F THE ATIMA CRUSADER ISSUE 117 WINTER The Fatima Center Rapid Response Team Defends the Catholic Faith in Sweden

Transcription

1 F THE ATIMA CRUSADER ISSUE 117 WINTER 2016 The Fatima Center Rapid Response Team Defends the Catholic Faith in Sweden

2 In Defense of Catholic Truth by Coralie Graham, Editor The Fatima Center s Rapid Response Team did the unprecedented in Lund, Sweden where Pope Francis participated in a commemoration of the approaching 500th anniversary of Martin Luther s Protestant revolt. Catholics there are a minority, and even more so are those who adhere to the traditional, solemn teachings of our One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church. Yet, by the grace of God and His Holy Mother, the team led by Father Håkan Lindström singing Latin hymns and leading the Rosary, along with loyal Catholic volunteers from Prague, Sweden and other parts of Scandinavia processed for over an hour through the crowded streets close to the Lutheran cathedral. The crowning glory of our procession was the statue of Our Lady of Fatima held high for all to see. For all of us who participated, we noted throughout the crowds not the animosity and heckling we expected, but it was as if the waters of the crowd parted in front of Our Lady and you could visibly see the look of awe on their faces as She passed by. We encountered only one radical group of students, dressed as popes, but the police swiftly provided us with a security guard of two officers on horseback who followed us to ensure our protection. Unfortunately, someone from the Catholic church where we distributed leaflets to those coming out from Mass called the police to try to stop us. The police, however, were very kind and allowed us to continue. We handed out thousands of leaflets to lay and clergy entering the papal Mass in Malmo. Very few refused and many read them intently. Just as we finished, the pope s cavalcade drove only meters away from us. We held up one of our signs: Don t Hide Catholic Truth. I was just in time to videotape his arm waving and shout our parting words: CONSECRATE RUSSIA! More on Rapid Response at fatima.org 2 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

3 Our Lady of Fatima being adorned with flowers prior to our one-hour procession to profess the True Faith through the streets of Lund close to the Lutheran cathedral where Pope Francis participated in the celebration of Luther s Protestant revolt. You may recognize this statue from our Synod in Rome last year.

4 Fatima Rapid Response Team in Sweden: Defending Catholic Truth Against the Errors of Ecumenism by Michal Semin The Kingdom of Sweden was chosen as the place where the followers of Martin Luther decided to kick off the yearlong celebration of the 500th anniversary of his revolt against the Church and its teachings. There is no better country than Sweden for that purpose. Why? Here you can taste most of the bitter fruits of Reformation an irreligious and thoroughly secularized society with widespread abortion, divorce and sodomy, gradually losing any sense (also due to its liberal immigration policy and multicultural madness) of its Christian and European identity. But it is not just the agnostic and religiously indifferent majority of Swedish society that sees no problem with the aforementioned evils.the Church of Sweden, walking in the steps of Lutheran Reformation, is no different. It seems to be void of any specifically Christian content. A good number of their clergy from top to bottom do not believe in the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ or His Resurrection. They accept ordination of women their archbishop is a female and many other liberal dogmas, including contraception, divorce and remarriage; even abortion and same-sex marriage. The openly lesbian Bishop of Stockholm Eva Brunne, who recently divorced her wife, speaks volumes about the level of diabolical disorientation that is affecting this particular Lutheran sect. You may ask: Should we, Catholics, be concerned with what is going on within the Lutheran milieu? There would be no reason if it was not Pope Francis himself who was telling 4 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

5 the world that what unites us with these perverts is much greater than what divides us. And to show he means business, Francis came to Lund and Malmö in person to make clear to everyone that the Church de facto erred in the past when it excommunicated Luther and condemned his heresies. Francis, typical of all the prelates with modernist mindsets, would never dare to call Luther s errors heresies. That is why we heard from him about mere differences that must be overcome. How? By walking, hand in hand, the path from conflict to communion. Silly, if not outrageous. Real Unity Is Return to the One True Church of Christ Instead of reminding the present Lutherans that the necessary condition for achieving real unity is the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it (Mortalium animos, Pius XI, 1928), he took an active part in an ecumenical event in a Lutheran cathedral (confiscated from Catholics in 1536), in a liturgy concocted by the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. Here he co-signed a Joint Statement, containing scandalous statements, undermining the dogmatic teachings of the Church. Francis signature under the sentence As we recommit ourselves to move from conflict to communion, we do so as part of the one Body of Christ, into which we are incorporated through Baptism is a clear rejection of the perennial Catholic teaching, well expressed by Pius XII in his monumental encyclical on the Church, Mystici Corporis Christi: Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. For in one spirit, says the Apostle, were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free. As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered so the Lord commands as a heathen and a publican. The Fatima Crusader Winter

6 It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit. How can a Vicar of Christ acknowledge, with gratitude, the spiritual and theological gifts received through Reformation when reformation was nothing else than a revolt against the authority of the papacy and the Church, the sacrificial nature of the Holy Mass, Transubstantiation and the Catholic moral teachings? It is simply mind boggling. And how can someone, who claims to be a Pope, state the following: With gratitude we acknowledge that the Reformation helped give greater centrality to Sacred Scripture in the Church s life.? This event in Sweden undermines the very foundations of the Catholic Faith. The Fatima Center has foreseen the crimes against the One True Faith committed in Lund and Malmö by Francis and his entourage. For that reason, fully aware of the scandalous nature of the papal involvement in Luther s festivities, it decided to make a Pilgrimage of Reparation. Not in Fort Erie, Canada, but in Lund and Malmö. With the help of a group of courageous traditional Catholics from Sweden and Denmark and with the spiritual assistance of Fr. Håkan Lindström, FSSPX, we reached thousands of souls on the spot with the truths about Lutheranism, presented to them the spiritual dangers of ecumenism and made the case for the Catholic Faith in its fullness and integrity. We were not stopped in distributing Catholic materials either by the modernist Catholic clergy, or by police (in fact, the policemen were friendlier to us than the clergy). The culminating event of our pilgrimage was the procession with Our Lady of Fatima through the streets of Lund just at the time when the ecumenical travesty in the local cathedral was going on. Did anyone notice? Hundreds of people present were taking pictures of the procession, but, as usual, the mainstream media didn t report on it. But who may have noticed, surprisingly, was Francis himself. We stood only a few meters from him when he was approaching the stadium in Malmö for his Pontifical Mass. 6 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

7 Inside the Lutheran Cathedral: Michal Semin being interviewed by The Fatima Crusader editor, Coralie Graham. See Michal s daily video reports from Sweden on our Web site fatima.org in our featured Rapid Response Team section. The car went slowly and while he waved at us we pulled out a large sign requesting: DON T HIDE THE CATHOLIC TRUTH.Only the future will tell if he takes heed of our wellmeaning request or not. At present the situation is not rosy at all. After undermining the indissolubility of marriage and related truths in the recent exhortation Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis is attacking, using ecumenism, the very foundations of the Church. Thus we find ourselves in a rather paradoxical situation while we are defending the dignity and rights of the papacy, the Pope himself abuses the papal office to make us all protestant. This is diabolical disorientation in its highest form. So while the Joint Statement from Lund frighteningly calls upon all Lutheran and Catholic parishes and communities to be bold and creative, The Fatima Center calls upon Catholics around the globe to remain faithful to the One True Faith, resist the errors of the ecumenical movement and pray for the conversion of the spiritual children of Martin Luther. May Our Lady of Fatima help us! The Fatima Crusader Winter

8 Last Mass at our Pilgrimage of Reparation Wisdom of the Saints: Our True Happiness Sermon by Father Håkan Lindström During the first eight days of November we can gain a plenary indulgence for the benefit of the souls in Purgatory by visiting a cemetery and praying there for the souls in Purgatory. And the usual conditions, of course, apply also to these plenary indulgences that can be gained for the souls in Purgatory. There is a cemetery not very far from here, in fact. It might be an idea to go for a little walk after lunch to visit that cemetery and pray there. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen We celebrate today, my dear brethren, the great Feast of All Saints, on this which I think I might call the last day of our Pilgrimage of Reparation reparation that was needed because of this ecumenical spectacle. Reparation for the glory of God and reparation for souls who risk being confused and led away from the true faith by these on-goings in Lund and Malmö during this last couple of days. As I said in my sermon on Sunday, Pope Pius XI wanted the Feast of Christ the King, which he instituted, to take place on the last Sunday of October. That is what he says in his encyclical Quas primas: that Sunday which immediately precedes this feast that we celebrate today, the Feast of All Saints. And I said that there is a connection there. Those are the saints, who follow Christ the King, who allow themselves to be ruled by Christ the King and also enjoy His protection. To be ruled, protected and helped by Christ the King, that is what helps us to become saints, to get to Heaven. This idea is expressed in the liturgy of today s feast day. I came across it, for instance, in 8 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

9 the so-called invitatorium at the beginning of Matins the part of the Divine Office that is prayed during the night by monks or in the morning by all priests who are obliged to pray the breviary. Come Let Us Praise the Lord The invitatorium, which is repeated several times between the verses of Psalm 94, the Venite exsultemus Dominum: Come, let us praise the Lord, this invitatorium reads: Regem regum Dominum venite adoremus, quia ipse est corona Sanctorum omnium. Come and adore the Lord, the King of kings, because He is the crown of all saints. Ipse est corona Sanctorum omnium. He is the crown of all saints. So He is, of course, also the reward of all the saints. We see how this idea this connection with Christ the King, Who is also the reward of His faithful subjects, because the happiness in Heaven is seeing God and loving God how this thought is being expressed in today s liturgy, which is of course much older than the liturgy of the Feast of Christ the King, which was instituted only by Pius XI. And in the Gospel today, we have the Sermon on the Mount Our Lord s Sermon on the Mount, where He talks about the eight beatitudes. And this tells us that if the saints are the loyal subjects of Christ the King, they are also the ones who have understood and put into practice in their lives not just a matter of theoretical understanding, but put into practice in their lives this wisdom, this knowledge about what our beatitude, what our true happiness, actually consists in. And this Our Lord tells us, when he talks about these eight beatitudes. As Saint Thomas Aquinas that great theologian of the Middle Ages explains, these eight beatitudes of Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, are a kind of deeper exposition of that general rule that we have all learnt as the answer to the first question of our catechism: Why are we here on earth? We are here on earth in order to know God, to love Him, to serve Him in this life and live happily with Him ever after in Heaven. As Saint Thomas Aquinas explains the eight beatitudes as a deeper explanation of this he tells us what this happiness consists in more precisely and in what it doesn t consist. Because, he says, there are four false opinions about the happiness of man. They are not all equally false; some are more wrong than others, but they are all false. The Fatima Crusader Winter

10 Neither of these four opinions actually express the full truth of the matter. Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit The first, then, is the opinion of those who think that the happiness of man consists in externals in riches or in fame or reputation and things like that. And against this, says Saint Thomas Aquinas, Our Lord says, Beati pauperes spiritu ( Blessed are the poor in spirit ). Blessed Are the Meek Others think that the happiness of man consists in the satisfaction of our own wishes. To be free, have complete freedom of our will, to get everything that we want. This takes four different expressions. One is the angry expression those who want revenge against their enemies. Some seek revenge to such an extent that it is the only thing they look for or they think they will be happy and content if they can only get the revenge they seek against their enemies. Against this Our Lord says, Beati mites ( Blessed are the meek ). Blessed Are They That Mourn Others think that happiness consists in getting all the joy and pleasure that we can dream of, that we can think of. That is, earthly joy and pleasure; and against this Our Lord says, Beati qui lugent ( Blessed are they that mourn ). They are sorry for their sins, and mourn also the state of mankind, the fallen, our fallen nature, that has been resurrected by Baptism, of course. Yes, we are again God s friends, but we are still wounded, so we have a tendency to fall back into sin unless we take heed, unless we make use of God s grace, of His help. So there is always this risk of sin; that is also reason for our own sorrow here on earth. We call this life here on earth, of course, a dwelling in a vale of tears the valley of tears (in the Salve Regina). Therefore Our Lord says, Blessed are they that mourn. They, who don t think that happiness is to be found in earthly things. Blessed Are They That Hunger and Thirst After Justice And then there is something that more concerns the will rather than the sensual passions the pride of the will not wanting to have any authority above itself, wanting to decide everything for itself. Some think that is what happiness consists in. This is a very topical idea is it not? People talk about how they have the right to do what they want, to promote ideas 10 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

11 After our final Mass in Sweden on All Saints Day, we all accompanied Father Lindström to a local gravesite where he led us in prayers for the Holy Souls. that are even against the natural law, and so on. Against this Our Lord says, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice. Because justice is exactly giving to each and every one that which is his due, to obey God s law, to fulfill our duty that will to be regulated by a law that is outside and above us. To be just is to submit our will to a measure that is outside of us. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice. Blessed Are the Merciful And then there are those who want to dominate others. They think that happiness consists in having power, dominating others, ruling. And against that Our Lord says, Beati misericordes ( Blessed are the merciful ), who sometimes give up even what is their strict right perhaps, because they are merciful, because they want to give, they forgive and they give something that they might strictly speaking have a right to require. Beati misericordes. Then there are those of the third false opinion, who think that perfection and happiness here on earth consist of the virtues of the so-called active life and in practicing the active virtues. Reaching out and helping others, and doing things like this; and also in temperance and self-control, those who do great things in sports and so on practice tremendous selfcontrol; these are examples of this. Here Our Lord doesn t say that it is completely wrong; because, as Saint Thomas explains, these virtues are a help, they are a means to reach true happiness. They are not true happiness The Fatima Crusader Winter

12 itself, but they are a means to reach happiness. Blessed Are the Clean of Heart So, for instance, temperance controls one s self; to have temperance, that is most completely expressed in the purity of the heart. That s why Our Lord says, Blessed are the clean of heart ; but He reminds us that being clean of heart here on earth is not what happiness consists in, but it is something that could lead to happiness as a means towards the end. That is why He says: Videbunt (in the future tense), they shall see God. Seeing God will only happen later. Blessed Are the Peacemakers And also in terms of justice, being good to others, doing good to others, Our Lord says, Blessed are the peacemakers. It is such a good thing to exercise justice towards others that those who do this shall be called the children of God, filii Dei vocabuntur but it is nothing that will happen already here on earth; it is a means towards the end of reaching complete happiness in Heaven in the life hereafter. And in those two sentences, because they shall see God, and because they shall be called the children of God, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, Our Lord also expresses the very essence of the happiness of Heaven. Because that happiness is to see God as He is, and to love God above all things without the risk of ever losing that love of God. To love Him completely and in a stable manner. A manner such that it can never be lost; something that we always have to risk as long as we live here on earth. The first is, of course, expressed when the Our Lord says: Blessed are the clean of heart because they shall see God. Seeing God that s one part of happiness in Heaven. But it is kind of fulfilled in loving God, and according to St. John in his first epistle, being the child of God or being the sons of God is a way of expressing this love of God because there he writes: Behold what manner of charity the Father has bestowed upon us that we shall be called and be the sons of God. So in this filii Dei vocabuntur they shall be called the children of God St. Thomas Aquinas sees that the blessed will have this childlike love of God and that it is something that they shall have in Heaven only in the life hereafter. This is contrary to the fourth false opinion which holds that our 12 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

13 complete happiness consists in the kind of knowledge and love of God that we can have already here on earth. In these two things in seeing God, loving God above all things happiness and the beatitude of the saints consists. Blessed Are They Who Suffer Persecuton For Justice Sake After these seven beatitudes, Our Lord also says that Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice sake. And this, of course, is encouraging for us, if we suffer some persecution and suffer some difficulties in trying to defend the honor of God, His Blessed Mother or the saints or the true Catholic Church, its true teaching. I don t think we can say, my dear brethren, that in the last few days we suffered an awful lot of persecution, but then again, there were some difficulties. We couldn t use that nice medieval church that we had wanted to use rather to have been expected, I think. There were a few people who were, I think, heckling us a little bit during our procession; but thanks be to God the police actually helped us there. We were fearing that the police would try to stop us but they didn t they helped us. In fact, I don t think we can complain about an awful lot of persecution. There was a little bit and I think there is some persecution in the sense that St. John also writes in the same passage from his first epistle: That the world knows not us, because it knows not Him ; it doesn t know Our Lord. If we haven t exactly been persecuted, I think we have been met, not exclusively but at least with a large share of incomprehension, people who don t understand. But we try our best, we try to show the truth. I m sure hearts are touched even if they don t fully understand and to the extent that people perhaps mock us, try to stop us, make life difficult for us, we have suffered a little bit of persecution and we are consoled by the words of Our Lord, that blessed are also they who suffer persecution for His sake. So, my dear brethren, let us pray then during this last Mass of our Pilgrimage of Reparation on this great Feast day of All Saints. Let us pray that we with our different prayers and activities have helped to fulfill the purpose of this pilgrimage. Let us present it to God, so that it be pleasing to Him, that we may have done something to repair the injustice that is done to His honor, by the things that we have done and the The Fatima Crusader Winter

14 prayers that we have offered up to God Himself, to His Blessed Mother, and to all the Saints. The saints that were thrown out of the churches by Luther, by the protestants, as is so movingly expressed in a painting that at least, I think, the Swedes here might have seen in Dr. Perssons edition of the two papal bulls against Luther; a reproduction of a painting in there by the Swedish artist Gisela Trapp; it is a painting called Luther and the Saints, where Luther is standing there with his reformers, driving out the saints from the church. So hopefully we have done some reparation to repair also the glory of the saints, to which also some harm has been caused by what s been going on. And also, of course, we hope, let us pray to God, that we have also helped our neighbor, that we fulfilled this beatitude of doing justice to our neighbor, to be peacemakers that is because opus iustitiae pax, as a famous quote from Holy Scripture, reads: the work of justice is peace. By doing justice to one another we can reach true peace. I hope we have managed to do justice to those souls that we have encountered during these days, that we have done justice to our duty. Because it is our duty, we who have received by God s grace the true Catholic Faith, who have received His help to also keep it in the adverse circumstances in which we live today. It is also our duty to try and pass it on to others, all according to our different states, whether we are priests or laymen. I hope we have fulfilled this duty of doing justice to our neighbor as well as we could during these few days, that is certainly what we have tried to do. We Ask for God s Blessing We ask for God s blessing that we may have repaired the glory of God, repaired the honor and glory of the saints. That we may have helped our neighbor to keep the Catholic Faith, keep taking it seriously or even to come closer to that true Catholic Faith and the true Catholic Church, which has the means that with certainty, if someone is faithful to them and keeps applying them to him or herself throughout their lives, will lead to the glory of Heaven, that will help the soul to become one of all the saints that we celebrate today. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 14 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

15 Our Lady of Fatima in procession through the streets of Lund. Latin hymns and the Holy Rosary were led by Father Lindström. Placards in defense of the Faith were held high. See how the police on horseback protected us for the entire hour-long procession. The Fatima Crusader Winter

16 The Ecumenical Fiasco in Lund, Sweden A Game of Let s Pretend by Christopher A. Ferrara Francis has completed his ecumenical journey to Lund, Sweden, where the long-planned fiasco elicited nothing but yawns from the post-christian Swedish populace. The press laughably reported that hundreds greeted Francis upon his arrival at the airport. At Lund, in the very cathedral that Lutheran rebels stole from the Catholic Church centuries ago, the one who is supposed to act as the Vicar of Christ participated in a joint ecumenical prayer service with pro-abortion, pro-contraception, pro-divorce, pro-homosexual, pro-women s ordination Lutheran laymen and lay women masquerading in clerical costumes. The cast of clerical fakes that Francis dignified with the presence of a Pope included a lady archbishop by the name of Antje Jackelen. The whole affair, like ecumenism in general, was a game of let s pretend. Let s pretend that Saint John, following the mandate of Our Lord Himself, never forbade any intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt version of Christ s teaching, to quote Pope Pius XI, who condemned the ecumenical movement at its origin and forbade Catholic participation in it for reasons that should be obvious today. Let s pretend that that there can be Christian unity with people who trample on the Gospel of Christ, deny the papal primacy, deny the existence of seven sacraments, the sacrificial priesthood and the Holy Sacrifice of Mass, flout fundamental moral precepts and condone abominable violations of the natural law, including abortion and sodomy, which cry out to Heaven for divine retribution. And above all, let s pretend that Catholics are just as blameworthy as Lutherans if not more so! for divisions 16 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

17 between the one true Church founded by God Incarnate and the ever-more-corrupt and ridiculous human organization whose origin lies in the rebellion of a maniacal, drunken, foulmouthed, libidinous monk from a late medieval backwater known as Wittenberg. Going along with the game, therefore, Francis uttered this preposterous prayer during the service: O Holy Spirit: help us to rejoice in the gifts that have come to the Church through the Reformation, prepare us to repent for the dividing walls that we, and our forebears, have built. Nonsense. We have built no walls whatsoever. The doors of the Catholic Church are always open, and she is always ready and willing to admit to the religion that Christ established any Lutheran who repents of Luther s errors, which have only been compounded infinitely by the errors of his supposed heirs in the Lutheran World Federation. It was Luther who put up the original dividing walls, and it is only his successors down through the past five centuries who have added to those walls layer after layer of heresy and immorality. But this is a game of let s pretend, so the ecumenist must pretend that the Catholic Church has cruelly built walls against the Lutherans. Nowhere is the Ecumenical Game of Let s Pretend more apparent than in Francis prepared homily for this disgraceful gathering. Herewith some examples from the text: As Catholics and Lutherans, we have undertaken a common journey of reconciliation. False. Catholics do not have to be reconciled with Lutherans. Lutherans must be reconciled with the One True Church, whose teachings they defy, and the Christ whose Gospel they have mutilated and corrupted. Now, in the context of the commemoration of the Reformation of 1517, we have a new opportunity to accept a common path, one that has taken shape over the past fifty years in the ecumenical dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church. False. There is no common path that Catholics and Lutherans can walk together. There is only the path that Christ established in his Church, which Lutherans have lost and must find again. That path leads only The Fatima Crusader Winter

18 to Rome, and from there to Heaven for those who persevere in the grace of the Sacraments. As Pius XI declared: For the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. Nor can we be resigned to the division and distance that our separation has created between us. We have the opportunity to mend a critical moment of our history by moving beyond the controversies and disagreements that have often prevented us from understanding one another. False. We cannot move beyond the controversies and disagreements that have often prevented us from understanding one another. It is the Lutherans who lack an understanding of the truths that Christ revealed. And their ignorance or willful rejection of those truths does not involve mere controversies and disagreements but rather fundamental matters of divine revelation and the natural law that guides the conscience even of pagan savages on hypothetical deserted islands. Certainly, there was a sincere will on the part of both sides to profess and uphold the true faith, but at the same time we realize that we closed in on ourselves out of fear or bias with regard to the faith which others profess with a different accent and language. Not only false, but absolutely intolerable. There can be no sincere will to profess and uphold the true faith on the part of those who not only adamantly deny dogmas of the true religion but condone even sodomy and the murder of innocent children in the womb. To reduce the differences between Catholicism and the various Lutheran sects to accent and language arising from fear or bias is an outrageous deception. I could go on for pages more, but the point is made. The ecumenical escapade in Lund, like the ecumenical venture as a whole, is a fraud a fraud not only upon the Catholic people, but upon Lutherans who so desperately need the helps that only the Catholic Church can provide. Ecumenism is, in fact, a form of almost unbelievable spiritual cruelty, which ruthlessly determines to leave in darkness 18 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

19 In the dim night light at the Catholic church in Lund, as parishioners exited from Saturday night Mass, the Rapid Response team distributed our flyers warning against Lutheranism. Joanna Swords (left) tried to explain to the pastor (right) but the police were summoned.the police were very courteous and allowed us to continue distributing. those who cannot see the light of the Gospel, refusing to tell them what Pius XI told the Protestants of his day with all the solicitude of a true spiritual father, a mere 34 years before Vatican II supposedly ushered in a new ecumenical orientation of the Church: Let them therefore return to their common Father, who, forgetting the insults previously heaped on the Apostolic See, will receive them in the most loving fashion. For if, as they continually state, they long to be united with Us and ours, why do they not hasten to enter the Church, the Mother and mistress of all Christ s faithful? Let them hear Lactantius crying out: The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the true worship. This is the fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned, which will be lost and entirely destroyed, unless their interests are carefully and assiduously kept in mind. May God deliver us Catholics and Lutherans alike from the scourge of ecumenism and restore the Church to the sanity and true mercy of her perennial approach to those lost in error. Let the ecumenical game of Let s Pretend come to an end for the eternal welfare of souls. Let the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart that Our Lady promised at Fatima set right all that has gone wrong in our beloved Church over the past fifty years, and in the world as a consequence. The Fatima Crusader Winter

20 Our Duty to Resist! Taken from Crucial Truths to Save Your Soul by Father Nicholas Gruner, S.T.L., S.T.D. (Cand.) There is a famous maxim attributed to the 5 th Century Pope, St. Felix III, about standing up for the truth: Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it. This saying is especially true in regard to opposing doctrinal errors and defending the true Faith regardless of the source of those errors. Even a Pope may be legitimately resisted if he were to act in a way that is contrary to the Faith or otherwise harmful to the Church. When the Pope and bishops preach the truth of the Catholic Faith to us, as they have received it from authentic magisterial sources, God expects us to believe them. And when they tell us to do something within the realm of their jurisdiction, He expects us to obey. But if the Pope tells us to do something contrary to the manifest good of the Church, or to profess a belief in something contrary to the Catholic Faith (such as a fourth Person of the Blessed Trinity), we don t have to obey him. We must disobey him that is, we must resist him, and obey God rather than men, as St. Peter said. 1 Otherwise we make ourselves guilty of a sinful false obedience (or as St. Thomas calls it, indiscreet obedience). 2 At the turn of the 17th Century, Protestants were slandering the papacy as a sort of despotism. The Pope, in their view, was an absolute monarch whose power was unrestrained by any law. Saint Robert Bellarmine answered this charge, demonstrating that the Pope s authority is by no means unlimited or arbitrary: Just as it is licit to resist the Pontiff that aggresses the body, it is also licit to resist the one who aggresses souls or who disturbs civil order, or above all, who attempts to destroy the Church. I say that it is licit to resist him by not doing what he orders and by preventing his will from being executed; it is not licit, 20 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

21 however, to judge, punish or depose him, since these acts are proper to a superior. 3 It shouldn t be necessary to belabor this point, but truly there are so many Catholics today who have a dangerous misunderstanding of the papacy. They seem to believe that they are somehow expressing a loyalty to Christ or to the Church by saying such things as, I d rather be wrong with the Pope than right without him! Some foolish, ignorant Catholics have even said to me they would rather follow the Pope and go to hell with him rather than disobey the Pope. There is nothing Catholic about such slogans. The great 16 th Century theologian Francisco Suarez, whom Pope Paul V praised as the Exceptional and Pious Doctor (Doctor Eximius et Pius), taught: If [a Pope] gives an order contrary to right customs [morality], he should not be obeyed; if he attempts to do something manifestly opposed to justice and the common good, it will be lawful to resist him... 4 Before Suarez, the eminent medieval theologian Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (who formulated the definitions issued at the Council of Florence) had written on the same subject: Were the Pope to command anything against Holy Scriptures, or the articles of faith, or the truth of the sacraments, or the commands of the natural or divine law, he ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands he is to be disregarded. 5 And before Torquemada, St. Thomas Aquinas had demonstrated the right and duty of the faithful (including members of the clergy) to publicly correct and even rebuke ecclesiastical superiors whose actions endanger the faith of Catholics or otherwise harm the common good of the Church. Here is St. Thomas answer to the question, Whether a man is bound to correct his prelate : It must be observed, however, that if the faith were endangered, a subject ought The Fatima Crusader Winter

22 to rebuke his prelate even publicly. Hence Paul, who was Peter s subject, rebuked him in public, on account of the imminent danger of scandal concerning faith. 6 (St. Peter had unwittingly given scandal to the Gentile converts in Antioch by making an appearance of continuing to follow some of the Mosaic dietary laws by refusing to eat with the baptized, uncircumcised Gentiles. 7 ) This teaching of St. Paul and the Catholic Church is because the Mosaic ceremonial law was after the Crucifixion now forbidden to be practiced by Christians. St. Thomas notes that resistance to teaching or practices against the Faith by anyone even the Pope is neither unlawful nor presumptuous, but is both a duty and an act of charity. We could continue multiplying examples of such teachings by Church Doctors and Saints, but I hope that the point is made. There are no personality cults in the Catholic Church. We have no license to turn off our minds and follow an authority figure to hell. For Heaven s sake, remember Our Lord s warning (repeated many times by Sister Lucy) that when the blind follow the blind, they both fall into the pit! (And Sister Lucy, as if it were the essence of the Third Secret, spoke of the diabolical disorientation of high churchmen in our time. We need to be careful not to follow those who knowingly follow the devil or who even unwittingly do the devil s bidding because they are themselves so confused.) As Catholics, we sometimes have not only the right but even the duty to voice our loyal obedience to God and our opposition to the errors of doctrine or practice advanced by our lawful superiors who are going beyond their legitimate authority. When the Pope speaks not in line with the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium, we have to use our prudence in receiving his teaching. There is no temerity on our part in refusing an assent to any such teaching which is a novelty. And when it is manifestly at odds with prior Church teaching, we must not ever accept this erroneous and/or heretical teaching. Footnotes: (1) Acts 5:29. (2) St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 104, A. 5, ad 3. (3) St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, Book II, Chapter 29. (4) Francisco Suarez, De Fide, Disp. X, Sec. VI, N. 16. (5) Juan de Torquemada, Summa de ecclesia, Venice, M. Tranmezium, 1561, Book 2, Chapter 49, p. 163B, emphasis added. (6) St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 33, A. 4, ad. 2. (7) Cf. Galatians 2: The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

23 Has the Vatican Surrendered to the Sexual Revolution? by Christopher A. Ferrara A Pro-Family Purge At the Vatican? On August 17, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis by motu proprio (his own initiative) had formally erected the new super-dicastery of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the Family and Life (PCLFL), effective September 1. The new dicastery absorbs (and thus abolishes) the Pontifical Councils for the Family and the Laity and also overlaps the function of the stillexisting Pontifical Academy for Life, one of whose members, the German philosopher Josef Siefert, published a devastating critique of the Amoris Laetitia, calling upon Francis to correct its errors. Francis has appointed as head of the PCLFL, Bishop Kevin Joseph Farrel of Texas, a progay prelate widely denounced for installing as pastor of a Texas parish a homosexual priest who participated in an explicitly gay website for homosexual clergy and religious. (The priest was removed only after public outcry over the appointment.) Farrel clearly accepts as a given that there will be homosexual priests in pastoral ministry. Citing remarks by Francis concerning respect for homosexual persons, Farrel declared here that The Church still has the expectation that priests must commit to a life of celibate chastity whether they are homosexual or heterosexual. Still? The expectation? Whether they are homosexual or heterosexual? Farrel reflects a generalized abandonment of the constant teaching and practice of the Church, affirmed by Benedict XVI, that men who consider themselves gay cannot be admitted to seminaries as their intrinsically disordered condition renders them unfit for the priesthood, which is configured to the person of Christ, the male par excellence. The Fatima Crusader Winter

24 As for the still-existing Pontifical Academy for Life, this has been turned over to the pro-gay Archbishop Vincenzio Paglia, who replaces Spanish bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula as President. Paglia will also take over the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, replacing the Vicar General of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, as Grand Chancellor. Vallini had denounced the distribution of condoms in Italian public schools as an initiative [that] can only be combated by the Church of Rome and the Christian families seriously affected by the education of their children. Paglia, on the other hand, has infamously praised the gay propaganda TV series Modern Family and it was he who was also responsible for inviting homosexual couples to last year s World Meeting of Families. In defense of the invitation, Paglia huffed: We are following Instrumentum Laboris of the Synod to the letter. Everyone can come, nobody is excluded. But it gets worse. Not only is Paglia now Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, he has also removed Monsignor Livio Melina, 64, as its President, replacing him with the liberal Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri. It was Melina who, as Life Site News points out, defended the Church s perennial teaching that remarried divorcees who are not living as brother and sister are not to be admitted to Holy Communion. Melina also bravely insisted that the disastrous Amoris Laetitia does not change the Church s discipline and that after Amoris Laetitia it continues to be the case that admitting to Communion the divorced and remarried (apart from the situations foreseen by Familiaris Consortio 84 and Sacramentum Caritatis 29) goes against the Church s discipline. Thus it is no surprise that Melina s head has rolled in the marriage and family purge that is clearly underway at the Vatican. With the creation of the new super-dicastery and these two appointments, the entire Vatican apparatus concerning marriage and family is now under the control of two prelates who are manifestly subversive of both. With each passing day, we see confirmation of the dire warning of Sister Lucia at Fatima, in a letter to Cardinal Caffarra, 24 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

25 sent in the 1990s, that the final battle between the Lord and the reign of satan will be about marriage and the family [A]nyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. The First Ever Vatican-Approved Sex-Ed Curriculum When Sister Lucia warned Cardinal Caffarra about what was coming, however, she did not reveal the particular reality now unfolding: a relentless drive by Church leaders to loosen the Church s constant teaching on sexual morality. It would appear that the reorganization of the Vatican s marriage and family departments is a major tactic in this final battle. Another tactic, earlier spearheaded by Paglia as head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, is the first Vatican-issued sex-ed program in Church history, designed for classroom use in Catholic schools. The very existence of this document is a gross violation of the Church s condemnation of any form of classroom sex education. To recall the teaching of Pius XI in his landmark encyclical on the Christian education of youth, Divini Illius Magistri: Far too common is the error of those who, with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term, propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers. That the Vatican now not only endorses but also provides classroom sex-education is bad enough, but the Paglia-approved curriculum it defies belief that this is happening is replete with indecent images and even recommendations that young people watch sexually explicit movies. Life Site News provides the following executive summary of the elements of this scandalous program: Handing the sexual formation of children over to educators while leaving parents out of the equation. The Fatima Crusader Winter

26 Failing to name and condemn sexual behaviors, such as fornication, prostitution, adultery, contracepted-sex, homosexual activity, and masturbation, as objectively sinful actions that destroy charity in the heart and turn one away from God. Failing to warn youths about the possibility of eternal separation from God (damnation) for committing grave sexual sins. Hell is not mentioned once. Failing to distinguish between mortal and venial sin. Failing to speak about the 6th and 9th commandments, or any other commandment. Failing to teach about the sacrament of confession as a way of restoring one s relationship with God after committing grave sin. Not mentioning a healthy sense of shame when it comes to the body and sexuality. Teaching boys and girls together in the same class. Having boys and girls share together in class their understanding of phrases such as: What does the word sex suggest to you? Asking a mixed class to point out where sexuality is located in boys and girls. Speaking about the process of arousal. Using sexually explicit and suggestive images in activity workbooks. Recommending various sexually explicit movies as springboards for discussion (see below for links). Failing to speak about abortion as gravely wrong, but only that it causes strong psychological damage. Confusing youths by using phrases such as sexual relationship to indicate not the sexual act, but a relationship focused on the whole person. Speaking of heterosexuality as something to be discover[ed]. Using gay icon Elton John (while not mentioning his activism) as an example of a gifted and famous person. 26 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

27 A monument to dead babies in the crypt underneath the Lutheran cathedral. See Michal Semin s video report about this on our website fatima.org in the section Rapid Response Team. Michal comments on the Lutheran hypocrisy of caring for the dead babies yet they promote abortion. Endorsing the dating paradigm as a step towards marriage. Not stressing celibacy as the supreme form of self-giving that constitutes the very meaning of human sexuality. Failing to mention Christ s teaching on marriage. Treating sexuality as a separate subject instead of as something integrated into the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church. Indeed, as Life Site News observes, this program violates norms previously promulgated by the very same pontifical council. The Regionalization of Sin Not surprisingly, Paglia also supports the idea of admitting public adulterers in second marriages to Holy Communion in certain cases, having published between sessions of the laughably misnamed Synod on the Family a book promoting the overthrow of the Church s contrary teaching and discipline in defense of the indissolubility of marriage, affirmed under John Paul II, especially in Familiaris consortio. The Fatima Crusader Winter

28 Indeed, as Edward Pentin reported, members of the John Paul II Institute, known for their defense of his teaching in this regard, were systematically excluded from any participation in the Synod s two sessions. And now the Church is becoming internally divided over this apparent attack on her perennial Eucharistic discipline, with bishops in Argentina, Germany, Granada, the Philippines, the Archdiocese of Chicago (Cardinal Cupich) and even the Diocese of Rome declaring that certain public adulterers may be admitted to Holy Communion, while other bishops in the United States, Canada, Poland and the Diocese of Florence continue to uphold the teaching of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and all of Tradition that the admission of public adulterers to Communion is intrinsically impossible. Thus, incredibly enough, what is considered the sacrilegious and gravely sinful reception of Holy Communion in some dioceses, in keeping with Tradition, will now be viewed as a sign of mercy and pastoral charity in other dioceses. Never in 2,000 years has the Church ever witnessed such a development: the fracturing of her universal discipline and the consequent regionalization of sin. Conclusion It is no use denying reality: The Vatican is in the process of surrendering to the sexual revolution, and we are in the midst of an apocalyptic turn of events in the Church. After fifty years of reckless innovation in the name of the spirit of Vatican II, now even the fundamental precepts of the natural law concerning marriage and sexual morality are under attack from within. Here we must recall Benedict s explosive revelation concerning the content of the Third Secret of Fatima: As for the new things which we can find in this message [the Third Secret] today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the 28 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

29 Church Faced with this reality, we must, as always, look to Our Lady in the midst of the tempests that have assailed the Church from her beginning, this one being perhaps the greatest of all. For as Sister Lucia also wrote to Cardinal Caffarra in the letter mentioned above: Don t be afraid because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. However, Our Lady has already crushed its [the serpent s] head. God will not be mocked. Sooner or later He will bring this madness to an end, no doubt through the extraordinary mediation of His Most Holy Mother in keeping with the Message of Fatima the prophecy for our time. Our Lady of Fatima Pray for us! Sources: breaking/professor-josef-seifert-now-presentsdetailed-critique-of-amoris-laetitia-and-calls-uponpope-francis-to-rescind-its-heretical-statements/ bishop-kevin-farrell-you-say-bloggers.html congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ ccatheduc_doc_ _istruzione_en.html new-vatican-book-suggests-opening-door-tocommunion-for-remarried-catholics cardinal-what-sister-lucia-told-me.html encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_ _ divini-illius-magistri.html glauco.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/meeting_ Lesson2.2_Educator.pdf glauco.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/meeting_ Lesson2.2_Educator.pdf glauco.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/meeting_ Lesson2.2_Young.pdf glauco.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/meeting_ Lesson2.3_Educator.pdf glauco.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/meeting_ Lesson5.1_Young.pdf glauco.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/meeting_ Lesson2.2_Educator.pdf it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/contents6.0_ Educator.pdf glauco.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/meeting_ Lesson4.3_Educator.pdf Laetitia-Prime riflessioni % %29 ING.pdf en/speeches/2010/may/documents/hf_benxvi_spe_ _portogallo-interview.html The Fatima Crusader Winter

30 The Diabolical Disorientation of Luther Excerpts from Should a Catholic Celebrate Martin Luther? by John Vennari Why would a Catholic celebrate Martin Luther when his entire revolt was based on hatred of the Catholic Faith? Luther Attacks the Papacy A central focus of Luther s 1517 revolt was a full scale attack on the Papacy established by Christ. Luther did not object to the policies of this or that Pope, which is something even many saints have done. Instead, he objected to the papacy itself. Luther raved against the Holy See in his book Against the Roman Papacy: An Institution of the Devil.... Luther Attacks the Mass Upon the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the most sacred action of the Church, Luther showered vulgar contempt. He said that no sin of immorality, nay even of manslaughter, theft, murder and adultery is so harmful as this abomination of the Popish Mass. He further snarled that he would have rather kept a bawdy house or been a robber than to have blasphemed and traduced Christ for fifteen years by saying the Masses The great St. John Fisher, who lived at the time of Luther, expressed horror at Luther s impiety: My God! he wrote, How can one be calm when one hears such blasphemous lies uttered against the mysteries of Christ? How can one 30 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

31 without resentment listen to such outrageous insults hurled against God s priests? Who can read such blasphemies without weeping from sheer grief if he still retains in his heart even the smallest spark of Christian piety?... 5 Perversion of Scripture A key tenet of Luther s revolution is belief in the Bible Alone. In Luther s system, there is no Church commissioned with Divine authority to teach in Christ s name, but there is only the Bible as the single source of Divine Revelation.... At the same time, Luther manifested contempt for Scripture by altering texts to fit his own ideas. Luther rejected good works as a means to salvation. He had the audacity to change the 28th verse of Chapter III of St. Paul s Letter to the Romans to read, We hold that man is justified without works by the law of faith alone. Luther added the word alone to the sacred text to bolster his own heretical view. To any follower who objected to his perversion of the text, Luther thundered, If any Papist annoys you with the word [ alone ] tell him straightway: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so: Papist and ass are one and the same thing. 6 As is obvious, pride was one of Luther s chief faults. Boasting of the infallibility and superiority of his own teaching, Luther barked, Whoever teaches differently than I, though it be an angel from Heaven, let him be anathema. And further, I know I am more learned than all the universities And further, If Moses should attempt to intimidate you with his stupid Ten Commandments, tell him right out: Chase yourself to the Jews. 10 Luther Perverts Morality Luther, an ordained priest and consecrated Augustinian religious, broke his vow of celibacy and married a nun, also under the vow of celibacy. Luther encouraged many other priests and religious to break their vows and marry. Luther s approach was ultimately a surrender to sensuality and worldliness at a time of moral laxity. As Professor Thomas Neil explained, Luther s appeal to the clergy of his day was successful: He offered them wives and they wanted wives. He withdrew them from the monasteries and put them in the public square, and they wanted to live in worldly society. 11 The eminent convert David Goldstein wrote: Luther s writings regarding matters of sex are the opposite of things decent. Only in Socialist free- The Fatima Crusader Winter

32 love writings have we seen commendation of them. There Luther s lewd writings have won for him distinction as the classic exponent of healthful sensualism. 12 Too many times through the centuries, immoralities have disgraced the Christian ministry, but Luther has the unenviable distinction of having defended sex sins as necessary Luther s Cruelty Though Luther made use of the peasants of his time to popularize his revolt, which inadvertently aroused the poor classes to a rebellion that had long been cankering in their hearts, Luther then sided with the princes against the peasants. In a display of his inhuman cruelty, Luther advised the princes that because the peasants rob and rave like infuriated dogs dash them to pieces, strangle them and stab them, just as one is compelled to kill a mad dog. 15 Shattering of Christendom Father Thomas Scott Preston, in his work The Protestant Reformation, outlines the consequences of Luther s contention that every man is free to interpret the Scriptures as he sees fit. In theory, writes Father Preston, private judgment destroys both the creed and the possibility of faith. There can be no creed where each individual is the maker of his own faith. There can be no unity of faith where all matters of belief are referred to the individual judgement. One man is as good as another in finding out his own faith and in interpreting Scripture, or tradition, or history; and more than that, this private judgment is not simply his privilege but his duty. All are bound, even the ignorant and unlettered, to decide for themselves when there is no divine authority and divine witness, and thus you have as many creeds as there are individuals As Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, the eminent American theologian, observed, Martin Luther s alleged Reformation of the Church consisted in an effort to have people abandon the Catholic Faith, and relinquish their membership in the one true Church militant of the New Testament, so as to follow his teaching and enter into his organization. 18 Despite the sentimental ecumenical posturing of highlyplaced churchmen, there is no papering over Luther s arrogance and his grave errors against the Faith. In fact, the present ecumenical collaboration between Catholics and Lutherans is, in the words of Pope Pius XI, a counterfeit 32 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

33 unity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ. 19 Nothing to Celebrate The errors of Martin Luther and of the Protestantism he spawned could not be more contrary to the beautiful Catholic truths reiterated by Our Lady of Fatima. At Fatima, Our Lady reaffirmed key Catholic doctrines that Luther denied, such as the Mass and the Eucharist, the reality of personal sin, the need for Confession and to make reparation, the reality and centrality of the papacy established by Christ, the humility of submission to the perennial doctrine of the Catholic Church, and the charity one must show to others rather than Luther s cry to strangle and stab the peasants if they get out of hand. Our Lady of Fatima performed the astonishing Miracle of the Sun before 70,000 people on October 13, 1917, to prove the veracity of Her words. There is no contest between the beautiful truths uttered by Our Lady and the heretical venom spewed by Martin Luther. It is thus impossible to concede that a Catholic should celebrate Luther in any way whatsoever. Only those of a Protestant and Modernist mindset will do so. Martin Luther must be neither admired nor imitated. As the Church consistently taught for four centuries, his doctrine and the movement he started is only worthy of condemnation. The 500th Anniversary of Luther s destructive revolt should be a time for Catholics to mark the 1917 centenary of Our Lady of Fatima, and to pray and work for the conversion of Protestants to the one true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church. Entire Leaflet Footnotes: 1. The Facts Against Luther, Msgr. Patrick O Hare, p Ibid., p Luther, Hartman Grisar, S.J. (English translation, Herder), Vol. 2, p. 166; Vol. 4, p The Defense of the Priesthood, Saint John Fisher, translated by Msgr. P.E. Hallet, p Ibid, pp Amic. Discussion, I, 127 taken from Campaigners for Christ Handbook, David Goldstein, pp Facts About Luther, p Ibid, p De Wette, IV. p Works, Wittenberg, ed. V. 1573, taken from Goldstein, pp Makers of the Modern Mind, Thomas P. Neil, Ph.D., p Bebel, Woman, p. 78, New York, 1910 (from Goldstein). 13. Quoted from Goldstein, p Facts About Luther, p Makers of the Modern Mind, p Facts About Luther, pp Ibid., p The Council and Father Kung, Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, American Ecclesiastical Review, September Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, On Fostering True Christian Unity (against ecumenism), January 6, The Fatima Crusader Winter

34 HOLINESS Knowledge of God Knowledge of Self The following is a sermon given by Father Rodriguez during Holy Mass at our Our Lady s Army of Advocates conference held in St. Louis, Missouri. by Father Michael Rodriguez On May 13, 1917, toward the end of Her first apparition at Fatima, the Most Holy Mother of God opened Her hands and shed upon the three shepherd children, a highly intense light. Lucia reported, This light penetrated us to the heart and allowed us to see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in a mirror. At Fatima, the three young children Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta had an intense experience of God Himself, and in the light that is God, they understood more clearly, their own unworthiness and absolute need of God. This knowledge of God and consequent knowledge of self, was granted them by God through the Maternal Mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Father Jean Nicolas Grou, an 18th century French Jesuit priest and mystic, wrote the following: All Christian sanctity is contained in two things: the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of self. St. Augustine cried, Lord, that I may know Thee, and that I may know myself. The knowledge of God elevates the soul; knowledge of self keeps it humble. The knowledge of God raises the soul to contemplate something of the depths of the divine perfections, while knowledge of self lowers the soul to the abyss of its own nothingness and sin. The amazing thing is that the very knowledge of God which raises man up, at the same time humbles him by the comparison of himself with God. Knowledge of God and knowledge of self lead to 34 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

35 sanctity. This is precisely what took place at Fatima 100 years ago, and it occurred so that all men of our time may convert by coming to know the true God through Mary as well as their own nothingness and need for repentance. Repent and Cease Offending God This is the path to holiness and it is also the path to Heaven! Our Lady came to Fatima to urge us to repent of our sins (knowledge of self) and cease offending God God Who is infinitely holy, good, faithful and true (knowledge of God). We are living in desperate times, probably more so than at any other period in human history! Only a tiny percentage of Catholics today are maintaining the true Faith whole and pure in worship, doctrine, and morals. Times are desperate because man has turned away from God and His Holy Law. And what does God do? God, in His infinite mercy, sends His Mother to Fatima to remind souls of the marvelous truth about God (knowledge of God), which in turn, brings man to his knees in adoration, love, and repentance, as he acknowledges how unfaithful and treacherous he has been (knowledge of self). The 20th and 21st centuries are characterized, not by the knowledge of God, but by the rejection of God! The errors of Russia are errors about God and the true nature of man. Our times are characterized, tragically, by ignorance of God and an inflated sense of man. Knowledge of God does not mean that each individual may choose to believe in God as he or she pleases or sees fit, or according to personal interpretations of Sacred Scripture. It is God, Who reveals the truth about Himself and God has done this through the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church The True Religion The Catholic religion is the only true religion and all other religions are false because they convey false beliefs about God. Father Grou explains: The knowledge we must have is what God Himself has revealed concerning the Blessed Trinity. At Fatima, the Most Holy Mother of God brings light true knowledge of God to our dark world, e.g. the third appearance of the Angel of Portugal: Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I adore Thee The Fatima Crusader Winter

36 profoundly... and Sister Lucia s vision of the Blessed Trinity at Tuy, Spain, on June 13, True Knowledge of God Corresponds With Fatima It is remarkable to compare how Father Grou explains true knowledge of God with the various corresponding aspects of the Message of Fatima. Father Grou writes: We must know the scope of His power, His providence, His holiness, His justice and His love. We must know the extent and multitude of His mercies, the marvelous economy of His grace, the magnificence of His promises and rewards, the terror of His warnings and the rigor of His chastisements, the worship He requires, and the precepts He imposes. In a word, we must know what He is to us, and what He wills that we should be to Him. The Miracle of the Sun (October 13, 1917) manifests God s immense power, and the lives of Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta are a brilliant testimony to God s providence and love. The Guardian Angel of Portugal transmits a profound sense of God s holiness, and Our Lady s repeated pleas to pray, sacrifice and make reparation, manifest the incredible extent of God s mercy and the marvelous economy of His grace. The magnificent promises and rewards of God are at the heart of the Message of Fatima, e.g. the conversion of Russia and peace granted to the world through the Pope s Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the promise of salvation granted to those who carry out the Five First Saturdays Devotion (which includes the Sacraments). So, too, are His terrible warnings and rigorous chastisements, e.g. the vision of hell where the souls of poor sinners go, wars, persecutions of the Church, much suffering for the Pope, and the annihilation of nations. In sum, the Message of Fatima teaches us who and what God is to us and what He wills that we should be to Him. The Mother of God, All Holy, came to Fatima to bring us true knowledge of God and true knowledge of ourselves. We are, indeed, poor sinners who must stop offending God. Repent and make due reparation to God s infinite majesty. By the light of Fatima, Our Lady came to make us holy and guide us to Heaven. Amen. 36 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

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38 The Dismantling of Morals and Marriage Amoris Laetitia: A Ramped-up Program of Diabolic Disorientation by John Vennari Amoris Laetitia (the Joy of Love ) is the much anticipated post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis on marriage and the family. Released on April 6, 2016, it runs 260 pages, approximately 59,000 words. Father George Rutler wryly commenting on the ponderous length of modern Vatican documents noted that Francis text is nearly two-thirds the length of all the Vatican II promulgations combined. Immediately after its release, respected Italian journalist Antonio Socci wrote: The Apostolic Exhortation is an open act challenging two thousand years of Catholic teaching. And in Catholic circles people are shocked and struck dumb in bewilderment. Raymond Cardinal Burke, in a somewhat subdued response, called the document a personal reflection of the Pope that is not [to be] confused with the binding faith owed to the exercise of the magisterium. The eminent Professor Roberto De Mattei said, If the text is catastrophic, even more catastrophic is the fact that it was signed by the Vicar of Christ. In an unprecedented act, 45 conservative Catholic theologians recently issued a detailed Critical Analysis listing points in Amoris Latitia that are heretical, contrary to Sacred Scripture, scandalous and similar censures. They opened their study stating, The apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia has caused grief and confusion to many Catholics on account of his apparent disagreement with a number of teachings of the Catholic Church on faith and morals. Anyone who followed the tumultuous 2014 and 2015 Synods will not be surprised at the Exhortation. The Synods, the synod press conferences, 38 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

39 the synodal texts and the newlyreleased Exhortation represent one steady stream of modernist revolution. Amidst great drifts of verbiage some not bad, some remarkably tedious Francis effectively canonizes what is called situation ethics. Francis furtively opens the door for Communion to the divorced and remarried on a case-by-case basis, which destroys key elements of Catholic Moral Theology. In particular, his approach undermines recognition of intrinsically disordered acts, and once this is undermined in one area, it is undermined in all areas. What is an intrinsically evil act? It is an act evil in and of itself, no circumstance can justify engaging in such an act. Two examples: 1) abortion, and 2) knowingly and willingly condemning an innocent person to jail or to death. Such acts can never be justified by any mitigating circumstances. Yet Francis approach undermines recognition of intrinsically disordered acts, and once this is undermined in one area it is undermined in all areas. Progressivists immediately celebrated Amoris Laetitia as a radical shift. Situation Ethics Situation Ethics is the rejection of the universal, binding, immutable norms of morality. That means there is no such thing as a moral act that is intrinsically evil, there is no rule that admits no exceptions. According to this false approach, the morality of an act ultimately depends not on objective truth, but on the individual s given situation. The early advocates of situation ethics (as well as contemporary advocates) rebelled against what they call legalism, rigidity and certain fixed rules of morality that can never be violated. Such an approach, as the 1960s advocates of situation ethics complained, puts rules over people. Dr. Joseph Fletcher ( ) was the popular proponent of Situation Ethics of the 1960s, and his ideas spread. Fletcher, an Anglican clergyman (who published the landmark 1966 book Situation Ethics and ended his days as an atheist), insisted that in a given situation we need not always act according to objective morality, but rather we do the loving thing based on the our given circumstances. The Fatima Crusader Winter

40 The new pastoral approach coming from Francis Vatican delivers a new twist to the same error, claiming what is most important is to do the merciful thing, in light of the various concrete circumstances of the individual. Condemned by Pius XII Situation ethics pre-dates Fletcher s book. As early as 1952, Pope Pius XII denounced situation ethics as follows: It is an individual and subjective appeal to the concrete circumstances of actions to justify decisions in opposition to the Natural Law and God s revealed will. Pope Pius also warned in 1952: The distinctive mark of this morality is that it is in fact in no way based on universal moral laws, for instance, on the Ten Commandments, but on the real and concrete conditions or circumstances in which one must act, and according to which the individual conscience has to judge and choose. This state of things is unique and valid but once for each human action. This is why the supporters of this ethics affirm that the decision of one s conscience cannot be commanded by universal ideas, principles, and laws... (AAS, 1952, pp ) Not only do we have Pius XII s denouncement of Situation Ethics in 1952, but in 1956 Pius XII s Holy Office explicitly condemned Situation Ethics in all its forms. Unfortunately, this condemnation means nothing to the Modernist. A key tactic of modernism is to pretend the magisterium has not spoken on certain points. We find in Amoris Laetita an inordinate emphasis on the concrete situations of various individuals, and how this might supposedly mitigate acts that are objectively sinful. This is the language of situation ethics. Amoris Laetitia effectively starts with the person s situation, not with immutable moral principles. The norm of true sacramental marriage is depicted more as an ideal rather than a nonnegotiable Commandment of Christ. The document treats with inordinate sympathy Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried, as well as those who cohabitate, offering one excuse after the next for how such souls find themselves in their fallen condition. True Catholic precepts concerning the proper living of Catholic marriage are depicted as abstract and somewhat out of touch with people s concrete circumstances. 40 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

41 In 1952 and 1956, Pope Pius XII and his Holy Office condemned Situation Ethics in all its forms. Here are some samples from Amoris Laetitiae: #31: We do well to focus on concrete realities, since the call and demands of the spirit resound in the events of history #36: At times we have also proposed a far too abstract and most artificial ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real family (the text goes on to speak of this excessive idealization ). #301: The Church possesses a solid body of reflection concerning mitigating factors and situations [the document fails to affirm that there are no mitigating factors that can in any way justify acts that are intrinsically evil, such as fornication, adultery, contraception and homosexual acts - jv]. Hence it can no longer be said that all those who live in any irregular situations are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace. More is involved here than mere ignorance of the rule. A subject may know full well the rule, yet have great difficulty in understanding its inherent values or be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act different The Fatima Crusader Winter

42 and decide otherwise without further sin. #304: It is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual s actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of the human being. This effectively casts aside the general rule of law. Thus, as we saw in situation ethics, we start with concrete circumstances, and then shape our moral conclusion from this actual reality. This demands a new program of dialogue and pastoral discernment that plays down black and white moral absolutes. This then grants leeway, in certain cases, to claim that those in objective mortal sin can subjectively be living the life of grace, and be treated as those living the life of grace. The end result is a new approach that opens the door for the divorced and civilly remarried, based on the difficulties inherent in their concrete situation, to receive the Eucharist. Commenting on this point, the highly-respected theologian Father Brian Harrison notes the most troubling aspect of Francis new document is its treatment in Chapter 8 of those living in irregular sexual relationships. He continues: In notes 336 and 351 to paragraphs 300 and 305 respectively, the Holy Father breaks with the teaching and discipline of all his predecessors in the See of Peter by allowing at least some divorced and civilly remarried Catholics (with no decree of nullity and no commitment to continence) to receive the sacraments. Since the document says discernment can recognize that in a particular situation no grave fault exists owing to a variety of mitigating psychological and other factors, Francis affirms in n. 351 that the Church s help to these Catholics living in objectively illicit relationships can in certain cases... include the help of the sacraments. The context, notes Father Harrison, indicates this means reception of Penance and the Eucharist while these individuals continue to live in sin. Catholic Morality Dismantled This new approach effectively destroys true Catholic moral theology. Situation Ethics cannot be admitted in one instance and not in others. Once situation ethics is granted in one area, it undermines the reality of moral absolutes in every area, and all 42 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

43 morality is cast into a state of subjectivist flux. Likewise, in the case of opening the sacraments to those living in sin: once it is permitted to divorced and civilly remarried because of varying concrete circumstances, and once the situation determines moral action, we can expect cohabitating couples and even homosexuals to claim a right to the Eucharist in light of their varied circumstances. Chicago s own Cardinaldesignate, Archbishop Blase Cupich, stated publicly in October 2015 that he would give Holy Communion to a practicing homosexual who came to the conclusion in his conscience that he is free to receive the Eucharist, without confession and abandoning his homosexual lifestyle. Tragically, this same Archbishop Cupich was appointed by Pope Francis to be on a key bishop-making panel in the Vatican. Francis will also elevate Cupich to the dignity of Cardinal in the Consistory of November 19, Once moral absolutes are abandoned in the area of the divorced and remarried being admitted to the Eucharist, then moral absolutes will go on to be abandoned in other areas, such as abortion, contraception, homosexuality, euthanasia, medical ethics, just war, surrogate parenting, and the list goes on. With universal, binding, immutable norms of morality discarded, the practice of what we do becomes an alleged discernment based on the concrete circumstances of the individual, or even the gutinstincts of the individual. What about Natural Law? Natural Law, which determines morality based on the intrinsic nature of the act, and on the nature of man himself, is the genuine ethic of the Church and common sense. It is taught within the triedand-true realism of scholastic philosophy and theology; and as St. Pius X warned in Pascendi, Modernists despise scholasticism the categories, the clear distinctions that allow for no wiggle room. Liberals live in a climate of ambiguity. They hate scholastic precision of language. Likewise, Natural Law has always been the sworn enemy of situation ethics, as it insists there are certain acts that are intrinsically disordered, and no set of circumstances can justify The Fatima Crusader Winter

44 committing them. Not surprisingly, Francis Amoris Laetitia undermines Natural Law, claiming that natural law could not be presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather, it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions. (#305) In other words, Natural Law is only at the level of inspiration that one may take or leave as the individual works out his deeply personal process of deciding one s own moral behavior. The entire orientation of Francis Amoris Laetitae is contra Natural Law, contra black and white moral absolutes, prosubjectivist and pro-situationist. It is the death knell of true Catholic moral theology. Why Do Too Many Catholics Go Along With This? Why then do so many Catholics praise the document, or claim there is nothing substantially wrong with it? We can give five quick reasons: 1) Many Catholics priests and bishops included have not received a proper systematic, scholastic formation in philosophy and theology. Much of their formation is fragmented and deficient, due to the breakdown in seminaries and Catholic higher education as a result of Vatican II. They are not equipped to see the blatant problems staring them in the face. 2) Other Catholics believe they are duty-bound to defend and accept anything that comes from the Pope, even though as Cardinal Burke noted the document is a personal opinion of Francis and is not [to be] confused with the binding faith owed to the exercise of the magisterium. Yet we know from Pope Innocent III, St. Robert Bellarmine, Suarez and others that it is possible for a Pope to deviate from the truth, and if he does so, Catholics may resist and prevent his will from being enacted (see Father Gruner on this point, pages 20 and 55). 3) Many Catholics are unaware that Amoris Laetitia is the full-flowering of a crisis in moral theology, devastating the Church for over 50 years. Since the time of Vatican II, perverse theologians such as Fathers Joseph Fuchs, Charles Curran, Richard McBrien, Richard McCormick and 44 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

45 Inside the Lutheran Cathedral where Pope Francis participated in the Lutheran service, the Rapid Response team (from left) Patrick Ryan, Michal Semin, Joanna Swords, Coralie Graham and not shown in photo James Hanisch and Dan Smith, settled into a quiet corner to pray a Rosary for the conversion of misled souls. countless others advanced this situationist, consequentialist, non-absolutist approach to moral theology. Except for Charles Curran who was eventually silenced (after over 20 years of discussions with Rome) these other delinquent theologians ran rampant, spreading their poison throughout the Church for decades in seminaries and universities, and in onceprestigious Catholic journals such as Commonweal, and Theological Studies and America magazine (especially during the reign of John Paul II, who took no effective action against them). One strong voice of opposition was the late Msgr. William Smith, Professor of Moral Theology at Dunwoodie Seminary, who delivered countless lectures in the 70s, 80s and 90s against these perverse theologians and their situationist errors. The key errors he fought have all surfaced in Amoris Laetitia. 4) Too many Catholics succumb to the claim that the document does not change doctrine, and is therefore safe. Those who say this fail to The Fatima Crusader Winter

46 understand how modernism operates. Modernists, as St. Pius X warned, are full of deceit, and usually do not announce blatant changes in doctrine (although Francis makes the heterodox statement in #297: No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! which appears to discard the Catholic and Biblical truth that souls are condemned to hell). Rather, Modernism by using new language, new emphasis, presenting an overall new atmosphere ( Mercy and Compassion and accompaniment ), emphasizing certain aspects of Catholic truth while ignoring others, pretending the magisterium has not spoken on certain points, failing to affirm key doctrinal points that contradict its general trajectory, and introducing new praxis contrary to doctrine effects a revolution in Catholic attitude and behavior without explicit change of doctrine. This is exactly how Amoris Laetitia operates. Even conservative Philip Lawler referred to Francis document as a subversive text. 5) Then, of course, there are liberal Catholics who thrill at the new approach. The radical Cardinal Kasper celebrated that Amoris Laetitia effectively changes everything. Now, the next obvious question: Will this not result in a floodgate of sacrilege? Yes, a floodgate of sacrilege. By canonizing a situation ethics approach, a system which Pius XII and his Holy Office explicitly condemned, Francis opens the door for the divorced and civilly remarried to receive the Eucharist. He is personally responsible for opening the floodgates of sacrilegious Communions that will necessarily follow. Every Eucharistic sacrilege that follows as a result of this document will have his name written upon it. Pray a great deal for the Holy Father. What Do We Do? We cling to the perennial truths of the Faith, publicly resist this latest subversion, teach the truth to those within our sphere of influence, work to prevent Francis will from being enacted in this regard, and offer many prayers of reparation, such as taught us at Fatima, for the countless sacrileges that will result from Amoris Laetitia. 46 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

47 The Sacrament of Matrimony A Helpful Reminder for our Faithful From the Catechism issued by His Holiness Pope Pius X I. NATURE OF THE SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY Q1: What is the sacrament of Matrimony? Matrimony is a sacrament, instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ, which creates a holy and indissoluble union between a man and woman, and gives them grace to love one another holily and to bring up their children as Christians. Q2: By whom was Matrimony instituted? Matrimony was instituted by God Himself in the Garden of Paradise, and was raised to the dignity of a sacrament by Jesus Christ in the New Law. Q3: Has the sacrament of Matrimony any special signification? The sacrament of Matrimony signifies the indissoluble union of Jesus Christ with the Church, His Spouse, and our holy Mother. Q4: Why do we say that the bond of marriage is indissoluble? We say that the bond of marriage is indissoluble or that it cannot be dissolved except by the death of either husband or wife, because God so ordained from the beginning and so Jesus Christ our Lord solemnly proclaimed. Q5: Can the contract be separated from the sacrament in Christian marriage? No, in marriage among Christians the contract cannot be separated from the sacrament, because, for Christians, marriage is nothing else than the natural contract itself, raised by Jesus Christ to the dignity of a sacrament. Q6: Among Christians, then, there can be no true marriage that is not a sacrament? Among Christians there can be no true marriage that is not a sacrament. The Fatima Crusader Winter

48 Q7: What effects does the sacrament of Matrimony produce? The sacrament of matrimony: (1) Gives an increase of sanctifying grace; (2) Gives a special grace for the faithful discharge of all the duties of the married state. II. MINISTER RITE DISPOSITION Q8: Who are the Ministers of this sacrament? The Ministers of this sacrament are the couple themselves, who together confer and receive the sacrament. Q9: How is this sacrament administered? This sacrament, preserving as it does the nature of a contract, is administered by the contracting parties themselves, who declare, in the presence of the parish priest or another priest delegated by him, and of two witnesses, that they take each other in marriage. Q10: What use, then, is the blessing which the parish priest gives to the married couple? The blessing which the parish priest gives to the married couple is not necessary to constitute the sacrament, but it is given to sanction their union in the name of the Church and to invoke on them more abundantly the blessing of God. Q11: What intention should those have who contract marriage? Those who contract marriage should have the intention: (1) Of doing the will of God, who calls them to that state; (2) Of working out in that state the salvation of their souls; (3) Of bringing up their children as Christians, if God should bless them with any. Q12: How should those about to be married prepare themselves to receive this sacrament with fruit? In order to receive this sacrament with fruit, those about to be married should: (1) Earnestly recommend themselves to God, so as to know His will and obtain the graces necessary for that state; 48 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

49 In front of the Catholic-confiscated church now being used as the Lutheran cathedral. From here, Father Lindström led us all in a Rosary walk of Reparation through sites which were once Catholic but now destroyed or taken over by the Lutherans. (2) Consult their parents before making any promise, because obedience and the respect due to them demand this; (3) Prepare themselves by a good confession, or, if necessary, a general confession of their whole life; (4) Avoid all dangerous familiarity in word or act while in each other s company. Q13: Which are the principal obligations of married persons? Married persons should: (1) Guard inviolably their conjugal fidelity and behave always and in all things as Christians; 2) Love one another, bear patiently with one another, and live in peace and concord; (3) Think seriously of providing for their children, if they have any, according to their needs; bring them up as Christians, and leave them free to choose the state of life to which they are called by God. The Fatima Crusader Winter

50 Authentic Apostolic Teaching on Faith and Truth: Part III First, The Truth! In this final part of Father Phillipson s catechetical speech on the Apostles Creed at Our Lady s Army of Advocates conference in Boston, Massachusetts, he teaches us that, at all cost, the truth must come first. Part I is in The Fatima Crusader Issue 115 and Part II in Issue 116. A DVD of the entire speech can be ordered from The Fatima Center see page 63 for order information. by Father David Phillipson A lot of people are trying to attempt their moral behavioral Catholic life without being rooted in the truth. That is an error in and of itself! First, the truth. First, the mind needs to be converted to the truth and then you will begin to act in the truth. Many people are trying to act somewhat in a Catholic way without first changing their minds. That is the first place that change needs to occur. The catechism is the first recourse to conversion and to acting properly in a moral and Catholic way. The devil is doing everything he can to separate the faithful from the Shepherd, from the truth, in a diabolical way. However, the Creed is the solution because it brings together the faithful and Christ the Shepherd, because they both have the right half of the coin that go together. Not only does the symbol of the Creed attach us to God, it also brings us in communion with one another. We all hold the same half coin because we all hold the same Faith. Our Faith should be One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. That s a catechism question, by the way. What are the four Marks of the Church? That is what should characterize our faith. It needs to be Apostolic; it needs to come from the apostles. Therefore, when we read a catechism and meditate and reflect on a good catechism, we are reflecting on the Apostolic teaching. This Apostolic teaching is one, the same, whether it was 50 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

51 taught two thousand years ago or whether it s authentically taught today it s the same. So, as Catholics, we are all holding the same coin. We recognize each other because we are all holding the same symbol. That s important we should be united in Faith. Catholics All Believe the Same Thing The idea that Catholics can believe different things is a novelty! It s not Catholic. It s not Apostolic. There is an insistence that we all believe the same thing; we all hold the same coin by adhering to the Creed and understanding it the way the Church teaches not the way we think it should be understood; not the way you feel it should be understood: Well, I feel this way about that Article of the Faith. That doesn t cut the mustard. It s how the Church teaches, how the Church understands this Article of Faith that we should receive as coming from God, as the Church teaches. Therefore, our Faith should be one it should be the same. This is primarily what unites us to one another, and to God. I d like to dovetail a little bit regarding the definition of Faith. This is a very similar definition that is from the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas. I want to read this to bring out one or two particular points about what is entailed in the Faith. This comes from the old 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia. It is a definition quoted from the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas a definition of Faith: The act of the intellect assenting to a Divine Truth owing to the movement of the will, which is itself moved by the Grace of God. That s quite a lot and I m only going to touch upon a couple of things here. First of all, it is an act of the intellect assenting to Divine Truth. Owing to the movement of the will which is, itself, moved by the grace of God. Clearly, when we are making an act of Faith a supernatural act of Faith grace is required. There Is ONE God We might be able to reason I would imagine most adults would be able to figure this out there is one God. The proofs of St. Thomas Aquinas bear this out. Reason alone can attain to the fact there is one God. That is not an act of Faith. Believing The Fatima Crusader Winter

52 it on rational grounds is not an act of Faith. When I believe there is one God because God revealed there is only one God as the Church teaches then I am making an act of Faith in the God Who has revealed it. It requires grace to elevate my intellect and my will to assent or consent to that truth for the reason that God revealed it not because I can figure it out. For example, if I think it makes sense that Christ founded a Church and we would all come together occasionally for social purposes and have a good time on Sundays and so forth that is a rational approach to the understanding of the Church. The Catholic Church Is a Divine Institution But understanding the Catholic Church as a Divine Institution because God has revealed it to be such requires the assistance of grace. A supernatural act will always require grace. It is not an act based merely on reason alone. The Catholic Encyclopedia in discussing what an act of Faith is speaks about Faith in the objective and subjective mode. I ve been speaking about the Faith mostly in an objective mode that is, a body of truths that anybody can take up a book and read. These are the objective body of truths, a deposit of Faith. That s the object. There is a subjective dimension to Faith, which used to be the only problem, because what used to happen is that pretty much all the priests, bishops, and popes were already on board with the deposit of Faith. The only problem they may have had was how clear they were in explaining this or that point of the Faith. Usually, the only problem back then was the fact that some people might have had a difficult time assenting because they couldn t understand it, or they had a hard time getting motivated to make an act of Faith. The difficulty then would have been on the subjective side on our side: I have a hard time believing that, I need help. I need assistance. I need grace, I need prayer in order to come to make an act of Faith in these truths as the Church teaches. Unfortunately, what has happened today is that there has been so much emphasis on the subjective dimension or the difficulties of coming to an 52 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

53 Distribution of our leaflet on Luther to the thousands arriving for the papal Mass. See excerpts of the leaflet (page 30) which warns about the diabolical disorientation of Luther s Protestant revolt. The Fatima Crusader Winter

54 act of Faith that the objective bodies of truth have completely been obliterated. Today you might find people in the hierarchy saying: Well you know it doesn t really matter what you believe, so long as you believe it sincerely; so long as you believe with all your heart; that s what s really important. It doesn t really matter what you believe; it s just whether what you do believe, is believed from your heart, if you really feel it. There are legitimately two poles and they both have to come together. We want to make sure that when we read the catechism, and accept the Faith it s not just merely a head-game. It s not just: Oh yeah, God exists somewhere out there. Yes, I can figure out that there is a God. We Believe Through God and With Him No! That is not an act of Faith. That is not the will assenting to the truth because God has revealed it. Rather, when I believe in God and this is bringing us right back to the first article of the Creed I don t just believe that God exists I believe through Him, and with Him because I m being assisted by grace. In order to be assisted by grace, I need to be in Him. Remember, St. Paul said that we can t say that Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. We can t really say that and mean it with our minds and our hearts. Obviously, we can say that verbally off the top of our heads, but we can t say that and mean it without the assistance of the grace of the Holy Ghost. So there are the two sides the subjective and the objective sides. We need both. First and foremost, when we are talking about the Faith, we need to make sure that we re talking about a body of truths that the Church has always and everywhere taught. Secondly, that we are making our own personal act of assenting to those truths which the Church teaches. That is part of what an act of Faith is. I believe these, and all the truths, which the Catholic Church teaches because Thou hast taught them Thou, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived. These truths are the truths found in the catechism. These truths God has revealed. These truths are to be believed because God, Who reveals them, cannot lie and cannot be deceived. See page 63 to order Father Phillipson s entire speech. 54 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

55 Follow the Will of God Through the Intercession of His Holy Mother, Mary The following article is an excerpt of a speech given by Father Gruner at Cork, Ireland, only a month before he passed away on April 29, Through his words, he leaves behind us a spiritual legacy of his ongoing direction to save our souls and to continue spreading the Fatima Message of warning and hope. This article has been placed last in this issue of The Fatima Crusader so that the final message you receive from reading it are Father Gruner s inspiring words to you personally to presevere and never lose hope. by Father Nicholas Gruner, S.T.L., S.T.D. (Cand.) God Will Not Save Us Without Our Cooperation I ve often wondered if Our Lady will ultimately triumph, then what should I do? Why should I bother doing anything? After all, She s going to do it all. Then again, Saint Augustine tells us that God, Who created us without our consent, will not save us without our cooperation. If we are going to have the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it will be Her triumph; it will only be by Her merits and Her prayers. Nevertheless, we are expected to do our part. So, the plan of God is to make it obvious to every man, woman and child on the face of the earth that what was given to them is only through the intercession and the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Let me go through some facts with you. In 6,000 years of recorded history, there have been over 14,400 wars. I met a man from Eastern Europe who was a Three Star General. He was younger than I and he told me that, in his lifetime, he had already been in 23 wars! And there will be worse wars around the corner; worse in such a way that they won t be very long not like the Second World War but much more destructive. The Fatima Crusader Winter

56 I was just reading the prophecy of Marie-Julie Jahenny. In it, she says that three-quarters of mankind will be wiped out. God wants to prevent that but He has a condition He wants us to recognize that it s through the merits and the intercession of Our Lady. Without Her intercession, we don t deserve it. With Her intervention, we still don t deserve it. But God will give it to us because of Her. He insists that She gets the credit for it. How is She going to get credit for it? by the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. All of history is governed by God, and God has ordained that Russia is either the instrument of justice or of mercy. If we bring about the Consecration of Russia by our prayers, actions and our words and it s done in time, then Russia will be an instrument of mercy evangelizing the whole world. The whole world will become not just Catholic, but fervently practicing Catholics through this mentality of Russia. But Russia can t do that unless it s consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Consecration is a word which people, perhaps, don t understand. Some people think of it as an exorcism. Properly speaking, it is the setting aside of a person, place, or thing, or a country for a holy purpose. After David was anointed king by the prophet, he was able to kill a bear with his bare hands. Now, I know I wouldn t take on a bear if I had a choice but he did. He took on a bear and apparently a lion as well, and won both times! That is why King Solomon then allowed David to fight against Goliath, who was a giant of a man. King David was able to do all these things because he was consecrated; he would not have been able to do that without being consecrated. Mystery of Iniquity The Evil of Our Time There is a lot of evil in the world and this evil is organized. Paganism of our time pretends not to be organized but it s been organized for a long time; in fact, since the beginning of history. Father Paul Kramer s book, The Mystery of Iniquity, refers to a quotation from Saint Paul, stating that the mystery of iniquity is very operative in our time. It will bring about World War III and the annihilation of nations as well as the 56 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

57 The Latin Mass was celebrated on Sunday in an old museum church which we rented after being refused to celebrate Mass at one of the two Catholic churches left in Sweden. The Fatima Crusader Winter

58 enslavement of the rest of the world. This mystery of iniquity, of course, is working for the devil. It is not just bad angels who are working with the devil we are also talking about human beings who follow the devil. We should not be surprised that nature abhors a vacuum and so does the spirit. We are either going to work for and be faithful to God, or we are going to work for the devil. We may think we re doing our own thing but that s just a front for the devil to have you work for him. Unless we are working for God, we are working for the devil. As Our Lord said: Either you are for Me or against Me. We are coming to this conclusion of history but not a conclusion forever, because Our Lady told us that in the end Her Immaculate Heart will triumph, the Holy Father will consecrate Russia, Russia will be converted and a period of peace will be given to mankind. God Chose Us For This Time History will go on it s not the end of the world but we are coming to a corner, a change in history that has never before been seen by mankind. It s good for us to, perhaps, reflect upon the fact that we, ourselves, didn t choose to be born in this time, but here we are God chose us for this time. It s for us to rise to the occasion in both the temporal realm and the spiritual realm. The Third Secret Is a Prophecy Saint Paul told us in 2 Thessalonians that the Antichrist cannot come until the great apostasy. The great apostasy is talked about in the Third Secret because Cardinal Ciappi the papal theologian to Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II told us, among other things, that, in the Third Secret, it is foretold that the great apostasy in the Church begins at the top. When you use the words the great apostasy, there is only one great apostasy at least the only one that is predicted in Sacred Scripture. How do we know it s in our time? Looking around us, it certainly should be evident if you know enough about the faith. But we also have the prophecy of Scripture as well as Our Lady of Fatima. How do we know that? Sister Lucy said it is a foretelling of the 58 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

59 future. When she was asked why the Third Secret should not be released before 1960, she said: Because, it will be clearer then. But how is a prophecy clearer, except when it starts to be realized? We also know the end of the prophecy, because it ended with the words: In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph, the Holy Father will consecrate Russia. Russia will be converted and a period of peace given to mankind. We have not had the consecration of Russia and we don t have the period of peace. I think we can all agree upon that. We are in that period between 1960 and the great triumph of Our Lady. We are living in it, whether we like it or not. We are given a choice to do nothing or a choice to not listen to Our Lady which would be the wrong choice. The Church, by and large, has not listened, nor has it in the past. In the 1950 s, Pope Pius XII was pleased to let himself be called the Pope of Fatima for consecrating Russia but he did this without the bishops. Then again, he didn t have the benefit of my 37 years of publishing explaining that it has to be all the bishops, it has to be the name of Russia, and it has to be all together at the same time. Why are these precise conditions set down in the Message of Fatima? Because God wants Our Lady s triumph the grace of changing the course of history by stopping wars in their tracks to be credited to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The prophecies of Isaiah and Micah in the Old Testament tell us: They will turn their swords into plowshares. They will learn the art of war no more. Every nation has its code of warfare. In the 1960 s, I taught English to the Italians so they could go to school to learn how to fight wars with the Americans in Belgium, in NATO. The schools of war are everywhere. They Will Learn the Art of War No More Every generation learns how to conduct war. Well, after the triumph of Our Lady, they will learn the art of war no more. The next generation will not know how to conduct a war or even start a war. Today, we see a great attempt to start war in the Ukraine, and with Russia and with China. They will learn the art of war no more but something has to change. The Fatima Crusader Winter

60 We Must Amend Our Lives We are told at Fatima that war is a punishment for sin. On October 13, 1917 the day of the Miracle of the Sun Our Lady said: They [the faithful] must amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins. Do not offend the Lord Our God any more, for He is already too much offended! Lucy tells us that when Our Lady expressed these words, She was very sad. Lucy wished that she had some means to be able to express that to the world. But as Pope John Paul II said when he went to Fatima: The world is going in the opposite direction from the Message of Fatima. In 1917, as you know, homosexuality was not legalized, nor was abortion. As Pope John Paul II pointed out, sin has become institutionalized. That is, it has become an institution. Now, most of the governments all over the world most of them in the West are telling us it is a right to commit sin, a right to kill babies in the womb, a right to commit the act of sodomy. Well, sin is sin. God has not changed His mind. God tells us that these two sins that cry up to Heaven for vengeance, are well enshrined in our age and so we are reaping up a punishment. There Are Two Solutions One is for ourselves personally and one is for our country and for the world. As followers of Jesus Christ, we should love our neighbors and pray for their well-being even for sinners. The other solution is that we should be taking care of our own and ourselves especially. Let us be confident in God. If we do what God wants, God will take care of us. We have entered the time of confusion foretold in Scripture. But we must stand for the truth and adhere to the dogmas of our Faith. Follow the Truth We need to start thinking for ourselves when a prelate of any status, even the Pope, tells us to do something contrary to the faith, or contrary to what the Church has always done. The reason why we believe the faith is because it is the truth. How do we know it s the truth? Because God told us. God, Who is All Holy, cannot tell a lie and God, Who is All Knowing, cannot 60 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

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62 be mistaken. When God tells us something, we know it is true. When somebody contradicts what is true, you know it is false. As Scripture tells us, Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and forever. He is the same Person with the same teaching. Saint Paul tells us: If I, or even an angel from Heaven, were to come down and tell you a gospel different from what I preach to you, let him be anathema because he, in that case, would be telling you a falsehood. So, if an angel or an apostle could be condemned for teaching a wrong doctrine, so, too, can a Pope or bishop or a Cardinal or a priest. We are warned in Sacred Scripture that this will happen. You can find it in Chapter 20 of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Saint Paul, speaking to the priests in Ephesus, said: After I leave, wolves will enter in among you. He was talking to priests and bishops, telling them that from their own selves, some will speak perverse things to bring the faithful to follow them instead of Christ. If you look at the history of heresy, you have the great heresy of Arius, a priest. You have the heresy of Luther, a priest. Nestorius, the Archbishop of Constantinople, taught heresy. You have many other heresies which come from priests or bishops. It was a layman, on one occasion, in 429 AD, who recognized that something was a heresy and it wasn t even defined yet. He stood up in the church on Christmas day during the sermon at Mass and said: That s a heresy, and left. Half the church left with him. It was two years later that the Council of Ephesus was held, and defined against Nestorius. God Gave Us the Rosary As Our Special Help In These Times So we are living in the times that we didn t choose to live in, but we have special helps if we will take them. Lucy has told us that God has given more power to the Rosary in our day than ever before and that there is no problem in the world that cannot be solved by the prayer of the Rosary. So let us take up the Rosary. Padre Pio called it his weapon. Let us pray the Rosary every day. God Bless You 62 The Fatima Crusader Winter 2016

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64 Procession of Our Lady of Fatima led by Father Håkan Lindström begins its hour-long unprecedented witness to the traditional Catholic Faith in Lund, Sweden where Lutheranism is a major majority. ~ INSIDE ~ In Defense of Catholic Truth by Coralie Graham... 2 The Fatima Center in Sweden Defends Catholic Truth by Michal Semin... 4 Wisdom of the Saints: Our True Happiness by Father Håkan Lindström... 8 The Ecumenical Fiasco in Lund, Sweden by Christopher A. Ferrara Our Duty To Resist! by Father Nicholas Gruner Has the Vatican Surrendered to the Sexual Revolution? by Christopher A. Ferrara The Diabolical Disorientation of Luther The Fatima Center Leaflet by John Vennari Holiness: Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Self by Father Michael Rodriguez The Dismantling of Morals and Marriage by John Vennari The Sacrament of Matrimony by Pope St. Pius X Authentic Apostolic Teaching on Faith and Truth: Part III First, the Truth by Father David Phillipson Follow the Will of God by Father Nicholas Gruner... 55