SOUTHERN SENTINEL

J.M.J.
December 1, 2003

Dear friends and benefactors of Holy Cross Seminary,

This past month here at the Seminary has been a busy one, both for Seminarians intensifying their preparation for end of year examinations, and for our lay workers. In fact, we have had no less than four skilled tradesmen who have donated one or more weeks of their time to help Brother Joseph and Mr. Ashelford in our innumerable remodeling projects. This included the completing of the new priest’s bedroom and office in the Sacred Heart wing (soon to be occupied by Father Bourmaud), a new footpath up to the Seminary’s main entrance, new electrical wiring to the classroom building, as well as completion of doors and trim within the classrooms, repair of rotting windows in the main building, the construction of a new storage facility to house the innumerable items that had been placed in St. Joseph’s House, the stripping of St. Joseph’s House to prepare for remodeling and the grading of the ground around the building to protect it from future water damage. We thank God for all these improvements.

Brother Joseph directs the workers
for the pouring of the cement foot path that is now the entry to the chapel.

FATIMA INTER-RELIGIOUS CONGRESS

I feel it my sad duty to keep you informed about a most recent act of terrorism, an attempted hijacking much more threatening than that of an airplane, namely of the Mother of God herself. In fact it is nothing less than the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima that have been recuperated for the ecumenical cause. It was from October 10 - 12 that a grave scandal took place: an inter-religious congress at Fatima itself under the authority of the local bishop, presided by Cardinal José de Cruz Policarpo of Lisbon and by the President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue. In order to illustrate the theme “The today of man, the future of God, the place of sanctuaries in their relation with the sacred”, representatives from the sanctuaries of different religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism and Catholicism, were all invited to deliver their testimonies.

The only public protest of reparation that weekend was organized by the Society’s priests from Portugal, Spain and France, who celebrated many Masses of reparation, adorations of the Blessed Sacrament, and a public Rosary procession in the rain along Lucia’s path, on bended knee, from the top of the hill to the chapel of the apparitions, as well as distributing 12,000 flyers explaining to the faithful the gravity of the blasphemy constituted by this inter-religious conference.

This is the Press Statement that was issued by the Society of Saint Pius X on October 9:

“The priests of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X in Portugal express the shock of thousands of Catholics who are scandalized by the international and inter-religious congress of Fatima to take place from October 10 - 12, 2003. The Society will send a delegation, also international, to Fatima, whose mission will be to make reparation for the insults to Our Lady and to inform Catholics of the gravity of such congresses. It will express thereby the convictions of all the Catholics spread over the world who feel the great necessity of making reparation for such an affront against the Mother of God and their heavenly Mother. Whoever knows the message of Fatima knows that the Blessed Virgin calls all men to convert and that she is never ecumenical. It is the devotion to her Immaculate Heart that saves ‘poor sinners’. The heart of Buddha, of Mohammed, or of Luther neither loved God nor saved souls. They are no longer anything but dust. The heart of the Most Blessed Virgin is in heaven, where it beats, loves God and desires to save us.” 

FATIMA TO BE AN INTER-RELIGIOUS SANCTUARY

The following information is taken from Portugal’s National Weekend Newspaper, the Portugal News, of November 1. The height of the insult took place when the shrine Rector, Msgr. Luciano Guerra, promised that this sacrilege was not going to be a one time event. In effect, he indicated that it would be an ongoing reality when he announced, with these words, that an interfaith stadium would be built immediately adjacent to the existing shrine: “The future of Fatima, or the adoration of God and His mother at this holy Shrine, must pass through the creation of a shrine where different religions can mingle. The inter-religious dialogue in Portugal, and in the Catholic Church, is still in an embryonic phase, but the shrine of Fatima is not indifferent to this fact and is already open to being a universalistic place of vocation.” Announcing that Fatima is not only a Muslim name, but also the name of a daughter of Mohammed, he explained that this shows that the sanctuary must be opened to the coexistence of different faiths and beliefs, saying: “We can therefore presume it was the will of the Blessed Virgin Mary that things happen in this way”.

Ansshok Ansraj, the Hindu representative, explained how millions of Hindus in Asia receive “positive vibrations” from visits to Marian sanctuaries, without endangering their Hindu “faith”. One of the principal ‘Catholic’ speakers was the Belgium Jesuit theologian, Father Jacques Dupuis, who insisted on the unity of the world’s religions: “ The religion of the future will be a general converging of religions in a universal Christ that will satisfy all”. He went on to explain what he meant by this, developing the themes taught in the Vatican II declarations on Religious Liberty and Ecumenism:

The other religious traditions are part of God’s plan for humanity and the Holy Spirit is operating and present in Buddhist, Hindu and other sacred writings of Christian and non-Christian faiths as well…The universality of God’s kingdom permits this, and this is nothing more than a diversified form of sharing in the same mystery of salvation. In the end it is hoped that the Christian will become a better Christian, and each Hindu a better Hindu.

The consequence of all this is that the missionary spirit is destroyed. Why, indeed, in the light of all this, would a person have to become a Catholic? This was expressed explicitly in the official declaration that came from the conference, containing as it did, the following statement of non-proselytism:

No one religion can irradiate another, or strengthen itself by downplaying others, and an open dialogue is the way to building bridges and tearing down walls of centuries of hate. What is needed is that each religion be true to its faith integrally and treat each religion on the same footing of equality with no inferior or superiority complexes.

Of all the efforts to neutralize the message of Fatima, surely this ecumenical endeavor must be the most horrifyingly perverse. Nothing could more effectively destroy Our Lady’s call for prayer, penance, conversion, devotion to the Immaculate Heart and the daily recitation of the Holy Rosary. Firstly there was the refusal to publish the Third Secret; secondly were the partial consecrations of Russia by Pius XII and of the world by John Paul II, and then the vague “entrustment” of October 2000, none of them being the collegial consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart that Our Lady had requested. There was likewise the June 2000 publication of a version of the Third Secret that might indeed be a vision received by Sister Lucia, but is not the brief 25 lines of the Third Secret, nor “the words which Our Lady confided as a secret to the three little shepherds in the Cova da Iria”, as it was described by the Vatican in John XXIII’s Press Release on the subject in 1960, nor the words of Our Lady explaining the devotion to the Immaculate Heart through which the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved. Then came the 2002 Apostolic Letter on the Rosary entirely omitting mention of the Fatima prayer that traditionally we recite after each decade. Now finally, it is the converting of Fatima into an ecumenical center.

SILLON & THE ECUMENICAL FATIMA

If the apparent subterfuge of the obscure vision released as the Third Secret had not undermined the crucial importance of Our Lady of Fatima in the minds of the public, the latest effort to ecumenize it certainly will. Such a humanitarian dream to bring about a one-world super religion, more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men of all religions, without in any way diminishing their personal religious convictions, is not something new in history of the Church.

A century ago, there was a modernist French political movement that attempted the same compromise. It was called the Sillon and it was roundly condemned in 1910 by St. Pius X’s letter to the French bishops, Our Apostolic Mandate. Like the ecumenical Fatima, the Sillon movement practiced religious indifferentism. The Pope explained how this leads to one world religion, which in turn leads to apostasy from the Catholic Faith. In his letter, he describes:

the audacity and frivolity of men who call themselves Catholic and dream of…establishing on earth, over and beyond the pale of the Catholic Church, “the reign of love and justice” with workers coming from everywhere, of all religions and of no religion, with or without beliefs, so long as they forego what might divide them - their religious and philosophical convictions, and so long as they share what unites them - a “generous idealism and moral forces drawn from whence they can”.

Here is how he analyzes such action, which being at the same time religious and yet indifferent to the true Catholic Faith, necessarily promotes a super religion:

What are they going to produce? What is to come out of this collaboration? A mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words of Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality and human exaltation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation, sterile for the end proposed…It will be a religion…more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men to become brothers and comrades at last in the “Kingdom of God”, “We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind” (§ 38 & 39).

St. Pius X proceeded to give his formal condemnation of this formerly Catholic organization, that had come to embrace such revolutionary ideas:

(It) is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy; neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of those who toil and suffer. (§40).

The striking parallel between the Sillon and these sad events in Fatima is inescapable. Furthermore, it is not only on account of the obvious movement towards a union of all religions, otherwise put a one-world church, but also on account of the great similarity in the pretext given - freedom and human dignity.

FATIMA & APOSTASY

It could only be by a diabolical cunning that the very remedy proposed by heaven against the modern secular apostasy, the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, be used to promote one world religion and apostasy. It could only be such a calculation that would take advantage of the devotion of the faithful to the Holy Mother of God, who has crushed the devil and all heresies under her virginal foot, to promote the false religions of the infidels and heretics. It is an astuteness of unbelievable audacity: to use the place and devotion attached to this message, entirely directed as it is against the apostasy of souls and nations, to actually further this apostasy itself. Yet, this is precisely what is being attempted by the inter-religious congress and sanctuary in Fatima.

The importance to the modernists of this ecumenical recuperation of Fatima lies in the fact that the message of Our Lady of Fatima truly does concern apostasy from the one true Catholic Faith. This was recently summarized in a very precise manner by Mark Fellows in Fatima in Twilight, p. 326:

What Sister Lucy has said about the Third Secret is worth repeating. There are consistent references to churchmen “being fooled by false doctrine”; to a “diabolical disorientation” afflicting “so many persons who occupy places of responsibility” in the Church; to “priests and consecrated souls” who “are so deceived and misled” because “the devil has succeeded in infiltrating evil under cover of good…leading into error and deceiving souls having a heavy responsibility through the place which they occupy…They are blind men guiding other blind men”, and so on.

When we combine Lucy’s real statements with the conclusions careful scholars like Father Alonso came to about the Third Secret involving apostasy in the Church, with inadvertent admissions by churchmen like Bishop do Amaral, the former Bishop of Fatima, (who in 1984 had this to say: “Its content concerns only our Faith…The loss of the Faith on a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that the Faith is continually diminishing in Europe”) and with what we can see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears about the appalling state of the Church and the world - having considered all this, if we are to maintain any grasp of reality, the only conclusion is: the thing speaks for itself. The “thing” is apostasy, the apostasy of the upper hierarchy many believe is mentioned in the text of the Third Secret the Vatican has yet to reveal.

  Let us not doubt for one instant that this ecumenical congress, and the subsequent plan for an inter-religious stadium, is a blasphemy, that is a gravely culpable gesture treating God with contempt. For Our Lord Jesus Christ is nothing less than the one true God, and ecumenical activities of this nature, placing Him on the level of other deities, are tantamount to a denial of His divinity.

CHRISTMAS - PROFESSION OF FAITH IN THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST

Such blasphemy calls for reparation, and the best reparation is profession of our Faith in the Incarnate Word, Who from the moment of His Incarnation assumed a human nature to His divine Person, all of whose actions were consequently the actions of God Himself, and whose Mother is consequently truly the Holy Mother of God. Let our celebration and meditation of this mystery during the upcoming Christmas season maintain this perspective of reparation. As Archbishop Lefebvre put it:

“Since the Person of our Lord is God, It has all the divine attributes: It is eternal, It is outside time and is not affected by the vicissitudes of temporal things. You see how great is the mystery of the Incarnation. It is very important to reflect on these things and to ponder them. We find ourselves enveloped by mystery, the great mystery, in fact, that Our Lord revealed to us and which should fill us with joy and hope.” (Mystery of Jesus, p. 115).

Neither can we afford to forget, this Christmas, that Our Lady is inseparable from her divine Son, that the defense of her divine motherhood is inseparable from that of His divinity, that devotion to her Immaculate Heart is intimately one with reparation to her Son’s Sacred Heart. May these united hearts be our consolation in betrayal, our strength in combat, our peace in this time of conflict, our joy in this vale of tears. These are my Christmas wishes and prayers for all of you. In gratitude for your many and warm-hearted expressions of support, and for your generous donations to support the seminarians and to help the remodeling projects, I will be offering the three Masses of Christmas Day for all your intentions.

Yours faithfully in the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts,

Father Peter R. Scott

The new poured cement slab which takes up half of the old car port
which is being converted into a large interior storage area.

IGNATIAN RETREAT DATES AT HOLY CROSS SEMINARY DURING THE UPCOMING MONTHS:

COME & BRING YOUR FRIENDS!

Men’s 5 day:             Friday December 26 - Wednesday December 31
Women’s 5 day:        Monday January 5 - Saturday January 10, 2004
Men’s 5 day:             Monday January 12 - Saturday January 17
Women’s 5 day:        Monday January 26 - Saturday January 31

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