September 11, 2001: Must They Win?

If we don't wake up and straighten up, they will.

Islam Center's Eerie Echo of Ancient Terror

by Amir Taheri, New York Post
Last updated: 8:35 a.m., September 10, 2010

In Islam, every structure linked to the faith and its rituals has a precise function and character. A mosque is a one-story gallery built around an atrium with a mihrab (a niche pointing to Mecca) and one, or in the case of Shiites two, minarets.

Other Islamic structures, such as harams, zawiyyahs, husseinyiahs and takiyahs, also obey strict architectural rules. Yet the building used for spreading the faith is known as Dar al-Tabligh, or House of Proselytizing.

This 13-story multifunctional structure couldn't be any of the above.

The groups fighting for the project know this; this is why they sometimes call it an Islamic cultural center. But there is no such thing as an Islamic culture.

Islam is a religion, not a culture. Each of the 57 Muslim-majority nations has its own distinct culture -- and the Bengali culture has little in common with the Nigerian. Then, too, most of those countries have their own cultural offices in the US, especially in New York.

Islam is an ingredient in dozens of cultures, not a culture on its own.

In theory, at least, the culture of American Muslims should be American. Of course, this being America, each ethnic community has its distinct cultural memories -- the Iranians in Los Angeles are different from the Arabs in Dearborn.

In fact, the proposed structure is known in Islamic history as a rabat -- literally a connector. The first rabat appeared at the time of the Prophet.

The Prophet imposed his rule on parts of Arabia through a series of ghazvas, or razzias (the origin of the English word "raid"). The ghazva was designed to terrorize the infidels, convince them that their civilization was doomed and force them to submit to Islamic rule. Those who participated in the ghazva were known as the ghazis, or raiders.

After each ghazva, the Prophet ordered the creation of a rabat -- or a point of contact at the heart of the infidel territory raided. The rabat consisted of an area for prayer, a section for the raiders to eat and rest and facilities to train and prepare for future razzias. Later Muslim rulers used the tactic of ghazva to conquer territory in the Persian and Byzantine empires. After each raid, they built a rabat to prepare for the next razzia.

It is no coincidence that Islamists routinely use the term ghazva to describe the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington. The terrorists who carried out the attack are referred to as ghazis or shahids (martyrs).

Thus, building a rabat close to Ground Zero would be in accordance with a tradition started by the Prophet. To all those who believe and hope that the 9/11 ghazva would lead to the destruction of the American "Great Satan," this would be of great symbolic value.

Faced with the anger of New Yorkers, the promoters of the project have started calling it the Cordoba House, echoing President Obama's assertion that it would be used to propagate "moderate" Islam.

The argument is that Cordoba, in southern Spain, was a city where followers of Islam, Christianity and Judaism lived together in peace and produced literature and philosophy.

In fact, Cordoba's history is full of stories of oppression and massacre, prompted by religious fanaticism. It is true that the Muslim rulers of Cordoba didn't force their Christian and Jewish subjects to accept Islam. However, non-Muslims could keep their faith and enjoy state protection only as dhimmis (bonded ones) by paying a poll tax in a system of religious apartheid.

If whatever peace and harmony that is supposed to have existed in Cordoba were the fruit of "Muslim rule," the subtext is that the United States would enjoy similar peace and harmony under Islamic rule.

A rabat in the heart of Manhattan would be of great symbolic value to those who want a high-profile, "in your face" projection of Islam in the infidel West.

This thirst for visibility is translated into increasingly provocative forms of hijab, notably the niqab (mask) and the burqa. The same quest mobilized hundreds of Muslims in Paris the other day to close a whole street so that they could have a Ramadan prayer in the middle of the rush hour.

One of those taking part in the demonstration told French radio that the aim was to "show we are here." "You used to be in our capitals for centuries," he said. "Now, it is our turn to be in the heart of your cities."

Before deciding whether to support or oppose the "Cordoba" project, New Yorkers should consider what it is that they would be buying.

H/T Fr. Z. for the New York Post article.

August 13-19, 1917: The Claw of Satan

Now the devil, no doubt alarmed by heaven's interventions in Portugal, decided to enlist human cooperation in his efforts to thwart them.  After the terrible visions and prophecies of July 13th, in which hell and its works were exposed, the troubles from without intensified, especially for Lucia.  As if the persecutions in her own home were not enough, the "freethinking" government officials -- who, however, were not free to admit either the truths of the Catholic faith or the possibility of divine intervention in human affairs -- began to turn their baleful gaze upon the children and the events at the Cova da Iria.  

Chief among these was Arturo Santos, the administrator of Vila Nova de Ourem, the county in which Fatima was located.  In The True Story of Fatima, the excellent account by Fr. John di Marchi based on his personal interviews of witnesses to the Fatima events, we have some background facts on Arturo Santos:

Arthur Santos was by training a tinker, or tin smith. His formal education had been slight, his ambitions large. A self-propelled and intrepid young man, he became the editor of the Ouriense, a local gazette in which his antimonarchical and anti-religious opinions were expressed with bitter zeal, and likely enough, some talent. In any case, with the advent of the Republic in 1910, Arthur Santos, at the age of twenty-six, was a man of consequence. After being elected to the Masonic Lodge of Leiria, the bustling Senhor founded a separate lodge in his native Vila Nova de Ourem, and was, before long, mayor or administrator of the county. This carried with it the corollary titles of President of the Chamber and Judge Substitute of Comarca. Wearing all these honours, with their companion authority, Senhor Santos was the most feared and influential man in his section of Portugal.

As an avowed atheist, Senhor Santos could only view the events in the Cova da Iria as a threat to civic order and the republican cause, so  on about the 11th of August, he summoned Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco and their fathers to appear before him.  Ti Marto, the father of Jacinta and Francisco, refused to bring the children, though he appeared himself; but Lucia's family thought it would serve her right to have to appear in front of the administrator.  Lucia's Second Memoir:

As for me, what hurt me most, was the indifference shown me by my parents.  This was all the more obvious since I could see how affectionately my aunt and uncle treated their children.  I remember thinking to myself as we went along: "How different my parents are from my uncle and aunt.  They risk themselves to defend their children, while my parents hand me over with the greatest indifference, and let them do what they like with me!  But I must be patient," I reminded myself in my inmost heart, "since this means I have the happiness of suffering more for love of You, O my God, and for the conversion of sinners."  This reflection never failed to bring me consolation.

The administrator interrogated Lucia in the presence of her father, her uncle and several others, sparing neither promises nor threats to force out of her the secrets that had been confided to her, all to no avail.  He finally dismissed the child with a threat to kill her if necessary, and sent her home.  

But Senhor Santos was not through yet.  On the 13th of August -- the day the next apparition was to take place -- he personally appeared at the Marto home.  He wanted, he said, to see these wonders at the Cova himself, and decided to take the children there in his own carriage, with a stop at the house of the local parish priest, Fr. Ferreira, on the way.

But from the priest's house, the carriage did not go to the Cova.  Instead, it took the children to Senhor Santos' house.  Now began an ordeal that was to last for several days.  The administrator imprisoned the children in his house, where he subjected them to promises, bribes, and threats to get them to reveal the secrets they had heard from the Lady.  Not even the threat of being thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil could move them.  The administrator eventually threw them into the public jail, alongside actual criminals; but even this did not break them.  

Nevertheless, it was a real trial, especially for little Jacinta. In her First Memoir, Lucia describes her torments:

I went over and drew her close to me, asking her why she was crying.

"Because we are going to die," she replied, "without ever seeing our parents again, not even our mothers!"  With tears running down her cheeks, she added: "I would at least like to see my mother."

"Don't you want, then, to offer this sacrifice for the conversion of sinners?"

"I do want to, I do!"  With her face bathed in tears, she joined her hands, raised her eyes to heaven, and made her offering:  "O my Jesus!  This is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, for the Holy Father, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary!"

Lucia goes on: 

Next, we decided to say our Rosary.  Jacinta took off a medal that she was wearing around her neck, and asked a prisoner to hang it up for her on a nail in the wall.  Kneeling before this medal, we began to pray.  The prisoners prayed with us, that is, if they knew how to pray, but at least they were down on their knees.  Once the Rosary was over, Jacinta went over to the window and started crying again.

"Jacinta," I asked, "don't you want to offer this sacrifice to Our Lord?"

"Yes, I do, but I keep thinking about my mother, and I can't help crying."

As the Blessed Virgin had told us to offer our prayers and sacrifices also in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we agreed that each of us would choose one of these intentions.  One would offer for sinners, another for the Holy Father and yet another in reparation for the sins against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Having decided on this, I told Jacinta to choose whichever intention she preferred.  "I'm making the offering for all the intentions, because I love them all."

Among the prisoners, there was one who played the concertina.  To divert our attention, he began to play and they all started singing.  They asked us if we knew how to dance.  We said we knew the "fandango" and the "vira."  Jacinta's partner was a poor thief who, finding her so tiny, picked her up and went on dancing with her in his arms!  We only hope that Our Lady has had pity on his soul and converted him!  

Meanwhile, at the Cova da Iria, the appointed time for the apparition came.  A large crowd had gathered, but the children were not there.  Fr. di March provides the testimony of a witness:

As before, I arrived very early at the Cova and sat down near the little tree where Our Lady had appeared. I went in spite of the fact that many people had tried to frighten me out of going. There were rumours it was the devil who came, and that he would wait until many people had come, then open the earth and swallow us all. A woman from Caterina had told me this, but I was not afraid. With so much praying going on, I decided, nothing so evil could happen. I asked Our Lady to guide me according to the divine will of her Son, and then I went.

The crowd this day was even greater than it had been in July. Oh, there were many, many more. Some came on foot and hung their bundles on the trees. Some came on horses. Some on mules. There were bicycles too, and everything else, and on the road there was a great noise of traffic.

It must have been around 11 o’clock when Maria dos Anjos, Lucia’s sister, got there. She had some candles with her that she expected to light when Our Lady came to her sister and her cousins. All around the tree, the people were praying and singing hymns, but when the children did not appear, they began to get impatient. Then someone came from Fatima and told us they had been kidnapped by the mayor. Everyone began talking at once; there was great anger, and I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t heard the clap of thunder.

It was much the same as the last time. Some said the thunder came from the direction of the road and others said it came from the tree. To me it seemed to come from a long way off. But wherever it came from, the thunder was a shock to the people. Some of them began to shout that we would be killed. We all began to spread out, away from the tree, but, of course, no one was hurt in any way. Just after the clap of thunder came a flash of lightning, and then we began to see a little cloud, very delicate, very white, which stopped for a few moments over the tree, and then rose in the air until it disappeared. As we looked around, we began to notice some strange things we had observed before and would see again in the months to follow. Our faces were reflecting all the colours of the rainbow—pink and red and blue and I don’t know what. The trees suddenly seemed to be made not of leaves, but of flowers. The ground reflected these many colours, and so did the clothes we wore. The lanterns that someone had fixed to the arch above us looked as though they had turned to gold. Certainly Our Lady had come, I knew, even though the children were not there.

 But the people's anger against the civil authorities, and against Fr. Ferreira, whom they suspected of having a hand in the children's disappearance.   When the children were finally set free and returned home -- on the feast of the Assumption -- Ti Marto played a significant role in calming the people's wrath and preventing violence.

And the children, having faithfully endured their trials, were to be consoled for having missed their appointment with the Lady at the Cova.  On August 19th, they received a heavenly visitation.  From Lucia's Fourth Memoir:

I was accompanied by Francisco and his brother John.  We were with the sheep in a place called Valinhos, when we felt something supernatural approaching and enveloping us.  Suspecting that Our Lady was about to appear to us, and feeling sorry lest Jacinta might miss seeing her, we asked her brother to go and call her.  As he was unwilling to go, I offered him two small coins, and off he ran.

Meanwhile, Francisco and I saw the flash of light, which we called lightning.  Jacinta arrived, and a moment later, we saw Our Lady on a holmoak tree.

What favor Jacinta must have enjoyed with Our Lady, since she waited to appear until the child arrived.  Lucia continues:

"What do you want of me?"

I want you to continue going to the Cova da Iria on the 18th and to continue praying the Rosary every day.  In the last month, I will perform a miracle so that all may believe."

At this point, Fr. di Marchi  mentions a detail that does not appear in Lucia's memoirs, and whose source he does not name, although he mentions earlier in the book that he had personally interviewed Sr. Lucia.  He records that Our Lady said the following:

If they had not taken you to the town (meaning Ourem), the miracle would be even greater. St. Joseph will come with the Holy Child to bring peace to the world. Our Lord will come to bless the people. Our Lady of the Rosary and Our Lady of Dolors will also come at that time.   

Of this detail, Francis Johnston offers the following commentary in his book Fatima: The Great Sign:

And here we have one of the most solemn lessons in the entire story of Fatima.  How great would the miracle have been if the children had not been kidnapped?  Would it have been of longer duration?   Would it have been seen all over Portugal?  Perhaps over Spain or even France, bringing incalculable benefits to the Fatima apostolate and the cause of world peace?  We shall never know.  All we do know is that the actions of one evil man, Arturo Santos, have endangered the lives of everyone living today.  And this underlines a deep truth, frequently ignored today.  Each sin committed in the world adversely affects everyone else, just as each merit gained favorably affects all others.

Lucia's memoir continues.  She asked the Lady:

"What do you want done with the money that the people leave in the Cova da Iria?"

"Have two litters made.  One is to be carried by you and Jacinta and two other girls dressed in white; the other one is to be carried by Francisco and three other boys.  The money from the litters is for the 'festa' of Our Lady of the Rosary, and what is left over will help towards the construction of a chapel that is to be built here."

"I would like to ask you to cure some sick persons."

"Yes, I will cure some of them during the year."

Then, looking very sad, Our Lady said: "Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and pray for them."  And she began to ascend as usual towards the east. 

And so in August of 1917, from the center of the maelstrom of war, famine, death and pestilence he had loosed upon the earth, Satan sent out a claw and with it tried to slam shut the portal between heaven and earth that had opened up at Fatima.  But he only succeeded in moving the door a few inches.  Still, he was not through.  The struggle was far from over.

July 13, 1917: The Secrets

Now it was time to show the three children why it was necessary for them to suffer and to make reparation for sinners.  Lucia's Fourth Memoir:

A few moments after arriving at the Cova da Iria, near the holmoak, where a large number of people were praying the Rosary, we saw the flash of light once more, and a moment later Our Lady appeared on the holmoak.

"What do you want of me?"  I asked.

"I want you to come here on the 13th of next month, to continue to pray the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, because only she can help you."

"I would like to ask you to tell us who you are, and to work a miracle so that everybody will believe that you are appearing to us."

"Continue to come here every month.  In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe."

I then made some requests, but I cannot recall now just what they were.  What I do remember is that Our Lady said it was necessary for such people to pray the Rosary in order to obtain these graces during the year.  And she continued:

"Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times, especially whenever you make some sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

As Our Lady spoke these last words, she opened her hands once more, as she had done during the two previous months.  The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire.  Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.  (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me.)  The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals.  Terrified and as if to plead for succor, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us, so kindly and so sadly:

"You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go.  To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.  If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.  The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI.  When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.

"To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.  If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; but if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.  The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.  In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.  The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.  In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved..."

It must have been at this point that the children received the "Third Secret," which would not be revealed publicly for eighty-three years.  However, in obedience to the Bishop of Leiria, Lucia committed the Third Secret to writing in 1944 as follows (edited here for punctuation, spelling and paragraph breaks):

After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand.  Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: "Penance, penance, penance!" 

And we saw in an immense light that is God something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it: a Bishop dressed in white.  We had the impression that it was the Holy Father.  Other bishops, priests, men and women religious going up [sic] a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark.  Before reaching there, the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins; and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way.

Having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big cross, he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him; and in the same way there died, one after another, the other bishops, priests, men and women religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs, and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

Then, after warning the children against telling anyone what they had seen and heard (except that the girls could tell Francisco, who was not able to hear what was said) the Blessed Mother gave the children what has come to be known as the Fatima Prayer, albeit in a somewhat different form than that which is now commonly used (at least in English):

"When you pray the Rosary, say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fire of hell.  Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need."

Then the apparition ended.  But the controversy over what happened that July 13th has not ended.  The Third Secret has given rise to much speculation, all the more since the decision was made not to make the Secret public in 1960, the year it was assumed the Secret should have been revealed. 

Why 1960?  When she wrote down the Secret for the bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Sr. Lucia wrote on the outer envelope that it could only be opened after 1960.  When asked why, and whether Our Lady had fixed the date, she replied: "It was not Our Lady. I fixed the date because I had the intuition that before 1960 it would not be understood, but that only later would it be understood. Now it can be better understood. I wrote down what I saw; however it was not for me to interpret it, but for the Pope."  By the time the contents of the Secret were finally made public in 2000, on the occasion of the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, so much doomsday-scenario speculation had gone on about it, during the bloodiest century in human history, that it seemed almost anti-climactic. 

So much so that a whole industry has grown up around the idea that the entire Third Secret has not been revealed, in spite of Sr. Lucia's categorical statement in 2001 that there are no more secrets.  It doesn't make sense, it is argued, that the vision of the Holy Father being shot refers to the attempt on the life of John Paul II on May 13, 1981, as asserted in the theological commentary on the Third Secret.  But that is a gross oversimplification of then-Cardinal Ratzinger's remarks.  The vision, he said, contains the whole bloody history of the 20th century, "a century of martyrs," as well as the special role of the Pope in "the Via Crucis of an entire century".  And, in view of the Communist connections of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Pope's would-be assassin, Ratzinger's reference to a comment Sr. Lucia made to John Paul II in a letter in 1982 should not be overlooked: "The third part of the 'secret' refers to Our Lady's words: 'If not, [Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.'"

Which brings us to part two of the July 13th controversy: whether or not, in spite of Sr. Lucia's statements to the contrary, the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has ever taken place.  On December 2, 1940, Sr. Lucia wrote to Pope Pius XII, asking that he consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart, and order all bishops to do the same in union with him.  She stated that Our Lady came to ask for this in 1929, and described the efforts that had been made to have it done.  On October 31, 1942, Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate heart.  On July 7, 1952, he consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart, but without the participation of the world's bishops.  Further acts of consecration follow in 1964, 1982 and 1983.  John Paul II finally made the consecration as requested on March 25, 1984, yet it is still alleged that the consecration has not been properly made.   Perhaps the strongest argument they have is the moral and economic mess that Russia is still in today, which seems to counter-indicate a change of heart on the part of the Russian people. 

Concerning the consecration controversy, some observations:


-- The 1984 consecration is criticized for not having explicitly mentioned Russia.  Yet it is plain from the text of the act of consecration that the 1952 act of Pope Pius XII, which does mention Russia by name, is incorporated by reference.  That would be good enough in a legal document; it was clearly good enough for heaven, as subsequent events attested.

-- Our Lady promised that Russia would be converted, but she neither said when this would take place, nor promised that it would take place instantaneously.  God is not on our schedule.

-- There is a danger of expecting too much.  Our Lady never promised that the consecration of Russia would eradicate all evils from the earth.  That will not happen this side of the Last Day.  Furthermore, she did not say how long the "period of peace" that would follow the conversion of Russia would last.

-- Our Lady's promises at Fatima were conditional.  God made His promised blessings dependent upon our repentance and conversion, which has not generally been forthcoming.  The fact that we have not promptly heeded Our Lady's requests for repentance and conversion must be set down as a factor in the present state of world affairs.

-- We must not forget that more than half a century elapsed between the time Our Lady asked for the consecration (1929) and the time it was actually done (1984).  That was more than half a century that Russia had to spread her errors throughout the world.  The late date at which the consecration was done, coupled with the amount of damage done in the world by Russia's errors, has to have had an effect on the timetable.

-- Yet the cataract of disasters in the Communist world that led to the removal of the Soviet Union as a threat to world peace began almost immediately after the 1984 consecration.  It's hard to believe that there is now a generation of adults who are not old enough to remember the Cold War; perhaps this is part of the reason for the disappointment over the "failure" of Russia to be converted.  It is true that the seeds of failure had been sown in the Soviet system from the beginning.  Nevertheless, the Soviet Union persisted for generations: by the time the Soviet era came to an end, one had to be quite old to remember back behind it.  For those who do not remember the collapse of Communism, it is hard to overstate how breathtakingly sudden, swift and unexpected it was.   I recall very clearly that late in 1989, one of my German language professors, who was from Germany and still had family stuck in the GDR, declared her belief that the Berlin Wall would never come down; just a few weeks later, down it came.  In a few months, Germany would reunify, East Germany having voted itself out of existence; the following year, the Soviet Union would be no more. All of this was unimaginable just a few short years before, yet it all happened within seven years of the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart.

-- The words of Our Lady concerning the conversion of Russia make clear that it is not merely for the benefit of Russia that that nation must convert, but for that of the whole world.  There can be no doubt that the implosion of the Soviet Union which immediately followed the 1984 act of consecration was of considerable benefit to the world and to the cause of world peace, whatever else might come after.  As for the change of heart of the Russian people, surely the breaking of the shackles of Communism was a necessary first step.  The Communists had to experience the failure and collapse of their precious system.

-- We do not know what calamities have been averted because of the 1984 act of consecration.

But we do have an inkling, 93 years later, of how three small shepherd children were drawn into the maelstrom of human history and, by means of their generosity of spirit and heroic sufferings, became instruments in God's great intervention.  More suffering lay ahead.

July 4th

So my trusty Olympus camera and I went out to the fairgrounds in Homedale for fireworks last night.  It's too bad the operator of the camera is not as trusty as the camera.  This is about the best picture I got of the action.

Most of my pictures came out like this.

And then my batteries died, and I didn't have spares ready instantly to pop in, and it was  too dark to rifle my bag for them, and I didn't want to miss the show.  So I wasn't able to get the finale.

But at least I got a halfway decent shot of the sunset.

June 13, 1917: Promises and Predictions

The war raged on.  Europe was no stranger to war; but the ferocity and the scope of this war were unprecedented.  The slaughter proceeded on an industrial scale.  And there were the new horrors, beyond all description: the blood and mud of trench warfare; poison gas; primitive tanks, whose operators could not expect to survive more than a few minutes in an engagement; and air raids over cities.  While the three shepherd children of Fatima were keeping their appointment with the Mother of God in the Cova da Iria on June 13, 1917, 18-20 German bombers struck the city of London in broad daylight, in one of the worst air raids of the war.  Four hundred people were injured, and 162 -- including 46 children -- perished. 

The peace that had fled the world had also fled Fatima, particularly in the home of Lucia dos Santos.  After the first apparition of Our Lady at the Cova da Iria, her little cousin, Jacinta, promptly broke the children's firm resolution not to tell anyone what they had seen; and thus began in earnest the sufferings the children promised to undergo for the conversion of sinners.  From this point forward, the children were hounded by inquisitors, both pious and profane, and curiosity-seekers.  But Lucia bore the added burden of persecution right at home.  Her family treated her with contempt; and her mother, who had a great horror of lying, employed every means, including corporal punishment, to make her daughter admit that she was lying.  It was hoped that the children would forget about the alleged apparitions amid the festivities of June 13th, the feast of St. Anthony of Padua.

But the children did not forget.  At noon on the feast of St. Anthony, the children were not at the festa, but at the Cova.  Lucia records in her Fourth Memoir:

As soon as Jacinta, Francisco and I had finished praying the Rosary, with a number of other people who were present, we saw once more the flash reflecting the light which was approaching (which we called lightning).  The next moment, Our Lady was there on the holmoak, exactly the same as in May.

"What do you want of me?" I asked.

"I wish you to come here on the 13th of next month, to pray the Rosary every day, and to learn to read.  Later, I will tell you what I want."

Amid the rending torments of nations, heaven remembers individuals, even the least of them, down to the last detail.

I asked for the cure of a sick person.

"If he is converted, he will be cured during the year."

"I would like to ask you to take us to heaven."

"Yes.  I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon.  But you are to stay here some time longer.  Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved.  He wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart."

Some time longer...The Mother of God has a gift for understatement.  Jacinta and Francisco would both be dead within three years, but another 88 years would pass before Our Lady would come for Lucia. 

"Am I to stay here alone?"  I asked, sadly.

"No, my daughter.  Are you suffering a great deal?  Don't lose heart.  I will never forsake you.  My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God."

As Our Lady spoke these last words, she opened her hands and for the second time, she communicated to us the rays of that same immense light.  We saw ourselves in this light, as it were, immersed in God.  Jacinta and Francisco seemed to be in that part of the light which rose towards heaven, and I in that which was poured out on the earth.  In front of the palm of Our Lady's right hand was a heart encircled by thorns which pierced it.  We understood that this was the Immaculate Heart of Mary, outraged by the sins of humanity, and seeking reparation.

In her Third Memoir, Lucia looks back on the effects of this second apparition on her and her cousins:

...Our Lady told me on June 13, 1917 that she would never forsake me, and that her Immaculate Heart would be my refuge and the way that would lead me to God.  As she spoke these words, she opened her hands, and from them streamed a light that penetrated to our inmost hearts.  I think that, on that day, the main purpose of this light was to infuse within us a special knowledge and love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary, just as on the other two occasions it was intended to do, as it seems to me, with regard to God and the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.

From that day onwards, our hearts were filled with a more ardent love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  From time to time, Jacinta said to me: "The Lady said that her Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.  Don't you love that?  Her Heart is so good!  How I love it!"

In the Fourth Memoir, Lucia describes more particularly the effects of this apparition on Francisco:

...Francisco was deeply impressed by the light which, as I related in the second account, Our Lady communicated to us at the moment when she said: "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way which will lead you to God."...

He remarked sometimes:

"These people are so happy just because you told them that Our Lady wants the Rosary said, and that you are to learn to read!  How would they feel if they only knew what she showed us in God, in her Immaculate Heart, in that great light!  But this is a secret; it must not be spoken about.  It's better that no one should know it."

But greater secrets -- and greater sufferings -- were to come.

May 13, 1917: The Campaign Opens

May 13, 1917 dawned upon a world in turmoil.  The fratricidal slaughter that engulfed Europe had raged for nearly three years, and had now spread over the whole globe.  One month earlier, the United States stepped into the European fray with her declaration of war on Germany.  The social and political order of the Old World was being swept away.  Two months earlier, the Czar of Russia abdicated, as his country slid toward the abyss of communism.  Nor were the horrors of 1914-1918 the worst the world would ever see.  The veterans of the War to End All War would not reach middle age before the outbreak of another and even more terrible war.  On May 13, 1917, Pope Benedict XV consecrated as archbishop the man who would steer the Barque of Peter through the bloodiest period (to that point) in human history.  As this future supreme shepherd knelt before the Pope, three shepherd children in a small plot of pasture land near Aljustrel, Portugal fell to their knees before a luminous vision over a small holm oak.

In 1941, the oldest of these three children, Lucia dos Santos -- now a Dorothean sister -- wrote under obedience in her 4th Memoir:

High up on the slope in the Cova da Iria, I was playing with Jacinta and Francisco at building a little stone wall around a clump of furze.  Suddenly we saw what seemed to be a flash of lightning.

"We'd better go home," I said to my cousins, "that's lightning; we may have a thunderstorm."

"Yes, indeed!" they answered.

We began to go down the slope, hurrying the sheep along toward the road.  We were more or less half-way down the slope, and almost level with a large holmoak tree that stood there, when we saw another flash of lightning.  We had only gone a few steps further when, there before us on a small holmoak, we beheld a Lady all dressed in white.  She was more brilliant than the sun, and radiated a light more clear and intense than a crystal glass filled with sparkling water, when the rays of the burning sun shine through it.

We stopped, astounded, before the Apparition.  We were so close, just a few feet from her, that we were bathed in the light which surrounded her, or rather, which radiated from her.  Then Our Lady spoke to us:

"Do not be afraid.  I will do you no harm."

"Where are you from"

"I am from heaven."

"What do you want of me?"

"I have come to ask you to come here for six months in succession, on the 13th day, at this same hour.  Later on, I will tell you who I am and what I want.  Afterwards, I will return here a seventh time."

The seventh time Our Lady came to the Cova da Iria was to give Lucia a private message in 1921, when she was was about to leave home to board at the Dorothean school in Vilar de Oporto.  Her bishop sent her there under an assumed name, among other reasons, to give her a chance at a normal life.  Lucia continues:

"Shall I go to heaven too?"

"Yes, you will."

"And Jacinta?"

"She will go also."

"And Francisco?"

"He will go there too, but he must say many Rosaries." 

Then I remembered to ask about two girls who had died recently.  They were friends of mine and used to come to my home to learn weaving with my eldest sister.

"Is Maria das Neves in heaven?"

"Yes, she is."  (I think she was about 16 years old.)

"And Amelia?"

"She will be in purgatory until the end of the world."  (It seems to me that she was between 18 and 20 years of age.)

If this young girl from rural Portugal, a place where the faith was still strong, had racked up enough offenses to merit purgatory until the end of time, what is to become of us in this time of weakened faith, with vastly greater opportunities for sinning and a culture that encourages us to yield to temptation rather than fight it?  

Lucia continues:

"Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the conversion of sinners?"

"Yes, we are willing."

"Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort."

As she pronounced these words, "the grace of God will be your comfort," Our Lady opened her hands for the first time, communicating to us a light so intense that, as it streamed from her hands, its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of our souls, making us see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors.  Then, moved by an interior impulse that was also communicated to us, we fell on our knees, repeating in our hearts:

"O most Holy Trinity, I adore You!  My God, my God, I love You in the most Blessed Sacrament!"

After a few moments, Our Lady spoke again:

"Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world, and the end of the war."

Then she began to rise serenely, going up towards the east, until she disappeared in the immensity of space.  The light that surrounded her seemed to open up a path before her in the firmament, and for this reason we sometimes said that we saw heaven opening.

Almost exactly ten years after this apparition, a boy was born to a policeman and his wife in Bavaria, where the future Pius XII -- consecrated archbishop on the very day the apparition took place -- had served as Papal Nuncio.  That boy was destined to become the fifth successor of the man who had once been the Pope's ambassador to the boy's place of birth, and to take the name of the Pope that had made the ambassador an archbishop; and to steer the Barque of Peter through seas no less turbulent and furious than those through which Benedict XV and Pius XII had to navigate.  

Now, on the 93rd anniversary of this first apparition, and the 10th anniversary of the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the younger two shepherd children, he is at the place of the apparitions -- the third Pope to make such a pilgrimage -- where he has entrusted and consecrated all priests to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  

Pope Benedict's prayer before the statue of Mary in the Chapel of the Apparitions:

Holy Father:
 
Our Lady,
Mother of all men and women,
I come before you as a son
visiting his Mother,
and I do so in company
with a multitude of brothers and sisters.
As the Successor of Peter,
to whom was entrusted the mission
of presiding in the service
of charity in the Church of Christ
and of confirming all in faith and in hope,
I wish to present to your
Immaculate Heart
the joys and hopes
as well as the problems and sufferings
of each one of these sons and daughters of yours
who are gathered in the Cova di Iria
or who are praying with us from afar.

Mother most gentle,
you know each one by name,
you know each one’s face and personal history,
and you love them all
with maternal benevolence
that wells up from the very heart of Divine Love.
I entrust and consecrate them all to you,
Mary Most Holy,
Mother of God and our Mother.
 
Cantors and Assembly: We sing to you and we praise you, O Mary (v. 1)
 
Holy Father:
 
The Venerable Pope John Paul II,
who visited you three times here in Fatima
and thanked the "unseen hand"
that rescued him from death
in the assassination attempt on 13 May
in Saint Peter’s Square almost thirty years ago,
wanted to offer to the Shrine of Fatima
a bullet which gravely wounded him
and was placed in the crown of the Queen of Peace.
It is a profound consolation
to know that you are crowned
not only with the silver
and gold of our joys and hopes,
but also with the "bullet"
of our anxieties and sufferings.

I thank you, beloved Mother,
for the prayers and sacrifices
that the shepherd-children
of Fatima offered for the Pope,
led by the sentiments
that you inspired in them in the apparitions.
I also thank all those who,
every day,
pray for the Successor of Peter
and for his intentions,
that the Pope may be strong in faith,
bold in hope and zealous in love.
 
Cantors and Assembly: We sing to you and we praise you, O Mary (v. 2)
 
Holy Father:
 
Beloved Mother of us all,
here in your Shrine at Fatima I consign
the Golden Rose
that I have brought from Rome
as a homage of gratitude from the Pope
for the marvels that the Almighty
has worked through you
in the hearts of so many who come as pilgrims
to this your maternal home.

I am sure that the shepherd-children of Fatima,
Blessed Francisco and Jacinta
and the Servant of God Lucia of Jesus,
are united with us at this hour of prayer and jubilation.
 
Cantors and Assembly: We sing to you and we praise you, O Mary (v. 5).   

Deadly Medicine and the Seared Conscience

Warning: Graphic and disturbing descriptions

 "I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion."

-- The Hippocratic Oath, classical version (excised from the modern version)

Most of you know what it means to see 100 corpses lying together, or 500, or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and shall never be written...

-- Excerpt of speech by Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler justifying the extermination of the Jews, spoken to senior SS officers in Poznan, Poland, October 4, 1943

 
It is morally and ethically wrong to do abortions without acknowledging what it means to do them. I performed abortions, I have had an abortion and I am in favor of women having abortions when we choose to do so. But we should never disregard the fact that being pregnant means there is a baby growing inside of a woman, a baby whose life is ended. We ought not to pretend this is not happening."

-- Judith Arcana, abortion activist, at a London seminar, October 1999

"I know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound. . . I think brain death would occur because the suctioning to remove contents is only two or three seconds, so somewhere in that period of time, obviously not when you penetrate the skull, because people get shot in the head and they don't die immediately from that, if they are going to die at all, so that probably is not sufficient to kill the fetus, but I think removing the brain contents eventually will. . . My intent in every abortion I have ever done is to kill the fetus and terminate the pregnancy."

-- Leroy Carhart, testifying under oath in 1997 about what he does to commit abortion, Asheville Tribune

"[T]he abortion patient has a right not only to be rid of the growth, called a fetus, in her body, but also has a right to a dead fetus. . . [I] never have any intention of trying to protect the fetus, if it can be saved. . . as a general principle [t]here should not be a live fetus."

-- Robert Crist, abortion doctor, testifying in federal court in 1980

" 'Forceps, please,' Mr. Smith slaps into his hand what look like oversized ice-cube tongs. Holtzman pushes it into the vagina and tugs. He pulls out something, which he slaps on the instrument table. 'There,' he says, 'A leg. You can always tell fetal size best by the extremities. Fifteen weeks is right in this case.' I turn to Mr. Smith. 'What did he say?' 'He pulled a leg off,' Mr. Smith says. 'Right here.' He points to the instrument table, where there is a perfectly formed, slightly bent leg, about three inches long. It consists of a ripped thigh, a knee, a lower leg, a foot, and five toes. I start to shake very badly, but otherwise I feel nothing. Total shock is painless. 'I have the rib cage now,' Holtzman says, as he slams down another piece of the fetus. 'That's one thing you don't want to leave behind because it acts like a ball valve and infects everything.... There, I've got the head now. Also a piece of the placenta.' I look at the instrument table where next to the leg, and next to a mess he calls the rib cage but that I cannot recognize, there lies a head. It is the smallest human head I have ever seen, but it is unmistakably part of a person."

-- Magda Denes, abortion advocate, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, In Necessity and Sorrow; Life and Death Inside an Abortion Clinic, 1978

"When you're a doctor who does these abortions and the leaders of your movement appear before Congress and go on network news and say these procedures are done in only the most tragic of circumstances, how do you think that makes you feel? You know they're primarily done on healthy women and healthy fetuses, and it makes you feel like a dirty little abortionist with a dirty little secret. I think we should tell them the truth, let them vote and move on. In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along. The abortion-rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else."

-- Ron Fitzsimmons, Executive Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, in "An Abortion Rights Advocate Says He Lied About Procedure", New York Times (February 26, 1997)

"Is birth control an abortion? Definitely not; an abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun."

-- Planned Parenthood pamphlet (August 1963)

"The pro-life groups were right about one thing, the location of the baby inside or outside the womb cannot make much of a moral difference. We cannot coherently hold it is alright to kill a fetus a week before birth, but as soon as the baby is born everything must be done to keep it alive. The solution, however, is not to accept the pro-life view that the fetus is a human being with the same moral status as yours or mine. The solution is the very opposite, to abandon the idea that all human life is of equal worth."

-- Peter Singer, Princeton "ethicist" and death enthusiast, Practical Ethics, pp. 185-8, 1993

"It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which had been used to create the 'right' to abortion out of legal thin air. But Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffey never told me that what I was signing would allow women to come up to me 15, 20 years later and say, 'Thank you for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible.' Sarah never mentioned women using abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy women, not women already wearing maternity clothes."

-- Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade, testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights (January 21, 1998)

"We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years."

-- George Tiller, declaring his pro-abortion credentials in a speech to the National Abortion Federation, April 2-4, 1995, New Orleans, LA

"I do think abortion is murder—of a very special and necessary sort. What else would one call the deliberate stilling of a life? And no physician involved with the procedure ever kids himself about that...legalistic distinctions among 'homicide,' 'justified homicide,' 'self-defense,' and 'murder' appear to me a semantic game. What difference does it make what we call it? Those who do it and those who witness its doing know that abortion is the stilling of a life."

-- Magda Denes, abortion advocate, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, "Performing Abortions," Commentary Magazine (October, 1976)

December 7, 1941: A Date which Will Live in Infamy

Roosevelt addresses a joint session of Congress.

First Sunday of Advent, 1969: The Long Lent Begins

On November 30, 1969, the first Sunday of Advent, the Novus Ordo Missae took effect, and what is now known as the Extraordinary Rite was effectively abolished.  The floodgates of mediocrity and stupidity flew open.

Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the mediocrity and stupidity were merely unmasked.  In a fascinating interview with Latin Mass magazine in 2001, Dr. Alice von Hildebrand, the wife of the 20th-century theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand, traces the historical roots of the crisis of the last 40 years.  An extended excerpt (emphasis added):

I relate in my biography of my husband, The Soul of a Lion, that a few years after his conversion to Catholicism in the 1920s, he began teaching at the University of Munich. Munich was a Catholic city. Most Catholics at the time went to Mass, but he always said that it was there that he became aware of the loss of a sense of the supernatural among Catholics. One incident especially offered him sufficient proof, and it greatly saddened him.

When passing through a door, my husband would always give precedence to those of his students who were priests. One day, one of his colleagues (a Catholic) expressed his astonishment and disapproval: “Why do you let your students step ahead of you?” “Because they are priests,” replied my husband. “But they do not have a Ph.D.” My husband was grieved. To value a Ph.D. is a natural response; to feel awe for the sublimity of the priesthood is a supernatural response. The professor’s attitude proved that his sense for the supernatural had been eroded. That was long before Vatican II. But until the Council, the beauty and the sacredness of the Tridentine liturgy masked this phenomenon.

...

 ...[My husband] believed that after Pius X’s condemnation of the heresy of Modernism, its proponents merely went underground. He would say that they then took a much more subtle and practical approach. They spread doubt simply by raising questions about the great supernatural interventions throughout salvation history, such as the Virgin Birth and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity, as well as the Resurrection, and the Holy Eucharist. They knew that once faith – the foundation – totters, the liturgy and the moral teachings of the Church would follow suit. My husband entitled one of his books The Devastated Vineyard. After Vatican II, a tornado seemed to have hit the Church.

Modernism itself was the fruit of the calamity of the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, and it took a long historical process to unfold. If you were to ask a typical Catholic in the Middle Ages to name a hero or heroine, he would answer with the name of a saint. The Renaissance began to change that. Instead of a saint, people would think of geniuses as persons to emulate, and with the oncoming of the industrial age, they would answer with the name of a great scientist. Today, they would answer with a sports figure or cinema personality. In other words, the loss of the sense of the supernatural has brought an inversion of the hierarchy of values.

Even the pagan Plato was open to a sense of the supernatural. He spoke of the weakness, frailty and cowardice often evidenced in human nature. He was asked by a critic to explain why he had such a low opinion of humanity. He replied that he was not denigrating man, only comparing him to God.

With the loss of a sense of the supernatural, there is a loss of the sense of a need for sacrifice today. The closer one comes to God, the greater should be one’s sense of sinfulness. The further one gets from God, as today, the more we hear the philosophy of the new age: “I’m OK, You’re OK.” This loss of the inclination to sacrifice has led to the obscuring of the Church’s redemptive mission. Where the Cross is downplayed, our need for redemption is given hardly a thought.

The aversion to sacrifice and redemption has assisted the secularization of the Church from within. We have been hearing for many years from priests and bishops about the need for the Church to adapt herself to the world. Great popes like St. Pius X said just the opposite: the world must adapt itself to the Church.

The interview concludes with the following summation:

The devil hates the ancient Mass. He hates it because it is the most perfect reformulation of all the teachings of the Church. It was my husband who gave me this insight about the Mass. The problem that ushered in the present crisis was not the traditional Mass. The problem was that priests who offered it had already lost the sense of the supernatural and the transcendent. They rushed through the prayers, they mumbled and didn’t enunciate them. That is a sign that they had brought to the Mass their growing secularism. The ancient Mass does not abide irreverence, and that was why so many priests were just as happy to see it go.

And so the ancient Mass went -- but only temporarily.  It is worth noting that, for all the anguish that the sudden shelving of the old rites caused, these rites have at least come down to us intact: if the Ordo Missae of 1962 was out of the reach of the faithful, it was also out of the reach of modernist tinkerers who have had a field day with the new Ordo.

Viewed in this light, the introduction of the Novus Ordo Missae and its constellation of latent follies was not the source of the crisis of the last four decades, but -- thanks to the divine Providence that works all things to our good -- its remedy.  Because God is ultimately in charge, and not Archbishop Bugnini or any other infiltrators in the Church, the Novus Ordo was always bound to be an instrument of good, for all the damage that has been wreaked on its account.  It has destroyed our illusions about our spiritual health.  It has torn the veneer of holiness off the rot and the maggots and put them in our collective face.
  
A bitter cure, to be sure, but that is often the nature of a cure.  A boil, after all, has to be lanced and drained.  The process is painful and disgusting, but necessary.

And there is healing at the end of it.