Vladimir Putin

This is a huge day in the life of the Church. The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima is the greatest and most widely witnessed divine intervention since the Resurrection of Christ.

It is such a big day in fact that I feel somewhat forced to have some sort of commentary on the day itself, untrue to form. There are many much-better informed followers of Fatima, so I'll try and keep my statements brief.

The eminent historian Roberto di Mattei wrote a splendid piece which was published on Rorate Caeli. In it he writes a bit of what happened on that day, but much of his text has to do with how the 9 popes since the apparition have failed to honour the Virgin's request to have Russia consecrated to her Immaculate Heart.

There are some who feel that the consecration of Russia has been carried out and that the positive changes we see in Russia have occured as a result of that consecration. There were positive developments when Pope Pius XII consecrated the whole world to the Blessed Virgin, a fact Sister Lucia was keen to point out, but she was keen to point out that the consecration had not heeded our Blessed Mother's wishes. The Second World War did indeed end and we did indeed have a period of peace, but the world was soon plunged into the chaos of the Cold War, and the errors of Russia continued to spread. Indeed, Roberto di Mattei catalogues this.

Now some will say that Russia has changed and this and that.; facts hardly open to dispute. Anybody who argues that Russia is still communist is as ignorant as he is stupid, I would argue. Well, either that or you are accusing the Russian leadership of complete ignorance of what communism is. After all, communists specialise in destroying churches, not in building and re-building them. If you don't believe me, just as the Chinese and the Soviets!

One would think that people as wise as those in charge of Russia - people, it has to be admitted, who manage to outmanoeuvre the combined intellect of the entire Western world combined seemingly without even trying - would be in the know as to the basic tenets of communism, if that was the ideology that they secrectly espoused. The charge of the Russian leadership being crypto-communists really does not stand up even to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has built over 10,000 churches, many if not most with government money, I would assume, since there is simply no way that the Orthodox Church in Russia, persecuted and infiltrated by communists for so long, with barely any Mass attendees, would be able to afford such an undertaking. Some reports I have seen have claimed as much as 28,000 churches have been built in Russia since the fall of communism, a figure that seems rather fanciful to me, but which I would happily accept if it were proved to be true.

The president, Vladimir Putin, routinely attends church services, as does prime minister  Medvedev and defence minister Shoigu. These, I would argue, are the 3 most important public figures in Russia and they are doing everything they can do to prop up the Russian Orthodox Church. Although there is much to go before Russia can be called a Christian nation - the abolition of abortion being the foremost - there is not much more that the current leadership of Russia could have done to help Christianity regain its place at the centre of Russian life.

That it is the Russian Orthodox Church being propped up and not the Catholic Church will offend some, but it does not offend me. To any impartial observer, the Russian Orthodox Church certainly appears more Christian than the Catholic Church. Only the learned will bother to find out that the claims of the Russian Orthodox Church are bogus, but few ever go that far. Externals matter and the fact of the matter is that the primate of Russia behaves in a much more Christian way than does our pope, or whatever Bergoglio is.

Furthermore, it has always been the role of the Russian leadership to support Russian Orthodoxy and I am at a loss to understand how these people think that the Russian leadership can impose the Catholic faith on people who have been hostile to the Catholic Church for centuries. These rifts have nothing to do with Vladimir Putin or even the communists, and they cannot be healed by political figures, although I grant that political figures can do much to push the re-unification. The fact of the matter is that the Blessed Virgin Mary provided us with a roadmap of how to convert Russia back to Catholicism, and that is through the consecration of Russia.

Rumour has it that Putin even asked the pope to consecrate Russia; so much for the politicians being communists. That the popes have failed to do this is to their eternal condemnation. It would be one thing if they did not believe in the Fatima message, but pope after pope has paid homage to the apparitions at Fatima so it beggars belief that they will not do what they were asked to do.

Back to the topic of the consecration and the accompanying warnings...

Whereas Russia can be said in many ways to have rejected the errors of Russia, these errors are all-pervasive in the West. Whether it is the attack on the Christian faith, the destruction of the family, the promotion of sodomy, fornication homosexuality and feminism, the attack on human nature through transgenderism and materialism, the attack on the sacredness of human life through euthanasia and abortion, the promotion of Islam, witchcraft, scientism and atheism, the errors of Russia have spread into the West like wild-fire and there seems to be no stopping them.

I repeat that I am no expert of Fatima but it is my understanding that...

There was a statement alleged to have come from Vladimir Putin regarding Bergoglio. I cannot for the life of me figure out if the news is fake or whether it is real.

I came to the piece through Fr. Zuhlsdorf's site. In the piece we found the following (emphases from his site):

President Putin has slammed Pope Francis for “pushing a political ideology instead of running a church”, and warned that the leader of the Catholic Church “is not a man of God.”

“Pope Francis is using his platform to push a dangerous far-left political ideology on vulnerable people around the world, people who trust him because of his position,” Putin said. 

“If you look at what he (the Pope) says it’s clear that he is not a man of God. At least not the Christian God. Not the God of the Bible,” Putin said at the Naval Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Kronstadt.  

“He dreams of a world government and a global communist system of repression.

“As we have seen before in communist states, this system is not compatible with Christianity.”

The charges made against Bergoglio are certainly true, but the tone is certainly not that of Vladimir Putin, who is the most diplomatic statesman around. He is very cautious in his statements and I fail to even see why he would bother taking time from his busy efforts rebuilding Russia to criticise a man who is busy destroying the Catholic Church, of which he is not a member (the 'which' refers to Putin here but since heretics cannot be members of the Church...). I just don't see Putin making these statements, and at a cathedral no less.

Mind you, I would certainly not respect him less if he said it!

The truth is that Bergoglio's attack hounds have  been critical of Putin so it would be only fair of Putin to point out that Bergoglio is not a man of God and that he is deceiving people. I just don't think that Vladimir Putin said it, because I have not seen any confirmation of this piece from trustworthy newspapers or blogs, and even Fr. Zuhlsdorf seems to think it is fake news.

There were many comments on this piece at the website, but one in particular was noteworthy:

Fake news or not (I think it is largely invented), Pope Francis is to blame for having said things that make people wonder if articles like this are true. What this article says would not be remotely plausible if it pertained to either of our previous two popes. Not so with Pope Francis. Even if Putin never said what the article says he says, it is plausible that he did say those things and it is also plausible that there is some element of truth to at least some of them.

The truth is the more absurd a story coming from the Vatican nowadays the more likely that it is true, and the more anti-Catholic it is the less we can dismiss it. Even Bergoglio's defenders cannot pretend that the man is not a disaster for the Catholic Church.

The same priest writes about the 'North Korean' situatoin and suggests some solutions. There was only one contributor who wrote anything worthy of a Catholic response, while the rest showed off their americanism. As it turns out, he is British, and seemed generally to be the most informed. One of his responses captures his general attitude towards the 'problem', and he had many.

Simples. Don’t threaten North Korea. Don’t put THAAD missiles in South Korea. Don’t carry out massive battle manoeuvres in the south. In fact go back home and look after your own people.

I have a novel idea: Just leave North Korea alone!

My idea runs roughly along the same sentiments in other words. The fact is that most other countries have come to terms with the fact that North Korea is a nuclear power, including all of its neighbours, which are well within the range of North Korean weapons. It is only the U.S. which thinks it is so special that it has a right to prevent another country from defending itself.

North Korean concerns are not exactly unjustified, as the U.S. has been on a global campaign to take down anyone who opposes its policies and not strong enough for self-defence. We have seen Iraq, Libya and Syria attacked militarily by the U.S. and on top of that you can add other countries the U.S. has bombed int the recent past on multiple continents. As a sovereign country, North Korea have every right to defend themselves or at the very least to assure the destruction of anybody who attacks them, adn contrary to popular opinion, it is the U.S. which is the aggressor as it keeps holding military drills - some with such ominous names as "Operation Decapitation" - and imposing sanctions on what is already one of the most impoverished countries in the world. Truth is, sanctions are considered an act of war.

It is time for the U.S. to stop acting as if it is special - and being allowed to get away with it - and live with the rest of the international community as part of the community, and not as an overlord. It is the U.S. which is the real rogue state!

There is simply no good reason why anybody should accept the ridiculous notion that the U.S. has a right not to be under threat from other countries, given that it threatens virtually all countries on the planet. Furthermore, there is nothing irrational about the behaviour of North Korea: They simply seek the survival of their nation, as do most right-thinking people (which obviously excludes most of the Western politicians and electorate at this point in time). I would hope that at least Catholics can agree that it is unjust to threaten a country with annihilation simply for seeking the means to preserve itself,...