My friend and I stood at the bus stop, disappointed and with nothing to do. We could not see the film of our choice at the Scala Cinema, Heaton Moor because it was classified as an ‘A’ film and we were only ten years old. Suddenly another boy from our class at St Bede’s College stopped his bicycle to speak to us. As we had nothing else to do we accepted his invitation to come and meet the ‘group’, as he called it, to which he belonged. It was a sort of youth club for boys of our age run by twenty-one-year-old Leon Morris. He later told me he had a vision of Our Lady of Fatima. It was after this that he founded ‘the group’ otherwise known as the YRC or Young Rosary Crusaders. We joined, not least because we played games like football, table tennis and snooker although we always said the rosary first. We even went on holiday together to Pott Shrigley, a small village in Cheshire where we camped in the grounds of the Salesian seminary. After four or five years the ‘group’ broke up when he left us to become a priest in the Salford Diocese. However, his influence burnt into me a lasting interest in Our Lady of Fatima and I used to long for 1960 when the famous Fatima Secret would be revealed.
Corruption and Apostasy in High Places
Pope John XXIII did open the letter but for some reason made little of it, like the Popes who followed him. Perhaps in their innocence they simply could not take in the appalling calamities that would affect the Church, not from the outside but also from within. I am not an expert in the Fatima secrets but it is believed by some that they predicted terrible sins, corruption and apostasy in high places within the Church which were utterly inconceivable, not just to a callow youth like me, but to everyone in the Church. Now for every informed Catholic, horrors are hitting the headlines of the religious as well as the secular press. Our Lady did not say these horrors were inevitable, but only if nothing was done to turn back to her son in prayer, and the rosary was cited as the best readily available prayer for all. They can only be prevented if the call ‘back to prayer’ is taken seriously. It used to be said that the day a Bishop was consecrated was the day when people stopped telling him the truth. How much truer can that be said of the Bishop of Rome, who can so easily live out his days in a bubble where he only knows what his advisers think he would like to know, or should know, or what they want him to know, so that their own agendas may be implemented. But those days are now over in a world where the mass media sees everything and proclaims it from the rooftops.
Synodality and the LGBT Agendas
When I wrote about a powerful gay lobby in high places in the Church including Bishops, Archbishops and even Cardinals who have an agenda similar to that of the secular LGBT community, it caused quite a stir amongst my readers: Particularly when it was clear that these extremists amongst other things wanted to legitimise everything from gross sexual acts to gay marriages for all especially for the clergy. Many simply did not believe me or, as one reader put it she took all I said with a pinch of salt until she found that the Holy Father himself had condemned what I had condemned. In these extracts from a published book-length interview, to which my reader was probably referring, Pope Francis, addressed the challenge of homosexuality in the clergy.
“The issue of homosexuality is a very serious issue that must be adequately discerned from the beginning with the candidates.”
Francis said he was told by one religious superior that the issue was not “that serious, it’s just an expression of an affection.”
“That’s a mistake,” Francis warned.
“It’s not just an expression of an affection. In consecrated and priestly life, there’s no room for that kind of affection. Therefore, the Church recommends that people with that kind of ingrained tendency should not be accepted into the ministry or consecrated life. The ministry or the consecrated life is not his place.”
[We] “have to urge homosexual priests, and men and women religious to live celibacy with integrity, and above all, that they be impeccably responsible, trying to never scandalize either their communities or the faithful holy people of God by living a double life. It’s better for them to leave the ministry or the consecrated life rather than to live a double life.”
The Misuse of Synodality
The Holy Father’s outspoken remarks were made in such a forthright way that thee leaders of the extreme left wing who were hoping to introduce this LGBT agenda into Church teaching were shattered. Inevitably they were forced to try and downplay or reinterpret what the Holy Father had said. The use of synods to promote collegiality that was never implemented after the Council could indeed be a step forward. However, the most vociferous promoters of what has come to be called ‘synodality’ have been the extreme liberals who see it, not as a means of facilitating the action of the Holy Spirit, but of facilitating their own action in promoting their LGBT agendas. They tried and failed to do this in the Synod for Youth in the autumn 2018 but be sure of this, they have not been defeated, but merely lost the first battle in the war they are bent on winning. Any attempt to implement ‘collegiality’ will only succeed if those who are invited to participate in it are men and women of such deep prayer that the love of God, the Holy Spirit, can enter into them, filling them with the only wisdom that can ‘make all things new’. This wisdom can never be to change the teaching of the Church as the promoters of the LGBT community intend, but to re-emphasise what has been forgotten, or to restate the traditional teaching in a such a way that is has more meaning for contemporary Catholics.
The Sin Against the Holy Spirit
The last emphasis you find on the lips of extreme left wing liberals is ‘prayer’, ‘spirituality’, and ‘Jesus Christ,’ although they do speak of, and emphasise the action of the Holy Spirit. However, it is all smoke and mirrors as they only speak of the Holy Spirit working through synods to deceive the faithful into believing their agendas are not theirs, but that of the Holy Spirit. This is indeed the sin against the Holy Spirit to use him in this way for which the scripture says there is no forgiveness, at least unless they immediately see the errors of their ways, repent, seek reconciliation and sin no more against his Holy Wisdom. Would they have us believe that the Holy Spirit who inspired the scriptures, the teaching of the early church and our holy tradition has suddenly had second thoughts, changed his mind, and now wants to make not only legitimate, but good and holy, what his inspired words described in both the New and the Old Testament as abominations?
This present and prevailing agenda of the extreme left that can be found in the highest places in the Church today are not the only heretical teachings and practices that they profess and try to foster, but they are the most clearly visible. If we are not very careful and if we do not act now then the Church will be split, at least in two. What must we do and how must we act? The continual message, not just of Our Lady of Fatima, but of Our Lady whenever and wherever she has appeared in recent times, is always the same – the only prayer can save the calamities that will otherwise devastate the Church. Sadly, the word ‘prayer’ has become a cliché endlessly trotted out by the ‘great and the good’ in such a way that very few take much notice, on the simple principle that, “If it hasn’t changed you how can it be expected to change us?” But this word must be redeemed.
One Thing to Change the World
An ancient Chinese sage was once asked if he could do but one thing to change the world what would it be? He answered, “I would give back to words their original meaning”. We must give back to the word ‘prayer’ its original meaning, to enable us to understand the urgent message of Fatima that has been repeated many times over, each time with ever growing urgency. Whatever form of prayer you use and whenever you use it, deep down beneath what is said is the act of selflessness, the act of selfless giving. The more we pray, the longer we pray, the more this selflessness is practised until it becomes a habit of selflessness and self-sacrifice. The very distractions and even the temptations with which we battle enable us to keep saying ‘Yes’ to God and ‘No’ to self. It is this very selflessness that opens us up to enable us to receive that love of God that Christ released, as he promised on the first Pentecost day. Sadly, that is why prayer is dismissed as pious fantasy by many of the extreme liberals, because their way is not predominantly one of selflessness, self-denial and sacrifice, but of pleasure-seeking and self-indulgence for which they are prepared to change the Church. Everything I have written and everything that I will write will be about prayer, so that the message of Our Lady will be better understood and practised.
