By Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi
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| Sister Maria Faustina |
Introduction
Some days ago, I went to submit some documents in an office at Ikoyi, Lagos. While on my way back to Victoria Island, I passed through Femi Okunu Road, and when I got to number 15 I decided to stop and greet my brother Mr. Patrick Oke, as it had been a long time we spoke last. When I got to Mr. Oke’s house, however, his security guard said he was at a meeting, so I messaged the guard as well as sent a private text message to him, and then departed. About five hours later, when I had already gotten home, in the evening, my phone rang—it was Mr. Oke. Picking the call, however, what I got was a stern rebuke: “Which Jonathan?”—followed by blasting—and my big laughter as he was doing so!
Of course I was
laughing because the person blasting is a Christian brother and I knew he wasn’t
serious about all the things he said against me. We just had a disagreement on
some issues bothering on private revelations, John Paul II, SSPX, and so on.
Some years ago I had told Mr. Oke about the need for all traditional Catholics
in Nigeria to put aside their personal interests and work together with the
SSPX, and now, when I later met him again at Ikoyi a few days ago, Mr. Oke said
to me, “Yes, you’re right...all of us should work together”. I
was happy to hear that.
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| Mr. Patrick Oke (second left) with his friends |
Mr. Patrick Oke, a
journalist—former TV broadcaster, is a typical man of the Church and indeed, a
real sign of contradiction to his contemporaries. He is a Catholic who no doubt
manifests a great love for Our Lady, hence he is the founder of ‘Marian
Awareness and Jesus to Mankind Apostolate’—a prayer group. What attracted me to
Mr. Oke, however, wasn’t the prayer group but his massive campaigns against
nudism among women in the Catholic Church. On this, he is simply a dogged
fighter, and I must confess that—at least judging from appearance—his own
beautiful but totally womanly and very simpleminded wife, mother of over ten
children, remains a model that should be emulated by today’s carefree, lax and
dissolute Nigerian Catholic women, I mean the “city women”. Mr. Oke, though
wealthy, associates mostly with the poor and mobilises them always to fight
against the errors of the New-church. For years, in fact from the time of John
Paul II till date, he has been persecuted—immensely—by the clergy and
diabolically abused and insulted by the “lay faithful” just for being “too
Catholic”, but he has remained and ever remains indefatigable working
assiduously in the Lord’s vineyard. It is really fearful that despite his
massive efforts—despite his appeals to the clergy to abandon Novus Ordo and
embrace the traditional Latin Mass, despite his appeals to “city women” to
dress modestly always and especially while in the Church, etc.—both the clergy
and the “lay faithful” have, till date, not only remained deaf but
simply multiplied their sins. Today at Church of the Assumption in Falomo, Our
Lady Mother of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Victoria Island as well as
Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos Island—among other Churches where Mr. Oke sounded
his warnings for years—very many women, more than ever—go to the Churches
almost naked, and they do that because they are encouraged by the priests by
words and deed. What has particularly marvelled me is how people who call
themselves Catholic priests and even bishops see absolutely nothing wrong in
giving what they believe to be the Body of Christ—Holy Communion—to
practically everybody, no matter whatever one may wear! Do they
still have consciences—and I mean not just as Catholics but as human beings?
When I met Mr. Oke at
Falomo, Ikoyi some days ago, looking grief-stricken, he said to me: “All
the priests have betrayed the Church...only a few of the lay faithful
remain”.
Here, my intention is
to discuss those issues that seem to be dividing us—issues bothering on the
Mass, SSPX, Private Revelations, and John Paul II.
Mr. Patrick Oke
started promoting the Latin Mass in Lagos State more than anyone else
I associated with Mr.
Oke for some years and on different occasions tried to discuss some of the
problems I found in his ‘Marian Awareness and Jesus to Mankind’ with him
privately— issues bothering on private revelations, John Paul II, SSPX—but he
hardly listens to anybody but does things just the way he wants, so I quietly
withdrew when I got tired of him—hence our current “fight”! But I’m happy for
his current positive comments about “working together”—particularly with the
SSPX. It is a well known fact that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his priests
and bishops worldwide—falsely excommunicated by John Paul II but recalled by
Pope Benedict XVI—remain the greatest opponents of Vatican II modernists and
the greatest promoters of the traditional Latin Mass, so—except he or she has a
bad motive—no one who really sincerely wishes to promote the Latin Mass can be
against them, can be against the SSPX, period.
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| His Grace, Alfred Adewale Martins, Archbishop of Lagos |
Mr. Patrick Oke
started promoting the traditional Latin Mass in Lagos State more than anyone
else I’ve ever known. And as far as I know, too, Mr. Oke himself initially
associated with SSPX priests. I don’t really know what later happened between
them. For years, Mr. Oke’s efforts to promote the Latin Mass were immensely
frustrated by Cardinal Okogie who did not allow priests to celebrate the Latin
Mass anywhere in the Archdiocese of Lagos. Now, however, Archbishop Alfred
Adewale Martins—the Cardinal’s successor—has finally considered those efforts
by giving “permission” to some priests to celebrate the Latin Mass for
traditional Catholics in his Lagos Archdiocese. The “permission” was given
about two years ago, and we all rejoiced over that.
However, with regards
to that “permission”, which we consider good but simply not enough,
our verdict remains that all Catholics are Traditional Catholics and
their Mass is simply the Traditional Latin Mass.
Catholics who don’t see themselves as traditional Catholics—who believe that
Novus Ordo is the only Catholic Mass—are simply those enemies of the Church who
are betraying the Faith and we must unite to denounce them. To the Archbishop
of Lagos, we are saying a very big THANK YOU but also maintaining that Novus
Ordo Mass—very destructive of the Catholic Faith—should be abandoned
altogether. In other words it isn’t just enough for Archbishop Alfred Adewale
Martins to give “permission” to some priests (to celebrate the Mass that he
himself as the chief shepherd doesn’t celebrate!), the bishop himself should
also abandon Novus Ordo Mass, learn how to celebrate the Traditional Latin
Mass—which remains the only canonised Catholic Mass—and start
celebrating it together with his priests for the entire Catholics in his Lagos
Archdiocese. The argument that the Mass is now being celebrated in the
vernacular languages instead of Latin so that everyone may understand what is
being said is a romantic nonsense—it shows only lack
of love and interest for the things of the Church, the things of God.
During my one-year
stay in Niger State in northern Nigeria I simply marvelled to see 10-12 years
old Hausa-Fulani Muslim children very fluent in reading of Arabic texts. I had
taught English language in a secondary school over there and really marvelled
at how even the most senior boys and girls in the school could neither speak
nor write anything in English. One day, however, I met a
junior boy in class 2 reading the Quran—written purely in Arabic—silently. So I
halted, approached him and gave him a sign to read it loudly so that I might
hear him, and when he did, in fact, not even late Father Joseph Kenny O.P., my
personal mentor in Latin and Greek who was originally a professor of Arabic and
Islamic Studies, was as fluent as him! Hausa-Fulani children and youths despise
English language—the lingua franca of their country Nigeria—but manifest great
love and eagerness to learn the Arabic language simply because it is the
language of their religion. Now what equally stops Catholic men and women—let
alone children and youths!—from learning Latin which remains the only language
of the Church if not religious indifferentism as well as lack of interest in
the things of the Church, the things of God?
How Latin became a
“dead language”
Today in our world
Latin language is considered (by some jerks of course) to be an outdated and
“dead language” even while Arabic language, its contemporary stretching back to
some 16 centuries to unrecorded beginnings in the Arabian Peninsula, has
remained ever relevant. The rapid spread of the Islamic faith—and the Catholic
Faith is about six hundred years older than Islam!—brought the original
literary tradition of the Arabian Peninsula into contact with many other
cultural traditions—Byzantine, Persian, Indian, Amazigh (Berber), and Andalusian,
to name just a few—transforming and being transformed by all of them.
So if the two
languages are contemporaries, or almost so, why is Latin today considered to be
a “dead language” even while the Arabic remains ever relevant?
Now when we briefly
turn to history to find out the forces behind this revolution we
shall see the same anti-Catholic forces at work. Latin literature was primarily
produced during the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, when Latin was a
spoken language. For centuries, Latin wasn’t just the language of the Church
but simply the most influential language in the world—as Rome was the super
power by this time. When Rome fell, Latin remained the language of the Church
and later of the universities—the first university in the world, the principal
centre for studies in civil and canon law, was founded in the Italian
city of Bologna late in the 11th century AD, Università
Degli Studi Di Bologna, then came another in Paris, in northern
Europe, followed by Oxford, Cambridge and others—as well as the literary
language of the Western medieval world until it was superseded by the Romance
languages it had generated and by other modern languages. Even then, Latin
still remained the language of the Church and of the universities. After the Renaissance—the
spirit of which was expressed earliest by the anti-Catholic intellectual
movement called humanism, a humanism initiated by
secular men of letters rather than by the scholar-clerics who had dominated
medieval intellectual life and had developed the Scholastic philosophy—the
writing of Latin was increasingly confined to the narrow limits of certain
ecclesiastical and academic publications, but it remained ever relevant, still.
However, the massive attack finally came after the Reformation, when different
governments and nations that followed Martin Luther were not only renouncing
their Catholic Faith but also anything viewed to be connected
to that Faith. Since Latin was the language of the Church, it became a
suspect. The first modern university was that of Halle,
founded by Lutherans in 1694. This school was one
of the first to renounce religious orthodoxy of any kind in favour of
“rational” and “objective” intellectual inquiry, and it was the first where
teachers lectured in German (i.e., a vernacular language)
rather than in Latin. Halle's innovations were adopted by the University of Göttingen (founded in 1737) a generation
later and subsequently by most German and many American universities.
Today Vatican II
modernists have renewed the attack on Latin initiated by the Lutherans in the
seventeenth century, by doing away with the traditional Latin Mass, the
Tridentine Mass, and introducing Novus Ordo Mass in which Latin—the only
official language of the Church—is of less relevance than the vernacular
languages.
Some of these novelties are often imposed on the faithful, against their
wish
Some days ago I met
one of the old choir members at Holy Cross Cathedral and asked him: “Sir, you choir members know better. During
the time of Cardinal Okogie the readings on Good Friday used to be read in
Latin, but now everything is being read in English. Why?” And he answered: “Well, I share your feelings as well...I
wish a forum is organised where issues of this nature can be discussed. But
they don’t allow all that...they impose all these novelties on us”. Another
day I met another choir member, an old man as well, and asked the same question
and he answered, sharply: “It was
Monsignor Paschal Nwaezeapu who changed all that...Father Tekko has tried to
reverse that but hasn’t succeeded...too sad!” Monsignor Paschal Nwaezeapu
is a charismatic-minded priest who messed up the cathedral while he was the
administrator there. He promoted the charismatic movement—which Mr. Oke also
fought against for years—as well as introduced many novelties in the Novus Ordo
Mass there.
Mr. Oke’s attitude
towards some private revelations scandalised some of his Apostolate members
Most Catholics who
currently attend SSPX Masses in Lagos State were initially working with Mr.
Patrick Oke. In fact, they were mobilised by him some years ago to fight
against the errors and propagators of errors in the Nigerian New-church. They
were members of the ‘Marian Awareness and Jesus to Mankind Apostolate’ who
later felt scandalised by some things being promoted by the Apostolate—such as
teaching that John Paul II was a great pope, the Divine Mercy Devotion of
Sister Maria Faustina, private revelations of Sister Maria Divine Mercy, and so
on. SSPX opposes all these and some of the members, having taken time to study
them and found them to be false, agreed with the SSPX—hence the disagreement,
and finally separation.
However, with regards
to private revelations, I am aware that Mr. Patrick Oke of many years ago
wasn’t someone ever ready to embrace any nonsense appearing in the name of
“private revelation”, so I still can’t understand what’s really going on now—I
mean his current attitude towards them.
Many Private
Revelations are false
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| Mrs Veronica Ifeanyi (Mum) in the 1980s |
Many—but certainly not all—private revelations are false. I
started studying private revelations while I was a teenager. Then, it was my
mother—a teacher and vigilant Catholic simply in love with private revelations
of Our Lady and Our Lord—who started inculcating that habit in me. Mum also got
to know about Father Gruner’s apostolate and his interpretations of the Fatima
message early in life and had no doubt that Father Gruner was right. She used
to narrate the story of Fatima to us and was always very happy to see me
manifesting a profound interest in that. One day, however, a friend gave me a
book by one Emmanuel Eni entitled ‘Delivered from the Power of
Darkness’, which I simply digested. In the book, the author claims to
have had visions of Christ and to have received several revelations from
Christ. Wow! After reading the wonderful stories I quickly ran to my mum
and showed her the “great book”. I had expected her to like the book and to
praise me—as she used to do—but, to my surprise, she took the book from me,
scanned through it and kept quiet for some time. Then she spoke, calmly: “Don’t
read this one. It is false”. I was unhappy and displeased for this
remark. But she loves issues of this nature and often tells us stories
similar to what I read in this book, so why telling me not to read it? I
wondered unhappily. Nevertheless, because it was mum who said so—mum who knew
about private revelations more than any human being on this planet!—I accepted
her verdict, and put the book aside.
Saint Gregory VII in hell?
When I grew
older—particularly when I turned twenty—I simply advanced, reading stories of
the saints and other marvellous religious books. But by this time I didn’t know
much about the difference between Catholic and Protestant books. One day, I got
from a friend a book by Prof. Nathan Uzoma entitled “Occult
Grand Master Now In Christ”. The story in this book was just similar to the one I had read in Delivered From the Power of Darkness some years back, to the extent that at a point I got confused thinking it was from the same author! The
friend who gave me the book praised it immensely but I was cautious as I could remember my mother’s verdict on Delivered From the Power of Darkness some years back. Now in this new book, the author
claims to have gone to hell and to have seen there—among other innumerable
“evil men and women”—Hildebrand, “a great occult man who reigned here on earth
as Pope Gregory VII”. Put simply, the book immensely disturbed my Catholic
Faith, but again I remembered my mother’s verdict on Delivered From the Power of Darkness—in
fact, that first book which mum condemned doesn’t even condemn Catholicism so
openly as this new book does even blatantly. The new book, which
contains marvellous stories of heaven and hell, was so appealing to me that I
could hardly afford to dismiss it, so I tried imagining that the pope in
question might have been a very bad pope. This led me to visit the library and
began to study the biography of the pope. To my surprise, I learnt from my
studies that Pope Gregory VII (born Hildebrand) is in fact a Catholic Saint!
Knowing the man Hildebrand
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| Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) |
Hildebrand, one of
the greatest popes of the medieval Church, who lived exemplary life and lent
his name to the 11th-century movement now known as the Gregorian Reform or Investiture Controversy, was the first
pope to depose a crowned ruler, the faithless Emperor Henry IV (1056–1105/06).
His staunch advocacy of clerical celibacy and repudiation of simony reshaped
the Church and helped establish the ideals of the reformers as the standard for
the Church. In fact, Hildebrand’s exemplary life was so widely known that after
the death of his predecessor, Pope Alexander II, a tumultuous crowd of Roman
citizens and clergy themselves raised Hildebrand to the papacy during the
funeral solemnities for Pope Alexander II on April 22, 1073. He was enthroned
immediately in the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli even though he was not
ordained a priest until June 29, the feast day of the apostles Peter and Paul,
the patron saints of the Apostolic See and the city of Rome. Hildebrand's
elevation by the combination of citizens and clergy was a hostile reaction to the
reordering of the papal election ordo at the 1059 Lateran
Council, which had given the cardinal-bishops the leading voice in papal
elections. The Roman people and clergy had been disenfranchised by the ordo,
which thus ended the domination of the papacy by various Roman factions.
Hildebrand's election, however, followed the ancient rules that had been
prominently upheld in the canonical collection of Deusdedit, cardinal-priest of
San Pietro in Vincoli. Hildebrand, as Pope Gregory VII, interpreted his election
as a special call by God to continue unhesitatingly the fight for what he
described as iustitia (“justice”), meaning the restoration of
the Church to what Gregory and other faithful Catholics saw as its proper place
in the world order. Indeed, they intended to revive the Church's ancient
splendour and unquestioned leadership as instituted by Christ when he founded
the Church on the rock that was St. Peter (Matthew 16:18). Gregory was
convinced that the pope was the living successor of St. Peter and representative
of Christ. Because of this link, the pope, and he alone, would always remain a
true Christian, never deviating from the faith and always cognizant of the will
of God. Therefore, all Christians owed him absolute and unquestioned obedience.
Disobedience was regarded as heresy, and obedience to God was simply obedience
to the papacy.
Gregory VII was the
first pope to try to contact every ruler of his time, asserting the
overlordship of the apostle Peter—that is, of the papacy—in several regions of
Europe. The most successful example of the use of feudal arrangements by the
papacy was the alliance with the Norman leaders of southern Italy, concluded
with Richard of Capua in 1073 and Robert Guiscard in 1059. Their obligations
included fealty to the pope and his legitimate successors as well as military
and financial aid. In return, the pope became their overlord and invested them
with the imperial and Byzantine-Muslim territories that they had conquered or
would conquer. In Spain, Croatia-Dalmatia, Denmark, Hungary, the kingdom of
Kiev, Brittany, Poland, and Bohemia, as well as in England, Gregory also tried
to assert overlordship, but with little success.
The pope’s deposition
of King Henry IV happened thus: Gregory VII
addressed himself to amending the secularised condition of the Church. The
feudal standing of the higher clergy, the claims of sovereigns upon
temporalities, and the consequent temptation to simony were, he held, the cause
of all the evils present in Europe. While he tried to enforce all the details
of discipline, it was against investiture that his main efforts were directed.
In 1074 he prohibited this practice, under pain of excommunication, and in 1075
he actually issued that sentence against several bishops and councillors of the
empire. Emperor Henry IV, disregarding these “menaces”, was summoned to Rome to
answer for his conduct. Henry’s sole reply was defiance, and, on January 24,
1076, at the imperial assembly of Worms, Henry and the vast majority of the
German bishops replied in even harsher terms to Gregory's letter and oral
message. The bishops renounced their obedience to “Frater Hildebrand,” and the
king called on Gregory to abdicate and on the Romans to elect a new pope.
Northern Italian bishops immediately joined the action and renounced their
support for Gregory. The letters reached Gregory during the customary Lenten
synod (February 14–20, 1076), and the outraged pope reacted immediately, by
simply using a prayer to St. Peter to depose and excommunicate Henry. In the same
prayer, Gregory also absolved all of Henry's subjects of their oath of fealty
to the king.
In Germany Gregory's
action strengthened princely as well as episcopal opposition to Henry in a
civil war that raged intermittently throughout his reign. In order to save his
crown, Henry IV submitted to the pope at the castle of Canossa on January 28, 1077. Countess Matilda of Tuscany and Abbot Hugh
of Cluny, Henry's godfather, had interceded for him. Gregory acted as a pastor
of souls when he reconciled the king with the Church. The encounter at Canossa
had interrupted Gregory's journey to Augsburg (now in Germany), where he was to
meet German princes who had planned to elect a new ruler in opposition to Henry
IV. Despite Gregory's absolution of Henry and return to Rome, the princes
proceeded with their plan. Their nominee, Rudolf
of Rheinfelden, was elected (anti-king) on March 15, 1077.
The quarrel between
Henry and Gregory intensified after the pope formally prohibited lay investiture at the council of November 1078. Investiture
was the customary ceremony in which the emperor or king bestowed upon the
bishops the ring and staff, the symbols of their office as well as of royal
authority in and protection of the Church. Nevertheless, Gregory at first tried
to arbitrate between Henry and Rudolf, but he excommunicated Henry for a second
time at the Lenten synod of 1080 and formally recognized Rudolf as king.
However, after the absolution of Canossa, Henry had reasserted himself. The new
excommunication—for him—had little effect, and the king was victorious in the
civil war. In June 1080 Henry resumed hostilities with the pope, again
declaring Gregory VII deposed (by the synod of Brixen) and appointed Archbishop
Wibert of Ravenna as “pope”. After a siege of three years, Henry marched on
Rome, supported by German and, especially, Italian troops, and took possession
of the Eternal City in March 1084, when the Romans, including many cardinals
and other clergy, opened the gates to Henry and his army. They had deserted the
papal cause in response to Gregory's “inflexibility”. Wibert was enthroned as
antipope Clement III, and Henry IV was crowned
“emperor”. However, just as Gregory VII was on the point of falling into his
hands, Robert Guiscard, the Norman Duke of Apulia, entered the city, set
Gregory free, and compelled Henry to return to Germany. But the wretched
condition to which Rome was reduced obliged Gregory to withdraw ultimately to
Salerno, where he died on May 25, 1085. According to tradition, his last words
were a paraphrase of a passage from Psalm 44, “I have loved
righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.”
With his
revolutionary act, Gregory VII—who as early as December 1073 had called King
Philip I of France (reigned 1059/60–1108) the worst of all princely tyrants
oppressing the Church because the king refused to invest a canonically elected
bishop with the secular properties and rights of the bishopric—translated his
personal religious and mystical convictions regarding the role of the papacy
into direct action in the world at large. The effect of his excommunication of
Henry IV was tremendous. Never before had a pope deposed a king, but Gregory,
according to a later letter, believed that he had historical precedents on his
side. The deposition of Henry IV was the most hotly debated action taken by
Gregory VII, who pursued to its logical conclusion his conviction that papal
primacy pertained not only to the spiritual sphere but to the secular sphere as
well.
Pope Gregory VII was
canonised a Saint by Pope Paul V in 1606. (I felt his powerful heavenly blessing
upon me to see that his feast day is May 25, just the time I was amazingly
inspired to write about him!).
Thus, mum was right!
Nathan Uzoma is a wicked Protestant heretic and false visionary!
Now what I learnt
from this experience was how the Devil operates through false visionaries and
can easily destroy people’s faith through this means. I expect Mr. Oke to be
cautious in matters of private revelations—just like my mum was. As one of his
Apostolate members once said to me, “He
doesn’t have any problem with even some private
revelations coming from non-Catholics provided they say something good!” He was exaggerating of course, but certainly not completely.
On the Messages of
Maria Divine Mercy
According to Maria
Divine Mercy’s web site, she is “a Roman
Catholic married mother of a young family living in Europe [and] says she has
been receiving from the Holy Trinity as well as by the Virgin Mary.”
She writes anonymous,
stating, “The woman wishes to be known by the name Maria Divine Mercy and says
that it is the wish of Jesus that she remains anonymous to protect her family
and to avoid any distraction from the messages.” Again, “The messages have been
received by her since November 2010 and are still ongoing. Over 650 have
been received.”
In a YouTube
interview, she claims to have been a business woman and
speaks with what appears to be an Irish accent.
According to the
messages of Maria Divine Mercy, the papacy apparently ended as of March 20,
2012, on which date we were allegedly told by the Virgin Mary, “The keys of Rome
have been handed back to my Father, God the Most High, who will rule from the
Heavens”.
In Scripture, it was
the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:19) that Christ gave Peter when
instituting the papacy, not the “keys of Rome”; nonetheless, the messages of
Maria Divine Mercy convey a correspondence between the handing back of “the
keys of Rome” and the end of the papacy of Benedict XVI—whom Maria
Divine Mercy calls “the last true pope” (April 12, 2012, February 19, 2013, and
March 21, 2013)—and thus the end of the papacy. The messages
connect the handing back of the keys with Benedict's then “immanent
departure” (June 6, 2011), his “danger of being exiled from Rome” (March 20,
2012), and, finally on February 17, 2013, with his “departure”. A
purported message from Maria Divine Mercy's “Christ and Savour” [sic]
then informs us that “after Pope Benedict, you will be led by me from the
heavens” May 7, 2012), and then, from the “Mother of Salvation”, that “anyone
else who claims to sit on the Seat of Peter is an imposter” (July 22, 2013).
In any
case, Maria Divine Mercy is saying—in effect—that the papacy has ended, or
will end, at which point God the Father “will direct his Church, the true
believers, from the heavens” April 7, 2012). There are serious problems with
these implications.
The First Vatican Council responds to this in its First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (Pastor Aeternus), Chapter II, Sections 1 and 5:
Section 1:
“That which Our Lord
Jesus Christ, the prince of shepherds and great shepherd of the sheep,
established in the blessed apostle Peter, for the continual salvation and
permanent benefit of the church, must of necessity remain forever, by Christ's
authority, in the church which, founded as it is upon a rock, will stand firm
until the end of time.”
Section 5:
“Therefore, if anyone
says that it is not by the institution of Christ the Lord himself (that is
to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in
the primacy over the whole church; or that the Roman pontiff is not the
successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema.”
The problematic
nature of what the messages of Maria Divine Mercy are saying can be seen by
looking especially at the bulleted points of Section 5 of the above citation.
According to the
first point, it is heresy to say that Christ's institution of the papacy
would not entail that “Peter should have perpetual successors”.
And, Maria Divine Mercy states that Benedict is the “last true pope” (April 12, 2012, February 19, 2013, and March 21, 2013), that, “after Pope
Benedict”, the Church will be “led by [Christ] from the heavens” (May 7, 2013), and that “anyone
else who claims to sit on the Seat of Peter is an imposter” (July 22, 2013). That is a big lie.
Of course, it is
understandable that Francis I—the so-called successor of Benedict XVI—is
indisputably an impostor and a usurper. But we have to be on our guard as the
Devil is ever vigilant and clever and can—and indeed does—use the sad situation
to create more confusion. When we say that Francis is a false pope, our
position is not based on this sort of “revelation” by Maria Divine Mercy but on
the glaring evidence before us—namely the circumstances that surrounded
Bergoglio’s “election”, the St. Gallen’s Mafia and the rest as
well as Francis’ own personal heresies which he dishes out
every day. In fact whether Francis was validly elected or not is not even the
issue. The issue is that he is not only a manifest heretic but also an
archenemy of the Catholic Faith who masquerades as the Vicar of Christ just to
deceive people and send them to hell—his presence at the Vatican, alone,
is a threat to our Faith and for this we simply reject him. As
Father Kramer puts it:
“St. Robert
Bellarmine, St. Antoninus propose solutions for such a crisis. Once it is clear
that the pope is a heretic, then the Church can judge him. Then the Church
authorities must go about electing a new pope. It was a similar, but not
identical crisis of the papacy that brought about the convening of the Council
of Constance, which prevailed upon the three rival claimants to the papacy to
resign, and then elected Pope St. Martin V. That ended the crisis. One way or
the other, Francis must be replaced, regardless of whether he resigns gracefully
or gets thrown out kicking and screaming”.
There are many good
Catholics who believe the messages of Maria Divine Mercy because they haven’t
really investigated them. I don’t know whether Mr. Oke still believes them. In
any case, I advise anyone who does to carefully consider the objections just
raised. (See the condemnation of Maria Divine Mercy’s messages by the
Archbishop of Dublin, here:
On Sister Maria
Faustina’s Divine Mercy Devotion
In his article, ‘We
are Under Attack! To Defend Ourselves, We Must Have the Full Third Secret’ (published
in Father Gruner’s The Fatima Crusader, 2010 Issue 97, pp. 88-89),
Father Paul Kramer writes:
“...As always, to
solve a difficult question one must be willing to rethink a problem, no matter
how firmly held one’s convictions may be. This was one of the most valuable
lessons I learned as a philosophy student in the Angelicum, when our professor,
the renowned Dominican scholar Klemens Vansteenkiste, O.P. explained in class
that St. Thomas Aquinas always rethought a problem whenever it was put to him
anew no matter how many times he had expounded on it before.
“Most people are
unwilling to do this, and as a result their mind becomes the prisoner of their
own convictions—convictions that are not the fruit of analysis based on solid
evidence but the uncritical result of ideas that have been spawned by a
nurtured habit of mind which disposes one to accept premises that are based on
partial evidence that has been carefully pre-selected and spoon-fed to them and
therefore not firmly supported by established factual evidence. We must retrain
ourselves to break this habit of mind and insist on making a thorough
examination of the evidence ourselves—that means researching and investigating
rather than relying on the pre-selected evidence presented to us by government
and media both of which are effectively under the control of the ruling
financial elite.
“Judgement must once
again be objective—based entirely and exclusively on rational analysis of
evidence, and not subjected to the influence of political, social or financial
pressure. Objectivity requires that we give a fair hearing to an argument and
the evidence that supports it and judge on the basis of the evidence alone.
Truth is knowledge of reality based on premises that are (a) infallibly
revealed (b) self-evident, or (3) rigorously demonstrated.”
Most Catholics all
over the world today—members of Mr. Oke’s Apostolate among them—believe that
Sister Maria Faustina is a Saint and that her Divine Mercy Devotion came from
God. Their belief is based on the fact that John Paul II promoted that Devotion
and even made Sister Faustina a Saint. But is there anything wrong if one
investigates whether this belief is actually true or false? I don’t
think so.
Of course when I
hadn’t studied Sister Maria Faustina’s writings I myself was also one of the
devotees of her Divine Mercy Devotion—but after doing so and having seen a very
clear evidence against that I quickly rejected the “Devotion” even though it
was promoted by John Paul II. That is Catholic.
Divine Mercy Diary of
Sister Maria Faustina, as I learnt, is a counterfeit of The Way of
Divine Love, which is also written in diary form, but of the Sacred Heart's
messages to Sister Josefa Menendez. Sister Josefa’s 504-page book is still here
with me and I advise anyone who has read Faustina’s Diary to also get Josefa’s
book, read it and compare it to that of Faustina. In The Way of Divine
Love, Sister Josefa was constantly told by Our Lord, “it is because
of your littleness that I chose you.” The book is filled with
Josefa’s belief in her unworthiness and Our Lord’s requests over and over for
suffering and sacrifice for sinners. She was taken down into hell many
times to make reparation for various people the Lord asked her about. It
is really balanced, and her superiors at the convent actually were present when
the Lord spoke to her, so it is credible. Also, it has been translated
into many languages, and she died in the 1920's—just before Faustina came on
the scene. The point here is not that Faustina was trying to fake it, but
that this writer, like many vigilant Catholics around the world, believes Satan
saw the effects of The Way of Divine Love on Catholics all
over the world and brought in his counterfeit, period.
Many people may have
received “graces” from the devotion to Divine Mercy propagated by Sister
Faustina, and she was also pious. However, this does not necessarily mean that
this devotion is from God. It is true that Pope John Paul II promoted
this devotion, that it was through his efforts that the prohibition was lifted
on April 15, 1978, and that he even introduced a feast of Divine Mercy into the
Novus Ordo. However, the fact that good and pious people receive graces and
that Sister Faustina was pious do not necessarily mean that her messages were
from heaven. In fact, these messages were not only not approved before
Vatican II, they were condemned, and this despite the fact that the prayers
themselves of the chaplet of Divine Mercy are orthodox.
There were two
decrees from Rome on this question, both of the time of Pope John XIII.
The Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, in a plenary meeting held on
November 19, 1958, made the following decisions:
1. The
supernatural nature of the revelations made to Sister Faustina is not evident.
2. No feast of Divine Mercy is to be instituted.
2. No feast of Divine Mercy is to be instituted.
3. It
is forbidden to divulge images and writings that propagate this devotion under
the form received by Sister Faustina.
The second decree of
the Holy Office was on March 6, 1959, in which the following was established:
1. The diffusion of images and writings promoting the devotion to Divine Mercy under the form proposed by the same Sister Faustina was forbidden.
1. The diffusion of images and writings promoting the devotion to Divine Mercy under the form proposed by the same Sister Faustina was forbidden.
2. The
prudence of the bishops is to judge as to the removal of the foresaid images
that are already displayed for public honour.
What was it about
this devotion that prevented the Holy Office from acknowledging its divine
origin? The decrees do not say, but it seems that the reason lies in the
fact that in Faustina’s messages, there is so much emphasis on God’s mercy as
to exclude His justice. Our sins and the gravity of the offense that they
inflict on God is pushed aside as being of little consequence. That is
why the aspect of reparation for sin is omitted or obscured.
The true image of
God’s mercy is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance, crowned with
thorns, dripping precious blood. The Sacred Heart calls for devotion of
reparation, as the popes have always requested. However, this is not the
case with the Divine Mercy devotion. The image has no heart! It is a Sacred
Heart without a heart, without reparation, without the price of our sins being
clearly evident. It is this that makes the devotion very incomplete and
makes us suspicious of its supernatural origin, regardless of Sister Faustina’s
own good intentions and personal holiness. This absence of the need for
reparation for sins is manifest in the strange promise of freedom from all
temporal punishment due to sin for those who observe the 3:00 p.m. Low Sunday
devotions. How could such a devotion be more powerful and better than a
plenary indulgence, applying the extraordinary treasury of the merits of the
saints? How could it not require as a condition that we perform a
penitential work of our own? How could it not require the detachment from
even venial sin that is necessary to obtain a plenary indulgence?
The published Diary
of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalski (Marian Press, Stockbridge, MA, 2007) also
indicates several reasons to seriously question the supernatural origin of the
more than 640 pages of voluminous and repeated apparitions and messages.
The characteristic of any true mystic who has received supernatural graces is
always a profound humility, sense of unworthiness, awareness and profession of
gravity of his sins—as we see in Sister Josefa and other saints. Yet this
humility is strangely lacking in Sister Faustina’s diary. On October 2,
1936, for example, she states that the “Lord Jesus” spoke these words to
her: “Now I know that it is not for the graces or gifts that you love
me, but because My will is dearer to you than life. That is why I am
uniting Myself with you so intimately as with no other creature.” (§707,
p. 288). This gives every appearance of being a claim of being more
united to Jesus than anybody else, even the Blessed Virgin Mary, and certainly
more than all the other saints. What a pride, to believe such an
affirmation, let alone to assert that it came from heaven!
In April 1938, Sister
Faustina read the canonization of St. Andrew Bobola and was filled with longing
and tears that her congregation might have its own saint. Then she
affirms the following: “And the Lord Jesus said to me, Don’t cry.
You are that saint.” (§1650, p. 583). These are words that most
certainly no true saint would affirm, but rather his sinfulness and
unworthiness of his congregation. This presumption in her writings is not
isolated. She praises herself on several occasions through the words
supposedly uttered by Jesus. Listen to this interior locution, for
example: “Beloved pearl of My Heart, I see your love so pure, purer
than that of the angels, and all the more so because you keep fighting.
For your sake I bless the world.” (§1061, p. 400). On May 23,
1937 she describes a vision of the Holy Trinity, after which she heard a voice
saying “Tell the Superior General to count on you as the most faithful daughter
in the Order” (§1130, p. 417). It is consequently hardly surprising that
Sister Faustina claimed to be exempt from the Particular and General
Judgments. On February 4, 1935, she already claimed to hear this voice in
her soul: “From today on, do not fear God’s judgment, for you will not
be judged” (§374, p. 168). Add to this the preposterous
affirmation that the host three times over jumped out of the tabernacle and
placed itself in her hands (§44, p. 23), so that she had to open up the
tabernacle herself and place it back in there!...tells the story of a
presumption on God’s grace which goes beyond all reason, let alone as the
action of a person supposedly favoured with innumerable and repeated mystical
and supernatural graces.
“One day Jesus said
to me, I am going to leave this house... because there are things here
which displease Me. And the Host came out of the tabernacle and came to rest
in my hands and I, with joy, placed it back in the tabernacle. This was
repeated a second time, and I did the same thing. Despite this, it happened a
third time, but the Host was transformed into the living Lord Jesus, who
said to me, I will stay here no longer! At this, a powerful love for Jesus
rose up in my soul. I answered, ‘And I, I will not let You leave this house,
Jesus!’ And again Jesus disappeared while the Host remained in my hands. Once
again I put it back in the chalice and closed it up in the tabernacle. And
Jesus stayed with us.”
For years, Mr.
Patrick Oke fought against Reverend Sisters who commit the sacrilege of
touching the Host—those who distribute Holy Communion. But has he, as a learned
journalist, taken time to study Sister Faustina’s Diary—I mean Sister Faustina
whose Divine Mercy he promotes with zeal? “And the Host came out of the
tabernacle and came to rest in my hands and I, with joy, placed it back in
the tabernacle.” Has Mr. Oke ever read this? If so, then, has he
become among the “most people” spoken of by Father Kramer—those who, unlike
Thomas Aquinas, are unable to rethink a problem whenever it was put to them
anew—whose mind “becomes the prisoner of their own convictions—convictions that
are not the fruit of analysis based on solid evidence but the uncritical result
of ideas that have been spawned by a nurtured habit of mind which disposes one
to accept premises that are based on partial evidence that has been carefully
pre-selected and spoon-fed to them and therefore not firmly supported by
established factual evidence”?
In fact, I am going
too far. In the message given to Rev. Sister Hermana Guadalupe—which Mr. Oke
also has and promotes!—Our Lord speaks: “Now the priests no longer
distribute the Eucharist, they leave this to lay men, men who have not had
their hands consecrated. The lay men distribute the Eucharist and by doing this
they don’t give it any importance because the priests say that it is only a
banquet, that it is just a simple meal, and that you should sing, dance and do
so many things that offend the Eternal Father and Me and which makes my Mother
cry. When you do this you are desecrating my Body, you are desecrating my
Blood, and all of my children must be conscious that they are receiving God,
the God that remains confined in the tabernacle to give you life, to give you
the blessings and graces that your soul needs....I also want to tell you dear
daughters, the nuns, that you are also in mortal sin because you have changed
your habits, and because you dare to touch my Body, and this mustn’t be, because
this was also one of the reasons why I instituted the priesthood, because only
priests can consecrate.” (Guatemala, April 14, 1989).
Pope St. Sixtus
(circa 115AD) taught that “the sacred vessels are not to be handled by
others than those consecrated to the Lord”. The Council of Saragossa
excommunicated anyone who dared receive Holy Communion by hand, and this was
confirmed by the Synod of Toledo. The Sixth Ecumenical Council of
Constantinople (680-681) forbade the faithful to take the Sacred Host in their
hand, threatening transgressors with excommunication. In his Summa
Theologica St. Thomas Aquinas writes: “Out of reverence
towards this Sacrament (Holy Eucharist), nothing touches it, but what is
consecrated; hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise
the priest’s hands, for touching this Sacrament. Hence, it is not lawful for
anyone else to touch it except from necessity, for instance if it were to fall
upon the ground, or else in some other case of urgency” (Summa
Theologica, III, 82, 3). In the sixteenth century the Council of Trent
confirmed this: “The fact that only the priest gives Holy Communion is
an Apostolic Tradition”.
Hence people like us
maintain that the message of Sister Maria Faustina is false! Our Lord cannot approve
the sacrilege of un-anointed hands touching His Precious and Sacred Body, as is
commonly practised today all over the Catholic world.
It is perhaps not
accidental that John Paul II—a promoter of Communion in the Hand—promoted this
devotion, for it is very much in line with his encyclical Dives in Misericordia.
In fact, the Paschal Mystery theology that he taught pushed aside all
consideration of the gravity of sin and the need for penance, for satisfaction
to divine justice, and hence of the Mass as being an expiatory sacrifice, and
likewise the need to gain indulgences and to do works of penance. Since
God is infinitely merciful and does not count our sins, all this is considered
of no consequence. This is not the Catholic spirit. We
must make reparation for our sins and for the sins of the whole world, as the
Sacred Heart repeatedly asked at Paray-Le-Monial. It is the renewal of
our consecration to the Sacred Heart and frequent holy hours of reparation that
is going to bring about the conversion of sinners. It is in this way that
we can cooperate in bringing about His Kingdom of Merciful Love, because it is
the perfect recognition of the infinite holiness of the Divine Majesty and
complete submission to His rightful demands. Mercy only means something
when we understand the price of our Redemption.
John Paul II the
greatest pope?
Now on the belief
that John Paul II was the greatest pope, I don’t just wish to say much on that
because there is simply no time and space to do so—to do so would, put simply,
require writing a big book. It may just suffice to quote Father Paul Kramer’s
old article, ‘What are the Missing Contents of the Third Secret?’ (published
in Father Gruner’s The Fatima Crusader, Summer 2010, p. 39 &
pp. 42-43). In the sections entitled Diabolical Disorientation at Every
Level, God’s Foundation for Unity, Grace is Necessary
for Eternal Salvation, Freemasonic “Unity” and The
False One-World Religion Built-up from Ecumenism, Apostasy respectively,
Father Kramer writes:
“Sister Lucy referred
to the diabolical disorientation in our Church’s hierarchy at the very highest
levels. We look in the encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint,
and we see the disorientation was at the very highest level. The disorientation
inhibited the mind of the Vicar of Christ on earth, Pope John Paul II. He is
the one who declared that the Church has an irrevocable commitment to
ecumenism. The problem there is that ecumenism is the greatest threat to the
Church. Ecumenism was created by the greatest, most mortal enemies of the
Church for the purpose of destroying the Church. Ecumenism is the greatest
obstacle to unity, and yet we are told that we must promote ecumenism for the
sake of unity.
“To understand just
how absurd is the idea that ecumenism promotes unity, we need only to consider
what are the bonds of communion, in what does unity consist? There are the
three bonds of unity: the bond of Faith, the bond of the Sacraments, and the
bond of Ecclesiastical Governance. In the formulation of Saint Paul, he states:
“One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism” (Eph. 4:5).
“There is the one
Faith, the Catholic Faith outside of which there is no salvation. Or as the
First Vatican Council stated, outside of that Faith there is no salvation.
There is one religion which is a divine institution—that is the Catholic
religion. No other religion on earth is a divine institution. This is why there
is no salvation outside of the Catholic Faith, because it is the divine and
Catholic Faith.
“Mere human doctrines
cannot gain salvation. They do not have the power to confer grace. It is
through Faith and the Sacraments, by the supernatural power of God through
Faith, and the grace that we receive from Almighty God and the Sacraments that
bring about salvation. So there cannot be communion between the Church and any
other religion. So there is the bond of Faith, the bond of the Sacraments and
the bond of the Ecclesiastical Governance. Where there are these three bonds of
communion, there is unity.
“As John Paul II
himself declared in Ut Unum Sint, ecumenism has its origin in the Churches of
the Reform: the Protestants. We can go back further and we will see that
ecumenism, before it invaded the Church and before it invaded the Protestant
denominations, was first promoted by Freemasonry. It is of Jewish origin: the
idea of natural religion as the vehicle of salvation for the Gentiles. This was
the teaching of the Jewish rabbis. And the Jewish philosopher Mendelssohn—the
grandfather of the composer Felix Mendelssohn—wrote this and I provide the
precise quotation in my book, “The Suicide of Altering the Faith
in the Liturgy”.
“Now we can begin to
grasp what the Third Secret is dealing with: the Great Apostasy and loss of
Faith, and what will bring that about. Because the unity that will be created
by ecumenism is the unity sought after for centuries by Freemasonry. It is
Freemasonry that would set up in the world a one-world religion with this
Jewish/Protestant idea of unity. The idea that all the Christian denominations
can co-exist in peace and harmony and unity is absolutely incompatible with the
Catholic Faith, the doctrine of unity, the bonds of communion. It is coherent
strictly, entirely, logically in the absurd notion of Protestantism that there can
be communion in doctrinal diversity.
“So what unity will
ecumenism bring? It will not bring unity in Christ, but what Pope Saint Pius X
warned about in his 1904 encyclical when he warned about the coming one-world
religion. ...This is the Great Apostasy that Bishop Cosme do Amaral was
speaking about, referring to the loss of Faith. This is the content of the
Third Secret that has not been revealed. Bishop Cosme do Amaral was very
impressed by this great spiritual tribulation, the greatest and worst persecution
of the Church that there ever will have been and ever will be.”
 |
| Pope Pius XI |
Now on the argument
about who was the greatest pope, or rather the belief that John Paul II was in
fact the greatest pope, I need not say much on that but only to cite late Cardinal
Giacomo Biffi (1928-2015)—a professor of theology and former Archbishop of
Bologna, well known as an opponent of “Dialogue” with false religions, who, in
fact, was said to have once personally confronted John Paul II on the issue. It
is surprising that Cardinal Biffi—who attended the Second Vatican Council and
really witnessed all the terrible things that took place there—in his
autobiographical volume Memorie e digressioni di un italiano
cardinale [Memories and Digressions of an Italian Cardinal], published
in 2007, designates as “the greatest pope of the twentieth century” Pope Pius
XI, who today is perhaps the most overlooked and forgotten pope!
Had Pius XI lived to
witness the ecumenical scandal of John Paul II, he would—no doubt—have
excommunicated him without a waste of time. See Pope Pius XI’s verdict on
ecumenism here:
 |
| Cardinal Biffi |
Conclusion
It is my hope that we
take more time to study the issues raised here, and do so critically—whether we
like raising those issues or not—and then teach others. But we must do so
with love, not bitterness and backbiting. I say this because there
are those who, in the name of being “traditional Catholics”, go about talking
utter rubbish and confusing the simpleminded always. In fact I have seen some
whose only contribution in the “fight against error” is to always condemn those
they perceive to be their enemies instead of facing the errors themselves and
condemning them, and in the process what they achieve is to create confusion. And who are those being confused? The ignorant, the simpleminded, those who often sincerely come to learn!
As Our Lord said to
one of the seers in one of the private revelations, “You must be able
to approach my poor ones even though it will cause you anguish and tears...See
every person in my afflicted countenance”. (Divine Appeal 1, 3.00 am,
September 8, 1987). No one knows it all—certainly not the
present writer. But the little we know we should learn how to share with
others, with love! What God expects from all
traditional Catholics who understand the current sad situation of the Church is
to enlighten those who are ignorant, not to confuse them. To
do this successfully, unity among all traditional Catholics is highly needed.
As Mr. Oke himself stated, “Yes...all of us should work together”.
We pray, that God,
Truth Himself, may enlighten the darkness of our hearts and minds as we take
more time to study as well as consider more carefully the issues raised
here. Deus pater veritatis, pater sapientiae, pater summaeque vitae,
pater beatitudinis, pater boni et pulchri, pater intelligibilis lucis, pater
evigilationis atque illuminationis nostrae, pater pignoris quo admonemur redire
ad te. Te invocamus, Deus veritatis, in quo et a quo et per quem vera sunt,
quae vera sunt omnia.
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