Friday, January 24, 2025

Offsite Post: ‘Fatima, Tradition, and Politics’

 

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!

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