(What follows is an edited version of the lecture notes Michael Matt used for his talk at the Fatima Center’s “Consecration Now!”

Conference in Rome (May 2011).  It is not a transcript. The address can be viewed in its entirety at www.consecrationnow.com)  

Your Excellencies, Reverend Fathers, Brothers and Sisters in Christ:It is indeed an honor for me to be here  in Rome, the Eternal City, among so many renowned Fatima experts, priests and laymen, who’ve dedicated their lives not only to spreading the Fatima message but also to promoting the cult of Our Lady as the answer to what Pope Paul VI termed the “auto-demolition of the Catholic Church.”

I stand before you not as a Fatima expert so much as a Catholic publisher from America who spends his days combing newspapers, websites and magazines for some glimmer of hope that the silent apostasy lamented so bitterly by Pope John Paul II is giving way to a new springtime in the Church and a period of peace in our time.

Alas, I search in vain, as I can find no evidence of the advent of that springtime but rather only that of the rise of a ruthless regime of relativism that paves the way for a New World Order—one founded not on the Rights of God but on the Rights of Man, and based entirely on a rebellion against God, His Law, His Commandments, even His gift of life itself.

This rebellion is nothing new.  As far back as 1903 St. Pope Pius X—the greatest pope of the Twentieth Century—was already warning against it:
 

When all is considered, there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity (rebellion against God) may be a foretaste and perhaps the beginning of those evils which are reserved for the last days, and that there may already be in the world the ‘Son of Perdition’ of whom the Apostle speaks (II Thes. ii, 4).   Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the faith, in resolute efforts to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity.   While, on the other hand, and this according to the same Apostle is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God,’ raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has nevertheless condemned God’s majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored.  ‘He sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God.’ (E Supreme Apostolatus, Pius X, 1903)

It would be impossible to measure the extent to which the faithful Christian today is confronted by the diabolical designs of such men, those Christophobic purveyors of evil which Pope Benedict XVI  describes as “the wolves”— wolves that encircle the flock of the Lord and are growing more audacious every day.

In schools...

The wolves devour the virtue, purity and goodness of little children, as they drag the innocents through their hellish muck of a Godless indoctrination so pernicious that within just a few years the child becomes a stranger to his parents, his Church, even himself. It’s become commonplace for our children to soon thereafter become suicidal, faithless, drug addicted, and wanting in every way that matters.

In the family...

Where the wolves feed on the very nucleus of society, redefining marriage, reversing gender roles, encouraging divorce and infidelity, raising sodomy—one of the four great sins that cry to heaven for vengeance—to the level of a secular  sacrament on a par with holy matrimonial union and contract.

In the halls of government...

Where the wolves deny the Rights of God, silence His voice, establish laws “legalizing” the slaughter of millions of His little ones, while criminalizing as “haters” those few who dare object to the State’s all-out war against God and Natural Law.

In pop culture...

Where with bloodied fangs the wolves are tearing the little ones to pieces, and dragging their mauled souls into an endless living hell.

In the airport on my way to Rome yesterday, for example, I heard a new song by the pop star Rihanna—idol to tens of millions of ten-year-olds the world over.  Her song is called “S&M” and it repeats the following lyric over and over again: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me.”

Just one more sordid scrap of evidence pointing to a cultural collapse without precedent in human history.  The wolves market their  depravity to children--babies, really!--and yet remain protected under our laws of freedom of expression and speech to carry on without reproach or reprisal.

One can only tremble at the thought of the eternal ramifications of all this—especially when recalling Our Lady of Fatima’s words:  “More souls go to hell for sins of the flesh than for any other reason.” 

Confronted with this global war against morality and sanity, we look to our churches for sanctuary but find that the wolves have already been. After the nuclear winter of Vatican II,  the ravenous ones left our sanctuaries bulldozed, our pastors jailed, and our traditions cast out in the cold.

The universal scandal discourages resolve, weakens faith and severely tests perseverance. Everywhere there is apostasy and despair, as faith, like charity, grows cold.

And so this week, summoned by the voice of a lone priest crying in the wilderness, we have made our way here to Rome, through a gauntlet teeming with those same wolves, to join Father Nicholas Gruner at the feet of the Holy Father, asking on bended knee that the requests of the Queen of Peace be fulfilled and thereby the process of true peace be initiated at last. Our cities are dying, our children are lost, our old people are displaced, our priests are disappearing, our nuns are all but gone, our churches and schools are closed down, our faith hangs by a thread—What, Holy Father, are we waiting for?

At Cana our Lord Himself taught us how to respond to the wishes of His mother. His first miracle, let us not forget, was done at her behest. With confidence that it would be done because she wanted it done, she told the stewards, simply: Do whatever He tells you. Even Our Lord Himself bows to her will. And yet we refuse to follow His example, even in the face of world war and the loss of faith in entire generations, entire countries.  Why?

 “The time for doubting Fatima is past”, Pius XII said over 60 years ago: “It is now the time for action.”

Our Lady’s peace plan is our last hope.  If anyone in this room can think of another plan to stop the advance of this New Order and to keep man from blowing up the rest of the world, please, stand up.  There is nothing else.  Everything has been tried, and everything has failed.

And yet the excuses for ignoring Our Lady’s request abound, especially from the intellectual elite who solemnly assure us that “Fatima is mere private revelation”. Never mind that it was approved for the universal Church as a message of divine origin by six successive popes.  It’s still private, and we can thus ignore it in good conscience.

Pere Joseph de Sainte-Marie pointed to the folly of this attitude when he wrote: “It is for the Pope to discern whether the words of the prophet are of God.  But once he has judged and recognized that a given prophecy is indeed from God, then he must obey, not as obeying the prophet but as obeying God whose instrument the prophet is….that is why it is the duty of the Pope and the Bishop to obey Our Lady and to fulfill the demands she made at Fatima.”

As far as the popes and Fatima are concerned, let us consider the facts:

Pope Pius XI

His pontificate was drawing to a close  as the full details of the Fatima/Tuy phenomenon were emerging.  He was nevertheless informed in 1937 of Our Lady’s request that he lead the collegial consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  For whatever reason, he didn’t do it, and quickly thereafter the corpses of millions of victims of communist and socialist regimes were strewn across Europe. No Pope would ignore Fatima again.

Pius XII

In 1946, the Holy Father crowned a statue of Our Lady of Fatima and proclaimed her Mother of the World. In 1954, he issued his encyclical Ad Coeli Reginam, in which he commanded that an Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary be made annually in every parish of the world on the Feast of the Queenship of Mary—a request that went largely ignored, just as Summorum Pontificum is being largely ignored in our own day.

John XXIII

“Good Pope John,” who among the modern popes may have been the least enthusiastic about the Fatima message, nevertheless instituted the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary and hailed the Fatima apparitions as the “Center of all Christian Hope.”

Paul VI

In the presence of all the Council Fathers at Vatican II, Pope Paul VI solemnly renewed Pius XII’s consecration of the World to Mary’s Immaculate heart. And in 1967, journeyed as a “humble pilgrim” to Fatima to commemorate the golden jubilee of the apparitions.

John Paul I

John Paul I reigned only 33 days but did, as Cardinal Luciani, interview Sr. Lucia and ask whether Our lady would be pleased if a Pilgrim Virgin statue were to be carried through Italy—a journey which had already begun shortly before the pontiff’s untimely death.

John Paul II

And then there is Blessed Pope John Paul who did more to raise the profile of the apparitions at Fatima than perhaps any other pope. On May 13, 1982, after acknowledging Our Lady’s role in saving his life from an assassin’s bullet, Pope John Paul noted the following in a sermon here in Rome: “The Message of Fatima contains a truth and a call whose basic content is the truth and the call of the Gospel itself. The appeal of the Lady of the Message of Fatima is so deeply rooted in the Gospel and the whole of tradition that the Church feels that the message imposes a commitment on her. The evangelical call to repentance and conversion, uttered in the Mother’s message, remains ever relevant. It is still more relevant than it was 65 years ago.  It is still more urgent.”

Pope Benedict XVI 

Just last year, the current Holy Father visited Fatima again and spoke of how its prophesy is to be fulfilled at some point still in the future—thus opening the Fatima controversy wide once again, much to the consternation of the opponents of Fatima here in Rome. Like his predecessors, Pope Benedict made a papal pilgrimage to Fatima where he knelt and prayed before the  statue of Our Lady of Fatima at the place where she’d first appeared back in 1917. Benedict’s visit in May of 2010 marked the fifth papal visit to Fatima, the previous visit having occurred nine years earlier when Pope John Paul visited Fatima for the purpose of beatifying two of the seers—Blessed Jacinta and Francisco Marto. 

Quite Obviously, Pere Joseph de Sainte-Marie’s conditions have been met: “Every one of the modern Popes have discerned, judged and recognized that the Fatima message and prophesy are indeed from God, thus establishing the obligation to obey Our Lady and to fulfill the demands she made at Fatima.”

Mere private revelation?  I think we can move past that particularly lame excuse for ignoring the demands of Our Lady of Fatima.

So why, then, after so much papal acknowledgment of the divine hand and absolute authenticity of the message of Our Lady of Fatima, do we still await the fulfillment of the Mother of God’s request to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart?  Nearly a century has past, and one can only imagine how Our Lady must weep for us! She is, after all, the one whose intercession was acknowledged by saints and popes alike as having rescued Europe from Islamic scourge twice before; the woman “clothed in the sun” whose intercession is credited with having stopped Communism at the gates of Brazil; the mother whose intercession is credited with having saved the life of the Holy Father himself; the great intercessor who is said to be holding back the avenging arm of her Son in the face of universal apostasy.  Why do they make her wait when it is she who holds in her hands the power to save the world?

The Real Reason

Why Russia? In May of 1936, Sister Lucia asked our Lord Himself the same question—why is Russia the sole object of the requested consecration and why must it be made by the Pope, united with all the bishops of the world, on the same day, each in his own cathedral in solemn ceremony?

In His answer, Our Lord gives us the key to our own deliverance: “Because I wish all of My Church to recognize this consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in order thereafter to extend and place alongside devotion to My Divine Heart, devotion to this Immaculate Heart”

So, from this we can conclude that it’s  not Russia per se anymore, the Cold War having ended, even if Communism in China and elsewhere is still alive and well. As with the consecration of France to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by the King of France a few centuries earlier, it is the act of obedience that is wanting—an act of obedience that will signal a faith restored in the people of God; an act of obedience that will be possible only if and when men finally come to realize that their deliverance can come from God, and God alone.  It is not for us to reason why, for that is God’s business.  Why Russia?  Ask Him!  The point is, Our Lady said Russia, and it’s up to us to do whatever she tells us.  

But for progressives in the Church today this moment, this realization, has not yet come.  Fatima, with all of its emphasis on obedience to God and His Mother no longer  resonates with them. Besides, Fatima is all about humility, prayer, penance and getting down on our knees like little children, begging for help since we can no longer help ourselves—all of which smacks of tradition and the “pious  sentiments” of yesterday they’re still busy trying to eradicate from our schools, sanctuaries, and living memory itself.

Furthermore, a consecration of Russia to the Immaculate may upset their dialogue partners, and could even reverse  “progress” down the path to a world peace based on diversity and ecumenism. Never mind that this progress is wholly illusory thus far, and that the ecumenical outreach of which they’re so proud hasn’t bought one moment of peace to the world, but has served to confuse the faithful and compromise the moral authority of the Church.

Besides, a consecration of Russia, we are told, would threaten diplomatic relations with the Orthodox. Really? How so! Orthodox Russians have a thousand-year history of devotion to the Mother of God. Why would they be offended by a consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary?  And as for secularist Russia—would her political leaders not regard such a consecration by the Bishop of Rome as little more than a quaint throwback to a bygone era? 

No, something more sinister must be at work.

Enter Cardinal Oddi

So what is it, then? What is the impediment that not only prevents our shepherds from complying with Our Lady’s requests but also drives them to such preposterous lengths trying to justify their failure to obey?

Cardinal Oddi of happy memory offered a hypothesis that is not only plausible but quite probable.  His contention was that it’s the dismal failure of Vatican II itself that Our Lady was targeting at Fatima.

In April of 1990, Lucio Brunelli of Thirty Days magazine asked Silvio Cardinal Oddi if the Third Secret had something to do with the developments in the USSR at the time—that perhaps the Virgin Mary had prophesied and mysteriously guided Mikhail Gorbachev’s plan of perestroika: Are you also of this opinion?, Brunelli asked:

CARDINAL SILVIO ODDI: No, on the contrary, I remain very skeptical. I believe I knew John XXIII quite well, since I spent a number of years at his side when he was at the nunciature in Paris. If the Secret had concerned realities consoling for the Church like the conversion of Russia or the religious rebirth of eastern Europe, I believe that he would have brought pressure to bear to make the Secret public.

But when I asked him during an audience why in 1960, when the obligation to keep the Secret secret had come to an end, he had not made public the last part of the message of Fatima, he responded with a weary sigh. He then said: “Don’t bring that subject up with me, please ...” ...What happened in 1960 that might have been seen in connection with the Secret of Fatima? The most important event is without a doubt the launching of the preparatory phase of the Second Vatican Council. Therefore I would not be surprised if the Secret had something to do with the convocation of Vatican II...

Why do you say that?

CARDINAL ODDI: From the attitude Pope John showed during our conversation, I deduced – but it is only a hypothesis – that the Secret might contain a part that could have a rather unpleasant ring to it. John XXIII had convened the Council with the precise intention of directing the forces of the Church toward the solution of the problems that concern all of humanity, beginning from within.  But we all know that, despite the great merits of the Council, many sad things have also taken place in conjunction with the Council. I am thinking, for example, of the number of priests who have abandoned the priesthood: it is said that there have been 80,000. But one only has to recall the anguish with which the Holy Father, Paul VI, in 1968 cried out against the “autodemolition” taking place in the Church ... Or his dramatic homily on June 29, 1972: “We believed that after the Council would come a day of sunshine in the history of the Church. But instead there has come a day of clouds and storms, and of darkness ... And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil.” And again: “It is as if from some mysterious crack, no, it is not mysterious, from some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.”

And what is your assessment of all this?

CARDINAL ODDI: This: that I would not be surprised if the Third Secret alluded to dark times for the Church: grave confusions and troubling apostasies within Catholicism itself ... If we consider the grave crisis we have lived through since the Council, the signs that this prophecy has been fulfilled do not seem to be lacking ...”

Now, we’re getting to the heart of the problem.

Prophetess of Doom

The subtitle to my talk today is:  “Why does Rome fiddle while the world burns?” Even as Nero’s famous fire in this very city was rumored to have been of his own setting, could it be that Cardinal Oddi is hinting that the reason Fatima is problematic for the modernist contingent in the Church today is that it speaks of arson— of an apostasy, as Cardinal Oddi put it—a fire  set by their own hand?  A fire that razed the old ramparts of Christendom. A fire whose smoke entered the sanctuary of the Catholic Church. A fire which represents the errors of Russia’s advancement by having attached themselves like smoldering barnacles  to the barque of Peter itself, just above the waterline. 

Remember those famous “prophets of doom” targeted so specifically by Pope John XXIII at the opening of the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962? “We feel that we must disagree with these prophets of doom, who are always forecasting worse disasters, as though the end of the world were at hand.”

“If people attend to my requests,” Our Lady of Fatima said, “Russia will be converted and the world will have peace. If not, Russia will spread its errors throughout the world fomenting wars and persecution of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated.”

Is Our Lady herself one of Pope John’s “prophets of doom”?  The Lady who showed the children of Fatima a vision of Hell (which far from empty, was very much filled with the souls of the damned), gave the world a message that flies directly in the place of the aggiornamento of the New Springtime crowd at Vatican II.  Is that the problem? 

Now let’s be clear:  Vatican II is an authentic council of the Catholic Church. It taught no heresy. It was convened by men who had, it must be presumed, only the Church’s best interests at heart.  But as Father Wiltgen pointed out nearly a half-century ago in his book The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber—and as history itself now corroborates—the Council was infiltrated by modernists who used it to their own advantage, spawning the so-called “spirit of Vatican II”, which enjoys no protection whatsoever from the Holy Ghost and which has succeeded in undermining the entire Church in the modern world.

Our Lady of Fatima speaks of repentance and conversion—two ideas not at all popular in the modern Church today. Repentance? For what!  Sin and hell don’t exist anymore, remember? Few priests and even fewer bishops talk about the four last things.  Hell may not even exist, but if it does there’s certainly no one in it.  That’s what they’re telling us these days.

And conversion? To what! The Catholic Faith? What does such a pre-conciliar notion do to the confidence of our dialogue partners?  Even the Jesuits—the great missionaries of the Church—no longer believe in conversion!

We shudder at the extent to which the  famous “black robes” who carried the Light of Christ even to the darkest corners of the earth, have now abandoned Our Lord’s mandate to go out and baptize all nations.  In the April 12, 2011 edition of LMU (the magazine for Loyola Marymount University), Fr. Thomas Rausch, S.J., wrote an article entitled “The Interreligious Imperative” in which we read  the following:

In the years after the council, local churches, episcopal conferences and religious orders sought to reinterpret their own lives and missions in light of Council documents. In 1974, representatives of worldwide Jesuit provinces assembled in Rome for the Thirty-Second General Congregation under the leadership of Father General Pedro Arrupe for that purpose. That General Congregation translated their understanding of the Jesuit mission into language more reflective of the society’s post-Conciliar self-understanding. In its Decree 4, the fathers wrote: “The mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement. For reconciliation with God demands the reconciliation of people with one another” (no. 2). The emphasis on faith and justice is now familiar to those associated with Jesuit institutions and ministries throughout the world.

Twenty-one years later, another General Congregation gathered in Rome, this time under Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, to revise the Society of Jesus’ law in light of its revised mission. Among its decrees, including “Our Mission and Justice,” “Our Mission and Culture,” and “Cooperation with the Laity in Mission,” was one on “Our Mission and Interreligious Dialogue” (Decree 5). The latter noted that the society’s “service of faith” was now taking place in a world that was religiously pluralistic, and it encouraged Jesuits to recognize that “these religions are graced with an authentic experience of the self-communication of the divine Word and of the saving presence of the divine Spirit” (no. 6). Encouraging dialogue with other religions, it said, “To be religious today is to be interreligious in the sense that a positive relationship with believers of other faiths is a requirement in a world of religious pluralism” (no. 3).

This is the “errors of Russia” in a nutshell. Communist regimes spent much of the Twentieth Century attempting to eradicate the Catholic Church by force.  Today even the Jesuits are doing very much the same thing, only theirs is on a voluntary basis.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Congregation for Preserving Christian Unity for so many years—practically led a crusade against the 400,000 Anglicans who we’re trying desperately to get aboard the Barque of Peter back in 2007, after their leaky Anglican lifeboat had sunk to the bottom of the sea.

In 2007, the Catholic Herald interviewed Cardinal Walter Kasper: “It is not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome,” said Kasper, “we are on good terms with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and as much as we can we are helping him to keep the Anglican community together.”

Our Lady calls the world to conversion. Cardinal Kasper calls the world to stay put: “Today we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of a return, by which the others would ‘be converted’ and return to being ‘catholics.’ This was expressly abandoned by Vatican II.”

Vatican II, it would seem, is embroiled in a face-off with Our Lady of Fatima.

Clearly, the Church has been infiltrated by modernists who are every bit as ruthless when it comes to true Catholicism as were the Bolshevists, Leninists and Stalinists. They no longer seem to believe that the Church founded by Christ is the only true Church, outside of which there is no salvation—let alone that the rosary, penance and conversion play a role in the  peace process of far greater significance than their endless ecumenical dialogue. The idea is to move away from all that medieval poppycock, and nobody—not even Our Lady of Fatima herself!—is going to block the path of their retreat. 

This became abundantly obvious even as far back as 1984, when Pope John Paul asked the world episcopate to join him in consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in an attempt to comply with at least the spirit (if not the letter) of Our Lady’s request at Fatima.  He was met with defiance.

Consider the reaction of the bishops of England and Wales:  In the Universe of March 23, 1984, the largest “Catholic” newspaper in the UK let it be known what Catholics thought of Our Lady of Fatima’s request and the Holy Father’s attempt to heed it, however ineptly: “If by participating in this act of dedication Catholics give the impression they’re fostering a cult of Our Lady of Fatima, they will give grave scandal.”

Quite obviously,  Catholic hierarchs in the UK were scandalized by the Mother of God!

“It is an open secret,” noted the Times of London in 1984, “that few members of the hierarchy of England and Wales have any enthusiasm for the procedure [to consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary], and have elected to participate in the dedication in the lowest key possible without appearing to challenge the pope’s authority. The hierarchy has not asked Church members to attend special services in their local cathedral, and has not asked parish priests to repeat the prayers of the consecration at services.”

The Catholic Herald of March 23, 1984 got straight to the point when columnist Jonathan Petre quoted the Catholic secretary of the International Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary as saying: “The papal consecration may even prove an obex (obstacle) to ecumenical progress, judged to be a return to 19th century thought and devotion” Horror of all horrors!  A return to the thought and devotion of the saints and martyrs of 2000 years of Catholic history!

In the end, Cardinal Hume, according to an article by Hamish Fraser that appeared in Approaches at the time, begrudgingly performed the requested Act of Consecration in Westminster Cathedral on March 24, 1984—but didn’t so much as mention Fatima.

That was then. Imagine the open defiance the Holy Father would face today were he to attempt to convince the world episcopate to join him in consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary!  He’d be laughed out of Rome… or perhaps locked up as a hate criminal in The Hague.

Errors of Russia

In the meantime, the errors of Russia continue to spread unabated throughout the world. They have become a way of life in my country, where under an increasingly godless and socialist regime our freedoms are fading fast, our religion is being criminalized, and it’s absolutely expected that women will dress as men, leave the home and enter the “workers’ paradise”—just as Karl Marx advocated.

As atheism is now among the fastest growing “religions” in America, powerful democracies are doing exactly what the Communist regime sought to do at the point of a gun in the U.S.S.R.— drive Christ’s Church underground or into concentration camps;  outlaw public prayer;  and mandate that there is no truth except that there is no truth.  All the while the modern world moves further from Cross, from the very idea of God—exactly, again, as Karl Marx said it must: “The very idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed.”

Conclusion

The Errors of Russia are not a political or economic system. They are, rather, a systematic series of human non serviams, hatched in the black recesses of the minds of men like Karl Marx, who famously said: “Our war is against God and the world created by Him.”

The Errors of Russia are the full frontal assault on the family; the Errors of Russia include eugenics and the murderous war against the unborn; the Errors of Russia agitate for the death of Christian culture, the apostasy of the peoples of the world, the uncrowning of Christ the King and the enslavement of the masses to sex, drugs,  and meaningless labor.

As Sr. Lucia remarked to William Thomas Walsh during their famous 1946 interview: Unless a sufficient number comply with Our Lady’s demands every nation in the entire world without exception will eventually be enslaved. 

Fatima’s requests must be heeded if Fatima’s dark prophesies are not to become synonymous with our immediate future. Our shepherds must consecrate Russia, and we must pray the rosary every day, do penance, and fulfill our daily duty—this is the only peace plan that matters. And this duty includes, of course, the acceptance and proclamation of the empire of Christ the King over all governments and nations. Nothing else will suffice.  No political agenda, no voting Republican vs. Democrat; no polls, petitions or politics.   It’s too late for all that.  “The time for doubting Fatima,” as Pius XII told us, “is passed.”

The late great Hamish Fraser put it this way: “What we must do is to bring home the essential, world-shaking significance of the message of our lady of Fatima to everyone we know, to all our relatives, friends and connections everywhere. What we must do is, by such means, give rise to an immense movement capable of activating all the energies of the Church, whose faith can indeed move mountains. And finally let us look upwards and at the same time forward on the one hand to what has been promised by the Queen of Heaven, and, on the other hand, to the means of ensuring that her demands are fulfilled here below.  In other words, let us do whatever we can possibly do to stimulate and activate all the energies of Mother Church towards the achievement of Objective Number One: the collegial consecration of Russia to Mary’s Immaculate heart.”

That is our job. That is our duty. These are the marching orders given directly to us by the Queen of Heaven herself.

Tear Down This Wall!

In June of 1987, an American president stood at the Brandenberg Gate near the Berlin Wall, and in a voice that resounded across the world, uttered these now-famous words: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Powerful words from a powerful man!  And the Wall did come down, partly because of those words, but also under the weight of a tsunami of western filth and vice. Rock ‘n’ roll bands wrote anthems to the winds of change, even as the masses danced in the streets to celebrate the will of the people over the raw power of the tyrants.  But they forgot about God.

There was no conversion. Wars and rumors of wars sprang up faster than ever.  Millions upon millions of babies were subsequently slaughtered. Pornography, violence, suicide, alcoholism and apostasy ran rampant. Drug and border wars erupted everywhere, even as the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York braced for a terrorist attack that would change the world forever and leave country after country embroiled in seemingly endless wars at home and abroad.

The Silent Apostasy rightly lamented by Pope John Paul II rose to such heights after the Wall came down that the Holy Father spent his last few years on this earth lamenting the fact that all of his attempts to convince the European Union to even mention its Christian roots in the new  constitution were in vain.

Our Lady of Fatima stood in the wings and watched the Wall come down, knowing that it marked not the end but the beginning of the greatest apostasy of all.

What’s the lesson?  That moment in 1987 can never be repeated. America was strong.  A powerful and dynamic pope sat in Peter’s chair. The Evil Empire was financially broken beyond repair. The clerical sex scandals were nothing more than a gleam in Satan’s eye.  And yet Fatima’s requests were ignored-- the world sank deeper into chaos, even welcoming homosexual marriage with open arms, fomenting even more evil and unjust wars, aborting even more babies, and  dramatically curbing what few civil liberties were left here in the house the Enlightenment built.

Today, the Assisi Prayer Meetings and the World Youth Days give no sign of reversing our Titanic collision with the massive iceberg of chastisement.

I conclude my talk here today with a paraphrase of Ronald Reagan’s famous speech outside the Berlin War.  On bended knee and with anguish and even desperation in our hearts, let us say to the Holy Father:

“Holy Father, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Church and the world, if you seek liberalization, come to the Gate of Heaven. Come to the Morning Star.  Holy Father do what she tells you. Holy Father, tear down this wall and Consecrate Russia now.”

Editor’s Note: This talk contains a number of references to the Fatima saga that first appeared in the late, great Hamish Fraser’s Approaches magazine decades ago. We credit Hamish for his insights and prophetic observations, and ask God to grant eternal rest to that lion of the old Faith, if, indeed, He has not already long since done so.  MJM