OUR LADY OF FATIMA

Page 21c: Quotes to Remember
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"The measure of God's judgment of the world at any given period of history is the size of the Saints He sends to regenerate it. When there was a genuine humility among men, God sent intellectual giants like Thomas, Bonaventure, and Albert. Now that there is a pride about human knowledge, God sends children. The outstanding Saints of the modern world have been Father John Vianney, the Cure of Ars, who barely made the grades necessary for Ordination; Saint Theresa, the Little Flower, who chose the way of spiritual childhood. Our Lady revealed herself to a little peasant girl at Lourdes, who had never heard of the Immaculate Conception, and more lately at Fatima the Blessed Mother gave her revelation to three little children, Lucia, aged 10, Jacinta, aged 7, and Francisco, aged 9."

[JACINTA: FLOWER OF FATIMA, Fr. Joseph Galamba de Oliveira, AMI Press, 1992, p. 11.]

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"In the case of Pope John XXIII, . . . we have . . . definite information. Pope John did read the Secret. Here is the statement of one who can speak with authority, Cardinal Ottaviani:

" 'The Secret arrived in Rome and was taken to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Still sealed, it was later, in 1960, taken to Pope John XXIII. The Pope broke the seal, and opened the envelope. Although it was in Portuguese, he told me afterwards that he understood the text in its entirety. Then he himself placed it in another envelope, sealed it, and sent, it to be placed in one of those archives that are like a well where the paper sinks deeply into the dark, black depths, and where no one can distinguish anything at all. So really, it is difficult to say where the Secret of Fatima is now.' "

[THE SECRET OF FATIMA: FACT AND LEGEND, Fr. Joaquin Alonso, CMF, RavengateI Press, 1976, pp. 49-50.]

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"On 16 April 1957, the sealed envelope arrived in Rome, at the request of the Holy Office, and it was placed in the office of Pope Pius XII, in a little chest bearing the note, "Secret of the Holy Office".

"It is almost certain that Pope Pius XII did not read the Secret, since both Cardinal Ottaviani and Mgr. Capovilla, the Secretary of Pope John XXIII, stated that the envelope was still sealed when John XIII opened it in 1959, one year after the death of Pius XII. One understands, therefore, the solemn words of Sister Lucia to Father Fuentes, at that time Postulator of the beatification causes of Jacinta and Francisco, on 26 December 1957:

'The Blessed Virgin is very sad, for no one attaches any importance to her Message. Neither the good nor the bad . . . Only the Holy Father and the Bishop of Fatima would be able to know it in accordance with the will of the Blessed Virgin. But they have not willed to know it as they did not want to be influenced.'

"Pope John XXm had the envelope containing the Third Secret brought to him at Castelgandolfo on 17 August 1959, and he read it a few days later. Renowned Fatima experts throughout the world had for years been expecting the final Secret to be revealed by 1960 at the latest, and the consent of Pope Pius XII in 1942 to the disclosure of the first two secrets constituted a precedent. Suddenly, on 8 February 1960 a completely anonymous, inconsistent and even contradictory Vatican communique was issued to a Portuguese press agency, stating that the Third Secret would not be published, and that it would probably never be disclosed. The proper Portuguese authorities were completely disregarded, as neither Bishop Venancio of Fatima-Leiria nor Cardinal Cerejeira had been consulted or notified by Rome. Bishop Venancio attempted to appeal to all the bishops of the world, but the Vatican turned a deaf ear to this proposal, and nothing came of it.

"Following Pope John XXIII, both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have read the Third Secret, but did not choose to make it public. Is it therefore possible to know its essential content? We know four fundamental facts about it, which help us to uncover the mystery.

"First, we know its context, since we know three out of four parts of its composite entity. Secondly, we know the dramatic circumstances in which it was written down and which themselves reveal its tragic gravity. Thirdly, we know that it is purely on account of its content that successive popes have refused to disclose it. Lastly, there is a timetable in the realization of the prophecies of Fatima from which we can deduce with certainty that we are now in the period of which it speaks. Sister Lucia tells us that the Virgin asked that the Secret be made public in 1960 because at that time 'the Message will appear more clear'----in other words, because it is beginning to be fulfilled. But it has not yet reached its conclusion because Russia has not yet been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the way specified by Our Lady, and as it will be one day. Hence we are now living through the events announced by the Third Secret."

[FATIMA REVEALED . . . AND DISCARDED, Br. Michel de la Sainte Trinite, Augustine Publishing, 1988, pp. 205-206.]

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"Everywhere-in the Church, in Russia, in the world----the practitioners of Cardinal Sodano's Party Line on Fatima see the evidence of its failure. Yet Sodano's collaborators in the Vatican apparatus, and their Fatima revisionist dupes throughout the Church, continue to insist that Russia was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart 18 years ago, that recent events in Russia are "a miracle", that the Third Secret and the Message of Fatima as a whole "belong to the past" and need no longer concern us. Catholics like Father Gruner, who continue to point out the obvious, are being subjected to the equivalent of a Stalinist purge for their lack of fidelity to the Party Line. They are denounced as "disobedient", "schismatic", and their "loyalty to the Pope" is questioned, even though the Pope has never personally endorsed or imposed Sodano's Party Line on Fatima . . .

"How does one count the cost of the insane conspiracy to do away with the prophecies of the Mother of God at Fatima? The cost in temporal suffering and harm to souls is already beyond all human calculation: the misery of the Russian people and the continuing State persecution of Russian Catholics; the holocaust of abortion in every nation; a rising tide of violence throughout the world; the loss of countless souls through destruction of their Catholic Faith and the corruption of the Catholic clergy now on display before the whole world.

"And yet all of this was undoubtedly predicted in that part of the Third Secret we have not been allowed to see; and all of it could have been avoided if the men who rule the Church today had followed, rather than despised, the Virgin of Fatima's simple requests."

[THE DEVIL'S FINAL BATTLE, Fr. Paul Kramer, Ed., Good Counsel Publications, 2002, p. 213.]

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"Before Vatican II the Popes, even including Pope John XXIII, unanimously defended the Church's ancient Latin liturgy against innovation, recognizing that the immutable Latin language was a barrier against heresy, as Pope Pius XII taught in his monumental encyclical on the liturgy, Mediator Dei. Indeed, the Protestant "reformers" of the 16th Century hated nothing more than the traditional Catholic Mass in Latin, the Damasian-Gregorian liturgy which was the center of the life of the Church from at least the 4th Century (and probably earlier) until the liturgical "reform" of Pope Paul VI in 1969.

"Nowhere can the desire to destroy, the demolition of bastions, be seen more clearly than in Pope Paul's explanation of his decision to suppress the traditional Latin Mass of more than 1,500 years' standing and replace it with a newly concocted rite of Mass in the vernacular----a totally unprecedented action his predecessors would have regarded as absolutely unthinkable:

'It is here that the greatest newness is going to be noticed, the newness of language. No longer Latin, but the spoken language will be the principal language of the Mass. The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a great sacrifice for those who know the beauty, the power, and the expressive sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries; we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance. We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant. We have reason for regret, reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of the Angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. Why?' "

[Ibid., p. 75.]

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"What the Pope told Lucy was neither necessary nor prudent to reveal in 1982 was deemed timely enough in 1960, the date the Blessed Virgin gave Lucy for the revealing of the Secret. Part of the CDF document contains a summary of an interview with Sister Lucy, wherein she allegedly recants this testimony. This is very surprising since in matters concerning Fatima Lucy has been a model of constancy. The point, however, is this: how could a vision of a Martyred Pope have been timelier in 1960 than in 2000?

"Even though the vision released as the Third Secret has, like the vision of Hell, a certain timeless quality to it, the Fatima Message has always had an element of timing, as witnessed by Our Lady of Fatima's mention of Russia's errors, the summer prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and Her 1929 appearance to request the consecration of Russia after Russia had begun to "spread her errors". The timing made sense, so when the Blessed Virgin indicated to Lucy the date 1960 for release of the Third Secret, there was probably an element of timing involved. If the Third Secret of Fatima is nothing more than the vision released by the Vatican, it would appear that the Blessed Virgin was mistaken in Her calculations. In fact, it really wouldn't have mattered when this vision was released, 1960, 2000, 3000, or 1917. Who is in error here?

"One also wonders how the writing down of the Third Secret, as released by the Vatican, caused a three-month spiritual ordeal for Sister Lucy so significant that the Virgin Herself assisted with the writing of the Secret. The vision she recorded is certainly dramatic, but it is nowhere near as terrifying as the vision of Hell she saw as a child . . . "

[FATIMA IN TWILIGHT, Mark Fellows, Marmion Publications, 2003, p. 277.]

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"By 1996, however, it was clear that Cardinal Ratzinger, liKe Jonn Paul II, had little interest in Fatima, except perhaps for the opportunity it provided for catechizing the 600,000 to 800,000 pilgrims in the rubrics of post-conciliar consciousness. The pilgrims seemed slow to catch on to the new rules, however, which may explain Ratzinger's temper tantrum at a press conference during his appearance there. The nerve of those Portuguese, questioning the Vatican's representative in Fatima on October 13 about the Third Secret! Ratzinger snapped: 'I've had enough of speaking about that. The message transmitted by Sister Lucy, and not yet revealed, concerns neither the history of the world in general nor individual facts in particular. The Lady does not enter into details about the future. The Secret contains nothing new, it foretells no tragedy for humanity, nothing apocalyptic and nothing essential for the faith. The Lady simply opens a path, and this path leads to conversion and to faith. In a certain sense, the Second Vatican Council was the realization of the Virgin's message and, in summoning it, Pope John XXIII did the essential in answer to the Virgin's Message.' When the actual text of 'the Virgin's Message' is finally released, we will see how accurate these statements are. For now, see how far Cardinal Ratzinger has come in twelve years: no more talk about the Third Secret concerning 'the importance of the last times,' and 'the dangers threatening the faith and life of the Christian, and therefore the world.' Had the message changed? Or had Ratzinger changed? Moreover, if the Second Vatican Council really was "the realization of the Virgin's Message" in the Third Secret, are we to conclude that the Blessed Virgin wanted a Council that refused to condemn Russia's errors, that initiated the Protestantizing of the Holy Sacrifice of Her Son, and that coincided with a defection of priests and faithful so massive the Church is yet to recoup her losses? And if Vatican II really was 'the realization of the Virgin's Message,' why would the Vatican have spent the last forty years stubbornly refusing to reveal Her endorsement of the post-conciliar Church? Equally absurd is Ratzinger's defiance of history in his claim that Pope John's convening of the Council was the 'essential answer' to the Third Secret. In fact, John's answer to the Third Secret was to bury it with an anonymous press release that cast suspicion on the three children. To claim that Pope John's refusal of the Blessed Virgin's request to reveal the Third Secret in 1960 was really the 'essential answering' of it is neo-modernist double talk. It is evident the Cardinal was being less than candid in his answers."

[Ibid., p. 296.]

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"The expression of the great Secret, 'in the reign of Pius XI' undoubtedly has another meaning than a purely chronological indication of the beginning of the war. Of itself this would have no importance. Did not Our Lady of Fatima
wish to use this expression above all to designate the Pontiff who for his part was to carry a heavy responsibility for the war? We remember, indeed, that after predicting this war Our Lady continued: '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 of the month.' Now as we have I seen, Pope Pius XI was informed of these requests, and the promise of Russia's conversion connected with them, in 1930 and again in 1937. Finally the collective petition of the Portuguese bishops in June, 1938, although slightly different in inspiration, had drawn his attention once more to Fatima and the urgent necessity of a solemn consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to obtain the graces of peace for the world. The responsibility of the Pope, who did not deign to show interest in these requests, and in the end decided to ignore them, even in the hour of imminent peril, is certain. The Secret of Fatima seems to underline this responsibility in a formula which is reminiscent of the sub Pontio Pilato in our Creed: 'If My requests are not heeded, another worse one will begin in the reign of Pius XI.'

"In the light of Fatima, it must be said that Pope Pius XI's long pontificate appears in a very sorry light. He had neglected the extraordinary help which Heaven was offering him to effectively contribute to the salvation of souls and world peace. Thus in a different order, a purely supernatural order in which the Fatima message belongs, the historian must make the same sad observation."

[THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT FATIMA, VOL. 2, Fr. Michel de la Sainte Trinite, Immaculate Heart Publications, 1984, p. 698.]

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"The long history of Marian apparitions for over a century only illustrates the prudent wisdom of the Church, which can discern with certitude the authentic Divine manifestations that she recognizes and supports, from all their pathological counterfeits or diabolical imitations, which she untiringly unmasks and denounces.

THE CHURCH DECLARES FOR AUTHENTICITY.

"Relying on the facts of the most certain historical criticism, the Church firmly and authoritatively made her judgment on Fatima. Since the Bishop of Leiria gave his official recognition in 1930, Fatima has enjoyed a constant and unanimous approval of the world episcopate and the Popes, even when they procrastinated in fulfilling its requests.

"Here is what Cardinal Cerejeira declared at Rome on February 11, 1967, perfectly expressing the judgment of the Catholic hierarchy on the events of Fatima: 'No, Fatima is not ecclesiastical exploitation or superstitious ignorance;
Fatima is a source of light and grace that the Immaculate Virgin wished to pour into the heart of Portugal . . .

" 'It is not the Church that imposed Fatima on the faithful, it is Fatima that imposed itself on the Church . . . In spite of the reservations of the Church and the obstinate, ridiculous opposition of those in power, Fatima continued to move the religious conscience of the country. Without the help of the Church and against the power of the State, the light of the miracle shone more and more brilliantly in the sky of Portugal, and the fire of the crowd's enthusiasm communicated itself to the entire country.

" ' . .. Fatima imposes itself by the evidence of a supernatural action which, I do not fear to affirm, cannot easily be equalled in the history of Marian interventions . . . In our times of materialist atheism, Fatima demonstrates to us in a striking manner that the supernatural world exists. Fatima proves it to us in a visible, tangible, unassailable and even crying fashion. Fatima annihilates the absurd and arbitrary negation of the supernatural, formulated in the name of reason and science . . . '

"This brilliant, radiant light of the apparitions of 1917 guarantees the authenticity of the whole message of Fatima. Pope Pius XII, clearly alluding to the campaign of criticisms directed against Fatima, declared on May 8, 1950 to the directors of the Blue Army: ' . . . The time for doubting Fatima has passed.' "

[THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT FATIMA, VOL. 1, Fr. Michel de la Sainte Trinite, Immaculate Heart Publications, 1983, pp. 485-486.]

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"Having reached the end of our inquiry, we are able to discern, with near certainty, the essential elements of Our Lady's final Secret: While 'in Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved', in many nations, perhaps in almost the entire world, the Faith will be lost (chap. IV). The pastors of the Church will fail gravely in the duties of their office. Through their fault, consecrated souls and the faithful in great number will let themselves be seduced by pernicious errors spread everywhere (chap. VI). This will be the time of the decisive battle between the Blessed Virgin and the devil. A wave of diabolical disorientation will be hurled over the world. Satan will introduce himself even to the highest summit of the Church. He will blind the minds and harden the hearts of pastors. For God will deliver them to themselves as a chastisement for their refusal to obey the requests of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (chap. VII). This will be the great apostasy predicted for the 'last times' (chap. VIII); the 'False Lamb' and 'False Prophet' will betray the Church to the profit of 'the Beast', according to the prophecy of the Apocalypse (chap. VIII).

"Does perhaps the Secret also announce some of the chastisements prophesied by the Scriptures for the 'last times'?"

[THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT FATIMA, VOL. 3, Fr. Michel de la Sainte Trinite, Immaculate Heart Publications, 1985, p. 841.]

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