OUR LADY OF FATIMA WHY Fatima: The Path To Peace! Is Critically Important by Fr. Nicholas Gruner, STL, STD, [CAND.] Part 2 Satan and His Powerful Followers' Evil Plans Consider that there is a very expensive, large granite stone monument weighing over 300,000 pounds in Elberton, Georgia (USA) that calls for a drastic reduction of the world's population. It literally calls for the death and destruction of 6,500,000,000 people - that is 6 BILLION, 500 MILLION people. They claim this goal is for bettering the condition of the human race and the planet. That goal is to kill more than nine-tenths of the present population of the world, targeted for death by the people who erected this monument. It is not some sort of joke or pipe-dream - it is the established plan, in all seriousness. This monument has been in place there since the 1980's. Remember that in the time of the French Revolution, the evil leader Robespierre (who in 1790 to 1794 sent tens of thousands of his countrymen to their violent deaths) was discovered to have plans to kill 10 MILLION Frenchmen. That was about one-half of the total population of France at that time. Similarly Lenin (in 1917 in Russia) did not blink an eye at proposing to kill three-quarters of the world's population in order to bring about his goal of obtaining Communist domination of the world. What does it matter, he would say, if three-fourths of the population of the world is wiped out, so long as the remaining one-fourth is Communist? A significant number of people in power today still think along these same lines, like the builders of Elberton, like Lenin, and like Robespierre. The devil is a murderer and a liar from the beginning, and his followers are similar to him, as Our Lord said. Our Lady of Fatima Our Only Solution Only Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima can help us, as She Herself told us. We must do precisely what She requests. Without this obedience to Her, we will not escape what Cardinal Ratzinger has called the "dangers which threaten the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore [the lives] of the world." Those quoted words of Cardinal Ratzinger, by the way, were his description of what, in part, was in the real Third Secret (see Jesus magazine, November 11, 1984). Our Lady has told us in the Third Secret that our very lives - even our faith, the very basis of our hope for salvation - are in danger. The fact is that unless we obey Our Lady's requests (especially for the daily Rosary and the Consecration of Russia), we may not have Our Lady's merits to shield us personally from the just punishments of God that are about to overtake the world. How do we know that the Consecration of Russia is necessary for our well-being? As Our Lady explained to Sister Lucy, "Without that consecration, Russia will not be able to convert, nor will the world have peace." And as Sister Lucy herself explained to Father Fuentes in 1957: "[M]any times, the Most Holy Virgin told my cousins, Francisco and Jacinta, as well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world [for its sins] if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation." We must either obtain the conversion of Russia, or suffer in unimaginable ways from it as the chosen instrument of God's punishment on the world. And by Our Lady's own words, we know that the only means of obtaining Russia's conversion is its Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary - specifically, exclusively Russia - by the Pope and the Catholic bishops in the manner requested by Our Lady and Our Lord in the Fatima Message. Our Bishops Don't Seem to Understand How is it that most previous Popes and many bishops today have failed to understand this? Do they understand that there is no other solution to our problems? Maybe they think that we can continue to live with our problems with no worse consequences because things cannot or will not get any worse. Perhaps they think that there will always be plenty of time to comply with Our Lady's request whenever it suits them? Or yet again, perhaps they realize how little time remains to us, but they nevertheless feel that for some reason it is impossible to do what Our Lady has asked. Do they sense some overpowering threat (against themselves, against the Church, against mankind, etc.), convincing them that they have no choice but to wait for a better time? I assure you that they are badly and sadly mistaken if they have placed their trust in excuses such as those, telling themselves that there is nothing they can do. None of these excuses will avail before God when our time-limit has run out. It seems that from 1929 until the present, this has been the sort of thinking that has dominated within the Vatican. Six out of the last seven Popes have chosen to deny to Our Lady Her request for the Consecration of Russia. (Pope John Paul I expressed his determination to give Our Lady precisely what She asked for, but he died after only thirty-three days in office). It is too early to say if Pope Francis will follow the imprudent example of his six predecessors who thought that they knew better than the Virgin Most Prudent. But nevertheless, it is certain that he could use all the help we can give him to fulfill Our Lady's request. We should not be so naive as to suppose that there is no longer an array of highly placed Masonic functionaries in the Church who have betrayed their vows to God and who work for the devil. There are many of these men (even bishops and Cardinals!), and they are doing everything in their power to block the Consecration from ever taking place because they take their orders from their Masonic masters who, in turn, obey satan. The devil knows quite well that when the Consecration is finally performed, the devil's empire in this world will have come to an end. Is there any example in the history of the Church to which we can compare our present situation? Has there ever been such grave neglect, such debilitating inertia and lack of vigor, such disregard for spiritual danger, as is seen today on the part of the present-day Vatican? To what could we possibly compare the ongoing lack of zeal and pastoral concern, even in the face of unparalleled crisis in the Church and the world, as has been demonstrated by our shepherds of the past ninety-six years? The single example that suggests itself is the Great Western Schism. We should be aware of some of the details of that sad chapter in the history of the Church in order to recognize how its lessons apply to our own time. The Great Western Schism In 1378, just a few months after Pope Urban VI was elected, some Cardinals were unhappy with the new Pope's policies. So they pretended to themselves and to the world that the papal election had been invalidated by external pressures. They claimed that they had not been free in their choice. Now, of course, this was a lie. In fact, they had been so free of political pressures within the conclave that they had even chosen a man who was not among them at all. They chose as their new Pope someone who was not even in Rome, but in Bari. The coercive influence he had brought to bear upon this conclave was obviously zero! Nevertheless, in order to be rid of the new Pope whose governance they found not to their liking, these certain Cardinals staged another election six months or so later. They elected a new "pope" (really an anti-pope) who set up a rival "papal court" in Avignon, France. This was a terrible scandal, effectively undermining the unity of the Church. Two men claimed to be the head of the Universal Church, and Catholics were divided. Some followed Pope Urban VI of Rome and others supported anti-pope Clement VII in Avignon. And things went on this way for many years! At the death of Pope Urban VI in 1389, Boniface IX was elected as his successor. But similarly a new anti-pope (Benedict XIII) was elected in 1394 in Avignon when the previous one had passed away. And so things went, on and on through the years. It seemed that no one felt capable of (or inclined to) straightening out this situation, even though kingdoms and cities and families and religious orders were divided over it. The Popes and Cardinals seemed content to let things go on in this manner indefinitely. The clergy on both sides of this division were ineffective in trying (to the extent that they did try) to repair and remove this scandal affecting the entire Church. After about thirty years, as a compromise solution, both colleges of Cardinals abandoned support for their Pope/anti-pope, and they elected a third man to be the new "pope" - in reality, now a second anti-pope, since neither of the other "popes" had consented to resign! God allowed this confusion and all of the rivalries and hostilities that it engendered as a punishment for the sins of those days, and also as a lesson for our own times. Just as all of Scripture is given for our instruction and edification, as St. Paul reminds Timothy, so also has the history of the Church been given to us for the same reasons. The lives of the Saints instruct us on how to live in different circumstances, and the lessons of Church history show us what we must do in similar circumstances. What are the Lessons For Today? What lesson do we find for ourselves in those unfortunate years for the Church? Let's first see what parallels exist between our own time and the years of the Great Western Schism. We have to recognize first of all that there certainly was a crisis affecting the Church from 1378 to 1415, when so many people did not know so much as who the real Pope was. This compromised the unity of families, cities, societies, countries - all of Christendom. It was a disaster at every level of society and the Church. Second, the clergy were utterly ineffective in what efforts they made to resolve the problem. Their neglect and weak measures served only to perpetuate the situation indefinitely. Third, there was apparently no one else capable of intervening to repair the breach. Similarly in our own time, the Church is undeniably suffering a crisis. For those who are willing to look beyond merely superficial parameters and honestly assess our situation, there is no question that the Church is in fact dying in Europe and North America. And the situation is little better in South America. Our Lady of Fatima warned against the "suicide" of the Church that would follow from altering the liturgy. "I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima," said Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII. "This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul" (cited in his biography, Pie XII Devant L'Histoire, pp. 52-53). We see the effects of this suicide all around us today - Catholic parishes closing by the hundreds. Almost 80 in Buffalo, about 120 in Milwaukee, over 140 in Detroit. Let's be honest. Why are they closing? Because the faithful no longer believe or practice the Faith in the way that previous generations of Catholics did. [Abundantly echoed in Maine, where the situation is compounded by the glaring omission of the bishop and the priests to preach on the mortal sin of contraception, thus there are fewer Catholics being born and Baptized to begin with; this refusal to have the children God wills for us calls down upon us the chastisement of the loss of vocations: physical death begetting spiritual death and vice versa. - the Web Master] They are not going to Mass. What created or occasioned this rift? What has caused this rupture in the handing down of the Faith to the present generation, so that it is no longer similarly expressed or conscientiously practiced? What was the effective cause of this suicide of the Church? CONTINUED FORWARD HERE. Taken from Summer 2013 Issue, The Fatima Crusader VIEW/DOWNLOAD THE DESKTOP HOME--------------------E-Mail www.catholictradition.org/Mary/fatima50b.htm