Review of Four Grave Issues

The previous articles in this series examined grave problems with the “Norms of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for proceeding in the discernment of alleged supernatural phenomena,” published by Cardinal Víctor Fernández on May 17, 2024.

–    First Problem: No Church authority may judge an event to be of supernatural origin.

–    Second Problem: Authority in discerning the authenticity of an alleged phenomenon no longer resides with the local bishop.

–    Third Problem: The use of ambiguous language.

–    Fourth Grave Concern: These norms may be used to reverse the Church’s judgment regarding the authenticity of Our Lady’s apparitions at Fatima (and other Marian apparitions, such as La Salette, Akita, Good Success, etc.)

In this fifth part of the article, I draw out probable outcomes from the radically revised norms, given the current climate of heterodoxy which dominates Pope Francis’ mindset and that of his Curia. In the sixth and concluding part, I will provide an effective plan of action for faithful Catholics.

Greater Division and Confusion

The faith and piety of Catholics have been eroding for many decades. Catholic civilization was already in its ‘death throes’ in 1917 when Our Lady appeared at Fatima. Never-ending wars and revolutions, the spread of Russia’s errors throughout the world, and nearly 100 years of disobedience to Our Lady of Fatima’s requests have led to an ever-worsening crisis.

And now these revised norms will even further erode the Marian faith and piety of so many Catholics. They will surely also add to the confusion and division within our beloved Church.

Some Catholics will be inclined to accept the nihil obstat messages as authentically from Heaven and others will not. And having already pronounced its nihil obstat (free of error), the authority can remain silent. People will appeal to their own “authority” or to a local “cult of personality” like their ‘favorite’ priest or lay podcaster. So, division is inevitable. This will lead to more infighting among Catholics who sling accusations at each other, such as “You are [fill in the blank]” (disobedient, faithless, divisive, arrogant, etc.). Almost as if each ‘side’ informally excommunicates the other, or at the very least, questions their Catholicity.

Authentic Messages “Demoted”

Although the document is not explicit about making these procedures retroactive, one knows this will happen. Heterodox hierarchs are cautious about directly attacking Fatima or Lourdes right now because they have already been approved as supernatural and worthy of belief and still have a significantly large following.

However, under these new policies, many bishops and priests will feel perfectly justified in deemphasizing Marian messages. They can rationalize it by saying, “Since it is merely a message ‘free of error’ which each person can choose to accept or reject, it does not make sense for us to create ‘unnecessary’ division by promoting them at the parish level.”

Once Marian devotions receive less attention and their popular devotion diminishes further, it will be much easier to directly attack and erode those great Marian messages. The obvious justification will be something like: “Now we know better. By the Church’s [new] guidelines, those Marian apparitions would never even have been of supernatural origin. It contains concepts that are too medieval – as Our Lady supposedly talks of penance, of hell, and of chastisements – which ‘modern’ man no longer finds relevant. We should instead focus on the ‘gospel,’ which is about social justice, the environment, tolerance for all, dialoguing to discover truth, and how God loves everyone, so no one ever goes to hell.”

Authentic Messages Misrepresented

By decreeing that Church authority can, at best, offer only a nihil obstat, then a death blow is already struck against God’s self-revelation.

Any human being can, by his own natural powers, write something that is free of error. God certainly does not need to send His Blessed Mother to appear to men to simply express a message ‘free of error.’ By its inherent limitation, such a judgment therefore renders obsolete the essential reason why Our Lady appears and the very Message She delivers.

As an objective lesson on this point, let us consider Our Lady’s Message at Fatima. We turn to Fatima expert, Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité:

“The Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is not a matter of personal taste, an optional choice left to the faithful depending on their own interior attractions. Still less, of course, is it a desire Our Lady has for Her own benefit. No! It is willed by God. And not only is it willed by God hypothetically, or as something that ‘would be nice’, it is an absolute, unconditional will of God Himself.”^[i]

To simply judge “Fatima is free of error” is therefore to grossly misrepresent the essence of the Message. God directly confirmed Fatima through the greatest public miracle since biblical times, precisely to prevent such a limited judgment from Church authorities.

Our Lady’s Message at Fatima is not optional.^[ii] God wills for the Church hierarchy to embrace and encourage devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary alongside the Sacred Heart of Jesus in order that many souls will be saved. This is God’s positive will and the essential reason why Our Lady came at Fatima. Yet a mere judgment of “free of error” will never lead the hierarchy, priests, and laity to consider this a heavenly command such as Our Lord Himself referred to the Fatima requests. (“Make it known to My ministers that given they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My command, they will follow him into misfortune.”)

Therefore, these radically revised norms not only pave the way to misrepresent Our Lady’s authentic Message at Fatima but also – far worse – thereby essentially destroying God’s supernatural work at Fatima. Who does not see in this the tail of the great dragon, the enemy of all mankind?

False Message Promoted

Perhaps even more disturbing is the possibility that false apparitions can more easily be promoted through these revised norms. The curia cites “a more speedy response” as an advantage for these radical revisions. Yet, speed in such divine matters is rarely an advantage. All the spiritual masters – for example, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Alphonsus Liguori – advise great patience and prudence when discerning spirits.

Our 21^st-century tech-drenched world, with its “5G high speed” and 30-second TikTok clips, wants immediate reactions and responses. But Divine Providence does not operate in this manner. God is patient and wishes for us to acquire this virtue as an element of our sanctification. Hastiness in judging alleged supernatural apparitions far increases the probability of error. Who cannot see the devil having a field day with these new norms? Lucifer specializes in appearing as an “angel of light” (cf. 2 Cor 11:14) in order to “preach another gospel” (cf. Gal 1:8-9).

And satan can easily use his earthly minions to promote errors under the false pretense of an alleged apparition. Consider the following hypothetical example. Someone who supports Nicole Matson’s “transgenderism”^[iii] could claim Our Lady appeared and told them that God creates some people as homosexuals, that sodomitical acts have some good aspects, that homosexual couples may be blessed, or that God accepts the act of one choosing to “change” his sex. Every faithful Catholic would know this to be a diabolical abomination.

Yet this “supernatural message” could be phrased with the woke and cunning double-speak language currently being used by Bishop Stowe of Lexington, Cardinal Fernández, and Pope Francis. How easily would they willingly give a nihil obstat to such a message? They could rationalize it to themselves by saying Our Lady is merely confirming the position of today’s hierarchy. They would invariably judge it as “free of error” since it is the same message promoted by this “enlightened” hierarchy. Note, that this is far different from the judgment of “worthy of belief” and “of supernatural origin.”

If the hierarchy were to pass such a judgment on such an erroneous message, there would be many rank-and-file Catholics who would accept it as true. Great confusion and division would abound. The salvation of many souls would be at stake.

“What Is Truth?”

Today everyone is having a much harder time discerning truth from deceit. More and more people are preferring to live according to lies – even under a serious lack of reality – as evidenced by the popularity of fantasy entertainment, the appeal of artificial intelligence mimicking humans, the activities of woke social justice warriors, and the worldwide Covid phenomenon. If unnatural abominations can be attributed to the Holy Trinity, then any lie can be passed under such pretenses.

These radically revised norms move us one step closer to the precipice of a Brave New World where truth is unknown, morality has no meaning, and the errors of Russia reign supreme. “Yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth [the disciples of Christ], will think that he doth a service to God.” (John 16:2)

Our Lady of Fatima, ora pro nobis!

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ENDNOTES:

^[i] Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima, Vol. II, Ch. II, p. 59.

^[ii] Even Pope John Paul II asserted that the Message of Fatima imposes an obligation on the Church. He said, “The appeal of the Lady of the Message of Fatima is so deeply rooted in the Gospel and the whole of Tradition that the Church feels that the Message imposes a commitment on her.” L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), May 17, 1982, p. 3. See also “13 May: Pope John Paul’s Homily at Mass in Fatima,” The Fatima Crusader, Issue 9-10, October-December 1982, p. 7.

^[iii] Nicole Matson is claiming she is a man. Bishop John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington has accepted her as a “religious brother” living in his diocese as a “male hermit.” Christopher Ferrara and Dr. Brian McCall recently commented on this matter in Church and State and LifeSite has reported on it as well.

The post “Time Bombs” Within the New Vatican Norms for Supernatural Apparitions [Part 5] first appeared on The Fatima Center.

These views are those of the Fatima Center and do not necessarily reflect the views of Immaculata South Africa

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Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.