Another Ratzinger Myth is Born: Ratzinger the Catholic Mariologist

As the time available to me is quite limited, I no longer seek to inform myself about the latest events within the madness of the counterfeit church of conciliarism other than a stray news alert about that pops up on my alleged “smart” phone now and again. Thus, it was not until I received a phone call from a well-meaning Catholic who was seeking my judgment about an alleged apparition of the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI to a religious sister in Colombia.

Suffice it to say that the content of the alleged apparition is absurd on its very face as the religious sister is claiming that, among other things, Ratzinger/Benedict had written an encyclical letter to proclaim Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate but that his “enemies” had “burned” it, a rather quaint term given the digitization of texts. Whether or not the late German New Theologian wrote out his documents longhand or on the computer is a completely irrelevancy as the point of this relatively brief commentary is to remind the few remaining readers of this website that Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was not in the least bit Marian and was one of the three principal co-conspirators (along with the late Angelo Sodano and the equally late Tarcisio Bertone) in the deconstruction and willful misrepresentation of the Third Secret of Fatima.

Now, the Third Secret of Fatima is not an article of the Creed. One can save his immortal soul without getting immersed in the controversy surrounding it. However, anyone who contends that Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict was constitutionally capable of drafting an encyclical letter proclaiming Our Lady to be what she is (Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate) is deluding himself as he worked overtime to deconstruct Our Lady’s Fatima Message. No one who loves Our Lady would seek to do such a thing nor to make it appear in his “interpretation” of her apparitions in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, that began on May 13, 1917, was an “interior light” given to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin, Lucia dos Santos.

The following summary of the Sodano-Bertone-Ratzinger effort to deconstruct the Third Secret of Fatima was provided in the book entitled The Devil’s Final Battle, written by those in the resist while recognize camp, eighteen years ago:

It is this part of the Third Secret that causes the conciliar revolutionaries to undertake their clumsy and sometimes transparent efforts to replicate within the walls of the Vatican, which is now conciliar-occupied territory, what the Artur de Oliveira Santos did in Ourem: silence the Fatima Message once and for all. Consider these passage from The Devil's Fatima Battle, edited by Father Paul Kramer, published by Good Counsel Publications in 2002:

First, as Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano is literally the most powerful figure in the Church today, given the reorganization of the Roman Curia under Pope Paul VI; and, as such, Cardinal Sodano is the de facto rule of the daily affairs of the Church, especially given the failing health of the Supreme Pontiff.

Second, owing to the same curial reforms of Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Sodano stands at the head of every Vatican dicastery, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which (when it was called the Holy Office) was formerly headed by the Pope.

Third, it is Cardinal Sodano who has dictated what we have called the Party Line on Fatima: i.e., the falsehood that he Message of Fatima, including the Third Secret, belongs entirely to the past., and that no one may request any longer the Consecration of Russia. We know this because:

• it was Cardinal Sodano, not the Pope, who announced to the world on May 13, 2000 that the Third Secret would be revealed, but only after a "commentary" had been prepared by the CDF, which, again, is subordinated to him, and
• it was Cardinal Sodano's "interpretation" of the Third Secret that was cited no fewer than four times in the CDF's commentary The Message of Fatima (TMF).

Fourth, Cardinal Sodano, as the de facto ruler of daily Church affairs, has vigorously enforced the new orientation of the Church in the manner of Fatima We know this because,

• Cardinal Sodano took control of the "interpretation" of the Third Secret and its false reduction to a thing of the past, along with the rest of the Fatima Message.
• One day after the publication of TMF, Cardinal Sodano pointedly demonstrated his adherence to the new orientation by inviting Mikhail Gorbachev, the pro-abortion, ex-Soviet dictator, to the Vatican for a bogus "press conference" (no questions allowed), during which Cardinal Sodano, Gorbachev and Cardinal Silvestrini sat together to heap praise on a key element of the new orientation, developed by Cardinal Sodano's predecessor, Cardinal Cassaroli, namely, Ostpolitik, under which the Church "dialogues" with Communist regimes rather than opposing them, and observes diplomatic silence in the face of Communist persecution of the Church
• Cardinal Sodano's representative, Cardinal Cassidy, negotiated the Balamand Declaration (1993) which declares that the return of the Orthodox to Rome is "outdated ecclesiology"--as is, therefore, (according to Cardinal Sodano) the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith called for by Our Lady of Fatima. . . .

The Devil's Final Battle also discussed the role played by Joseph Ratzinger in deconstructing and misinterpreting the Third Secret of Fatima: 

First, Cardinal Ratzinger, in his capacity as head of the CDF, has on innumerable occasions stated his commitment to the new orientation of the Church, which he described as "demolition of bastions" in a book published after he had become head of the CDF.

Second, in accordance with this "demolition of bastions", Cardinal Ratzinger has openly declared his view that Blessed Pius IX and St. Pius X were "one-sided" in their solemn, infallible condemnation of liberalism, and that their teaching was "countered" by Vatican II. He further declares that the Catholic Church no loner seeks to convert all the Protestants and schismatics, and that it is no right to "absorb" their "churches and ecclesial communities," but must make a place for them in a "unity of diversity"--a view that is obviously irreconcilable with the consecration and conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith. Cardinal Ratzinger's view is, to say the least, suspect of heresy.

Third, one of the "bastions" Cardinal Ratzinger has sought to "demolish" is the traditional Catholic understanding of the Message of Fatima.

Fourth, Cardinal Ratzinger sought to demolish the bastion of Fatima in TMF, which he published under the control of Cardinal Sodano.

Fifth, TMF attempts to destroy the authentic Catholic prophetic content of the Message by the following exegetical frauds:

• Cardinal Ratzinger removed the words "in the end" from the Virgin's prophecy "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph."
• Cardinal Ratzinger also cropped the immediately following words from the Fatima prophecy: "The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and it will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.
• Having deliberately tampered with the words of the Mother of God, Cardinal Ratzinger then declared that the (predicted future) Triumph of the Immaculate Heart means only Mary's fiat, 2,000 years ago, in consenting to be the Mother of the Redeemer.
• Cardinal Ratzinger thus deliberately ignored the Virgin's prophecy of four future events surrounding the consecration and conversion of Russia, and deliberately reduced them all to one event--Her fiat in 1 B.C.
• Concerning devotion to the Immaculate Heart, which Our Lady of Fatima announced that God wills to establish in the world, Cardinal Ratzinger dared to say that devotion to the one and only Immaculate Heart of Mary means nothing more than following Mary's example by achieving an "immaculate heart" of one's own, through "interior unity" with God.
• By means of this grotesque and blasphemous "interpretation," Cardinal Ratzinger debases the Mother of God Herself in order to sever any link between devotion to the Immaculate Heart in the world, and Our Lady of Fatima's call for the conversion of Russia to the Catholic religion, which must precede true devotion to the Immaculate Heart in that nation since the Russian Orthodox religion does not recognize the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Sixth, Cardinal Ratzinger, following Cardinal Sodano's Party Line, stated in TMF that "we must affirm with Cardinal Sodano: ...the events to which the third part of the 'secret' of Fatima refers now seem part of the past", and (according to Cardinal Sodano's "interpretation") that the Third Secret culminated with the failed assassination attempt in 1981.

Seventh, in adopting the Sodano Party Line on the Third Secret, Cardinal Ratzinger flatly contradicted his own testimony in 1984--three years after the assassination attempt--that the Third Secret is a "religious prophecy" concerning "dangers to the faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore the world", on which occasion Cardinal Ratzinger made no suggestion that the Secret pertained to the 1981 assassination attempt or any other past event.

Eighth, in furtherance of the Party Line, Cardinal Ratzinger went out of his way to criticize Father Nicholas Gruner at the press conference of June 26, 2000, advising the world press that Father Gruner "must be submissive to the Magisterium" and accept the alleged 1984 consecration of the world as a consecration of Russia. That is, according to Cardinal Ratzinger, Father Gruner must submit to Cardinal Sodano's Party Line. Cardinal Ratzinger's claim is false because there has been no binding, authoritative pronouncement of the Magisterium--not the Pope, not a Council, not the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium.

Ninth, in sum, Cardinal Ratzinger, carrying out the Party Line, deliberately used his position as head of the CDF to lend the false appearance of theological weight and validity to a shameless "deconstruction" of the Message of Fatima--an effort so blatant that even the Los Angeles Times sub-headlined its coverage of TMF and the June 26, 2000 press conference as follows: "The Vatican's Top Theologian Gently Debunks a Nun's Account of Her 1917 Vision that Fueled Decades of Speculation." (The Devil's Final Battle, pp. 230-233) 

The Devil's Final Battle discusses additional questions about the conciliar Vatican's party line about The Third Secret of Fatima on pp. 284-285:

June 26, 2000 - At a press conference, the Vatican publishes a text it claims is the entire Third Secret. The text describes a vision in which the Pope (a "bishop in white") is killed by a band of solders who shoot him down while he is kneeling at the foot of a large wooden cross atop a hill, after having traversed a half-ruined city filled with corpses. The execution of the Pope is followed by the execution of many bishops, priests and laity.

Questions abound. (See article by Andrew Cesanek in The Fatima Crusader, Issue No. 64.) Among those questions is why the published vision contains no words of Our Lady, even though, when it announced suppression of the Secret in 1960, the Vatican itself referred to "the words which Our Lady confided to the children as a secret." The vision fails to mention the words which clearly follow. "In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc."--the phrase Sister Lucy included in her fourth memoir as part of the integral text of the Third Secret of Fatima. The phrase concerning the dogma of the Faith in Portugal is mysteriously demoted to a footnote in the Vatican commentary on the Secret, where it is ignored by both Cardinal Ratzinger and Msgr. Bertone, the co-authors of the commentary.

Cardinal Ratzinger's portion of the commentary specifically states that he and Msgr. Bertone are following the "interpretation" given by Cardinal Sodano: i.e., that the Message of Fatima, and the Third Secret in Particular, relates entirely to events which now belong to the past. Accordingly, Cardinal Ratzinger claims that the Pope's escape from death in 1981 is what is depicted in the vision of the Pope being killed. Even the secular media recognize the falsity of this interpretation.

The published text of the vision contains none of the elements described by Cardinal Ratzinger in his mysteriously censored 1984 interview in Jesus magazine. The published vision says nothing about "dangers threatening the Faith and the life of the Christian and therefore of the world", nothing about "the importance of end times", nothing about what is contained "in many other Marian apparition" approved by the Church and nothing about prophecies "announced in Scripture". Further, while Cardinal Ratzinger said in 1984 that the Third Secret contains "religious prophecy:"--a statement he made three years after the attempt on the Pope's life--he will now claim that there is no prophecy, but only a description of past events, culminating in the 1981 assassination attempt.

Further, Cardinal Ratzinger's commentary scandalizes the faithful by claiming that the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is nothing more than love conquering bombs and guns, and that devotion to the Immaculate Heart means nothing more than each person doing God's will and thus acquiring an 'immaculate heart" of his or her own. The conversion of Russia to Catholicism and the spreading of devotion to the one unique Immaculate Heart of Mary throughout the world are not even mentioned in Cardinal Ratzinger's commentary. 

Convinced yet about the fact that Joseph Alois Ratzinger was an enemy of the true message of Our Lady of Fatima?

No?

Well, consider his own words in Fatima thirteen years ago:

Brothers and sisters, in listening to these innocent and profound mystical confidences of the shepherd children, one might look at them with a touch of envy for what they were able to see, or with the disappointed resignation of someone who was not so fortunate, yet still demands to see. To such persons, the Pope says, as does Jesus: “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mk 12:24). The Scriptures invite us to believe: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (Jn 20:29), but God, who is more deeply present to me than I am to myself (cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions, III, 6, 11) – has the power to come to us, particularly through our inner senses, so that the soul can receive the gentle touch of a reality which is beyond the senses and which enables us to reach what is not accessible or visible to the senses. For this to happen, we must cultivate an interior watchfulness of the heart which, for most of the time, we do not possess on account of the powerful pressure exerted by outside realities and the images and concerns which fill our soul (cf. Theological Commentary on The Message of Fatima, 2000). Yes! God can come to us, and show himself to the eyes of our heart.

Moreover, that Light deep within the shepherd children, which comes from the future of God, is the same Light which was manifested in the fullness of time and came for us all: the Son of God made man. (Homily at the Purported Mass on the Esplanade of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fátima.)

It is very significant that the late apostate cited his own Theological Commentary on the Fatima Message from ten years previously as he meant to convey, albeit in the obscurantist manner of a Modernist, that the Faith is purely a matter of the senses (no room for the intellect here) and that the three shepherd children had a "Light deep within them" that caused them to "see" Our Lady interiorly, meaning, of course, that she was not truly physically visible to the eyes of their bodies. And that is leaving aside the phrase "the future of God" as no true pope has ever spoken in such a absurd manner. A Catholic can speak about the future possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. One possessed of a Catholic mind does speak of the "future of God" as He is without beginning or end.

How did the Theological Commentary on the Fatima Message connect with Ratzinger/Benedict's words in 2010 to justify a conclusion that he does not believe that Our Lady really appeared physically before the eyes of Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos? Consider this passage from that Theological Commentary on the Fatima Message:

Before undertaking an interpretation of the message of Fatima, we must still attempt briefly to offer some clarification of their anthropological (psychological) character. In this field, theological anthropology distinguishes three forms of perception or “vision”: vision with the senses, and hence exterior bodily perception, interior perception, and spiritual vision (visio sensibilis - imaginativa - intellectualis). It is clear that in the visions of Lourdes, Fatima and other places it is not a question of normal exterior perception of the senses: the images and forms which are seen are not located spatially, as is the case for example with a tree or a house. This is perfectly obvious, for instance, as regards the vision of hell (described in the first part of the Fatima “secret”) or even the vision described in the third part of the “secret”. But the same can be very easily shown with regard to other visions, especially since not everybody present saw them, but only the “visionaries”. It is also clear that it is not a matter of a “vision” in the mind, without images, as occurs at the higher levels of mysticism. Therefore we are dealing with the middle category, interior perception. For the visionary, this perception certainly has the force of a presence, equivalent for that person to an external manifestation to the senses.   

Interior vision does not mean fantasy, which would be no more than an expression of the subjective imagination. It means rather that the soul is touched by something real, even if beyond the senses. It is rendered capable of seeing that which is beyond the senses, that which cannot be seen—seeing by means of the “interior senses”. It involves true “objects”, which touch the soul, even if these “objects” do not belong to our habitual sensory world. This is why there is a need for an interior vigilance of the heart, which is usually precluded by the intense pressure of external reality and of the images and thoughts which fill the soul. The person is led beyond pure exteriority and is touched by deeper dimensions of reality, which become visible to him. Perhaps this explains why children tend to be the ones to receive these apparitions: their souls are as yet little disturbed, their interior powers of perception are still not impaired. “On the lips of children and of babes you have found praise”, replies Jesus with a phrase of Psalm 8 (v. 3) to the criticism of the High Priests and elders, who had judged the children's cries of “hosanna” inappropriate (cf. Mt 21:16).   

“Interior vision” is not fantasy but, as we have said, a true and valid means of verification. But it also has its limitations. Even in exterior vision the subjective element is always present. We do not see the pure object, but it comes to us through the filter of our senses, which carry out a work of translation. This is still more evident in the case of interior vision, especially when it involves realities which in themselves transcend our horizon. The subject, the visionary, is still more powerfully involved. He sees insofar as he is able, in the modes of representation and consciousness available to him. In the case of interior vision, the process of translation is even more extensive than in exterior vision, for the subject shares in an essential way in the formation of the image of what appears. He can arrive at the image only within the bounds of his capacities and possibilities. Such visions therefore are never simple “photographs” of the other world, but are influenced by the potentialities and limitations of the perceiving subject. (Theological Commentary on the Fatima Message.) 

In other words, just as Modernists contend that Faith itself is a matter of interior consciousness that comes from within so do they believe that seers such as Saint Bernadette Soubirous and Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos have had real but necessarily "subjective" experiences that have no actual visible, spatial reality with the eyes of the body.

It is important to examine the connection between the Theological Commentary on the Fatima Message of twenty-three years ago and the "homily" given on the Esplanade of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fátima on May 13, 2010.

First, Ratzinger/Benedict made the point in 2010 that the three shepherd children of Fatima were able to "see" Our Lady because they had "these innocent and profound mystical confidences," meaning that the children had to have pure, innocent souls to see interiorly what they thought they had seen with their eyes. This corresponds exactly to what he wrote ten years ago, that "this explains why children tend to be the ones to receive these apparitions: their souls are as yet little disturbed, their interior powers of perception are still not impaired."

My friends, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI did not believe that Our Lady physically appeared before the physical eyes of Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia. He has dismissed the Fatima apparitions as an "interior vision" that are designed to move us closer to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and have nothing at all to do with apostasy in the ranks of those who believe themselves to be Catholics or, Heaven forfend, the consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart by a true pope with all of the world's bishops.

Ratzinger/Benedict did not believe triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary that he referred to gratuitously in 2010 has anything at all to do with the consecration of Russia or the conversion of souls to the true Faith, Catholicism. 

If what happened at Fatima was but a mere "interior vision," then why did each of the children, when being examined by ecclesiastical authorities, give identical testimony as to what they saw with the physical eyes of their bodies? Each had the identical "inner vision"? Logic has never been Ratzinger/Benedict's long suit as his rejection of Thomism (both Thomistic Philosophy and Thomistic Theology) has opened up to grow from young adulthood into an old man, who is now a "retired" antipope, who has lived in a world of contradiction, paradox and ambiguity which makes it almost impossible for to him to see the fallacies in what he presents as "explanations" of the Faith and the events associated with It.

Second, Ratzinger/Benedict said in 2010 that God "has the power to come to us, particularly through our inner senses, so that the soul can receive the gentle touch of a reality which is beyond the senses and which enables us to reach what is not accessible or visible to the senses." This corresponds with his statement of ten years previously:

It is clear that in the visions of Lourdes, Fatima and other places it is not a question of normal exterior perception of the senses: the images and forms which are seen are not located spatially, as is the case for example with a tree or a house. This is perfectly obvious, for instance, as regards the vision of hell (described in the first part of the Fatima “secret”) or even the vision described in the third part of the “secret”. . . .

It means rather that the soul is touched by something real, even if beyond the senses. It is rendered capable of seeing that which is beyond the senses, that which cannot be seen—seeing by means of the “interior senses”. It involves true “objects”, which touch the soul, even if these “objects” do not belong to our habitual sensory world. This is why there is a need for an interior vigilance of the heart, which is usually precluded by the intense pressure of external reality and of the images and thoughts which fill the soul. (Theological Commentary on the Fatima Message.) 

Why is it "perfectly obvious" that the images and forms seen, to cite the false "pope's own example, by the fourteen year-old Bernadette Soubirous and Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia "are not located spatially"?

Our Lady did not actually part the earth and show Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia a vision of Hell that they saw with their own eyes? This was merely an "interior" vision vision of theirs that did not really happen in time and space?

The the buds on holm oak tree over which Our Lady hovered as she physically appeared to Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia did not change their appearance as seen by eyewitnesses who came to watch them? They were all suffering from mass delusion when they saw the following things?

The second apparition - June 13, 1917

Preceding the second apparition, the seers once again saw a great brilliance, which they called lightning, but which was really the glare of the approaching light. Some of the approximately fifty spectators who had come to the place noticed that the light of the sun became dimmer during the first few minutes of the conversation. Others said that the top of the budding holm oak bent down, as if under the weight of something, a moment before Lucia spoke. During Our Lady's conversation with the seers, some of the bystanders heard a whispering, like the humming of a bee.

When this vision ceased, the Lady, still surrounded by the light that she radiated, rose from the little tree and glided toward the east until she disappeared completely. Several persons who were closer noticed that the buds at the top of the holm oak were bent in the same direction, as if they had been drawn by the Lady's clothes. They returned to their usual position only some hours later.

The third apparition - July 13, 1917

Mr. Marto, father of Jacinta and Francisco, says that when the third apparition began, a little grayish cloud hovered over the holm oak, the sunlight diminished, and a cool breeze blew over the mountain range, even though it was the height of summer. He also heard something that sounded like flies inside an empty jug.

The fourth apparition - August 19, 1917

On 13 August, the day the fourth apparition was to take place, the seers could not go to Cova da Iria, as they had been abducted by the mayor of Vila Nova de Ourém, who wanted to force the secret from them. The children held fast.

At Cova da Iria, thunder followed by lightning was heard at the usual time. The spectators noticed a small white cloud that hovered over the holm oak for a few minutes. Phenomena of coloration were observed on the faces of the people, the clothing, the trees, and the ground. Our Lady had certainly come, but she had not found the seers.

The fifth apparition – September 13, 1917

A crowd estimated at twenty thousand observed atmospheric phenomena similar to those of the previous apparitions: the sudden cooling of the air, a dimming of the sun to the point where the stars could be seen, and a rain resembling iridescent petals or snowflakes that disappeared before touching the ground. This time, a luminous globe was noticed which moved slowly and majestically through the sky from east to west and, at the end of the apparition, in the opposite direction. The seers saw a light, and, immediately following this, they saw Our Lady over the holm oak. 

All of this did not happen? The crowd did not see what they reported? Were they having "interior visions"? Preposterous.

What about the Miracle of the Sun on October 13, 1917, ninety-eight years ago today?

Was the following report from a reporter for O Seculo, Avelino de Almeida, who had written pieces that were scathing in their criticism of the children's claims to have seen Our Lady, making up the following story that he wrote about what happened in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, on October 13, 1917?

One could see the immense multitude turn towards the sun, which appeared free from clouds and at its zenith. It looked like a plaque of dull silver and it was possible to look at it without the least discomfort. It might have been an eclipse which was taking place. But at that moment a great shout went up and one could hear the spectators nearest at hand shouting: "A miracle! A miracle!" Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was Biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws - the sun "danced" according to the typical expression of the people.

People then began to ask each other what they had seen. The great majority admitted to having seen the trembling and dancing of the sun; others affirmed that they saw the face of the Blessed Virgin; others, again, swore that the sun whirled on itself like a giant Catherine wheel and that it lowered itself to the earth as if to burn it with its rays. Some said they saw it change colors successively. (The Miracle of the Sun.)

Is the testimony below about what happened on October 13, 1917, bogus?

From dawn, our reporter relates, visibly impressed by that calm courage, groups looming up again, intrepid individuals who pass through, without stopping for a moment, the small town, whose silence is broken by the chant of hymns intoned by feminine voices in harmony which contrasts with the roughness of the men... The sun rises, but the aspect of the sky is threatening. Some black clouds accumulate, precisely from the Fatima side. Nothing however holds back the pilgrims who, from all roads and by all means of locomotion, flock in that direction... Some small bells on a chain tinkle; we see here and there a cart decorated with palms. However, the festive atmosphere is discreet; the general manner is grave, the order perfect ... Towards ten o’clock, the sky is covered completely and a heavy rain begins to fall. The downpour, whipped by a bitter wind, beating against the face, inundates the gravel roads, and pierces to the bone those who did not take the precaution of carrying an umbrella or some other means of protection from the bad weather. But no one becomes impatient nor gives up following the road

Whereas «the low and heavy sky had a very dark color, laden with moisture, released an abundant and long lasting rain,» during the time of the apparition, the rain stopped totally. Abruptly the sky cleared: «The sun triumphantly pierced the thick bed of clouds hiding it until then, and shone intensely.» (Dr. Almeida Garrett).

This abrupt change of weather took all the eyewitnesses by surprise: «It was a day of heavy and continuous rain. But a few minutes before the miracle, it stopped raining.» (Alfredo da Silva Santos) 

«Suddenly I heard the uproar of thousands of voices, and I saw the whole multitude spread out in that vast space at my feet ... turn their backs to that spot where, until then, all their expectations focused, and look at the sun on the other side ... I turned around, too, toward the point commanding their gazes, and I could see the sun, like a very clear disc, with its sharp edge, which gleamed without hurting the sight ... It could not be confused with the sun seen through a fog (there was no fog at that moment), for it was neither veiled, nor dim. At Fatima, it kept its light and heat, and stood out clearly in the sky, with a sharp edge, like a large gaming table. The most astonishing thing was to be able to stare at the solar disc for a long time, brilliant with light and heat, without hurting the eyes, or damaging the retina.» (Dr. Almeida Garrett). 

«And then we witnessed a unique spectacle, the reporter of "O Seculo" remarked in similar vein, an incredible spectacle, unbelievable if you did not witness it. From above the road ... We see the immense crowd turn towards the sun, which appeared at its zenith, clear of the clouds. It looked like a plate of dull silver, and it was possible to stare at it without the least discomfort. It did not burn the eyes. It did not blind. One might say that an eclipse had occurred.» (Article of October 15, 1917) «The people could look at the sun as we look at the moon.» (Maria do Carmo)

Suddenly, the heavenly body began to tremble, to shake with abrupt movements, and finally to turn on itself at a dizzying speed while throwing out rays of light, all colors of the rainbow: «The sun turned like a fire wheel, taking on all the colors of the rainbow.» (Maria do Carmo) «It appeared like a globe of snow turning on itself.» (Father Lourenço) «The pearl-like disc had a giddy motion. This was not the twinkling of a star in all its brilliance. It turned on itself with impetuous speed.» (Dr. Almeida Garrett) «At a certain moment, the sun stopped and then began again to dance, to spin; it stopped again, and began again to dance.» (Ti Marto) It is indeed therefore a triple "dance of the sun" which thousands of witnesses affirm, having contemplated it for several minutes. 

  «The sun took on all the colors of the rainbow. Everything assumed those same colors: our faces, our clothes, the earth itself.» (Maria do Carmo) «A light, whose colors changed from one moment to the next, was reflected on the people and on things», notes Dr. Pereira Gens.

       «We suddenly heard a clamor, relates Almeida Garrett, like a cry of anguish of that entire crowd. The sun, in fact, keeping its rapid movement of rotation, seemed to free itself from the firmament and blood-red, to plunge towards the earth, threatening to crush us with its fiery mass. Those were some terrifying seconds.» «I saw the sun turn and it seemed to descend. It was like a bicycle wheel.» (John Carreira) «The sun began to dance and, at a certain moment, it appeared to detach itself from the firmament and to rush forward on us, like a fire wheel.» (Alfredo da Silva Santos) «I saw it perfectly descending as if it came to crash on the earth. It seemed to detach itself from the sky and rush toward us. It maintained itself at a short distance above our heads; but that sort of attack was of very short duration ... It seemed very near the people and it continued to turn in the opposite direction.» (Maria do Carmo) «From those thousands of mouths, relates the engineer Mario Godinho, I heard shouts of joy and love to the Most Holy Virgin. And then I believed. I had the certainty of not having been the victim of a suggestion. I had seen the sun as I would never see it again.»

Everyone Had Dry Clothes

       A last astonishing fact: all those people, who were for the most part soaked to the bone, verified with joy and amazement that they were dry. The fact is attested to in the canonical process.

The Vision of the Solar Prodigy at a Distance

       A marvelous thing, the phenomenon could be admired from beyond Fatima. And even, some perfectly credible witnesses, who were very far away from the Cova da Iria, related having seen the unprecedented spectacle of the dance of the sun, exactly like the thousands of pilgrims gathered around the holm-oak.

 

A photograph of part of the 70,000 witnesses as they are actually observing the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima on October 13, 1917.

In the small village of Alburitel, situated eighteen or nineteen kilometers from Fatima, the whole town was able to enjoy the vision of the solar prodigy. The testimony frequently quoted is that of Father Inacio Lourenço, because it is the most detailed. But what he relates having seen, all the good villagers, questioned by the investigators, confirmed seeing it in exactly the same way. 

       «In October, I will perform a miracle,» Our Lady had sovereignly declared on July 13. And on October 13, it was at Her efficacious gesture that the marvelous "dance of the sun" began: «Then, opening Her hands, She made them reflect on the sun, and as She rose, the reflection of Her own light continued to be projected on the sun itself.»

Thus, the magnificent miracle, it is She Who promised it, Who announced it three months in advance, and at Her gesture the miracle was fulfilled. That is the reply of the Queen of Heaven to the instant supplication of Her shepherd: «I would like to ask You to tell us Who You are, and to perform a miracle so that all may believe that You are appearing to us.» A response surpassing all expectations and one of such magnitude, of such splendor, that no one would dare to dream it possible.

The witnesses of the event were indeed innumerable, their testimonies agree and we are flooded with the documents they have left us.

In the first place, the numerous accounts conveyed appeared at once in the Portuguese press. It is noteworthy that the first to provide testimony were the anticlerical reporters. The three articles of Avelino de Almeida, the one of October 13, immediately before the event, the other of October 15, edited at Vila Nova de Ourem on the evening of the 13th, and a third article of October 29, merit a special mention. In spite of the jeering tone and Voltarian irony which inspire in part the first article, in spite of the expected anticlerical tones which still appear in the article of the 15th. These texts from a reporter of talent, one who besides, is honest and conscientious, are historical documents of prime importance5. But he was not the only one to relate the facts, for other reporters were present at the Cova da Iria.

Next there were the official investigations. In November, 1917, at the request of Bishop de Lima Vidal, who was then directing the diocese of Lisbon, the Parish Priest of Fatima led his investigation and questioned several witnesses of the parish. Unfortunately, he transcribed only... four depositions!

The investigations of the historians fortunately compensated for those negligences of the official investigators. Since Father Formigao, who obtained from Dr. José Maria de Almeida Garrett, professor at the Faculty of Sciences of Coimbra, a very thorough account, the most scientific report in our possession6, all the top historians went to question the witnesses. Father da Fonseca, in order to verify the points disputed by Father Dhanis; Father De Marchi, Canon Barthas, Father Dias Coelho and Father Richard.

In 1977, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the last apparition, it was still possible to assemble in Fatima more than thirty persons who had been present at the solar prodigy and who could reveal their memories.

Thanks to those numerous testimonies, it is possible to reconstruct a precise running commentary, allowing us to relive, hour by hour and minute by minute, this decisive day, assuredly one of the most important in the history of the world. (The Miracle of the Sun.)  

Did it not actually rain?

Were not the thousands of people assembled soaked to the bone with rain water?

Was not the ground beneath them muddy with puddles of water aplenty?

Were not the clothes of those people made completely try in an instant after the Miracle of the Sun?

Was not the ground beneath made them dry as though it had never rained?

The conciliarists have made war upon Our Lady's Fatima Message and her Third Secret, seeking to turn Our Lady into a witness in behalf of concilairism, precisely because they do not want to admit that that Third Secret deals with their own very apostasy as they deceive souls and blaspheme Our Lady and her own chosen souls such as Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos. It is that simple.

Admitting that I am agnostic as to whether the following account of the Third Secret is real and legitimate, I would like to pose the following question to my readers? What if the account below, as has been reported on the anti-sedevacantist Tradition in Action website, accurate? Would this not explain the antipathy of the unholy trio--Joseph Ratzinger-Angelo Sodano-Tarcisio Bertone--who worked so mightily to "reinvent" the Fatima Message and to misrepresent its Third Secret?

Tuy September 1, 1944 or April 1, 1944
JMJ

Now I am going to reveal the third fragment of the secret: This part is the apostasy in the Church!

Our Lady showed us the individual who I describe as the 'holy Father' in front of a multitude that was cheering him.

But there was a difference from a true holy Father, his devilish gaze, this one had the gaze of evil.

Then, after some moments we saw the same Pope entering a Church, but this Church was the Church of hell; there is no way to describe the ugliness of that place. It looked like a gray cement fortress with broken angles and windows similar to eyes; it had a beak in the roof of the building.

Next, we raised our eyes to Our Lady who said to us: You saw the apostasy in the Church; this letter can be opened by the holy Father, but it must be announced after Pius XII and before 1960.

In the kingdom of John Paul II the cornerstone of Peter’s grave must be removed and transferred to Fatima.

Because the dogma of the faith is not conserved in Rome, its authority will be removed and delivered to Fatima.

The cathedral of Rome must be destroyed and a new one built in Fatima.

If 69 weeks after this order is announced, Rome continues its abomination, the city will be destroyed.

Our Lady told us that this is written,[in] Daniel 9:24-25 and Matthew 21:42-44 (Alleged Third Secret of Fatima.) 

I do not know whether this is the true Third Secret. All I do know with certainty is that there are some, including the late Mario Luigi "Cardinal" Ciappi, O.P., who had read the Third Secret and stated that it did indeed deal with apostasy:

[Journalist Antonio] Socci also notes that Cardinal Ratzinger had said in 2000 that the Vatican interpretation was merely hypothesis and not the official interpretation, but now Cardinal Bertone “demands to impose it as the official version.”

Socci goes on to note various facts that support the thesis of two texts of the Secret: one published in 2000 and another yet unpublished:

• the evidence that the Secret was written on one sheet of paper;

• the evidence that the size of the paper was about 9x14 cm contained in an envelope about 12x18 cm;

• the evidence that the Secret consists of only 20–25 lines of text;

• the evidence from Paris Match magazine, from Sister Pasqualina, the confidential assistant of Pope Pius XII; and from Msgr. Capovilla, personal secretary to Pope John XXIII who said the Secret was held in a desk in the Pope’s apartment, which conflicts with the 2000 commentary that claims it was stored at the Holy Office.

"Bertone does not answer these testimonies in his book”, says Socci.  The Prelate merely says “the cinematographic reconstructions of the envelope hidden in the desk of the Pope are pure fantasies,” but provides no evidence except his own testimony.

Bertone goes on to ridicule the idea that the Secret speaks of “apostasy” in the Church.

Socci responds, “I don’t talk about apostasy, but Cardinal Ottaviani and Cardinal Ciappi did.”  (“In the Third Secret, it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.” – Ciappi)

More hints that the Third Secret speaks of an apostasy in the Church, notes Socci, are found in Sister Lucy’s 1957 interview with Father Fuentes, and in two statements of Cardinal Ratzinger. Bertone vs. Socci  (Those who you who read the Italian language can access the May 12, 2007, article in Libero at: Enrico Baccarini - SUL "QUARTO SEGRETO" C'È ANCORA DA INDAGARE di ...)

 

What?

Ratzinger contradicted himself?

No, really?

Yes, really. The late German New Theologian did it all the time He did it all of the time.

Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who once said as “Benedict XVI” that he did not pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary every day, doing so only when he had time, was not friend of Catholic Mariology, and anyone who claims to have a vision of him as its advocate is permitting himself to fall into yet another of the myriad mythologies that so many people have constructed to make of the deceased New Theologian what he was not: a defender of the Catholic Faith.

Here is a quick review of what Ratzinger/Benedict was an enemy of the Holy Faith and thus of the souls redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross:

1. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was a dogmatic evolutionist who made a career long warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth and hence against the nature of God himself.  

2.  Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believed that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, not that it is coextensive with her.  

3. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI rejected the "ecumenism" of the return, thus making a mockery of the martyrdoms of Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Saint Josaphat Saint Andrew Bobola, and among so many others, the English and Irish Martyrs as well as the work of Saint Peter Canisius, Saint Robert Bellarmine, Saint Charles Borromeo, and  the very words of Pope Pius IX in Iam Vos Omnes, September 14, 1868, Pope Leo XIII in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 29. 1896, and Pope Pius XI in MortaliumAnimos, January 6, 1928.  

4. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI engaged in inter-religious "prayers," personally esteemed the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands, extolled the nonexistent "virtues" of pagan religions and condemned certain "Christian hoteads," presumably including Saint Benedict of Nursia and Saint Francis de Sales, who personally crushed the symbols of pagan religions and their temples of worship that please only the adversary himself. 

5. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI said that a Jewish reading of the Bible was a possible one and that is not true that everything in the Old Testament points unequivocally to Our Lord Jesus Christ and explained that the Mosaic Covenant had never been revoke, thus contradicting Sacred Tradition, the Council of Florence's Cantate Domino, February 4, 1442, and Pope Pius XII's Mystici Corporis Christi, June 29, 1943.  

6. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI endlessly deconstructed the works of countless Saints and Doctors of the Church, disparaged the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas, praised Protestant and Talmudic "experts" as though the Divine Constitution of Holy Mother Church needed to be "augmented" by anything extrinsic to the Sacred Deposit of Faith of which she is the sole repository and which she, guided at all times by God the Holy Ghost, has always explicated infallibly.   

7. Joseph Ratzinegr/Benedict XVI was a vocal of the heresy of religious liberty as the "key to peace," never once mentioning Our Lady, her Most Holy Rosary, or her Fatima Peace Plan. 

8. Relatedly, joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI rejected the Social Reign of Christ the King, and specifically endorsed and praised the "separation of church and state" in Portugal ninety-nine years after Pope Saint Pius X had categorically and unequivocally condemned it in Iamdundum, May 24, 1911, in Portugal as he had in France in 1906 in Vehmenter Nos, February 11, 1906. 

9. Significantly, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI continued the false, condemned personalist view of holy matrimony that inverted the ends proper to the married state. Pope Pius XII personally condemned the Father Herbert Doms-Dietrich von Hildebrand Personalism on March 29, 1944:  

Certain publications concerning the purposes of matrimony, and their interrelationship and order, have come forth within these last years which either assert that the primary purpose of matrimony is not the generation of offspring, or that the secondary purposes are not subordinate to the primary purpose, but are independent of it.  

In these works, different primary purposes of marriage are designated by other writers, as for example: the complement and personal perfection of the spouses through a complete mutual participation in life and action; mutual love and union of spouses to be nurtured and perfected the psychic and bodily surrender of one’s own person; and many other such things.  

In the same writings a sense is sometimes attributed to words in the current documents of the Church (as for example, primary, secondary purpose), which does not agree with these words according to the common usage by theologians.  

This revolutionary way of thinking and speaking aims to foster errors and uncertainties, to avoid which the Eminent and Very Fathers of this supreme Sacred Congregation, charged with the guarding of faith and morals, in a plenary session on Wednesday, the 29th of March, 1944, when the question was proposed to them: “Whether the opinion of certain writers can be admitted, who either deny that the primary purpose of matrimony is the generation of children and raising offspring, or teach that the secondary purposes are not essentially subordinate to the primary purpose, but are equally first and independent,” have decreed that the answer must be: In the negative. (As found in Henry Denzinger, Enchirdion Symbolorum, thirteenth edition, translated into English by Roy Deferrari and published in 1955 as The Sources of Catholic Dogma–referred to as “Denziger,” by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, England, No. 2295, pp. 624-625.)  

Pope Pius XII amplified this condemnation when he delivered his Address to Italian Midwives on the Nature of their Profession, October 29, 1951:  

"Personal values" and the need to respect such are a theme which, over the last twenty years or so, has been considered more and more by writers. In many of their works, even the specifically sexual act has its place assigned, that of serving the "person" of the married couple. The proper and most profound sense of the exercise of conjugal rights would consist in this, that the union of bodies is the expression and the realization of personal and affective union. 

Articles, chapters, entire books, conferences, especially dealing with the "technique" of love, are composed to spread these ideas, to illustrate them with advice to the newly married as a guide in matrimony, in order that they may not neglect, through stupidity or a false sense of shame or unfounded scruples, that which God, Who also created natural inclinations, offers them. If from their complete reciprocal gift of husband and wife there results a new life, it is a result which remains outside, or, at the most, on the border of "personal values"; a result which is not denied, but neither is it desired as the center of marital relations. 

According to these theories, your dedication for the welfare of the still hidden life in the womb of the mother, and your assisting its happy birth, would only have but a minor and secondary importance. 

Now, if this relative evaluation were merely to place the emphasis on the personal values of husband and wife rather than on that of the offspring, it would be possible, strictly speaking, to put such a problem aside. But, however, it is a matter of a grave inversion of the order of values and of the ends imposed by the Creator Himself. We find Ourselves faced with the propagation of a number of ideas and sentiments directly opposed to the clarity, profundity, and seriousness of Christian thought. Here, once again, the need for your apostolate. It may happen that you receive the confidences of the mother and wife and are questioned on the more secret desires and intimacies of married life. How, then, will you be able, aware of your mission, to give weight to truth and right order in the appreciation and action of the married couple, if you yourselves are not furnished with the strength of character needed to uphold what you know to be true and just? 

The primary end of marriage 

Now, the truth is that matrimony, as an institution of nature, in virtue of the Creator's will, has not as a primary and intimate end the personal perfection of the married couple but the procreation and upbringing of a new life. The other ends, inasmuch as they are intended by nature, are not equally primary, much less superior to the primary end, but are essentially subordinated to it. This is true of every marriage, even if no offspring result, just as of every eye it can be said that it is destined and formed to see, even if, in abnormal cases arising from special internal or external conditions, it will never be possible to achieve visual perception. 

It was precisely to end the uncertainties and deviations which threatened to diffuse errors regarding the scale of values of the purposes of matrimony and of their reciprocal relations, that a few years ago (March 10, 1944), We Ourselves drew up a declaration on the order of those ends, pointing out what the very internal structure of the natural disposition reveals. We showed what has been handed down by Christian tradition, what thwhat the Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly taught, and what was then in due measure promulgated by the Code of Canon Law. Not long afterwards, to correct opposing opinions, the Holy See, by a public decree, proclaimed that it could not admit the opinion of some recent authors who denied that the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of the offspring, or teach that the secondary ends are not essentially subordinated to the primary end, but are on an equal footing and independent of it.  (Pope Pius XII, Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession, October 29, 1951.)