The great apostasy predicted in Scripture as harbinger of end times

"Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II all read the Secret in private, as has John Paul II's right hand man, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The suppression of the Third Secret has naturally led to speculation among Catholics that its contents must be nothing short of explosive. Yet the official Vatican line is that the Secret contains nothing that has not already been revealed in Scripture. If that is so, then why is it being suppressed? In November 1984 Ratzinger gave a tantalizing hint of what the Third Secret contains when he admitted that it refers to"dangers which threaten the Faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world.” "

Prophecies and Warnings of Fatima

“Fatima is a village in the center of Portugal about 70 miles north of Lisbon. It was there in 1915 that three humble peasant children began having a series of apparitions of angels and, later, the"Virgin Mary.”The children were: Lucia Santos and her two cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto...

Lcia Santos (middle) with her cousins
Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 1917. Lucia would keep the Third Secret until 1941, when she received an inner"locution"from the Virgin giving her leave to publish all but the last of its three parts. As for the final part, which has come to be known as the Third Secret Sister Lucy's nearly fatal bout of pleurisy in 1943 moved the Bishop of Fatima to ask her to write it down and seal it up in an envelope, so that it might be read if she died. After much agonizing and another visitation by the Lady, she complied with the Bishop's request in January 1944, and forwarded the envelope to him with the instructions that it was to be opened by the Pope and read to the world in 1960," because the Virgin wishes it so.”

But the Vatican refused to disclose the Third Secret in 1960 and continues to suppress it to this day. All the popes since John XXIII, as well as a few Curia cardinals, have read the contents of Lucy's envelope, as John Paul II is reported to have done shortly after his inauguration in October 1978.

While conversing with a small group of pilgrims in the cathedral square of Fulda, West Germany, in November 1980, the Holy Father was asked to explain why the Third Secret had not been published in 1960, as the Lady of Fatima had directed...

A question was then posed concerning the fate of the Church in Fatima's apocalyptic scenario.

John Paul: "We have to be prepared to suffer, before long, great trials which will require of us the disposition to sacrifice even our life for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is still possible to diminish this trial, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only in this manner can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time.”

Evidently, from John Paul's remarks at Fulda quoted above, the Third Secret of Fatima addresses this unprecedented crisis of faith and in fact predicts its onset in the latter decades of this century. This would explain the Lady's desire to have the message revealed in 1960, when a veritable epidemic of universal apostasy began to sweep across the globe. Another strong inference here is that the Church"renewal" which will resolve this great crisis may involve the martyrdom of one or more popes.

A tangible"marker"Was left behind by Jacinta Marto, the younger seeress of Fatima. Shortly after the children received Our Lady's Secret in July 1917, Jacinta had two visions which she recounted to Lucia, who recorded them in her memoirs with the remark that they comprise"part of the [third] secret.”Both visions concern the Holy Pope or Angelic Pastor:

"I don't know how it was, but I saw the Holy Pope in a very large house. He was kneeling by a table with his face in his hands and he was crying. Outside the house were many people. Some of them were throwing stones at him, others were cursing him and using bad language.”...

The mysterious Third Secret of Fatima remains under lock and key in a Vatican archive, while Vatican bureaucrats attempt to silence a Canadian priest leading a movement for its disclosure. On February 8, 1960 Catholics around the world were stunned when the Vatican announced in an unsigned press release that the famous Third Secret would not be disclosed that year, as expected, and would probably remain a secret forever. Thus began a controversy in the Catholic Church which shows no signs of dying out, more than 35 years later.

What is the Third Secret, and why is a Canadian priest, Father Nicholas Gruner, under fire by the Vatican bureaucracy for probing into it?

Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II all read the Secret in private, as has John Paul II's right hand man, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The suppression of the Third Secret has naturally led to speculation among Catholics that its contents must be nothing short of explosive. Yet the official Vatican line is that the Secret contains nothing that has not already been revealed in Scripture. If that is so, then why is it being suppressed? In November 1984 Ratzinger gave a tantalizing hint of what the Third Secret contains when he admitted that it refers to"dangers which threaten the Faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world.”

Father Nicholas Gruner has widely publicized the work of several Fatima experts who believe they have deduced what the Third Secret contains: a warning that the Catholic Church will undergo a catastrophic loss of faith and discipline ... the great apostasy predicted in Scripture as a harbinger of the end times.”

Morgana's Observatory http://www.dreamscape.com/

John Paul II Will the Son of man find faith in Europe?

Apostolic Exhortation of John Paul II on the Church in Europe

On June 28, 2003, following the second Synod of the Bishops of Europe, Pope John Paul II wrote the Apostolic Exhortation"Ecclesia in Europa" (the Church in Europe). His comments also apply to countries like Canada and the United States, where many people live"As if God did not exist.” Here are excerpts from this document:

A time of bewilderment

In proclaiming to Europe the Gospel of hope, I will take as a guide the Book of Revelation, a"prophetic revelation"Which discloses to the community of believers the deep and hidden meaning of what is taking place (cf. Rev 1:1) (...) The Book of Revelation contains a word of encouragement addressed to believers: beyond all appearances, and even if its effects are not yet seen, the victory of Christ has already taken place and is final. This in turn causes us to approach human situations and events with an attitude of fundamental trust, born of faith in the Risen One, present and at work in history.

The age we are living in, with its own particular challenges, can seem to be a time of bewilderment. Many men and women seem disoriented, uncertain, without hope, and not a few Christians share these feelings.

Among the aspects of this situation, so many of which were frequently mentioned during the Synod, I would like to mention in a particular way the loss of Europe's Christian memory and heritage, accompanied by a kind of practical agnosticism and religious indifference whereby many Europeans give the impression of living without spiritual roots and somewhat like heirs who have squandered a patrimony entrusted to them by history.

Certainly Europe is not lacking in prestigious symbols of the Christian presence, yet with the slow and steady advance of secularism, these symbols risk becoming a mere vestige of the past. Many people are no longer able to integrate the Gospel message into their daily experience; living one's faith in Jesus becomes increasingly difficult in a social and cultural setting in which that faith is constantly challenged and threatened. In many social settings it is easier to be identified as an agnostic than a believer. The impression is given that unbelief is self- explanatory, whereas belief needs a sort of social legitimization which is neither obvious nor taken for granted.

At the root of this loss of hope is an attempt to promote a vision of man apart from God and apart from Christ. This sort of thinking has led to man being considered as"The absolute centre of reality, a view which makes him occupy — falsely — the place of God, and which forgets that it is not man who creates God, but rather God who creates man. (...) European culture gives the impression of"silent apostasy"on the part of people who have all that they need and who live as if God does not exist.

John Paul II

This article was published in the August-September, 2003 issue of"Michael.”

The Changing Church
Faith Fades Where It Once Burned Strong
By FRANK BRUNI, New York Times
October 13, 2003

ROME, Oct. 12 — Like many Italians in decades and childhoods past, Giampaolo Servadio used to go to Roman Catholic Mass every week. He even served as an altar boy.

But last Sunday morning, as church bells tolled around this city of storied cathedrals, he followed a different ritual: he went running. It struck him as a more relevant use of time.

"The church seems really out of step," said Mr. Servadio, 39, mentioning issues like birth control and questioning the very utility of prayer.”I don't see how something like a confession and a few repetitions of the 'Hail Mary' are going to solve any problems.”

He wondered if he should call himself Catholic: "When you realize that for 20 years you don't do this — you don't even go to church — what kind of Catholic are you?”

A fairly typical one, at least in Italy and much of Europe, where the ties of Christianity no longer bind the way they once did — and often seem not to bind at all.

This week Pope John Paul II is to celebrate his 25th anniversary as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, which is both Europe's and Christianity's largest denomination.

It has been a quarter century of enormous changes, and few have been more significant, for his church and mainstream Protestant denominations, than the withering of the Christian faith in Europe and the shift in its center of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere.

Christianity has boomed in the developing world, competing successfully with Islam, deepening its influence and possibly finding its future there. But Europe already seems more and more like a series of tourist-trod monuments to Christianity's past. Hardly a month goes by when the pope does not publicly bemoan that fact, beseeching Europeans to rediscover the faith.

Their estrangement has deep implications, including the prospect of schisms in intercontinental churches and political frictions within and between countries.

The secularization of Europe, according to some political analysts, is one of the forces pushing it apart from the United States, where religion plays a potent role in politics and society, shaping many Americans' views of the world.

Americans are widely regarded as more comfortable with notions of good and evil, right and wrong, than Europeans, who often see such views as reckless.

In France, which is predominantly Catholic but emphatically secular, about one in 20 people attends a religious service every week, compared with about one in three in the United States.

"What's interesting isn't that there are fewer people in church," said the Rev. Jean Franois Bordarier of Lille, in northern France," but that there are any at all.”

Debates Over Gays and God

While France is an extreme case, its drift from Christian institutions and disparity with the United States hold true throughout much of Europe, where faithful attendance at Christian services, be they Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, is the province of a small minority of people.

They show up to mark crucial milestones in their and their loved ones' lives. But they pay minimal heed, between those visits, to their churches' exhortations and admonitions.

The tension between contemporary attitudes and traditional church teachings has forced an emergency meeting this week of the leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

They are expected to debate the acceptability of openly gay bishops in their church. Representatives from congregations in the developing world have threatened to break the church in two if their Western peers head in a permissive direction.

The preamble of a new, unfinished constitution for the European Union omits any mention of Christianity or even God among the cultural forces that shaped Europe, although the pope and other Christian leaders raised vehement objections.

"My own view is that there is a form of secular intolerance in Europe that is every bit as strong as religious intolerance was in the past," said John Bruton, a former Irish prime minister who was involved in the drafting of the document. He lobbied for God's inclusion.

Mr. Bruton's vantage point is Western Europe, but many Eastern European countries — with a few exceptions, like the pope's native Poland — are no more demonstrably devout. Having gone through religious outbursts after their emergence from Communism, they too seem poised to pivot in a secular direction.

Christianity's greatest hope in Europe may in fact be immigrants from the developing world, who in many cases learned the religion from European missionaries, adapted it to their own needs and tastes, then toted it back to the Continent.

In cities like Paris, Amsterdam and especially London, there are many thriving independent black churches, packed with newcomers from Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other African countries.

A recent report by Christian Research, a British group, determined that blacks and, to a lesser extent, Asians represent more than half the churchgoers in central London on a given Sunday, though they represent less than a quarter of the area's population.

By some estimates, more than 25 million people in England identify the Church of England as their denomination. Only 1.2 million actually go to one of the church's services every week.

Other Protestant denominations are in the same shape.

"In Western Europe, we are hanging on by our fingernails," wrote the Rev. David Cornick, the general secretary of the United Reformed Church in Britain, in the June-July edition of Inside Out, a religious journal.”The fact is that Europe is no longer Christian.”

Believing vs. Attending

That is something of an overstatement. Despite a recent influx of Muslim immigrants and the rise of mosques in countries like Britain, France and Germany, an overwhelming majority of Europeans who profess religious devotion consider themselves Christian. But for most, Christianity has evolved into an amorphous spiritual inclination rather than an exacting creed.

Stéphanie Vercamer, a 31-year-old florist in Lille, wears a gold cross around her neck and said it saved her from injury in a car crash several years ago.”There is a God," Ms. Vercamer said. "I wouldn't be here today if there wasn't.”

But she said that she almost never sets foot in a church and that while she wanted to arrange a Roman Catholic baptism for her daughter, who was born out wedlock, she had not been able to yet. The little girl is 3 years old.

At the Saint Sacrement church in Lille, attendance at Mass often drops below 50 but rose above 125 on a recent weekend. The Rev. émile Reyns, a priest there, gladly reported that he had recently done prenuptial counseling for six couples: proof, he said, that young adults still wanted Catholic weddings.

But he sadly conceded that all the couples had been living together for a while.

"They say it without blushing," said Father Reyns, 66, who added that he did not expect to see the couples much once they moved on to their honeymoons. At Saint Sacrement, like many other congregations, the regulars tend to be much older.

"In terms of religion, Europe is very complicated," said the Rev. Andrew M. Greeley, the author of"Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium," which was published this year.

Sizable majorities of people in most European countries believe in God, and sizable majorities believe as well that some kind of religious service is important when a person dies, according to the European Values Study, a sweeping survey conducted in 1999 and 2000 and published this summer.

But they are less familiar with, or tethered to, the specific rituals and roots of Christian worship.”If you ask the average European the basic credo or statements of the Christian church, most of them don't know," said Grace Davie, a sociologist at the University of Exeter and the author of several books about religious trends in Britain and Europe.

That assessment is supported by the caretakers of the faith themselves.

Last month Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the archbishop of Milan, said at a news conference," The parishes tell me that there are children who don't know how to make the sign of the cross.”

"At the elementary schools, they don't know who Jesus is," added the cardinal, who is widely considered to be a strong candidate for the papacy.

According to the European Values Study, only about 21 percent of all Europeans said religion was"very important"to them. Although the methodology was not precisely comparable, a Gallup Poll this year showed that 58 percent of Americans defined religion that way.

Even in Italy, where 33 percent of respondents described religion as"very important," the percentage of Italians who go to church every week is as low as 15 and no higher than 33, according to various polls.

Most Italians seem not to listen to the Vatican, even though about 85 percent identify themselves as Roman Catholic and the pope resides smack in the middle of their country.

John Paul has exhorted them to be fruitful and multiply, forbidding artificial birth control. But Italians have had one of the world's lowest fertility rates for a quarter century now.

In a 1981 referendum, Italians defied an aggressive campaign by John Paul and other Roman Catholic leaders and voted by a margin of two to one in favor of legal abortion. Abortion is now readily available and commonplace in most European countries, as it is in the United States.

Europeans are moving well ahead of Americans — and more aggressively challenging traditional Christian teachings — by providing civil recognition for same-sex couples. Despite stern opposition from the Vatican, the French, Belgian, Dutch and German governments have granted same-sex couples legal entitlements and protections, and Britain is considering it, too.

But the diminished sway of Christianity is evident in more than low fertility rates and bold new legislation.

Public schools throughout Western Europe have removed crosses from walls. Many congregations have been forced to close or combine operations, to make do with part-time ministers or to import pastors from the developing world.

On this continent, ministry has lost much of its luster.

"In Western Europe," said Archbishop Giuseppe Pittau, the secretary of the Vatican congregation in charge of seminaries," it's been almost a tragedy. A diocese that once had 10 priests ordained every year might have two, or one, or less.”

The desperation is evident. In September, when a group of Catholics in a rural town near Rome heard that the local monastery would be closed and the monk would be sent away, they kept him there for several days by bricking up and barricading the entrances.

Urban Stresses, Wider Choices

There are many suggested reasons for Europe's drift, which happened gradually, over decades, as the continent grew wealthier and better educated.

One is a modern European cynicism about big institutions, grand ideologies and unfettered allegiances, manifest not only in partly empty churches but also in weakened support for labor unions and political parties.

"it's an overarching thing, a diminishing trust," said Rudiger Noll, director of the Brussels-based Church and Society Commission of the Conference of European Churches, an interdenominational group.

The process of urbanization moved Europeans from quiet places where the church was at the center of life to chaotic bazaars where it got lost in the din.

The Rev. Enzo Bianchi, a Catholic theologian in Italy, said that in today's heterogeneous and often hedonistic European capitals," there are more and more morals and ethics on the market.”

"There's Buddhism, Hinduism, New Age spiritualism, consumerism," Father Bianchi said. "With all these competitors, it's harder for the church to sell.”

The New York Times
October 13, 2003

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