The Consecration Has Been Done?

MOSCOW. May 6 (Interfax) - Executive Secretary of the Russian Conference of Catholic Bishops Igor Kovalevsky has admitted that some of the steps taken by Vatican representatives in Russia could be qualified as proselytism (conversion of the Orthodox population to Catholicism).

"Certain facts cause surprise and may be interpreted as proselytism. However, this has not been done deliberately," Kovalevsky told a briefing following the first session of a joint working group for relations between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches

"The Catholic Church has no plans of pursuing missionary activities in Russia. Russia is not New Guinea or some African country where it is necessary to preach Christianity. Russia is a country with more than one thousand years of Christian culture," he said.

"The Vatican is not pursuing any proselytism policy. It has no goal of making Russia a Catholic nation," Kovalevsky said.

The Russian Orthodox Church, however, has expressed skepticism over the Vatican representative's remarks.

Well, folks, there you have it. "The Vatican is not pursuing any proselytism policy. It has no goal of making Russia a Catholic nation." Although this is not really shocking news whatsoever, this statement is nevertheless a reminder of the state of apostasy that has seized the Church in the wake of the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions that began to be ushered in during the pontificate of Pope John XXIII and thereafter. Sure, yes, the way was being paved in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the Modernists and their fellow travelers. However, it was not until 1958 that the Modernists began to come out into the open to take advantage of the "opening up to the world" desired by Pope John XXIII. The Second Vatican Council and the Consilium that planned the synthetic concoction known as the Novus Ordo Missae helped to propagate novelties and innovations that were alien to the whole patrimony of the Church, including the very language used in official church documents and by popes in their various pronouncements. Let's be brutally frank: to assert that the Catholic Church is not interested in the conversion of souls from Orthodoxy to Catholicism is to assert a belief that is alien to Catholic truth and representative of the sort of syncretist, pan-Christianity specifically condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in 1928.

The religion of modernity and Modernism being spouted by Pope John Paul II and his functionaries has devastated the vineyard of Christ's true Church. This religion of modernity and Modernism has accepted as an irreversible, if not actually desirable, fait accompli of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Pronouncements by the popes prior to 1958 mean next to nothing. There are minimal footnotes to any pre-conciliar document or pronouncement emanating from the Vatican since 1965, with that trend becoming increasingly noticeable in the twenty-five years and nearly seven months of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. The Holy Father is constantly apologizing for the "errors" committed by the Church in the past. It causes one to wonder if everything that every pronouncement and pastoral practice of the Church prior to 1958, including a strict fidelity to the words of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to bring everyone into the true Church was misguided and in need of "correction" and/or apology in light of the "new insights" we have gained into man and the world (see Gaudium et Spes, for example, and Paragraph 15 of the 1997 version of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal).

When you think about it, however, the errors of modernity and Modernism are really the errors of Russia. How ironic that the executive secretary of the Catholic bishops' conference in Russia is quoted as saying that the Church has no desire to make Russia a Catholic nation. One of the most important fruits of the actual consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart by a pope and all of the world's bishops is the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith, the same sort of miraculous, widespread and almost instantaneous conversion that took place in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America after Our Lady appeared to Saint Juan Diego on December 9, 1531. That a representative of Catholic bishops is denying the necessity of converting Russia is to prove that the Holy Father has had no intention to faithfully fulfill Our Lady's Fatima requests, which is why he has avoided naming Russia and has substituted the word "world" instead in his various attempts to circumvent Our Lady's specific requests.

There are several reasons for this. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has given a good deal of empirical evidence that he really does not believe in the Fatima message. How can he? How can a man understand properly the Triumph of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart when he states that all of our hearts have been made immaculate and it is that "triumph" that Our Lady was talking about at Fatima? How can any Vatican official or a representative of the Church in Fatima, Portugal, claim with a straight face that the Fatima message was about "inter-religious dialogue," no less attempting to turn Fatima into a quite active center of religious indifferentist, making room for Baal and his friends, as I noted in a column in The Remnant six months ago? The prophecies of Anne Katherine Emmerich are being proved true by the very words and actions of the Holy Father and his functionaries as a veritable new world religion, one that disparages the doctrines and traditions of the true Church, is posited as representing an unbroken link to the past.

This disbelief in the Fatima message was more or less expressed by Pope John XXIII himself when he read the Third Secret of Fatima in 1960. According to the late Silvio Cardinal Oddi, Pope John said, "This is not for our time." Over twenty years later, however, Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, O.P., who was for many years the theologian of the papal household, said that the Third Secret of Fatima dealt with apostasy within the Church, starting at the very top. Please tell me how not seeking the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith is not apostasy.

Another reason for the failure to consecrate Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart is Pope John Paul II's desire to visit Russia before he dies. Laboring under the delusion that Bolshevism ended when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dissolved on December 25, 1991, the Holy Father believes that he will help to foster a rapprochement between the Russian Orthodox Church, which has fiercely persecuted Roman Catholics over the centuries, and the Catholic Church that will serve as a sort of model for similar arrangements with other Orthodox churches in the East. Thus, Our Lady's specific requests must be ignored and de-constructed of their actual meaning. After all, modern man has a "better way" than to believe so simplistically that all it is going to take to solve the problems of modernity is to actually consecrate a country to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Indeed, Pope John Paul II admitted in Crossing the Threshold of Hope in 1993 that he had given little thought to Our Lady's Fatima message prior to his being shot and nearly killed in 1981 on the sixty-fourth anniversary of Our Lady's first apparition to Sister Lucy and her two cousins, Blessed Jacinta and Francisco Marto, on May 13, 1917. How can a priest in Europe, of all places, which had been so convulsed by events that could have been prevented if Our Lady's words had been heeded, live thirty-five years of his priesthood (1946-1981) without giving much thought to Our Lady's apparitions in Fatima? Little children in Catholic schools in the United States were taught to foster devotion to Our Lady's Fatima requests. What sort of intellectual pride is it that prevents a priest and a bishop and an archbishop and a pope from paying careful attention to an actual appearance of the Mother of God to warn about the dangers posed by the spreading of the errors of Russia? Indeed, for all of Pope John Paul II's opposition to crimes against the inviolability of innocent human life, he does not seem to realize that it was in Russia under Vladimir Lenin that abortion on demand first reared its ugly head under state sponsorship in the year of 1918. Abortion is thus very much one of the errors of Russia that crystallize the problems of modernity.

Indeed, the errors of Russia are really the errors of modernity and Modernism. That is, the errors enshrined in Bolshevism are the crystallization of false philosophies and currents that began to issue during some aspects of the Renaissance before taking full bloom in the aftermath of the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of Freemasonry. These errors include the deification of man, the denigration of the necessity of belief in the Incarnation of the God-Man and His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross as absolutely essential for the right ordering of men and their societies, the promotion of international organizations as the secular substitutes for the true Church, and the ultimate arrogation unto the State of all matters pertaining to life and death without regard for the Deposit of Faith the God-Man had entrusted to the Catholic Church. These errors have influenced every nation in the world, including the United States of America (as I noted in an article in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos in June of 2000, an article that I will endeavor to put in the "Golden Oldies" section of this website once I complete a lot of important work for Christ the King College), bar none. These errors have influenced the true Church in countless numbers of ways, including the prayers contained in the Novus Ordo Missae.

The devil knows all of this. As is pointed out in The Devil's Final Battle, which was edited by Father Paul Kramer (who has done outstanding work concerning the absolute right of all priests to offer the Traditional Latin Mass without any permission from the Vatican or a local bishop), the devil's minions in Freemasonry do not need a Freemason on the Throne of Saint Peter. No, all they need is someone who will speak in a religious indifferentist sense about a "civilization of love" rather than about the Social Reign of Christ the King. They need popes and bishops and priests and nuns to exalt the international organizations and ideologies that are meant to undermine and replace the Faith rather than to speak in the clearly unambiguous language of Catholic tradition. Even absent a consideration of actual infiltration of the ranks of hierarchy, there is ample proof that the errors have metastasized at a rapid pace within the Church, thus making her an accomplice, either witting unwitting, in the spread of the errors of Russia in all aspects of popular culture.

That is why, you see, that the problems plaguing the Church and the world are intertwined and why they will not be ameliorated until and unless some pope actually does consecrate Russia with all of the world's bishops to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Father Nicholas Gruner has been right all along. Despite all of the protestations of others that the consecration has been accepted by Heaven, the statement of the executive secretary of the Catholic bishops' conference in Russia proves that the Vatican has no interest--and I mean no interest--in the conversion of Russia whatsoever.

This is not the first time that there has been a failure on the part of the Church to heed a warning from Heaven. Sister Magaret Mary Alacoque pleaded with King Louis XIV and the bishops of France to do as Our Lord had told her He wanted done: to consecrate the entire country of France to His Most Sacred Heart. The year was 1689, one hundred years before the French Revolution, which can be seen as a punishment upon France for the failure to do exactly what Our Lord wanted done. King Louis XIV permitted the bishops of France to consecrate Paris to the Sacred Heart, but not the entire country. This is eerily similar to the repeated efforts of Pope John Paul II, who has gone to Fatima several times since his 1981 assassination attempt and who beatified Francisco and Jacinta (while permitting the Third Secret of Fatima to be misrepresented and deconstructed of its actual contents), to consecrate the "world" to the Immaculate Heart of Mary without publicly stating the word "Russia." Indeed, even the word "consecrate" has been replaced by the word "entrust," thereby further disobeying the Mother of God. Just as France has not yet recovered from the effects of the disobedience of a worldly king and the bishops eager to cater to him in the latter part of the seventeenth century, so will it be the case that the Church herself--and thus the world--will continue to suffer as long as this pope and his successors to refuse to do exactly what Our Lady said must be done to effect the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart.

We never despair in the face of the problems that face us. We are Catholics, people who know that our own sins are responsible (to one extent or another) for the sad state of the Church and the world. We know that the jaws of Hell will never prevail against the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. That does not mean, however, that the Devil will not win a few battles in the larger life of the Church, just as he wins more than a few battles in our own lives. The final victory though belongs to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady is with us during these unprecedented times in the history of her Divine Son's Church. It is thus important to rededicate ourselves to her patronage, especially during the month of May, which belongs to her. As her consecrated slaves, we must give her everything we experience on a daily basis, trusting that she will use what we give her in ways that may only become manifest to us clearly in eternity, please God we persevere until the point of our dying breaths in states of sanctifying grace.

We must pray to Our Lady of Fatima so that some pope--and we pray it is Pope John Paul II--will actually do what she said must be done to stop the errors of Russia. We may never live to see this done, sad to say. However, we must believe that Our Lady wants to use us as instruments to help bring this about, especially as we pray her Most Holy Rosary and keep the five First Saturdays.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us, pray for the Pope, pray for the bishops, for a re-conversion of the hierarchy so that Russia may converted once and for all to the one, true Church that is the Catholic Church. % 0D

Editor, The Remnant: The Letter of Dr. Branca Paul as reproduced in your recent article by Mr. Sungenis (02/29/04 Remnant) only states the former’s opinion of what Sister Lucia said; it does not quote what she said. As such, in my opinion, it has no probative value as to what Sr. Lucia actually did say.

I’ve heard a Doctor of Theology support the 1984 consecration on the basis that “an intention to consecrate Russia” suffices to make an act of consecration of Russia valid “no matter what words are used.”

It seems sufficiently apparent that such a humble and obedient and charitable sister as Sr. Lucia, as evidenced over so many years of religious life, would accept the claim that Russia was consecrated on the basis of such an argument – especially if she is being told that there are controversies over her former statements in regard to the non-validity of the consecration of 1984.

In this one needs to suppose no malice or any particular coercive force against her. Nor does her statement make the consecration valid or not. The validity of a consecration is something objective, and it requires that the thing to be consecrated be named, either properly or in with a term(s) referring to it. If the Pope had said, “I consecrate Russia” or “I consecrate that nation which Our Lady asked at Fatima to be consecrated,” or even “I consecrate every nation, all together and each individually,” then one would presume the validity. If “entrust” is used instead or Russia is not named or adverted to in the singular, the no consecration of Russia as a singular nation takes place. Nor can the Pope advert to some prior secret intention of naming Russia under the words, “especially those nations which are most in need…”, as such a public religious act requires a public intention for validity and these words refer to a collective, not to singulars.

God is Truth, and He will not accept as true what is based on error. It is unsound to presuppose the consecration of 1984 as valid in the case of Russia: no testimony for or against by Sister Lucia would change that conclusion, since it depends not on her testimony or even that of some vision or angel, but theological principles and the public acts of the Roman Pontiff, who himself said in public prayer to Our Lady in Rome after this consecration, “the consecration which You still await from us.”

Br. Alexis Bugnolo
Letters to the Editor, The Remnant, April 15, 2004 issue.

Gruner's a nut, though.

Well, folks, there you have it. "The Vatican is not pursuing any proselytism policy. It has no goal of making Russia a Catholic nation."

Russia is already a Catholic nation. Her people are not heretics, but dissidents or schismatics. You can't convert someone to a faith they already hold. In the same vein, do the Polish National Catholics, SSPX, or Chinese Patriotic Association need to change faiths, or do they need to submit to the governance of the Bishop of Rome? Obviously the later, unlike say, a Methodist or a Muslim.

Let's be brutally frank: to assert that the Catholic Church is not interested in the conversion of souls from Orthodoxy to Catholicism is to assert a belief that is alien to Catholic truth and representative of the sort of syncretist, pan-Christianity specifically condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in 1928.

This implies that Orthodoxy is not Catholicism, when the Russian Orthodox actually style themselves Catholic (we call them Orthodox in English for the same reason we term the East Roman Empire "Byzantium", and for the same reason we don't call eastern Christians what they and their Muslim opressors call themselves "Romans" - to avoid historic truths uncomfortable to the dominant Anglo-French perspective in the west). For this to be true, for Orthodoxy to be "not Catholicism", one should be able to date the exact moment when Russia, which started off Catholic in AD 988 in union with both Old Rome and Constantinople New Rome, suddenly gave it up and stopped being Catholic, and changed the faith it originally professed in AD 988. I'm waiting for this data to be given. If of course, it can be shown that Russia never changed her faith professed, then of course, she remains as Catholic as she was in AD 988. The question then becomes why Rome, and K'yiv and Moscow, are no longer in mutual communion. A solid data point for this is the unions of Brest and Uzhorod in 1596 and 1646. Those diocese entering communion with Rome were not required to renounce any errors, but rather to profess obedience to Rome as the first, while changing nothing of their faith and worship (at least that's what the treaties said). If there was nothing to be renounced in 1646, one wonders what has changed since then.

One of the most important fruits of the actual consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart by a pope and all of the world's bishops is the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith,

Where was this ever promised? This gets bandied about so much that most take it for granted, yet it seems to have no foundation in fact. Its rather like the intention Pius XI added to the Leonine Prayers, that they be said for the "liberty of the Church in Russia" (something accomplished in 1991 with the fall of Communism). This has been thoroughly confused with this same nebulous "conversion of Russia to Catholicism" by too many who should know better.

the same sort of miraculous, widespread and almost instantaneous conversion that took place in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America after Our Lady appeared to Saint Juan Diego on December 9, 1531.

The conversion of Mexico and Latin America was hardly "instantaneous", but was a work spread out over many decades. Otherwise, the Franciscans would have no reason to be planting new missions to convert heathen Indians in New Spain in the late 1700's.

Over twenty years later, however, Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, O.P., who was for many years the theologian of the papal household, said that the Third Secret of Fatima dealt with apostasy within the Church, starting at the very top. Please tell me how not seeking the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith is not apostasy.

This must be that "real third secret" being hidden by the Satanists in the Vatican. Right? Have I got that straight?

Laboring under the delusion that Bolshevism ended when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dissolved on December 25, 1991

Aparently this is a delusion must Russians, Ukranians, and Central Europeans are suffering too. The delusion of thinking they are no longer opressed by Bolshevik atheists.

How can a priest in Europe, of all places, which had been so convulsed by events that could have been prevented if Our Lady's words had been heeded, live thirty-five years of his priesthood (1946-1981) without giving much thought to Our Lady's apparitions in Fatima?

Probably because it is totally irrelevant to teaching the Catholic Faith. Had the message been a vital part of Catholicism, Our Lord would have included it in the public revelation entrusted to His Holy Apostles.

Little children in Catholic schools in the United States were taught to foster devotion to Our Lady's Fatima requests.

This sure worked wonders in ensuring the post-war generation raised on this type of Catholicsm "kept the faith" didn't it? What sort of intellectual pride is it that prevents a priest and a bishop and an archbishop and a pope from paying careful attention to an actual appearance of the Mother of God to warn about the dangers posed by the spreading of the errors of Russia?

Indeed, for all of Pope John Paul II's opposition to crimes against the inviolability of innocent human life, he does not seem to realize that it was in Russia under Vladimir Lenin that abortion on demand first reared its ugly head under state sponsorship in the year of 1918.

Abortion was legal in the US prior to around 1860. Most countries have long allowed fairly widespread abortion under various guises such as "life of the Mother" excuses. Is there a significant moral difference between allowing "abortion on demand" and abortion by craniotomy for various medical excuses? I don't see it. Maybe Mr. Drolesky does.

Abortion is thus very much one of the errors of Russia that crystallize the problems of modernity.

Around the same time Russia was allowing widespread abortion, so were other places, such as Weimar Germany.

So the primary sicknesses coming out of England are somehow the errors of Russia in Communism? I must have missed the Protestant-Freemason conspiracy that was behind Bolshevism being introduced in Russia as Leninism.

These mental gymnastics are difficult!

Russia is already a Catholic nation. Her people are not heretics, but dissidents or schismatics.

Schismatics are not Catholics.

For any man to be able to prove his Catholic faith and affirm that he is truly a Catholic, he must be able to convince the Apostolic See of this. For this See is predominant and with it the faithful of the whole Church should agree.[7] And the man who abandons the See of Peter can only be falsely confident that he is in the Church.[8] As a result, that man is already a schismatic and a sinner who establishes a see in opposition to the unique See of the blessed Peter[9] from which the rights of sacred communion derive for all men.[10]
9. This fact was well known to the illustrious bishops of the Eastern Churches. Hence at the Council of Constantinople held in the year 536, Mennas the bishop of that city affirmed openly with the approval of the fathers, "We follow and obey the Apostolic See, as Your Charity realizes and we consider those in communion with it to be in communion with us, and we too condemn the men condemned by it."[11] Even more clearly and emphatically St. Maximus, abbot of Chrysopolis, and a confessor of the faith, in refer ring to Pyrrhus the Monothelite, declared: "If he wants neither to be nor to be called a heretic, he toes not need to satisfy random individuals of his orthodoxy, for this is excessive and unreasonable. But just as all men have been scandalized at him since the chief man was scandalized, so also when that one has been satisfied, all men will doubtless be satisfied. He should hasten to satisfy the Roman See before all others. For when this See has been satisfied, all men everywhere will join in declaring him pious and orthodox. For that man wastes his words who thinks that men like me must be persuaded and beguiled when he has not yet satisfied and beseeched the blessed Pope of the holy Roman Church. From the incarnate word of God Himself as well as from the conclusions and sacred canons of all holy councils, the Apostolic See has been granted the command, authority and power of binding and loosing for all God's holy churches in the entire world."[12] For this reason John, Bishop of Constantinople, solemnly declared-and the entire Eighth Ecumenical Council did so later—"that the names of those who were separated from communion with the Catholic Church, that is of those who did not agree in all matters with the Apostolic See, are not to be read out during the sacred mysteries."[13] This plainly meant that they did not recognize those men as true Catholics. All these traditions dictate that whoever the Roman Pontiff judges to be a schismatic for not expressly admitting and reverencing his power must stop calling himself Catholic. (Bl. Pius IX, Encyclical Quartus Supra On the Church in Armenia)

Make that "your" response. By the way, here are a few Catholic theologians on the matters of papal infallibility and supremacy:

"Many of the Eastern Fathers who are rightly acknowledged to be the greatest and most representative and are, moreover, so considered by the universal church, do not offer us any more evidence of the primacy. Their writings show that they recognized the primacy of the Apostle Peter, that they regarded the See of Rome as the prima sedes playing a major part in the Catholic communion-we are recalling, for example, the writings of St. John Chrysostom and of St. Basil who addressed himself to Rome in the midst of the difficulties of the schism of Antioch-but they provide us with no theological statement on the universal primacy of Rome by divine right. The same can be said of St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. John Damascene" (Yves Congar, After Nine Hundred Years (New York: Fordham University, 1959), pp. 61-62).

"It does sometimes happen that some Fathers understood a passage in a way which does not agree with later church teaching. One example: the interpretation of Peter’s confession in Matthew 16:16-19. Except at Rome, this passage was not applied by the Fathers to the papal primacy; they worked out an exegesis at the level of their own ecclesiological thought, more anthropological and spiritual than juridical (Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions" (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 398).

"I believe that the East had a very poor conception of the Roman primacy. The East did not see in it what Rome herself saw and what the West saw in Rome, that is to say, a continuation of the primacy of St. Peter. The bishop of Rome was more than the successor of Peter on his cathedra, he was Peter perpetuated, invested with Peter's responsibility and power. The East has never understood this perpetuity. St. Basil ignored it, as did St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. John Chrysostom. In the writings of the great Eastern Fathers, the authority of the Bishop of Rome is an authority of singular grandeur, but in these writings it is not considered so by divine right" (Catholic historian Pierre Batifoll, cited by Yves Congar, After Nine Hundred Years (New York: Fordham University, 1959), pp. 61-62).

"To my knowledge, nobody seems to have challenged Tierney's contention that the entire first millenium is entirely silent on papal infallibility and that, therefore, Vatican I's contention concerning the early roots of the doctrine is difficult to maintain. Practically the only objection of some substance raised against Tierney seems to be his interpretation of the twelfth century decretists: is the future dogma of Vatican I implicitly contained in them? Even after granting for the sake of argument that it is-something that Tierney does not concede in any way-the formidable obstacle of the first millenium remains untouched. In my opinion his critics have fired their guns on a secondary target (the medieval decretists and theologians) leaving the disturbing silence of the first millenium out of consideration. Nobody seems to have been able to adduce any documentary proof to show that this long silence was illusory, that the doctrine was-at least implicitly-already known and held in the early centuries. It is not easy to see how a given doctrine can be maintained to be of apostolic origin when a thousand years of tradition do not echo it in any way" (Catholic theologoan Luis Bermejo, Infallibility on Trial (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1992), pp. 164-165).

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