Traditional Roman Catholic Thoughts

Traditional Roman Catholic Thoughts

Reintroducing Logic and Reason to the Age of Sentimentalism

Fatima and the Third Secret

Our Lady of Fatima was instrumental in bringing me into the Catholic Church. I honestly don’t know if I’d be Catholic today if it weren’t for her. Of course, I certainly hope I would have eventually come into the Church, but it was after reading about Fatima and having a minor miracle happen that pushed me into diving head first into Catholic thought.

statue-of-our-lady-of-fatima

It’s intriguing to me that after having come into the Church via a rather traditional path I ended up down the road of Modernistic thinking. Over time, I became your typical neo-Catholic who thought that Vatican Two was the greatest thing to happen to the Church and how all the popes since then were de facto saints. After all, I was a convert, what did I know about Catholicism?

Having no Catholic foundation when I read about Fatima, I didn’t understand everything I was reading. What I did know was that the message of Fatima, praying for the conversion of the world to prevent souls from going to Hell was a vastly different message than what most Christians were teachings me. The Jesus of Fatima wasn’t the happy, happy, joy, joy Jesus, but a serious Jesus, who died for our sins and demanded that we follow Him and His teachings.

I never went back to review Fatima until relatively recently as a good friend asked me about what I thought about the Third Secret. I had thought it was a done deal. The consecration was “accepted by Heaven”. Russia stopped their communistic ways. The Third Secret was revealed by the Vatican headed by Cardinal Ratzinger. I figured it was a closed chapter.

However, in the last week, two important stories have broken from One Peter Five in regards to the Third Secret of Fatima.

The first story came Thursday where Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand revealed that she had been told by Cardinal Luigi Ciappi (1909-1996) of the true Third Secret, which revealed: “that a great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”

The second story broke Sunday and tells how Pope Benedict XVI confided in a close priest friend, Fr. Ingo Dollinger, about how “there is more than what we published.” Specifically, the part of the secret which was unpublished discusses “a bad council and a bad Mass” which was to happen shortly.

This secret was given by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917 to Sr. Lucia. It speaks volumes as to why Pope John XXIII did not reveal the 3rd Secret in 1960 like he was requested and passed it on to one of his successors stating that the Third Secret “does not concern my pontificate.” If the Third Secret reveals that apostasy would “begin at the top” and would allow for a “bad council and a bad Mass,” then it explains that the Second Vatican Council and the Novus Ordo is not pleasing to God, despite being told the opposite these last 50 years.

Next year marks the 100th anniversary of Fatima. It is important that we take heed of her warnings. Go to confession, pray the Rosary daily, pray for the conversion of the world. Pray for the Pope that he consecrates Russia like he and his predecessors were asked to do. The world is in spiritual shambles around us, and Our Lord and Our Blessed Mother have given us a special role in rebuilding it.

Jeff May 17, 2016 3 Comments Permalink

Only The Last 50 Years of Catholicism Matters

For some time now, I have argued that the majority of Catholics view the Church as only being relevant since the Second Vatican Council. So much so, I wrote a parody article explaining how the Church was founded in 1963 when the Holy Spirit descended upon those present at Vatican 2.

We can see evidence of this when we analyze the footnotes of documents that mainstream Catholic authors, as well as the Vatican, has released over the last couple of decades. The number of citations we see to only post-conciliar popes and Vatican 2, in comparison with the number of citations before Vatican 2 demonstrates that many prelates are only looking for examples that go as far back as 1963. Yes, some of these citations do include references to Sacred Scripture, as well as to some saints such as St. Thomas Aquinas.

Lest we forget, St. Thomas Aquinas lived from 1225-1274 and is a Doctor of the Church. His masterpiece The Summa Theologica is considered to be the go-to book on all things theology and Catholic thought. St. Thomas Aquinas’ work has been so influential that his process for thinking out issues was named “Thomistic”, and many Popes declared that his work is the prime example of how Catholics should approach their education.

To better illustrate my point, Donald Cardinal Wuerl released a graphic the other day in which he discusses the number of citations Pope Francis uses in Amoris Laetitia that point back to the pontificates of previous popes.

Pontifical Continuity

Based on Cardinal Wuerl’s graphic, we see that there is a total of 107 citations. Of those 107 citations, only 14 or 13% of them are to St. Thomas Aquinas. 87% of the citations are from the last 50 years of a 2,000-year-old religion. If we are to believe Cardinal Wuerl, then 87% of Pope Francis’ citations are from the last 2.5% of Catholicism’s life-span. Surely there weren’t a few more points that couldn’t have been taken from the vast majority of our faith? You would be hard-pressed to find any document written in the last 50 years that would have even a 50:50 ratio of pre-Vatican 2 to post-Vatican 2 citations (excluding the documents of the Second Vatican Council, of course).

Even more alarming is how the majority of the quotes which are obtained from Pope St. John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio are taken severely out of context. The same can be said about the quotations taken from St. Thomas Aquinas. Both LMSChairman and the Remnant published articles detailing how Pope Francis misrepresented both of these saints in Amoris Laetitia.

When prelates use only a subset of the Magisterium of the Church while formulating documents, it certainly lends credit to the common misconception that the Church’s teachings were changed (Spoiler: some of them were) during the Second Vatican Council. For the Hermeneutic of Continuity to be true, you would expect that all of the unchanging teachings of the Church be used, not just those that further the agenda of the enemies who have put themselves into prominent positions.

Jeff May 1, 2016 2 Comments Permalink