May 2011
Our Lady and the Lodge
THE EDITOR
"Freemasonry: Here is the enemy." - LEO XIII |
There are many benefits and joys associated with publishing a truly independent journal. Unencumbered by managerial interference and not beholden to advertisers or other vested interests, one can speak plainly while proclaiming unfashionable Catholic truths without fear or favour.
This rare privilege (bequeathed by my esteemed predecessor Father Paul Crane, S.J.) far outweighs the necessary sacrifices. For the truth, as our loyal subscribers, donors and benefactors appreciate, is priceless. It sets us free from the faithless party line of the Modernists within; liberates us from the political correctness of the worldlings without. Thanks be to God, CO can offend their naturalistic sensibilities with statements of supernatural Catholic fact – unapologetically.
Others are not so blessed. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, for one. A follower of Buddhism and Shinto, he told reporters that the 11 March earthquake and tsunami was punishment from heaven because the Japanese people had become greedy. Here is a translation of his statement from Otaku Who News Radio:
The identity of the Japanese people is selfishness. The Japanese people must take advantage of this tsunami as means of washing away their selfish greed. I really do think this is divine punishment.
The flash of enlightenment was short-lived. The next day this outspoken political veteran was cowed into apologising. ''I will take back (the remark) and offer a deep apology," he told a news conference, adding he should have thought about the feelings of victims. Normally unconcerned about upsetting anyone's feelings, Ishihara has never felt the need to back down before. (Not even after the Chinese uproar he created in 1990 by denying that Japan massacred Chinese civilians in Nanking in 1937, despite the 300,000 slaughtered). Which just goes to show the power of anti-religious sentiment everywhere; the crushing weight of hysterical reaction to any talk of Divine Intervention in the affairs of men by way of punishment for sin. Indeed, apart from affirming the reality of Satan as a personal malign force in the world, there are few religious notions as politically incorrect and socially isolating as the sin-punishment nexus.
No matter how apocalyptic the scale of a disaster – and they don't come much scarier than the Japanese trifecta of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear fallout, not to mention its global economic/ financial implications – nobody wants to know. Nor has the relentless sequence of shocking natural disasters and financial, political and military turmoil around the world in recent years made them any more amenable to talk about God's wrath. The mere suggestion of the possibility is best avoided unless you wish to court universal opprobrium and character assassination. Hence the blogosphere turned blue with condemnations of Ishihara. "It’s good to see that America isn’t the only place where people say stupid things about tragedies," was a mild comment reflecting the general tenor of the (unprintable) vitriol.
Divine Cause and Effect
It is a touchy subject even among our own ranks. Following my three part article last year on the occult and diabolic possession, "The Monumental Struggle", a reader wrote to complain about "Blaming the Haiti earthquake as a judgement on the people for practicing voodoo. To my mind this was cruel and unjustified. Earthquakes are not confined to Haiti. Lisbon was twice destroyed by earthquakes and also in the tragedy innocent and 'guilty' suffer."
And yet far worse than my suggesting that pervasive occult activity may account for Haiti having suffered calamities which have not affected their immediate neighbours, would be to discount that possibility entirely, as if the Gospels and Catholic teaching did not support the thesis. Furthermore, Our Lady reaffirmed at Fatima that "the good" suffer and die alongside the wicked who provoke God's justice. The reader missed the point entirely. The very purpose of the article was to insist upon our viewing the world through a supernatural lens – one which allows for divine cause and effect, across the board. As I put it elsewhere:
It was not just the rampant homosexuality, occultism (voodoo), drugs and prostitution that brought down God’s wrath upon the Big Easy, although it appears that way. According to a prophetic Spirit Daily article by Michael H. Brown in 2001, which precisely forecast a Katrina-like disaster, it was also down to the indifference and devil-may-care attitude of the otherwise “kind and generous Christians” of New Orleans who let “fester an evil that is unmatched outside of Hollywood and Berkeley and Times Square.”
We reap what we sow: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind [Osee 8: 7]. For their sins, the city of New Orleans got Hurricane Katrina. For ours, the City of God was flattened by the alien winds of Vatican II and pillaged by the marauding Modernists we deserved ["Hurricane in the City," Nov. 2005].
In other words, the sins of one and all contribute to the ongoing natural disasters and hellish disintegration of Church and State in our times. When St. Teresa of Avila said that war is simply God abandoning man to himself she doubtless meant what St. Alphonsus Ligouri also preached: that at a certain point we cross a threshold beyond which God pardons no more, and we are left to wallow in our sinful self-destruction. Anne Graham, Billy Graham's daughter, put it this way in response to a television host who asked her: "How could God let something like this [Hurricane Katrina] happen?":
I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone? [CO, Aug/Sept 2005, pp. 61-63].
Heavenly Warnings
The Protestant Anne Graham understands the nature of Divine Justice perfectly well from her reading of the Holy Scriptures. Catholics have the additional benefit of Our Lord's teaching Church as well as the heavenly correctives of Our Blessed Mother herself, repeatedly sent by God to warn us to sin no more, or face the worst.
It is hardly insignificant that the site of the apparitions of Our Lady of Akita is just 90 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake that caused the Japanese tsunami. Naturally, this reawakened interest in the message of Akita and we have had a number of enquiries about the official status of the messages and the shrine. Essentially it is this: having set up two investigative commissions, Bishop Ito of Niigata notified his final decision in a 1984 pastoral letter:
It is not possible to make a negative statement that there is no supernaturality. Also, nothing can be found that is opposed to faith or morals. Consequently, until a final judgment is handed down by the Holy See, I will not forbid the showing of veneration within this diocese towards the holy statue of Akita.
Bishop Ito's successor, Bishop Sato, stated that this decision "is still valid" i.e., veneration and pilgrimages to the statue are neither especially encouraged nor forbidden. (Beginning on 20 September 1973, the statue wept a total of 101 times, even in the presence of Bishop Ito.)
A dozen years ago, amid conflicting reports about Rome's official stance on the matter, I contacted the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Subsequently, the Apostolic Nuncio in Tokyo wrote to confirm that "The Holy See has never given any kind of approval to either the events or the messages Akita." However, by way of underlining the authoritative position, he enclosed with his letter a "copy of the statement which the Bishop of Niigata sends to overseas bishops who seek information about Akita." (Both the Nuncio's response to me and Bishop Sato's statement of 18 August 1993 are reproduced on pages 610-611 of the December 1999 CO.)
Understandably, with true Marian devotion and Church-sanctioned apparitions being undermined by hundreds of bogus "visions" and pseudo-"seers" worldwide – most located in North America and largely spawned by the Medjugorje scam – Akita has its sceptics. Nonetheless, after rigorous investigation it has been ecclesiastically approved. At the very least, therefore, it is worth noting that despite the devastating earthquakes (yet another of magnitude 7 rocked a Prefecture a month after the first) and despite the tsunami's ghastly fallout (including the unprecedented floating rubbish tip now bobbing around in the Pacific Ocean, said to be three times the size of the UK, which will deposit its body parts, boats, cars and whole houses on American shores over the next three years), it all pales in comparison to the punishment threatening humanity of which Our Lady spoke at Akita. She said:
If men do not repent and amend their lives, the Father is going to inflict a terrible chastisement on all of mankind. It will be a chastisement more serious than the Deluge ... fire will fall from the heavens and annihilate a great part of humanity ...
This is consistent with all the other ecclesiastically-approved Marian warnings. On 19 September 1846 at La Salette, for example, Our Lady revealed to Melanie:
God will strike in an unprecedented way. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth! God will exhaust His wrath upon them, and no one will be able to escape so many afflictions together ... The Vicar of My Son will suffer a great deal, because for a while the Church will yield to a large persecution, a time of darkness, and the Church will witness a frightful crisis.
And, of course, we always return to Our Lady's portentous statement at Fatima in 1917, apropos her later request via Sister Lucia for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart:
If they attend to My requests, Russia will be converted and the world will have peace. If not, Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, fomenting wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated.
Even though then-Cardinal Ratzinger was a key player in the Vatican's May 2000 Third Secret debacle that portrayed the Fatima prophecies as passé (in order to hide its undoubted reference to apostasy and betrayal among the top echelons of the Church), his own 'clarifying' explanation contradicted the official attempt to edit out Our Lady's apocalyptic message. The chastisement threatened in the Third Secret, he concedes on page 40 (!) of his interpretation, might still take place in the future after all:
“The angel with the flaming sword on the left of the Mother of God ...” the cardinal explains, “This represents the threat of judgement which looms over the world. Today the prospect that the world might be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems pure fantasy.” This seems to be more in keeping with the statements about the ‘third secret’ that the cardinal has made in the past. On November 11, 1984, the Italian journal Jesus published an interview in which Cardinal Ratzinger spoke about the content of the “third Secret.” Asked by the interviewer, Vittorio Messori, if Ratzinger had read the Secret, His Eminence answered: “Yes, I have read it.” While explaining the reason why he thought it had not been publicly revealed, Ratzinger mentioned the topics with which the Secret deals: “the dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore the world. And then the importance of the ‘last things’ ... the things contained in this ‘third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture, and has been said again and again in many other Marian apparitions ...” [The Devil's Final Battle, 2002].
Our Lady and the Lodge
Yes indeed. Repeatedly. And much earlier than the apparitions of the Marian Age running from Rue de Bac (1830) through Lourdes (1858) to Fatima. The Holy Father would do well to re-read the most specific prophecies of all: the messages given between 1582 and 1634 at the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito, Ecuador, where Our Lady of Good Success spelled out to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres the sin-fuelled cataclysm we are living within and without the Church today.
During the first apparition in 1582, then-Sister Mariana saw that the whole Church had become immersed in darkness, as from dust and smoke. Our Lord emerged from the Tabernacle, suffering His agony of Calvary, together with the Blessed Virgin at His feet. Seeing Our Lady's tears Mariana asked if she was to blame for her sadness. Our Lady replied: "No, it is not you, but the criminal world!" Then, as Our Lord agonised, she heard the voice of God the Father saying:
"This punishment will be for the 20th century."
She then saw three swords over the head of Christ. On each was written:
- "I shall punish heresy,"
- "I shall punish impiety,"
- "I shall punish impurity."
What is striking about the subsequent descriptions by Our Lord and Our Lady of the ecclesial/societal disintegration now all about us – the punishment for heresy, impiety and impurity – is the centrality of Freemasonry to the coming apostasy and corruption, both in Ecuador and universally.
4th Apparition
When Our Lady appeared to Mother Mariana on 21 January 1610 carrying the Child Jesus – "I come as always to confide to you my secrets" – she spoke of the unfaithful religious who would live in the convent throughout the centuries, of their inveterate lukewarmness and deafness to any grace, inspiration or charitable counsel, and warned of the chastisement they would incur. Then she said:
Thus, I make it known to you that from the end of the 19th century and from shortly after the middle of the 20th century, in what is today the Colony and will then be the Republic of Ecuador, the passions will erupt and there will be a total corruption of customs, for Satan will reign almost completely by means of the Masonic Sects.
They will focus principally on the children in order to sustain this general corruption. Woe to the children of these times!
[...] Alas! How deeply I grieve to manifest to you the many enormous sacrileges – both public as well as secret – that will occur from profanation of the Holy Eucharist.
Often, during this epoch, the enemies of Jesus Christ, instigated by the Devil, will steal consecrated Hosts from the churches so that they might profane the Eucharistic Species. My Most Holy Son will see Himself cast upon the ground and trampled upon by filthy feet.
[...] Since this poor little country will lack the Catholic spirit, the Sacrament of Extreme Unction will be little valued. Many people will die without receiving it – either because of the negligence of their families or misconceived affection for their sick ones. Others, incited by the cursed Devil, will rebel against the spirit of the Catholic Church and will deprive countless souls of innumerable graces, consolations and the strength they need to make the great leap from time to eternity. But some persons will die without receiving it due to just and secret chastisements of God.
As for the Sacrament of Matrimony, which symbolises the union of Christ with His Church, it will be attacked and deeply profaned.
Freemasonry, which will then be in power, will enact iniquitous laws with the aim of doing away with this Sacrament, making it easy for everyone to live in sin and encouraging the procreation of illegitimate children born without the blessing of the Church.
The Catholic spirit will rapidly decay; the precious light of Faith will gradually be extinguished until there will be an almost total and general corruption of customs. Added to this will be the effects of secular education, which will be one reason for the death of priestly and religious vocations.
The Sacrament of Holy Orders will be ridiculed, oppressed, despised, for in this Sacrament, the Church of God and even God Himself is scorned and despised since He is represented in His priests. The Devil will try to persecute the ministers of the Lord in every possible way; he will labour with cruel and subtle astuteness to deviate them from the spirit of their vocation and will corrupt many of them. These depraved priests, who will scandalise the Christian people, will make the hatred of bad Catholics and the enemies of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church fall upon priests.
This apparent triumph of Satan will bring enormous suffering to the good Pastors of the Church, the many good priests, and the Supreme pastor and Vicar of Christ on earth...
Further, in these unhappy times, there will be unbridled luxury which will ensnare the rest into sin and conquer innumerable frivolous souls who will be lost.
Innocence will almost no longer be found in children, nor modesty in women.
5th Apparition
Shortly afterwards, on 2 February, Our Lady was complaining about Mother Mariana's tardiness in having a statue made of her likeness; which statue would "favour not only you and my convent, but also the people – and the general public – through the centuries." But she agreed that Mother Mariana's role in the project should remain hidden:
... for it is not fitting for anyone at the present time to know the details or origin of how this statue came to be made. For this knowledge will only become known to the general public in the 20th century.
During that epoch the Church will find herself attacked by terrible hordes of the Masonic sect, and this poor Ecuadorian land will be agonizing because of the corruption of customs, unbridled luxury, the impious press, and secular education. The vices of impurity, blasphemy, and sacrilege will dominate in this time of depraved desolation, and that one who should speak out will be silent.
Know, beloved daughter, that when your name will become known in the 20th century, there will be many who will not believe, claiming that this devotion is not pleasing to God....
[...] A simple, humble faith in the truth of my apparitions to you, my favoured child, will be reserved for humble and fervent souls who are docile to the inspirations of grace, for our Heavenly Father communicates His secrets to the simple of heart, and not to those whose hearts are inflated with pride, pretending to know what they do not or infatuated with empty science.
Vision of the Devil's fury
On the Feast of Corpus Christi, 1623, at the foot of the Tabernacle, Mother Mariana fell into ecstasy for a period of eight hours (during which time her Sisters believed her to be dead). She saw how Ecuador would be favoured with graces and mercy as a result of the public and solemn devotion that would be rendered to the Blessed Sacrament in future centuries.
However, she also saw how all this aroused the fury of the Devil who would strive to eradicate this Catholic piety. To that end he would prey on Ecuadorians who had lost the Faith passed on to them by their parents. These men would work to oppress the Church in their assemblies and prevent this public devotion, since they would have already entered the party of Satan by becoming members of the Masonic Lodges.
Our Lord showed her how the hideous and pestiferous wild boar of Masonry would enter the beautiful, flourishing vineyard of the Church, leaving it destroyed and in complete ruins.
She no sooner came around than she lost her senses again, this time seeing the infidelity of the ministers of the altar to their holy vocation, and the unworthy way that some would approach the Holy Sacrifice.
6th Apparition
At 3am on 2 February 1634, while praying before the Tabernacle, the sanctuary light went out, leaving the main sanctuary in complete darkness. Then, suddenly, a heavenly light illuminated the whole church and Our Lady appeared to Mother Mariana, lit the sanctuary lamp and explained the many reasons that the lamp had been extinguished:
The first reason for the lamp being extinguished is that at the end of the 19th century and for a large part of the 20th, various heresies will flourish in this land, then a free Republic. As these heresies spread and dominate, the precious light of the Faith will be extinguished in souls by the almost total corruption of customs. During this period, there will be great physical and moral catastrophies, both public and private.
The small number of souls who, hidden, will conserve the treasure of the Faith and virtues will suffer an unspeakably cruel and prolonged martyrdom, Many of them will succumb to death from the violence of their sufferings, and those who sacrifice themselves for their Church and country will be counted as martyrs.
In order to free men from bondage to these heresies, those whom the merciful lover of My Most Holy Son will destine for that restoration will need great strength of will, constancy, valour and confidence in God. To test this faith and confidence of the just, there will be occasions when everything will seem to be lost and paralysed. This will be, then, the happy beginning of the complete restoration.
The second reason for the lamp being extinguished is that my [Conceptionist] Community, being greatly reduced in number, will be submerged in a fathomless ocean off indescribable bitterness...
How many authentic vocations will perish because of the lack of discretion, discernment and prudence on the part of the Novice Mistress in forming them! ... Woe to those souls who will return to the Babylon of the world after having been in the secure port of this blessed convent!
During this unfortunate epoch, injustice will even enter here, my closed garden. Disguised under the name of false charity, it will wreak havoc in souls.
The spiteful demon will try to sow discord, making use of putrid members, who, masked by the appearance of virtue, wil be like decaying sepulchers emanating the pestilence of putrefaction, causing moral deaths in some and lukewarmness in others.
[...] The third reason for the lamp being extinguished is because of the spirit of impurity that will saturate the atmosphere in those times. Like a filthy ocean, it will inundate the streets, squares and public places with an astonishing liberty.
There will be almost no virgin souls in the world. The delicate flower of virginity, timid and threatened by complete destruction, will shine in the distance. Taking refuge in cloisters, it will find good soil there that will take root, grow, and live, its fragrance being the delight of My Most Holy Son and the shield against Divine Ire. Without virginity, it would be necessary for fire from heaven to fall upon these lands to purify them.
... Alas, how sorrowful! There will be careless souls... [who] returning to the world [from the religious cloisters] will become instruments of the Devil for the loss of souls.
The fourth reason for the lamp being extinguished is that the Masonic Sect, having infiltrated all the social classes, will be so subtle as to introduce itself into the heart of the family in order to corrupt the children, and the Devil will glory in dining upon the exquisite delicacy of the hearts of children.
During these unfortunate times, evil will assault childhood innocence. In this way, vocations to the priesthood will be lost, which will be a true calamity.
[...] In this epoch, the secular clergy will be far removed from its ideal, because the priests will be careless in their sacred duties. Lacking the divine compass, they will stray from the road traced by God for the priestly ministry and they will become attached to wealth and riches, which they will unduly strive to obtain.
How the Church will suffer during this dark night! Lacking a prelate and father to guide them ... many priests will lose their spirit, placing their souls in great danger.
Pray insistently without tiring... imploring our Heavenly Father that ... He might take pity on His Ministers and quickly bring to an end those ominous times, sending to the Church the prelate that will restore the spirit of its priests.
[...] The lukewarmness of all the souls consecrated to God in the priestly and religious state will delay the coming of this prelate and father.
[...] The fifth reason or the lamp being extinguished is due to the laxity of those who possess great wealth, who will indifferently stand by and witness the Church being oppressed, virtue being persecuted, and the triumph of evil, without piously employing their riches for the destruction of evil and the restoration of the Faith. It is also due to the indifference of the people in allowing the name of God to be gradually snuffed out and adhering to the spirit of evil, freely delivering themselves to the vices and passions.
All of this passed before Mother Mariana as if by way of a silent presentation. She was given to know the countless number of souls who would be condemned for these reasons articulated by the Blessed Virign. Seeing it all, she fainted and remained unconscious in the choir, as if dead, for a few days. Miraculously she woke up to live the last year of her life.
The Lodge in Church and State
We hardly need crates of documentary evidence to prove the exactitude of Our Lady's prophetic descriptions. Our shameful times make the dissolute Roaring Twenties and pre-war Berlin nightclubs seem prudish. We are living through the debauchery, blasphemy and sacrilege – the "free delivery to the vices and passions" – on a daily basis: affronted by filth at every turn through film and media of every kind; on advertising billboards; or in the drunken flesh on any British High Street of a Saturday night. Spain has suffered the latter first-hand every year since 2002, with young Brits invading the resort town of Salou ostensibly to take part in a university "sports festival." In April, the Daily Mail reported on this year's disgrace:
The drunken debauchery at Saloufest – a magnet for hedonistic British students – goes on and on. ... A girl hoists up her clothes to show her underwear. Lads drop their trousers in a busy street, oblivious to common decency.
Elsewhere on Monday night, a group of girls dance provocatively in nuns' outfits with the words 'fresher meat' written on their thighs, epitomising the lack of self-respect displayed by some of the supposed cream of our academic crop at this event.
[...] Around 5,000 18-23-year-olds have descended on the town in the Costa Dorada this year. Within 48 hours of their arrival on Sunday Spanish newspaper El Mundo banded their antics "a whirlwind that would shame any parent."
One shopkeeper called them "animals," adding: "They get naked at 5 or 6 in the afternoon. They urinate in bottles and then throw the bottles from their hotels. It's terrible."
No need to elaborate further. Yet if the British are notorious, the post-Christian depravity is endemic. Most Western countries suffer frequent bouts of similar animalism (like pornographic "Gay Mardi Gras"), as well as the same non-response by officialdom. The Spanish authorities annually turn a blind eye to the above activities, preferring to indulge the students rather than enforce laws drafted specifically to curb the anarchy! It puts Continental tut-tutting about the British pond life who regularly invade European resorts in hypocritical perspective. When it comes to safeguarding public morality or protecting the flow of tourist euros, filth wins every time. (Thus, some Salou businesses "welcomed the students ... who are expected to spend £7 million.")
Dissolute, rampaging "youths," not least the English CINO students who defile Lourdes with their debauched behaviour [see Jan. 2007, pp.17-18], merely reflect their equally godless elders. And both, as Our Lady herself told Mother Mariana, are symptoms of the reign of Satan in our time, "almost completely by means of the Masonic Sects."
To appreciate the truth of this pivotal prophecy, we need only consider that virtually all the corrupting anti-Christian practises, sentiments and 'enlightened' laws diffused or enacted in the past forty years – lowering the age of consent, decriminalising homosexuality, legalising contraception, sex education, no-fault divorce, abortion on demand, IVF, euthanasia, etc. – were debated and settled decades in advance in the Lodges of North and South America, Europe and, latterly, Africa (as the Archbishop of Dakar informed Jeune Afrique in March 1999). Paul A. Fisher wrote in his meticulously documented work Behind the Lodge Door [1998]: "It was the masonically-dominated [Supreme] Court which outlawed Christianity in public life, outlawed prayer and Bible, established the 'theory of evolution' as the only account of Creation which could be taught in America [in the public schools]" and established secular humanism as the de-facto religion of America.
In addition to this primary purpose and goal of Freemasonry – i.e., the socio-political and moral corruption of erstwhile Christian societies with a view to total secularisation – is its workaday criminality. The liberal French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur reported in June 2000 that the French Lodge was directly involved in the worst criminal acts of the preceding decade: from public health catastrophes to assassination and penetration of big business. The lengthy investigative report revealed that the corrupting hand of les francs-maçons touches virtually every aspect of contemporary Gallic life – political, judicial, military, commercial, civil administrative and law enforcement. Disinformation is also spread by a "masonic network at the heart of the magistracy and the press."
However, it is the naturalism they peddle in myriad ways through untold socio-political mechanisms that has seen the Masons conquer the Christian West and establish their demonic fiefdom. The very air we breathe today is Masonic carbon monoxide: odourless but deadly. It is that very "spirit of impurity" that Our Lady of Good Success foretold would "saturate the atmosphere" in our times: "a filthy ocean, it will inundate the streets, squares and public places with astonishing liberty." Pervasive and overwhelming, it renders talk of conspiracy – against truth and virtue – incomprehensible. Bad stuff just keeps happening because "it's in the air." Unfortunate, but a small price to pay for "progress," they say.
And so the Lodge itself is rarely implicated or mentioned in daily dispatches about the grim state of play. Not only because of its media influence, as in France, but also because nobody seriously considers that relentless societal decay has an origin: a deft yet non-descript facilitator that keeps the anti-Christian wheels of moral and doctrinal dissolution well-oiled and rolling on. Whenever Freemasonry does face a rare public enquiry into its activities, as in England in 1998, it is all about subversive networks within the police and legal profession (bad enough!), not about its fundamental role in steering the self-destructive socio-political agenda of the day.
The urgent teaching of the Catholic Church, based on primary-source Masonic documentation gathered and published over centuries, that the Lodge is Satan's frontline strike-force, is a non-starter. Instead, shored up by a multitude of complicit "social" Masons of low degree, who are driven more by vain curiosity and self-interest than ideology, it is presented and accepted as a benign, philanthropic fraternity.
This also explains the disbelief among badly misled Catholics, especially Lodge members, when presented with the case against the Lodge. They are even more dumb-founded when the root cause of the Catholic crisis forewarned by Our Lady, especially the corruption of the priesthood, is tied to Masonic infiltration of the Church itself. And yet no claim could be less controversial! – presuming, of course, one's familiarity with the repeated papal condemnations of the Lodge from 1738 until Vatican II. Tragically, the religious knowledge of most Catholics is restricted to our post-conciliar age of ecumenical compromise with every false religion and pagan sect imaginable, including Masonry. Their bishops, "useful idiots" in the Masonic war against the Church, would consider it an affront to sacred "dialogue" to recount this history:
The papal condemnations of Freemasonry are so severe and sweeping in their tenor as to be quite unique in the history of Church legislation. During the last two centuries Freemasonry has been expressly anathematized by at least ten different Popes and condemned directly or indirectly by almost every Pontiff that sat on the Chair of St. Peter.
The Popes charge the Freemasons with occult criminal activities, with "shameful deeds", with worshipping satan himself (a charge which is hinted at in some Papal documents), with infamy, blasphemy, sacrilege and the most abominable heresies against the State, with anarchical and revolutionary principles and with favouring and promoting what is now called Bolshevism; with corrupting and perverting the minds of youth; with shameful hypocrisy and lying, by means of which Freemasons strive to hide their wickedness under a cloak of probity and respectability, while in reality they are the very "synagogue of satan", whose direct aim and object is the complete destruction of Christianity [Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement, Fr Cahill, S.J, 1930].
Pass that summary to your bishop next time he laughs to scorn your objections to his "ecumenical" dealings with the local Lodge – as did the liberal Archbishop Kelly of Liverpool [Nov. 2000, p. 557] and the neo-conservative Archbishop Hart of Melbourne [Feb. 2004, pp.5-7; "Shifting the Blame," April 2004], to finger just two.
During this month in which the warp-speed beatification of a manifestly unworthy papal recipient is set to batter the credibility of the Church, we should especially recall that it was Cardinal Koenig, a Freemason, who proposed Karol Wojtyla as the preferred candidate of the Masonic faction in the 1978 conclave. Hence the seamless transition after Paul VI (also a Mason, according to St. Padre Pio). The Lodge was obviously well acquainted with Wojtyla's neo-Modernist writings and thought and knew what he would bring to the pontifical table i.e. more of the same humanism entrenched under Paul VI. In fact they hit the jackpot, since John Paul's papacy was even more secular and scandal-ridden than Pope Paul's – as documented voluminously and irrefutably by Fr Villa in Karol Wojtyla beatified? ... Never! [Sept. 2010. Available as a pdf file from ladyofgoodsuccess@sbcgbobal.net].
The Lodge was surely gratified in 1986, for instance, when John Paul II thrust the Church into the World Council of Churches [WCC]. "The symbolic representation of Masonic Ecumenism," the WCC's clear and stated purpose is to reorganise world political affairs under a World Government. "The only religion that would lose its identity in this crowd," writes Fr Villa, "would be the Catholic Religion, the only true religion, founded by God Himself!"
The most powerful weapon for the destruction of the Church (by way of refashioning her as one more secularising instrument of the Lodge), “Masonic Ecumenism” is now the diocesan and parish Party Line because its proponents are ensconced in the Curia. "There are men in the Vatican Curia who do not work for the Pope, but for others... the Freemasons," stressed Bishop Bernard Fellay during an August 2007 interview with Argentina's daily La Nación. "There are three or four Lodges specific for Vatican Bishops and priests which seek to use the Church to reach the union of all peoples and religions."
On page 47 of the booklet Who is Father Luigi Villa?, we also read this testimony: "To the Prelate, who had shown the evidence, published by Chiesa Viva, of Cardinal Casaroli [the Secretary of State] belonging to Freemasonry," John Paul II said: 'I know, I know, but I do not know who to put in his place!' To Cardinal Palazzini, who presented his concerns about the Masonic infiltration of the Church, Pope John Paul II, after beating his fist on the table, exclaimed: 'It is I, who want it'."
In our January 2002 edition, Vatican insiders explained the methodology behind this alarming situation – i.e. how the Lodge cultivates and recruits its clerical members. Perversely, its major weapon is holy obedience. This is clearly laid out in the Masonic blueprint for subverting the Church, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita [see CO, Nov. 2000], which boldly declares: "Let the Clergy march under your standard, always believing that they are marching under the banner of the apostolic keys." That is, the demand for "obedience" would be used in dictatorial fashion to undermine true obedience and the Faith itself.
As Father Kramer points out in The Devil's Final Battle, that dictatorial aim was achieved via the restructuring of the Roman Curia, around 1967, by order of Pope Paul VI – which was actually designed and carried out by Cardinal Jean Villot, a member of the Lodge! This was "instrumental in ... subjecting the whole Church to the Party Line of the Secretary of State – including the Party Line on Fatima – under the guise of a false 'obedience' to an authority who has clearly exceeded the bounds established by God Himself. It was [Secretary of State] Cardinal Sodano who literally dictated the 'interpretation' of the visional aspect of the Third Secret of Fatima, which has been published without the Virgin’s own words to explain it." Since the restructure, Fr Kramer truly states, "the heads of the various Roman dicasteries have been able to behave like dictators." He explains the sea change wrought by the notorious Freemason Villot:
Before the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Curia was structured as a monarchy. The Pope was the Prefect of the Holy Office, while the Cardinal in charge of the day-to-day business of the Holy Office was the second-in-command. The other dicasteries were of lower rank. And while having their own authority and jurisdiction, again in accordance with that principle of subsidiarity, they were subordinate to the Holy Office, and the Holy Office was directly under the Pope. ...
But after Vatican II, Cardinal Villot engineered the restructuring of the Roman Curia. Long before Gorbachev announced his program of perestroika in the Soviet Union, the Church underwent its own perestroika in the Roman Curia. The Holy Office was renamed – but far more significant, the Holy Office lost its supreme position in the Curia. The Curia was restructured in such a manner that the Cardinal Secretary of State was placed over all the other dicasteries, including the former Holy Office ... now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) ... .
According to the previous arrangement under the Pope and his Holy Office, faith and morals were the preeminent factors determining curial policies. In the post-conciliar arrangement, however, ... it is the Party Line – the politics of the Secretary of State – that is the supreme determining factor in the formulation of Church policies. ... As a result of this restructuring, the Holy Father, the Supreme Pontiff, is reduced to a figurehead who gives his approval, as a rubber stamp, to rulings presented to him as a fait accompli by the Secretary of State. This bears repeating: The Pope has been reduced to a figurehead in the service of the dictatorship of the Secretary of State.
A Study in Contrasts
Clearly, there is no hope of a Catholic restoration until these infiltrators have been weeded out of head office and banished once and for all. And so we are once more highlighting the scourge of Masonry and the dreadful reality of its grip on the upper echelons of the Roman Curia, and thus the universal Church, by reprinting herein the entire chapter devoted to ecclesiastical Freemasonry in Father Luigi Villa's book on Paul VI. It is foundational to understanding the whys and wherefores of the Catholic (and therefore societal) collapse, described by Our Lady at Quito.
The life and battles of this remarkable priest himself, however, when contrasted with so many of his faithless brethren, are themselves instructive: reflecting the nub of the Catholic crisis and its impact on world events.
Father Luigi Villa
Ordained in 1942, Fr Villa became a respected preacher and lecturer. He was particularly detested by Mussolini's Fascist government for his positive influence on the Italian youth. As a result he lived out the war with an official death sentence hanging over his head; though it did not deter him from saving 57 Jews in several escapades at further risk of his life.
But the indefatigable Fr Villa was clearly called by God for one major task: "to tear away the mask from Freemasonry, and to let it be seen as it really is" [Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, 1884].He has done so with the express encouragement of St. Padre Pio. As his collaborator of twenty years, Dr Franco Adessa, reveals in his short biography Who is Father Luigi Villa?, during two meetings in 1956 and 1963, Padre Pio told him to dedicate his entire life to defend the Church of Christ from the work of Freemasonry, especially the ecclesiastical variety. At the second meeting the saint embraced Fr Villa and said: "Courage, courage, courage! For the Church is already invaded by Freemasonry." He added that "Freemasonry has already reached the Pope's slippers [i.e. Paul VI]."
In other words, Fr Villa is not a "loose canon" with a deluded mission to save the Church from a phantom enemy. He had never planned to meet Padre Pio and certainly had no idea how to go about undertaking such a monumental and dangerous task. It was the great Saint himself who, in 1956, kicked-started the venture by sending Fr Villa to the Bishop of Chieti. Perplexed, the Bishop went to Rome "for a clarification" on how to proceed. The idea of a simple priest pursuing this task was immediately opposed. But the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tardini, being told that Padre Pio had initiated the project, said he would talk with the Holy Father. Subsequently, Pius XII approved the mission on two conditions: Father Villa had to have a degree in dogmatic theology, and he was to be placed under the direction of Cardinal Ottaviani, Prefect of the Holy Office, Cardinal Parente and Cardinal Palazzini. These had to guide him and instruct him in the secrets of the Church relevant to his papal mandate.
Fr. Villa duly undertook his studies and graduated from the Lateran University in 1971. At the same time he operated as a secret agent for Cardinal Ottaviani, responsible for documenting the Lodge membership of senior clerics and dealing with delicate ecclesial questions. He became connected with police headquarters and their special investigative and operational units. It was perilous work and there are numerous documented attempts on his life. To this day he has not a single tooth in his mouth owing to a punch to the face he once collected while waiting near a Masonic lodge in Paris to collect documentation attesting to the Lodge membership of Cardinal Achille Liénart (of Vatican II infamy). A young man suddenly ran at Fr Villa and hit him, shouting: "There is a devil on this earth!" He regained consciousness in a pharmacy with his mouth full of blood, a broken jaw, and no teeth.
As with the Fascists, however, he was also despised by liberal ecclesiastics for his many proposed initiatives for increasing priestly vocations (he personally found 50 vocations, all of whom are missionary priests today), as well as for assisting orthodox formation in the seminaries and missionary institutes. He was obstructed at every turn and it became clear that "he was no longer permitted to make any steps, realize any idea, or start any project aimed to defend the Catholic faith."
We might say, therefore, that the 'target' on Fr. Villa's back was merely enlarged when he established his magazine Chiesa Viva, via which he has relentlessly pursued the mission entrusted to him by Padre Pio and Pius XII, of exposing the enemy within and helping Holy Mother Church unbind herself from the compromising entanglements of ecclesiastical Masonry. It was precisely because he wished to remain free to pursue this mission that he rejected numerous offers from friends, and even enemies, related to his vocation/formation activities. These included several "donations" of villas and huge sums of money, as well as schools and the offer of a Benedictine convent in Genoa (by Cardinal Siri).
"He had already foreseen the storm that was destroying the Church," writes Dr Adessa, "and therefore preferred to stay poor. He did not want to be linked and involved in economic and financial issues." For the same reason, "he said 'no' to two wealthy Americans who offered him billions [of lira]" to hand over Chiesa Viva. (It speaks additional volumes for the quality and fearless independence of the magazine that its Deputy Director, from 1971 until his death in 1977, was the great Dietrich von Hildebrand, a man "Paul VI knew but also feared.")
Fr Villa was always well received in the Vatican under Pius XII, dining regularly with cardinals and bishops. For the obvious reasons articulated in his ensuing book extract, however, everything changed under Paul VI. He became persona non grata. The persecution commenced, with orders passed down from the top to isolate him. The Masonic Pro-Secretary of State, Archbishop Benelli, led the way, telling his staff in meetings: "We need to silence that Father Villa!" When it was objected that, rather, they must prove him wrong, an irritated Benelli replied: "Well, then ignore him and make him ignored."
Thereafter it never stopped: legal threats, death threats, late night phone calls involving insults and profanity to demoralise him. Lukewarm, robotic clergy acquiesced in the slander. Fr Villa became "lazy," "crazy," "fascist," "anti-Semitic," "outside the Church," "heretic," "a priest of extreme conservative tendencies and pre-conciliar," "a destroyer of Charity opening the way of defamation," "spewer of arrogance as he believes he is the proud bearer of the truth," and most recently, "author of libel," and "worthy of any punitive measures," which "were not carried out so as not to humiliate a ninety-two-year-old priest."
But he never flinched and Chiesa Viva survived to continue its truth-telling. In 1991, for example, the most powerful man in the Vatican at the time, Cardinal Ruini, did not take kindly to
Fr Villa's "Heresies in the Neo-Catechumenal Way"; a compilation of Chiesa Viva articles denouncing 18 heresies of the Movement that Ruini himself officially protected.
There is much more of great interest to be said about the life and times of Fr Luigi Villa. But the essential point is that his credibility is beyond question. The violent neo-Modernist campaign waged against him and his literary apostolate merely strengthens the documented veracity of his charges, and points to the impeccable source and foundation of his mission. Thus, when he verifies other credible accusations of Paul VI's homosexuality, for instance, we can believe him. Dr Adessa writes:
Father Villa was aware of the fact that Cardinal Pietro Palazzini had sent a letter to the Postulator for the "cause of the beatification" of Paul VI that contained the names of the last homosexual lovers of Paul VI. Cardinal Palazzini was an authority in this field, because the Cardinal held two binders of documents that demonstrated, unequivocally, the impure and unnatural vice of Paul VI.
Then, Father Villa wrote a letter to the Postulator, referring to what he had known from Cardinal Palazzini.
This ties in to Paul's Masonic and Communistic proclivities, comprehensively documented by Fr Villa, since the Homosexual Collective (aka Lavender Mafia), like Communism, is just a tool and subset of the Lodge. It is also vital to understanding the otherwise perplexing accommodation of sodomites within the Church since the Council [CO passim]. Those who close their eyes, shut their ears and say it is "impossible" to believe, act as if Pope Alexander VI and his sexually voracious Borgia clan never fouled the Vatican palace with their mistresses and illegitimate progeny! They need to wake up, smell the bitter post-conciliar coffee – and then grow up [1 Cor. 13:11 ]. The good of the Church demands it!
In sum: Fr Villa is a priest of the old school – faithful, obedient, pious, trustworthy, selfless, diligent, virtuous, brave, and (crucially) poor. He represents the antithesis of those twentieth-century clerics condemned as reprobate by Our Lady and Our Lord at Quito. Let us briefly consider the stunning contrast with one local exemplar of that ill-fated clerical breed.
Father Michael Seed
A poorly instructed convert who, like his peers, went from bad to worse in the seminary, Fr Michael Seed was mentored by the Lodge-friendly Cardinal Hume [see "Bugnini, Bernadin and Basil: Modernist Masons or Masonic Modernists," CO, Nov. 2000] and then Cardinal Murphy O'Connor as their golden-haired "ecumenical adviser" who could do no wrong. Thus, endlessly indulged, he became a scandalous liability for the Church; an attention-seeking celebrity-priest who assumed the role of "Catholic envoy to Parliament," as the press put it.
In this capacity he mixed with the monied and powerful while instructing hapless politicians and notables in the Faith (or not!). He was notorious for dispensing sacrilegious Communions to the ungodly Blairs at Downing Street. Together with the dissident Cherie, he clearly contributed to the non-"conversion" of the self-serving Tony and his unspeakable faux-"reception" into the Church by Cardinal Murphy O'Connor.
This year alone, the 53-year-old has hit the headlines several times. The first scandal involved his celebrating the 25th anniversary of his ordination with a champagne party at the Pigalle Club – a "pink basement" in Piccadilly known for its "racy floor shows." The press sketched the "racy" proceedings:
The 200 guests, many of them fellow clergymen, were startled to be greeted at the door by four burly transvestites, who took their coats.
Party-goers – who ranged from clerics from the Diocese of Westminster to millionaire benefactors who had flown in for the celebrations by private jet – were again taken aback when the transvestites appeared on stage later wearing nuns’ habits.
The 6ft ‘nuns’ proceeded to give what can only be described as a rather unsuitable cabaret act. "A female singer came on first. She sang rather good, classic jazz songs, which was fine," says one wide-eyed reveller. But then these transvestites came on stage. Mouths dropped. Quite a few people scuttled off to the bar in embarrassment. Lots of champagne had flowed and I can’t recall the songs that the nuns sang. Needless to say, they weren’t singing vespers." [Daily Mail, 23/2/11]
Currently on three years leave from the New York-based Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, a period of exclaustration granted at his own request, his superiors had barely digested his hiring of this utterly inappropriate venue and the embarrassing fallout, when more scandalous activity emerged. "Blair's Priest fixed papal knighthoods for cash," ran the banner headline of the Mail on Sunday of 27 March. The feature article revealed that Seed was soliciting charity donations of very large sums in exchange for papal knighthoods.
Emails swapped with his various millionaire go-betweens were published. The damning contents forced Seed to admit they were "extremely damaging." Especially one dealing with his cultivation of Hezi Bezalel, a (legitimate) Israeli arms dealer looking for business opportunities in the Balkans. When it was put to him that he was effectively trying to facilitate a potential arms deal, Seed replied disingenuously: "I can’t deny that ... it’s terrible."
Unlike Seed and others prepared to buy and sell papal honours, however, the arms dealer was an upright man. He spurned the offer. "Hezi could be on that [knighthood] list and be invested in February [2009], perhaps at the Ritz hotel, London," Seed wrote to his intermediary. "I can get the grand rooms free of charge – or wherever he wishes. [Archbishop] Eugenio would come over for it." Bezalel didn't bite and was then accused of being "short-sighted" by the intermediary, who wrote: "Within days you could be sitting with the Presidents of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro selling them technologies they want and need. To achieve direct access.... surely £75,000 is a small fee." To which the Israeli replied by email: "I don’t like this approach. When I give to charity it’s because I want and not under instruction. I’m trying to be as polite as possible. So please let’s forget about it."
Unlike this righteous Jew, Seed is bewitched by neo-Modernist false-charity and ends-justifies-the-means morality. Accordingly, he rationalised the sleazy business since the "donations" went to the ecumenical Path to Peace in the Balkans Foundation, run by his close friend of 30 years, Archbishop Eugenio Sbarbaro. Conveniently, as the papal nuncio to Serbia,. the Archbishop (who retired in late 2009) had the power to nominate people for papal knighthoods. "Fr Seed is a very good man," he told the Mail. "When I was ambassador I met a lot of people and I awarded papal knighthoods but this was a secondary part of my work." Well, that's alright, then!
Thus, the complicit Archbishop mistakes the shameful Fr Seed for "a very good man," and the priest himself justifies the scam with equally chilling perversity. "At the heart of this is goodness," he proclaimed like a crafty New Age guru. Blinded for their pride and disobedience, post-conciliar churchmen can no longer distinguish good from evil.
At least we can enjoy the dual defrocking. In our dreams! His Grace is doubtless ensconced in comfortable retirement. While Seed, too, goes on his smug, untouchable way, admitting to the Mail that "he is living [rent-free] in a London flat [in exclusive Dolphin Square, Pimlico] owned by Gregory King, a Glaswegian corporate money lender whose fortune is estimated at £200 million.
Fr Seed claimed [you'll be expecting this] that Mr King... received a papal knighthood after donating to Archbishop Sbarbaro’s charity"!
Worse still, for his scandalous trouble Fr Seed has been made honorary chaplain to the International Committee on Human Dignity! The crowning mockery. Yet perfectly in keeping with the Quito prophecies.
Clerical Cause and Effect
The abyss separating Luigi Villa and Michael Seed is the difference between light and darkness; heaven and hell; sanctity and putrefaction. It is the Church opposed to the world, the flesh and the devil. Ultimately, it is what stands between the peace of Christ or His wrath.
Fr Villa represents those "holy ministers of the altar" praised by Our Lady of Good Success on 2 February 1634 as she explained the meaning of the extinguished sanctuary lamp:
"... beautiful souls, in whom my Most Holy Son and I will take our delight, finding them to be excellent flowers and fruits of heroic sanctity. The impious ones will rage a cruel war against them, vituperations, calumnies and vexations in order to impede the fulfilment of their ministry.
But they, like firm columns, will remain unswerving and will confront everything with that spirit of humility and sacrifice with which they will be vested, by virtue of the infinite merits of my Most Holy Son, Who loves them as the inner fibres of His most holy and tender Heart.
On the contrary, Fr Seed is the personification of those "impious" clerics Our Lady forecast on that same February morning: priests who "will be careless in their sacred duties. Lacking the divine compass, they will stray from the road traced by God for the priestly ministry and they will become attached to wealth and riches..." Moreover, his Franciscan superiors and episcopal handlers are precisely that "dark night" of hierarchical negligence by which "Many priests will lose their spirit, placing their souls in danger."
One hastens to add that the grave sins of Father Seed and his countless ilk are by no means the only cause of divine distress. On 2 November 1634 Our Lord appeared to Mother Mariana as "but one wound, especially His Sacred Heart, which was covered in small but piercing thorns which tormented Him with extraordinary cruelty. He shed a deluge of tears, accompanied by tender lamentations and sighs." Jesus Christ said to Mariana:
... You see how these small thorns sting me cruelly. Understand that they are the grave as well as slight faults of my priests, secular and religious... I lavish on them a deluge of spiritual graces, giving them also serious, prolonged sicknesses so that they might become like unto Me. But, ungrateful and heartless, they complain about My loving Providence. They think I am being cruel to them, and withdrawing with indifference, they leave Me alone.
... With this ungrateful behaviour, they will thrust these tiny thorns into My Heart, cruelly wounding It, which is all love and affection for My chosen souls.
[...] The times will come when doctrine will be spread among the learned and the ignorant, accessible to priests and religious, and even the common people. Many books will be written. But the practice of the virtues and these doctrines will be found only in a few souls: for this reason, saints will become rare.
This brings us back to the the Tokyo Governor's take on the tsunami, which seems like "divine punishment" for the far worse tidal wave of impurity in a world almost devoid of "virgin souls." Essentially, therefore, Ishihara is right. Yet not only does his false worship of the false gods of Shintoism fail to placate the one true God of Catholicism, it blinds him to the full and deeper cause of the Divine Wrath he perceives. Christ Himself explained it simply to Mother Mariana:
Know, moreover, that Divine Justice releases terrible chastistements on entire nations, not only for the sins of the people but for those of priests and religious persons. For the latter are called, by the perfection of their state, to be the salt of the earth, the masters of truth, and the shields to hold back Divine Ire. Straying from their sublime mission, they degrade themselves in such a way that, before the eyes of God, they increase the rigour of the punishments.
This underlines both the value of Fr Villa's impeccable priestly witness and the importance of his work unmasking ecclesiastical Freemasonry: since our present "dark night" is the symptom of a rudderless Barque of Peter in thrall to the Lodge. (After all, what is Pope Benedict's forthcoming "Assisi III" if not a textbook perpetuation of "Masonic Ecumenism"?) Just as a fish starts rotting from the head, so too the Church; corruption flowing down from "diabolically disoriented" Rome and branching out through diocesan tributaries through episcopal appointments of actual Masons or, most often, fellow-travelling neo-Modernists – "moderate" Modernists, as St. Pius X called them.
That is how we ended up with untold numbers of treacherous prelates controlling corrupt episcopal conferences; under whose patronage the Fr Seeds of the clerical world, and worse, emerge to disgrace the priesthood of Jesus Christ with impunity.
There is the root cause of our woes.
"Here," as Pope Leo XIII restated 250 years after the Queen of Heaven had singled out Freemasonry, "is the enemy."
Punishment or Peace
So let us pray that the Lord will send us that great "Prelate" Our Lady mentioned in February 1634, who will "quickly bring to an end" these "ominous times" and "restore the spirit of its priests." Only then will we be saved from the punishments that wicked, worldly and/or lukewarm clergy and Religious draw down upon us for their key contribution to "heresy", "impiety", and "impurity."
And let us practise the Five First Saturdays of Reparation so urgently requested by Our Lady of Fatima. In addition to the conversion of sinners and our own eternal salvation, Our Lady has linked this practise to another magnificent promise: the gift of peace. On 19 March and 20 June, 1939, Sister Lucy wrote:
Whether the world has war or peace depends on the practise of this devotion, along with the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. ... Our Lady promised to delay the scourge of war, if this devotion was propagated and practised. We see that She will obtain remission of this chastisement to the extent that efforts are made to propagate this devotion; but I fear that ... God, being displeased, will pull back the arm of His mercy and let the world be ravaged by this chastisement which will be unlike any other in the past, horrible, horrible.
And so it was. Yet whether wars or natural disasters, the moral of all such punitive events is crystal clear: as God's children, we should obey Our Heavenly Mother and Father! Oremus.