The faith of a new Athanasius

ATHANASIUS Schneider, a Roman Catholic Bishop of Kazakhstan, is a member of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra. He responded to the Document of Abu Dhabi, which Pope Francis and Imam At-Tayeb of Al-Azhar University in Cairo signed in the name of peace and the fight against violence. We can read in this Document that “the pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives.”

At a theological conference in Rome in December 2010, Bishop Athanasius proposed the drafting of a “new Syllabus” in which the Pope would correct misinterpretations of the Acts of the Second Vatican Council. His proposal was ‘shelved.’ Now, he has published a Declaration, The Gift of Filial Adoption, dated February 9, five days after the signing of the Abu Dhabi Document, which he condemns line by line in the name of the Catholic Faith.

Anton Schneider was born in Tokmok, in the Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan, on April 7, 1961, of German parents from the Black Sea of Odessa, Ukraine. As a child, Anton and his three siblings attended clandestine Masses with their parents. In 1973, shortly after secretly making his First Communion, Anton emigrated with his family to Rottweil, West Germany.

In 1982, he joined the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra, a Roman Catholic religious order, in Opus Sanctorum Angelorum, in Austria. He received the religious name of Athanasius, and was ordained a priest on March 25, 1990. Since 1999, he has been teaching patristics at the Seminary of Mary Mother of the Church in Karaganda.

On June 2, 2006, he received episcopal consecration from Cardinal Angelo Sodano at the altar of the Chair of Saint Peter in the Vatican. He was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Astana, Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference of Kazakhstan.

In addition to German and Russian, Bishop Athanase Schneider is fluent in English, French, Italian and Portuguese, and knows Latin and Greek. Below is the full text of the Declaration of Pope Francis, followed by that of Bishop Athanasius, and our commentary.

“HUMAN FRATERNITY,” NATURALISATION OF CHARITY

In the name of God who has created all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity, and who has called them to live together as brothers and sisters, to fill the earth and make known the values of goodness, love and peace;

In the name of innocent human life that God has forbidden to kill, affirming that whoever kills a person is like one who kills the whole of humanity, and that whoever saves a person is like one who saves the whole of humanity;

In the name of the poor, the destitute, the marginalised and those most in need whom God has commanded us to help as a duty required of all persons, especially the wealthy and of means;

In the name of orphans, widows, refugees and those exiled from their homes and their countries; in the name of all victims of wars, persecution and injustice; in the name of the weak, those who live in fear, prisoners of war and those tortured in any part of the world, without distinction;

In the name of peoples who have lost their security, peace, and the possibility of living together, becoming victims of destruction, calamity and war;

SURNATURALISATION OF FRATERNITY

In the name of human fraternity that embraces all human beings, unites them and renders them equal;

In the name of this fraternity torn apart by policies of extremism and division, by systems of unrestrained profit or by hateful ideological tendencies that manipulate the actions and the future of men and women;

In the name of freedom, that God has given to all human beings creating them free and distinguishing them by this gift;

NATURALISATION OF THE FAITH

In the name of justice and mercy, the foundations of prosperity and the cornerstone of faith;

In the name of all persons of good will present in every part of the world;

In the name of God and of everything stated thus far; Al-Azhar al-Sharif and the Muslims of the East and West, together with the Catholic Church and the Catholics of the East and West, declare the adoption of a culture of dialogue as the path; mutual cooperation as the code of conduct; reciprocal understanding as the method and standard.

We, who believe in God and in the final meeting with Him and His judgement, on the basis of our religious and moral responsibility, and through this Document, call upon ourselves, upon the leaders of the world as well as the architects of international policy and world economy, to work strenuously to spread the culture of tolerance and of living together in peace; to intervene at the earliest opportunity to stop the shedding of innocent blood and bring an end to wars, conflicts, environmental decay and the moral and cultural decline that the world is presently experiencing.

NATURALISATION OF THE HOPE

We call upon intellectuals, philosophers, religious figures, artists, media professionals and men and women of culture in every part of the world, to rediscover the values of peace, justice, goodness, beauty, human fraternity and coexistence in order to confirm the importance of these values as anchors of salvation for all, and to promote them everywhere.

NEITHER FAITH NOR BAPTISM

This Declaration, setting out from a profound consideration of our contemporary reality, valuing its successes and in solidarity with its suffering, disasters and calamities, believes firmly that among the most important causes of the crises of the modern world are a desensitised human conscience, a distancing from religious values and a prevailing individualism accompanied by materialistic philosophies that deify the human person and introduce worldly and material values in place of supreme and transcendental principles.

While recognising the positive steps taken by our modern civilisation in the fields of science, technology, medicine, industry and welfare, especially in developed countries, we wish to emphasise that, associated with such historic advancements, great and valued as they are, there exists both a moral deterioration that influences international action and a weakening of spiritual values and responsibility. All this contributes to a general feeling of frustration, isolation and desperation leading many to fall either into a vortex of atheistic, agnostic or religious extremism, or into blind and fanatic extremism, which ultimately encourage forms of dependency and individual or collective self-destruction.

History shows that religious extremism, national extremism and also intolerance have produced in the world, be it in the East or West, what might be referred to as signs of a “third world war being fought piecemeal”. In several parts of the world and in many tragic circumstances these signs have begun to be painfully apparent, as in those situations where the precise number of victims, widows and orphans is unknown. We see, in addition, other regions preparing to become theatres of new conflicts, with outbreaks of tension and a build-up of arms and ammunition, and all this in a global context overshadowed by uncertainty, disillusionment, fear of the future, and controlled by narrow-minded economic interests.

We likewise affirm that major political crises, situations of injustice and lack of equitable distribution of natural resources – which only a rich minority benefit from, to the detriment of the majority of the peoples of the earth – have generated, and continue to generate, vast numbers of poor, infirm and deceased persons. This leads to catastrophic crises that various countries have fallen victim to despite their natural resources and the resourcefulness of young people which characterise these nations. In the face of such crises that result in the deaths of millions of children – wasted away from poverty and hunger – there is an unacceptable silence on the international level.

It is clear in this context how the family as the fundamental nucleus of society and humanity is essential in bringing children into the world, raising them, educating them, and providing them with solid moral formation and domestic security. To attack the institution of the family, to regard it with contempt or to doubt its important role, is one of the most threatening evils of our era.

We affirm also the importance of awakening religious awareness and the need to revive this awareness in the hearts of new generations through sound education and an adherence to moral values and upright religious teachings. In this way we can confront tendencies that are individualistic, selfish, conflicting, and also address radicalism and blind extremism in all its forms and expressions.

The first and most important aim of religions is to believe in God, to honour Him and to invite all men and women to believe that this universe depends on a God who governs it. He is the Creator who has formed us with His divine wisdom and has granted us the gift of life to protect it. It is a gift that no one has the right to take away, threaten or manipulate to suit oneself. Indeed, everyone must safeguard this gift of life from its beginning up to its natural end. We therefore condemn all those practices that are a threat to life such as genocide, acts of terrorism, forced displacement, human trafficking, abortion and euthanasia. We likewise condemn the policies that promote these practices.

Moreover, we resolutely declare that religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood. These tragic realities are the consequence of a deviation from religious teachings. They result from a political manipulation of religions and from interpretations made by religious groups who, in the course of history, have taken advantage of the power of religious sentiment in the hearts of men and women in order to make them act in a way that has nothing to do with the truth of religion. This is done for the purpose of achieving objectives that are political, economic, worldly and short-sighted. We thus call upon all concerned to stop using religions to incite hatred, violence, extremism and blind fanaticism, and to refrain from using the name of God to justify acts of murder, exile, terrorism and oppression. We ask this on the basis of our common belief in God who did not create men and women to be killed or to fight one another, nor to be tortured or humiliated in their lives and circumstances. God, the Almighty, has no need to be defended by anyone and does not want His name to be used to terrorise people.

This Document, in accordance with previous International Documents that have emphasised the importance of the role of religions in the construction of world peace, upholds the following:

– The firm conviction that authentic teachings of religions invite us to remain rooted in the values of peace; to defend the values of mutual understanding, human fraternity and harmonious coexistence; to re-establish wisdom, justice and love; and to reawaken religious awareness among young people so that future generations may be protected from the realm of materialistic thinking and from dangerous policies of unbridled greed and indifference that are based on the law of force and not on the force of law;

– Freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as well as the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept;

– Justice based on mercy is the path to follow in order to achieve a dignified life to which every human being has a right;

– Dialogue, understanding and the widespread promotion of a culture of tolerance, acceptance of others and of living together peacefully would contribute significantly to reducing many economic, social, political and environmental problems that weigh so heavily on a large part of humanity;

– Dialogue among believers means coming together in the vast space of spiritual, human and shared social values and, from here, transmitting the highest moral virtues that religions aim for. It also means avoiding unproductive discussions;

– The protection of places of worship – synagogues, churches and mosques – is a duty guaranteed by religions, human values, laws and international agreements. Every attempt to attack places of worship or threaten them by violent assaults, bombings or destruction, is a deviation from the teachings of religions as well as a clear violation of international law;

– Terrorism is deplorable and threatens the security of people, be they in the East or the West, the North or the South, and disseminates panic, terror and pessimism, but this is not due to religion, even when terrorists instrumentalise it. It is due, rather, to an accumulation of incorrect interpretations of religious texts and to policies linked to hunger, poverty, injustice, oppression and pride. This is why it is so necessary to stop supporting terrorist movements fuelled by financing, the provision of weapons and strategy, and by attempts to justify these movements even using the media. All these must be regarded as international crimes that threaten security and world peace. Such terrorism must be condemned in all its forms and expressions;

– The concept of citizenship is based on the equality of rights and duties, under which all enjoy justice. It is therefore crucial to establish in our societies the concept of full citizenship and reject the discriminatory use of the term minorities which engenders feelings of isolation and inferiority. Its misuse paves the way for hostility and discord; it undoes any successes and takes away the religious and civil rights of some citizens who are thus discriminated against;

– Good relations between East and West are indisputably necessary for both. They must not be neglected, so that each can be enriched by the other’s culture through fruitful exchange and dialogue. The West can discover in the East remedies for those spiritual and religious maladies that are caused by a prevailing materialism. And the East can find in the West many elements that can help free it from weakness, division, conflict and scientific, technical and cultural decline. It is important to pay attention to religious, cultural and historical differences that are a vital component in shaping the character, culture and civilisation of the East. It is likewise important to reinforce the bond of fundamental human rights in order to help ensure a dignified life for all the men and women of East and West, avoiding the politics of double standards;

– It is an essential requirement to recognise the right of women to education and employment, and to recognise their freedom to exercise their own political rights. Moreover, efforts must be made to free women from historical and social conditioning that runs contrary to the principles of their faith and dignity. It is also necessary to protect women from sexual exploitation and from being treated as merchandise or objects of pleasure or financial gain. Accordingly, an end must be brought to all those inhuman and vulgar practices that denigrate the dignity of women. Efforts must be made to modify those laws that prevent women from fully enjoying their rights;

– The protection of the fundamental rights of children to grow up in a family environment, to receive nutrition, education and support, are duties of the family and society. Such duties must be guaranteed and protected so that they are not overlooked or denied to any child in any part of the world. All those practices that violate the dignity and rights of children must be denounced. It is equally important to be vigilant against the dangers that they are exposed to, particularly in the digital world, and to consider as a crime the trafficking of their innocence and all violations of their youth;

– The protection of the rights of the elderly, the weak, the disabled, and the oppressed is a religious and social obligation that must be guaranteed and defended through strict legislation and the implementation of the relevant international agreements.

To this end, by mutual cooperation, the Catholic Church and Al-Azhar announce and pledge to convey this Document to authorities, influential leaders, persons of religion all over the world, appropriate regional and international organisations, organisations within civil society, religious institutions and leading thinkers. They further pledge to make known the principles contained in this Declaration at all regional and international levels, while requesting that these principles be translated into policies, decisions, legislative texts, courses of study and materials to be circulated.

Al-Azhar and the Catholic Church ask that this Document become the object of research and reflection in all schools, universities and institutes of formation, thus helping to educate new generations to bring goodness and peace to others, and to be defenders everywhere of the rights of the oppressed and of the least of our brothers and sisters.

In conclusion, our aspiration is that:

this Declaration may constitute an invitation to reconciliation and fraternity among all believers, indeed among believers and non-believers, and among all people of good will;

this Declaration may be an appeal to every upright conscience that rejects deplorable violence and blind extremism; an appeal to those who cherish the values of tolerance and fraternity that are promoted and encouraged by religions;

this Declaration may be a witness to the greatness of faith in God that unites divided hearts and elevates the human soul;

this Declaration may be a sign of the closeness between East and West, between North and South, and between all who believe that God has created us to understand one another, cooperate with one another and live as brothers and sisters who love one another.

This is what we hope and seek to achieve with the aim of finding a universal peace that all can enjoy in this life.

Abu Dhabi, February 4, 2019
His Holiness Pope Francis
The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb

THE GIFT OF FILIAL ADOPTION, A SUPERNATURAL GRACE

The Truth of the filial adoption in Christ, which is intrinsically supernatural, constitutes the synthesis of the entire Divine Revelation. Being adopted by God as sons is always a gratuitous gift of grace, the most sublime gift of God to mankind. One obtains it, however, only through a personal faith in Christ and through the reception of baptism, as the Lord Himself taught: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” (Jn 3:5-7)

In the past decades one often heard – even from the mouth of some representatives of the Church’s hierarchy – statements about the theory of “anonymous Christians.” This theory says the following: The mission of the Church in the world would consist ultimately in raising the awareness that all men must have of their salvation in Christ and consequently of their filial adoption in Christ. Since, according to the same theory, every human being possesses already the sonship of God in the depth of his personality. Yet, such a theory contradicts directly Divine Revelation, as Christ taught it and His Apostles and the Church over two thousand years always transmitted it unchangingly and without a shadow of a doubt.

In his essay “The Church, consisting of Jews and Gentiles” (Die Kirche aus Juden und Heiden) Erik Peterson, the well-known convert and exegete, long since (in 1933) warned against the danger of such a theory, when he affirmed that one cannot reduce being a Christian (“Christsein”) to the natural order, in which the fruits of the redemption achieved by Jesus Christ would be generally imputed to every human being as a kind of heritage, solely because he would share human nature with the incarnated Word. However, filial adoption in Christ is not an automatic result, guaranteed through belonging to the human race.

Saint Athanasius (cf. Oratio contra Arianos II, 59) left us a simple and at the same time an apt explanation of the difference between the natural state of men as God’s creatures and the glory of being a son of God in Christ. Saint Athanasius derives his explanation from the words of the Holy Gospel according to John, that say: “He gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in His Name. Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:12-13.) John uses the expression “they are born” to say that men become sons of God not by nature, but by adoption. This shows the love of God, that He Who is their Creator becomes then through grace also their Father. This happens when, as the Apostle says, men receive in their hearts the Spirit of the Incarnated Son, Who cries in them: “Abba, Father!”

Saint Athanasius continues his explanation saying, that as created beings, men can become sons of God in no other manner than through faith and baptism, when they receive the Spirit of the natural and true Son of God (verus et naturalis Filius Dei.) Precisely for that reason the Word became flesh, to make men capable of adoption as sons of God and of participation in the Divine nature. Consequently, by nature God is not in the proper sense the Father of all human beings. Only if someone consciously accepts Christ and is baptised, will he be able to cry in truth: “Abba, Father!” (Rm 8:15; Gal 4:6.)

Since the beginnings of the Church there was the assertion, as testified by Tertullian: “One is not born as a Christian, but one becomes a Christian” (Ap 18:5). Saint Cyprian of Carthage formulated aptly this truth, saying: ‘He cannot have God for his Father, who has not the Church [Mary] for his mother’” (De unit., 6.)

CHRISTIAN FAITH IS THE ONLY RELIGION WILLED BY GOD

The most urgent task of the Church in our time is to care about the change of the spiritual climate and about the spiritual migration, namely that the climate of non-belief in Jesus Christ, the climate of the rejection of the kingship of Christ, be changed into the climate of explicit faith in Jesus Christ, of the acceptance of His Kingship, and that men may migrate from the misery of the spiritual slavery of unbelief into the happiness of being sons of God and from a life of sin into the state of sanctifying grace. These are the migrants about whom we must care urgently.

Christianity is the only God-willed religion. Therefore, it can never be placed complementarily side by side with other religions. Those would violate the truth of Divine Revelation, as it is unmistakably affirmed in the First Commandment of the Decalogue, who would assert that the diversity of religions is the will of God. [Yet this is what the Declaration of Abu Dhabi affirms.]

According to the will of Christ, faith in Him and in His Divine teaching must replace other religions, however not by force, but by loving persuasion, as expressed in the hymn of Lauds of the Feast of Christ the King: “Non Ille regna cladibus, non vi metuque subdidit: alto levatus stipite, amore traxit omnia” (“Not with sword, force and fear He subjects peoples, but lifted up on the Cross He lovingly draws all things to Himself”.)

There is only one way to God, and this is Jesus Christ, for He Himself said: “I am the Way” (Jn 14:6.) There is only one truth, and this is Jesus Christ, for He Himself said: “I am the Truth” (Jn 14:6.) There is only one true supernatural life of the soul, and this is Jesus Christ, for He Himself said: “I am the Life” (Jn 14:6.)

The Incarnated Son of God taught that outside faith in Him there cannot be a true and God-pleasing religion: “I am the door. By Me, if any man enters in, he shall be saved” (Jn 10:9). God commanded to all men, without exception, to hear His Son: “This is My most beloved Son; hear Him!” (Mk 9:7). God did not say: “You can hear My Son or you can hear other founders of a religion, for it is My will that there are different religions.” God has forbidden us to recognise the legitimacy of the religion of other gods: “Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me” (Ex 20:3) and “What fellowship has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has the faithful with the unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2 Co 6:14-16.)

If other religions likewise corresponded to the will of God, there would not have been the Divine condemnation of the religion of the Golden Calf at the time of Moses (cf. Ex 32:4-20;) then the Christians of today could unpunished cultivate the religion of a new Golden Calf, since all religions are, according to that theory, God-pleasing ways as well. God gave the Apostles and through them the Church for all times the solemn order to instruct all nations and the followers of all religions in the only one true Faith, teaching them to observe all His Divine commandments and baptise them (cf. Mt 28:19-20.) Since the preaching of the Apostles and of the first Pope, the Apostle Saint Peter, the Church proclaimed always that there is salvation in no other name, i.e., in no other faith under Heaven by which men must be saved, but in the Name and in the Faith in Jesus Christ (cf. Ac 4:12.)

With the words of Saint Augustine the Church taught in all times : “The Christian religion is the only religion which possesses the universal way for the salvation of the soul; for except by this way, none can be saved. This is a kind of royal way, which alone leads to a Kingdom which does not totter like all temporal dignities, but stands firm on eternal foundations.” (De civitate Dei, 10, 32, 1.)

The following words of the great Pope Leo XIII testify the same unchanging teaching of the Magisterium in all times, when he affirmed: “The view that all religions are alike, is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions.” (Encyclical Humanum genus, no. 16.)

In recent times the Magisterium presented substantially the same unchanging teaching in the Document Dominus Jesus (August 6, 2000,) from which we quote the following relevant assertions:

“Theological faith (the acceptance of the truth revealed by the One and Triune God) is often identified with belief in other religions, which is religious experience still in search of the absolute truth and still lacking assent to God who reveals Himself. This is one of the reasons why the differences between Christianity and the other religions tend to be reduced at times to the point of disappearance.” (no. 7)

“Those solutions that propose a salvific action of God beyond the unique mediation of Christ would be contrary to Christian and Catholic Faith.” (no. 14)

“Not infrequently it is proposed that theology should avoid the use of terms like ‘unicity,’ ‘universality,’ and ‘absoluteness,’ which give the impression of excessive emphasis on the significance and value of the salvific event of Jesus Christ in relation to other religions. In reality, however, such language is simply being faithful to revelation.” (no. 15)

“It is clear that it would be contrary to the Faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her, even if these are said to be converging with the Church toward the eschatological Kingdom of God.” (no. 21)

“The Faith rules it out, in a radical way, that mentality of indifferentism ‘characterised by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another’ (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 36).’” (no. 22)

The Apostles and the countless Christian martyrs of all times, especially those of the first three centuries, would have been spared martyrdom, if they had said: “The pagan religion and its worship is a way, which as well corresponds to the will of God.” There would have been for instance no Christian France, no “Eldest Daughter of the Church,” if Saint Remigius had said to Clovis, the King of the Francs: “Do not despise your pagan religion you have worshiped up to now, and worship now Christ, Whom you have persecuted up to now.” The saintly bishop actually spoke differently, although in a rather rough way: “Worship what you burned, and burn what you have worshiped!”

True universal brotherhood can be only in Christ, and namely between baptised persons. The full glory of God’s sons will be attained only in the beatific vision of God in Heaven, as Holy Scripture teaches: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” (1 Jn 3:1-2).

No authority on earth – not even the supreme authority of the Church – has the right to dispense people from other religions from the explicit Faith in Jesus Christ as the Incarnated Son of God and the only Saviour of mankind with the assurance that the different religions as such are willed by God Himself. Indelible – because written with the finger of God and crystal-clear in their meaning – remain, however, the words of the Son of God: “Whoever believes in the Son of God is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God” (Jn 3:18). This truth was valid up to now in all Christian generations and will remain valid until the end of time, irrespective of the fact that some people in the Church of our so fickle, cowardly, sensationalist, and conformist time reinterpret this truth in a sense contrary to its evident wording, selling thereby this reinterpretation as continuity in the development of doctrine.

Outside the Christian Faith no other religion can be a true and God-willed way, since it is the explicit will of God, that all people believe in His Son: “This is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life” (Jn 6:40.) Outside the Christian Faith no other religion is able to transmit true supernatural life: “This is eternal life, that they know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent.” (Jn 17:3).

February 8, 2019
+ Athanasius Schneider,
Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese
of Saint Mary in Astana

ADDENDA

THROUGH this text of our “new Athanasius,” the Church, the Holy Church, our Mother, the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church of all time, accuses Pope Francis’ novelty and its corrupting influence on the Faith, on morality and on world order. Yet since it fails to accuse him explicitly, the Declaration of our “Athanasius” is made inoperative.

Before Bishop Schneider, Father de Nantes did not only explicitly accuse Paul VI, John Paul II, and the author of the CCC but, in this apocalyptic dispute, he appealed to the Judgement of the Most Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of God: “She has come down from Heaven on many and various occasions in this 20^th century, he wrote to John Paul II, and all Her words, miracles, deeds and desires are contrary to yours. This already provides a sufficient judgement on the whole matter, while we wait in expectation for the Church Militant’s infallible sentence, which will certainly not contradict it.”

“You ignore the great sign given by God, the Apocalyptic sign of Fatima.”

Bishop Schneider likewise! “Yet, as in the Gospel, it is through unprecedented miracles that God manifests His will to be heard and believed by us. Not since the beginning of the world has there ever been such an astonishing miracle and terrifying sign as that of the sun seen falling from the sky! The Pharisees asked for a sign from Heaven. We have one. How is it that the Pharisees of the Church pay no heed to it? ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars… The powers of heaven will be shaken.’ (Lk 21:25) However, since your Modernist theologians no longer believe in the literal truth of the Gospel, how could they read the ‘signs of the times’ that fulfil the Gospel today? This unheard-of miracle, predicted three months in advance as the certain proof and heavenly guarantee of all the Blessed Virgin’s apparitions and words, occurred punctually at midday on October 13, 1917, and was witnessed by about seventy thousand people.” (Liber accusationis secundus)

What is Fatima?

“Fatima is the religion of all time, insistently reproaching the Church of today for her infidelity, and threatening her with war and Russian domination as a chastisement for her impiety and immorality. Fatima is also the little Secret of twenty lines, capable in itself of cleansing the Church of the twenty years of apostasy through which we are living. Whatever the future may hold, the world-wide expansion of Communism or the immanent apostasy of the modern Church, one thing is certain: ‘In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and a time of peace will be given to the world.’”

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary.

COMMENTARY

In and of itself, the title of Bishop Athanasius’ Declaration contradicts that of Pope Francis: by announcing “Filial Adoption in Jesus Christ” as a gracious “Gift” of God the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, it refutes the affirmation of a “human fraternity” originating from the first Creation of “all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity,” thus “called to live together as brothers and sisters,” without war between the siblings. This is God the Creator’s first work.”

On the contrary, according to the Catholic faith of Athanasius, “one cannot reduce being a Christian to the natural order, in which the fruits of the redemption achieved by Jesus Christ would be generally imputed to every human being as a kind of heritage, solely because he would share human nature with the incarnated Word.” This is an allusion to a theory that John Paul II was believed to have initiated (Gaudium et Spes 22:2) Yet, “in his essay ‘The Church, Consisting of Jews and Gentiles’ (Die Kirche aus Juden und Heiden) Erik Peterson, the well-known convert and exegete, long since (in 1933) warned against the danger of such a theory.”

For, “filial adoption in Christ is not an automatic result, guaranteed through belonging to the human race.”

With this sentence, Bishop Schneider summarises the dogma of our faith: “The filial adoption in Christ, which is intrinsically supernatural, constitutes the synthesis of the entire Divine Revelation”

On the other hand, when Pope Francis claims to act “in the name of ‘human fraternity’ that embraces all human beings, unites them and renders them equal,” and not in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit according to our Catholic Faith, he denies this “eldest Brother” Who is Jesus Christ by obliterating His Name: “I do not know this man.” (Mk 14:71)

Henceforth, the first ‘commandment’ of “human fraternity” is expressed “in the name of innocent human life that God has forbidden to kill.” The Pope personally signed this denial of original sin! It results in the condemnation of all putting to death, including that of Christ! Moreover, the Qurʾān denies it: “They did not kill him.” (IV, 157) It is therefore a denial of the mystery of the Redemption for which this death was the price.

On the other hand, Athanasius quotes his patron saint, a Doctor of the Church, Bishop of Alexandria:

“Saint Athanasius left us a simple and at the same time an apt explanation of the difference between the natural state of men as God’s creatures and the glory of being a son of God in Christ. This change “happens when, as the Apostle says, men receive in their hearts the Spirit of the Incarnated Son, Who cries in them: ‘Abba, Father!’” through the Sacrament of Baptism.

“Saint Athanasius continues his explanation saying, that as created beings, men can become sons of God in no other manner than through faith and baptism.”

Why is this so? Bishop Schneider does not explicitly mention original sin. However, the reference to ‘baptism,’ which is a death to sin through union with the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross, is sufficient to imply the whole truth of the mystery.

On the contrary, there is an omission of any reference to this sacrament in Pope Francis’ Declaration:

“In the name of justice and mercy, the foundations of prosperity and the cornerstone of faith,” of the biblical faith of the Old Testament, and of the Muslim faith that plagiarises it. ‘Justice’ and ‘mercy’ are in fact the two keywords of the Qurʾān.

“In the name of all persons of good will present in every part of the world”… war is abolished in East and West, to make way for “a culture of dialogue as the path,” of “mutual cooperation as the code of conduct,” of “reciprocal understanding as the method and standard. ”

This means that this Document must open a new era, and imposes on those who govern, starting with Pope Francis himself, and extending “to the leaders of the world as well as the architects of international policy and world economy, to work strenuously to spread the culture of tolerance and of living together in peace; to intervene at the earliest opportunity to stop the shedding of innocent blood and bring an end to wars, conflicts, environmental decay and the moral and cultural decline that the world is presently experiencing.”

All of this without Christ, without faith or baptism? Yes! Compare this with Bishop Schneider’s Catholic faith:

“Saint Athanasius continues his explanation saying, that as created beings, men can become sons of God in no other manner than through faith and baptism, when they receive the Spirit of the true Son of God, the Son of God by nature (verus et naturalis Filius Dei.) Precisely for that reason the Word became flesh, to make men capable of adoption as sons of God and of participation in the Divine nature. Consequently, by nature God is not in the proper sense the Father of all human beings. Only if someone consciously accepts Christ and is baptised, will he be able to cry in truth: “Abba, Father!” (Rm 8:15; Gal 4:6.)

Since the beginnings of the Church there was the assertion, as testified by Tertullian: “One is not born as a Christian, but one becomes a Christian” (Ap 18:5). Saint Cyprian of Carthage formulated aptly this truth, saying: ‘He cannot have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother’”

THE ONLY ARK OF SALVATION

For those who still doubt that Bishop Schneider is addressing Pope François, champion of the fight against climate change and the reception of migrants, here it is clearly indicated:

“The most urgent task of the Church in our time is to care about the change of the spiritual climate and about the spiritual migration, namely that the climate of non-belief in Jesus Christ, the climate of the rejection of the Kingship of Christ, be changed into the climate of explicit faith in Jesus Christ, of the acceptance of His Kingship, and that men may migrate from the misery of the spiritual slavery of unbelief into the happiness of being sons of God and from a life of sin into the state of sanctifying grace. These are the migrants about whom we must care urgently.”

Pope Francis, on the other hand, after having praised the “historic advancements, great and valued as they are” of “our modern civilisation,” expresses a concern for “both a moral deterioration that influences international action and a weakening of spiritual values and responsibility.” The Pope puts the blame on “religious extremism, national extremism and also intolerance,” as the root of all ills, “in the East and West, what might be referred to as signs of a ‘third world war being fought piecemeal.’ In several parts of the world and in many tragic circumstances these signs have begun to be painfully apparent, as in those situations where the precise number of victims, widows and orphans is unknown.

“We see, in addition, other regions preparing to become theatres of new conflicts, with outbreaks of tension and a build-up of arms and ammunition, and all this in a global context overshadowed by uncertainty, disillusionment, fear of the future, and controlled by narrow-minded economic interests.”

In fact, Pope Francis is witnessing, with his own eyes, the worldwide situation that Our Lady of Fatima announced in 1917 to three Portuguese children if we did not stop offending God, Who was already “too offended.”

It was on July 13 1917, during the third apparition at the Cova da Iria, after having shown to the children, “Hell where the souls of poor sinners go,” and announced the remedy: “To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.

“If what I am going to say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.

“The war is going to end. If, however, they do not cease to offend God another, a worse one, will begin in the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illuminated with an unknown light, know that it is the great sign that God is going to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father.

“To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation of the first Saturdays of the month.”

In the midst of the World War of 1917, who would have thought that such power would be given to the Immaculate Heart of Mary? No one!

Or rather, only one man had announced it as early as 1904, and this man was Pope Saint Pius X, prophesising both the war and its remedy, in his encyclical Ad diem illum of February 2, 1904, to prepare for the feast of December 8 at the end of the year, which would mark the fiftieth anniversary of the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by St. Pius IX. Through this encyclical, he decreed a jubilee year.

Our Father called St Pius X, the beacon of the twentieth century. Coming from him, this expression was pregnant with meaning, for this Doctor of the Church was the light that illuminated the whole life and work of this other Doctor of the Church, Georges de Nantes.

“In this encyclical,” our Father told us in his Sunday sermon on December 8, 1985, “I found that incomparable joy that is inspired by piety. I was about to say the simple, rustic piety of this holy Pope, but a piety full of vivacity, full of certainty, which leads to a vehement call to moral conversion. It then goes even further, to the point of casting a look full of hope and even certainty, he said, on the renewal of the Church that will come and that he already foresaw. What magnificence!

“In this encyclical, Saint Pius X begins by giving the reason for his incomparable joy in order to convey it to the whole Church, in remembrance of December 8, 1854. That day, he said, the Virgin Mary was glorified by the whole Church, her bishops, her priests, her multitudes of peoples of every race, language, nation, all unanimous in celebrating the Most Holy Virgin, Whose name is “Immaculate Conception.” With a joy that was intensified by the great miracles, apparitions and wonders of Lourdes four years later, Heaven confirmed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. ”

He then recalls the First Vatican Council, in 1870, a great blessing granted to the Church by the almighty intercession of the Blessed Virgin to confirm the Pope’s infallible authority. Saint Pius X sheds light on this privilege of the Immaculate Conception by showing that through it God has exempted Her from every stain “in prevision of the Blood of Christ the Redeemer,” that is, so that She might give Him a Blood of great value, infinitely Precious, capable of purifying us by filling the gulf that the fault creates between God and us.

Pope Pius X invites us to choose our side because there is no middle ground: either the Blessed Virgin or Her adversary, the Devil. In proclaiming a Jubilee Year, the Pope wanted the whole Church to make an immense effort of conversion through the intercession of Mary, Mediatrix of all grace. On the threshold of this century when he foresaw the coming of the Antichrist, he concluded that the victory of the Virgin Mary was near. He ends this encyclical by showing the Virgin Mary as a rainbow that will appear in our sky, to announce the renewal of the Church, and her conquest of the whole universe.

In 1917, three years after his death, the miracle of Fatima took place. Yet, none of his successors on the papal throne, from Pius XI to Francis was a disciple of Saint Pius X, since they all ignored the requests of the Queen of Heaven. His only true disciple, Father de Nantes occupied the ‘last place.’

Then we had the Second World War that She had warned us about on July 13, 1917 in the second part of the ‘Secret.’ It was followed by the same outrageous indifference to the requests of the Mother of God. That is why the third part of the Secret is unfolding before our eyes marked by what Pope Francis calls “the signs of a “third world war being fought piecemeal,” fulfilling very precisely Sister Lucy’s descriptions of the ‘Third Secret’:

“At the left of Our Lady and a little higher up we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; it flashed and gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they were extinguished on contact with the brilliant light that Our Lady radiated against them with Her right hand. ”

“THE HOUSE OF GOD IS ON FIRE! HELP! HELP!”

The Angel’s “flaming sword” came into action in the Middle East when the State of Israel was established in 1947, in the aftermath of the Second World War. This war began “in the reign of Pius XI,” as Our Lady of Fatima had foretold on July 13, 1917, as punishment for Pius XI’s refusal to fulfil the demand for the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Thus, it did not put an end to the progression of the “errors of Russia” in the world. On the contrary! The establishment of the People's Republic of China by Mao Tse Tung in 1949 greatly increased their influence throughout the world.

Again, in 1967, for the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions, Paul VI's ‘pilgrimage’ to Fatima gave rise to hope, followed by irremediable disappointment: far from consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart to obtain peace, the Pope declared that “peace is possible, because men are essentially good” (Message of the First Day for Peace, January 1968, CRC n° 4, p. 2).

The reply therefore did not come from Heaven, which had not been able to make itself heard, since it was in vain that Sister Lucy had asked to speak to the Pope on May 13, 1967. At least she had given him “a nicely illuminated parchment, with a request to intensify the practice of the Rosary for the sake of peace.”

“Yet, it was no longer a question of the Rosary for the sake of peace. On May 15, 1967, Pentecost Monday for Christians, a state of emergency was declared in Cairo; Egyptian armoured units were headed for the borders. When the crypto-communist U’Thant withdrew the UN peacekeeping force, and Egyptian President Nasser closed the Gulf of Akaba, war was inevitable. It was the Jihad, Holy War. This name alone suffices to coalesce the Arab peoples. It was a question of annihilating the Jewish State.

“On the morning of June 5, in order to break the stranglehold, the Israeli army made an all-out attack and conducted a blitzkrieg that, in six days, brought its vanguard to the Suez Canal, to the southernmost point of the Sinai peninsula, to Jericho and the banks of the Jordan, and north to the suburbs of Damascus. The city of Jerusalem, ancient Sion, was reconquered. The Jewish Pentecost, June 15, dawned on a Land totally recovered by a people whose pride was at a climax after the anguish of peril, the heat of combat, and the incredible victory. The Army’s Chaplain General, Chief Rabbi Goren, hoisted the Israeli flag in the heart of the Sinai, at the very place where Moses gave the Tables of the Law to the Chosen People. On June 13, at the Wailing Wall, he had sounded the ram's horn, the ‘chofar,’ the sacred instrument that heralds the coming of the Messianic Times. “This is the first time in two thousand years that we have made this pilgrimage,” said the Israelis who descended in front of this Wall, the last remnant of the Second Temple that Herod rebuilt and that Titus set on fire in 70 a.d., according to the prophecy of Jesus Christ. “The Israelis can hardly believe it, and many wonder in all seriousness if the Messianic era has not arrived. We have heard Israelis far removed from religion refer to the god of armies when they talk about the war they have just won. For others, the unexpected fulfilment of so many prophecies leaves only one forthcoming: the appearance of the Messiah. It is difficult to detect a joking tone in the expression of those who put forward such a hypothesis.” (Georges de Nantes, Letter to My Friends no. 249, July 13, 1967).

Father de Nantes wondered: “Has the hour of the Jews come? From the Christians’ point of view, it seems so, and many of them are preparing to enter into the ecumenism of a restored Synagogue. If Islam also accepts this reconciliation, there will be Messianic Peace. It will radiate from Jewish Jerusalem, the universal Holy City. The Council prophesied that the day would come when ‘all peoples would serve the Lord under one yoke,’ according to the Jewish prophet Zephaniah (Declaration Nostra Ætate, no. 4).”

Turning away from this mad optimism, our Father noted: “In the aftermath of that May 13, when Paul VI thought that he had received from Heaven the assurance that ‘peace was an achievable end,’ it ceased to be so.” The conflict that was peripheral and local in Vietnam, became central, vital and ideological in the Middle East.

“Israel will now bear its easy victory like a heavy millstone. No one is in control of the Arab or Israeli match that will be used to ignite the global powder keg. It could be lit tomorrow. Israel might desire to make a military walkover to Damascus and Cairo.”

This forecast is astonishing lucid and it has been verified over the past fifty years on many occasions, up to the present day. It is not a ‘desire,’ but a necessity, – at least this is what is believed in Tel Aviv–, to drive out Iran, its mortal enemy, an ally of Bashar-el-Assad. Thus is fulfilled what Father de Nantes had announced:

“Israel will now bear its easy victory like a heavy millstone. Henceforth time is on the side of the Arab camp.”

“Israel, whether the aggressor or the aggressed, will not hesitate to drag the world into its war. Israel in peril will not surrender. Rather, this determined people will lead the West to its downfall. We will wage war once again ‘for the Jews.’ I do not hesitate to say that war will break out because we have remained blind and impervious to the true ‘signs of the times’ that our Christian faith should have allowed us to understand. The apostasy of Churchmen, however, will have had its suicidal effect.”

Our Father was anticipating the Abu Dhabi Declaration fifty years in advance by emphasising “that the appeal to “universal fraternity” seems insane when it is no longer addressed to Christians but to Jews and Arabs”.

MARY, UNIVERSAL MEDIATRIX

There is no universal peace except through the mediation of Mary Help of Christians, by virtue of the promise made to Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta on July 13, 1917:

“In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted and a certain period of peace will be given to the world.”

Without this recourse, there is war.

Today, U.S. President Donald Trump announces that he will leave Syria, while the Pentagon continues to send men and equipment. How are we to understand?

What remains of the Islamic State's army is confined in an area covering only a few square kilometres near the Iraqi border north of the Euphrates. Yet, during the last two months following President Trump's announcement of its withdrawal, the US army has steadily increased its personnel and supplies in the region with weapons and new equipment: anti-tank missiles, heavy machine-guns, etc. For what purpose? No one knows. Trump himself does not seem to know this since he continues to claim that there are only two thousand American soldiers left in Syria!

However, on Saturday, February 2, when an American attack targeted a Syrian artillery position in the village of Sokkariyeh west of the border town of Al-Bukamal, we understand that the Pentagon is continuing to wage war against Bashar el-Assad to overthrow him.

The attack destroyed the artillery and wounded two soldiers. In conjunction with the US aggression, jihadist terrorists attacked military posts in the region, and Syrian army units repelled the attack and killed or wounded most of the terrorists.

It is clear that the United States is intentionally allowing some jihadists to escape with the purpose of weakening the Syrian government.

The Americans are therefore continuing their interference to prevent the Syrian government from regaining control of its reconquered territory, from defeating the remaining jihadist sleeper cells, from dealing with the prisoners captured by the Kurds and from keeping Turkey at bay.

The ‘Deep State’ of American foreign policy, however, is still not ready to loosen its grip, for a reason clearly stated by Donald Trump in an interview on Sunday, February 3: ‘We must protect Israel.’ This is why the American President stated in the same interview that he wanted to “keep” the Ayn al-Asad military base in Iraq, west of Baghdad, in order “to keep Iran under surveillance.” This neighbouring country is Israel’s nightmare, and therefore the United States’ bugbear. Thus, he declared: “If someone is trying to make nuclear weapons, we will know before they succeed.”

These remarks triggered the anger of many Iraqi officials (Le Figaro of February 5.) The President of the Republic, Barham Saleh, who has long-standing relations with the US administration, replied the following day, Monday, that “the Iraqi Constitution precludes any use of Iraq as a base for raiding or attacking a neighbouring country. US forces are present under the law and within the framework of agreements between the two countries, any action outside this framework is unacceptable.  »

President Barham Saleh, elected in November 2018, comes from a Kurdish party that has cordial relations with Iran.

While the Kurds demand an autonomy that Damascus rejects, they will soon have to choose between accepting Damascus' conditions or being massacred by a Turkish invasion force.

Once again it is Russia that indicates the path of wisdom by working to restore the Adana Memorandum between Turkey and Syria signed in 1998. Syria promised to prevent all attacks of the Syrian Kurds against Turkey, while Turkey would refrain from any engagement against the Kurds on Syrian territory.

The new obstacle now is the territory that Turkey has conquered from Syria.

EUROPE

Seen from Canada, Europe is at war with Brussels, its nerve centre! According to Brussels, the merger of the French and German railway giants, Alstom and Siemens, despite the desire of both countries, violates the regulations of the European Community: “Thus Brussels has just immolated the possibility of creating a European railway giant on the altar of the sacrosanct free market, even though the Chinese mastodon CRCC is already the world leader.” (Christian Rioux, Le Devoir, February 8, 2019)

Rioux, quoting the book, Eurotragedy, by economist Ashoka Mody, (Oxford University Press), a former IMF and World Bank member, states that “by moving from the Common Market to the single currency, the continent has provoked its own decline. In these six hundred pages, the Princeton economist relates a tragedy that has led Europe from one failure to another over twenty years. According to him, not only was the single currency a huge mistake, but since then Europe has locked itself into a real ‘cognitive bubble’ that only aggravates its mistake and makes it deaf to what people and economic reality are saying.” Thus “the euro now allows Berlin to dictate its economic reforms to France.”

For “the euro was first and foremost an ideological choice that defied all the laws of economics and geopolitics. In a world of floating rates, European countries were depriving themselves of this monetary sovereignty that acts as a ‘buffer’ Devaluations allow the weakest to catch their breath, contrary to what Pompidou and Giscard d'Estaing believed. They deemed them an object of shame.”

The economist Mody notes that the voters who voted against the Maastricht Treaty (1992) in France are strangely similar to the members of the Yellow Vest movement (a grassroots political movement for economic justice that began in France in November 2018. After an on line petition posted in May had attracted nearly a million signatures, mass demonstrations began on November 17,) that actually occupied the roundabouts. It was at that time, he says, that the rebellion of part of the population against Europe began. “Instead of hearing the voice of the people and bridging the divide, European leaders decided to ignore it.”  The monetary issue is not the only one involved. Maurras, the unbeliever, had seen it well only in the light of experience and history: ‘the Church is the only international that stands firm.’

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban launched his campaign for the May European elections under the banner of defending ‘Our Christian Heritage.’ The editorialist of La Croix, under the title: ‘A walled religion’ grinds his teeth: “One can be a Christian and feel a deep uneasiness when seeing the Hungarian Prime Minister portraying himself as the defender of ‘Christian nations’ against the ‘international’ financed by the American billionaire George Soros and the Dutchman Frans Timmerman, the chief candidate of the socialists. Its ‘new citadel’ is called Brussels and its tool is ‘immigration,’

“In other words, the Christian faith is being instrumentalised here in a contemporary version of Maurrassism,” what horror! And even Pétainism, with its “seven-point action plan on the protection of the family to prevent Hungarians from becoming ‘a cloud of dust on the highway of all peoples.’”

With or without ‘instrumentalisation,’ how can we defend ‘our Christian heritage’ without the faith? Maurras himself did not succeed. How can we keep the faith if Rome has lost it, as the Declaration of Abu Dhabi signed by our Holy Father the Pope clearly shows?

ROME

“The credibility of the Church and the Pope has reached an apocalyptic state.” (François Devaux interviewed by Jean-Marie Guénois in Rome, on Thursday 21 February, the opening day of the ‘Summit Against Paedophilia,’ in the Thursday 21 February 2019 issue of Le Figaro.)

Indeed, on the same day of the opening of this synod, a lampoon against the Church entitled SODOMA, was published in eight languages and twenty countries. Its author, Frédéric Martel, presented by the press as a ‘sociologist,’ a ‘researcher’ and a ‘historian,’ has acquired a certain renown through his latest essay, Global Gay, translated into several languages, dedicated to the triumphant march of the gay movement throughout the world.

The goal of this well-known activist is the ‘normalisation’ of homosexuality. He produced numerous articles to promote the pseudo-homosexual ‘marriage’ in France, until its complete legalisation on May 18, 2013.

I would like to react like our Father in 1983, during a News conference on March 17, 1983, at the Mutualité Hall. I quote:

“I told you that I would speak to you about Roger Peyrefitte's book, La Soutane rouge [The Red Cassock], as soon as it is published, if it were brought to my attention. Of course, Peyrefitte sent it to me right away. So I am sorry to say that I really do not know how to speak to you about it. For the good reason that I do not want you to read it. It is a book interspersed with horrors: lust, interspersed with sacrilege! I mean, it is really offensive to read a book like that. It truly contributes to the Satanic enterprise of demolishing the Church.”  So I will not read SODOMA neither will you. Just like the time of the Inquisition, let it be cast into a fire!

Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly much truth in the ‘revelations’ made in this book, and many lies. It is obvious, however, that certain proven facts contribute to ‘discrediting’ the Church and the Pope, as Jean-Marie Guénois says. For Pope Francis was well-informed by Bishop Maria Vigano of the personal background of the evil Cardinal McCarrick, a predator prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour: seminarians and young priests. Pope Francis nevertheless lifted the restrictions that Benedict XVI had imposed on this cardinal and made him his advisor for appointments in the United States and as his personal envoy to North America, China, Armenia, Cuba and Iran.

Today, Bishop Vigano having told the pure and simple truth by affirming that Jorge Maria Bergoglio had known about it for a long time, the Pope became angry. This has only served to confirm the truth of Vigano's words and the Pope is now, very belatedly and reluctantly, demonstrating his firmness against the evil cardinal, without condemning homosexuality. Instead, he is diverting public attention solely to the crimes of paedophilia and abuse of power.

The public is not fooled. In his closing speech to the Summit Against Paedophilia on Sunday, February 24, “which disappointed those who were expecting concrete measures” (La Croix, February 25), the Pope clearly reaffirmed his desire to “protect children from greedy wolves,” but he did not pronounce any condemnation of homosexuality. This is incredible, but it is a fact!

This is hardly surprising? In a Decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments dated January 25, Pope Francis established that the Memorial of Pope ‘Saint Paul VI’ be inserted into the General Calendar of the Roman Rite, taking account both of the universal importance of his actions and the example of holiness given to the People of God. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, whose prefect is Cardinal Sarah, has added to the Liturgy of the Hours in the Common of Pastors, for the Pope, a passage from “the homilies of Saint Paul VI, Pope,” intended for the “Office of Readings” (ad officium lectionis):

“To know God one must know Man.”

“Yes, the Church of the Council has been concerned, not just with herself and with her relationship of union with God, but with man – man as he really is today: living man, man all wrapped up in himself, man who makes himself not only the centre of his every interest but dares to claim that he is the principle and explanation of all reality. Every perceptible element in man, every one of the countless guises in which he appears, has, in a sense, been displayed in full view of the Council Fathers, who, in their turn, are mere men, and yet all of them are pastors and brothers whose position accordingly fills them with solicitude and love. Among these guises we may cite man as the tragic actor of his own plays; man as the superman of yesterday and today, ever frail, unreal, selfish, and savage; man unhappy with himself as he laughs and cries; man the versatile actor ready to perform any part; man the narrow devotee of nothing but scientific reality; man as he is, a creature who thinks and loves and toils and is always waiting for something, the ‘growing son’ (Gn 49:22)…”

“Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall.” What does this reference to this figure of the prosperity and growth of the house of Joseph, son of Jacob and object of his blessings, have to do here? While we are talking about modern man emancipated from divine revelation!

“… man sacred because of the innocence of his childhood, because of the mystery of his poverty, because of the dedication of his suffering; man as an individual and man in society; man who lives in the glories of the past and dreams of those of the future; man the sinner and man the saint, and so on.

“Secular humanism, revealing itself in its horrible anti-clerical reality has, in a certain sense, defied the council. The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none. The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of the spirituality of the council. A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the whole of it. The attention of our council has been absorbed by the discovery of human needs (and these needs grow in proportion to the greatness which the son of the earth claims for himself). But we call upon those who term themselves modern humanists, and who have renounced the transcendent value of the highest realities, to give the council credit at least for one quality and to recognise our own new type of humanism: we, too, in fact, we more than any others, have the cult of man.” (December 7 1965)

ANATHEMA!

Our Father, Georges de Nantes wrote to “our Holy Father Pope Paul VI by the grace of God and the law of the Church, sovereign judge of all Christ’s faithful,” a “complaint against our brother in the faith Pope Paul VI, for heresy, schism and scandal.” After quoting the passage of the closing speech of the Council that we have just transcribed, he insisted:

“Yes, Most Holy Father, it was you who, on that historic day of December 7, 1965, addressing the entire assembled Council, gave a Discourse unlike any other in the annals of the Church and unlike any other that is ever to come, a Discourse that culminated in proclaiming the cult of Man in the face of the world and in the Face of God:

“This allows us to assess how your heteropraxy is inexorably slipping into a full and entire heterodoxy. I can no longer refer to it as heresy, but as apostasy. Totally disregarding all the wise counsels and infallible teaching of your Predecessors, in your apostolic generosity, you play the Good Samaritan, affectionately turning his attention to every man his brother. In your unfettered love you make friends with the Goliath of the Modern World, kneeling before the Enemy of God who only feels hatred and defiance for you. Instead of steeling your heart and fighting, like David, against the Adversary, you express yourself full of love for him, you flatter him, and end up in his exclusive service! Your charity towards the Enemy of God turns into adoration and service, to the extent even of rivalling him in his error and blasphemy.

“For you have allied yourself with Man-who-makes-himself-god! You maintain that you surpass all these pride-intoxicated atheistic humanists of our day in the cult of man. Just read again this Hymn to the glory of Man which you intoned on the occasion of one of the voyages to the moon and which is a blasphemous parody of the Hymn to Christ the King of Ages:

“Honour to Man!

“Honour to his thought; honour to his scientific knowledge;

“Honour to his technical skill; honour to his work;

“Honour to human endurance;

“Honour to that combination of scientific activity and organisation by which man, unlike the other animals, can invest his spirit and his manual dexterity with instruments of conquest;

“Honour to Man, King of the Earth, and today Prince of the Heavens!

“Honour to our living being, in which is reflected the image of God and which, in its triumph over matter, obeys the biblical command: increase and rule.”

“It was on a similar occasion, in 1969, that you said: ‘Man is both giant and divine, in his origin and his destiny. Honour, therefore, to man, honour to his dignity, to his spirit, to his life.’” (Liber accusationis I, 1973)

The result of this exalting of “man who is both giant and divine” is that God made man gives way before man who makes himself God.

“You do, admittedly, make references to God and even, in passing, to Christ the Son of God made man, in that fantastic discourse of December 7, 1965. You, however, do not have anything to say about the Cross of Christ, or the gift of the Holy Spirit, about Baptismal Grace, indeed about the whole mystery of faith, which is the treasure of Truth, Life, and Virtue of the One Catholic Church.

“The aim is always man... ‘the first goal in that ascent towards the supreme and transcendent goal, towards the cause and origin of all love.’ The countenance of man reveals to you the countenance of Christ, as you tell us, quoting Mt 25:40 out of context, and hence, the countenance of the Heavenly Father – and so you behold God in man. And you say triumphantly: ‘Our humanism becomes Christian and our Christian faith becomes theocentric, so that we could equally well say that, in order to know God, we must know man.’

“But, saving your respect, Most Holy Father, this is idolatry!” (ibid.)

IDOLATRY.

“I would ask you whether you have not yielded to that third kind of temptation, that of making a bargain with Satan, which Jesus resisted in those words that are a condemnation of yours: ‘Be gone Satan! For it is written: You must worship the Lord your God, and serve Him alone.’ Jesus refused, even for the sake of seeing all the kingdoms of the earth accepting His rule, to pay to anyone else that homage which belongs to God alone. Whereas you in order to win the world, for the sake, no doubt, of making it more disposed towards that conversion of which it stands in need, you dare to proclaim, in the name of the whole Church and of the greatest Council of all time, your sympathy for man in his efforts to make himself god, and to declare your own homage of Man.

Compare this Discourse with that of St. Pius X in his first Encyclical, in which he foresaw this apostasy:

“When all this is considered there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils that are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the Son of Perdition of whom the Apostle speaks. Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the Faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity! While, on the other hand, and this according to the same Apostle is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has contemned God's majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored…

“That is why all our efforts must be directed towards bringing mankind back under the rule of Christ. To achieve the result of Our hopes, it is vital to spare no efforts in uprooting entirely this monstrous iniquity peculiar to the times we live in, which leads man to set himself up in place of God.” (E Supremi Apostolatus, October 4, 1903, quoted in CRC no. 1, p. 1, October 1967)

“The teaching and sentiments expressed here are totally different – are they not? – in their spirit and inspiration. St. Pius X, for whom you have no love and whom you avoid quoting, even when such quotation would be imperative upon you, preaches Christ in accordance with the fullness of the Catholic Faith and Law. He resists the temptation by Satan and bravely takes up the battle against him... And you, Most Holy Father? Your liberalism has moved from the pastoral sphere into the doctrinal, and from the practical level to the theoretical. Was this done deliberately, with premeditation? It was already evidence of greatest temerity to override the condemnations of your Predecessors in order to adopt this liberal policy, even for the best of apostolic intentions. Yet taken in its entire context, it seems rather that, having first yielded to the second of the three temptations – that of tempting God through foolhardiness – you have let yourself fall into the third, which consists in abandoning God in order to follow Satan, so that you finish up by adoring Man who puts himself into the place of God.  This Luciferian cult is a mark of Antichrist.

“You announced this new Credo on December 7 1965, in the presence of the bishops of the whole world. How far these were inattentive, or your accomplices, or fascinated by you, I do not know. Holy Mother Church, however, cannot, and will never be able to subscribe to such statements. That day marked the point of no return along the road that leads away from the Church of Christ in order to proceed towards that other Church which is truly yours – the Antichurch or Synagogue of Satan, where man makes himself God. In the meantime, however, through men’s indifference or cowardice, you are still on the Throne of Peter, in the capacity of Supreme Judge of the Church. The capital charge we bring against you concerns your liberalism and your cult of man, which we maintain are blasphemous, heretical, schismatic and finally apostate. The decision is for you to make, for you are still the Vicar of Jesus Christ upon earth. Pass judgement upon yourself and, if I have lied, cut me off from the Church. You know, however, that I am not lying. If I have told the truth, then cut yourself off from this Sacred Body that you have betrayed!”

Alas! Far from cutting himself off from it, without his “cult of Man,” ever having been judged, he has scaled the altar! His being raised to the altar is presented as though it were a judgment, the final sentence of the trial opened by Father de Nantes’ objections.

So we, disciples of Father de Nantes, address to Pope Francis, successor of Pope Paul, the exhortation by which our Father addressed his complaint:

“RETURN AND CONFIRM YOUR BRETHREN!”

“Most Holy Father,

“I feel impelled to ask you to accept this expression of my compassion and the exhortation which I make so bold as to address to you, prostrate at your feet, to have pity on Holy Mother Church and to remember to pay God the honour due to Him.

“MOST HOLY FATHER, HAVE PITY ON YOUR OWN SOUL!”

“During these days and nights when I have, as it were, been dwelling within your own mind – making an index of your thoughts, analysing your feelings and your aims, recording your decisions – I could not but become conscious of the terrible havoc wrought within your own self by all this new and heretical teaching. I have seen you standing alone, confronting all your Predecessors and – notwithstanding the applause of the world in a semblance of unanimity – cut off from the Church herself, from all the Saints and the multitudes of faithful who peopled our great Catholic past.

“I have been obliged to measure the depth and breadth and height of this Great Design which within your own soul is diametrically opposed to the Faith of the Church. I compared it, instinctively, with that of your Predecessor, Saint Pius X: ‘The Triumph of God over individuals, as over society as a whole, can consist of nothing else than the return of those who have gone astray to God through Christ and to Christ through His Church: this is Our Programme.’ (Communium Rerum, April 21, 1909) Yours is, on the contrary, to lead the Catholic Church into a more vast and indiscriminate New Christianity, to make this Christianity sink into a universal ecumenism. Its Charter will be based on faith in Man, and the Cult of Man-who-makes-himself-god, which in its turn is to make way for that Tower of Babel which is being built by the World today. How is Rome to become Babylon the great, the harlot of the Apocalypse!

“I have been filled with horror to see what deterioration has taken place within your own self, asking myself what is the evil influence which has you in its power and fearing for the eternal salvation of your soul. Yes, Most Holy Father, I who am a miserable sinner among sinners, dare to tell you that I suffer greatly on your behalf at the thought of God’s Judgement – so close, so inexorable – and I must entreat you to have pity on your own soul.

“When I address you thus, it is in the confidence of being heard. For have you not yourself, on various occasions, in discourses other than those with which I have been concerned here, allowed us to see the anguish you feel at your own inadequacy and unworthiness? And I cannot forget that strange admission which you made to the pilgrims at your Wednesday audience on April 12, 1967:

“‘We find a strange thing taking place within Ourselves: in Our desire to comfort you, We find Ourselves beginning to share, in a certain sense, the feeling of your danger, from which We would wish to protect you. Conscious of our inadequacy, We think of the weakness of Simon, son of John, who was called upon to become Peter by the Will of Christ… Doubt… fear... the temptation to adapt one’s faith to the modern mentality… unreflecting enthusiasm...’ We can often discern in your words an element of distress which cannot but incite us to redouble our prayers for Your Holiness – and to appeal to you to break free from that sinister influence which holds you bound, to turn back to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to ‘confirm your brethren’!

“You spoke, on Ash Wednesday last, about the final destiny of man – ‘Life everlasting or eternal damnation,’ and you added immediately, with reference to this second terrifying prospect: ‘And this makes us shudder.’ Those were your words. Indeed, the very thought is enough to make all those shudder who will not do the Will of God. For it is a terrifying thought – terrifying for heretics, for schismatics, for those who commit scandal. How could I, after having noted your guilt on all three counts, refrain from adding, from the bottom of my heart: Most Holy Father, have pity on your own eternal destiny!

“MOST HOLY FATHER, HAVE PITY ON THE CHURCH!”

“The Church, entrusted to your care and for which you will one day be called upon to account, is drifting to her ruin as a result of your continuous innovation and ‘reformation,’ which is disrupting and wearing her out. You are aware of this, for you described the sad state of affairs in dramatic terms on December 7, 1968. Only you did not realise – though it was the third anniversary of your proclamation of the ‘Cult of Man’ – that such disaster was the inevitable result of your own error.

“‘The Church finds herself in an hour of disquiet, of self-criticism, one could almost say of auto-demolition. It is like an inward upheaval, complex and full of anguish, such as no one would have expected after the Council. (On this point you are deluding yourself, and are misleading your audience, for we did expect this and we were saying and writing so much to this effect, that the Church authorities, acting with your approval, applied the most ignominious sanctions in order to silence us.) We had expected to see, rather, an expansion and flourishing of the ideas ripened in the great sessions of the Council. This aspect exists also, certainly, but... it is the sad aspect which is the more prominent. It is as though the Church were working for her own ruin.’

“By June 29, 1972 your view of what was taking place in the Church had become blacker still, and alarmed those who were unaware, to whom the sorry sight of the Church undergoing her ‘reformation’ was being concealed:

“‘Through some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: doubt, uncertainty, questionings, disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation, have come to the fore. We no longer trust in the Church, but in the first profane prophet who comes to speak to us from any newspaper or any gathering, and we run after him to ask him if he has the formula for the true life, without thinking that we already possess it. Doubt has entered into our consciousness through that very window which ought to be open to the light....

“‘This state of uncertainty reigns within the Church herself. We would have expected the dawn following the Council to be a day of sunshine for the Church. In place of the sun, however, we have had clouds and storms, darkness, searching, uncertainty. We preach ecumenism but in fact we are drifting farther and farther apart from each other. We are doing our best to create new chasms instead of filling them in.

“‘What has happened? We will confide to you Our thought: that an adverse power has intervened – the Devil – that mysterious being to whom Saint Peter alludes in his Epistle. How many times does Christ not speak to us in the Gospel about this enemy of men! This supernatural thing (subsequent correction: “preternatural ”) has appeared in the world precisely in order to ruin and dry up the fruits of the Ecumenical Council and to prevent the Church breaking into hymns of joy at having rediscovered her consciousness of herself (?!)’

“So the Devil is the enemy of the Council? Is he not rather on the same side, and come to assert his leadership of it? In any case, the fact remains that the situation is a terrible one. So what are you going to do to save God’s own Church from the clutches of Satan, the destructive reality of whom you have just acknowledged?

“You do, admittedly, show some desire to help, to confirm your brethren in the Faith: ‘We wish, therefore, today more than ever, that we were able to exercise the function which God entrusted to Peter: to confirm your brethren in the Faith. We should like to give you that charism of certainty which God has bestowed upon him who represents Him on this earth, whatever his personal unworthiness.’ Nevertheless, in comparison with the power of Satan, with the extent of the present ills, and with the tragedy of the situation, your half-hearted inclination to do something about it seems to us very paltry indeed!

“Therefore we make so bold as to exhort you to think of the Church: Even if you are indifferent to your personal salvation, can you not show some concern for that of the great mass of mankind, and become a courageous ruler of your people for their own sake?

“Some remarks you made on a certain occasion suggested that you would be glad to retire. Though I did not attach particular importance to these, others have been very impressed: ‘It is the Lord who created the Church, and not We. It is neither easy nor pleasant to have certain responsibilities. Yet Jesus said: you shall be an Apostle. Upon you I will found My Church... It would be good to be able to lay aside such a responsibility. I, however, do not wish to do so. I would ask you to show at least your understanding and affection for those who have to shoulder the hierarchical functions in the Church – for those, that is, who have charge of the ministry.’

“Yes, we understand the heavy weight of his charge – ‘the weight of the Keys of Peter’ and ‘the crown of thorns’ suffered by the Pope in the shape of those numerous desertions and the other sad happenings in the Church, which have become the bread of bitterness for him as for us. Yet there comes to mind the motto of St Pius X, so noble and encouraging: ‘Do your duty and all will be well.’ Was it not you, Most Holy Father, who set the barque of Peter free to drift in the tempest? You did that not only willingly, but with a passionate joy – and now you weep about the consequences. Weep, rather, for the Church!

“Even worse, in this desperate situation, you let go the rudder and leave to God alone the care of saving the Church, which has been set upon this disastrous course by none but yourself.

You were saying, already on December 7, 1968: ‘There are those who would expect of the Pope dramatic gestures, decisive and energetic interventions. The Pope considers that he has to follow no course other than that of placing his trust in Jesus Christ, Who loves His Church more than anyone else. It will be He Who will calm the tempest. How many times has Jesus not said: Have confidence in God, and believe in Me! The Pope shall be the first to follow this commandment of the Lord and to abandon himself without disquiet and undue distress to the mysterious action of the invisible but very definite help which Jesus has assured for His Church.’

“This reasoning is false. Three years before, when the question had been how to reform, modify, change, and generally turn everything upside down, it was you who did it, it was you who were at the helm and made sure that it was your plans that won the day. It was you who prepared all the conditions necessary for this tempest now racking the Church. Now you think you can sit back with your arms folded, leaving go of the rudder which God had placed within your hands and which you had manipulated so effectively in order to steer us into the present disaster? You think you can leave it to Jesus to save you through a miracle? ‘Heaven will help those who help themselves.’ See, rather, how Saint Paul in the tempest led his companions, promising that the lives of all should be saved, on condition that they would do all that lay within their power!

“Then, on June 21, 1972, you again expressed this false view according to which you could disown all responsibility and lay it upon others – on Satan for the evil which you had done, and on Christ for leading us to that safety which we need to attain:

“‘In certain of Our personal notes, We find the following relevant remark: Perhaps the Lord has called me to this service not because I have a particular aptitude or because I should govern the Church and save it from its present difficulties, but because I should suffer something for the Church. It is clear that He, and no one else, guides and saves it. We are now confiding this Our thought to you, not in order to make a public – and therefore boastful – act of humility, but so that you too may enjoy that peace of mind which We feel at the thought that it is not Our weak and inexpert hand which is at the tiller of the barque of Peter, but the invisible, strong, and loving hand of the Lord Jesus.’

“Your words are fallacious, hypocritical and pernicious, because the Lord never did call you to endanger the Church through your Reformation and you would not now have the problem of saving her if only you had ruled her in accordance with the just and saintly tradition of your Predecessors. But to let go the rudder now and abandon the barque to the fury of the waves is to tempt God – to call for a miracle when one’s duty lies rather in humbly admitting one’s mistake and – together with all others on board – doing whatever lies within one’s power to save the ship. It was you, Most Holy Father, and not Christ, who desired and conducted this criminal Reformation. Therefore it should be your duty, not that of the Lord, to carry through a corresponding Catholic Counter-Reformation, or – if you will not or cannot do this – to give up your place to another. On no account, however, should you continue to fill a place of honour if you refuse to carry out the duties that go with it, nor go on expecting from your people an obedience and a trust of which you are not worthy.

“MOST HOLY FATHER, THINK OF THE HONOUR DUE TO GOD.”

“You are, we might almost say, the reflection and the lieutenant on earth of Our Father in Heaven, in the stead of His Beloved Son to teach, feed and rule His entire chosen People in His Name. God has bestowed on you the light and energy of His Holy Spirit, making you the Head of the Mystical Body of which He is the Soul and Who has overwhelmed you with His graces because you are His chosen instrument for the universal sanctification. God has placed His Honour and His fortune in your hands.

“You are the living link in that immortal chain of the succession of Roman Pontiffs without which we should lack all that is worth having. As you are in that position, we plead with you to think of the glory of our Heavenly Father and give up struggling against the things which appertain to His design, which is worth thousands and thousands of times more than your silly daydreams!

“Hallowed by His Name – may it be glorified through your ministry! Cease, then, to offer your praise and glory to Man – to Man who seeks to make himself God – and to flatter him in the things created through his pride, the insignificance of which you must surely realise from your lofty vantage point. Think of the thousands of millions of human beings who still await, helpless in the darkness and the shadows of death, the revelation of the Divine Name. Try to feel joy at the thought of God’s Great Design to bring all men to the knowledge of His Holiness and Glory. Oh what a wonderful vision of our Faith to see the whole of mankind from pole to pole joining as one man in the first petition of the Pater Noster: Sanctificetur Nomen tuum.

“We implore you to cease to preach us the cult of Man and exhort us instead to hallow the Name of Our Father in Heaven!

“May His Kingdom come – helped by your indefatigable zeal. For what are the United Nations, UNESCO, and the rest of these international organisations compared with His Kingdom, with His Church, ‘the only international body which has lasted,’ in the words of Charles Maurras in 1917, that political thinker whom you do not care for, but who spoke well when he said that? You flog yourself building sand castles when the same energy put into the ordered and peaceful service of the Church would have brought her great increase in numbers and influence, today, when men’s expectations, as well as their misery, are so great. What can a Roman like yourself find so fascinating about Manhattan? For is not Rome herself the City of cities, the source from which radiates both divine grace and human civilisation? How is it that you have so much more admiration for the pagan crowds in Bombay than for the Catholics in Portugal singing the unforgettable Fatima Hymn: Ave, Ave, Ave Maria? Is not Our Lady, Virgin and Mother, and Queen of Christendom the instrument through which men can attain holiness?

“Oh, how I pray that your eyes may at long last be opened to the vision of the glory of the Church through the ages and that, forgetting your aversion to it, throwing aside your pre-prepared discourses, you may be led to exclaim: ‘How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel!’ May that ‘happy vision of peace’ – of mankind united from East to West, in accordance with the prophecies of Isaiah, in the One True Church, inspire you with the courage needed to undertake the heroic task of preparing the new Counter-Reformation. If you could but drop your fanciful Utopias in which God has no place, and devote yourself instead to that Church which is in existence here and now – Christ’s Church and yours – and pray: Adveniat Regnum tuum.

“His Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. For the past ten years it is men’s will that has been done, encouraged by your own Declaration of Religious Liberty, and the results are there for all to see. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity – the Great Principles of 1789 – have replaced the Laws of God, and you can see what sort of place the earth has become as a result. The price paid to make the Charter of the Rights of Man into the law of the world has been far too high in terms of pain and sweat, tears and bloodshed. Cease then to extol the Law of Satan and return in all humility to the faithful observance of the Commandments of God and of the Church.

“God, who is slow in anger and rich in mercy, will speedily drive back into the depths of Siberia and Mongolia the Communist hordes who are to form the ‘blind instruments of His wrath.’ And, in response to your prayers, He will once again dispense His abundant grace to the peoples, so that they will turn away from the false humanism which prevails today and from the idolatrous cult which mankind renders to itself. God will forgive and God will help, provided that Rome returns to the observance of her Laws, both of the Natural Law and the Revealed Law of Moses and the Gospels. We pray you to assume the role of the Legislator and Judge who rejoices in upholding the Honour of God and takes every care to defend His Rights and make His Will prevail throughout the earth. To those who seek the Kingdom of God and His Justice, the rest will be added.

“Return again to Fatima, Most Holy Father, and there, joining your voice to that of the vast crowd praying as one, say with them: Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra. And when you decide to yield to Mary’s requests, you will be granted the miraculous gift of Peace!

“At any rate, and regardless of what we do, the future belongs to God Our Father. And the future belongs to Jesus Christ, Son of God and our Saviour, and not to any other king or messiah or lord of this world. For already, ‘the prince of this world has been cast out.’ The future belongs to God’s own Church, which is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. No Masdu of Satan shall prevail against her.

“For my part, I feel happy and confident in spite of my personal insignificance, at having completed this task which needed to be done. I have said before, and repeat now: may God punish me if I am wrong and have deceived those who follow me; may He strike me with violent death if I have served falsehood and not truth. There are certain exceptional moments in the course of history when the fog lies so heavy that – in the absence of infallible human judges – he who has enough faith is compelled to make a direct appeal to God’s judgement, as in past days, through an ordeal.

“But for your part, Most Holy Father, now that you have been handed this booklet containing the charges against you, you have forfeited your rightful place in the Church – and in relation to Christ Himself – until such time as you make use of your Infallibility to declare where the truth lies and where the error, in this state of division and scandal which is ravaging the Church. It gives me pain to be the bearer of this summons calling upon you to do your duty, but it is a divine as well as a human summons. It is charity that has guided me and given me the necessary courage. For unless and until you make up your mind to undo the heresy, the schism and the scandal of these past ten years – or even fifty in your personal case – of which you have now been publicly accused before your own Tribunal, you will have no rest, either in this world or in the next.

“We ask you, finally, Most Holy Father, to grant us, as a sign of the bond of Catholic charity, that we nay recite, together with you, three Pater Nosters and three Aves for your intentions, for the intentions of the Sovereign Pontiff as these have always been defined and as I find them in the Manual of Prayer of Ars published in 1844: ‘Let us pray for the intentions of the Sovereign Pontiff, for the propagation of the Faith, for the exaltation of Holy Mother Church, for the destruction of heresies and for peace between Christian Princes.’ For these are really and truly our intentions and surely they must also be yours.

“Pater Noster... Ave Maria...

“We entreat Your Holiness, in accordance with the just and lawful power of your Sovereign priesthood, to pray that the light and grace of God may descend upon us, and to bless the devoted members of the League of the Catholic Counter-Reformation – including the least worthy among them.

“Your very humble servant and son,

Georges de Nantes.

“Written at Maison Saint-Joseph, Saint Parres-lès-Vaudes, France, on March 27 and 28, 1973, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of my Priestly Ordination and my first Mass.”

The first Book of Accusation was followed by a second one “against our brother in the Faith, Karol Wojtyla,” submitted to the Holy See on May 13, 1983, and a third “against the so-called Catechism of the Catholic Church,” brought to the Vatican on May 13, 1993.

There has been no response other than the canonisation of Pope Paul VI, that is to say of his heresies, schisms and scandals duly compiled by Father de Nantes, and confirmed by the silence of the “sovereign judge of all Christ’s faithful.” For, ‘silence means consent.’

Then a divine surprise occurred: two bishops, Bishop Vigano and Bishop Schneider, have followed suit by denouncing the heresies, schisms and scandals that are submerging the Church under the reign of Pope Francis, successor and disciple of Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. A careful reading of the Abu Dhabi Declaration reveals a thorough knowledge of both the entire heritage of the Second Vatican Council and the Qurʾān. Bishop Schneider's profession of faith responds to it, almost line by line, with the affirmation of the Catholic Faith.

As for Bishop Vigano's open letter to McCarrick, it seems to be entirely inspired by Georges de Nantes' exhortation to Paul VI:

“Most Holy Father, have pity on your own soul”

“Most Holy Father, show concern for the Church!”

Pope Francis, however, pays no more heed than Paul VI did. Since the death of Saint Pius X (August 20, 1914), the Vicar of Christ, “the bishop dressed in white,” John Paul I aside, pays no heed to the will of Heaven. In order that Her Son may find faith on earth when He returns, the Virgin Mary came down from Heaven to tell three innocent little children how to cure the Church sickened by the Council.

THE GOSPEL OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA

First, beg pardon. This is the first message that an angel brought from Heaven:

“Do not be afraid! I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me: ‘My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You. I beg pardon for those who do not believe, who do not adore, who do not hope, who do not love You.’”

If we pray in this way, we will obtain mercy for everyone, for “the Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications.”

What an extraordinary revelation! It was in the spring of 1916. In the summer, the angel returned. The children were playing. What could be more natural for children?

“Pray, pray very much! The Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of mercy on you. Constantly offer prayers and sacrifices to the Most High.

“How are we to make sacrifices? Lucy asked.

“Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. In this way, you will draw down peace on your country. I am its Guardian Angel, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission the sufferings that the Lord will send you.

These words shed light on how God loves us and desires to be loved by us in return, on the value of sacrifice and how pleasing it is to Him, because it is the only proof of love that we can give to God in return for His love for us. It is not enough to say “I love you!” without supporting evidence. Sacrifice is the proof that incites God not to be outdone in generosity, to spread peace over Portugal.

That is why, from that day on, they did not cease to offer the annoyances and mortifications that circumstances brought them. They did not seek anything else, other than repeating, bowed to the ground, the earnest prayer learned from the angel until they fell from fatigue.

Our prayers and sacrifices, however, are not enough to obtain forgiveness from our Heavenly Father. We must unite them with the sacrifice of the Cross. In the fall of 1916, the angel returned to teach them the ‘memorial’ of this Holy Sacrifice: “Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He Himself is offended. Through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I ask of You the conversion of poor sinners.”

This time the angel concluded the ceremony with a Eucharistic Communion to console God the Father for the immense apostasy. Thus they received the Eucharistic kiss from Jesus, the Word made flesh, immolated and risen; Lucy, when she received in Communion His Body, and Francisco and Jacinta when they drank His Precious Blood.

During this time, the Angel said these words, which are today tragically topical: “Eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.”

This year of preparation was followed by the year of the Blessed Virgin’s apparitions.

Sunday 13, Mai 1917: “I am from Heaven.” Twenty years earlier Saint Thérèse suffered the torment of a sudden night of the spirit: “In the joyful days of Easter, Jesus made me feel that there really are souls without faith, who, through abuse of grace, have lost this precious treasure, the source of all true and pure joys.”

These souls who have lost the precious treasure of the faith are living today in the Vatican!

“[…] He permitted my soul to be invaded by the thickest of darkness and allowed the thought of Heaven, always so sweet for me, to become an occasion of combat and torment. This trial did not last merely for a few days or weeks. I have been suffering for months; it will only end at the hour chosen by the Good God and – this hour has not yet come. I wish I could express what I feel, but alas! I think that it is impossible. One would have to pass through this dark tunnel to understand its blackness. I will, however, try to explain it by means of a comparison.

“Let me suppose that I had been born in a land of thick fogs, and had never seen the pleasant aspect of nature, bathed, transfigured by brilliant sunshine; although I had heard of these wonders from my early youth, and knew that the country wherein I dwelt was not my real home, there was another land to which I should always aspire. Now this is not a fable, invented by an inhabitant of the sad country where I am; it is the solemn truth, for the King of that sunlit country dwelt for thirty-three years in the land of darkness. Alas! The darkness did not understand that this Divine King was the Light of the World... Dear Lord, Your child has understood Your Divine Light; she asks that You pardon her brethren, and is willing to eat the bread of sorrow as long as You may wish (Ps 127:2) and she will not leave this table of bitterness where poor sinners take their food before the day that You will have decided. May she not, however, say in her own name, and in the name of her brethren? Have pity on us Lord, for we are poor sinners! O Lord, send us away justified. May all those who are not enlightened by the luminous torch of the Faith come to see it shine in the end. O Jesus, if it is necessary that the table sullied by them be purified by one soul who loves You, I truly wish to eat the bread of affliction alone at that table until it please You to introduce me into Your Kingdom of light. The only grace I ask of You is never to offend You!

“My beloved Mother, what I write to you lacks coherence; my little story that resembled a fairy tale has suddenly turned into a prayer, I do not know what interest you will find in reading all these confused and poorly expressed thoughts. After all, Mother, I am not writing to produce literature but out of obedience. If I bore you, at least you will see that your child has shown good will. I will thus without discouraging myself continue my little comparison from where I left off. I said that the certainty of going one day far from the sad and dark land had been given to me from my childhood; not only did I believe because of what I heard people more knowledgeable than myself say, but also I felt aspirations for a more beautiful region in the bottom of my heart. Just as the genius of Christopher Columbus made him sense that there existed a new world, when no one had thought of it, thus I felt that another earth would one day serve me as a stable dwelling. Suddenly, however, the fog that surrounds me becomes thicker. It penetrates my soul and envelops it in such a way that I am no longer able to find in it the so sweet image of my Country – all has disappeared!

“When my heart, weary of the enveloping darkness, tries to find some rest and strength in the thought of an everlasting life to come, my anguish only increases. It seems to me that the darkness itself, borrowing the voice of sinners, cries mockingly:

“‘You dream of a land of light and fragrance, you believe that the Creator of these wonders will be for ever yours, you think to escape one day from the mists in which you now languish. Hope on! Hope on! Look forward to death! It will give you, not what you hope for, but a night darker still, the night of utter nothingness.’

“Beloved Mother, the picture that I wanted to give you of the darkness that obscures my soul is as imperfect as a first rough outline is from the model; yet I do not want to write more, I would fear to blaspheme... I even fear that I may have said too much…(St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, The Story of a Soul, 1897)

Today, in 2019, it is insufficient to express the blasphemy that proceeds from the mouth of the Pope himself!

The response could only come from Heaven :

“We saw, on a small holm oak, a Lady all dressed in white,  more brilliant than the sun, and radiating a light more clear and more intense than a crystal glass filled with sparkling water, when the rays of the burning sun shine through it. We stopped, astounded, before this Apparition. We were so close, just a few feet from Her, that we were bathed in the light that surrounded Her, or rather, which radiated from Her.

“Then Our Lady spoke to us:

‘Do not be afraid. I will do you no harm.’

‘Where does Your Grace come from?’ I asked Her.

‘I am of Heaven.’

‘What does Your Grace want of me?’

‘I have come to ask you to come here for six months in succession, on the 13^th day, at this same hour. Later on, I will tell you who I am and what I want. Afterwards, I will return here yet a seventh time.’

‘Shall I go to Heaven too?’

‘Yes, you will.’

‘And Jacinta?’

‘She will go also.’

‘And Francisco?’

‘He will go there too, but he will have to say many Rosaries.’

“Then I remembered to ask about two girls who had died recently. They were friends of mine and used to come to my home to learn weaving with my eldest sister.”

‘Is Maria das Neves already in Heaven?’

‘Yes, she is.’

“I think she was about 16 years old.”

‘And Amelia?’

‘She will be in Purgatory until the end of the world.’

“It seems to me that she was between 18 and 20 years of age.”

It was only then that Our Lady, like an afflicted mother, addressed Her request to the children in an exquisitely polite manner:

‘Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?’

‘Yes, we are willing.’

‘Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort.’

“As She pronounced these last words, (the grace of God, etc.) Our Lady opened Her hands for the first time, communicating to us a light so intense that, as it streamed from Her hands, its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of our souls, making us see ourselves in God Who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors.

“Then, moved by an inner impulse that was also communicated to us, we fell to our knees, repeating in our hearts: ‘O Most Holy Trinity, I adore You! My God, my God, I love You in the most Blessed Sacrament.’

“After a few moments, Our Lady spoke again:

‘Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world, and the end of the war.’

Because a time will come when you will no longer be able to attend Mass for want of priests. Il will be “the Mass of the Blessed Virgin,” as our Father, Georges de Nantes, termed it in his commentary on the Rosary.

‘Can you tell me if the war will go on a long time, or will it end soon?’

‘I cannot tell you that yet, because I have not yet said what I want.’

“Then She began to rise serenely, going up towards the east, until She disappeared in the immensity of space. The light that surrounded Her seemed to open up a path before Her in the firmament, and for this reason we sometimes said that we saw Heaven opening.”

The three little ones remained as though fascinated for some time, looking up to the sky, staring at the point where the celestial vision had disappeared.

“The apparition of Our Lady plunged us once more into the atmosphere of the supernatural,” Lucy said, “but in a more gentle way than the apparitions of the Angel. Instead of that annihilation in the Divine Presence, which exhausted us even physically, it left us filled with peace and expansive joy, which did not prevent us from speaking afterwards of what had happened.” (To be continued.)