“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”

WITH these words, Our Lord reproached His enemies, the chief priests and scribes of Jerusalem, for “shutting the Kingdom of Heaven against men” (Mt 23:13) by refusing to submit to Him, condemning Him, allegedly, in the name of the Mosaic Law.

Two thousand years later, on May 17, 2024, Cardinal Fernandez published new Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena. According to these Norms, the message of Our Lady of Fatima could in no way be imposed on the universal Church, and no Catholic, cleric or lay person, would be obliged to submit to it. This document, which will henceforth be the law of discernment in the Church, hinders the merciful design of the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary by swamping the true apparitions of the Virgin Mary by a mass of alleged supernatural phenomena the celestial, human, or demonic origin of which the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith now refuses to discern. Fatima? “It could be the Devil”!

“Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.” (Lk 11:52).

PERFIDIOUS “NORMS”

The very introduction to these new ‘norms’, reveal Cardinal Fernandez’s perverse intentions:

“1. Everything God wanted to reveal, He did through His Son, the Word made flesh. Therefore, “the Christian economy, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.’ (Dei Verbum, no. 4)” (no. 1)

This is the ‘classic’ objection raised to Our Lady of Fatima’s requests, to which our Father, Georges de Nantes, responded as follows:

“I ask a question, an obviously indiscreet and unusual question: does Christ still have the right to intervene (the word says it all: intervene) in the life of His Church, of nations and of the world, to govern them? And even to ask His holy Mother to provide for the needs of Her children?

“All theologians know that Revelation came to an end with the death of the last Apostle, but in addition, in continuity with Revelation, what about the governance of the world and the Church? What about orthodromy, is it abandoned once and for all to men appointed to hold an office, or is God still free to act?”

No, according to Dei Verbum, God is no longer free to act.

From this first principle, Cardinal Fernandez draws the conclusion that “in the revealed Word, there is everything necessary for the Christian life” (no. 2).

This is indeed true. In the Apocalypse of Saint John, we even find prophetic figures of the future of the Church, “what is and what is to take place hereafter” (Ap 1:19), notably, in the midst of a deluge of evils, the appearance of “a great portent in Heaven, a Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under Her feet, and on Her head a crown of twelve stars.” (Ap 12:1)

How can we fail to see the fulfilment and renewal of this prophetic sign in the great modern Marian apparitions of Rue du Bac, Lourdes and Fatima? All the more so since Our Lord announced “signs in the sun” for the last days (Lk 21:25). What better sign could we ask for than the one wrought by the hand of Our Lady on October 13, 1917? From the Cross, Our Lord entrusted us to His Mother (cf. Jn 19:26), could She not come to the aid of her children?

It is perfidious to obscure Our Lady of Fatima’s message in the name of “the revealed Word”.

“You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to Me; yet you refuse to come to Me that you may have life!” (Jn 5, 39-40)

THE REAL APPARITIONS HUSHED UP

Cardinal Fernandez attacks the traditional canonical recognition of apparitions, which “oriented the faithful to think they had to believe in these phenomena”. He insists: “The Church’s own conviction is that the faithful did not have to accept the authenticity of these events.”

This was not the conviction of Saint Pius X, who extend the liturgical feast of the Apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes to the universal Church (decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, November 13, 1907), In his encyclical Ad Diem Illum (February 2, 1904), he referred to “those wonderful manifestations in Lourdes”, followed by “daily prodigies that still continue to take place through Her intercession furnish splendid arguments against the incredulity of our days”.

If Saint Pius X wanted the whole Church to give thanks for the Lourdes apparitions, it is obviously because all Catholics must believe in them! This is so for a reason which, while obvious to the simple and to “babes”, is not so to “the wise and understanding” (cf. Lk 10:21): if the Virgin Mary, in Her glorious body, has truly descended from Heaven where She lives and reigns eternally, the least we can do is to draw the consequences from the signs that She gives of Her presence, to listen to what She says and to obey Her wishes, which, for us poor sinners, can only be salutary and merciful requests!

Furthermore, if at La Salette, Our Lady asks that Her message be transmitted “to all Her people”, or if at Fatima, She announces and performs a cosmic miracle “so that all may believe”, by making the sun fall before the eyes of 70,000 witnesses and then stopping it in its tracks, this is proof that She is the messenger of the divine Will “to establish devotion to Her Immaculate Heart in the world, to save the souls of poor sinners from Hell”!

It is the duty of Her Son’s ministers to relay these heavenly interventions to the faithful.

“The works which the Father has granted Me to accomplish, these very works which I am doing, bear Me witness that the Father has sent Me.

“His voice you have never heard, His Face you have never seen; and you do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He has sent. (Jn 5, 36-38)

ULTIMATE HOPE: THE HOLY FATHER’S CONVERSION

Our Lady of Fatima said on July 13, 1917: “You have seen Hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.”

Cardinal Fernandez has the nerve to oppose this sovereign and salutary divine will. He writes that the new procedures “do not include the possibility of declaring that the phenomenon under discernment is of supernatural origin – that is, affirming with moral certainty that it originates from a decision willed by God in a direct way.” (Letter of Presentation).

It is too late, Cardinal! You can fight Our Lady’s message, bruise Her heel all you like, but She will bruise your head. Your standards do not apply to the apparitions at Fatima to which She attested by such great miracles, and which Bishop da Silva recognised on October 13, 1930. A new Covenant is offered to the Church, by God, in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Do you object? Our Lord will accomplish His plan in spite of you, against you. It will be late, it is already very late, but the Holy Father will be converted, the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph, and the converted Catholic multitudes will make reparation for all your outrages.

Not the least of these is your insistence on repeating “that it is not obligatory to make use” of these new revelations, as a response to our repeated requests for the establishment of the reparatory devotion of the five First Saturdays of the month as the necessary complement to the Consecration of Russia pronounced by Pope Francis. No, you say to Catholics around the world, it is not obligatory to use this devotion! Even though God gives it to us “with a certain fear”, as the final means of saving souls from Hell!

Nevertheless, you write that “the possibility always remains that the Holy Father may intervene exceptionally by authorising a procedure that includes the possibility of declaring the supernaturalness of the events”.

Most Holy Father, we beseech you, bow to grace! Obey the requests of our heavenly Mother, to put an end to the war that afflicts you, and which threatens to ravage the earth, claiming millions of victims. How many of them will go to Hell?!

We will not be going to Rome to ask you. But to Fatima and Pontevedra, for the centenary of the Our Lady’s request for the Reparatory devotion.

We must pray, pray, make reparation, as did the venerable Sister Mary Lucy of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart, to whom Our Lord said IN 1939:

“Ask again insistently for the promulgation of the Communion of Reparation in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the First Saturdays. The time is coming when the rigour of My justice will punish the crimes of diverse nations. Some of them will be annihilated. In the end, the severity of My justice will fall most rigorously on those who want to destroy My reign in souls."

Ah! Abide with us, Our Lady! Be the salvation of Pope Francis. Inflame his Pastor’s heart with the desire to console You, and the dogma of the Faith will be restored, and souls saved from Hell!

Brother Bruno of Jesus Mary