Since laws
and constitutions are at the center of political life in the US, tradition is
supremely important. Without a stable
and coherent lens through which we can all understand the meaning of the words
and phrases of those documents, rulings, etc., there is no possibility of a
peaceful, settled society. Michael
Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center makes
this point well in the context of the federal constitution (but it applies
equally well to State and local charters, too):
Reading an
18th-century legal document with a 21st-century understanding of the words can
quickly lead you way off the reservation. After all, the meanings of words can
and do change over time. James
Madison warned what would happen if we took this approach.
“If the
meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing
it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake
of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are
constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law
if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense!”
In other words,
in order to understand the Constitution, you need a coherent framework through
which to read it.
The only way to
understand the original, legal meaning of the Constitution lies in a process
known as “originalism.” To read the Constitution through an originalist
framework means we seek to determine how the people who ratified it and put it
into legal effect understood it at the time. In other words, we adhere to what
they said they were agreeing to.
Otherwise, as
Madison warned, the meaning becomes a moving target, subject to the changes in
language and societal assumptions over time.
Thomas Jefferson summed
it up succinctly.
“On every
question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the
Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and
instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended
against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
As we have
said in other essays, the political is bound up in the religious. For there to be a strong, healthy political
tradition, there must first be a proper religious tradition underlying it. For instance, we would not be concerned about
preserving the various strands of the political tradition here in the States –
from the ancient Greek and Roman practices to English common law and French capitularies
and statutes to the laws of Constantinople/New Rome and the Holy Scriptures –
if Darwinian evolution were the reigning religion. In that scheme, nothing is stable; everything
is in a constant state of change. If a
fish can become a bird, or a bacteria an insect, then a law can mean one thing
one day and a completely different thing the next, and a consistent
evolutionist would be quite happy with both developments.
In
Christianity, this is not the case.
There is a God Who does not change, Who ‘is the same yesterday and today
and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8), a God who gave a fixed Tradition to the Holy
Apostles, which they have passed on to us.
St Jude speaks of ‘the faith which was once for all handed down to the
saints’ (Jude 3), while St Paul writes, ‘So then, brethren, stand firm and hold
to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by
letter’ (II
Thessalonians 2:15).
But not
everyone in Christendom has been a faithful guardian of the Holy Tradition
given to the Apostles. Most Protestants
consider ‘tradition’ to be a dirty word, and as a consequence they go through
life quite rudderless, inventing new teachings, denominations, and practices of
public worship and private devotion with troubling regularity. Even the Protestants who approach Tradition
with the most seriousness, the Anglicans/Episcopalians, because of their
numerous inconsistencies, contradictions, and vagaries, are not trustworthy
custodians of it. A letter of the tireless
missionary and archpastor, St Rafael of Brooklyn (+1915), goes into
more detail on that for those interested.
So we are
left with Roman Catholics and the Orthodox as candidates for the proper custodians
of Tradition. How shall we decide? Jeff LeJeune helps us to do so via his essays
on the Fatima apparitions at The Hayride. In one he
remarks,
Over a century
ago today in Fatima, Portugal, a heavenly visitor to
our humble earth–the Blessed Virgin Mary–began a series of appearances that
would predict world happenings still years and decades away. She would predict
the rise of Communism in the Soviet Union seven years before the Bolshevik
Revolution ended. She would predict the Great War would
end, now dubbed “World War I,” but that a greater one would emerge–if people
didn’t repent–at the end of the 1930s under the reign of the very Catholic pope
who ended up being elected.
And 70,000 would
witness confirmation of all of this on October 13, 1917.
At this time, World War I was still raging,
and the Russian Civil War was breaking out. The heavenly visitor asserted that
Russia would be the instrument through which God chastised the world for its
sins. Russia would spread its “errors,” she said, an indication that the bloody
twentieth century would be on Communism’s hands. She predicted that wars and
persecutions would be unbridled and that nations would be annihilated.
Let’s
examine this from the more secular, geopolitical angle first. Jay Dyer, one well-versed in history,
politics, and theological writings like Mr LeJeuene, provides this material. He
writes,
My stance on this event is also not
intended to be the standard, fundamentalist evangelical “debunking,” but rather
to look at the larger geo-political setting that surrounds Our Lady of
Fatima. Although I am not a Roman Catholic, the goal here is not to
promote Enlightenment rationalism, but rather to propose an espionage-based
thesis for the so-called “revelations.” The first place we want to look
is Dr. Carroll Quigley’s revelations
based on CFR private archives in regard to the banking houses of New York,
London and Europe being the source of the 20th century’s world wars – world
wars are banker’s wars. . . .
For those that
have spent a lot of time in Tragedy
& Hope, you know the first hundred pages or so are about how
awful Russia is. This is because in the classic “Great
Game,” the perennial enemy of the Anglo-American Establishment (another
book title by Quigley) is Russia. The only power that could rival the
merchant sea power (England), is the great land power, Russia. Other
works like Gould and Fitzgerald’s Invisible
History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Mark Curtis’ Secret Affairsalso discuss at
length the classic rivalry of these two powers, giving us a wider picture of
the historical setting for the First and Second World Wars.
As we know from
the works of Antony Sutton (as well as Quigley), the banking houses had an
invested interest in funding both Bolshevism and Nazism for the purpose of
reorganizing the various continents into large trading blocs with, first, a
League of Nations following World War I, and a United Nations, following World
War II. The Vatican Bank had also been in the service of the Rothschilds
since the 1800s. The
Jewish Encyclopedia states of the Rothschilds:
“After various
vicissitudes, graphically described by Zola in his novel “L’Argent,” the Union
failed, and brought many of the Catholic nobility of France to ruin, leaving
the Rothschilds still more absolutely the undisputed leaders of French finance,
but leaving also a legacy of hatred which had much influence on the growth of
the anti-Semitic movement in France. Something analogous occurred in England
when the century-long competition of the Barings and the Rothschilds culminated
in the failure of the former in 1893; but in this case the Rothschilds came to
the rescue of their rivals and prevented a universal financial catastrophe. It
is a somewhat curious sequel to the attempt to set up a Catholic competitor to
the Roths-childs that at the present time the latter are the guardians of the
papal treasure.
Of recent years
the Rothschilds have consistently refused to have anything to do with loans to
Russia, owing to the anti-Jewish legislation of that empire, though on one
occasion the members of the Paris house joined in a loan to demonstrate their
patriotism as Frenchmen.”
This would
suggest the co-opting of the Vatican was much earlier than the Vatican II
conspiracy most traditional Catholics adhere to. The anti-Russian stance
thus suggests a specific anti-Russian bias that continues today, as the mega banking
houses of our day are still embroiled in Vatican Bank scandals, recalling
the ritual
death of Roberto Calvi and John Paul I. With this geopolitical
setting in mind, we can consider Fatima within this milieu and my thesis is as
follows: The Western Atlanticist powers had planned World War I and II,
and the miraculous “revelations” of Fatima specifically target Russia as the
villain that will “spread her errors” to the globe. As Sutton and
Quigley detail, funding for world communism and fascism came from western
capital.
The “errors” here
are the spread of communism, but why didn’t the prophetic gift enable to
children to understand that London exported Marxism to Russia? What about
London spreading her errors to the globe, with international finance and industrial
powers funding both Nazism and communism? No, the peasants
specifically target Russia as the villain, conveniently the Atlanticists’ enemy
number one. And what better way to mobilize a billion Catholics to target
Russia as the global enemy according to Mother Mary, when Bolshevism and
communism wrecked Russia by Great Game design? This is not to
say the Cold War and east/west espionage weren’t real – the wars and covert
operations are very real, but are war gamed at a higher level by powerful internationalists.
To further
bolster my thesis, I dug up a fascinating scholarly essay on “CIA
Psychological Warfare Operations in Chile, Nicaragua and Jamaica” that
delves into minute precision analyzing various CIA Psy Ops tactics in these
nations that specifically utilize the manipulation of various Marian
“apparition” superstitions amongst the local populations. Although from
somewhat of a leftist bent, the article by Fred Landis explains various CIA
fronts planting several “miraculous” stories in the news, creating a fake
Lourdes for local that would propagandize, the appearance of Mary to various
ministers, as well as numerous other faux
miracles invented for psy ops. My first thought reading this important
article was the famous quote of Machiavelli in his Art of Warthat a staged miracle is a great way for
a general to mobilize his troops (Book VI) – and keep
in mind that the British Empire made liberal use of Machiavelli.
While I recognize
the CIA operations against Marxists were much later than Fatima, it shows there
has been precedent for military and intelligence operations staging miracles to
mobilize a population. I am also not supporting the Marxists against the CIA,
but rather using the article as an example. In my estimation, it is far
more likely the machinations of Rome in the clutches of the Atlanticists were
prepared to go along with a Fatima Psy Op to prepare for an already-planned
World War I and II, which is why Benedict
XV was a supporter of the bankster’s League of Nations (and why the
present popes are lovers of the United Nations).
(For more on
the attempts of the US intelligence apparatus to weaponize religion, we highly
recommend these two
videos
by Jay on Graziano’s book Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors.)
The material
of Mr Dyer casts some doubts on Fatima, and a more purely theological
examination casts more. The Orthodox
Miriam Lambouras is very helpful in this regard. In a detailed essay,
she looks at many of the Roman Catholic Marian apparitions, including Fatima,
and sees some things that are not in accord with Tradition:
Equally doubtful would be any suggestion of
replacing "Christ our God, long-suffering, all-merciful,
all-compassionate, Who loves the righteous and has mercy on sinners," with
a distant, impersonal figure of wrath, bent on punishment and vengeance. The
apparition of La Salette said, "I can no longer hold back the heavy arm of
my Son;" the apparition of Fatima: "... already He is deeply
offended." At San Damiano, 1961, 'The Eternal Father is tired, very
tired.... He has freed the Demon, who is working havoc. " At Oliveto
Citra, Italy, in 1985, again we hear, "I can no longer hold back the
righteous arm of my Son." The sayings echo the unbalanced but very popular
teachings of some of the Latin saints and preachers of the past, whereby
Christ's Kingdom of justice was opposed to Mary's Kingdom of Mercy. "If
God is angry with a sinner, Mary takes him under her protection, she withholds
the avenging arm of her Son and saves him" (Alphonsus Liguari). "She
is the sure refuge of sinners and criminals from the rigour of the wrath and
vengeance of Jesus Christ;" she "binds the power of Jesus Christ to
prevent the evil He would do to the guilty" (Jean-Jacques Olier).
. .
.
The rest may
be read here:
https://thehayride.com/2024/05/garlington-fatima-tradition-and-politics/
Or here:
https://orthodoxreflections.com/fatima-tradition-and-politics/
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us
sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
