By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Very few Marian apparitions have been approved in the 2,000-year history of the Church. When one is approved, it means only that after exhaustive review the testimony of the seers and the witnesses has not yielded anything contrary to the Deposit of Faith. No Catholic is obliged to heed or subscribe to the messages transmitted thereby as the content is private revelation.
Fatima is one of the few approved apparitions and Sr. Lucia is the primary visionary among the three shepherd children to whom our Lady appeared in 1917. The Russian Revolution was two months old when Mary, whom the children only knew as “a beautiful Lady,” first shared with them her message from Heaven of prayer and penance. She was particularly concerned about the rejection of the faith brought by the social upheaval.
“Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated,” were her words as reported by Lucia. She urged the children to do penance and to pray themselves for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, calling upon the world’s bishops to do so formally.
Our Lady desired above all to save all mankind, and in particular her children in the Church, from the fires of Hell. She showed the shepherd children a vision of the fiery torments of eternal separation from God. She revealed the method of the Devil for the seduction of mankind by means of the lies that would separate us from God — a spin on the method he used with our first parents. His attack would find its principal target in the family.
Our Lady said, “The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be contended and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.”
Is the Pope dangerously avoiding the connection between the crimes of priests and the attack on the family? Are the two connected?
As I write, bishops from around the world are gathered in Rome to discuss ways in which to fight the evil of sexual abuse, especially of minors upon which aspect of the crisis they have said they will focus. But if justice is to be done, then all victims should be heard and all victims acknowledged, some of whom were maturing young men and not minors. Mr. McCarrick was removed from the priesthood for the reason that he abused men, including priests and seminarians.
The crisis involves homosexual predation, that is, men acting on same-sex attraction. The first John Jay report and sociologist Fr. Paul Sullins, among others, agree.
How do Sr. Lucia’s comments help us to put this meeting of the leaders of the world’s conferences of bishops in Rome in context? Unless they understand the crisis of the priesthood and of the Church within the context of the battle for the family, as emphasized by Our Lady of Fatima, they will not successfully vanquish the subversion of the Evil One.
The two basic communities are the family and the Church. “As the family goes, so goes the Church” taught St. John Paul II.
Many voices are calling for recognition of the role of homosexuality in the epidemic of abuse of minors that has rocked the Church throughout the world. Other voices are indignantly rejecting this and claiming it amounts to an attack of “homophobia,” or the sin of hatred of those who suffer same-sex attraction.
Any use of the sexual faculty outside the Sacrament of Marriage is an attack on both the institution of marriage and upon the human person. Homosexualism and the “gay lobby” which seeks to protect it are guilty of these. Pope Francis has admitted to the existence of such a lobby within the Vatican and the Church while at times promoting and defending bishops and cardinals who form part of it.
One of the Pope’s closest collaborators, Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, was practically run out of his diocese in Argentina for homosexual activity, among other complaints. Francis brought him to safety within the walls of the Vatican and created a job for him. That bishop’s sexual crimes against clerics in his home diocese have now caught up with him and he is the subject of an investigation. Pope Francis is guilty of neglect, if not outright collusion, in protecting this man from justice. The Pope’s words seem insincere in light of this and a number of other similar cases. He could be abetting the attack on the family through the compromises these cases bring to light.
The breakdown in society has reached such an extreme that the family itself is now under attack through transgender ideology, in vitro fertilization, contraception, abortion, divorce and remarriage, and more. Same-sex marital simulation and subsequent adoption mimic true marriage in a mockery by the Devil. That members of the Church, and leaders too, are refusing to consider homosexuality as a cause in the plague of sexual abuse leaves families further at risk. When any child is vulnerable, the family is vulnerable.
Do not the actions and words of the bishops in Rome, meeting to fight sexual abuse of children while ignoring anything regarding the homosexual aspect of the crisis, cede the victory in this battle to Satan? Why are the Pope and his spokesmen saying that everything else must be excluded from this conference except the focus on the fact that children are abused? If we don’t look into all the reasons why they were abused, are we really fighting the problem? Are we really protecting children? If not, then what are we covering up?
Ignoring Catholic teaching betrays Christ and His people. Refusing to face the whole truth betrays Christ and His people. Teaching less than the full moral law of God betrays Christ and His people. (See page one of this week’s issue for the statement by Raymond Cardinal Burke and Walter Cardinal Brandmueller.)
Professor Roberto de Mattei also spoke out on Christ’s suffering and betrayal by men of the Church: “One of the principal reasons for Christ’s sufferings was His vision of unfaithfulness — not only in The Chosen People — but in all those during the centuries to come, who would guide the Church, founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Only the truth will set us free. Bishops: Do not be afraid of the truth. Defend the family to defend the Church. Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@MCITLFrAphorism
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