Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X shows: The links among the revolt of Luther, the Bolshevik Revolution and the miracle of Fatima: Liberal laxity and state communism/socialism. The great anti-Christian persecutions carried out by the Communists had been announced by Our Lady at Fatima and she gives us the supernatural remedy to these evils.

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

During the month of October 2017, three anniversaries were observed which determined the course of human history and Church history: Luther’s rebellion, the Bolshevik Revolution and the miracle of Fatima.

Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther began his rebellion against the Catholic Church. One hundred years ago, on November 7, the revolution broke out in Russia. In keeping with the Julian Calendar, it acquired the name of the “October Revolution”.

One hundred years ago, a few days earlier, on October 13, the Immaculate Heart sealed with a spectacular miracle her message announcing great future events of the Church and of the world, some of which now belong to the past, like World War II, while others have not yet taken place, like the triumph of the Immaculate Heart and the conversion of Russia.

The reformation launched by Luther appears at first glance to have been a religious event. And certainly the German heresiarch disrupted the Catholic Church to its foundations, attacking the papacy, Holy Mass, the priesthood, and the Holy Eucharist.... The Faith and the means given by God to mankind to obtain eternal salvation for them were rejected or profoundly falsified.

Yet given the undeniable connections between the supernatural order of the Church and grace, on the one hand, and the temporal order of human governments and civil society, on the other hand, very quickly the rebellion against the Church extended to human society, dividing Europe to this day, inaugurating centuries of persecution against the Church in the Reformed countries, and leaving all over Europe the marks of terrible wars, the most painful of which was the Thirty Years War. Truly we are totally baffled when we see Catholic prelates today commemorating and even celebrating this event, which was so sad and so terrible for Christendom.

Luther’s rebellion was based on a principle that is so to speak the foundation of modern thought and governs all of contemporary society, whether it claims to be liberal or socialist-communist. This principle aims to liberate men from their dependence on God and the order established by Him, both on the natural and the on the supernatural level.

However, in the depths of man’s nature there is the ontological reality of total dependence upon his Creator — total because there is no sphere in which a human being could escape from it. The very notion of creation clearly indicates this. And for the creature’s part, this objective dependence immediately gives rise to the duty of an equally absolute submission to his Creator, who is God. This submission extends to much more than what appears to men to be its most common expression: obedience to God’s commandments, moral obedience. It extends also to the order of the intellect, to our knowledge. This is the submission of our reason to reality that imposes itself on us, in such a way that the exact definition of truth is “the adherence of the intellect to reality”, to objective reality. The same path is followed in the domain of faith, although the reason for this submission is different in that case. Whereas our natural reason submits to the light of the evidence, supernatural faith submits to the authority of God, the Truth who reveals Himself without deceiving us or being deceived, as we say in the Act of Faith.

Luther, through the principle of “private interpretation” or “free thinking” [liberum examen], destroyed that submission. Ever since then, the slogan resounding throughout the world has been the cry: “liberty”: actually, rebellion against God and the order of things willed by God. This modern liberty flatters the soul, which ever since original sin has been fallen. It is the temptation of the present age; it is an illusion. It is a fanciful dream, the one that inspired the sin of the archangel Lucifer and of all sins after it. This so-called liberation ends very badly, and ultimately it does not have very much to do with true freedom. For if man was created free, it was not so that he can rebel against God, his final end, his supreme good, but rather so that he can choose by himself the means that will lead him to God; thus merit is involved in the process of obtaining the eternal happiness that Almighty God wants to share with His creatures.

How few men and women there are today, immersed as they are in this liberal atmosphere, who understand these truths, which are nonetheless fundamental!

The unmistakable excesses of liberalism taken to its logical conclusion, whether it be anarchy or the tyranny of a materialist government, just like the excesses of socialism and Communism, which in their horrible fanaticism left tragic scars on the twentieth century with at least two hundred fifty million dead, do not seem to make our contemporaries reflect.

The Russian Revolution started with this rebellion against the yoke of the temporal power, but its origin was not Russian. It was found in Western Europe. Karl Marx was German; Russia would be the testing ground of the principles elaborated by the German Marx, with the financial support of Western business interests, according to some historians. Nevertheless, the Revolution would very quickly attack religion. And Communism would always see in the Catholic Church more than in any other a sworn enemy to destroy, if at all possible. From Communism came the greatest of all persecutions against the Church, which still continues today in China, North Korea, and Vietnam.

All this was foretold in Fatima, where Our Lady asked the religious authorities and every Christian to perform very simple acts in order to ward off these evils that threatened to swoop down on the earth: devotion to her Immaculate Heart, the Five First Saturdays of the month in reparation to the outrages committed against the Mother of God, and the consecration of Russia.

There is a striking disproportion between the means proposed by Heaven to remedy the ills of humanity and the tragic destiny of the nations at this moment in the history of humanity. But Almighty God, who is infinitely above all human turmoil, has no need of human means. For Him, one word suffices to create the universe, to regenerate it, to save it. But that will happen only through human beings who have finally acknowledged His sovereignty. “The war will end, but if men do not stop offending God, an even worse one will begin during the reign of Pius XI.” “If people heed my requests, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, starting wars and persecutions against the Church.” The peace of the world — and of the Church — is bound up with the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. According to an unquestionable testimony that was reported to me personally, Sister Lucia, shortly before her death, told a priest that “the consecration of Russia WILL BE MADE, but it will be very difficult.”

The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will come, we have no doubt about that, but at the moment the battle is raging, and this time even within the Church. The pillars of our faith that seemed unshakable tremble on their foundations; some bishops and some cardinals go farther than their new schoolmaster, Luther, and celebrate the anniversary of his rebellion this year. There are very few who defend revealed truth. The voice on which everything depends in the Church on earth is resolutely silent. It is allowing the darkness of doctrinal and moral confusion to invade the City of God.

On December 7, 1968, only three years after the conclusion of the Council, Paul VI had to admit: “The Church is going through a time of uncertainty, self-criticism, one could even say self-destruction.” On June 29, 1972, he remarked that “through some crack the smoke of Satan [had] entered the Church: doubt, uncertainty, problems, worry, confrontation.” Today it is no longer a wisp of smoke, it is the thick, billowing smoke of a volcanic eruption. St. Pius X had already declared: “When all this is considered there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils which are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the ‘Son of Perdition’ of whom the Apostle speaks (2 Thessalonians 2:3).” (From the Encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus dated October 4, 1903). What can be said, one hundred years later, at the sight of the Church disintegrating bit by bit? Our blood is chilled when we hear that same voice say, during the press conference on the airplane returning from Armenia on June 26, 2016, that Luther had not erred on the subject of justification: “I think that Martin Luther’s intentions were not wrong: he was a reformer....And today, Lutherans and Catholics, with all the Protestants, we agree about the doctrine of justification: on this very important point he (Luther) had not been mistaken.”

Thus, we have no other plans for the Society of St. Pius X, for you, dear faithful, except to continue what Holy Church has always done, whatever may happen. The way of truth which has made saints in every age will always remain the sure path to Heaven, the path of the Gospels, in imitation of Our Lord and Our Lady. We use the means shown to us by Heaven, with the certainty that we cannot do any better. Our Rosary Crusade officially ended on August 22 of this year; nevertheless we beg and ask you insistently to keep up the good habits that you have formed: praying the Rosary, those little sacrifices which are so pleasing to God and which have the power to save souls for eternity, provided that we put into them a seed of love for Our Dear Lord!

At the end of this year in which we celebrate the centenary of the apparitions in Fatima, let us remember the lessons and the requests of Mary, the ever-Virgin Mother of God. According to her own words, her Heart will be our refuge and the path that leads to God. We live by this hope, without becoming discouraged by the terrible events that surround us, well aware that all of us can and must do much good for our contemporaries by faithfully preserving the treasures of Tradition.

Accept our heartfelt thanks for your untiring generosity. May God reward you with His graces and bless you, while you await the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Menzingen, November 21, 2017, on the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

+ Bernard Fellay, Superior General

Luther's private judgment denies the need for supernatural authority and makes unity in the truth impossible. This principle amounts to denying the need for a supernatural, infallible authority that can impose itself on particular judgments. Thus stated, what Protestant would feel the need to convert? Furthermore, this new attitude causes the loss of faith in countless Catholics.

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther rebelled against the Church, taking a good third of Europe along with him. It was probably the most significant loss that the Catholic Church has had to suffer during her entire history, after the Eastern Schism of 1054. He thus deprived millions of souls of the necessary means of salvation, separating them not just from one religious organization among others, but actually from the one Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, denying its supernatural reality and the necessity of it for salvation. He completely distorted the Faith, rejecting its fundamental dogmas, which are the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the priesthood, the papacy, grace, and justification.

At the foundation of his thinking, which even today is that of Protestantism as a whole, is private judgment. This principle amounts to denying the need for a supernatural, infallible authority that can impose itself on particular judgments and decide debates between those whom she is commissioned to guide along the path to Heaven. This principle, which is claimed explicitly, quite simply renders the act of supernatural faith impossible, since the latter is based on the submission of the intellect and the will to the Truth revealed by God and taught authoritatively by the Church.

Private judgment, set up as a principle, not only cuts off access to the supernatural faith which is the way of salvation (“He that believeth not shall be condemned,” Mk 16:16), but also makes unity in the Truth impossible. He thus established in principle for Protestants the impossibility of eternal salvation and of unity in the Truth. And in fact the number of Protestant sects has not stopped increasing since the 16th century.

In the face of such a distressing spectacle, who would not understand the maternal efforts made by the true Church of Christ to look for the lost sheep? Who would not welcome the many apostolic attempts to liberate so many souls locked up in that fallacious principle that forbids them access to eternal salvation? This concern for their return to the unity of the true Faith and of the true Church runs through the centuries. It is not at all new; consider the prayer recited on Good Friday:

Let us pray for heretics and schismatics, that our Lord God may deliver them from all errors and may deign to bring them back to our Holy Mother, the Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Almighty and ever-living God, who savest all and dost not wish that any one should perish, look at the souls deceived by the diabolical fraud, so that the hearts of those who err, having set aside all heretical perversity, might repent and return to the unity of Thy truth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This traditional language leaves no room for the confusion that is so widespread today in the name of a false ecumenism. The warnings of the Congregation of the Sacred Office in 1949, following several papal documents, the most important of which is certainly the Encyclical by Pius XI, Mortalium Animos (1928), these fair warnings seem now to be a dead letter. Nevertheless, the dangers of this ecumenical irenicism, which was denounced by Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950), are immense and extremely serious, because it discourages conversions to Catholicism. What Protestant, seeing the “riches” and the “venerable traditions” of Luther’s Reform being praised, would feel the need to convert? Besides, the very word “conversion” is currently banished from the official Catholic vocabulary when it is a question of other Christian denominations.

Furthermore this new attitude, made up of praises for Protestantism and apologies for Catholicism, causes the loss of faith in countless Catholics — this is an observable fact. Every survey inquiring about the faith of Catholics shows the ravages resulting from this frightening alignment with Protestantism. How many Catholics are affected in the 21st century by what the Church condemned, until the Council, by the name of indifferentism? A fatal error that claims that the whole world is saved, whatever one’s religion may be. An error diametrically opposed to the teaching of Our Lord Himself and of the whole Church after Him. Nevertheless, if someone denounces this error against the two-thousand-year-old Catholic Faith, he is immediately branded as a fanatic or a dangerous extremist.

The new liturgy, too, was invented in the name of this new ecumenism. It has so many parallels with the Protestant Lord’s Supper that several Protestant theologians, for example, Max Thurian in Taizé, have been able to state that it is possible for their co-religionists to use the new Catholic missal. And during this time the children of the Catholic Church found themselves deprived of the most beautiful treasures of divine worship and of grace. Thank God, Benedict XVI courageously declared that the many-centuries-old liturgy had never been abolished, but — for more than 40 years, throughout the world — the postconciliar liturgical reform drove millions of the faithful from the churches, because they no longer found what they expected of the Catholic Church.

How can anyone be surprised, then, that this ecumenism, which is supposed to promote the unity of Christians, makes but little progress?

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, from the Council on, denounced this new way of dealing with the Protestants that took shelter under the name of ecumenism. In fact, this very elastic term expresses a general manner of seeing and doing that was introduced into the Church at the time of Vatican II. We are talking about an ostentatious benevolence toward all human beings, a determination to no longer condemn error, a search all over the map for “what unites us” rather than what separates us.... And what ought to have been only the first step in a journey toward unity, within the framework of a captatio benevolentiae [a rhetorical gesture to win good will], rapidly turned into a pursuit for its own sake that became an end in itself; an unending quest for an undefined truth. It then strayed from its objective purpose: the return to the Church of those who have lost unity with her. Thus the meaning of the word ecumenism was changed, the concept of unity was modified, and the means of arriving at it were falsified.

In the past, the Church knew that she is the only true Church and proclaimed it loud and strong, but this traditional clarity has been replaced by a new, uncertain doctrine — a mixture of apologetic self-denigration and post-modern relativism (for example, “we do not possess the whole truth”), which currently leads a majority of Catholics to reject the statement that there is only one way of salvation, and that we have it from Jesus Christ Himself that “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but through me” (Jn 14:6).

The dogma “Outside the Church there is no salvation” has been changed surreptitiously by confused ideas, to the point of altering the statement that the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church are identical. Cardinal Walter Kasper, then-President of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity, saw the new definition of the Church (subsistit in; “subsists in”) as the thing that quite simply made possible the ecumenism that has been promoted since the Council. Coming from a figure like that, this is a fitting admission that should be taken seriously!

That, in a few words, is why we cannot celebrate joyfully the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Quite the contrary, we lament this cruel division. Following Our Lord, we pray and work so that the lost sheep might find again the path that will lead them safely to salvation, the path of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

We pray also that this illusory irenicism will soon be abandoned and that in its place a true movement of conversion may be reborn, like the one that existed before the Council, particularly in English-speaking countries.

Finally, during this centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady to the three shepherd children of Fatima, we pray also that the requests of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary may be heard. She promised the conversion of Russia, when the Supreme Pontiff will be so kind as to consecrate this country explicitly to her Immaculate Heart. Let us redouble our prayers and sacrifices, so that the promise of the Mother of God may become a reality, without delay.

With her Divine Son, cum prole pia, may she deign to bless you during this Easter season and lead us all to eternal happiness.

Easter Sunday 2017

+ Bernard Fellay

The history of the 20th and 21st centuries is profoundly dependent on the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. To prepare for the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, we will launch a new Rosary crusade, the prayer that the Immaculate Heart of Mary requested so urgently. We therefore continue to earnestly await the triumph of the Immaculate Heart when Russia will be consecrated and all holy requests of the Blessed Virgin Mary are fulfilled.

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

In 1917, Our Lady deigned to visit the earth. She entrusted to the three visionaries of Fatima a message composed of several parts, some of which are classified under the name of “secret” so that the “message” and the “secret” of Fatima have become almost synonymous. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between them. The message was communicated immediately. The parts belonging to the secret were supposed to be divulged later, at various dates, the latest being 1960. The secrets concern major events in the Church and in the world, in relation to the way in which mankind behaves toward God. They deal with wars, the disappearance of entire nations, serious errors spreading over all the continents, the consecration of Russia by the pope and the bishops, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, and a time of peace.

Establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary worldwide

One year before the celebration of the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, which have been recognized by the Church as authentic, allow me to reiterate the importance of this event and this message, which remind us of a number of fundamental truths of the faith and show us God’s real intervention in human history.

1. The essence of the message is found in these words of the Blessed Virgin to Sister Lucy on June 13, 1917: “Jesus wants to use you to make Me known and loved. He wants to establish the Devotion to My Immaculate Heart in the world. I promise salvation to those who embrace it and their souls will be loved by God as flowers placed by Myself to adorn His Throne.”

When we reflect on the Fatima message as a whole, with its secret, while considering the influence that it has had and still has in the history of the Church and of the world, it becomes obvious that everything revolves around a divine intervention: “He (Jesus) wants to establish Devotion to My Immaculate Heart in the world.” Later, when Sister Lucy asked the Sacred Heart why He wants the consecration of Russia, Our Lord replied: “Because I want My whole Church to recognize this consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so as then to spread devotion to Her and to place devotion to the Immaculate Heart alongside devotion to My Sacred Heart” (Spring 1936).

2. The second fundamental truth that emerges from the Fatima message is, of course, the real intervention of Almighty God in human history, both of individuals and of nations. This is an obvious truth for us, but today it is widely under attack in an atheistic, liberal, or socialist-communist world — a Masonic world that claims to carry out its activities and accomplish its plans without any regard for the Creator and Savior, God, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, many Church leaders, too, are steeped in this idea that the world, nation states, and civil governments have no accounting to render to Christ to King, the King of Nations. Many elements of the Fatima message show us exactly the opposite. Here are three of them:

1. The Most Blessed Virgin explains to the children of Fatima that God has placed the peace of nations in the hands of Mary. Whether they enjoy peace or suffer from war depends in the first place upon Our Lady, by an explicit arrangement of Divine Providence.
2. Responding to the Blessed Virgin’s request for consecration to her Immaculate Heart, the bishops of Portugal obeyed, but Spain ignored this request. Sister Lucy herself explains that the misfortunes that afflicted Spain afterward (which Portugal escaped) were consequences of the Spanish bishops’ failure to make this consecration.
3. After the announcement that if the world did not convert there would be another, more terrible war, World War II took place. If we consider carefully the most important dates of that war, we must note that they correspond to feasts of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. In particular May 8, the Feast of Mary Mediatrix — formerly the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel — was the date of the German surrender; and August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, was the date when the Emperor of Japan accepted the defeat of his country.

God’s real intervention in human history

3. “God is not mocked” (Gal 6:7). Here, according to the testimony of Sister Lucy, are the words of Our Lord Himself, two years after Our Lady came to tell her, in 1929, that the time for the consecration of Russia had arrived — a request that was left unheeded: “Make it known to My ministers, given that they follow the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My command [to consecrate Russia], they will follow him into misfortune” (August 1931). These words recall the request made by the Sacred Heart to Louis XIV in 1689, which the King of France disdained to carry out. One hundred years later, the French Revolution broke out, which resulted in the ruin of King Louis XVI and his decapitation. The threats made by Our Lord to His ministers are terrible, therefore . . . they will follow the King of France into misfortune. The current persecutions of many, many Christians, the attacks against consecrated persons, give us reason to think that unfortunately the priests and the bishops, the ministers of Our Lord, have not yet drunk this chalice of misfortune to the dregs.

All this shows the importance that Our Lord Himself gives to Fatima and to its message about devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

We can conclude that the history of the 20th and 21st centuries is profoundly dependent on this divine intention: devotion to the Immaculate Heart, and on the gross negligence of the world and of many Church leaders in carrying out this intention, which however was manifested with such great clarity and accompanied by truly extraordinary miracles.

Based on Our Lady’s words themselves, we must conclude also that God’s plans will lead to the crowning glory of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary when Russia is consecrated by the Holy Father, united by the bishops from all over the world. With this triumph, a time of peace is promised to the world and to the Church.

So far the many attempts to make the consecration have not obtained the effects promised by Mary. And despite an undeniable religious renewal of Orthodox Russia in recent years, we see today neither its consecration nor any increase of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the world. Quite the contrary.

A year to prepare for the centenary of Fatima

To prepare properly for the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, we have decided to launch a new Rosary crusade, the prayer that the Immaculate Heart of Mary requested so urgently.

In order to correspond as closely as possible to the divine intentions, and given Our Lady’s insistence on the need to make reparation for sins, we will set our hearts on combining our rosaries with many sacrifices. We do hope to be able to offer a crown of twelve million rosaries and fifty million sacrifices. With all our heart we want to work to spread devotion to the Immaculate Heart, particularly during this time of prayer and penance. This is the primary intention of our crusade, to which we join also the filial request for the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart and for the consecration of Russia according to the directions of Our Lady. And finally, in the troubled times that we are going through, both in the world and in the Church, we ask our heavenly Mother for special protection for the Society of Saint Pius X, all its works, and all its affiliated religious communities.

We invite you all, for love of the Mother of God, of Her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, to multiply these acts, which we ourselves will do, to practice this devotion more intensely and to spread it. Thus we recommend that, after diligent preparation, you consecrate your homes and your works to the Immaculate Heart, and practice the devotion of the Five First Saturdays of the month, and personally wear the scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and spread the Miraculous Medal given by the Blessed Virgin on rue du Bac in Paris — a medal which, on the reverse, shows the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

May we thus offer our small contribution to Heaven’s requests, receive divine protection, and above all obtain in due time the fulfillment of the most beautiful of all promises: our salvation, the salvation of sinners.

May Our Lady deign to bless you with the Child Jesus, as a beautiful, pious prayer from the Breviary says: “Nos cum prole pia benedicat Virgo Maria.”

On the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, July 16, 2016

+ Bernard Fellay