BIG: Tucker Carlson in Russia already, to interview President Putin, Musk supports.

For the "thinkers" of the modern world it was a dark age because faith was valued more than reason and scientific rationalism, as a reflection of a dominant Christian culture.

 

The term dark ages was coined in the 14th century by the Italian poet Petrarca, who was a faithful Catholic and who did not see a conflict between realizing humanity's potential and having religious faith. What he saw was that the culture of ancient Rome and the Greeks was far richer in art, poetry, and science, and the reasons are the ones I mentioned. He himself died from the plague that once again swept Europe...
The invention of the printing press enabled the redevelopment of science and art, and the discovery of America was another step in all of this.

The theory of communism was born in Germany by Marx who never set foot in Russia. The first revolution and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks took place in Russia 1, but the other revolutions happened in parallel in Germany in 1918, Hungary in 1918/19 and the coming to power while the struggle in Russia was still going on between the Red Army (communists) and the White Army (the imperial army abdicated Emperor) until 1921. Our Lady told the people in a way they could understand, they did not know what communism was, but they knew about Russia and that they could associate the arrival of new authorities with evil. That is why the Church condemns communism, not the Russians and other nations... Communism itself is not Russian, but the first communist government was established there. As for Iran, Russia, China, where did I say that I do not condemn them and relativize their power? I'm saying that evil will always persecute good, evil will always persecute Christians, and you can't expect these regimes to open their doors to you because it's never been like that. The Roman Empire was also doing evil, so Jesus did not attack the Emperor or the Romans, but the apostles simply preached the faith regardless of the sanctions that preaching brought them.

Who prevents Christians from going to preach in Russia, Iran, China, just like the apostles used to go around the Roman Empire?

 

It is true that the Russian Orthodox Church suffered greatly as a result of the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin's rule, but under Satlin it became the official religion of the regime and the instrument of persecution of the Catholic Church.

 

Communism was born at the level of ideas with Marx in Germany, but was implemented for the first time in Russia, which occurred months after Our Lady providentially appeared in Fátima. The Fatima message expressly condemns communism and mentions Russia as a central theme, but this is due to the guilt of its rulers over the years and not because God rejects the Russian people in any way. You have a habit of citing the errors of the West as if we Catholics did not have the authority to condemn persecution in Eastern countries. All the mistakes of communism and the West; including the apostasy of bishops were predicted in the Fatima message; This is a message that the Russian government prevents from being propagated with its restrictions, thus maintaining the deception that Catholicism has really degenerated along with the entire Western society. Anyone can travel to Iran; Russia or China to preach the doctrine of the Church, the problem will be to do so freely

 

Fatima Issues


Sister Lucy’s Last Public Interview - 1957

Fr. Augustin Fuentes
A reader recently noted that the interview Sister Lucy gave to Fr. Augustin Fuentes in 1957, is always partially reported, and asked TIA if we could post the full text. To assist in this request we are now posting the most complete text available of the 1957 interview with our own translation from the original Spanish. Fr. Augustín Fuentes was the Mexican priest named vice-postulator of the cause of beatification for Francisco and Jacinta. In that interview Sr. Lucy said that Our Lady told her: “The last means that God will give to the world for its salvation are the Holy Rosary and My Immaculate Heart.”

This important conversation of December 26, 1957 was the last public interview of Sr. Lucy. After it, permission was refused for any other interviews and she was effectively silenced and completely hidden away for the next several decades.

Another very jovial Sr. Lucy appeared 10 years later in 1967 during Paul VI’s visit to Fatima. This Sr. Lucy, square-faced, cheerful and robust – incredibly different from the oval faced, sad and pale Sr. Lucy who spoke to Fr. Fuentes - was seen more regularly starting in 1982, after John Paul II’s visit to Fatima. [See our Two Sister Lucys' analysis]

These are the authentic words of her 1957 conversation with Fr. Fuentes, which came from the records of the official archivist of Fatima, Fr. Joaquín María Alonso, CMF. Fr. Alonso spoke with Sr. Lucy and publicly testified that her statements to Fr. Fuentes in 1957 were genuine and true.

This text is from his book, La verdad sobre el Secreto de Fátima, Fátima sin mitos [The Truth about the Secret of Fatima without Myths ]. The text has the approval and imprimatur of Archbishop Sánchez of Santa Cruz, Mexico.

What follows is the literal translation of Fr. Fuentes' text reporting what he heard "from the lips of" the seer of Fatima. TIA


Interview of December 26, 1957
Speaking to the sisters of Motherhouse of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Mexico on May 22, 1958, Fr. Fuentes said, “I want to tell you the last conversation I had with her [Sister Lucy], which was on December 26 of last year. It was in the convent, where I found her very sad, pale and drawn.”



A very grave Sister Lucia in 1957
He then proceeded to read Sister’s Lucy’s words to him at the December 26, 1957, interview:

“Father, the Blessed Virgin is very sad because no one has paid attention to her Message, neither the good nor the bad. The good, because they continue on the road of goodness, but without paying mind to this Message. The bad, because of their sins, do not see God’s chastisement already falling on them presently; they also continue on their path of badness, ignoring the Message. But, Father, you must believe me that God is going to punish the world and chastise it in a tremendous way.

“The chastisement from Heaven is imminent. The year 1960 is on us, and then what will happen? It will be very sad for everyone, and far from a happy thing if the world does not pray and do penance before then. I cannot give more details, because it is still a secret. By the will of the Blessed Virgin, only the Holy Father and the Bishop of Fatima can know the secret. Both have chosen, however, not to open it in order not to be influenced by it. (1)

“This is the third part of the Message of Our Lady, which still remains secret until 1960. Tell them, Father, that the Blessed Virgin said repeatedly – to my cousins Francisco and Jacinta as well as to me – that many nations would disappear from the face of the earth, that Russia would be the instrument of chastisement from Heaven for the whole world if the conversion of that poor Nation is not obtained beforehand. …”

A decisive battle with the Devil

Sr. Lucy also told me:



Fr. Augustin Fuentes
“Father, the Devil is fighting a decisive battle against the Virgin and, as you know, what most offends God and what will gain him the greatest number of souls in the shortest time is to gain the souls consecrated to God. For this also leaves unprotected the field of the laity and the Devil can more easily seize them.

”Also, Father, tell them that my cousins Francisco and Jacinta made sacrifices because they always saw the Blessed Virgin was very sad in all her apparitions. She never smiled at us. This anguish that we saw in her, caused by offenses to God and the chastisements that threaten sinners, penetrated our souls. And being children, we did not know what measures to devise except to pray and make sacrifices. …”

 

We cannot wait for Rome to speak

Referring to the vision of Hell that Our Lady showed her and Jacinta and Francisco, she said:

“For this reason, Father, it is my mission not just to tell about the material punishments that will certainly come over the earth if the world does not pray and do penance. No, my mission is to tell everyone the imminent danger we are in of losing our souls for all eternity if we remain fixed in sin.

“Father, we should not wait for a call to the world from Rome on the part of the Holy Father to do penance. Nor should we wait for a call for penance to come from the Bishops in our Dioceses, nor from our Religious Congregations. No, Our Lord has often used these means, and the world has not paid heed. So, now each one of us must begin to reform himself spiritually. Each one has to save not only his own soul, but also all the souls that God has placed on his pathway.

Two last remedies to save the world

“Father, the Blessed Virgin did not tell me that we are in the last times of the world, but I understood this for three reasons:

“The first is because she told me that the Devil is engaging in a battle with the Virgin, a decisive battle. It is a final battle where one party will be victorious and the other will suffer defeat. So, from now on, we are either with God or we are with the Devil; there is no middle ground.

“The second reason is because she told me, as well as my cousins, that God is giving two last remedies to the world: the Holy Rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And, being the last remedies, that is to say, they are the final ones, means that there will be no others.



'Our Lady never smiled. She was always very sad'
“And the third, because in the plans of the Divine Providence, when God is going to chastise the world He always first exhausts all other remedies. When He sees that the world pays no attention whatsoever, then, as we say in our imperfect way of talking, with a certain fear He presents us the last means of salvation, His Blessed Mother.

If we despise and reject this last means, Heaven will no longer pardon us, because we will have committed a sin that the Gospel calls a sin against the Holy Spirit. This sin consists in openly rejecting – with full knowledge and will – the salvation that is put in our hands.

“Also, since Our Lord is a very good Son, He will not permit that we offend and despise His Blessed Mother. We have as obvious testimony the history of different centuries where Our Lord has shown us with terrible examples how He has always defended the honor of His Blessed Mother.

“Prayer and sacrifice are the two means to save the world. As for the Holy Rosary, Father, in these last times in which we are living, the Blessed Virgin has given a new efficacy to the praying of the Holy Rosary. This in such a way that there is no problem that cannot be resolved by praying the Rosary, no matter how difficult it is - be it temporal or above all spiritual - in the spiritual life of each of us or the lives of our families, be they our families in the world or Religious Communities, or even in the lives of peoples and nations.

“I repeat, there is no problem, as difficult as it may be, that we cannot resolve at this time by praying the Holy Rosary. With the Holy Rosary we will save ourselves, sanctify ourselves, console Our Lord and obtain the salvation of many souls.

“Then, there is devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our Most Holy Mother, holding her as the seat of mercy, goodness and pardon and the sure door to enter Heaven. This is the first part of the Message referring to Our Lady of Fatima, and the second part, which is briefer but no less important, refers to the Holy Father.”1. In 1943, the Bishop of Fatima José Correia da Silva authorized Sister Lucia to write down the Third Secret during her bout with pleurisy, which threatened her life. On June 17, 1944, this document was officially placed in his hands. When Sister Lucia gave the letter to Bishop da Silva, she told him that he could read it, but he refused. Instead, he ordered the sealed document to be kept in the safe of the Episcopal Curia. Pope Pius XII also chose not to read the message, and left it in the care of Bishop da Silva until 1957, when the sealed envelope was sent to Rome at his request.

 

Sister Lucia said in 1957 that Russia would be the world's instrument of punishment; this after just 12 years of the defeat of Nazism; some Russian nationalists could consider this a form of ingratitude towards the Russian nation, which would make the historiography of the message of Fatima something extremely short in Russia if any initial freedom for free Catholic proselytism arose; Furthermore, Our Lady brought the two last remedies for the salvation of the world: the Holy Rosary and devotion to the immaculate heart of Mary, which are rejected by the Russian state church as Western innovations in addition to suffering public restriction. These two instruments of Salvation as well as the message of Fatima (inconvenient for Russian nationalism) also constitute a spiritual weapon to save the West.

 

So little is recorded of the era following the collapse of the Roman Empire that it is pure mendacious and self-interested speculation on the part of those who hold to Enlightenment superstititions as to what happened in these times. However, we know for certain that Arianism fell away and Christianity grew throughout Europe. It can be conceded that Mohammedanism (slowly) replaced Christianity in the areas seemingly most influenced by the Arian heresy, such as some Eastern territories, North Africa and Spain, some of which were controlled by the Arian Visigoths and Ostrogoths. This would be unsurprising, because Arianism and Mohammedanism would have shared the traits of an iconoclastic, non-Trinitarian god. Indeed, Mohammedanism was a syncretistic conglomeration of whatever was most amenable to Mohammed and his paedophilic, cleptomaniac lifestyle. In such a context, the differences between Catholic and Orthodox doctrines reduce significantly to matters of historical atrocities and misunderstandings moreso than religious differences. The differences, in other words, are more human than divine. We need to bury the hatchet, but Peter has to be number one (Francis is a poor argument).

 

Were these Orthodox who danced to Stalin's tune any weaker than our own Catholic prelates who surrender to the Western zeitgeist? To be fair to those Orthodox, they knew well the fatal consequences of opposing the Bolsheviks. While the optimum for the Orthodox would have been to give the two fingers to Stalin and suffer further martyrdom, the Catholic Church has always rejected Donatism and, thus, does not reject those lacking the strength to suffer certain martyrdom. Many current Catholic prelates are unwilling to suffer fates orders of magnitude less.

 

The central figures of the Third Part of the Secret of Fatima are the Holy Father and the Church Martyr. Wherever there is the suffering and the blood, there is the true Church.

 

Apostasy and communism are two different things, I can't compare them, but maybe you're right.

 

I'm only quoting Church history and theology. Regarding your charge of apostasy, did those Orthodox who reluctantly came in from the cold to Stalin's thaw reject or disown any dogma or doctrine? I'm not merely trying to be difficult, but it is important to be sure on all of this. The (Catholic) Church was historically quite lenient with those not up to martyrdom. This only served to (by comparison) glorify all the more those who suffered it.

 

Another view, from Fr Z (the comments are also worth reading):

https://wdtprs.com/2024/02/what-happened-at-st-patricks-and-what-now-wont-happen-in-austin/

 

Our Lord was so merciful to Peter that he did not dismiss his ministry as Prince of the Apostles and first among equals, even after his triple denial. I find it curious that some Orthodox churches (if I'm not mistaken, the ones with Greek jurisdiction) impose the sacrament of confirmation again on those who left the Orthodox faith and returned.

 

It's unsurprising that errors will occur when the connection with Rome is severed. How merciful is the Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church-I can speak from my own personal experience. Perhaps, because we are led by the successor of Peter (an argument not currently at its strongest)?

 

I don't know brother, what I'm referring to is not individual weaknesses of Orthodox Christians in the face of the fear of death, but rather a formal and institutional adulteration of the Russian Orthodox Church in favour of the communist regime, in which it's not clear where one begins and the other ends. Something that seems to be now happening again...

The Russian Orthodox Church was in fact the Soviet communist regime's instrument for annihilating the Catholic Church in USSR. I don't know if you're aware of the events of the Pseudo-Synod of Lviv that practically liquidated the Byzantine Rite Catholic Church in 1946. (https://ugcc.ua/en/church/history/pseudo-council-and-liquidation/)

The Putinist regime and its official Church have their own understanding of this lethal blow by "Mother Russia" against the Catholic Church in 1946, just as they have their own understanding of the Holodomor Massacre in 1932/1933. And this is why I find it really frightening that many Western Catholics praise Puntin's knowledge of [his version of] history.

 

I will always condemn sin, persecuting someone is evil in itself because you are doing something bad to another person and thus insulting God. I'm not using the "sins of the West" to justify the East, i.e. these regimes, but I'm saying that the difference compared to the past is that you had living witnesses of faith and people who were ready to die as missionaries, thousands of them, while today you don't have that in the West. There have always been Empires and regimes that forbade Christianity from England, which from the 16th century passed a bunch of laws that persecuted the Catholic Church, to missionaries in Asia, Japan in the 17th century when they persecuted and killed Christian missionaries, and in numerous other countries.
Only their persistence and numbers and the strength of their faith were fruitful and the faith was established in the Far East. If you don't have witnesses of faith and missionaries, how will you spread the gospel? You don't expect evil to willingly open the door for you...

What I know is that the sins of the West are much worse than the East, because they committed their sins with less knowledge than we in the West who have the fullness of the Catholic faith. They persecute what they do not know to be the Truth, and we know what the Truth is and we reject it.
Jesus told Pilate that the sin of the one who handed him over to him was much greater, even though Pilate was the one who condemned him, but those who handed him over to him were learned priests who knew the laws and scriptures, while Pilate did not have that knowledge.
Today, the center of sexual immorality in the west, human trafficking for the sake of prostitution, pedophilia, homosexuality, divorce, illegitimate children, abortions... These are the sins that Our Lady in Fatima said that most people end up in hell because of them.

There is no deception, but the decline of the Christian faith and culture led to the decline of Western civilization that we are witnessing. If there is a mass apostasy from the faith, if it happens that we have priests who bless gay marriages, if we have bishops who oppose bishops, if we have bishops who advocate for the ordination of women, abandoning traditional teaching... They are all part of the Catholic Church , we cannot take only the traditional and conservative ones and say they are the Catholic Church and ignore the majority already today.
In fact, in the West we are already living in a post-Christian civilization, as Pope Benedict XVI said in the late 1960s that it would happen.

 

Yes, it’s a post-Christian civilization. It happened very gradually at first.

 

There are many Catholics in the West who would be willing to die for their faith if necessary. You can witness this yourself here on the forum. There were many empires that persecuted the church of Christ even before Russia, before China, and before Iran, but I must say that at no point did I say that these historical persecutions were anything less serious than the persecution actually occurring at this moment in the East. Regarding the degeneration of the West, I completely agree, but I must remember again that Our Lady of Fátima gave two remedies as instruments of salvation: the Holy Rosary and devotion to the immaculate heart of Mary. Those remedies that can save the world are, however, rejected by Russia, which still restricts Catholic missionary activity. For me, stifling the door of grace for the salvation of millions of people is a very serious sin, and this in no way diminishes the gravity of the abominations of the West.

 

By that time, 99% of the Orthodox Church in Russia had been destroyed, and the priests had been killed. The 1% that remained alive were collaborators of the Soviets and were therefore under the direct influence of the state, thus acting against whomever they were told.
We had such a case with the communists where they forced Cardinal Stepinac to renounce the Vatican, they killed priests and recruited some to be their informants. However, Stepinac did not renounce the Church and was sentenced to 15 years of hard prison, and then house arrest where he was poisoned. Now he is blessed and is in the process of canonization to become a saint. Every communist regime subjugates the Church to itself because the state and individuals must control everything.