Q. Could you please explain the following passages: Hebrews 6:4-6 and Hebrews 10:26-27? — M.M., Maryland.
A. The first passage says that “it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift and shared in the Holy Spirit and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to bring them to repentance again, since they are re-crucifying the Son of God for themselves and holding him up to contempt.”
If “enlightened” is a reference to Baptism and “heavenly gift” to the Eucharist, then those who deliberately defect from these twin pillars of the Christian Faith, which is the definition of the malice of apostasy, are unlikely to repent and are in effect crucifying Jesus all over again. Quoting from the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, the new Catechism says:
“We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins. Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts (for he is in them) and hold him up to contempt. And it can be seen that our crime in this case is greater in us than in the Jews. As for them, according to the witness of the Apostle, ‘None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory’ [1 Cor. 2:8]. We, however, profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him” (n. 598).
The second passage says that “if we sin deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire that is going to consume the adversaries.”
This appears to be another reference to apostasy, about which the Catechism warns: “By rejecting grace in this life, one already judges oneself, receives according to one’s works, and can even condemn oneself for all eternity by rejecting the Spirit of love” (n. 679).
Q. Have you seen or heard about the claim that someone has impersonated Sr. Lucy of Fatima? I first became aware of it on LifeSiteNews with John-Henry Westen’s interview of Dr. Peter Chojnowski, a Christendom College grad who is pursuing the claim. The interview is about 38 minutes, and the evidence is very convincing. To me, the important revelations of the investigation so far are the apparent changes that the alleged imposter made to statements known to have been made by the authentic Sr. Lucy. Those changes concern the Third Secret and whether or not a Pope has formally consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as requested by Our Lady of Fatima. Contrary to statements by Sr. Lucy, the imposter said the consecration had been completed in compliance with Our Lady of Fatima’s instructions.
Regarding the Third Secret, Sr. Lucy said the secret was to be opened by the Pope for all to see in 1960. The imposter said the Third Secret was only for the Pope and no one else was to see it. What do you think? — D.M., Virginia.
A. We have seen the video, and have visited the website SisterLucyTruth.org, but we are not persuaded by Dr. Chojnowski’s arguments. They remind us of the ludicrous statements put out by Bayside, N.Y., devotees about forty years ago when they contended that Pope St. Paul VI had been replaced by an imposter. They published a 40-page tabloid newspaper containing more than 120 photographs of Paul VI and his alleged imposter and argued that they were two different men because of the size and shape of the Pontiff’s nose and ears. The pictures were taken over a period of fifteen years, and they were taken from different angles and in different lights, which would explain why the Pope didn’t always look the same. Who of us looks the same as we did many years ago?
Dr. Chojnowski cites experts in forensics, facial recognition, and handwriting to support his conclusion that Lucy prior to 1967 and after 1967 are two different persons. He says that the “imposter” first appeared on May 13, 1967, at a meeting with Pope Paul VI in Fatima. (Was that the real Pope Paul or the “imposter” created by the Bayside group?) We are not told what happened to the “real Lucy.” Was she eliminated through murder or hidden away in some convent until her death by natural causes?
And how many people were part of this conspiracy? Was Pope St. John Paul II in on it, or was he so clueless that he could meet with Lucy in 1982 and 2000 and not know that he was meeting with an imposter? John Paul was a brilliant man who had dedicated his papacy to the Blessed Virgin Mary. How likely is it that this future saint could have been so blind as to be taken in by this charade? Not likely at all.
Dr. Chojnowski says that he started his investigation into this matter in 2017, but he mentioned that he had worked for 15 years with the late Fr. Nicholas Gruner, who died in 2015 after many years of using his magazine, The Fatima Crusader, to promote a variety of odd theories about Sr. Lucy and the Fatima message. For example, Fr. Gruner contended that Lucy had been silenced since 1960, but that she made some statements in an interview in 1992 that “are so bizarre and out of character that it has led some Fatima scholars to go so far as to suggest that she was drugged, brainwashed, or even replaced with an impersonator.”
Fr. Gruner’s main crusade was to convince people that no Pope had consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the manner requested by the Blessed Mother in 1917 and 1929. When John Paul said that he had made the consecration properly in 1984, Gruner disagreed and said that the Holy Father was guilty of a “mortal sin” for not following the wishes of the Virgin Mary.
If he were the Pope’s confessor, said Gruner, then he would “tell him that he was in danger of losing his soul in Hell if he didn’t make such an undertaking [the consecration].” He said that “the Pope is most seriously bound to obey Our Lady of Fatima, even under pain of mortal sin,” and that if he didn’t obey Our Lady, his confessor, “if he knows Fatima like I do,” would be obligated “to refuse the Pope absolution” (Fatima Priest, pp. 268-269).
The bottom-line issues in all of this are whether the consecration of Russia was done correctly and whether the entire Third Secret was revealed in 2000. Pope John Paul, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, and Sr. Lucy said yes to both questions; Nicholas Gruner and Peter Chojnowski said no. So whom are we to believe — the hierarchy of the Church and the Fatima seer herself, or two outsiders?
The plot thickened last month when Pope Francis approved the decision of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints that Sr. Lucy had lived a life of heroic virtue and can now be called “Venerable Lucia dos Santos.” Her advancement to Blessed and Saint awaits the confirmation of two miracles granted to those who pray for her intercession. Does this mean that Pope Francis and the Vatican Congregation are in on the conspiracy, too? We know that conspiracies exist, but we don’t think that this is one of them.
Instead of wasting time on whether Lucy was replaced by an imposter, this time could be better spent praying the rosary for peace in the world, as Our Lady requested.
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