to worship the majesty of Thy power and glory, with great faith and love, we cry out: Rule us, Christ!”
Instead of celebrating this manifest victory over communism and the return of Russia to its Christian roots, the global press is trying to divide classes and races, trying to create conflict in (1) hopes of advancing their dying dream of one world liberal culture, (2) to hide the truth about Russia and (3) to hinder reconciliation and cooperation resulting in peace; when men and women stop fighting each other and join hands, there is greater likelihood that they will realize who the enemy really is.
Karl Marx and a generation of social scientists trained in the conflict school of social progress are masters of divisive politics, masters of confusion, masters of creating a smoke screen for their paymasters to hide behind while advancing their pernicious global agenda. Thus, hired press agents have the world focused on manufactured protests between liberals and conservatives, on divisive racial imbroglios and the evils of terrorism while their overlords endeavor to advance a now failing game plan, a plan that includes at times real, but often manufactured, conflict to advance their agenda and to make it appear as if all hell is breaking loose and a chastisement is imminent, when in fact a chastisement has just ended and its remnants are fading while its purveyors spend billions to try and keep their plan of global conquest afloat. Liberalism is falling apart, Christianity is being reborn in Russia and around the globe, but we must believe that a chastisement lies in front of us. Because Russia and Putin have become a threat to liberal globalism, they must be portrayed as a growing menace. The truth is Russia is becoming Christian and opposing the liberal world agenda but we must believe that they are part of a plan to control the world devised by those who actually imposing a dehumanizing global hegemony.
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The conflict currently underway, the conflict daily portrayed in the media, is best understood as the beating back of the still significant forces of liberalism, forces that are straining to unleash all their fury in hopes of holding onto a world rapidly fading from their grip, but we are to believe that they are signs of a looming great chastisement, when in fact the chastisement is behind us.
Whole nations were annihilated by communist armies and we are to believe that liberal “snow flakes” blocking traffic are somehow a great threat? They are a threat, but a manageable threat, a threat that backfires and raises ire against them with their every epicene performance. The 20th century was plagued by two World Wars followed by other atrocious wars fought all over the globe, wars accompanied by gruesome tortures, death camps and gulags where priests and nuns were brutalized along with innocent women and children, churches desecrated by the tens of thousands, nuclear holocaust at the door and we are to think that a cohort of paid for terrorists, poverty stricken men without a country, men driving jeeps paid for by American and Saudi dollars equipped with nothing but machine guns and IEDs, we are to believe that such feeble forces are somehow a match for the world’s superpowers, somehow equal to or greater than the evils of Communism. The threat of terrorism is minimal compared to the atrocities of Communism, which was a real chastisement, not a manufactured one.
A review of the Twentieth Century would be a good anecdote to the manufactured false consciousness resulting from false news narratives, which are both indicative signs of the times.
THE WORLD APOSTOLATE OF FATIMA is the sole organization commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church to propagate the authentic Message of Fatima. Nonetheless, a self-proclaimed Catholic organization, Tradition Family and Property (TFP congruent with other Traditionalist apostolates) seems to have little problem pretending that it is the ultimate world authority on the Heaven sent message. TFP apparently believes that it, not the Catholic Church but it, should be listened to by Catholics worldwide contrary to what the apostolic line of popes and bishops teach and have taught about the Message of Fatima.
Regarding the crucial question concerning the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart as requested by the Virgin Mary (June 13, 1929), the Vatican has clearly concluded based upon attestation of the visionary, Sister Lucia herself, based upon her testimony, the Vatican has definitively concluded that the papal consecration of March 25, 1984 was both valid and perpetually definitive. As Pope John Paul II pronounced:
Though they do not often state it explicitly, TFP representatives and their subsidiary, “America Needs Fatima”, apparently do not believe (contrary to the official position adumbrated by the Vatican, the World Apostolate of Fatima, and Sister Lucia herself) that the papal consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary made by Pope John Paul II on March 25, 1984 was valid:
TFP pontificates) that men have not converted. There is no doubt that Our Lady’s requests have not been heeded. And given the present state of world affairs, it is unlikely that men will do this in the near future. Therefore, Fatima is more urgent than ever because it foresees a chastisement (not peace, but a chastisement) for a world that has lost all sense of order.”
TFP does not possess any sort of canonical title or even a scintilla of juridic personality, it possesses no mandate or ecclesial approbation to teach about Fatima in the name of the Church; TFP has none of these things, yet it holds a position completely antithetical to that advanced by the Church and by the WAF and is thereby causing confusion, confusion which is not of God:
“For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” (1 Corinthians 14:33).
Consequently, the WAF prohibits any talk and certainly any pronouncements pertaining to a supposed need to consecrate Russia. The WAF prohibits these things because the consecration has already been accomplished by Pope John Paul II as confirmed by Sister Lucia and the Church itself. To teach anything to the contrary reeks of pride, the root cause of confusion and then of division contrary to the plan of God who wills that in all things His Church be one.
“That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21).
“Faithfulness to the magisterial teaching of the Church and loyalty to the Pope and the Bishops and Pastors in communion with the Chair of Peter is an absolute requirement. Any and all discussion of things like defects in the Consecration of Russia performed by Blessed Pope John Paul II on March 25, 1984 which made it unacceptable to heaven, and any and all discussion about alleged parts of the Secret of Fatima which are purported in certain corners to have not yet been revealed is strictly prohibited. People who promote either of these two allegation (are)… causing great confusion and deep division.”
The World Apostolate of Fatima (WAF) Only Organization Commissioned by Church to Propagate and Implement the Message of Fatima
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The WAF, speaking with ecclesial authority, teaches that Russia has been consecrated and is subsequently being converted (asevidenced by numerous news reports), while TFP, pretending to be Catholic, is engaged in an antithetical and on-going contradictory moral crusade against Russia. TFP continues to claim that Pope John Paul II’s (1984) Papal Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary was invalid or incorrectly implemented and must therefore be repeated (correctly), while the WAF following Sister Lucia, the seer herself, and the Church all claim that the consecration was accepted by heaven.
When Sister Lucia asked Our Lord why the Holy Father had to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart, why He, as King of Kings and High Priest, could not forego the papal consecration and convert Russia without the input of a pope? Jesus responded that it is His will that His entire Church attribute the conversion of Russia to His Mother’s Immaculate Heart so that the Church would thereafter raise devotion to Her Immaculate Heart next to devotion to His Sacred Heart. In His own words. Jesus told Lucia:
Jesus, in obedience to the fourth commandment, wants His Mother honored – He wants her honored because He loves her. It is she who gave Him His Body, the Body that died and rose from the dead, the Body that is the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the New Israel, the Church. Thus, as Mother of His Body; she is the Mother of all the faithful, who in accordance with scripture, shall call her blessed forever. Since all prophetic scriptures are to be fulfilled, “all generations” (even this perverse generation), will call her blessed (Luke 1:48). To help assure the fulfillment of Luke 1:48 in this generation, Jesus wished to stress the intimate connection linking the conversion of Russia to the Immaculate Heart. He wants His entire Church to recognize that the conversion of Russia is the direct result of the consecration to her Immaculate Heart, thereby motivating the Church to elevate devotion to this heart by placing it along side of the Heart of Jesus.
Satan, on the other hand, is at perpetual war with this Woman (Gen 3:15); he loathes the Virgin Mary (Rev 12: 13-15). It thus behooves him to sequester, camouflage, pervert and disguise knowledge about Russia’s conversion, to dissociate her conversion from the Immaculate Heart. He therefore distorts information about the consecration and about change underway in Russia and throughout the world, change that clearly indicates that the triumph she promised is occurring. Her triumph and the promised conversion of Russia must be kept hidden from all the world. The legions of hell and their adepts are ceaselessly working through such clandestine apparatus as fake news, staged political events, false apparitions and diabolical chicanery to obfuscate and confuse all mankind in order to railroad or steal the promised Era of Peace. Unfortunately (and hopefully unknown to) the TFP, in the name of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, has inadvertently taken the side of forces arrayed against the august Mother of God and the will of her Divine Son. For in addition to misrepresenting the consecration of Russia to the world, TFP also misrepresents social, economic and political facts about Russia in publication after publication. This seemingly benign apostolate (and other similarly misinformed and misinforming apostolates) thus appears to be doing the work of the devil rather than the work of the Holy Trinity.
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According to TFP Russia is not Only Mis-Consecrated or Un-Concentrated; It is also a “Sinking Ship”
“Bloomberg has ranked the Russian economic performance expected in 2016 as the fourth worst in the world, surpassed only by Venezuela, Brazil and Greece.
Likening the Russian economy to the Titanic, they reported that:
“The Titanic has already crashed, its bow is filling with cold water but the crew and first class passengers behave as if nothing is happening….More of the same poison will only cause Russia to suffer more as her economy sinks like the Titanic with Putin at the helm.”
“Russia is ready to make a comeback. This might not be entirely translatable in its stock market however, which is already up over 40% year-to-date. On Monday, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development revised its outlook for industrial production in 2016 to 1% compared to the previous 0.4%. In November, national statistics firm Rosstat said industrial production in the first 11 months of 2016 rose 0.8% from 2015 and 2.7% compared to the same month a year ago. IP also rose around 1% from October levels.”
“The ruble, which plunged to a record low in January, has stabilized as crude rebounded. It’s gained more than 13 percent against the dollar, the best performance globally this year (2016), after a 20 percent loss in 2015….“The most important thing right now is probably how the economy is adjusting to new conditions,… we see some positive signals, some of the expected shifts have began in the structure of the Russian economy. There’s a shift from non-tradable sectors to tradables, especially those oriented toward exports.”
TFP continued its false-theological driven bogus tirade
“So it is no wonder that Russia, while endowed with remarkable natural resources, fails to meet even the basic needs of her people.
“Grain flows from Russia are expected rise again this year after strong wheat output growth, with production expected to hit new records at around 70m tonnes. “[Russia’s] harvest is absolutely huge,” says Amy Reynolds, analyst at International Grains Council.
“Last season, Russian topped the U.S. in wheat exports for the first time in decades and is expected to extend those gains to displace the EU from the top spot this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Investors from local farmers to billionaire tycoons are pumping money into the business.”
“Russian wheat has crowded out U.S. supplies in Egypt, the world’s biggest buyer, and is gaining footholds in some other countries, such as Nigeria, Bangladesh and Indonesia. That’s four decades after the Soviet Union turned to U.S. shipments of wheat and corn to offset shortfalls in its own harvests. Over the last decade, Russia has been the biggest single source of growth in wheat exports, vital to meeting surging global demand.”
flourishing. The Japanese Times reports that “Russia is an emerging superpower in food supply.“giving resource-rich land awayAccording to the Financial Times, it is improved economic conditions in Russia that are driving its unexpected agricultural growth. Nevertheless, TFP must be the purveyor of Russian doom, or its allegations that Russia’s consecration has not been properly performed come to naught. Russia’s economic and food debacle and its purported inability to feed its own people, as falsely told by TFP, is as untrue as its spiritual accounts regarding the consecration of Russia: simply not true.
TFP would like everyone to believe that Communism is still alive in Russia, that it is killing the Russian economy and that therefore Russia must be consecrated again. In short, they seem to be Nationalist Neocons believing that without sacrosanct Capitalism, Russia is doomed-there can be no other way to prosperity except state-sponsored usury and unlimited private property. Damn the Russians, if they are not capitalists, they must therefore still be communists. As was previously stated, TFP publications are full of false reports about the Russian economy:
“The stale ideas of communism were not removed, and much of the capitalist financial resources evaporated maintaining collective property. Now that the exceptional commodity bonanza is over, so is the illusion.(3)”
On the one hand, TFP cites Bloomberg (without providing any source information) for verification purposes and then, on the other, they fail to cite Bloombergwhen it, contrary to the TFP script, informs the public that:
“Big retailers like Sweden’s Ikea Group and France’s Leroy Merlin SA have begun pumping billions of dollars in new stores and factories….Ikea is putting $1.6 billion into new stores over the next five years or so. Leroy Merlin in September announced a 2-billion-euro plan to more than double the number of outlets in Russia over the same period. Pfizer Inc. is building a new drug factory, while Mars Inc. is expanding plants for chewing gum and pet food.”
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“This is the moment for investment,” said Walter Kadnar, country head for Ikea, which last launched a new store in Russia five years ago but this fall opened a $60 million furniture factory near St. Petersburg and acquired land for a third Mega mall near the city. “I strongly believe in the potential of the Russian market long-term.”
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“The government said its annual meeting of foreign investors in September drew the most top executives in a decade. Foreign direct investment surged to $8.3 billion in the first nine months of this year, more than the $5.9 billion reported for all of 2015, according to central bank data.
To further bolster Bloomberg and FT reports (misrepresented by TFP), the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has announced verifiable economic data congruent with Bloomberg and FT data. Putin recently gave his State of the Union Address in which he stated:
“We have seen a slight overall decline in the automotive industry, although trucks have shown an increase of 14.7 percent, light commercial vehicles, up 2.9 percent, and buses, up 35.1 percent. In railway engineering, there is a 21.8 percent growth, and freight cars are up 26 percent. Agricultural machinery and equipment have shown very good momentum, 26.8 percent. The light industry is also demonstrating an upward trend.”
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“We have ensured macroeconomic stability, which is very important, and have maintained financial reserves. The Central Bank gold and currency reserves have not decreased, but have even grown. Whereas on January 1, 2016 they totalled $368.39 billion, now they stand at $389.4, almost 400 billion. Here, too, we can see positive dynamics.”
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“Agricultural produce exports bring in more revenue today than arms exports. Only recently, we would probably have scarcely imagined such a thing possible. I have already spoken publicly about this and can say it again here today. Incidentally, as far as our arms exports go, we are still a serious contender on this market. Our exports came to $14.5 billion in 2015, and our agricultural produce exports came to $16.2 billion. This year, we expect a figure of $16.9 billion.”
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“The IT industry is one of the most rapidly developing sectors, which is heartening. Russian IT companies have doubled their exports over the past five years…. Our IT exports were almost zero only recently, but they have risen to $7 billion now.”
Because they refuse to see the truth, the guardians of false information generated by TFP maestros claim that, “A key fact remains, and its effects are devastating: Vladimir Putin’s Russia has not put an end to socialist collectivism and the hens have come home to roost.“
Instead of scholarly documentation to support this specious contention, the maestros stealthily provide an outdated and irrelevant link to papal encyclicals against socialism. What? News Flash: Socialism/Communism in Russia is dead. Russia is undergoing a Christian renewal as recognized by Politico, the New York Times, Newsweek, by other members of the world press and by Pope Francis himself:
unprecedented renewal of the Christian faith in Russia, as well as in many other countries of Eastern Europe, formerly dominated for decades by atheist regimes. Today, the chains of militant atheism have been broken and in many places Christians can now freely confess their faith.”
notWikipedia has this one right:
“Russia has an upper-middle income mixed economy with state ownership in strategic areas of the economy. Market reforms in the 1990s privatized much of Russian industry and agriculture, with notable exceptions to this privatization occurring in the energy and defense-related sectors.
A mixed economy does provide for state ownership of key sectors, as stated, but it is also characterized by extensive private ownership as well. Russia, moreover, is poised to experience a new round of economic growth.
“The improving outlook is driving appetite for Russian assets. The ruble was the second-best performer in emerging markets last quarter with a gain of 4.8 percent against the dollar. It traded little changed at 64.8225 against the dollar as of 3:36.m. in Moscow. Ruble volatility is at the lowest level since 2014, with investors seeking close to four times the government debt tendered at an auction on Wednesday.”
Bloomberg was referring to organizations such as TFP when it recently stated:
“It’s time to bury the expectation that Russia will fall apart economically under pressure from falling oil prices and economic sanctions, and that Russians, angered by a drop in their living standards, will rise up and sweep Putin out of office. Western powers face a tough choice: Settle for a lengthy siege and ratchet up the sanctions despite the progress in Ukraine, or start looking for ways to restart dialogue with Russia, a country that just won’t go away.”
Russia is still in the ascendant mode and will remain in that mode until complimented and then surpassed by a resurgent Europe (a Newera projection to be discussed at a later time). Today, this is the type of cultural event occurring on Red Square at the Kremlin (see video below), the type of Marian event that Satan hates, anti-Christian globalists abhor and that radically traditionalist foundations and news agencies attempt to keep out of the news.
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Unlike this Russian choir, TFP sings an unsupported refrain against the Rus and in so doing perverts the Fatima Message esp. regarding the consecration of Russia and the promised “Era of Peace”.
Like other traditionalist groups, TFP seems to be waging a war with the Catholic episcopate. Thus, according to the Brazilian Bishop Castro de Meyer:
“There is a visceral anticlericalism in TFP: everything that comes from the clergy is prejudicially received. Basically, it holds that all priests are ignorant, not very zealous or interesting, and have other such qualities. Well, then, keeping in mind the divine Constitution of the Church which was instituted by Jesus Christ,TFP’s habitual anti-clericalism, latent, makes it an heretical sect, and therefore, as I have said, is animated by a principle contrary to the dogma established by Jesus Christ in the constitution of His Church”
TFP combines a unique blend of elitism, anti-communism, anti-modernism, mystical theology, monarchism, and avid devotion to its founder, Plinio Correa de Oliveira. Under his regime, TFP members exercised considerable influence in the Brazilian government and military. As social elitists representing traditional values and insistent on private property rights and large land-holdings, they were (and still are) rabid anti-Communists. They distinguished themselves by hiding behind ardent opposition to aberrant liberation theology thereby ignoring their Christian social responsibility to engage in much needed land reform throughout Latin America. TFP represents a throwback to medieval Feudalism, to knighthood, and social privilege; they view themselves as remnants of the noble class of landowning “aristocrats”.
Given their strict adherence to American Foreign Policy, excessive private property and Cold war anti-communist rhetoric, TFP advocates might be mistaken for Neocons. The US foreign policy initiatives fully embraced by TFP seem to make it morally complicit in war-mongering around the globe, in the destabilizing advancement of NATO to the very borders of Russia (see maps on this page), in American engagement or involvement in Afghanistan, Libya, Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Yemen as well as the South Pacific and Latin America, in the building and maintaining of two thousand military bases outside of the homeland compared to Russia’s two or three, and they insist Russia is a threat to world peace.
“From the chilling winds of a Cold War, one can see that the Russian danger that seemed so distant after the fall of the Berlin Wall is back at the gates. The warning of Our Lady at Fatima about Russian errors spreading about the earth now comes back onto the stage – and her message is ever more timely.”
The USSR is gone, and liberalism of the West is tottering, but rather than focusing on the demise of liberalism, the global spread of American militarism, and rejoicing that we are moving toward an Era of Peace, TFP will have none of it. As expected, from the far right fringe, everything must be viewed through a negative lens, there must be a devil behind every stone, the world must be kept from knowing the truth about Fatima and the Christian renewal that is actually happening in Russia and Eastern Europe. The World Apostolate of Fatima (WAF), the only Fatima apostolate with juridic personality, the only apostolate that speaks with the voice of the Church on Fatima, the WAF tells us that Russia is being converted, but TFP people tell us Russia is about to devour us in a diabolical new wave of communism.
As far as communism in Russia is concerned, TFP is a radical organization, which in the spirit of its founder Plinio Correa de Oliveira, refuses obedience, obedience even to the Vicar of Christ:
Resistance is a common term used by members of TFP, Plinio’s resistance motif resurfaced in some of his followers, including Marian Horvat, among others, who gave it a more acute twist, speaking to the “heretic” John Paul II, they said, “We resist you to your face.”
However, the “heretic” John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI said that:
“It is necessary to be strong in faith and to resist error even when it masquerades as piety, so that by professing truth in love, we may embrace in the love of the Lord those who have strayed (cf. Eph. 4:15).”
Tradition Family Property (TFP) Committed to Causing Confusion over Fatima
BOTH ULTRA-LIBERALS and ultra-conservatives have their own version of the Virgin Mary, a version they think should be adopted by the rest of the Church, a version that they spare no cost in advancing. Disobedience might be expected on the left, but it is surprising when it comes from the right as with the zealots from Tradition Family and Property (TFP) and their subsidiary, “America Needs Fatima.”
Tradition Family and Property
Tradition Family and Property (TFP) is a traditionalist community founded in 1960 by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, a Brazilian politician and intellectual activist. TFP claims to be “the world’s largest anti-communist and anti-socialist network of Catholic inspiration.” As such, it was founded to “confront the profound crisis shaking the modern world” (1), a crisis rooted in something it refers to as “Cultural Marxism”.
Although it is to be lauded for its efforts in this area, it seems, nonetheless, overly committed to anti-socialism and too uncritical of capitalism. According to TFP, the social-cultural problem facing the modern world is rooted in “materialism”, but when considering the social effects of materialism, TFP limits its analysis to socialism and then proceeds to an unsustainable conclusion that the American Founders (certainly not socialists) rooted the country in moral values.
“Since materialism is the root of socialism, today’s widespread practical materialism prepares the ground for the germination of the socialist seed.
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A review of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography in which he turns fornication and adultery (which he referred to as venery-Article 12) into virtues, as long as they are practiced according to Aristotle’s maxim of moderation, manifests a serious misunderstanding of virtue by some of the founders. If that is not enough, consider that the US Constitution is a secular document void of any mention of God, divine law, or even natural law, and it is easy to see that the Christian morality that the folks at TFP want to sustain, was not a concern of the Founding Fathers whom they applaud.
The Christian founding motif is a typical theme of the religious right coming from the Conservative Camp. Thus, it is not surprising that, under the guise of anti-Socialism, TFP has successfully forged political connections with prominent people on the political and religious right along with whom they have become advocates of a type of American Manifest Destiny associated with Neoconservatism.
TFP is so intent on mounting a counter-revolution against Communism, and promoting renewal and advancing of Christian civilization, that it seems to get confused and conflates those goals with its Americanism. For example, one prolifer blogger recently posted the following:
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liberalism“)medieval Christendom was not democraticNor were the main architects of the Constitution (Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison) Christian. Nonetheless, TFP leaders hold these men up as shining examples of the type of elite class that should lead America in this its hour of great need. According to a TFP publication,
TFP holds up the Founding Fathers as elite men to imitate without demonstrating that they realize the Fathers whom they honor were the authors of the liberalism they profess to be crusading against. Rather, they advocate the need for a similar contemporary elite. Clearly, for members of TFP, those on the political left are too decadent to lead; leadership for our times requires men and women of virtue on the right. Unfortunately, members of TFP seemingly fail to realize that the contemporary Conservative Republicans they honor, represent the liberal tradition (economically-politically) they ashew. Thus, under the guise of fighting communism, they unwittingly and at least partially promote capitalism, although John Hovart’s Book, “Return to Order” is a move in the correct direction (it would benefit by a more precise critique of finance and usury). Nonetheless, they have focused myopically on communism.
It might be a hard pill for TFP members to swallow, but as Cardinal Glemp, Primate of Poland, stated: “Communism is dead.” Fighting communism is not going to make America great again. TFP could use a dose of Saint Padre Pio, a Catholic who when asked to compare communism and capitalism said that
“They are both indescribably evil. In the East they deny God from the head to the belly button. In the West, they deny Him from the belly button to the feet.”
Thus, TFP falls into the trap of elevating the right due to its sole critique of those on the left. Materialism is not limited to communism/socialism (or to “Cultural Marxism”); it is manifest in capitalism as well. If TFP continues to conduct its crusade against socialism, it might end up being guilty of advancing the very liberalism that it claims to be combatting.
Unfortunately, although TFP representatives speak admirably of Christian culture, they often seem over embroiled in the liberal economic-political program of Americanism as evidenced by their anti-papal stance, and willingness to act as moral arbiter of presidents while concomitantly taking pope’s to task on Catholic Social Teaching applied to America, among other things.
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No Problem Disagreeing with the Pope’s Judgments
With the outbreak of the Iraqi War in 1992, leaders of the TFP such as Vice President John Horvat lined up behind President Bush in full support of the invasion. Mr. Horvat wrote the following letter to President Bush:
9 March 2003
The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States of America The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
“I am writing to express the American TFP’s full support for our Armed Forces which you, as Commander-in-Chief, have sent into combat against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
As you have often said, the United States, as a sovereign nation, has a right to declare war when its people, territorial integrity, or interests are attacked or threatened. Our sovereignty allows us to make this decision independent of international organizations or bodies.
Moreover, natural law does not distinguish between defensive or offensive war. It is sufficient that the threat be real and menacing. That same law supports the right of a sovereign state to come to the aid of an oppressed people that suffers under the yoke of an unjust regime, and, depending on the circumstances, this natural law right may even oblige in charity.
The September 11 attacks underscored the existence of an enemy whose ideologues proclaim their goal shamelessly: the extermination of America and Western civilization.
Nevertheless, throughout the world a chorus of socialists, liberal clergy, radical pacifists, anarchists, and leftist non-governmental organizations dispute not only the cause for this war, but even America’s right to declare war. Such a position is unacceptable since it would leave America dishonored and defenseless before a very real threat.”
According to Mr. Horvat, Pope John Paul II must be either an “unacceptable” “socialist, liberal, radical or anarchist” because Saint John Paul was among those who not only opposed the war but counseled President Bush not to wage it.
In 1991, John Paul II opposed the Gulf War and publicly appealed to U.S. President George H. W. Bush not to wage it. In 2003, he again opposed the war in Iraq and appealed to President George W. Bush to refrain from engaging in it. According to the New York Times, the pope
“…expressed his strongest opposition yet to a potential war in Iraq today, describing it as a “defeat for humanity” and urging world leaders to try to resolve disputes with Iraq through diplomatic means.”
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“No to war!” the pope said during his annual address to scores of diplomatic emissaries to the Vatican, an exhortation that referred in part to Iraq, a country he mentioned twice.”
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“War cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option, and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations.”
“You are very familiar with the unequivocal position of the Holy See in this regard, expressed in numerous documents, through direct and indirect contacts, and in the many diplomatic efforts which have been made since you visited me, first at Castelgandolfo on 23 July 2001, and again in this Apostolic Palace on 28 May 2002.”
Cardinal Ratzinger also argued that “reasons sufficient for unleashing a war against Iraq did not exist,” in part because:
“Proportion between the possible positive consequences and the sure negative effect of the conflict was not guaranteed. On the contrary, it seems clear that the negative consequences will be greater than anything positive that might be obtained.”
Clearly, Pope John Paul II, then Cardinal Ratzinger and Mr. Horvat held differing views about just war. Mr. Horvat however, had no problem playing teacher to presidents while disagreeing with his own pope, the Universal Shepherd and Head of State equal to the president in diplomatic rank and exceeding him in spiritual authority, while Mr Horvat has neither diplomatic rank nor teaching authority in the Church. But that did not stop him. He even presented his teachings about Just War to the president thereby helping the president to justify his opposition to the Pope. It sounds as if Mr. Horvat was more loyal to his Country than to his Church, something TFP has been warned about by bishops in Latin America . According to the Brazilian Bishop Castro de Meyer:
“There is a visceral anticlericalism in TFP: everything that comes from the clergy is prejudicially received. Basically, it holds that all priests are ignorant, not very zealous or interesting, and have other such qualities. Well, then, keeping in mind the divine Constitution of the Church which was instituted by Jesus Christ,TFP’s habitual anti-clericalism, latent, makes it an heretical sect, and therefore, as I have said, is animated by a principle contrary to the dogma established by Jesus Christ in the constitution of His Church”
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“Individuals become incapable of seeing objective reality, of perceiving even fundamental errors, because of this inversion of following a lay person (referring to TFP founder Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira ) instead of the legitimate Shepherds of the Holy Church.”
TFP not only had a problem with Pope John Paul II, it also has one with Pope Francis whom they also would like correct and to tutor. In regards to the recent Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, TFP tellingly published this papal broadside:
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WAR IS MORE WITH CHURCH THAN WITH WORLD AND DEVIL
Since, TFP leaders have no problem lecturing popes on Just War Theory and moral theology , it should not be surprising that members of TFP have boldly professed to “resist the pope to his face” so much so that at times, it seems that they have decided that the war they’re waging is a war with the Church, rather than with a fallen world. Nor is it surprising that the name “Hovart” (Marian Hovart, the sister of John Hovart) appears on the list of literary architects behind the resistance declaration, a declaration that is an invitation to engage the “heretic Karol Wojtylaaka John Paul II in dialogue on how he had deviated from what the perennial Magisterium of the Church taught.”
Although Marian Horvat, Ph.D formed a new group “Tradition in Action” that dissociated from the TFP, both Hovarts harbor an animus toward Vatican Council II and the modern papacy, an animus that they have learned to tone down so that they can better work from within inside the Church rather than as suspect laity compromised by association with priests that have been suspended a divinis (meaning that they are canonically prohibited from exercising ministries such as Holy Mass and the sacrament of confession).
According to Catholic tradition, the Church Militant is involved in a threefold war against the world, the flesh and the devil; the church is not a fourth candidate on the threefold list. The Church cannot go to war with itself because any kingdom divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 3:24). That does not stop TFP however from waging war against the Church; worse, those waging the war with the Church are not even clerics or shepherds of the flock – they are laymen who have judged themselves important and competent enough to correct popes and bishops. At least that is what it seems when we read many of the documents coming forth from this camp. To those who asked Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, founder of TFP, why contend with bishops and cardinals when there were so many evils in the world outside the Church, Plinio replied:
“If the enemy is storming the (church) walls, everyone must unite. But if it has penetrated the citadel (presumably the Vatican), then it is not enough to fight outside the walls, but also within the walls”. [1]
Because of actions flowing from this attitude, the bishops of Brazil took decisive action. At their 23rd General Assembly (April 10-19, 1985) the Brazilian Bishops drafted a formal notice regarding the TFP:
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Signed by Dom Raymundo Damasceno Asas, the Secretary-General for the National Bishops of Brazil
Given these experiences of the Brazilian Bishops, it should not be surprising that TFP has been charged with all of the following:
Disobedience to bishops
Being a cult
Singing hymns of praise to their founder and his mother that belong to Christ and His Mother
The rejection of Vatican Council II, which they deem heretical
Sedevacantism i.e., the belief that the popes since Vatican II are false popes – that is, the Seat of Peter has been vacant for a long time
Dismissing Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict and Pope Francis et al as heretics
Gnosticism or elitism manifest in a preferential option for the rich and those who fill their ranks
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What Have Other Brazilian Bishops had to Say about TFP?
Bishop Castro De Meyer knew Dr. Plinio personally; below are excerpts from a letter penned by this Brazilian bishop. The letter appeared in Le Sel de la Terre, [no. 28, Spring 1999], in an article entitled “Documents sur la T.F.P“.
“In this case (of TFP), I can only offer the sole advice: pray, pray much, above all the Rosary or at least the five decades of the Rosary, asking the Virgin Mother, Mediatrix of all graces, to enlighten your son and make him see that TFP is an heretical sect because, in fact, although they do not say or write it, TFP lives and behaves in accord with a principle which fundamentally undermines the truth of Christianity, that is, of the Catholic Church.”
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“In fact, it is de fide that Jesus Christ founded His Church — destined to maintain on earth the true worship of God and to lead souls toward eternal salvation — as an unequal society, composed of two classes: one which governs, teaches and sanctifies, composed of members of the clergy, and the other — the faithful — who receive the teaching, are governed and sanctified. This is a de fide dogma.”
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“It is a heretical subversion to habitually follow a lay person, therefore, not a member of the Hierarchy— as the spokesman of orthodoxy. Thus, they do not look to what the Church says, what the Bishops say, rather what this or that one says…. Nor does it end there: this attitude — even if not openly avowed — actually positions the “leader” as the arbiter of orthodoxy, and is accompanied by a subtle but real mistrust of the hierarchy and of the clergy in general.”
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“Well, then, keeping in mind the divine Constitution of the Church which was instituted by Jesus Christ, TFP’s habitual anti-clericalism, latent, makes it an heretical sect, and therefore, as I have said, is animated by a principle contrary to the dogma established by Jesus Christ in the constitution of His Church.”
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“Perhaps I (once) gave it support beyond a licit point. I retracted it only when it became clear to me that my warnings were not being taken into consideration. It is It is necessary to pray, because charismatic fervor produces a certain fanaticism: individuals become incapable of seeing objective reality, of perceiving even fundamental errors, because of this inversion of following a lay person instead of the legitimate Shepherds of the Holy Church.”
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To be Continued: Disguised Error about Papal Consecration of Russia
CONFUSING GLOBAL POLITICAL EVENTS, such as those happening in Syria and the Middle East cannot be understood properly without knowledge provided by the Virgin Mary who in 1917 revealed a future global Era of Peace, an unprecedented peace intimately related, she said, to the “Conversion of Russia”. It is worth repeating: The proper lens through which to understand global events, especially those currently unfolding in Syria and the Middle East, is through a startling Divine Message the Mother of God communicated to three Portuguese children (July 13, 1917) Jacinta and Francisco Marto (now canonized saints) and Lucia dos Santos while tending their familys’ flocks in the Cova da Iria of Fatima, Portugal. She opened their minds to the future foretelling World War II, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the pandemic scope of communism and its unprecedented cruciation permitted by God as a punishment for the sins and offences of humanity. Nonetheless, as foretold in Genesis 3:15 by the will of the Holy Trinity and united to her Son, she would crush the forces of evil:
“In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
She revealed this startling news in 1917; twelve years later (June 13, 1929) she appeared again, this time solely to the eldest child, Lucia Santos (who had become a Dorthen Nun stationed at Tuy, Spain) and announced the following:
“The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means” (Tuy, 1929).
It took another 55 years for the consecration to be made by Pope John Paul II on March 25, 1984. By that time the communists had spread their errors (atheism, materialism, socialism) throughout the world as she had foretold, so much so that the effects are cascading to this day. It will take much effort and a significant amount of time to undo them, but anyone closely observing global events can tell that a change, a significant change, is clearly underway in Russia and around the world. Russia’s unexpected conversion is confounding the architects of globalism and their liberal foreign policy initiatives – the entire global system is being thrown off of kilter by what the Russians are doing; no one expected it. The liberal regime had expected Russia to continue down the New Age path navigated by Gorbachev and liberal puppet Boris Yeltsin. In short, Russia was expected to be a player on the team advancing liberalism and its relentless anti-Christian global agenda. Instead, to everyone’s surprise, Russia has taken an about face and is reasserting its Christian identity.
https://youtu.be/XfSPgO-4uJA
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Liberal ideologues monopolizing power in both the United States and among NATO nations have identified Russia as the major political/military threat standing in opposition to their plans for global hegemony. In the past, the aggression was due to Russia’s Atheistic Communism; today it is due to the country’s commitment to family and traditional Christian values that are under vicious attack in the West. Therefore, intolerant liberal-minded globalists have undertaken an all-points crusade to vilify Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin. When these global hegemons engineered a coup in the Ukraine against a democratically elected government, when they undertook support of Islamic terrorists killing Christians in Syria following on the heels of their annihilation of Libya and destruction of Iraq, the Russians stood up and said “enough”; they began to fight back. From the moment the Russians became involved in Syria, the war took an abrupt turn against the globalists and their paid for terrorist forces. Al Qaeda, Daesh et al supposed enemies whom the Americans and their numerous allies could not tame after five long years of war, were subdued by the Russians in a few months. Was America really fighting the terrorists?
As a consequence of Russia’s decisive involvement, the six year war and propaganda effort waged by the United States and allied nations has failed; the war in Syria is basically over. Very few people, however, are aware of the momentous event and its consequences. The vastly publicized Syrian War (an event that was lavishly splashed across front pages of Western newspaper, magazines, periodicals, journals and web portals) has all of a sudden fallen into oblivion. President Bashar al Assad, the Syrian War, Al Qaeda were front page news items that have conspicuously faded into the past. They have faded without mention because, as things currently stand, the United States has in fact lost the war in Syria. Behind it all, to everyone’s surprise, stand Russia and Vladimir Putin. Russia is not only being converted as foretold by the Virgin Mary, Russia is emerging as the world’s new peace broker helping to bring about the Era of Peace she promised at Fatima.
“In affirming the foremost value of religious freedom, we give thanks to God for the currentunprecedented renewal of the Christian faith in Russia, as well as in many other countries of Eastern Europe, formerly dominated for decades by atheist regimes. Today, the chains of militant atheism have been broken and in many places Christians can now freely confess their faith.”
It is clear why Neocons and liberals have has such a disdain for Vladimir Putin. Instead of reading the signs of the times and appropriately adjusting their international agenda, American foreign policy is in disarray – nothing seems to be working for its dismayed engineers. It seemed as if Donald Trump understood the importance of working with Russia toward world peace during his candidacy. At that time, he percipiently stated, “It’s time to put the mistakes of the past behind us and chart a new course.”
“It is now time for a new approach. Our current strategy of nation-building and regime change have been a total disaster — Instead, all we got from Iraq and our ventures in the Middle East, was death, destruction and tremendous financial loss. But it’s time to put the mistakes of the past behind us and chart a new course….If I become president, the era of nation-building will be brought to a swift close” (CNN Transcripts)
“Our new approach must be to halt the spread of radical Islam….All actions should be oriented around this goal and any country which shares this goal (presumably Russia) will be our ally. We cannot always choose our friends but we can never fail to recognize our enemies.”
Unfortunately, due to the pride of Neocons in his administration (men and women who are still attempting to make this an American Century under America’s Global dominance), unfortunately, President Trump is not acting on his earlier insights. Rather than Neocons crafting a Pax Americana, America has instead become the exporter of war and terrorism worldwide. Because of its insistence on war, covert operations, and support of terrorist groups around the globe, the Project for a New American Century is defunct, very few people desire war and liberalism’s vaunted tolerance and free market finance (both under the guise of liberty) has become so aberrant that people are waking up to the challenges of liberal democracy; they don’t like it – authentic democracy (truly for the people) is preferable. Few people like a nation led by bullies and selfish warlords who involve its fighting men and women in action all across the globe from Nigeria, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and beyond to the South Pacific – no place is free of the threat of American weapons.
The United States must learn to be a peacemaker, leading by diplomacy and showing the world how to beat swords into plough shares. Instead, US military spending is more than that of all the countries in the world combined. NATO alone spends ten times more on military than the entire Russian Federation – so who is the military aggressor, who is the war-monger? Putin recently challenged the West to publish a map of all of its bases around the world and compare them to Russian bases – such a map, he said, would more clearly show who the aggressor is:
“American submarines are on permanent alert off the Norwegian coast; they are equipped with missiles that can reach Moscow in 17 minutes. But we dismantled all of our bases in Cuba a long time ago, even the non-strategic ones. And you would call us aggressive?”
“You yourself have mentioned NATO’s expansion to the east (that is toward the Russian border). As for us, we are not expanding anywhere; it is NATO infrastructure, including military infrastructure, that is moving towards our borders. Is this a manifestation of our aggression?”
“Everything we do is just a response to the threats emerging against us. Besides, what we do is limited in scope and scale, which are, however, sufficient to ensure Russia’s security. Or did someone expect Russia to disarm unilaterally?”
MAPS OF US BASES AROUND THE WORLD
Looking at the maps below, it seems that Mr. Putin has a valid point, a point that neoliberals want to ignore:
Graphic by 5W Infographics
It is not the Russians who are demonizing the West, we do a good job of that all by ourselves; it is the West that is demonizing Russia. It seems that Russia and the West have switched roles. Hopefully, under President Trump, the United States and Russia will be reconciled and cooperate to protect Christians and advance world peace – things the neoliberals and neocons fear more than anything else, consequently, Putin must be a demon.
Anyone with eyes can see who is threatening whom. Russia is virtually surrounded except for the frigid North Pole, and even there the US has nuclear submarines than can target and hit Moscow in 17 minutes. Now, the United States is deploying 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan and President Trump is threatening more war (see below).
If we need further proof of Russia’s aggression, we need only consider how bold the Russians are: How dare they move their country so close to our military bases! Seriously, Russia seems to be doing its part, will the United States do its? It does not appear to be doing so, at least not yet. Will it require international embarrassment to move the United States in the right direction, to move it toward its Christian roots, to take its role as a peacemaker among nations rather than a war monger?
Unfortunately, the new president is not following his campaign promise to cooperate with Russia; unfortunately, he is letting Neocons and misguided (but well intentioned) Nationalists determine his foreign policy. As a result, the United States is about to suffer a major foreign policy embarrassment in Syria (or elsewhere), which will soon be followed by others if it does not change its course of action, it it does not seek peace and global cooperation, if it does not stop spreading a defective liberal agenda worldwide.
“If the new president continued with the foreign policy of the Bush and Obama administrations (as he appears to be doing), if he pursued the same path as his predecessors (a path favored by Neocon War Hawks and Liberal Globalists), American Foreign Policy would continue its downward slide and America would continue suffering one foreign policy embarrassment after another while earning the ire of other nations around the globe.”
Although President Trump has piqued the world’s interests with his statement implying some type of decisive American military action in the near future, he should think twice; he would do well to carefully review America’s recent failures in Iraq and Syria as well as what is now looking to be failures in Libya and Ukraine as well. He should seriously review the (unforeseen) consequences of any further military action in a world that is growing increasingly tired of war and increasingly hungry for cooperation and peace, a world where American foreign policy initiatives are increasingly on the FAIL as is NOW most evident in Syria and with America’s long-term ally, Saudi Arabia, which is giving evidence of changing sides.
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What is Happening in Syria?
The biggest authentic news coming out of Syria is that Russia, not the United States, is emerging as the regional peace keeper. Following the fall of Aleppo in December 2016 to the Russian assisted Syrian army of Bashar al Assad, US leadership in the region has steadily declined. Vladimir Putin recently spearheaded a peace initiative hosted multiple times by the President of Kazakhstan in the Kazakh city of Astana (new era news). The meetings have resulted in a combined peace keeping force consisting of Russia, Iranian, and Turkish forces. These combined forces are actively assisting Syrian forces against American backed terrorists disguised as “freedom fighters”, freedom fighters intent on toppling Assad and inserting a government more amenable to Saudi, American and Western economic and political interests. Since implementation of the Astana peace initiatives, American backed terrorists have been defeated in city after city and the United States has quietly and increasingly disengaged from the Syrian arena thereby leaving a political and military vacuum increasingly filled by Russians.
Not only has Russia emerged as the decisive factor in Syria, in the process Russia has also strengthened ties to Iran, China and Iraq as well as with US allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia both who have changed their position on Assad; they have adopted the Russian position that his fate must be decided by the Syrian people and not by American or NATO desires to simpy depose him by force. Russian success and failed US policy in Syria has pushed long-standing allies into Putin’s camp partially due to the facts that Putin shoots straight, disavows the prospect of nation building and has consistently respected and abided by International Law including the recognition of the sovereign rights of every nation to decide their own futures.
“We never play a double game with anyone. It is this and not our military potential that attracts our partners.” Oct 9, 2017
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Due to their relentless drive for global power, the American hegemons have unwittingly catapulted the Russians into power; they have used economic inducements, political persuasion and military power to impose their liberal economic, social, and political agenda on a war weary world contrary to the cultural values, beliefs and protestations of weaker nations – they have rode roughshod over them. They fail to see that the age of colonial imperialism is rapidly coming to an end.
At this point of history, it is Russia, not the United States, that is standing for the sovereign rights of individual nations, including the right to decide their own futures; thereby making them the champions of human rights and freedom. This is a role America should be playing, but the liberal hegemons, in the name of tolerance, are intolerantly foisting their myopic global vision on a world increasingly tired of their liberalism. Recent events manifest this shifting of global power. Due to Russia’s involvement in Syria, the United States has de facto lost; the war is basically over. Thus, according to the Washington Times:
“The fate of Syria in the wake of the country’s devastating six-year civil war will be dictated in Moscow, not Washington, reaffirming President Bashar Assad’s regime’s hold on power, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee said Friday.”
“Assad’s sponsor, Russia has … emerged as the international leader in exploring a political solution to the conflict” (peace).
That this is true is no more manifest than this past week’s historic visit of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud to Moscow for a visit with President Putin, the first ever by a Saudi king. According to Putin,
“This is the first visit of the King of Saudi Arabia to Russia in the history of our relations, which in itself is a very significant event. Our relations have a fairly lengthy history.”
To underscore the importance of this meeting it helps to realize that Russia and Saudi Arabia have been hostile enemies. In the past, Salman teamed up with the United States to support the mujahideen fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s. During this time, Saudi Arabia also encouraged by the United States, increased its oil output to drive down prices thereby weakening the Soviet Union whose economy depended heavily upon energy exports. Salman has also proudly taken credit for unleashing terrorist attacks inside Russia itself. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has also supported Al Qaeda and other terrorist forces fighting Assad’s Syrian forces who are backed by Russian and Iranian militias. Russia has long been allied with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s mortal foe, in opposition to the Saudi-American axis in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has been America’s greatest ally in a life-and death struggle with Iran, Russia’s staunch ally.
Thus, Saudi Arabia has been (up to this point) bitterly opposed to Russia’s foreign policy. Nonetheless the 81 year old king, who has an aversion for travel abroad, humbled himself to make a trip to Moscow this past week indicating that Riyadh understands the dire need to secure ties with Russia. Now, instead of supporting terrorists against Russia and Syria, Saudi Arabia will begin cooperating with Russia to defeat terrorism according to the Russian script. In short, American led Saudi efforts in Syria, and beyond, are failing. American sponsored Saudi efforts in Yemen are also failing; moreover, American insistence that oil prices remain artificially deflated in order to cripple Russia are bankrupting Saudi Arabia. To exacerbate Saudi woes, Riyadh’s arch-nemesis, and Russian ally, Iran has gained power in the region. Iran is collaborating with US ally Iraq; they have teamed up to fight American backed forces in Syria (Iraq is now in the Iranian and Russian camp). Something similar seems to be happening with Turkey, a nation the Saudis could count on in the past to balance Iran – Turkey is now cooperating with Iran (over the issue of the Kurds) and are also turning toward Russia and away from NATO. In short, the Saudis are in a panic and realize the need to turn toward Russia, even if it means earning the ire of the United States.
Thus, King Salman has significantly altered his position on the fate of Bashar al Assad; he has dropped the American position and adopted the Russian, viz., Assad will remain in power and it is up the Syrian people themselves to decide who their next president will be. More specifically, he has adopted the Russian brokered Astana Accord in conjunction with that of the UN Security Council. Leonid Savin, an analyst with the Center for Geopolitical Expert Studies, summed up the diplomatic situation very well:
“Saudi Arabia cannot fail to see the changes that embrace the Middle East and the whole world – a change in the geopolitical conjuncture and behavior of the United States on the world stage.”
Saudi Arabia like Russia, would like to raise the price of oil per barrel. The two are NOW working together and are likely to affect such a change. Saudi Arabia would also like Russia to distance itself from Iran; this they will not get. Although the United States will likely remain a vital partner with Saudi Arabia, the Saudis have opened an historic door for broader cooperation, cooperation that is a step in the right direction for peace in the Middle East, although significant steps still remain. Russia seems to be doing its part, will the United States do its? It does not appear to be doing so, at least not yet. Will it take international embarrassment to move the country in the right direction, to move it toward its Christian roots, to take its role as a peacemaker among nations rather than a war monger? Our Lady of Fatima, ora pro nobis.
Mary’s Perpetual Virginity Clearly Confirmed in Scripture & Jewish Tradition
SAINT LUKE’S GOSPEL ACCOUNT of the encounter between the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary contains a remarkable dialogue that confirms the dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity, a virginity that she insisted upon before assenting to Gabriel’s request that she become the Mother of God. If Luke’s account (Luke 1: 26-35) is read closely in conjunction with ancient Jewish laws pertaining to vows and along with Jewish marital customs, it contains all the information necessary to conclude that Mary had taken a vow of perpetual virginity and that Joseph had accepted her vow. According to the “Law of Vows” recorded in the Jewish Torah, Book of Numbers,
A)“If a woman vow any thing, and bind herself by an oath, being in her father’s house, and but yet a girl in age: if her father knew the vow that she hath promised, and the oath wherewith she hath bound her soul, and held his peace, she shall be bound by the vow: Whatsoever she promised and swore, she shall fulfil in deed.”
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B) “If she have a husband, and shall vow any thing, and the word once going out of her mouth shall bind her soul by an oath: The day that her husband shall hear it, and not gainsay it, she shall be bound to the vow, and shall give whatsoever she promised. But if as soon as he heareth he gainsay it, and make her promises and the words wherewith she had bound her soul of no effect: the Lord will forgive her” (Numbers 30: 3-6).
In addition, Jewish matrimonial laws-customs-traditions consisted of two marital phases necessary for the contracting and consummation of a valid marriage (kiddushinand nisu’in). According to the Jewish Encyclopedia:
“The term “betrothal” in Jewish law must notbe understood in its modern sense; that is, the agreement of a man and a woman to marry, by which the parties are not, however, definitely bound, but which may be broken or dissolved without formal divorce.”
In Jewish Law, once the proposal had been made and accepted, the relationship was binding; that is, marriage had already been entered into albeit not yet fully consummated. This was so strongly the case that Jewish law required a divorce to nullify the first stage (kiddushin) of a marital relationship. Thus, Joseph, who was “betrothed” or “espoused” to Mary, was forced to divorce or to “put her away”, even though they had not yet begun to live together (nisu’in):
“Now the generation of Christ was in this wise. When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, (but) before they came together (kiddushin), she was found with child, of the Holy Ghost. Whereupon Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose her, was minded to put her away privately” (Matt 1:18).
“When the agreement had been entered into, it was definite and binding upon both groom and bride, who were considered as man and wife in all legal and religious aspects, except that of actual cohabitation.”
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“The (Jewish) root (“to betroth”), from which the Talmudic abstract (“betrothal”) is derived, must be taken in this sense; i.e., to contract an actual though incomplete marriage. In two of the passages in which it (betroth) occurs (in the scriptures) the betrothed woman is directly designated as “wife” (II Sam. iii. 14, “my wife whom I have betrothed” (“erasti”), and Deut. xxii. 24, where the betrothed is designated as “the wife of his neighbor”). In strict accordance with this sense the rabbinical law declares that the betrothal is equivalent to an actual marriage and only to be dissolved by a formal divorce.
Putting the “Law of Vows” recorded in Book of Numbers together with the laws/customs regulating Jewish marriage, and the Gospel account given by St. Luke, it is clear that not only was Mary a consecrated virgin, but that she had taken a vow of perpetual virginity. St. Luke was very careful to make this fact abundantly clear from his account of the Angelic Visitation in which he reveals that when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, she was already “betrothed” (married) to Joseph. What does that mean? It means, consequently, that according to Jewish Law well known to Luke, and to Joseph and the Virgin Mary, as well as the Jewish audience first reading the Gospel account of Jesus’ birth, it means that (according to Numbers Article (B) above)Joseph must have been aware of Mary’s vow of virginity and consented to it, for Luke tells us that Mary was a “virgin” at the time she was “betrothed” to Joseph!
This scriptural fact helps to explain why Mary was confused at the angel’s message. Luke tells us that Mary was “troubled at his (Gabriel’s) saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be.” How could she, a consecrated virgin, have a child? Thus, in this state of troubled confusion, she asks, “How shall this be done, (how can this be?) because I know not man? “ How can a virgin have a child? How can this be, I know not man nor shall I know man even though I am married to one.
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A Note on Virginity and the Consecrated Life
Before proceeding, it is relevant to note that the Old Testament indicates the existence of virgins who served God within the Temple precincts of Jerusalem. In the Second Book of Maccabees the following is recorded:
“And the women, girded with haircloth about their breasts, came together in the streets. And the virgins also that were shut up, came forth, some to Onias, and some to the walls, and others looked out of the windows. And all holding up their hands towards heaven, made supplication” (2 Maccabees 3: 19-20).
In Catholic tradition virgins that are “shut up” are called cloistered such as the Carmelite nuns who do not have regular contact with the outside world but live a life of solitude, contemplative prayer and service. Thus, these “shut up” Temple Virgins seem to have constituted a special class of virgins who presumably lived and served in the Temple of YHWH in Jerusalem.
“There is further testimony of temple virgins in the traditions of the Jews. In the Mishnah, it is recorded that there were 82 consecrated virgins who wove the veil of the Temple” (Mishna Shekalim 8, 5-6)
More mystically, according to the Patristic Fathers as recorded by Kereszty Roch, “Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology”,
“The patristic argument for the perpetual virginity of Mary is … based on the understanding of virginity as a total consecration to God in pure faith and undivided love. They interpret Lk 1:34 as expressing the firm intention (or vow) of Mary to dedicate herself to God as a virgin; such a dedication must be total and irrevocable. They also see in the womb of Mary the New Ark of God overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, the New Temple forever sanctified by God’s presence. No man may enter that sanctuary since God has made it his own.”
Wow!
Ezekiel, moreover, was given a vision of the future Temple in Jerusalem, a mystical temple containing an equally mystical “East Gate”:
“Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east; and it was shut. And he said to me, “This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened and no one shall enter by it; for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut” (Eziekiel 44:1).
Several Fathers of the Church saw the East Gate as a mystical allusion to the Virgin Mary – She is the virginal East Gate through whom only the Lord, Himself, could enter. This mystical gate was to “remain shut”, that is, virginal, never to open to any man. Significantly, in Mary’s apparitions, esp. at Fatima, she is always seen ascending to the east, to her place, toward the East Gate. It is through Mary alone that our Lord entered the world. She is the Ark of the Covenant containing the Holy of Holies, the incarnate Son of God. It is through her, and her alone, that the Lord entered humanity and took on human flesh as the “blessed fruit of her womb”.
Christ, as the firstborn, opened the virgin’s womb :
“Sanctify unto me every firstborn that openeth the womb among the children of Israel, as well of men as of beasts: for they are all mine” (Exodus 13:2).
The early heretics refused to acknowledge this mystery pertaining to the opening of the “mystical gate, which was prefigured by the Eastern door of the Temple (Ezekiel 44:2), which closed again when once the High Priest had gone through it” (Against the Pelagians Book II).
Thus, according to Canon 604 of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, there are such servants of God known as consecrated virgins, virgins who imitate the Virgin Mary by living a type of consecrated life:
Canon §1. Similar to these forms of consecrated life is the order of virgins, who, committed to the holy plan of following Christ more closely, are consecrated to God by the diocesan bishop according to the approved liturgical rite, are betrothed mystically to Christ, the Son of God, and are dedicated to the service of the Church.
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Return to Mary’s Perpetual Virginity
The above scriptural facts and historical points of sacred tradition pertaining to virginity, betrothal, and the consecrated life help to explain why Mary was confused at the Angel Gabriel’s message. Luke tells us that Mary was “troubled at his (Gabriel’s) saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be.” How could she, a consecrated virgin, have a child? Thus, In this state of troubled confusion, she asked, “How shall this be done, (how can this be?) because I know not man? “ How can a virgin have a child? How can this be, I know not man nor shall I know man even though I am married to one.
Interestingly, Luke informs us that both Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, and the Virgin Mary were visited by the Archangel Gabriel, both were presented with a message involving the birth of a son (Son). Both responded with the same question, (How can this be?). Zacharias, however, was punished for asking this question while the Virgin Mary was blessed. How can this be?
The Virgin Mary trusted God and thus believed what Gabriel was conveying to her. Her question was simply one of how exactly this miracle was going to take place since she was a vowed perpetual virgin. Her question was not one of doubt or disbelief or incredulity. Her question was an innocent reflection on how God was going to accomplish this miracle as indicated by the fact that once the Angel told her that her virginity was to remain inviolate, she assented to his request: “Be it done unto me….”
Zacharias, on the other hand, was presented with a substantially much less difficult announcement. When the Angel Gabriel told him he would have a son, his only apparent impediment was a physical one: old age; whereas Mary suffered from a moral and spiritual impediment involving a solemn vow to God, a vow so solemn that even her husband consented to it, as indicated by her perplexity. Mary, graced by God, reverently tested Gabriel. Zacharias, however did not trust God; he had trouble believing that a son could be born to him and Elizabeth in their old age; he had so much trouble believing that he dared to ridicule an angel by implying that the good tidings that Gabriel was announcing were somehow untrue (something that even the Archangel Michael would not do when contesting with Satan over the body of Moses):
“When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but (simply) said: The Lord rebuke thee” (1 Jude 9).
Consequently, Zacharias was punished for his disbelief, for his incredulity before a princely messenger of God, a messenger certainly deserving of more respect than Satan to whom even Michael showed respect for his fallen but angelic dignity.
“And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be able to speak until the day wherein these things shall come to pass, because thou hast not believed my words, which shall be fulfilled in their time” (Luke 1:20).
Because Mary was a consecrated virgin, she was honestly confused; her confusion over the matter led her to question the Angel Gabriel, led her to reverently protest his request that she become the Mother of the Messiah, especially if that meant that she had to violate or relinquish her vow of virginity to God. Thus, the Virgin Mary found herself in a quandary, a confusing situation that required her to test or “try” the spirit addressing her:
“Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God” (1 John 4:1)
Was Gabriel from God or a diabolical messenger? Would God ask her to break her solemn vow, would God reject her virginity? Was this a ploy to get her to engage in sexual intercourse with St. Joseph? These are the type of implicit questions she reverently places before Gabriel and it is not until the angel clarifieed exactly what he meant by his message that she knew he is from God. It is not until this point that she, the handmaid of the Lord, was willing to consent. Her confusion and reverent protest make it clear that Her vow of virginity was still operative and that Joseph had assented to it as well.
More importantly, her question (how can this be?) would be meaningless if she had not taken a vow of virginity and shared it with Joseph. Clearly, she and Joseph were “betrothed” (in the first stage of marriage) and would soon be living together. Her question clearly indicates that she and Joseph had agreed to live in virginity; otherwise she would NOT have had a need to ask such a question. The question makes no sense unless Mary was a virgin and planned to remain one. If she and Joseph were to consummate their marriage by a unitive and procreative marital act, she would not have had to ask the question. She would not have been confused. Mary knew what Her virginity entailed; she knew how babies are made.
Mary, however, had taken a vow of virginity and in so doing had entered into a spiritual and nuptial relationship with God; she had given her virginity to Him. He in return accepted her vow and they (Mary and YHWH) were thus united in a sacral bond as when a “consecrated virgin” gives her virginity to God and thereby enters into a nuptial relationship often attested to by the putting on a wedding ring to indicate consecration and virginal-espousal.
Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades placing wedding ring on Consecrated Virgin at Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne, Indiana
Thus, because of her virginity, Mary was not only confused by the angel’s request, she also uttered a mild form of protest: “How can this be” or “I do not think I can do this” since I have given my virginity to God and He has accepted? Aware that God does not change His mind and aware of the perpetual nature of her virginal vow, she was naturally confused. Would an angel of God ask her to relinquish her vow, a solemn nuptial vow of virginity by which she was related to Him in an especial nuptial manner? So she asked, “How can this be?” Has God changed His mind? or perhaps to Gabriel: Are you truly from God or somewhere else?
When Gabriel elucidated his message, it became clear that instead of being asked to violate her vow, Mary was being invited to consummate it, to offer her virginity to Him, to open the mystical East Gate through whom only He could spiritually enter by overshadowing her with His glory. When it was clear that God, not Joseph, was to be the operative spiritual cause of her mystical conception, she consented.
This is worth repeating: It was NOT until the Archangel Gabriel assured her that she could keep her vow, assured her that God had not changed His mind, and that she could remain a virgin, it was not until this surety was given, that the Virgin Mary gave her fiat, gave her consent. Presumably, if Gabriel had revealed to her that the child to be born would be St. Joseph’s, she would not have given her consent, would not have replied “yes’ but rather, “no”: “non fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum“.
The Archangel Gabriel, however, revealed to her the miraculous nature of the Messiah’s birth. He was to be formed in her virginal womb by a divine act of God, the God to whom she had consecrated her virginity. Once this was clear in her mind, and not a moment before, she immediately gave her consent:
“Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum“: “Let it be done unto me according to thy word.”
Thus, God’s request through Gabriel provided Mary with the opportunity to fulfill her vow, to say yes to the Lord as she was consecrated to do as His handmaid. But before consenting, she asked the Angel Gabriel to clarify his message. Once he assured her that her vow of virginity was to remain inviolate, that she was to give virgin birth while married to Joseph, only then did she consent. Her consent was conditional upon the ability to remain a virgin, a condition that Joseph was aware of and had consented to according to the Torah, according to Jewish marriage customs, and to the Gospel of St. Luke who derived his data directly from the Virgin Mary herself.
Remembering 9-11: What is the True US Strategy in Afghanistan?
AFGHANISTAN FELL UNDER Soviet control from 1978 until 1989 when the Communists withdrew. From 1978 onward the Soviet Union backed a secular Socialist government known as the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). In 1979 the DRA requested the Soviet Union to send forces into the country to assist them against indigenous forces headed by warlords known as the mujahideen. For ten years thereafter the Soviets engaged in war against these Islamic jihadists. During this time, radical Sunni Islamists from other countries, including Al Qaeda and its leader, leader Osama Ben Laden (Saudi Arabia), came to the assistance of the Mujahideen in which effort they were aided by the United States.
Following the importation of Osama Ben Laden, economic and military assistance as well as radical Islamic forces from around the globe began to funnel into Afghanistan with significant support coming from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Although the Soviets continued to support the DRA after their withdrawal in 1989, much of Afghanistan fell to the US backed Mujahideen who overthrew the DRA’s last president, Mohammad Najibullah in 1992. Thereafter, the Mujahideen fought among themselves and eventually morphed into what is now known as the Taliban, the force that sheltered Al Qaeda and the radical Sunni Muslims that planned terrorist attacks from their safe abode inside Afghanistan, including what many believe to be the planned attack against the United States known as 9-11.
Triggered by the 9-11 attacks of 2001, the United States has been militarily involved in Afghanistan against the Taliban for seventeen years, the longest war in American History. Yet according to Senator John McCain, not only is victory elusive, the US is losing the war:
“We have no strategy. And we are losing. When you’re not winning, you’re losing. And the ANA, the Afghan National Army, is taking unacceptable losses” (CBS News July 2017).
At its peak (2010-2011) the United States deployed approximately 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. Then President Obama made the decision to begin withdraw. Although the Afghan mission was formally halted in December of 2014, eight thousand plus US troops remain stationed there to assist a NATO coalition (approximately five thousand troops) to train indigenous security personnel collectively referred to as the “Afghan National Defense and Security Forces”, which are currently engaged in joint-offensive military operations to combat terrorism throughout the country.
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For decades multiple terrorist organizations, headed by the Taliban (see Note below), have disrupted political, social, and economic activity in the region. As noted above, prior to US involvement post 9-11, Soviet Communist troops dealt unsuccessfully with the Afghan mujahideen who, backed by the United States, forced the Soviets to retire (1989) from the exhausting confrontation ironically leaving the battle to the Americans who likewise later withdrew (2014), thereby handing the conflict to NATO and the American backed secular Afghan government and its “Afghan National Defense and Security Forces”. This government has also proved unable to handle the proliferating problem, a problem that now includes additional Islamic State (ISIL-Daesh) terrorists, who, together with the Taliban, control roughly a third of Afghanistan, at least as much as they previously controlled prior to the military engagement of the United States and its allies in November of 2001.
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President Trump Addresses the Taliban
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During a recent August, 2017 presidential address to the nation, President Trump reminded viewers that a previous early withdraw from Iraq cost America the war in that country. The lack of US troops permitted the uncontested, or poorly contested, ascendancy of the Islamic State, which has increased its zone of terror from western Iraq to Syria and to the east as well. Consequently, the president announced his firm resolve to beef up America’s involvement to end the conflict in Afghanistan by means of devastating force to be inflicted by American troops:
“We will fight to win. From now on, victory will have a clear definition: Attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge” (CNN).
Although the Pentagon had previously (June, 2017) announced a deployment of up to 3,900 new troops to Afghanistan, that announcement cannot be taken as authoritative since the president announced in his August address that the numbers would remain unspecified to maintain the element of surprise necessary to conduct a successful campaign:
“America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out” (PBS News).
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Will the President be Able to Institute a New Foreign Policy?
During his National Address (as well as during his presidential campaign), President Trump insisted that under his leadership the United States is embarking on a new foreign policy path: The US, he said, will no longer be involved in wars for the sake of nation building, but rather for peace and stability. Echoing the president, Secretary of State Tillerson specified that the United States would advance “peace talks” with the Taliban and allied terrorists without “preconditions.” In other words, negotiations, so it seems, should be open to input from all concerned parties without any foreign agenda to be imposed.
Unfortunately, the president’s policy involves overt threats to neighboring Pakistan, a nation that has harbored Taliban insurgents seeking asylum by crossing the mountainous Afghan border into its equally mountainous regions, which have historically served as an incubator for terrorists threatening Afghanistan. Rather than leaving this adroit diplomatic maneuver to the Chinese (deeply desirous for peace in the region) who have recently courted economic-political favor with the Pakistani government via the New Silk Road Initiative (an economic boon for Pakistan), the president’s American bravado got the best of him thereby forcing him into a foreign policy faux pas, which will need correcting. If not corrected, relationships with Pakistan will continue to deteriorate driving them into further Chinese and Russian alliance.
Mr. Trump would do well to adhere to his campaign plan to cooperate with Russia and China to end terrorism rather than trying to do it solo or with NATO but without Russia and China or by flying in the face of Sino-Russo objections. Unfortunately, it behooves Neocon warhawks and their liberal allies in the United States to continue painting Russia as the bad guy when, in fact, a cooperative venture would do much to stabilize the war-torn region and advance global peace.
The world is groping for peace and the United States (apparently contrary to the wishes of its elected president) continues to make maneuvers that promise more and greater conflict. Recently (July 13, 2017), Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the President of Germany, visited German troops stationed in Afghanistan to whom he communicated Germany’s continued resolve to maintain its military presence in Afghanistan alongside the United States and other NATO allies; Steinmeier however, is looking for peace. Like President Trump as well as Russian and Chinese diplomats (and political leaders throughout Eastern Europe and elsewhere), Steinmeier seems to think that future peace entails the respect of national sovereignty and the curtailing of globalism, nation building or any form of neo-colonialism.”
In Steinmeier’s words to the troops, “I came to” Afghanistan to “speak with President Ghani about the steps that are needed and can be taken toward a serious and credible peace process in Afghanistan. My message to him today was”:
“The future of this country is not primarily in the hands of Germany, NATO or international donors. It is first and foremost in the hands of the Government of Afghanistan, and it hinges on the government’s efforts to unite this divided country. None of this will be possible without the acceptance of a central government in Kabul, without a political settlement with the various ethnic and religious groups, including the Taliban. That is part of the reality which we, but above all political leaders in Afghanistan, have to recognise. Your presence here cannot take the place of a political settlement. Your presence can only create both time and space for a political settlement, one that Afghans themselves must both desire and work out. Nothing more – but also nothing less” (Der Bundesprasident)
The German approach is inclusive, yet it leaves future decision making to the AFGHANS THEMSELVES, NOT TO SOME FOREIGN GLOBAL POWER OR INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION. This is the prefered position of President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as that of Xi Jinping, President of China. Unfortunately, Neocon Warhawks such as John McCain et al on the extreme right along with their army of liberal counterparts on the extreme left are committed to preserving an antedated status quo which views the United States as the world’s policeman and as God’s viceroy on earth entrusted with a “Manifest Destiny” to spread outdated eighteenth century liberal economic, political and anti-Christian cultural ideas around the globe.
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They hope thereby to make the world safe for liberal democracy via the global deployment of increasingly confused American troops who are beginning to wonder who the “good guy” really is and what exactly they are fighting for. CNN, President Trump’s favorite “Fake News outlet, has gone as far as asserting that Russia is supplying weapons to the Taliban, its sworn enemy in Afghanistan. The Russian response: “prove it” – “there is no evidence”. According to Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
“We paid attention to the lampoon of the American CNN television channel about alleged supplies of weapons to the Afghan Taliban by Russia.”
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“It is hardly possible to seriously perceive video materials in which old small arms are demonstrated, the origin of which is impossible to establish. The weapons are not stamped by the manufacturer and serial numbers are defaced. In addition, the weapons shown are typical. As is known, such samples were produced not only in Russia, but also in other countries, including Eastern Europe, from where in the early 2000s, Americans massively imported them to Afghanistan.”
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“Recently, the Taliban attacked the base of the Afghan National Security Forces in Helmand province, using American armored vehicles “Humvee”. What conclusion can be drawn based on this information using the logic of CNN?”
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“As we have repeatedly stated, the accusations of a number of Western and some echoing Afghan mass media regarding alleged support from the Russian Federation by the militants of the Taliban movement are unfounded. To date, neither the Afghan authorities nor the command of the US and NATO contingents in the IRA have provided evidence that would confirm these speculations.
Thus, regardless of how liberal media outlets are portraying Russian resistance to US troop deployment in Afghanistan, the truth is that Russia is delighted by America’s presence in Afghanistan, which has long been a training ground for terrorists such as Daesh, ISIL et al that threaten Russia and are therefore considered terrorists groups by the Russian government. In short, the United States, if it is doing what it is reported to be doing, is fighting against Russia’s enemies in Afghanistan and thereby assisting Putin to secure his own borders.
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However, since the debacle in Syria, Russian diplomats have little trust for American initiatives. While in Syria, war-hawks like Senator McCain portrayed the conflict as a war against terrorists when in fact it became public knowledge that the Americans were stealthily aiding and abetting the terrorists in service of the liberal ideological and economic interests of ruling profiteers contrary to the Russians who were engaged in a real battle with the real terrorists. Because Russia supports America’s war on terrorism close to its borders in Afghanistan, it is a natural ally in the fight.
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The Russians however, due to their growing mistrust of America’s intentions, are proceeding cautiously, interpreting American intervention with a grain of salt. Therefore, Alexander Grushko, the Russian envoy to NATO recently stated that his country fears that Afghanistan is becoming a hornet’s nest for terrorists of all sorts, implying that he is unsure of America’s intentions: Will American involvement curtail or exacerbate the challenge of terrorism to global peace and Russian security? Grushko indicated to reporters gathered in Brussels that Moscow hopes NATO will provide full information as to just “how the Alliance is planning to conduct future operations in Afghanistan.”
Grushko’s concern is confirmed by reports that America’s efforts against terrorists in Afghanistan are starting to sound a bit like reports that previously came out of Syria. According to the New York Times and the BBC, a US airstrike on a compound in Helmand province, Afghanistan, resulted in deaths to friendlyAfghanforces (forces opposed to and fighting against terrorists throughout Afghanistan):
“During a US-supported (Afghan security) operation, aerial fires resulted in the deaths of the friendly Afghan forces who were gathered in a compound.”
This widely reported fact engenders several provocative questions to be followed in upcoming weeks: Will future reports change under President Trump? Will the US assist Russian brokered efforts to bring world peace and thus be a peace-maker itself? or will President Trump succumb to tiresome Neocon voices in favor of ongoing conflict in the name of liberal ideology, personal interests, and veiled chicanery leading to ever more conflict and profitable war?
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NOTE:
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Both the Taliban and Al Qaeda are radical Sunni Muslims committed to Jihad and theocratic government; both are opposed to the influence of Western culture and the secular governments put in place by Western leaders.
From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban enforced strict Sharia law over most of Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001. The United States assisted the Taliban with Stinger missiles and an array of military supplies in the 1980s, when these terrorists were combatting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
During their 1996 to 2001 rule, the Taliban Mujahideen interfered with UN humanitarian shipments to famished men, women, and children, massacred Afghan civilians, scorched fertile land and destroyed thousands of homes. The Taliban was opposed by the Northern Alliance spearheaded by Russia, Iran, Turkey and India and then later used by the United States to defeat the Tsliban and install its own compliant government, a puppet state amenable to secular liberal interests.
The Taliban consists of militants drawn primarily from Afghanistan itself. It is an indigenous nationalistic movement in favor of an Islamic government and opposed to the Western backed secular state in Afghanistan.
The Taliban is therefore a legitimate stake-holder having a legitimate claim to some share in a future Afghani government.
Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, consists primarily of educated Arabs, a few Afghans and a healthy contingent of Egyptians. Al-Qaeda was formed by an Arab, Osama Bin Laden, to spread global Jihad against liberal forces supported by the United States in favor of its ally, Israel. The Taliban invited Ben laden to Afghanistan where they sheltered him as he planned terrorist attacks.
THE BROWN SCAPULAR HAS BEEN CALLED “The Livery of Our Lady”, “Grace Garment” and the “Sign of Mary”. The scapular is a sign of the Queen Mother’s maternal care for the souls of all her children, all those who wear it with filial and true devotion. In their love of and obedience to the Virgin Mary, they imitate Jesus, who fully aware of His Divine mission and fully cognizant of His Divine relationship with His Eternal Father, nonetheless, submitted himself to the Virgin Mary (Luke 2:51). Saint Luke informs his readers that “subject” to Her and to St Joseph,
“Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man” (Luke 2: 51-52).
As the mother of Jesus, and of His Church, the Queen Mother assists her children to advance in wisdom and favor before God (and before men) until they become one with Him as members of His “Mystical Body”.
Although every member of the mystical Body of Christ has Mary for his or her mother, the Brown Scapular of Mt. Carmel is a singular Sign of Mary’s highly favored Carmelite family, her “favoured” children, the children of a family that has produced more saints than any other spirituality in the history of Christendom. This seems to be one of the reasons why the Virgin Mary choose to appear at Fatima as Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and to offer the Brown Scapular of Carmel to all her children. The spirituality of Mt. Carmel was the spirituality of Sister Lucia, of the Holy Father John Paul II, of Doctors of the Church such as Saints John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila as well as Terese of Lisieux and of so many outstanding models of perfection that inspire souls to avail themselves of this proven way to holiness and Christian perfection. Those who heard Jesus speak in the synagogues of Nazareth were spellbound and unaware of where He had gained His knowledge and wisdom prompting them to ask:
“Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary… Whence therefore hath he all these things” (Matt13:53-56)?
Although His countrymen were unaware of the origin of His wisdom and unaware that they had answered their own question, the Saints of Christendom were, and are, fully aware that Jesus received his virtue, learning, and wisdom from his parents, St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Thus, when Sister Lucia (one of the three shepherd-children who communed with Our Lady at Fatima) was asked why Our Lady held out the Scapular following the October 13, 1917 Miracle of the Sun, she replied, because “Our Lady wants all of Her children to wear it.”The scapular is a sign of her maternal help and protection, a “grace garment” emblematic of Her regal and motherly authority and of Her ordained ability to assist their growth in virtue, wisdom and love necessary to overcome the world, the weakness of their flesh, their passions and the pride of life, which diminish their strength and by degrees render them increasingly prone to the cunning of superior angelic beings.
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Origin of the Scapular
As recorded in the Old Testament, 850 years before the birth of Christ, the Prophet Elijah challenged the Satanic priests of Baal (pagan priests supported by King Ahab – the seventh King of Israel – who led the nation into the spiritual sin of apostasy) to a spiritual contest pitting the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob against the pagan god Baal. Three years earlier, Elijah had entered Jerusalem to confront Ahab warning him to return to the God of Israel or the nation would be chastised. Ahab brazenly dismissed the prophet. Since that day, the day that Elijah was expelled by Ahab from the royal palace, no rain was released over the Holy Land nor was a cloud seen. Three years later Israel found itself in the throes of severe famine. It was then that Elijah rebuked Ahab and summoned him to Mt. Carmel along with the apostate priests and false-prophets of Baal:
“And when Ahab had seen Elijah, he said: Art thou he that troublest Israel? And Elijah said: I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father’s house, who have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and have followed Baalim. Nevertheless send now, and gather unto me all Israel, unto Mt.Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, who eat at Jezabel’s table (1 Kings 18: 17-19).
Elijah pleaded with the crowd to return to God:
“How long do you halt between two sides? If the Lord be God, follow Him! but if Baal, follow him!”
But no one spoke a word in favor of the God of Israel thereby prompting the prophet to propose a contest. Both he and the apostate prophets would build altars, place a holocaust on them and pray to their God/god to send down a consuming fire. The God/god who sent down the unquenchable fire would be acknowledged as the true God of Israel. The druid apostates prayed and slashed themselves for hours to no avail. Most Christians know this story, how the prophet Elijah prayed and God immediately sent down fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice followed by the slaying of the prophets of Baal. These memorable events, however, are not the main focus of the scriptural account. Like an “after party”, the main focus is actually what happened afterward, the “after event”.
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What happened Afterward?
Immediately afterward, King Ahab went off to dine and refresh himself while Elijah proceeded to the top of Mt. Carmel where he crouched down to the earth and put his head between his knees to pray. Elijahthen summoned his servant to go and look out over the sea and come back and tell him what he observed. Six times the servant went forth and came back with the same reply:
“I see nothing”
Neither King Ahab, Elijah’s servant, nor anyone among the gathered multitude knew that the prophet was about to “behold a prophetic vision of the spiritual Salvation of all mankind through an Immaculate Virgin” (John Haffert – Co-Founder World Apostolate of Fatima)
Elijah sent his servant a seventh time (seven indicating the fullness of time). The servant then observed a mysterious cloud rising out of the sea in the shape of a human foot (1 Kings 18:43-44).
Years later, Elijah conveyed to the prophets of Mt. Carmel that this mysterious foot foreshadowed the coming of an Immaculate Virgin who would rise out of the sea of humanity to bring grace and consolation to the world: the foot of the “Woman” that would crush the head of Satan (as Elijah had just crushed his false-prophets, the prophets of Baal) as prophesied in Gen 3:15.
This mysterious “Woman” is revealed by St. John to be the the Virgin Mary (Rev 11:19 – 12:1-6) the “Great Sign” the new and mystical Ark of the Covenant, the HolyTabernacle in which God dwells; She is also the prophetic and eschatological “Woman” who, along with her “seed” (Rev 12:17), will crush the head of Satan as foretold in Genesis. As such, she is symbolized by both foot and cloud.
“Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting, because the cloud settled down upon it and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle (as He filled the Virgin Mary with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Rev 11:19-12:1, and overshadowed Her with His glory at the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel – Luke 1:35).Whenever the cloud rose from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on their journey. But if the cloud did not lift, they would not go forward; only when it lifted did they go forward. The cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and fire in the cloud at night, in the sight of the whole house of Israel in all the stages of their journey” (Exodus 40: 34-38), as the Virgin Mary accompanied Jesus at every stage of His journey, birth to death – She was there.
As soon as Elijah was told of the mysterious cloud in the shape of a foot he rose from prayer; then the heavens grew dark with moisture laden clouds and cascading winds. As the clouds passed over the land for the first time in three years water fell, like divine grace, to renew God’s people.
“Go up, and look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said: There is nothing. And again he said to him: Return seven times. And at the seventh time, behold, a little cloud arose out of the sea like a man’s foot… behold the heavens grew dark, with clouds, and wind, and there fell a great rain. (Kings I, 18:43-44).”
Some two thousand, one hundred and ten years later (1260) King Saint Louis of France found himself leading a Crusade to the Holy Land; while there, he was told of holy-men descended from the long line of Elijah who lived on Mt. Carmel. The king ascended Carmel and found on its heights a remnant of monks living among its caves and hollows. Appropriately, they called themselves the “Hermits of St. Mary of Mt. Carmel”. Due to the Muslim onslaught, these hermits were being forced to emigrate to Europe.
Before doing so, they told King Louis that they were descended from the prophet Elijah. They told him that they were called hermits of Saint Mary because of the foot shaped cloud Elijah had seen coming out of the sea. This foot, they said, was a prophetic foreshadowing of the “Woman” foretold by God, an Immaculate Virgin, who was to conceive the savior and crush the pride of Satan beneath the humble heel of Her seed.
“I shall place enmities between thee and the Woman, thy seed and Her seed . . . thou shalt lie in wait for Her heel and She shall crush thy head . . ,(Gen 3:15)”
A short fifty years later (after the visit of King Louis), The Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Peter Thomas (a French Carmelite and General to the Papal Court of Pope Clement VI at Avignon) and told him that the Order of Mt. Carmel would endure to the end of the world. She told Saint Peter that “Elijah (the order’s founder), obtained it (the promise) a long time ago from my Son.” Three Hundred years following this exchange between St. Louis and the Hermits of Mt. Carmel, Jesus Himself revealed to Saint Teresa of Avila, that this same order of hermits should be known as “The Order of the Virgin”.
Six years before King Louis transported the hermits to France, a group of crusaders had already taken others to England. While in England, an unusual holy man by the name of Simon Stock joined them at the request of the Virgin Mary who had made their landing in England known to him. Like another Elijah, Simon departed from the world and dwelt alone in the English forest living in the hollow of a tree trunk. The Virgin Mary personally appeared to him and told him that her sons from Carmel were coming to England and that he should join them. A short six years later (1245) Simon was made General of the entire order. The Order of the Virgin, however, was despised by its English hosts for their austere and foreign spirituality. Throughout England the secular clergy rose against these begging ill-clad mendicants. Several times, under Simon’s leadership, it appeared as if the Order of Our Lady would dissolve. The young general, abandoned, perplexed, and infirm, retired in seeming defeat to consider how the Queen Mother would preserve Her order.
In the words of the Little Flower, St Terese of Lisieux, referring to Saint Simon Stock:
“It was an illness in which Satan assuredly had a hand . . .He little knew, however, that the Queen of Heaven was keeping a faithful and affectionate watch from above…and was making ready to still the tempest just as the frail and delicate stem was on the point of breaking.”
Exciting himself to deep prayer, Simon cried out from the depth of his soul and then recited the “Flos Carmeli” or “Flower of Carmel”, which after the Hail Mary is often called “the most beautiful of all Marian prayers”:
“Flower of Carmel, Vine blossom laden, Splendor of Heaven, Childbearing maiden,
None equals thee!
O Mother benign, Who no man didst know, On all Carmel’s children
Thy favors bestow, Star of the Sea!”
As he raised his head from this prayer, the room was bathed in bright light. Three in his midst stood the Blessed Virgin surrounded by a cohort of angels. She descended toward him holding in her hands a brown scapular. Extending it forth she spoke the following words:
“RECEIVE, MY BELOVED SON, THIS HABIT OF THY ORDER: THIS SHALL BE TO THEE AND TO ALL CARMELITES A PRIVILEGE, THAT WHOSOEVER DIES CLOTHED IN THIS SHALL NEVER SUFFER ETERNAL FIRE.”
This extraordinary privilege was later extended to all the faithful who accept the Virgin as their Spiritual Mother and don Her livery, the Brown Scapular of Mt. Carmel. In the words of Pope Pius IX:
“This most extraordinary gift of the Scapular from the Mother of God to Saint Simon Stock brings its great usefulness not only to the Carmelite Family of Mary but also to all the rest of the faithful who wish, affiliated to that Family, to follow Mary with a very special devotion.”
All who are enrolled in the Brown Scapular belong to the Carmelite Family as members of the Scapular Confraternity.
Many popes have underscored the veracity of this maternal pledge. They have ratified this privilege of eternal salvation, salvation that comes through the eternal merits of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ assisted by His heavenly Mother, the Woman clothed with the Sun. She has promised all of Her children, those who die clothed in Her Brown Scapular, those who have perseveringly and devoutly served Her Son, She has promised to assist them all with the grace of final perseverance in holiness and the grace of final penitence by which they are saved from eternal fire. Some of the popes who have ratified this maternal promise include: Pope Alexander V, Pope Nicholas V, Pope Sixtus IV, Pope Clement VII, Pope Paul III, Pope St. Pius V, Pope Clement VIII, Pope Leo XI, Pope Paul V, Pope Urban VIII, Pope Alexander VII, Pope Benedict XIV, Pope Pius VI, Pope St. Pius X, Pope Benedict XV, Pope Pius XI and Pope Saint John Paul II who died clothed in his scapular.
“Let all of you have a common language and a common armor: the language, the sentences of the gospel; the armor, the Scapular of Mary which all ought to wear and which enjoys the singular privilege of protection even after death.”
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The Sabbatine Privilege
Catholic theologians and authorities like Saint Robert Bellarmine and Pope Benedict XIV explained the concept that anyone dying clothed in the scapular would not suffer the fires of hell to mean that our Blessed Mother will assist them at the hour of death with the graces necessary for final contrition or final perseverance in the state of grace. The “Sabbatine Privilege” is a further privilege: That those who die clothed in the Brown Scapular will be released from purgatory the first Saturday following their death.
The Sabbatine Privilege does not permit violations of the moral law as if a wearer could sin and be free from the guilt of punishment. According to Pope Pius XI
“Those who wish to have the Blessed Mother as a helper at the hour of death, must in life merit such a signal favor by abstaining from sin and laboring in Her Honor”
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The Promise Extends into Purgatory
Ever since the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Simon Stock (July 16, 1251), multitudes have found it difficult to believe that for so fractional a devotion as belonging to Her Scapular Confraternity, a person could be blessed with salvation. So the Mother of God returned to make a Promise even more astounding! In the year after Saint Peter Thomas was informed by Her that “ the Order of Carmel is destined to exist until the end of the world”, the Queen of Heaven conferred a favor so astounding that Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922) pronounced the following:
“Let all of you have a common language and a common armor: the language, the sentences of the gospel; the armor, the Scapular of Mary which all ought to wear and which enjoys the singular privilege of protection even after death.”
“The Carmelite Fathers may preach that the Christian people can piously believe in the aid of the souls of the brethren and confratres of the Sodality of the Most Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel. Through her continuous intercessions, pious suffrages, merits, and special protection the Most Blessed Virgin, especially on Saturday, the day dedicated to her by the Church, will help after their death the brethren and members of the Sodality who die in charity. In life they must have (1) worn the habit, (2) observed chastity according to their state, and (3) have recited the Little Office. If they do not know how to recite it, they are to (3a) observe the fasts of the Church and to abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Saturdays, except for the feast of Christmas.“
In 1890 Pope Leo XIII began the process of granting the faculty to confessors to commute the condition of abstinence into other good works for the gaining of the Sabbatine Privilege. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia,
“The faculty to sanction this change was granted to all confessors by Leo XIII in the Decree of the Congregation of Indulgences of 11 (14) June, 1901).”
Thus, according to Pope Leo XIII, in order to gain the privilege one must:
Be enrolled in the Brown Scapular Confraternity (This is a simple ceremony which can be performed by any priest).
Wear the Scapular
Observe chastity according to one’s state in life and
Recite daily the Little Office of Our Lady, or if one does not know how to recite it, abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
However, since Pope Leo XIII, the commutation of the fourth condition has become a common practice. According to a statement made by the Carmelite Fathers at the National Scapular Center, every priest now has the right to invest the faithful in the Brown Scapular and to substitute the rosary in lieu of the Little Office. Now, other spiritual exercises may be assigned by a confessor and substituted for the fourth requirement; most pray the rosary instead.
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Regarding the Sabbatine Privilege
Saint Bernardine said that the Blessed Virgin always liberates Her special devotees from the torments of purgatory and Saint Denis the Carthusian and Saint Peter Damian wrote that on the feasts of the Assumption, Christmas and Easter: “Our Lady descends into purgatory and takes many souls from it.”
Saint John of the Cross rejoiced to die on Saturday because of this “Sabbatine” Privilege”. Hedied in 1591 saying:
“The Mother of God and of Carmel hastens to purgatory with grace, on Saturday, and delivers those souls who have worn Her Scapular. Blessed be such a Lady who wills that, on this day of Saturday, I shall depart from this life!”
Pope Pius XI said of the Sabbatine Privilege:
“Everyone should strive for it.”
The Sabbatine Privilege was granted by a pope and many popes have ratified it:
John XXII
Alexander V
Nicholas V
Sixtus, IV
Clement VII
Paul III
Saint Pius V
Clement VIII
Leo XI
Paul V
Urban VIII
Alexander VII
Benedict XIV
Pius VI
Pius X
Benedict XV
Pius X
Of the popes who have sanctioned the Privilege, note these words of St. Pius V (Superna dispositione . . . Feb. 8, 1565):
“With apostolic authority and by tenor of the present, we approve each of the privileges. (of the Carmelite Order) and also the Sabbatine.”
However, simple as it may seem, ”Our Lady revealed to the Ven. Dominic of Jesus and Mary that:
“Although many wear my Scapular, only a few fulfill the conditions for the Sabbatine Privilege.”
Similarly, at her death the saintly Carmelite, Frances of the Blessed Sacrament, exclaimed:
“There are only a few who receive the Privilege because only a few fulfill the conditions”
Presumably the reason few people earn the especial privilege has to do with the observance of chastity according to a person’s state of life. That is, a married man must remain loyal to his wife and spurn all others; unmarried couples are to abstain from intercourse and foreplay until marriage; consecrated virgins are to remain virgins and priests and religious celibate. However, according to Our Lady of Fatima, “more people go to hell for sins of the flesh than for any other reason.” Likewise, more than one holy man or woman has quipped, “if there were no no sixth commandment we would all be in heaven.”
It is the practice of chastity that is detrimental to many. It takes moral strength known as natural fortitude aided by many acts of self-denial to strengthen the will so that it may be assisted by the theological gift of fortitude to withstand temptations of the flesh. Fortitude is a virtue that must be attained by years of discipline and spiritual exercise so that a person might produce the resplendent fruit of chastity, one of the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit, fruits that are evidence of the Divine Life operating in the human soul.
Thus, Pope Pius XII emphasized the value of Scapular devotion:
“There is no one who is not aware how greatly a love for the Blessed Virgin Mother of God contributes to the enlivening of the Catholic faith and to the raising of the moral standard. These effects are especially secured by means of those devotions which more than others are seen to enlighten the mind with celestial doctrine and to excite souls to the practice of the Christian life. In the first rank of the most favored of these devotions, that of the holy Carmelite Scapular must be placed—a devotion that has produced so many and such salutary fruits.
Pope Leo XIII articulated the same theological verity regarding devotion to the “Most Blessed Virgin of Mt. Carmel whence flow the richest and most wholesome fruits for the soul.”
Consequently, the Church grants a Plenary Indulgence on the day a person is enrolled in the Scapular. To gain the indulgence, a person must go to confession and receive Holy Communion within eight days and pray for the intention of the Holy Father.
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The Final Word
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“The Sabbatine privilege thus consists essentially in the early liberation from purgatory, through the special intercession and petition of Mary, which she graciously exercises in favour of her devoted servants preferentially — as we may assume — on the day consecrated to her, Saturday.
(“to betroth”), from which the Talmudic abstract 
(“betrothal”) is derived, must be taken in this sense; i.e., to contract an actual though incomplete marriage. In two of the passages in which it (betroth) occurs (in the scriptures) the betrothed woman is directly designated as “wife” (
