Fatima Through the Lens of Vatican II: As Illustrated by Raymond Cardinal Burke

Fatima Through the Lens of Vatican II: As Illustrated by Raymond Cardinal Burke

By: Cornelia R. Ferreira

Here we go again – Fatima suffers another round of distortions and doubletalk, courtesy of Cardinal Raymond Burke’s May 19th speech at the Rome Life Forum. In established modernist style, it’s an intriguing blend of truth and novel errors. Rash euphoria greeted reports of his talk, entitled “The Secret of Fatima and a New Evangelization,” but sober analysis of his actual words reveal a disturbing picture.
First, some background: the talk took place during the Jubilee Year of Fatima (November 27, 2016-November 26, 2017), a year featuring countless projects commemorating the Fatima Centennial. Now, as observed, in the special “Years” celebrated by the Holy See, the object being honored is simultaneously subjected to a revision and “updating” that weakens traditional beliefs and practices.



For instance, in the Year of the Holy Spirit, my Archdiocese (Toronto) announced it would make the Sacrament of Confirmation more special by doing all Confirmations on the same day. This being physically impossible for the bishops, pastors were assigned to administer Confirmation. This was promoted as “upgrading” the Sacrament. Having been upgraded, it couldn’t be downgraded, and so Confirmation continues to be done by priests.
The Year of the Rosary brought us the novel Luminous Mysteries and a new interpretation of the Rosary as a “Christocentric” instrument of ecumenism. Pope John Paul chose the syncretic Focolare sect to spread his Ecumenical Rosary for Peace, as it was called. The “Fatima Pope” also pushed for a replacement of the prayer which Our Lady of Fatima taught us to say after each decade.
Because St. Paul “spent himself for the unity and harmony of all Christians,” the Year of St. Paul celebrated the great evangelist as an “ecumenist.” The papal basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls in Rome was newly designated an “ecumenical basilica,” with one of its chapels dedicated to Protestant services.
One could delve into other Years, but you get the point. Which brings us to the Year of Fatima. Sanctioned by the Holy See and emboldened by the convenient death of that great guardian of the true Message, Fr. Nicholas Gruner, a plethora of anti-“Fatimists” are exploding out of the woodwork with their own twists on Fatima.
The Rome Life Forum itself could now safely mention Fatima without the stigma of being associated with that “disobedient” priest. As for Card. Burke, his position on Fatima, and hence the slant of his talk, can be gauged by the following correspondence he had with British Catholic journalist Joanna Bogle in 2013. Writing in the Catholic Herald in 2016, she recounts:

Back in 2013, when there was an outbreak of lobbying by the Fatimists, I wrote to Cardinal Raymond Burke, then head of the Apostolic Signatura, expressing my concern. He wrote back: “You are correct that there is much confusion about the message of Our Lady of Fatima, caused especially by Fr. Nicholas Gruner, a priest who is not in good standing in the Church, and that this confusion is harmful to many good people who are being led astray about the important message of Our Lady of Fatima.”

And so in this Year of Fatima, safe from his challenges, the anti-Fatimists are with impunity undoing Fr. Gruner’s “harm”.
Naturally, Card. Burke’s speech doesn’t once mention or commend Fr. Gruner’s work. Instead, we find large sections devoted to upholding the programs and actions of “Saint John Paul II” and “Blessed Paul VI.”  This adherence to arch-heretics reveals the orientation of the speech: Fatima as seen through the lens of Vatican II.
For example, here’s his accolade about one of the architects of the Council’s Revolution and a scandalous promoter of inter-faith sacrilege and blasphemy:

The pontificate of Pope Saint John Paul II, in fact, may be rightly described as a tireless call to recognize the Church’s challenge to be faithful to her divinely given mission.

It’s in this context that we look more deeply into the Cardinal’s sudden call for the Collegial Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Is it a “vindication” of Fr. Gruner as some claim? Not so fast.
Referring to the period before World War II, Cardinal Burke states the Consecration “did not take place as Our Lady requested,” resulting in the World War and other punishments She warned about. Then, in ambiguous modernist style, he leads us to accept that the 1984 Consecration was fine – and yet says Our Lady wants another Collegial Consecration:

Certainly, Pope Saint John Paul II consecrated the world, including Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25, 1984. But, today, once again, we hear the call of Our Lady of Fatima [to whom did She speak?]  to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, in accord with her explicit instruction.

This is doublethink – the holding of two opposing ideas at the same time. In Communist dialectical terms, it’s the synthesis of a thesis (Consecration not done) and antithesis (Consecration done).
Perhaps the reason he feels obliged to repeat the Party Line that the 1984 Consecration was acceptable is because the alternative would constitute the “thoughtcrime” of holding that (a) incomplete “Consecrations,” even by “sainted” Popes, have been acts of disobedience towards Our Lady and the Holy Trinity Itself (present at Her 1929 request); (b) the faithful have been systematically deceived about their validity; and (c) Communism is not dead and the errors of Russia underpin the post-conciliar Church.
(Interestingly, John Paul himself acknowledged he didn’t obey Our Lady. Hours after the 1984 Consecration he publicly prayed to Her at St. Peter’s for “those peoples for whom You Yourself are awaiting our act of consecration and entrusting” – emphasis added.)
But then in a stunning revelation, while avoiding thoughtcrime, Card. Burke discloses the real reason he considers himself justified in calling for another Consecration: it’s because Pope John Paul claimed at his 1982 Consecration that Our Lady requires the Consecration (i.e., some version of it) to be done over and over! Referring to the Consecrations done by his predecessors, John Paul said:

Once more this act is being done. Mary’s appeal is not for just once. Her appeal must be taken up by generation after generation, in accordance with the ever new “signs of the times”. It must be unceasingly returned to. It must ever be taken up anew. [Emphasis added.]

Maybe John Paul’s creative take on Our Lady’s wishes was to excuse the fact that all previous and future incomplete Consecrations could not and would not bring about the promised conversion of Russia and world peace. In any case, various “Consecrations” to suit changing times fits the modernists’ policy of constantly re-interpreting everything, including Fatima.
Joanna Bogle, confidante of Card. Burke, has even “predicted”:
“Renewing the consecration will probably, over the years, become something that is done with some regularity and with great solemnity”; in fact, “an annual consecration.”
Directed toward the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith, Fatima has long been a stumbling block for ecumenist bishops and Popes who have “anathematized” proselytizing; further, they attributed the fake “death of Communism” at the Soviet Union’s controlled demolition to the “successful” (though invalid) 1984 Consecration.
Indeed, recent dialectical hogwash has it that (the highly occult and immoral) Russia is converted or converting. So let’s move on to other problems Our Lady needs to solve. Hence Card. Burke implies a new Consecration is now needed to solve the problems in the Catholic hierarchy! (Yet he doesn’t acknowledge the problems stem from the errors of Russia, which gained strength at the Council, bringing about the persecution of the Church from within.)
Which brings us to another major thrust of Card. Burke’s address: Fatima is intertwined with the “new evangelization.” This dialectical claim is a serious affront to Our Lady of Fatima. Let’s see why.
The Cardinal is highly perturbed by the “poisonous fruits of the failure of the Church’s pastors.” (Is he excepting himself?) He connects the mess in the Church to Paul VI’s famous anthropological observation that “through some fissure” the smoke of Satan had entered the temple of God, and “darkness” and “uncertainty” was engulfing the Church after Vatican II.
Of course, Paul VI didn’t link these problems to the Council (even blaming the devil and “secular prophets” for trying to “suffocate the fruits” of the Council), the Communist infiltration, or to John XXIII’s “opening the windows”.
Now, before becoming Pope, Pius XII prophesied that the “persistence of [Our Lady of Fatima] about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul … A day will come … when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted”.
This exactly describes the suicidal Council and its aftermath. For abandoning Tradition, the Church’s pastors were led into delusions and errors (what Sr. Lucia termed a “diabolical disorientation”) as a punishment of God  (cf. 2 Thess. 2:7-14).
Compounding their errors, the solution of “Blessed Paul VI” and “Saint John Paul II” was “a new evangelization.”
According to Card. Burke, Paul VI considered this “the fundamental form of proclaiming the truth of Christ in our time” (remember: “signs of the times”), for instance, to “intellectuals who feel the need to know Jesus Christ in a light different from the instruction they received as children.” (Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 52)
Ah yes, they need to know there is no sin, no hell, Jesus loves them, and everyone is saved.
The new evangelization is not re-evangelization, but a new way of “evangelizing.” This was made clear when, in 1985, John Paul emphasized, “the reference point for all contemporary evangelization must remain the Second Vatican Council” – not Christ’s command to teach “whatsoever I have taught you,” and baptize (i.e., convert) all men into His Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.
Instead, the new orientation of the Council, as proudly stated by one of its architects, Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book Theological Highlights of Vatican II, was non-conversion, i.e., non-evangelization. As Pope Benedict, in 2007, he reiterated this meaning of the “new evangelization” for the Latin American bishops.
The new evangelization is opposed to conversion and salvation. New in its methodology and orientation, it’s instead effecting a dialectical synthesis between traditional and modernist thinking, gradually converting Catholics to the modernist, Masonic anti-Church of Vatican II.
John Paul’s “Theology of the Body” (TOB) and World Youth Day (which would scandalize the three children of Fatima), and Francis’ Laudato Si are examples. (Incredibly, TOB is allegedly “approved” by Our Lady of Fatima and “paving the way for Her triumph.”)
The new evangelization has exacerbated the disaster that dismays Card. Burke; nevertheless, in true dialectical fashion, he has re-invented Fatima to promote this fruit of modernism. In line with the signs-of-the-times’ thirst for constant change, the Cardinal proffers the new evangelization as the goal of Our Lady of Fatima:

… let us heed once again the maternal direction of the Virgin of Fatima for a new evangelization of the Church and, thus, of the world.

Reflecting upon the pressing need to respond to the grace of a new evangelization, we see how timely the apparitions and message of Our Lady of Fatima remain.

The words of Pope Saint John Paul II make clear the perennial importance of the Message of Fatima: the giving of one’s whole heart, together with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and thus the commitment to become an ever more effective agent of the sorely needed new evangelization of our culture. [Emphases added.]

This doublethink is blasphemous – implying Our Lady wants to defy Her Son’s command to convert all nations, whilst painting such defiance as honoring both of Them.
Equally blasphemous, the Cardinal also promotes Paul VI’s and John Paul’s universal-brotherhood “civilization of love,” a pantheistic, gnostic utopia, as a fruit of the Fatima devotion:

Attention to the maternal direction of Our Lady of Fatima draw [sic] souls to Christ … for the conversion of their lives and the transformation of a culture of death into a civilization of love.

John Paul’s mantra – “civilization of love” – recycles the Sillonist ideal condemned by Pope St. Pius X. Culture reflects religious beliefs. The only way to destroy the culture of death is to convert the whole world to the true Catholic Faith.
Cardinal Burke tiptoes around the First Saturdays devotion. He refers to the Communion of Reparation on First Saturdays without mentioning that this is to make reparation for the five blasphemies against her Immaculate Heart. Since these blasphemies are the heresies of Protestantism and other false religions, mentioning them could damage ecumenical relations; instead, Card. Burke talks vaguely of “offenses” against God. For example:

Let us make reparation for the many and grievous offenses against the immeasurable and unceasing love of God for us by practicing the devotion of the First Saturdays….

This contradicts what was made clear in 1925 when the holy Virgin appeared to Sr. Lucia with the Child Jesus, Who said:
“Have compassion on the Heart of your most holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”
Showing Her Heart encircled with thorns, Our Lady said it was pierced by blasphemies and ingratitude. She gave Sr. Lucia the devotion of the Five First Saturdays to make reparation for these sins against Her and to console Her.
In 1929, when in the presence of the Holy Trinity Our Lady requested the Consecration of Russia, She definitively stated:
“There are so many souls whom the Justice of God condemns for sins committed against me, that I have come to ask reparation: sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray.”
Furthermore, although Fatima is supposed to be about establishing devotion to the Immaculate Heart, Card. Burke’s novel emphasis throughout is on the Sacred Heart (ecumenism again?), even though devotion to the Sacred Heart had already been established through St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Some examples:

… the Secret of Fatima …  is fundamentally a message of hope in the victory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
… the victory of her Immaculate Heart which is indeed the victory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
May the Mother of God … lead many souls to unite their hearts to her Immaculate Heart in the total consecration of their hearts to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

… the Immaculate Heart of Mary will also triumph over the great darkness of our time by leading souls to the truth and love of her Divine Son, by leading souls to give their hearts, with hers, completely into the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Card. Burke even makes the Consecration of Russia a Consecration to the Sacred Heart, which is not the message of Fatima:

She also foretold the terrible physical chastisements which would result from the failure to consecrate the agent of the spread of atheistic communism to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through her Immaculate Heart and to undertake the regular practice of reparation for so many offenses communicated against the immeasurable and unceasing love of God manifested so perfectly in the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus. [Emphases added.]

Departing from the pure message of Fatima, Card. Burke seems to be endorsing more the work of the Alliance of the Two Hearts, part of the Alliance of the Holy Family International, which operates under the Vatican’s new Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life.
Formed in 1990 to foster holiness in the family, clergy, and marriage, their new devotion promotes consecration to the two Hearts jointly and a lifestyle termed “the Communion of Reparation.” This includes what the Cardinal requests: the Brown Scapular, daily Rosary, regular Mass attendance, confession, Eucharistic Adoration. Responding to Pope John Paul’s “challenge to make every family Eucharistic-centered and Marian,” the groups also hold a First Friday-First Saturday Communion of Reparation all-night vigil “for sins committed against the sanctity of family life”.
Although these pious practices are commendable, they adulterate the authentic Message of Fatima by blending it with other devotions. Indeed, the Alliance recently brought a statue of Our Lady of Fatima blessed by Pope Francis to a parish here in Toronto. They led a consecration prayer to the Two Hearts, whilst preaching that Our Lady said consecration to Her Immaculate Heart was necessary to make reparation for offenses against the Sacred Heart – mirroring Card. Burke’s position.
Further, the Alliance has boldly fabricated the yarn that Our Lady told Sr. Lucia in 1925 that She wishes the Church to establish a Feast of the Alliance of the Two Hearts, and “promised that the family who practices consecration and lives the communion of reparation lifestyle everyday will experience the era of peace.”
Cardinal Burke also adds to the Third Secret confusion. He agrees with the Party Line that the vision revealed in 2000 is the Third Secret, though he doesn’t commit as to whether it’s the full Third Secret. Then going off script from what was revealed, he incorporates the speculation that it concerns the diabolical attack on the world and the Church, and “is directed, with particular force,” to the pastors of the Church and “[t]heir failure to teach the faith in fidelity to the Church’s constant teaching and practice….”
Finally, it’s highly disturbing to see that the Cardinal derives a lot of his information from a biography of Sr. Lucia published in English in 2015 by the Blue Army (now called the World Apostolate of Fatima, or WAF).
The WAF/Blue Army has long broadcast the Vatican’s Party Line on Fatima. Now an International Public Association of Pontifical Right, it claims it’s “the only Fatima organization in the world which speaks ‘in the name of the Church’ and ‘with the authority of the Church’ on Fatima.”
Its “charisma” is “the New Evangelization of the world through the authentic Message of Fatima.” Its “responsibility” is to “guard the purity of the message.”
The WAF summarizes the Vatican’s corrupted Message of Fatima (evident in Card. Burke’s talk) as follows:

A new effort is needed to save the world and make possible a new era of peace and hope, promised at Fatima. To achieve this, the New Evangelization of the world is the main pastoral objective of the Universal Church for the XXI century and the new millennium.
… the Message of Fatima continues to be crucial in the building of a better world, ‘a civilization of love, a new springtime for the Church, a New Marian Pentecost.’

Fr. Gruner spent his life heroically battling such outlandish misrepresentations of Fatima.
The WAF heaved a collective sigh of relief when he conveniently died on April 29, 2015. He wouldn’t be around to challenge the Fatima Centenary projects that, according to the WAF branch in Goa, India, were already being hatched.
Two weeks after Fr. Gruner’s death, at its May 13th conference on Fatima, the rejoicing was evident.  Opening the event, the Chairman “hoped that with his passing away, the deviation from the authentic message of Fatima that Fr. Gruner represented will not continue, that it will fade away soon.”
The group’s newsletter, published three weeks later, featured a commentary by Prof. Américo Pablo López-Ortiz, International WAF President. Obliquely questioning Fr. Gruner’s eternal destiny based on whether he had followed the “Commandment of Love,” Américo exhorted his followers to pray that Fr. Gruner’s work would be destroyed:

Now we must also pray that the deviation from the authentic Message of Fatima (his emphasis) that Fr. Gruner represented when living on this earth, will not continue, that it will fade away soon with the death of its leader. That there will be no continuation or that the continuation will not be successful as people should know that truth on the Fatima Message in harmony and obedience with the Universal Church. The WAF International should continue hard to spread the authentic Message of Fatima….

This “deviation” from the Message whose authenticity the Vatican determines according to the times, is what Card. Burke was obviously referring to when he told Joanna Bogle that Fr. Gruner was causing “confusion.”
Cardinal Burke’s favored source of information, the Blue Army Vatican mouthpiece, which, tellingly, was very pleased with his speech, also has an interesting suggestion for a future Consecration:

Perhaps now is the time to invite our Russian Orthodox brothers to join in a consecration in order to please Our Lord who told Sr. Lucia, “I want my whole Church [WAF’s emphasis] to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary….”

Hang on – the schismatic Russian Orthodox are now part of the Catholic Church? And the ecumenical – i.e., sacrilegious – act of joining the Orthodox in consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart will represent the triumph of Her Heart? The mind reels at the doublethink.
The decline in those Catholics able to recognize error continues. “Fatimists” who blithely think the Cardinal’s speech is a gain for their side have unfortunately been synthesized. It’s not a good place to be.