If we consider the history of rational creation from the
beginning of time, a repeated pattern emerges: over and
over again, we see a great apostasy that begins at the
top.
At the beginning of time, God created the nine choirs of
angels, in hierarchical order, with Lucifer as the
head. St. Thomas explains that the higher angels
possess a more powerful intellect and a greater
knowledge than the lower, and that the higher angels
enlighten those beneath them. (1) Therefore Lucifer –
the chief angel - was not only the highest in
hierarchical order, but was also the angel with the
greatest intellect, and the one responsible for
enlightening and governing the others.
As we know, this
magnificent angel – the greatest creature God had
created up to that time – disobeyed God and fell into
apostasy, and in so doing brought one third of the other
angels with him. The angels who thought to themselves,
“we would rather be wrong with Lucifer than right
without him”, got their wish and became demons, while
those who remained faithful to God, in spite of the
apostasy of their divinely appointed leader, were
immediately confirmed in grace and now reign with God in
heaven.
After the fall of the bad angels, God created man. He
endowed the first man with the preternatural gifts of
integrity, bodily immortality, impassibility, and
infused knowledge, which perfected him according to
nature, as well as the supernatural gift of grace, which
elevated his soul to the supernatural level, thereby
making him a “partaker of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter
1:4). By the gift of infused knowledge, Adam knew all
that he had a natural aptitude to know (2), including
knowledge
of the physical
universe, both material and spiritual, the moral law,
the Divine Attributes of God, and man’s relationship to
his creator” (3), as well as the supernatural knowledge
necessary to guide him and his descendants to their
supernatural end.
(4) All of the gifts Adam received would have been
passed down to his posterity, with the exception of
infused knowledge. The reason his descendents would not
have received this gift, according to St. Thomas, is
because Adam was to be the teacher of all other men. (5)
As father of the human race, he was to instruct and
govern mankind, just as Lucifer was to govern and
enlighten the lower angels. As we know, Adam, the father
of the human race and divinely appointed teacher of all
men, disobeyed God and fell into sin, thereby causing
the Fall of the entire human race. But unlike the
angels who fell, God did not abandon man, but instead
promised to send a Redeemer.
Next God established His chosen people – the children of
Israel – from whom this Redeemer was to come. This
chosen race received supernatural revelation directly
from God, and practiced the true religion revealed by
God. The Israelites offered God true worship, and
longed for the coming of the Messiah for two millennia.
Then, when the long-awaited Messiah finally
arrived, their leaders rejected Him, declared him a
blasphemer, and had Him put to death by the Romans,
thereby causing the fall of the entire Jewish Nation.
Next, God used the betrayal of His once-chosen people,
and the sacrificial death of Christ, as the means of
Redeeming mankind and saving the Gentiles. He then
founded His Church, the “pillar and ground of truth” (1
Tim 3:15) and exclusive Ark of Salvation, and placed the
Pope as the head and teacher of all the faithful.
Now, with the pattern that has been repeated over and
over again since the beginning of creation, what should
we expect to happen at the end? Would it be a surprise
if the Pope – the divinely appointed head of the Church
and teacher of the faithful – repeated the actions of
the former divinely appointed leaders and bring countless
souls to destruction, thereby bringing about the great
apostasy predicted in the New Testament? Would this be
a surprise, or simply the same pattern repeating itself?
Could the great apostasy brought on by diabolically
disoriented popes be what is spoken of in
the portion of
the Third Secret of Fatima that has yet to be revealed?
Let’s consider the testimony of Cardinal Ciappi who read
the Third Secret. Cardinal Ciappi was a distinguished
theologian from the pontifical household from 1955 to
1989. In a letter to Professor Baumgartner, the
Cardinal made an astonishing admission about the Third
Secret. He wrote: “In the Third Secret it is predicted,
among other things, that the great apostasy in the
Church will begin at the top.” (6) Notice, he
didn’t say it would begin “near the top”, but “at the
top” – the same pattern we have seen repeated throughout
history.
In a 1984 interview, Cardinal Ratzinger also spoke of
the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima. The
interviewer asked: “Have you read what is called the
Third Secret of Fatima?” To his surprise, the Cardinal
answered “yes”, and then went on to discuss what it
contained. The Cardinal said “the things contained
within the ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been
announced in Scripture and has been said again and again
in many other Marian Apparitions”. (As an aside, we
must ask where Scripture speaks of the failed
assassination attempt of John Paul II?) Continuing on,
the Cardinal said the Third Secret speaks of “dangers
threatening the Faith… and the importance of the
‘novissimi’[the end times].” Once again we see a
prelate, who had read the Third Secret, state that it
refers to dangers threatening the Faith.
But perhaps the most interesting statement comes from
Paul VI himself on the sixtieth anniversary of the
Miracle of the Sun, during which he spoke of apostasy at
the very “summit” of the Church, which confirms what
Cardinal Ciappi wrote to Professor Baumgartner. Here is
what Paul VI had to say on October 13, 1977:
The tail of the devil is functioning in the
disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of
Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic
Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of
the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into
the highest levels within the Church. (7)
Is it just a coincidence that Paul VI made this
statement on the anniversary of Fatima? It seems
unlikely. It seems more likely that he was revealing
what is contained in the Third Secret.
But if this is what the Third Secret contains, when
would it begin? Is there a particular date that one
could look to as the beginning of this great apostasy
that would begin “at the top” – at the very “summit” of
the Church?
In the famous 1957 interview of Sister Lucy of Fatima
with Fr. Fuentes, about the events of Fatima, the
cloistered nun asked her interviewer the following
question: “Father, how much time is there before 1960
arrives?” Why would she ask about the date 1960? She
then went on to explain. She said when this date
arrives, “it will be very sad for everyone, not one
person will rejoice at all if beforehand the world does
not pray and do penance.” She then ended by saying: “I
am not able to give any other details because it is
still a secret.”
In 1960 preparations were underway for the Second
Vatican Council, which Cardinal Suenens later described
as “the French Revolution in the Church”. Another
attendee of the Council, an Archbishop who had lived
during both WWI and WWII,
described Vatican II
as “the greatest war I have lived through”.
This “pastoral council” brought chaos to the Church –
even before the close of its final session. Consider
what Fr. Depau wrote to Paul VI just one year after the
close of the disastrous council.
‘Already then, December
1, 1965’ wrote Fr. Depau to Paul VI, who had appointed
him as the head of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement,
‘Your Holiness asked me to realize that our Church was
going through ‘one of the gravest crises in its
history.’ If such a description of our Church's
condition was true then, how much more can the same be
said of our Church today! To say that it has gone from
bad to worse would be the understatement of the
century. Today's condition of the Catholic Church is
beyond the point of doctrinal heresy, factual schism and
even apostasy. It is in a state of chaos and utter
collapse resulting from the systematic destruction of
first our liturgical and other traditions, and now our
very beliefs and morals. (8)
If that letter describes the Church
in the 1960’s, what words could be used to describe the
Church in our day?
For those who have eyes to see, the
Church is undergoing a crisis of unprecedented
magnitude: a great apostasy that began “at the top” –
at the very “summit” of the Church, by means of a
disastrous “pastoral council”, and a series of Popes
who, whatever their good intentions may have been, were
nevertheless induced to attempt to foist a new order
upon the Catholic world—an order which is rapidly
unraveling into chaos. We have the promise that the
gates of hell will not prevail; neither will a Pope ever
infallibly define a heresy, since this would be
incompatible with the charism of infallibility. But
without violating any of His promises, there is no
reason to believe that God will not permit, and indeed
has permitted, the crisis of Faith to reach the very
summit of the Church, thereby bringing about an apostasy
similar to that which has been repeated over and over
again since the beginning of creation.
Since the Council, we see that the
Popes themselves have embraced the same modernist errors
that are ravaging the Church from top to bottom and that
were warned against by the great St. Pius X in 1907,
when he admitted that these errors were to be found “in
the very veins and heart” of the Church:
They
[Modernists] put their designs for her [the Church’s]
ruin into operation not from without but from within;
hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins
and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more
certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her.
Moreover they lay the axe not to the branches and
shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and
its deepest fibers. And having struck at this root of
immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through
the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic
truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do
not strive to corrupt. (9)
In this ecclesiastical crisis of
unprecedented magnitude, let us hold firm to “the faith
once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:8), and never
forget the words of St. Paul: “If anyone preach to you a
gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be
anathema” (Galatians 1:8-9).
Footnotes
1)
S.T. PT 1, Q 106, A. 1
2)
S.T. Pt I, Q 94, A 3
3)
Hardon, God the Author of Nature and the Supernatural
4)
S.T. Pt I, Q 94, A 3
5)
Ibid
6)
The Fourth Secret of Fatima, Pg. 122
7)
Pope Paul VI’s October 13, 1977 address on the Sixtieth
Anniversary of the Fatima Apparitions
8)
Letter of Fr. Depaw to Paul VI. Later published under
the title: ‘Be Thou Peter’.
9)
PASCENDI
DOMINICI GREGIS,
Encyclical of Pope Pius X on the Doctrines of the
Modernists, 1907
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