In hearing these things we shudder indeed at so great an audacity of assertion and so great a sacrilege. And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of unbelievers. There are Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings!
#10 http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10pasce.htm

Acting as if he were sent and inspired by God, he speaks in the name of the Trinity and then uses Scripture as a pretext for releasing the people from the law of obedience. He twists the words of holy Scripture in a bold and cunning manner in order to firmly establish his depraved ravings. He does this in order that, as St. Bernard used to say, "He might spread clouds for light or give poison for honey, or rather in the honey, creating a new Gospel for the people and laying a different foundation from the one which is already laid
# 5   http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Greg16/g16singu.htm (Condeming book Paroles d'un croyant by Félicité Robert de Lamennais)
3. These enemies of the Church usually employ a variety of deceits for turning the spirits of the Italian people away from the Catholic faith. For instance, they shamelessly affirm and cry it abroad that the Catholic religion is opposed to the glory, greatness and prosperity of the Italian nation. So they say that Protestantism should be brought in, set up and increased to replace Catholicism. Then Italy could once more acquire its former splendor of ancient, that is, pagan, times. It is hard to decide which is the more hateful aspect of this fiction of theirs -- the malice of their raving impiety or the effrontery of their lying wickedness.
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9nostis.htm (NOSTIS ET NOBISCUM ON THE CHURCH IN THE PONTIFICAL STATES ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS IX DECEMBER 8, 1849
Everyone must understand that such ravings and others like them, concealed in many deceitful guises, cause greater ruin to public calm the longer their impious originators are unrestrained. They cause a serious loss of souls redeemed by Christ's blood wherever their teaching spreads, like a cancer; it forces its way into public academies, into the houses of the great, into the palaces of kings, and even enters the sanctuary, shocking as it is to say so.
#7 http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius06/p6inscru.htm  (ON THE PROBLEMS OF THE PONTIFICATE Inscrutabile Encyclical of Pope Pius VI promulgated on December 25, 1775)

Philippians 3 :2 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision

Was listening to the news this weekend with the fear mongering of swine flu.Several news reports noted the fear is in churches too, they made a special report just on how the Catholic Churches in Raleigh were taking precautions with the common cup and the Grope of Peace.Some reports were more detailed how they Eucharistic ministers were having to wash hands,etc.

Most on report, not surprising, were simpleton looking and syrupy.

Here's a good health practice:

1.Eucharist handled by one person only, the priest,persona Christi
2. No "common cup". You get both either in the blood or host…you can return to Tradition by allowing the priest only to handle species.Byzantines have both in chalice and spoon it out on tongue..nicely eliminating need for man-or often women-handling……
3. Grope of peace…..no need to disrupt Mass being grabbing at each other, esp when it has devolved to priest flying off altar and going up down isles, people, same thing….it is man focused, not eyes front on Christ….led in front by priest….
4. Washing, the priest cleanses hands prior to Mass, the handling is largely done of things by altar acolytes…….he also does the cleansing o nthe altar…

THE LAVABO
Lava is Latin for for wash or bathe. In the early days of the church the priest would clean his hands after being brought gifts of oil, food and other goods. In the past it has been symbolic of Pilate washing his hands of Jesus' blood.
The priest then begins to recite Psalm 26 with "I shall wash" while the server pours water from a cruet over his fingers. He then prays the Gloria Patria and moves to the center of the altar and recites the seventh offertory prayer, in which he asks the Holy Trinity to accept our sacrifice in commemoration of our Lord's passion and resurrection and in remembrance of our Blessed Virgin Mother and the saints.

•Going to the Epistle side, the priest washes his fingers and says:                        

P:  Lavabo inter innocentes         P:  I will wash my hands among

manus meas:  et circumdabo         the innocent,  and will

altare tuum Domine.  Ut audiam     compass Thine altar,  O Lord. 

vocem laudis:  et enarrem           That I may hear the voice of

universa mirabilia tua.             praise,  and tell of all Thy

Domine dilexi decorem domus        wondrous works.  I have loved, 

tuae,  et locum habitationis        O Lord, the beauty of Thy

gloriae tuae.  Ne perdas cum        house,  and the place where

impiis Deus animam meam:  et       Thy glory dwelleth.  Take not

cum viris sanguinum vitam           away my soul,  O God,  with

meam.  In quorum manibus           the wicked;  nor my life with

iniquitates sunt:  dextera          men of blood.  In whose hands

eorum repleta est muneribus.       are iniquities:  their right

Ego autem in innocentia mea        hand is filled with gifts. 

ingressus sum:  redime me,  et     But as for me,  I have walked

miserere mei.  Pes meus stetit     in my innocence;  redeem me, 

in directo:  in ecclesiis           and have mercy on me.  My foot

benedicam te Domine.  Gloria,      hath stood in the right way; 

etc.                                in the churches I will bless

                                    Thee,  O Lord. 

                                    Glory be to

                                    the Father, and to the Son, 

                                    and to the Holy Ghost.  As it

                                    was in the beginning,  is now, 

                                    and ever shall be;  world

                                    without end. Amen

So, returning to Tradition, will not only offer a Mass in true worship of Christ, but also, would cut down on germs!.

2 Thessalonians 2 :14 Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle

 
Ecumenism: Time to Stop the Insanity
By Edwin Faust

Editor’s note: The following remarks are taken from an address delivered at the Keep the Faith conference in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., on Sept. 21, 2008.

I first heard the word ecumenism in 1964, when I was 15 and a student at a Catholic High School in South Philadelphia. The priest who used the term — let’s call him Father T.— was the debate and speech coach and I was an avid member of the club.

Father T. was not from South Philadelphia, and he deprecated what he called our Catholic ghetto mentality. There were few non-Catholics in our working-class neighborhood of row homes, and those few we regarded with pity and suspicion.

Father T. relished the new words coming out of the Council and wanted to adopt the new attitudes they expressed. He was especially eager to engage in ecumenism. He joined the Confraternity of Christians and Jews and other organizations designed to demonstrate the irrelevance of doctrine in the performance of good works. He also became involved with the Optimist Club, which sponsored an annual speech contest for high school students in which he decided I should compete.

The Optimists are fairly indistinguishable from other such do-gooder groups that dot the American landscape — The Elks, The Moose, The Lions — but they chose to name themselves for an attitude instead of an animal.

The annual speech topic always had to do with some aspect of optimism. The topic that year was: “Optimism; Spirit of Youth.” It occasioned a considerable outpouring of sappy rhetoric and, to my shame, I must admit adding to it at the behest of Father T. I made it through several elimination rounds and was headed to the final contest and a chance to win a modest scholarship award. The grand gathering of the Optimists International, at which they elect their head man and at which I was to deliver my final speech, was to be in Atlantic City that year. I was to speak after dinner in the grand ballroom of the Traymore Hotel in front of about 300 well-fed optimists from throughout the country. Each of the elimination rounds had also been preceded by a dinner and my priest-coach always appeared very pleased to attend these gatherings at which, presumably, he could demonstrate that Catholics are ordinary, likable folks: good Americans who don’t let their creed get in the way of being good neighbors. He also wanted to cultivate my social skills. Most importantly, he wanted to bring me out of the Catholic ghetto and into the wider world.

At the big contest, we dined at the table of the head man of the Optimists International, Governor Sam, as he was called. I felt extremely uncomfortable throughout the meal, for I had little in common with these people: businessmen and their wives who were nothing like the people among whom I grew up. So, to the annoyance of my coach, I was very silent, offering only monosyllabic answers to the few questions that were put to me. I had the sympathy of the table, however, for Governor Sam’s wife, apparently feeling my unease, took it upon herself to excuse my lack of sociability by explaining to everyone that I was doubtless nervous about my approaching speech. “Butterflies in the stomach,” she said in a kind attempt to extenuate any reproach about my behaving like a dumb brick. Before the contest, Governor Sam, who was sitting across from me, was unanimously re-elected to another term of office. He was a mustached, fat man with a massive bald head who put me very much in mind of Oliver Hardy. At the announcement of the election results, Governor Sam rose to make a bow of acceptance and appreciation. Unfortunately, he rose rather quickly and at the same instant that a waiter was passing by with a tray containing the remains of several shrimp cocktails. Governor Sam’s head slammed into the bottom of the tray, knocking it out of the waiter’s hand and distributing its contents here and there. The Gov., stunned, slid back into his chair with bits of shrimp and spatters of cocktail sauce cascading from his head onto his shoulders and shirtfront. And then, I did the most unforgivable thing: I laughed. A short, loud, quickly arrested laugh, but one that was heard by all. The governor’s wife, who had been bending solicitously over her husband, turned sharply to me with a look of horror and disgust. The rest of the table shared her emotion. Of Father T’s reaction, I will say nothing, except that in recalling it I think I was in the position of that man of whom Emily Dickinson wrote: “He fell so low in my regard I heard him hit the ground.”

My name was mud.

In my defense, I can say that I was only 15 and I thought the incident the funniest thing I had ever seen. My embarrassment at the time, however, was so excruciating that every subsequent minute spent at the table was painful beyond description. Needless to say, I didn’t win the contest. It was my first loss; I was out of the competition; and I was glad of it.

The fact is, I didn’t like the Optimists; I always felt somewhat foolish and more than a little phony whenever I gave my speech. And despite Father T.’s warm admiration for Governor Sam, I found the man and his whole organization a bit ridiculous. I think of this episode as my first and final foray into ecumenism. I was very glad to retreat to my Catholic ghetto mentality, which I have preserved to this day and hope to take to the grave and beyond.

For the truth is, I don’t like being around non-Catholics. I don’t feel at all comfortable or in any way drawn to people who don’t share my faith. We Catholics, the genuine, not the nominal ones, see the world in quite the opposite way from non-Catholics. For us, life is about one thing: salvation. And salvation is to be had in one way: through the Catholic Church. The possibility that we should form any deep and lasting connection with someone who doesn’t believe this is rather remote, if not impossible. For the Catholic and the non-Catholic don’t even speak the same language; we may respectively use the same words, but with different meanings. And consider the fact that for us, the most perfect life is that lived according to the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience. What other group of people in this country think it a blessed calling that a young man or woman should renounce possessions, embrace celibacy and live under strict obedience to a superior, following a regime of prayer and penance? Most regard such a prospect with utter perplexity and frank horror. They think it madness.

The Sin of Ecumenism

To be Catholic is to be different, now more than ever, and I think the strain of being Catholic, of always swimming against the stream of popular culture, has much to do with the surrender of our churchmen to popular ideas, which surrender manifests in the novel phenomenon called ecumenism. It is as though the popes and the hierarchy these past 40-some years want to drag us all to the Optimists Club to dine and hobnob with unbelievers and to listen to their vapid rhetoric; to plunge us into a world that does not share our vision of reality, not so that we might convert that world, but so that we might become acclimated to it.

I am not particularly interested in examining ecumenism from any sociological or psychological or historical standpoint; I want to look at ecumenism as a spiritual matter, i.e., as something that either draws us toward or away from God, who is our salvation. In other words, I want to look at ecumenism as sin.

It may sound surprising to some, and perhaps a bit radical, to talk about ecumenism as sin. We all have to some extent been influenced by the times in which we live, and these are secular times. We all have to some extent gotten hold of the notion that life contains large areas of spiritual neutrality: domains removed from the great contest waged for our souls by Heaven and Hell. I think the immense popularity of televised sports and other entertainments has to do with their superficiality. Here are domains in which we can disregard our faith and join with others in a seemingly innocent pastime. Many of us have thus become accustomed to act in the same manner as those about us for whom the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His one true church are matters of indifference. Most of life, we presume, more or less unconsciously, has no relation to sin or virtue.

And so we can pass our days with little thought about whether we are advancing or retreating from our ultimate goal, which is God. And the less we think about God, the more godless we become.
The great theologian of the 20th century, Father Garrigou-LaGrange, waged a ceaseless war against this slide into secularism. He reminded us repeatedly that each day we either move closer to God or farther away from Him. There is no standing still in the spiritual life, he insists, and every willed act has its effect upon our relation to our Creator and our prospective salvation. He uses a powerful metaphor to drive home this truth. He describes a steady rain falling on a great mountain peak with each drop rolling down either one or the other of its two opposing slopes: one slope leads to a river running to the south and the Mediterranean; the other, to the north and the North Sea. So it is in our spiritual life, he says, with every act either drawing us in one of two ways: toward or away from God.
Now, I am going to argue that ecumenism draws us away from God; that it is, as I said above, a godless activity; that ecumenism is sin. One might counter this assertion by saying that the catalogue of deadly sins contains no mention of ecumenism; that moral theologians do not treat of the matter in their manuals. I say they do. And that in the catalogue of deadly sins, ecumenism comes under the heading of sloth.

Sloth is usually divided into two categories under Latin names: pigritia and accedia. Under the first heading, pigritia, are comprised those qualities that are generally regarded as the manifestations of sloth: a dislike for anything that requires arduous exertion; physical or mental; a desire for unbroken repose, idleness; what the Italians call ‘dolce farniente’ – the sweetness of doing nothing. In other words, the general disposition of most men at most times. Those of us who are parents can testify that the better part of child-rearing is a combat with pigritia: nine times out of ten, when you ask your child what he or she is doing, you will get the answer, “nothing,” and it will likely be an honest answer. Nor are we as parents and responsible adults spared the temptations of pigritia. Many days, just getting out of bed can require a Herculean exercise of will.

But pigritia is not sloth properly speaking.

In fact, the slothful man may be quite energetic, full of bustle and business; he may be a classic over-achiever. So what makes him an exemplar of a quality so terrible as to be classed among the seven deadly sins? It is this: he hates the very means offered him for his salvation. He hates God’s Providence. In the end, he hates God.

The Slothful Rebel

Now, sloth can manifest as an indifference to the means of salvation. It can be casual and only dimly, if at all, realized. Or it can be intense: a virulent hatred of the whole apparatus of salvation. And, of course, there are gradations between these extremes. The great Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh considered sloth the predominant fault of the twentieth century and observed that the slothful man, often presented in heroic terms, has become a stock character in modern literature.
 
    
Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh considered sloth the predominant fault of the twentieth century and observed that the slothful man, often presented in heroic terms, has become a stock character in modern literature. 

During my years of miseducation at a nominally Catholic college, I took a theology course titled: Christian Themes in Modern Literature. It was in this course that I was introduced to the writings of the Nobel laureate Albert Camus. What claim he had to be included in the curriculum is unclear. He was avowedly no Christian and both his fiction and his essays are a repudiation of the entire religious tradition of the West, erupting at times into attacks upon the Catholic Church

In one of his novels, The Plague, the priest is presented as a fool, and even worse, as a coward in the sense that he shrinks from what are posited as the obvious facts of human existence; the priest’s creed, the Catholic faith, is condemned as a betrayal of mankind. The hero, a medical doctor treating a town full of people stricken by bubonic plague, avows that he will continue to fight against a world in which innocent children suffer and die. But that assertion begs the question: are children innocent? Was there no fall? St. Augustine didn’t think so. He points out the undeniable fact that from our infancy we give evidence of the effects of the fall; that we begin life with a screaming, crying demand that we should have what we want when we want it and with no regard for others.

But Camus does not appear to notice these fundamental flaws in human nature. We are all poor victims, as far as he is concerned; the helpless creatures of a cruel cosmic order that is bent on our suffering and destruction.

The Catholic becomes, for Camus, a traitor, one who sides with God against man. Camus was to say again and again that we have two choices: either we find man guilty and God innocent and submit; or we find man innocent and God guilty and rebel. He recommends rebellion. He says that man must become a metaphysical rebel: that is, he must oppose with all his heart and mind the very order of creation.

I am not going to examine Camas’ arguments, nor his philosophical antecedents, for I am interested in him now only as an example of sloth in its clearest, most conscious and most dramatic expression. But sloth, in our time, is a widespread condition. It is, perhaps, as Waugh believed, the master sin of the age.

Now, Camus recommends that we rebel; that we remain in a constant state of antagonism toward the whole apparatus of salvation. Such rebellion, I think, has become quite ordinary, although it is not always recognized as such. Not only society in general, but most of the Catholic hierarchy have been in this state of rebellion for the past 40-some years. But their rebellion is not as self-conscious and forthright as Camus’.

The Danish thinker, Soren Kierkegaard, made some pertinent observations about the nature of rebellion. He said that an age that is passionate and revolts will tear down all of the old structures and leave nothing standing; but an age that lacks passion and revolts, will leave all of the old structures standing but cunningly empty them of significance.

You may ask a priest these days whether one can be saved outside the Catholic Church and receive the seemingly orthodox answer, “No.” But what you may not be told is that the clergyman in question believes that all men belong to the Church. If he is a devotee of the new theology, he may have erased in his mind the distinction between the natural and the supernatural. For him, to be born is to be saved, for all men are joined to Christ in their human nature and, therefore, members of the mystical body whether they know it or not; whether they accept it or not. For him, the institutional church may be useful, but essentially gratuitous. His rebellion against doctrine thus remains covert and he can continue to enjoy the prerogatives of his office and to disembowel the old structures while masking his activity behind this verbal legerdemain. From pope to parish priest, ambivalence reigns.

Now, I have said that ecumenism is rooted in the sin of sloth.The classic definition of this capital sin is that offered us by St. Thomas Aquinas: “tiristitia de boni spiritualis.” This is usually translated as sadness in the face of spiritual good, or sadness in the face of spiritual joy. It’s a definition that requires some reflection. Why should one be sad in the face of spiritual joy? Why not embrace it? After all, who doesn’t want to be happy?

I think the best illustration of the nature of this sadness is given us in Scripture, in the story of the rich young man.

Few accounts in the New Testament are, for me, more poignant than this one as it is told in St. Mark’s Gospel. The rich young man has been listening to Our Lord and is filled with a fervent desire for the kingdom of Heaven. He approaches Jesus and says, “Master, what must I do to gain eternal life?” Our Lord tells him to follow the commandments. The young man is not satisfied. These things he has done all his life, he says. Then we are told that Our Lord, looking upon him, loved him, and said, “If you would be perfect, go and sell what you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven, then come, follow me.” And then we read the terrible line, “And the young man went away sad, because he owned much.”

This to me has always been a heartbreaking story. The young man, of course, represents all of us, whom Our Lord looks on with love. And the counsel of perfection the young man receives is given to all of us, because we all own much in the way of self-will. But so many times, like the rich young man, we go away sad, because we are unwilling to follow that counsel and surrender self-will.

Now, the rich young man appears only in this one story, and we know nothing of his further history, although St. Luke, in his rendering, refers to him as one of the leaders of the people. It would be a comfort to believe that he had a change of heart; that after some deliberation, he sold his goods and followed Jesus. But let’s assume, for the purposes of understanding the progress of the sin of sloth, that he did not; that he clung to his wealth and to his way of life. How might this eventually affect his attitude toward Christ?

We know that the young man went away sad. He was offered the means of salvation, but it was not to his liking. It saddened him that it should be so. He wanted salvation on his own terms, not those revealed to him by his Lord and Creator. Certainly, when Jesus looked at him with love, the young man experienced a moment he would never forget; yet, it doubtless became a torment for him to remember it. All the sweetness he knew in listening to Jesus, in longing to be his disciple, in being enrapt in that look of love, must have come to taste very bitter to him as time passed and he became hardened in his rejection of Our Lord’s counsel.

I read somewhere that the mind is Satan’s lawyer. When we turn away from spiritual good, from spiritual joy, our mind begins the process of rationalization, of justification. No doubt, the rich young man began to convince himself that it would have been madness to follow Our Lord’s counsel.
“Sell all my goods? Give the money to a bunch of bums and ne’er do wells? Set out with no provisions, no capital, no fallback position, blindly following an itinerant preacher? No. I did the sensible thing in refusing. The responsible thing. After all, a man of property, a leader of the people like me, has duties to himself and to others. Surely, this Jesus seemed an attractive figure; said some very appealing things; sure, he had a certain magnetism. But I was young. Easily impressed. Romantic. Full of illusions. What did I really know of the world? What did I really know of this Jesus? Of course, he was found out later to be a fraud and executed in the most hideous way. Served him right, I suppose. How many fools did he ruin? How many young men who lacked my reserve and good judgment did he drag down with him? I hear from time to time of another of his deluded followers being stoned or beheaded or crucified. That might have been my fate. But, thank heaven, I was sensible. I have lived and prospered. I have my wife, my children, my good servants, the respect of my neighbors. I am a man of influence, and I will use that influence to oppose such dangerous people as this Jesus and his fanatical disciples. They lead astray the young; they wreck lives and sow discord among families. They must be stopped. Yes, I see clearly now the evil they represent and I will set my face against them.”
And so the erstwhile disciple becomes the enemy of the faith from whose demands he shrank.

This is the way sloth works.

We become saddened by the terms of salvation, for it means giving up something to which we are attached; chiefly, it means setting ourselves at odds with the world and with our own will. We look down the path of sanctity stretching before us; we want the spiritual good, the joy, that illumines that road like the sun, but we do not want the ardors of the journey, so we turn away, sad.

The Religion of Sloth

Now, Aristotle tells us in his Ethics that no man can remain for long without joy. If we are going to turn away from spiritual joy, we are going to look for joy elsewhere. And so the slothful man ends by putting something else in the place of the revealed spiritual good.

For the mainstream Catholic clergy, ecumenism is that something else. It is the substitute for the Divinely revealed spiritual good. It has been the driving force of every papacy since John XXIII’s; the overarching concern of most every precept and policy to issue from Rome these past 40-some years. It is the reason there is a New Mass. It is the reason we are identified as traditionalists. We are resisting the new religion fashioned by sloth. We are the declared enemies of ecumenism. We are, quite simply, Catholic.

And because we are Catholic, we are either despised or ignored by the vast majority of the Catholic hierarchy. We are not of their faith. We do not attend their Mass. And we are an irritating, hateful reminder of the spiritual good from which they have turned away.

Now, I have so far not given a definition of ecumenism. I am sure we all have a notion that it has something to do with reconciling the differences between the Catholic faith and the Protestant sects; or perhaps, we have a broader notion: that it is about finding the common ground shared by all religions. Or perhaps, it is even broader than that, ultimately transcending religion and shifting the emphasis from the supernatural to the purely natural: to urge men to work together for modest, achievable ends, such as better plumbing in third-world countries. It will bear all of these interpretations.

We have certainly been given some rather striking examples of the grand ecumenical gesture in the papacies of Paul VI and John Paul II and, regrettably, in that of the current pope.

The late John Paul II, on one stage after another, from synagogue to mosque to voodoo hutch, cheerfully proclaimed his joy that heresy, apostasy and even demonism should enrich the spiritual tapestry that is our presumably common legacy, leading us all eventually to the same beatitude.
How did such outrages become possible? How did we arrive at this juncture? What is this ecumenism that has gutted the Catholic faith and reduced popes to incoherence, scandal and absurdity?

Curiously enough, despite the voluminous documents that have issued from Rome on the subject for more than four decades, a clear definition of ecumenism has proved elusive. The closest we have come to such a definition is quoted by Romano Amerio in Iota Unum. It comes from a speech given by Paul VI in January 1969, the same year the New Mass was promulgated. Here is how the then-Vicar of Christ describes ecumenism:

“From theological discussion it can emerge what the essential Christian doctrinal patrimony is, how much of it is communicable authentically and together in different terms that are substantially equal and complementary, and how it is possible for everyone to make the victorious discovery of the identity of faith, in freedom, and in the variety of its expressions, from which union can be happily celebrated.”

It is nothing short of incredible that this gobbledygook came from the mouth of a pope and is accepted as the Church’s new mission, replacing that given by Christ, to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Now, a mercifully brief examination of Pope Paul’s statement might help to make clear this connection between ecumenism and sloth, and why ecumenism is a sin.

The pope starts out by saying that our essential Christian doctrinal patrimony can emerge through discussion. This is astounding. The essential Christian doctrinal patrimony was revealed by God and is preserved by the Church in what is called the deposit of faith. But here we are told it is something to be discovered by chatting together with non-Catholics. I suppose what is implied here is that there is a non-essential doctrinal patrimony. I was taught that all doctrine is essential; that no part of that patrimony is dispensable. What is non-essential doctrine? It’s something that can emerge apparently.

And once it has emerged, we can separate it from essential doctrine and perhaps discard it, then decide how much of the essential doctrine is communicable authentically. Now, if something cannot be authentically communicated, how can we even know it exists? How can there be essential doctrine that is incommunicable or communicated inauthentically? How can we discuss that which we cannot communicate?

Or is inauthentic communication a euphemism for falsehood? Is the late pope here referring to doctrine that is falsely communicated as an essential part of our patrimony when it is in fact gratuitous and optional? Doctrinal impostures, if you will? Who knows? But once we have chatted sufficiently with the proponents of heresy and apostasy, he tells us, we will then realize how essential and authentically communicated doctrine is expressed in different ways that are substantially equal and complementary.

 So, all authentically communicable doctrine, whatever it might be, can be expressed in ways that may appear contradictory but which are, under closer scrutiny, found to be substantially the same.

Now, I wonder: how many different but substantially the same ways there are to define the Trinity? How about the virgin birth? The Immaculate Conception? The Incarnation? The Fall? The Redemption? The Resurrection? Most of the essential doctrines of our faith are rooted in history; in events that occurred at a particular place and time involving particular people. They contain mysteries, certainly, but they can be simply and succinctly expressed.

These events are not symbols, but realities. They do not yield to different forms of expression unless they are turned into symbols; that is, unless we subordinate and possibly discard the historical fact, regarding it merely as a convenient vehicle for a larger idea, which idea offers a great deal of flexibility in the way in which it may be understood and expressed.

But the late pope believes that there are different ways of expressing essential doctrine and that, when we realize this, it will bring us to the victorious discovery of the identity of faith, in freedom. I suppose the phrase ‘in freedom’ implies that one need not be bound to a particular doctrinal definition, an idea that runs counter to the entire history of the church and its magisterium. This would seem to mean that Catholics and non-Catholics, and perhaps non-Christians, will come to recognize that we all have our own way of speaking but we are all saying the same thing; that our past differences were the result of unexamined speech, mere verbal confusion, which can be cleared up by a friendly and attentive look at our variety of expressions. Then, we will be able to laugh at our foolishness in thinking we had real disagreements and, as the late pope says, our union, a union that embraces everyone, can be happily celebrated.

Now, if this had been said by Oprah, or by some moonstuck new ager, one would merely smile at the naivetÈ, ignorance and presumption contained in the statement and wonder at the human capacity for delusion. But this was said by a pope.

And it has since given direction to the Church: all aspects of Catholic life were from that time were to be oriented to the ecumenical goal of a universal faith, or an egalitarian acceptance of all religions as differing superficially but as essentially the same. Liturgy, theology, catechetics – all have assumed an ecumenical posture. Pope Paul’s friend and biographer, Jean Guitton, tells us that the late pope saw the New Mass as a vehicle for drawing Catholics and Protestants closer together and, to that end, it was fashioned along the lines of Protestant worship services, particularly Presbyterian and Anglican rites. In other words, the late Holy Father imposed upon the Catholic world a Mass designed to please those who reject the very definition of the Mass as the unbloody re-enactment of the sacrifice of Calvary; he imposed a Mass designed to please those who deny the priesthood, the doctrine of the Real Presence, of expiation and of sacramental grace. All for the sake of this vain fancy called ecumenism.

Now, these theological discussions from which the genuine Christian doctrine is supposed to emerge are open to representatives of any and every creed, just about. I say representatives, but really, who do the discussion partners from non-Catholic sects represent? They have no creedal authority; there are no doctrines, no precepts to which those of their various sects must give assent. Should one of them agree with the Catholic faith on some particular point, who else is bound by that agreement? No one. They represent themselves, really, and no one else. I also used the phrase “just about,” for there are certain people who have never been welcome in the ecumenical chat room: Traditional Catholics.

The reason is obvious. If you are going to pretend that Christianity must be discovered through discussion; if you are going to pretend that Christianity is not identical with the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church; if you are intent upon pretending that heresy and apostasy are not real, but simply verbal misunderstandings, then the last person you want at your kaffeeklatch is an Archbishop LeFebvre.

The postconciliar popes have been only too glad to beam benevolently at every representative of heresy, schism and apostasy, but they have coldly averted their eyes from those loyal to the faith, which cannot accommodate their new religion of ecumenism.

The New Evangelism

John Paul II, of course, saw himself as the great apostle of ecumenism, a new St. Paul carrying a new faith to the four corners of the Earth. I first became aware of this when I was working on the copy desk of a newspaper in 1988 and supplementing my meager income by writing a weekly feature for the religion page, which was published every Saturday as a sop to those of our subscribers still benighted enough to cling to the notion of a deity. The features editor came to me one week and asked whether I knew anything of this French archbishop who had just been excommunicated for some reason. I said no, but I’d find out and squeeze an article out of it. I had just come back to the Church after many years in the spiritual wilderness and was still trying to figure out the lay of land, which had changed so dramatically since my departure in the late 1960s.

In my rapid-fire research – I only had a few days to write the article – I came across some wildly contradictory statements by John Paul II. He said that Archbishop Lefebvre’s consecration of bishops without his permission was gravely displeasing to God. He made this statement as he was setting out on a tour, one might say a pilgrimage, to Lutheran churches in Germany and Scandinavia, and he was at the same time full of praise for Martin Luther. He or someone in his entourage even made the cryptic statement that Luther’s excommunication did not extend beyond his earthly life. What did that mean, I wondered?

Now, Archbishop Lefebvre pointedly did not confer any jurisdiction on his bishops, as that was the prerogative of the pope and he wanted to make plain that he was not challenging papal authority; that he did not intend to establish a parallel and contending magisterium. He was acting, as he insisted, on the basis of a case of necessity, rooted in Canon law, for the good of souls, which is the supreme law of the Church. One might disagree with the archbishop’s reasoning and disapprove of his actions, but certainly one can find no part of Catholic doctrine from which the archbishop dissented. The same cannot be said about Luther, nor about those who still adhere to his heresies.

So, I wondered at the time, how is it that the pope has nothing but good things to say about Martin Luther, but refers to Archbishop Lefebvre in the darkest, most dour manner? How is it that he implies a posthumous lifting of the excommunication of Luther, who gave no signs of final repentance, but has no qualms about booting out of the church the greatest missionary bishop of the 20th century?
Luther called the Mass an abomination and heaped upon it unspeakable insults; yet, the pope was pleased to kneel in a Lutheran cathedral in Denmark, where he was, incidentally, forbidden to preach, but condemned Lefebvre, whose real crime was his loyalty to the Mass and his insistence that the Catholic Church, and only the Catholic Church, was founded by Christ and given the exclusive, Divine mandate to save mankind through her sacraments.

Lefebvre, it struck me, was excommunicated for refusing to give his assent to the new religion of ecumenism, not for disobeying the pope. If it were his rather limited and arguably justifiable refusal of papal authority that was gravely displeasing, why was not the absolute and complete refusal of that authority by the Lutherans, the other Protestant sects, the schismatic orthodox, the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus and the worshipers of the Great Thumb even more gravely displeasing? The pope seemed to have no problem with their disobedience.

It became very clear to me that the archbishop was targeted by the big guns in Rome for being an apostate from the new ecumenical faith being preached by John Paul II and by the vast majority of his bishops and clergy. The archbishop was despised by the hierarchy because the faith he still preached and practiced had been discarded by them and was also now despised. He was a man of zeal in a Church given to sloth. He was the descendent of the apostles; the hierarchy had become the progeny of the rich young man. And it was now the chief concern of that hierarchy to suppress that faith they had formerly sworn to preserve and propagate.

It is interesting to note in passing that the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei Afflicta, issued by John Paul II, in part to justify the heavy-hand with which Rome had dealt with the archbishop, is concerned not so much with papal disobedience, but with what the pope calls Lefebvre’s defective understanding of Tradition. John Paul II coins the phrase “living tradition” to explain and, it would seem, justify those changes in the church, notably ecumenism, that the archbishop found diametrically opposed to Her perennial teaching. The purpose of Ecclesia Dei appears to be to demonstrate that you can have your Latin Mass so long as you swallow the new religion of ecumenism along with it.

Now, we have made some progress in the 20 years since Ecclesia Dei and we are all grateful for Summorum pontificum. It is not quite the writ of manumission we had hoped for, but despite its ambivalence and some non-sequiturs, it is a big step in the right direction. But it tries to effect a marriage between contradictory things: between the traditional faith and its denial. And such a marriage can never be a true one.

So long as there are two religions contending for the heart and mind of the Church, there will continue to be two Masses: the novus ordo missae, the rite of ecumenism, and the Tridentine Mass, the rite of the Catholic faith. The two cannot coexist peacefully; there can be no liturgical detente, despite the hopes and preferences of some people for such a peace. So we must be prepared to stand fast for awhile.

The slothful men who hate the faith and the Mass and us and who now run the curia and the chancery offices are growing old. In another generation, say 15 or 20 years, most all of these bishops and their entourage will be dead. And with them will die the religion of ecumenism they have so fatuously proclaimed as the new springtime in the church. Then, we will have a real springtime, a genuine renewal of the faith. Then, the true Mass will no longer be extraordinary, except in its sublime beauty, and those cherished words, “Introibo ad altare Dei,” will resonate wonderfully in all of our sanctuaries.
From the November 2008

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Saturday, January 10, 2009

Thrift Matters and Come, Lord!
(His Excellency's previous week's posting was foiled by a blog snafu. Hence, a double edition. Enjoy! -Ed.)

Eleison Comments LXXIX

Another brief visit to the United States gives me to think that a large part of the population, while concerned about the financial and economic state of their nation, are going about their business as though there is nothing too much to worry about. Perhaps there is not much else they can do. Perhaps it is only human to go on "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage", until the catastrophe hits (cf. Mt. XXIV, 3 .

However, my own best understanding, from the commentators who make the most sense to me, is that a major catastrophe is on its way, which will go way beyond mere finance and economics. The best commentators see what stands to reason, namely that if the problem is deep and human, its roots are moral and, ultimately, religious. Let us back up with one commentator from today's effects to yesterday's causes (within the USA) :

Regulators and financial institutions "woke up too late" to the collapse of a pyramid of debt, partly because in its last stage it had been too profitable to them. In this last stage "liar loans" in the form of SIVs (Structured Investment Vehicles) had been invented to deal with borrowers on housing not repaying their debts. SIVs did this by packaging good mortgages with bad, and selling the packages as "investments" to gullible investors who did not do their homework. Everything seemed good until housing values fell, as they were bound inevitably to do. Then borrowers repudiated their debts, confidence cratered, investors and huge financial institutions were bankrupted, from the USA outwards to much of the rest of the world.

And why had housing in particular brought down the house of cards ? Because housing, second most important part of the whole US economy, had become an investment as well as a home, and collateral for house "owners" to take out still further loans. Moreover since the 1970s, the US government had been subsidising mortgages for people normally unfit to borrow (but who vote!), and it had been bullying lenders to make loans according to "equality" and not according to their better judgment.

Further back still, the government had set households the example (taught by the Englander John Maynard Keynes - "Tomorrow we are all dead anyway") of living beyond one's means, as though endless borrowing could ensure an endless increase of prosperity. Financial responsibility was made to seem a thing of the past. Such reckless behavior on the part of the government had been greatly facilitated by the disastrous founding in 1913 of the private bankers' Federal Reserve, enabling the government, amongst other things, to rob the mass of citizens without their realizing it, by means of inflation - five cents then bought what only a dollar can buy now. But let us make no mistake - broadly speaking, citizens have from God the governments they deserve, especially when they are convinced that their government is "democratic". Kyrie eleison.
Eleison Comments LXXX

If the rolling crash of finance and economics will help to pull families together and even impose some hunger, it will be a blessing, a blessing in disguise maybe, but still a blessing, if one listens to what a family physician practising medicine in the Eastern United States has to say about the current state of his patients. Here are a few of his observations (more may appear in an upcoming issue of the “Angelus”) :

“There is a war on fertility taking place. A soft eugenic war (choosing who lives) is being waged against the American people, according to a Fabian program of gradualism and incrementalism, to get rid of social problems, e.g. poverty and old age, by getting rid of the people! Contaminated food and water serve in this war. Also anti-depressant pills, all of which stop the reproductive function. Sperm counts are way down.

“Our food is no good, and people know it. The more natural diet of poor people is healthier than that of the well-to-do. When deer face a choice between natural corn and manipulated corn, they make straight for the natural corn! Hispanics and blacks still have some common sense, but the disintegration of the family amongst the white people is causing a loneliness, loneliness, loneliness, which is pushing them to eat their unnatural food for comfort. Cases of diabetes have doubled in the last ten years. Recently I had in my office a 14-year old weighing in at 393 lbs ! And youngsters like him are more and more common. People are overfed yet undernourished. Children fed like they are being fed today will not live. Drugs like Ritalin only calm them down externally because they stimulate them internally. Modern pills are dangerous, liable to upset people’s brain-chemistry for ever, like in the Soviet Gulag. As a patient said to me recently, ‘I just don’t feel right any more’.

“But the genocide is not only physical. People are being deprived of their faith as of their nutrition. The slow, rich, Catholic culture is going, going, gone, to be replaced by a toxic Protestant anti-culture, pushing frenetic parents, for instance, to orchestrate their children’s lives at such a fast pace that they cannot grow normally, and their attention span is destroyed. People are profoundly out-matched by this anti-culture. They do not stand a chance. They cannot listen any more. They can only believe what they see on television. They are despondent, but it is tough for anyone like me to go up against what is supposed to be “science” in the attention-deficit culture.

The Novus Ordo religion is no help because it is part of the problem! It is saturated in female hormones, and has nothing with which to go up against the anti-culture. I completely understand that to get through to the modern world, Heaven may need to resort to a miraculous world-wide Warning, such as we were told of at Garabandal in the 1960s. Such a warning fits the condition of my patients like a key fits a lock.” End of doctor’s quote.

Come, crash ! Come, Warning ! Come, Lord Jesus ! (Apoc. XXII, 20) Kyrie eleison.
Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Posted by Bishop Richard Williamson at 1:59 PM http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9063664365661360579&postID=2266456541690765599 http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9063664365661360579&postID=2266456541690765599
Labels: Financial Crisis, impending chastisement
Saturday, August 9, 2008

La-La-Landslide II
Eleison Comments LVIII

On November 17 of last year Eleison Comments said that the Great Warning prophesied at Garabandal might take place in February or March of this year. That did not happen. One reader asks me why.

The reason is simple. It was not yet the time fixed by Almighty God. When is that time? I do not know. However, I still believe that Garabandal is a sleeping volcano, and I believe it may easily erupt in 2009, because my main reason for taking seriously a few pointers to 2008 was the instability and precariousness of the world situation, which is more unstable and precarious than ever.

The capitalism launched in England by the founding in 1694 of the first Central Bank of a nation is collapsing around our ears. The hurting capitalists who just recently would blast any government that interfered with free enterprise, are now themselves begging the US government to bail out their banks. So capitalism, having made itself “too big to fail”, is now, sure enough, mutating into government control, which, being atheistic and materialistic, amounts to communism!

What will happen then in the next few years, only God knows. But it is easy to imagine inside the USA martial law becoming necessary to maintain a semblance of law and order, and outside the USA the Third World War, which is coming and will be terrible. It may well come soon, because for years now the vile media have been beating the drums of war for an attack on Iran, and as the people become more and more discontented with the collapse of money inside the United States, the temptation for the politicians to distract them with a war outside may become virtually irresistible.

There is much evidence that both collapse and war have long been planned by enemies of God to give them control of the entire world. The only light in which one can grasp the full problem and its correct solution, is the light of God and of our Catholic religion. God is not mocked. Read the Old Testament prophets, especially Jeremiah, and pray up to or over 15 Mysteries a day of the Holy Rosary. Kyrie eleison.

La Reja, Argentina
Posted by Bishop Richard Williamson at 12:53 PM http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9063664365661360579&postID=4215231036289986661 http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9063664365661360579&postID=4215231036289986661
Saturday, November 17, 2007

Fasten Seatbelts
Eleison Comments XX

Prepare to fasten your seat-belts for the year 2008! It is always risky to announce dates for dramatic events in the future, because if they do not then happen, the doom-dater has only discredited himself. However, there is a triple convergence for next year which constitutes at least an “orange alert.”

First and foremost, there is the pressure building towards a Third World War, which may well be the beginning of the long-deserved chastisement of a globe turning its back on God. On the side of the United States there is an insane pressure group beating the war-drums for an attack upon Iran, when more and more people now know that the disastrous attack upon Iraq was only made possible by fraud (9/11) and lies (WMD). On the side of Russia, President Putin has backed his good reasons for condemning any such attack with the threat to resist it.

But the West’s vile media silence the reasons and step up the war-drums. President Bush announces he wishes to “prevent Iran’s nuclear capacity” before he leaves office – end of 2008 – and in 2007 we see a still mounting economic and financial crisis within the USA which risks presenting him no later than 2008 with a virtually irresistible temptation to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels” (Henry IV, Pt II, Act IV, Scene 4 end).

Secondly, two years ago Fr. Paul Kramer quoted in the “Fatima Crusader” a German priest (living) who may be privileged with prophetic gifts from Heaven, and who foretells 2008 as the year for the outbreak of WWIII. (One may look for the whole interesting article at http://www.fatimacrusader.com.) Thirdly, a report comes to us from northern Spain where believably Our Lady appeared in Garabandal many times between 1962 and 1965, which gives March and April of 2008 as the months of the Great Warning and Great Miracle respectively. It may be only another false alert, but it would certainly fit in just before an outbreak of WWIII…

The prophecy from Germany and the report from Spain are worth no more than they are worth (nor less), but the realities from the USA and Russia are for real. It does no harm to take a little more seriously still St. Paul’s abiding exhortation to us to “pray without ceasing” (I Thess. V, 17). Kyrie Eleison.

Bishop Richard Williamson
La Reja, Argentina
Posted by Stephen Heiner at 5:43 PM WORLD ENSLAVEMENT OR PEACE
It's Up to the Pope
by
Father Nicholas Gruner
and other Fatima experts

INTRODUCTION
by Father Paul Leonard
Full Fatima Message is Obscured
The story of Fatima is known throughout the world and Our Lady of Fatima is venerated everywhere in the Catholic world, yet few have fully grasped the message that the Holy Virgin addressed to the world. By many, Our Lady's words are considered to be merely a call to conversion and penance and a message of hope - like so many other apparitions and messages, nothing more.
Our Lady's Message has long been misinterpreted in this manner because the Message has not only been little publicized, but where it has been propagated, various organizations and individuals have effectively suppressed the Virgin's Message by preaching and publishing only a portion of it.
In order to get an idea as to what extent this situation has gotten out of hand, one needs only to consider the presentation of "The Message" as it is summed up in the flyer published at the Sanctuary in Fatima:
"The Message of Fatima pleads with sinners to stop offending God, to seek pardon for their sins and to amend their lives, as did the prodigal son of the Gospel; it asks the just to pray much and to make sacrifices for sinners so that they may not suffer eternal damnation in hell. All are asked by Our Lady to recite Her Rosary every day, to have devotion to Her Immaculate Heart, and to receive Holy Communion in Reparation to Her Immaculate Heart on the first Saturday of the month. If people do not do these things, Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church. Many will be martyred, the Holy Father will suffer greatly, and several nations will be annihilated ... Our Blessed Mother's own words assure us of peace and happiness for the entire world, if people do what She requested of them, when She appeared at Fatima in 1917 ...
"Pope John Paul II came on pilgrimage to Fatima on May 12 and 13, 1982 to thank Our Lady for Her protection on the occasion of the attempt on his life on May 13, 1981 and to make the Consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary."
This brief explanation of the message is extremely deceptive - not for what it says, all of which is true, but for what it omits: the great prophecy of how God will bring about the conversion of Russia and restore peace to the world. The means by which this will be accomplished, according to the Holy Virgin, will be the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, performed by the Pope together with all the bishops of the world. Our Lady revealed this in the apparition of July 13, 1917 as part of the "Secret", the third part of which has never been published.
The Heart of the Fatima Message
The heart of the Fatima Message is contained in the "Secret", where Our Lady said: "You saw Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If people do what I ask, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end. But if people do not stop offending God, another even worse, will begin in the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, know that it is the great sign that God gives you that He is going to punish the world by means of war, hunger and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent it, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of reparation on the first Saturdays. If people attend to My requests, Russia will be converted and the world will have peace. If not, Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, fomenting wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated. In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me; it will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogmas of the faith will always be kept ... (at this point, the third part of the Secret begins, commonly called "the Third Secret".)
The first part of the Secret consists in the vision of Hell, therefore, Our Lady told the children, "You saw Hell where the souls of poor sinners go." In the next sentence, the Virgin states Her purpose in coming to Fatima: "In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart." Thus, God's purpose is to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in order to save souls and prevent their going to Hell.
Our Co-operation with Our Lady of Fatima's Message
is Necessary
Our Lady announced that human co-operation with God's plan is necessary, stating what the consequences would be if that co-operation is given: "If people do what I ask, many souls will be saved and there will be peace." Then She answered: "The war is going to end. But if people do not stop offending God, another, even worse, will begin in the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, know that it is the great sign that God gives you that He is going to punish the world by means of war, hunger and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father."
Our Lady stated unequivocally that if Her requests were carried out, then there would be peace and many souls would be saved. The war (World War I) would come to an end and would be followed by peace i.e. there would not be a World War II. However, if people would not stop offending God, the Mother of God warned that there would be another war even worse than World War I, and this war would begin in the reign of Pius XI. World War II actually did begin during the reign of Pius XI, and later in the reign of Pius XII, this conflict escalated into a world war.
World War II a Result of Ignoring Fatima
Actually, conflicts broke out between the Japanese Manchurian Army and Chinese forces on July 7, 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peiping (Beijing).
The Japanese used this incident as a pretext to overrun northern China, and then moved on to eastern and southern China. The war came to an end only when, after the dropping of the atomic bomb, the Japanese Manchurian Army (Kwantung Army) surrendered to Soviet forces, who were only at war for 5 days, in August 1945.
On the night of January 25, 1938, Sister Lucia saw the ominous red glow Our Lady had foretold would be the great sign that God was "going to punish the world by means of war, hunger and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father". Sister Lucia understood that the punishment of the world was about to begin, and several weeks later, in March (193 , Hitler invaded Austria and annexed it to Germany, and this act began the escalation of events which transformed the various aggressions of Germany, Italy and Japan into World War II.
The catastrophe of another world war and its consequent evils was not inevitable, it could have been avoided by a much simpler means than anything that was formulated or proposed by the Versailles Treaty or the League of Nations: Our Lady said, "If people do what I ask ... there will be peace." What did She ask? She made general requests addressed to all humanity, and a very particular request to the Pope and the bishops. Our Lady's general requests were:
1) "I have come to warn the faithful to amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins. They must not continue to offend Our Lord, Who is already deeply offended."
2) "Say the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world."
3) "Pray, pray a great deal, and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to Hell because they have no one to make sacrifices and pray for them." (Our Lord said to Sister Lucia: "The sacrifice that each one can make is to do his duty and obey My Law. That is the form of penance I now demand".)
4) In the final vision (October 13, 1917) Our Lady silently held out the Scapular - a gesture which indicates that She wants everyone to wear it.
5) Communion of Reparation on first Saturdays: On December 10, 1925, Our Lady said to Sister Lucia "I promise to assist at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for salvation all those who, on the first Saturdays of five consecutive months, confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary and keep Me company for 15 minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to Me."
In particular, in order to prevent the punishment of the world by means of war, hunger, persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father, Our Lady said: "I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the first Saturdays. Our Lady fulfilled Her word on June 13, 1929 at Tuy, Spain, when in great and sublime vision representing the Blessed Trinity, She said to Sister Lucia: "The moment has come for God to ask the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops of the world, the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart. He promises to save Russia by this means ..."
The Absolute Importance of the Obedience
of the Pope and Bishops in This Matter
At this point we are able to consider how terribly and transcendentally important it is that God's command be fulfilled by the collegial act in which the Pope, together with the bishops of the world, consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is precisely this consecration which Our Lady set forth as the means to prevent the punishment of the world by war, hunger, persecution of the Church and the Holy Father. ("To prevent it, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart ...")
Our Lady promised unconditionally, that if Her requests were fulfilled, then, "Russia will be converted and the world will have peace".
However, if that which Our Lady requests is not carried out, She warns that: "Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, fomenting 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."
The Holy Virgin specifies in unequivocally explicit terms that Russia will be the scourge through whose instrumentality the world will be punished. ("Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, fomenting wars and persecution of the Church.") However, it is not by means of U.N. resolutions or "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative by Pershing Missiles or the NATO Alliance that the world will be made safe from the godless oppression and slavery of Soviet Communist Imperialism: for the Virgin Mary says: "Only I can help you." Therefore, our only hope lies in the fulfillment of Our Lady of Fatima's requests.
At the time when God sent Our Lady to convey His Command that Russia be consecrated by the Pope and bishops, He was expecting swift obedience from them in this matter. However, the pastors of the Church did not comply with His will, and therefore Our Lord, Jesus Christ, appeared to Sister Lucia on August 19, 1931 at Rianxo, (Rianjo) Spain and complained (expressed His displeasure) to her saying: "Make it known to My ministers that it has been given to them that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My Command and that they will follow him into misfortune."
This is a very strong warning spoken by Christ Himself, for He, through Saint Margaret Mary, commanded the King of France to consecrate France to His Sacred Heart. The command was not carried out. Louis XVI, after being jailed, tried to obey the command of God but could not make the required public and solemn act, and in 1793, he went to the guillotine.
On January 21, 1935, Sister Lucia wrote, "About three years ago, Our Lord was very displeased because His request had not been attended to and I made this fact known to the bishop in a letter ... from an intimate conversation with Him, it seems that He is ready to show mercy towards Russia as He promised five years ago and which He wishes so much to save." In another letter dated May 18, 1936, Sister Lucia wrote, "if it will be convenient to insist in order to obtain the consecration of Russia ... I have spoken to Our Lord about the subject and not too long ago I asked Him why He would not convert Russia without the Holy Father making the consecration (He replied) 'Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that it may extend its cult later on and put the devotion to the Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Sacred Heart ... The Holy Father, he will do it but it will be late. Nevertheless, the Immaculate Heart of Mary will save Russia. It has been entrusted to Her.'"
These statements made by Our Lord reaffirm what Our Lady revealed at Fatima: "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me; it will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world." If all that Our Lady of Fatima requested is carried out swiftly, the dreadful chastisement which now approaches would be averted.
Fatima Prophecy is Uniquely Important
The content of the Fatima Message makes it clear that the apparitions of 1917 cannot be placed in the same class or category as the other apparitions - when one carefully ponders the content of Our Lady's Message, it becomes clear that what took place at Fatima is the culmination of more than 2,000 years of prophecy.
St. Methodius (+35 wrote: "A time will come when enemies of Christ will boast: 'We have subjected the earth and all its inhabitants, and the Christians cannot escape our hands.' Then a Roman Emperor will rise in great fury against them ... he will fall upon the foes of Christianity and crush them. Then peace and quiet will reign on earth and the priests will be relieved of all their anxieties." What is meant by "Roman Emperor" in another text is more clearly specified as a "Great Monarch". The Ven. Bartholomeus Holzhauser (+165 , in his commentary on the Apocalypse says: "When everything has been ruined by war; when Catholics are hard pressed by traitorous co-religionists and heretics, when the Church and her servants are denied their rights, the monarchies have been abolished and their rulers murdered ... then the Hand of Almighty God will work a marvelous change, something apparently impossible according to human understanding. There will be a valiant monarch anointed by God ... he will root out false doctrines and destroy the rule of Moslemism. His dominion will extend from the east to the west. All nations will adore God their Lord according to Catholic teaching ... peace will reign over the whole earth, for divine power will bind satan for many years until the coming of the Son of Perdition."
According to St. Caesar of Arles (469-543), "there shall be a great carnage ... the altars and temples shall be destroyed ... the pastors of the Church shall abandon their pulpits and the Church itself be despoiled of all temporalities." The "Great Monarch, a most virtuous man ... will assist the Pope in the reformation of the whole earth. Many princes and nations that are living in error and impiety shall be converted and an admirable peace shall reign among men during many years ... there will be one common law, only one faith, one baptism, one religion. All nations shall recognize the Holy See of Rome ... but after some considerable time fervor shall wane, iniquity shall abound, and moral corruption shall become worse than ever, which shall bring upon mankind the last and worse persecution of Anti-Christ, and the end of the world."
Father Lavinsky (+170 says: "The world will be harassed by civil wars and greater destruction than ever before. Germany will be partitioned and have many enemies. Religion will be greatly opposed and monks will be banished ... the Cross, to the astonishment of all, will shine in double splendor through many lands because of the great ruler."
Significant is the prophecy of Bishop George Michael Wittman (+1833): "Woe is me! Sad days are at hand for the Holy Church of Jesus Christ. The Passion of Jesus will be renewed in the most dolorous manner in the Church and in her Supreme Head. In all parts of the world there will be wars and revolutions, and much blood will be spread. Distress, disasters and poverty will everywhere be great, since pestilential maladies, scarcity, and other misfortunes will follow one another.
"Violent hands will be laid on the Supreme Head of the Catholic Church: bishops and priests will be persecuted, and schism will be provoked, and confusion reign amid all classes. Times will come so preeminently bad, that it will seem as if the enemies of Christ and His Holy Church, which He founded with His Blood, were about to triumph over her ... Secret societies will wreak great ruin, and exercise a marvelous monetary power, and through that many will be blinded, and infected with the most horrible errors: however, all this shall avail naught ... they cannot shake the rock whereon Christ has founded His Church: 'Portae inferi non praevalebunt'."
Saint Gaspare del Bufalo (+1857) foretells "the destruction of impenitent persecutors of the Church during the three days darkness. He who outlives the darkness and fear of the three days - it will seem to him as if he were alone on earth because of the fact that the world will be covered everywhere with carcasses."
Blessed Anna Maria Taigi (+1837) says: "God will ordain two punishments: One in the form of wars, revolutions and other evils, will originate on earth, the other will be sent from heaven. There shall come over all the earth an intense darkness lasting three days and three nights. Nothing will be visible and the air will be laden with pestilence, which will claim principally but not exclusively the enemies of religion ...
"On this terrible occasion ... these wicked men, enemies of the Church, and of their God, shall be killed by this divine scourge ... All the enemies of the Church, secret as well as known, will perish over the whole earth during the universal darkness, with the exception of some few, whom God will soon after convert."
Sister Rose Asdente of Taggia (1847): "A great revolution will spread over all Europe ... A lawless democratic spirit of disorder shall reign supreme throughout all Europe. There will be a general overthrow.
"There shall be great confusion of people against people, and nations against nations ... The Russians and Prussians (East Germans) shall come to make war on Italy ... Priests and religious shall be butchered and the earth, especially in Italy, shall be watered with their blood."
These prophecies (which are only a small portion of the well known prophetic texts) illustrate the futility of mere human expectations and illusions in respect to man's desire for peace and tranquility. Although the normal course of action when a murder is committed is to arrest and punish the killer, World War I started when instead of allowing the normal legal procedure to take place, Austria declared war on Serbia.
All of Europe was expecting a brief war, but the war did not swiftly complete its course as generally was the case in European wars. That long and horrible war was an unexpected catastrophe, and as Our Lady said, "war is a punishment for sin", that one was no exception: Our Lord told Père Lamy (+1931) that "the war had three causes: Blasphemy, Sunday labor, and the desecration of marriage" (contraception, etc.).
The "Great War" came to be called "The war to end all wars", but while men were looking forward to the end of the war and the beginning of peace, Our Lady was already giving the warning at Fatima: "The war is going to end. But if people do not stop offending God, another even worse will begin in the reign of Pius XI." Within 20 years, World War II was raging. Our Lady further warned that if Her requests do not meet with compliance, then "Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, fomenting 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."
Fatima Refers to End of 20th Century
The warnings that Our Lady made at Fatima indicate that the catastrophe foretold by saints and prophets in past centuries is about to take place. In 1945, only a short time after the end of World War II, Pope Pius XII stated in his Christmas message to the Cardinals: "The world is on the verge of a frightful abyss ... Men must prepare themselves for suffering such as mankind has never seen."
Sister Elena Aiello (+1961) who is of great renown for her prophecies was told by Our Lady: "My Heart is sad for so many sufferings in an impending world in ruin ... The wrath of God is near. Soon the world will be afflicted with great calamities, bloody revolutions, frightful hurricanes and the overflowing of streams and the seas ... the world will be overturned in a new and more terrible war. Arms most deadly will destroy peoples and nations. The dictators of the earth, specimens infernal, will demolish the churches and desecrate the Holy Eucharist, and will destroy things most dear. In this impious war, much will be destroyed of that which has been built by the hands of man.
"Clouds with lightning flashes of fire in the sky and a tempest of fire shall fall upon the world. This terrible scourge, never before seen in the history of humanity, will last seventy hours. Godless persons will be crushed and wiped out. Many will be lost because they remain in their obstinacy of sin. They shall be seen the power of light over the power of darkness. ... some nations will be purified while others will disappear entirely.
"Russia will march upon all the nations of Europe, particularly Italy, and will raise her flag over the dome of St. Peter's. Italy will be severely tried by a great revolution and Rome will be purified for its many sins, especially those of impurity ...
"Another terrible war will come from the east to the west. Russia with her secret armies (terrorists) will battle America; will overrun Europe. The river Rhine will be overflowing with corpses and blood. Italy, also, will be harassed by a great revolution, and the Pope will suffer terribly.
"Great earthquakes will swallow up entire cities and countries, and will bring epidemics, famine and terrible destruction - especially where the sons of darkness are (communists, Masons and similar sectaries)."
These same chastisements are part of the content of the secret that Our Lady revealed to the children at Fatima - these things will take place if Her requests are not obeyed. When John Paul II spoke on the "Third Secret" of Fatima in Fulda, he revealed a portion of it: "... the oceans will flood whole areas of the earth, and from one moment to the next millions of people will perish ..."
The Fatima Secret and the La Salette Secret
On November 11, 1984, Cardinal Ratzinger in an interview stated that he had read the Secret and that "The things contained in this 'Third Secret' correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian apparitions. Cardinal Ratzinger's statement is very revealing! In the apparition of the Blessed Virgin at La Salette (September 19, 1846), Our Lady said to Melanie (the little girl): "... God will strike in an unprecedented way. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth! God will exhaust His wrath upon them, and no one will be able to escape so many afflictions together ...
"The society of men is on the eve of the most terrible scourges and of the gravest events ... The Holy Father will suffer a great deal. I will be with him until the end and receive his sacrifice (Chris' comment-parallel to 3rd secret of bishop in white dying in hail gunfire). The mischievous would attempt his life several times ... but neither he nor his successor will see the triumph of the Church of God. All the civil governments will have one and the same plan, which will be to abolish and do away with every religious principle, to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritualism and vice of all kinds ... France, Italy, Spain and England will be at war. Blood will flow in the streets. Frenchmen will fight Frenchmen, Italian will fight Italian. A general war will follow which will be appalling."
In addition to these temporal chastisements, there will be a great spiritual chastisement: The published part of the Fatima secret concludes: "In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be kept ..." At this point of the message, Our Lady shifts from temporal to spiritual matters. Cardinal Ratzinger stated that the 'Third Secret' refers to "the dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore the world". Similarly, on September 10, 1984, Bishop Cosme do Amaral, the present Bishop of Leiria, Fatima, in a conference at the Technical University of Vienna, stated that the content of the Third Secret concerns our faith, "the loss of faith".
At La Salette, Our Lady foretold that, "the Church will witness a frightful crisis", a "time of darkness".
St. Hildegard (+1179) writing of this great time of tribulation said: "people will renounce the authority of the Pope. Individual countries will prefer their own church rulers to the Pope." (She says that this will take place when Germany will have been divided.) Likewise, the Ven. Holzhauser says that the hand of Almighty God will intervene, "when Catholics are hard pressed by traitorous co-religionists and heretics".
The message and warnings of Our Lady concurs entirely with the prophetic warnings of the saints down through the centuries, and, as Cardinal Ratzinger says, "corresponds to what has been announced in Scripture." The difference however is this: in the past centuries, the great chastisement of a future age was announced. At Fatima, Our Lady warns that now the hour has come and the threatened chastisements are already beginning to take place just as Our Lady foretold. World War II took place as Our Lady foretold, and since 1917, Russia has been fomenting wars and persecution of the Church in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. Their hired assassin has even shot the Pope. Meanwhile, in various parts of the world we see starvation in the midst of abundance.
Only Our Lady of Fatima Can Help Us
Every sort of means has been proposed to end or at least arrest these evils which threaten to engulf and devour the world: financial, political, ideological and military solutions. However, all of these efforts have proven to be futile. Our Lady said at Fatima: "Only I can help you." She has announced to us the only solution, the only means that will remedy the profound crisis that now besets the whole of civilization.
The great chastisement is already in its initial stages, and Our Lady said at Fatima: "To prevent it I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the first Saturdays." Now more than 50 years have passed since Our Lady came to announce (June 13, 1929) that "the moment has come for God to ask the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops of the world, the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart".
Why Russia Specifically
Why must Russia be consecrated - why specifically Russia? Why not the whole world but Russia in particular?
Because the communist leaders of Russia have declared a war to the death against God, against His Church, against His religion.
It is not for political, economic or social reasons why the communists wage their fiendish war against religion and attempt to exterminate the name of God from the collective memory of humanity. "The ultimate aim of Communism" says Richard Wurmbrandt, "... is not to establish another social or economic system. It is to mock God and praise satan."
Communism was not created by political theorists but by Masonic sectaries whose purpose was to exterminate the Christian religion by overthrowing the Christian Monarchies, abolishing international boundaries and erecting a Godless one world republic. It was the patriarchs of Masonry, according to certain sources, who commissioned Adam Weishaupt to found the Masonic sect called the "Order of Illuminati" in 1776 which according to their slogan: "No God, No Property, No Government", set about to accomplish this fiendish scheme. The order and its devilish plans were discovered by the Bavarian police in 1785. The Illuminati scattered and regrouped under the name of "The League of Just Men". Weishaupt "planned and organized the French Revolution. This he accomplished by absorbing into his order the Masonic Lodges of France." Weishaupt died in 1830 but his order lived on. In 1848 they commissioned the publication of the "Communist Manifesto" (twenty years later Marx's name was appended to the Manifesto). They changed their name to the "League of Communists" and Karl Marx became their theoretician.
Marx at the Service of Satan
The writings of Marx expose the true purpose of Communism: the extermination of religion and the abolition of all liberties under a one world dictatorship. In both of their writings it is not capitalism or the bourgeoisie which is the ultimate enemy, but God Himself.
In the "Invocation of One in Despair", Marx wrote: "I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above" and, "a God has snatched from me my all in the curse and rock of destiny ... Nothing but revenge is left to me ..."
In a poem called "The Prayer" Marx says:
"The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain
till I go mad
and my heart is utterly changed.
See this sword?
The Prince of Darkness
Sold it to me ..."
In the "Invocation", the words of Lucifer became the words of Marx. In Isaiah 19:13, Lucifer boasts: "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God." In the "Invocation", Marx says: "I shall build my throne high overhead. Cold, tremendous shall its summit be, for its bulwark - superstitious dread (satanism) for its marshal - blackest agony (cruel tyranny)." God answered to satan: "How art thou fallen from heaven O lucifer? ... thou shalt be brought down to hell into the depth of the pit." (Isaiah 19:12, 15.) Likewise, Marx: "... the abyss yawns in darkness. You will sink down and I will follow laughing. (Oulanem) Similarly: "Ruined, ruined, My time has clean run out ... Soon, I shall embrace eternity to my breast, and soon I shall howl gigantic curses on mankind. (Oulanem) Also: "Ha! Eternity! She is our eternal grief. An indescribable and immeasurable Death ... Ourselves being clockwork, blindly mechanical ... Having no purpose save to happen, to be ruined, so there shall be something to ruin. (Oulanem) Again, in The Pale Maiden:
"Thus heaven I've forfeited,
I know it full well,
My soul, once true to God,
Is chosen for hell."
In these poems, Marx states the true purpose of his life's work: "Soon I shall howl gigantic curses on mankind. If there is something which devours, I'll leap within it, though I bring the world to ruins, the world which bulks between me and the abyss, I will smash to pieces with my enduring curses. I'll throw my arms around its harsh reality: Embracing me, the world will dumbly pass away and then sink down to utter nothingness, perished ..."
"It is essential" says Richard Wurmbrandt, "to state emphatically, that Marx and his confreres, while anti-God, were not atheists (as they publicly pretended to be) ... they hated a God in whom they believed ... the ultimate aim of Communism in conquering new countries is not to establish another economic system: It is to mock God and praise satan." (Wurmbrandt, "Was Karl Marx a Satanist").
Marxist philosophy is a deliberate inversion of the truth, for Marx was fascinated with the inversion common to satanists. Thus the inversion of Emanuel is Oul/an/em which is the title of his satanic poem. "Inversions so permeated Marx's whole manner of thinking", Wurmbrandt explains, "that he used them everywhere." He answers Proudhon's book The Philosophy of Misery, with another book entitled The Misery of Philosophy. He also wrote "We have to use instead of the weapon of criticism, the criticism of weapons." (Marx, Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung MEGA, I.; (1) 614.) Consequently, while Marx's doctrine teaches that "man is the supreme being for man", (ibid) and "the suppression of religion as an illusory happiness of the people is presupposition of his true happiness", (ibid) in reality, Marx's stated purpose is the eternal ruin and destruction of the whole world.
According to the communist doctrine of Marx, the ultimate purpose of Socialist revolution is to emancipate man by suppressing religion: "The critique of heaven transforms itself into the critique of the earth ..., the critique of theology into the critique of politics" (ibid) thus, "the fight against religion is indirectly the fight against that world of which religion is the spiritual aroma" (ibid). What this means is that since God is an illusion then man must be the supreme being for man, Christian civilization must be overthrown and destroyed in order to abolish and exterminate religion from the face of the earth. In short, the Communist program is identical to the impious program of Masonry: that of destroying the thrones and the altars, merely disguised as a class struggle.
Leninist Russia at Service of Satan
Communism, therefore, is essentially and ultimately a war against religion - it is not a political ideology or a social system but hell's war against God. Marx states (to Robert Owen) that Communism begins with atheism - atheism is the first principle of Communism, and it is upon the principle of atheism that the Communist party of Russia established the Soviet Republic. The Christian State of Russia was desecrated when the Communists established it and replaced it with an atheist regime that Lenin founded on the principle that "any notion of a Lord God is an unspeakable abomination ... the most dangerous abomination, the most loathsome pestilence".
Lenin established Russia as the headquarters of the world revolution against religion. God, however, has elected that nation for a holy purpose, and He has therefore commanded that the Pope and the bishops consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in order that the nation be solemnly established in its holy vocation. God has decreed this, for in His name Our Lady said (June 13, 1929), "He promises to save Russia by this means."
Russia Must Be Consecrated
Russia must be consecrated to Mary. When Sister Lucia asked Jesus "why He would not convert Russia without the Holy Father making that consecration", Our Lord replied, "Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that it may extend its cult later on and put the devotion to the Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Sacred Heart." (letter of May 18, 1936.)
This consecration will be the only means by which God will save Russia and restore peace to the world. God has decreed that this consecration be performed: "The Holy Father", Our Divine Lord said to Sister Lucia, "he will do it, but it will be late. Nevertheless, the Immaculate Heart of Mary will save Russia. It has been entrusted to Her." (May 18, 1936.)
The conversion of Russia has been entrusted to Mary, because "God", in the prophetic words of Jacinta, "gives graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary ... the Lord has entrusted the peace of the world to Her." Our Blessed Lady promises: "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me; it will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world."
Peace will be given to the world. If the consecration is done now, the world will be saved. If it is postponed, that peace may come only after the enslavement of the world to godless communist tyranny - after the annihilation of entire nations, and after the damnation of an immense number of souls takes place.
Let us pray and do penance and implore the pastors of the Church to fulfill God's command regarding the consecration, lest we ourselves experience the fulfillment of the dreadful prophecy made centuries ago: "When pictures look alive, with movements free (television, movies), when ships like fishes swim beneath the sea (submarines), when men, outstripping birds can soar the sky (airplanes), then half the world deep drenched in blood shall die."

 
Antichrist
by
Yves Dupont
(September 1975 A.D.)
 
Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist
(Close-up of the devil instructing the Antichrist)
Luca Signorelli, 1499-1502

"As in Christ dwells the fullness of the Godhead so in Antichrist the fullness of all wickedness. Not indeed in the sense that his humanity
is to be assumed by the devil into unity of person ..., but that the devil by suggestion infuses his wickedness more copiously into him than
into all others." -St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa III:8:
"Yet many Christians will remember that this was all foretold of Antichrist for centuries past and perceive the fraud of Satan and refuse to be deceived. They will stand firm and enlighten the faint-hearted and console them." -Bernadine Von Busto

THE TIME OF ANTICHRIST? - AS PREDICTED BY CATHOLIC PROPHECY
(TCW PRESENTS SCHOLARLY WORK BY YVES DUPONT)
In Today's Catholic World (TCW)
November 26, 2006 A.D.

(Minneapolis) -Nov 26- Provided for the readers of TCW is an article on the coming of Antichrist by the well respected expert and author, on Catholic prophecy, Mr. Yves Dupont. His article entitled, Antichrist, was written in September of 1975 A.D., and was penned as a response to an individual who incorrectly identified Communism as The Antichrist - fully negating the actual Theological Fact that Antichrist is a specific person. Yves Dupont, who was a staunch anti-communist, and a learned historian- gives a proper Catholic understanding of what to expect when the terrible "man of sin" (as St. Paul aptly named him in Holy Writ) publically appears.
Note: a portion of the Introduction section was deleted from his article. Presented here is the entire body (main content) of Mr. Dupont's scholarly article on Antichrist, drawn from his many years of studying authentic Catholic Prophecies and his thorough understanding of the immutable Theological teachings of the Church on the matter.

INTRODUCTION:
It is quite clear, from all these prophecies (Mr. Dupont mentions his well-known book titled: Catholic Prophecy), that Antichrist will come after the Age of Peace. The Age of Peace, which will also be the Age of Mary, will coincide with the reign of the Great Monarch which is to follow immediately after the collapse of Communism. .... quite apart from the hundred or so prophecies which I have just mentioned, we have the comments of the Fathers of the Church to guide us. Patristic writings are among the most authoritative in the Catholic Church.... Antichrist will believe in God. But, like Lucifer, he will rebel against God and, worse still, he will proclaim himself to be God; His spirituality will be that of the devil... he will be a Jew leading the Jewish nation. Israel may still be a negligible power on the world scene today, but by the end of the reign of the Great Monarch, it will be very powerful indeed.
Israel, then, will accept Antichrist as the Messiah and will rule over the whole world (or nearly) for a short time. Thus will be fulfilled the Talmudic dream of world domination and One- Worldism.
To sum up:
Communism will overcome the world for a short time.
God will work a tremendous cosmic miracle to destroy Communism,
The reign of the Great Monarch will follow. It will be the Age of Mary, a period of peace, prosperity, massive conversions, and a wonderful flowering of religious vocations.
Antichrist will come shortly after the death of the Great Monarch, Under his rule, the Jewish nation will overcome the world for a few months, and the Communist persecutions of our time will pale into insignificance in comparison with what Israel will inflict on the world.
Christ Himself will smite down Antichrist, but will not come visibly.
The Jews will be converted and, after a short period, probably a few years, Christ will come down again and judge the nations.
INDEX:
(The numbers refer to paragraphs, not pages)
Antichrist will be a man, not just a system or regime. (7, 50)
He will be a Jew. (1, 3)
He will come from the Tribe of Dan. (29, 39, 25, 26, 50, 55, 57)
He will be born in the Middle East. (2, 3, 24, 55, 59)
His mother will be a harlot possessed by the devil. (3, 37, 50, 57, 59)
He will be conceived by a man, not by the devil. (51)
He will be possessed by the devil like his mother. (23, 31, 33, 37, 51, 52, 55, 60)
He will be familiar with all the magical arts. (60)
He will be a wonder child, endowed with great intelligence and memory. (60)
He will be assisted by the devil throughout his life. (3)
He will be utterly wicked. (31)
He will claim to be the true Son of God the Messiah. (3, 7, 8, 12, 22, 28, 33, 50, 52, 54, 55, 59, 60)
The Jews will accept him as such. (7, 27, 50, 55, 59)
He will be made King of the Jewish Nation. (7)
He will re-build Jerusalem and make it a magnificent city. (12)
Jerusalem will be the capital of the world. (12, 29, 3
He will not be an atheist; he will believe in God. (50)
He will re-build the Temple of Jerusalem. (1, 3, 12, 3
He will sit in the Temple to be adored as God. (2, 3, 4, 8, 22, 27, 30, 33, 52)
He will conquer the whole world. (3, 8, 12, 29, 50)
Those who accept him will bear his mark, or sign. (3, 8, 31, 32, 50, 55)
One-third of the conquered peoples will refuse to obey him. (8, 31)
He will persecute and he will torture them with every refinement of cruelty, and he will make sure that they do not die so that the tortures may be prolonged. (28, 31, 53)
But God will not forsake the Faithful. (8, 9, 32)
Ireland will be spared the persecution of Antichrist. (40, 41, 42, 43)
He will rule the world for three and a half years. (3, 31, 32, 34)
He will work great wonders and deceive many. (2, 3, 8, 28, 38, 50, 51, 53, 55, 57)
He will be opposed by Henoch and Elias. (34, 35, 50, 51, 53, 55, 5
He will put to death Henoch and Elias. (3, 53, 58, 60)
Henoch and Elias will come to life again on the third day, and ascend into Heaven. (53, 58, 60)
He will say that they are sorcerers and that he can bring them back to earth. (58, 59, 60)
He will rise in the air by his magical powers, but will be almost immediately struck down by Saint Michael, and killed. (39, 50, 52, 55, 58, 59, 60)
The Jews will finally accept Christ as the Messiah. (34, 60)
Some time will be given to the human race to do Penance before the Last Judgment. (50, 51, 55)
ANTICHRIST
by
Yves Dupont
(September 1975 A.D.)

Antichrist will be a human being, a particular man, not a system, a regime or an ideology. We know this for certain from Scripture, from Patristic writings and also from private revelations, although the latter, alone, would not constitute a definite proof.
"Christ arose from among the Hebrews, and he (Antichrist) will spring from among the Jews. Christ showed His flesh as a Temple, and raised it up on the third day; and he, too, will raise up again the Temple of stone in Jerusalem." (St. Hippolytus)
"Antichrist, the son of perdition will be born in Corozain, will be brought up in Bethsaida and shall begin to reign in Capharnaum, according to what Our Lord Jesus said in the Gospel: "Woe to thee Corozain ... woe to thee Bethsaida ... and thou Capharnaum that art exalted up to heaven, thou shalt be thrust down to hell. (Luke, 10:13) Antichrist shall work a thousand prodigies on earth. He will make the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead rise, so that even the Elect, if possible, shall be deceived by his magical arts. Puffed up with pride, Antichrist shall enter in triumph the city of Jerusalem and will sit on a throne in the Temple to be adored as if he were the Son of God. His heart being intoxicated with arrogance, he will forget his being a mere man, and the son of a woman of the tribe of Dan." (St. Zenobius)
"Antichrist will be born of Jewish parents, of the tribe of Dan, but his mother will not be a virgin, as many believe. As the Holy Ghost came into the heart of Mary, so will the devil enter into the mother of Antichrist, and his diabolical power will always support him. Babylon will be his birthplace, but he will be reared and instructed in Bethsaida and Corozain. After his education at the hands of malignant spirits he will go to Jerusalem and place his seat in the Temple which he will have restored. He will submit to the rite of circumcision, claiming that he is the Son of the Omnipotent God. His first converts will be kings and princes. His influence will extend from sea to sea, largely through force and persuasive eloquence. He will perform many signs and great miracles. Those who believe in him will be marked on the forehead with a sign. For three and a half years he will hold sway and, at the end of that period, he will put to death Henoch and Elias, who will have previously opposed him by preaching the true faith. Shortly afterwards, Christ will appear, and Antichrist will be killed by Michael the Archangel." (Adso the Monk, 10th Century)
"And we beseech you, Brethren, by the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of our gathering together unto Him: that you may not be easily moved from your sense, nor be terrified, neither by spirit, nor by, word, nor by epistle as sent from us as if the day of the Lord were at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means, for unless there come a revolt first and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and is lifted above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the Temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God." (2 Thess., 2:1-4)
These few passages suffice to show that Antichrist will be indeed a man. They show also by way of implication that he will not be an atheist for his claim of being God and the Son of God is in itself an acknowledgment that God is not a mythical being as the Communists assert. Further, he will gather together the Jewish people - hardly what the Communists are endeavouring to achieve. That anyone should say, write, and write again in spite of all remonstrances, that Communism is Antichrist leaves one baffled.
I now propose to present further evidence to show the absurdity of such a contention. In each case I invite the Reader to pause and ask himself if these passages fit Communism.
"In every respect that Deceiver seeks to make himself appear like the Son of God. Christ is king of things celestial and terrestrial, and Antichrist will be king upon earth. The Saviour sent the Apostles unto all the nations, and he, in like manner will send false apostles. Christ gathered together the dispersed sheep, and he in like manner will gather together the dispersed people of the Hebrews. Christ appeared in the form of man, and he in like manner will come forth in the form of man." (Hippolytus)
"This impious man ... will give orders that he himself shall be worshipped as God. For he will say he is Christ, though he will be His enemy. That he may be believed he will receive the power of doing wonders, so that fire may descend from heaven, the sun retire from its course and the image which he shall have set up may speak. And by such prodigies he shall entice many to worship him, and to receive his sign on their hands or foreheads. And he who shall not worship him and receive his sign will die with refined tortures. Thus he will destroy nearly two parts, the third will flee into desolate solitudes. But he, frantic and raging with implacable anger, will lead an army and besiege the mountains to which the righteous shall have fled. And when they shall see themselves besieged, they will implore the help of God with a loud voices and God shall hear them, and shall send to them a Deliverer ..." (Lactantius)
"But many who are hearers of Holy Scripture and have it in their hands, and keep it in mind with understanding, will escape his imposture. For they will see clearly through his insidious appearance and his deceitful imposture, and will flee from his hands and betake themselves to the mountains, and hide in the caves of the earth; and they will seek after the Friend of man with tears and a contrite heart: and He will deliver them out of his toils, and with His right hand He will save those from his snares who make their supplication to Him in a worthy and righteous manner." (St. Hippolytus)
"Antichrist will teach that Christ was an impostor, and not the real Son of God." (St. Hilary)
"Nero will again reappear on earth as a messenger and forerunner of the Evil One who is coming for the devastation of the earth and the overturning of the human race." (Lactantius)
"One day we asked St. Martin of Tours about the End of the World, and he said that Nero and the Antichrist would come first. Nero would subdue ten kings and rule in the countries of the West. A persecution he was to impose would go so far as to require the worship of heathen idols. Antichrist would first seize the empires of the East; he would have Jerusalem as his seat and imperial Capital. Both the city and its temple were to be rebuilt by him. His persecution would require the denial of Christ's divinity (he himself pretending to be Christ) and would by law impose circumcision on all. Finally, Nero himself was to perish at the hands of Antichrist. In this way, the whole world and its peoples would be brought under his yoke, until, at Christ's coming, the impious imposter would be overcome." (Sulpicius Severus)
(Note 1). The reappearance of Nero does not mean the resurrection of the actual Nero, but the rise of a man as wicked as he or, perhaps, a man having the same name.
(Note 2). Antichrist's rule is to last until the Second Coming of Christ. This cannot be Communism, but Communism, to be sure, is in itself an attempt by the devil to destroy the Kingdom of God. It may be useful to recall here the various "plans" (and their partial failure) used by the devil to destroy Christianity, which, every time, led him to try a new "plan".
Thus we first had the Reformation in the 16th Century at the close of the 1000 years of peace within the Church. In a world of believers such as it was then, the preaching of an atheistic philosophy was unthinkable. The purpose of the devil was to weaken and, possibly destroy the Catholic Church by substituting a watered-down form of Christianity. He failed, for the Catholic Church is still alive; but he did succeed in sowing seeds of discord and division, and in promoting the philosophy of Liberalism that came with Protestantism and gradually passed from the religious field into the economic and political areas.
Liberalism was condemned by the Church; liberal Catholics were warned and condemned by Gre