Note: The following is a commentary on the new book The
Devil’s Final Battle, compiled and edited by Father Paul
Kramer.
God sends
His signs and miracles sparingly. In the Gospel according to St. John, a royal
official of Capharnaum whose son is at the point of death comes to Our Lord and
implores that He heal the boy. Our Lord admonishes the man by saying, "Unless
you see signs and wonders, you do not believe" and then effects the requested
cure, the cure that also confirms the official and all his household in
faith.
Today we
may think it odd that so few who lived when Christ walked the earth and
witnessed or heard of the extraordinary miracles He enacted became His
followers. Our Lord’s admonishment speaks to our human weakness: we demand
signs and wonders but these are no guarantee that we will turn our hearts to
God.
If we
consider the account in Exodus of the contest between Moses and the Pharao, the
point is again clear. Moses is fearful that the children of Israel will not
believe that God has appeared to him. God says He will provide signs so that
the people will believe: the transformation of the rod to the serpent and back,
and Moses’s hand being changed from whole to leprous and back. Moses shows
these signs to the people and they believe.
Pharao is a
harder case. He refuses to act on the will of God to free the people of Israel.
He then witnesses the miracle of the rod changing into the serpent, but finds
his own magicians who can perform a like wonder. The sign does not touch him,
for God has hardened his heart, we are told. Then Moses changes the waters of
Egypt to blood and Pharao is still unmoved. Then God sends more punishments on
the land as signs — the plagues of frogs, sciniphs, flies, the murrain of
the beasts, boils, hail, locusts. Pharao both hardens his own heart, we learn,
and has his heart hardened by God, a perfect balance between God’s
providential design and free will. But still he refuses to do God’s will
and let the Children of Israel go. Then God sends the great darkness on the
land of Egypt and the terrible punishment of the death of the firstborn. The
Pharao permits his land to be devastated by punishment before he will comply
with a clear request from God.
These
thoughts come to mind after reading a chilling but compelling new book, The
Devil’s Final Battle, edited and compiled by Father Paul Kramer. The
very first chapter of this landmark work in recent Catholic thought states very
clearly, "God does not waste miracles. Throughout salvation history — from
Joshua, to Moses, to the Twelve Apostles, to the saints of the Catholic Church
down through the centuries — God has granted miracles for one overriding
purpose: to serve as a divine credential for a witness who invokes the miracle
in His name. When God chooses a witness, and then associates an authentic
miracle with the testimony of that witness, we can know for certain that the
witness is worthy of belief." (p. 5)
The miracle
being spoken of is a miraculous event of our own time — the Miracle of the
Sun that took place on October 13, 1917 in Fatima, Portugal; the witness is
Sister Lucy. This miracle was an extraordinary event, certainly the most
astonishing occurrence of the 20th Century, one that puts in the shade such
puny human accomplishments as a walk on the moon or the invention of a picture
box for the living room.
Tens of
thousands gathered as they had been told that there would be a sign from Heaven
visible that day. As they watched, the sun, which they could view without any
problem, suddenly began to twirl in the sky like a pinwheel, changing colors as
it moved. It then seemed to dislodge from its usual sphere and begin hurtling
toward earth, directly at the assembled multitude. They screamed and fell to
the ground, only to look up and see the sun back in its usual place and shining
in its usual way. Their clothes and the ground were now miraculously dry.
The
Devil’s Final Battle begins with this amazing miracle and then goes on
to make a brilliant connection between this most significant event in Catholic
Church history (and thus in the history of mankind) and the other defining
moment in the history of Holy Mother Church in the 20th Century — the
Second Vatican Council. If the Miracle of the Sun is a great sign from God to
seal the veracity of the testimony and requests of Heaven as reported by the
witness of Sister Lucy, then the Second Vatican Council may be seen as the
triumph of Pharao in the Church, the temporary victory of a group of rulers who
have had their hearts hardened by God and who have hardened their own hearts.
The current
crisis, the ongoing chaos that rocks the Catholic Church and the world, can
then in this context be very simply understood — it is the punishment from
God because of the refusal of those in authority to comply with the will of
Heaven as expressed by a certified witness. Are we at the beginning of our
plagues? Are worse punishments ahead? Do we face darkness and death?
The history
of Fatima should be well known to most Catholics. The great work on the subject
is the three-volume study by Frère Michel of the Holy Trinity, The
Whole Truth About Fatima, a comprehensive study. In this new book, Father
Kramer begins from two vantage points — the first the Miracle of the Sun
that is described in detail, along with a series of stunning first-person
accounts of eyewitnesses to the event. He also chronicles the opposition that
surfaced from the beginning of the Fatima appearances. He recounts the
antagonism shown at the time by Arturo de Oliveira Santos, the Mayor of Ourem,
the county seat to which Fatima belongs. Arturo Santos was not only the Mayor
of Ourem but also the president of Ourem’s newly-founded Masonic lodge.
His anti-Catholic fervor had begun to show results with fewer Catholics
attending Mass, an increased divorce rate and a declining birth rate. In the
midst of the monthly apparitions, on August 11, 1917, the Mayor of Ourem
demanded that the three young visionaries, Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco, be made
to stand trial to expose their falsehood. This furious rage at the messages
being reported by the children drove the man to threaten the children with a
horrible death — boiling in oil — unless they admitted to being
liars.
The fierce
opposition to the Church manifested in such behavior exposes the profound
hatred of the Masons to Holy Mother Church. The book follows this antagonism
through the Masonic movement as well as the open opposition of the communist
party in many countries around the world at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Freemasonry had expressed their purpose quite explicitly in the notorious
Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, a precise and practical
agenda for the destruction of the Catholic Church. Testimony from those who
deserted the Communist ranks, such as Douglas Hyde, Bella Dodd and ex-KGB
officer Anatoliy Golitsyn, makes clear that the Communists had their own agenda
for the destruction of the Catholic Church. That the two groups worked together
in realizing their nefarious goals cannot be doubted. Especially alarming is
their intention to succeed in this destruction by placing their supporters
within the Church where they could more easily undermine the venerable
institution.
The point
becomes fairly evident — the hatred of the Church by the
ever-strengthening forces of the Masons and the Communists became a hatred of
the traditions and the dogmas and the doctrines of the Church by many of the
very churchmen charged with protecting and passing on those very pillars of the
Faith. When the messages from Fatima and the accompanying commands reached
these authorities, they showed little interest. Over time, their successors
would mount fierce opposition. Yet seeking to hide this opposition from the
general public, they undermined Our Lady’s Message while pretending to
love and honor Her. But as all the evidence shows, they came to hate the
messages and requests of Fatima with the same vehemence first exhibited by the
Mayor of Ourem. In fact, in their deranged minds and twisted souls, to subvert
the desires of Heaven as expressed to the visionaries would be the best way to
subvert the Church.
The
Devil’s Final Battle follows with precise detail and convincing
documentation the dual paths of the Fatima messages and the undermining of the
Church until the two meet at the time of the Second Vatican Council. Looking
back from the perspective of the previous forty years, any sane observer could
only conclude that the so-called "new Pentecost" of that ecumenical council in
the early sixties was nothing other than a deliberate and devastating assault
on the Catholic Church and the Catholic Faith. There is no need to do a
complete compilation of the ruin upon ruin heaped up by the reforms of the
Council and the subsequent dismantling of every aspect of the Traditional
Catholic Faith and its beliefs and rites. One need only walk down the block to
the closed local parish church or the new ecumenical worship space, or ask a
few basic questions of a young person taught in the classroom of a "Catholic"
school, or look at the flamboyant presbyters being turned out by the local
seminary, or visit the wicca retreat at the local convent. The Catholic Faith
as a leavening presence in the world has been destroyed almost everywhere.
If the
Second Vatican Council was the bomb launched at the heart of the Church, the
apparitions and messages of Fatima were meant to be the shelter. The book
documents the process by which Sister Lucy transcribed the third part of the
Message from Fatima and the process of its transfer to Rome. The first two
parts of the message had been made public. The directive concerning the third
could not have been clearer. When Bishop da Silva of Leiria, not wishing the
burden of knowledge, refused to read the contents of the sealed envelope,
Sister Lucy asked him to promise her that, in the words of Canon Galamba as
quoted in the book, "it would definitely be opened and read to the world either
at her death or in 1960, whichever would come first".
The Vatican
instead decided to suppress the document. There can be little doubt that the
message concerns apostasy in the Church. This volume presents very convincing
evidence. To have revealed it according to the clear design of Heaven would
have changed the course of the Council and the subsequent history of the Church
for the remainder of the century. The bomb would have been defused or the
faithful could have had a place of shelter from which to fight back against the
enemy.
The message
being suppressed, the Second Vatican Council went forward. As it went forward,
the official attacks from Rome on the Fatima Message increased:
"Although
the Church recognizes the Fatima apparitions" said the anonymous Vatican 1960
press release announcing that the Pope would not release the Third Secret, "she
does not pledge herself to guarantee the veracity of the words which the three
shepherds claim to have heard from Our Lady".
The author
of the book comments:
"Claim to
have heard? Could there be any doubt about the veracity of their testimony
after the Miracle of the Sun? Could there be any question that they had been
given an authentic prophecy from Heaven in view of the complete fulfillment of
every prediction in the message thus far — from the imminent end of World
War I, to the spread of Russia’s errors, to World War II and the election
of Pius XI? (p. 52)
This was
but the beginning of the attacks. From questioning the veracity of the seers,
the Vatican authorities moved on to silence Sister Lucy and to bar from public
access and public view the 5,000 documents in 24 volumes which Father Alonso
compiled between 1965 and 1976. The book states: "The crime had begun."
If Sister Lucy had stated that the third part of the Secret should be revealed
in 1960 because it "would be clearer then" that clarity arrived in harsh and
painful reality with the Council and its fruits. Those fruits are documented
and explained dispassionately under the following headings, each one embodying
a weight of error and violated tradition that would over the next forty years
weigh on and seem to squeeze the very life out of the Church: "The ‘Errors
of Russia’ Infiltrate the Church"; "The Neo- Modernists Triumph at Vatican
II"; "A Whole New ‘Orientation’ for the Church"; "The Church
‘Opens’ Itself to ‘Dialogue’ with Communists and Masonic
Enemies"; "The Church ‘Reconciles’ Itself with Liberalism"; "The
Teaching that the Roman Catholic Church Is Exclusively the One True Church of
Christ Is Abandoned"; "The Church No Longer Seeks the Return of Heretics and
Schismatics"; "The Social Kingship of Christ Is Abandoned"; "The
‘Civilization of Love’ Replaces the Conversion of Pagans". A loyal
child of Holy Mother Church must read this list and weep. This is what the
Church in our time has become; this is the nonsense her modern Churchmen have
proclaimed.
Not content
with promulgating these new and outlandish ideas, the Vatican II Church has
also labored to destroy any remnant of the Traditional Church and the
Traditional Faith. In a chapter entitled "The Demolition of Bastions" we read,
as a military commander used to read the lists of the dead after a major
battle, the list of destruction wrought by the reformers: "The Destruction of
the Liturgy"; "The Destruction of Theology"; "The Demolition of the
Church’s Soul". There can be no doubt of the accuracy of the observation
that we are witnessing "The Passion of the Church".
How could
the Fatima Message have prevented this? Why does it represent such a threat to
the Churchmen of the New Order? A list of the doctrines that have come under
fiercest attack in recent years are presented with stunning boldness in the
words of the Blessed Mother as spoken to the shepherd children at Fatima:
- She spoke of the doctrine of Heaven;
- She spoke of the doctrine of Hell;
- She showed the children Hell;
- She spoke of the doctrine of Purgatory;
- She spoke of the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist;
- She spoke of the doctrine of the Sacrament of
Penance;
- And She also spoke, indirectly, of the Social
Kingship of Jesus Christ when She conveyed Heaven’s command that Russia be
consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart and converted to the Catholic
religion — the very thing the Vatican’s negotiators described as
"outdated ecclesiology" in the Balamand Declaration. (p. 85)
One reads
this list and its presentation of the Faith of All Time and must conclude with
the bold assertion of this remarkable book: "There is a fundamental opposition
between the ‘new’ Church ushered in by Vatican II and the Church of
all time, as represented by the Message of Fatima."
The battle
lines are clearly drawn with the Catholic Church of Tradition on one side, a
Church shining brightly in all Her glory in the Apparitions and Messages of
Fatima and confirmed by the Miracle of the Sun, and the New Order Church of
Modernism, a Church of novelties embracing the world and its dark lord and
revealed in its scandals and barrenness and apostasy. But there can be little
doubt: this is a real battle and unlike any warfare the world has ever known.
This is a spiritual battle, a cosmic battle, not unlike the battle of the
Angels in Heaven when Lucifer first refused to submit, some say because at that
time he realized he would be made subservient to a human woman. The war between
the devil and the Lady is now in its final stages and in the balance hang
millions of souls. We know the outcome; She also has informed us as part of the
Fatima Message that in the end "My Immaculate Heart will triumph," which means
we know who will win and who will fall back into hell, defeated and
despairing.
Such
teleological certainty, however, does not mean that the struggle will be quick
or easy. The ferocity of those holding power in the Vatican today, should make
that obvious. They are aggressive and unbending in their opposition; they hate
those things that Our Lady of Fatima embodies and expresses. Much of the book
documents this antagonism and the lengths to which the purveyors of power in
today’s Rome will go to quash the Will of Heaven.
Misrepresentations and untruths pour forth like pollution muddying a clear
stream. The Consecration of Russia has been done, they say, and Russia is
converted. The book documents the insanity of such an assertion by documenting
the horrors of modern-day Russia, from the highest abortion rate in the world
(the average Russian woman having eight abortions during her years of
fertility) to the subsequent plummeting birth rate, to the highest rate of
alcoholism in the world, to the rise of Satanism, to rampant homosexuality, to
being the world center for the distribution of child pornography, to the open
assault on the Catholic faithful, the Catholic priesthood and the Catholic
Church. These are the fruits of the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary?
The other
major deception occurred in the summer of 2000, when the Vatican supposedly
released the third part of the Fatima Message and provided its own
interpretation. The book makes clear that the paper the Vatican put forward
containing the Fatima secret may have been four pages torn from Sister
Lucy’s notebook, but it most definitively was not the single sheet on
which she wrote the Third Secret sent years before to Rome. The interpretation
was also absurd: that the vision of a "bishop in white" walking through a
devastated city over many corpses and then himself being shot to death
was actually a prophecy of the assassination attempt on John Paul II in
1981.
Not content
with that particular beanball, they pitched a few other curve balls toward the
public, including such nonsense as the possibility that Sister Lucy imagined
the whole episode after doing spiritual reading and that all Catholic mouths
should be shut permanently and never again breathe a word concerning Our Lady
of Fatima and Her revelations. Their intent could be discerned even by the most
secular of minds and the Los Angeles Times on June 27, 2000, reported on
the smoke-and-mirrors announcement with a headline that read, "Catholic Church
Unveils Third Secret: The Vatican’s Top Theologian Gently Debunks a
Nun’s Account of Her 1917 Vision That Fueled Decades of Speculation."
More than
the Vatican’s "top theologian" were involved in this public insult to the
Catholic faithful, and public insult to the Mother of God. One of the glories
of the new book is that it names and thoroughly explores the roles played by
each of the four prelates who are quite rightfully lined up as an anti-Fatima
cabal. They are Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Archbishop
Tarcisio Bertone and Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos. These prelates
have colluded to stifle the Mother of God, to silence Sister Lucy, to obscure
the Message of Fatima and to promote a new Church that stands in opposition to
all of Catholic Tradition. They deserve to be exposed; they should be forced to
answer to the Catholic faithful even before they stand before their Maker and
are made to answer to Him. Their opposition puts both world peace and millions
of souls in peril.
The
conclusion that this provocative but courageous volume draws is that the
decomposition and destruction of the Catholic Church over the last forty years
has direct connections with the suppression of the Message of Fatima, a Message
that quite obviously warned us of the hijacking of the Church, by liberal
ideological terrorists that was about to occur. They have had good reason to
bury the Secret, to harass those who have kept it before the public eye, to
concoct their own false substitute message with a foolish interpretation, a
move as damaging as their newly concocted Church has been to the Catholic
Faith. They have no interest in what God has willed for His Church and His
people as evidenced through centuries of saints and bishops and martyrs and
mystics and simple Catholic souls. They are liberals; they know better than the
Almighty. They will dismantle the old and construct the new, shatter the
stained glass and gut the sanctuaries, trash the rites and impose trendy
alternatives. They have no fear of God and thus they have little wisdom; their
arrogant schemes have brought us to this sorry state.
We know the
state of the current Church. The Faithful are few in number and their children
are apostate, never having learned the Faith in the soul-dead Catholic schools;
the hierarchy has quietly supported a plague of perversion unleashed by
homosexually-dominated seminaries; the priests have seized the opportunities
offered by the protestantized liturgy to display their pathetic and vapid
imaginations in debased worship — Elvis masses, pumpkin masses, clown
masses, guitar masses, motorcycle masses, star war masses, any mass but the
Mass of All Time, the unbloody sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ offered by a
devout and holy priest on a real altar as reparation to the Father and for the
salvation of mankind. As the number of real Masses has dwindled, the unholy
sacrifice of innocent blood on the operating tables of abortion doctors has
drenched the world. The Prince of Darkness cannot contain his demonic glee.
This is his hour.
This
truthful and shattering account of betrayal is appropriately titled. The
Devil’s Final Battle is ongoing and the last year has given us hints
of what we may yet expect: terrorism and economic collapse, social chaos and
cultural horror, madness and despair and death. Our Lady of Fatima predicted
"many nations will be annihilated". We all know we are on the brink of the
fulfillment of that harsh vision. And Rome responds by telling us to keep our
mouths shut and never again speak of Fatima.
May God
bless Father Kramer and all those other devout Catholic souls who have worked
together to produce this superb and essential book.
By speaking
out, they have fired a major salvo in the ongoing battle, and their weapon,
this powder keg of Catholic Truth, will surely assist Our Lady’s ultimate
victory. Do not sit on the sidelines for you are in the midst of the campaign,
as is every soul now living in the world: read this book, share it with your
friends. Then do your part as Our Lady’s soldier and supporter and wield
the ultimate weapon: grab your Rosary, kneel down and pray for the Consecration
of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
That event,
when it happens, will be more amazing and will be viewed by more astounded eyes
than was the breathtaking Miracle of the Sun.
David Allen White
Ph.D. is Professor of Literature at Annapolis Naval Academy and is the author
of the books Shakespeare A-Z and The Mouth Of The
Lion.
- from Catholic
Family News, November 2002 |
