Posted on 08/10/2012 5:28:42 PM PDT by stfassisi
Our Lady of Good Success Date: very early 17th c., first approved 1611 Place: Quito, Ecuador Visionary: Venerable Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres
The story of Our Lady of Good Success is a most fascinating one -- and incredibly important and timely, as many of the prophecies of our Lady and our Lord given to Mariana pertain explicitly to the 20th c. and thereafter.
Mother Mariana was a Spanish Conceptionist nun, blessed with the charismata of discernment and prophecy, who ran a convent in Quito, Ecuador. First, Our Lady told her to make a life-sized statue of her holding the Infant Jesus under the title "Our Lady of Good Success." The statue was begun by a local sculptor, but was miraculously completed in 1611 by the Archangels.
Our Lady told her that at the end of the 19th Century and especially in the 20th Century, Satan would reign almost completely by the means of the Masonic sect. She told Mother Mariana that this battle would reach its most acute stage because of various unfaithful religious, who, "under the appearance of virtue and bad-spirited zeal, would turn upon Religion, who nourished them at her breast."
"During this time, insomuch as this poor country will lack the Christian spirit, the Sacrament of Extreme Unction will be little esteemed. Many people will die without receiving it - either because of the negligence of their families or their false sentimentality that tries to protect the sick from seeing the gravity of their situations, or because they will rebel against the spirit of the Catholic Church, impelled by the malice of the devil. Thus many souls will be deprived of innumerable graces, consolations and the strength they need to make that great leap from time to eternity..."
"As for the Sacrament of Matrimony, which symbolizes the union of Christ with His Church, it will be attacked and profaned in the fullest sense of the word. Masonry, which will then be in power, will enact iniquitous laws with the objective of doing away with this Sacrament, making it easy for everyone to live in sin, encouraging the procreation of illegitimate children born without the blessing of the Church. The Christian spirit will rapidly decay, extinguishing the precious light of Faith until if reaches the point that there will be an almost total and general corruption of customs. The effects of secular education will increase, which will be one reason for the lack of priestly and religious vocations..."
"The Sacred Sacrament of Holy Orders will be ridiculed, oppressed and despised. ...The demon will try to persecute the Ministers of the Lord in every possible way and he will labor with cruel and subtle astuteness to deviate them from the spirit of their vocation, corrupting many of them. These corrupted priests, who will scandalize the Christian people, will incite the hatred of the bad Christians and the enemies of the Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church to fall upon all priests. This apparent triumph of Satan will bring enormous sufferings to the good Pastors of the Church...."
"Moreover, in these unhappy times, there will be unbridled luxury which, acting thus to snare the rest into sin, will conquer innumerable frivolous souls who will be lost. Innocence will almost no longer be found in children, nor modesty in women, and in this supreme moment of need of the Church, those who should speak will fall silent."
"But know, beloved daughter, that when your name is made known in the 20th century, there will be many who will not believe, claiming that this devotion is not pleasing to God...A simple humble faith in the truth of My apparitions to you, My predilect child, will be reserved for humble and fervent souls docile to the inspirations of grace, for Our Heavenly Father communicates His secrets to the simple of heart, and not to those whose hearts are inflated with pride, pretending to know what they do not, or self-satisfied with empty knowledge..."
Our Lady said, "...the secular Clergy will leave much to be desired because priests will become careless in their sacred duties. Lacking the divine compass, they will stray from the road traced by God for the priestly ministry, and they will become attached to wealth and riches, which they will unduly strive to obtain. How the Church will suffer during this dark night! Lacking a Prelate and Father to guide them with paternal love, gentleness, strength, wisdom and prudence, many priests will lose their spirit, placing their souls in great danger. This will mark the arrival of My hour."
"Therefore, clamor insistently without tiring and weep with bitter tears in the privacy of your heart, imploring our Celestial Father that, for love of the Eucharistic Heart of my Most Holy Son and His Precious Blood shed with such generosity and the profound bitterness and sufferings of His cruel Passion and Death, He might take pity on His ministers and bring to an end those Ominous times, sending to this Church the Prelate who will restore the spirit of its priests."
She predicted a truly Catholic president of Ecuador who would dedicate that country to the Sacred Heart and who would be assassinated by Masons (this happened during the presidency of Gabriel Garcia Moreno, 1821-1875. Read more here).
She predicted that the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility would be strictly defined and declared dogma (these happened in 1854 and 1870, respectively).
She predicted that a Pope would be a prisoner in the Vatican and that there would come to pass "the unjust usurpation of the Pontifical States through the iniquity, envy and avarice of an earthly monarch" (these things happened in the 19th c. during the pontificate of Blessed Pope Pius IX).
Another prediction yet to come concerns the statue shown above left. The Infant Jesus part of the statue isn't original: a Conceptionist sister hid the original statue during a revolution and died before revealing where she'd secreted it. Our Lady told Mother Mariana that the original statue would be found after the restoration of the Church had begun.
Mother Mariana predicted the day and exact hour of her death (she died at 3:00 P.M. on January 16, 1635). After death, her body remained flexible and lovely. A blind girl was cured at Mother's wake when a flower that encircled Mother's head was touched to her eyes.
In 1906, Mother Mariana's casket was opened and her body was found to be incorrupt, exuding the fragrance of lilies. One may view it by visiting the convent in Quito
>>I don’t believe you’re a Catholic in good standing with the church<<
I believe that with as many time as you replied to the same phrase here and on FReepmail, The Lord has spoken to you about your pride.
Praise be to Jesus Christ, now and forever.
Dear Sister, I sent you Fr mail with information on the topics that will help you understand the Church’s position on the topic that seems to be bothering you
Unfortunately, many of the Catholic nations founded are going down in flames simply because they abandoned the entirety of the Faith. A number of South American nations come to mind. Mexico comes to mind. You are either Catholic or else you are not. You either believe in the Faith or else you do not.
Political correctness driven by Puralism in favor of following the faith has weakened this world for sure
Dave Goodman wrote some good stuff in an old Seattle Catholic article
Though pluralism, because it is simply a public manifestation of indifferentism, necessarily promotes a lack of any substantial religion in those living under its regime, there will always be those who resist this tide and maintain a faith which contains actual tenets requiring real, active fulfilment. Whenever such fulfilment, however, requires the conversion of others, it is violating the sacred doctrine of pluralism and indifferentism that all religions are equal, at least as far as salvation is concerned, because it presumes that the beliefs of the converted were less worthy of salvation than those of the converter. Such substantive faiths must be kept out of the public square as much as possible, even if the government of the pluralist state still insists on permitting the free exercise of all religions within its borders. Thus great social pressure arises encouraging the subsumation of such active faiths into simple, internal affairs, the active elements completed removed. Even arguing on behalf of a position from the standpoint of religious faith is considered bad form and insulting to the beliefs of others.8 Thus arises the great compartmentalization of life which effectively banishes religion not only from any official role in the state, but also from any unofficial role which it might play through the beliefs of individuals who participate in the pluralist society. Irreligion has been enshrined as the official state "church," and the protestations of those few who continue to insist on an active, public faith are of no avail in the sea of pluralistic practical atheism.
No, you sent me many FReepmails showing your sin of Pride.
You want to push information when, if you bothered to read what I actually wrote instead of pushing your agenda, you would see that my problem with you is stating that George Washington and the fight for Independence is “of Satan”.
Understand that if you post to me again, my next reply will include pings to the Admins and the owner. I have been patient with you while you question my faith and called me a liberal in a forum where we are “not to get personal”. My patience is gone and I’m sure the owner won’t much like your assumptions that the Father of our country was “of Satan”.
I never said this and you're bearing false witness against me in alluding that I did say that.
It might be good for you to say the chaplet of Saint Michael daily.
I will not to post you again,as you wish
You:>>I have read the Washington denounced freemasonry later in his life, but anything masonic He did prior was of satan<<
Me: So winning the Revolutionary War was “of Satan”?
You: >>Winning in your eyes is not necessarily the will of God.<<
Me: So, answer the question. Was George Washington winning the Revolutionary war “of Satan”?
Are you saying that the United States of America becoming an Independent Nation was the work of Satan?
You:Is MTV, abortion,legal porn, which makes the US an Independent nation the work of satan? I say yes!
Pointing out the evils allowed means we condemn the evil,not the good things that are in place.
Nice try ,but you’re jumping to conclusions that was not said by me in your post 44
I choose my words carefully for a reason
Many thanks; it is largely due to my friends and antagonists on FR who simply do not permit mediocrity during discourse. Jim has created a singularly exceptional site.
Even arguing on behalf of a position from the standpoint of religious faith is considered bad form and insulting to the beliefs of others.8 Thus arises the great compartmentalization of life which effectively banishes religion not only from any official role in the state, but also from any unofficial role which it might play through the beliefs of individuals who participate in the pluralist society. Irreligion has been enshrined as the official state "church," and the protestations of those few who continue to insist on an active, public faith are of no avail in the sea of pluralistic practical atheism.
I would argue that it is not atheism, per se, but the substitution of self worship for the worship of God. I have spoken here and elsewhere many times about the 'god in the mirror'. That way lies such wondrous events as the Protestant Reformation, the American Restoration, and all the dandruff shed from their monstrous progeny: self-identified Christian ATMs created by the Joel Osteens, Robert Schullers, Benny Hinns, Peter Popoffs and so on.
Luther came to realize the errors of his ways with the confession of 'every milkmaid that can read can create a new religion'. And far too many do, subverted by the lure of being the boss. Why submit to a Pope when you can create your own continuous money-making machine accountable only to that damnable 'god in the mirror'.
Explain your own post #20.
netmilsmomAnd then we see:
“Are you saying that the United States of America becoming an Independent Nation was the work of Satan?”stfassisi
Is MTV , abortion,legal porn, which makes the US an Independent nation the work of satan?I say yes!
Religion Moderator asking stfassisi, "Explain your own post #20.
This is a fundamental Catholic question - when is armed revolution a moral good? Can a Masonic foundation be seen as a solid foundation?
“”Explain your own post #20””
Certainly
Legal abortion,legal pornography are the work of satan. and they are protected by the laws of this country. Therefore we have government protected laws that are satanic and these are not inalienable rights protected by God.
If inalienable rights protected by God was defined and concrete there would be no abortion and pornography protected by laws
If you want to know where I stand,the following article was written by Joe Sobran- I agree with he is saying that Nationalism is wrong and Patriotism explained in this fashion is correct
By Joe Sobran...
The nationalist has to prove his country is always r
ight. He reduces his country to an idea, a perfect abstraction, rather than a mere home. He may even find the patriot’s irreverent humor annoying.
Patriotism is relaxed. Nationalism is rigid. The patriot may loyally defend his country even when he knows it’s wrong; the nationalist has to insist that he defends his country not because it’s his, but because it’s right. As if he would have defended it even if he hadn’t been born to it! The nationalist talks as if he just “happens,” by sheer accident, to have been a native of the greatest country on earth — in contrast to, say, the pitiful Belgian or Brazilian.
Because the patriot and the nationalist often use the same words, they may not realize that they use those words in very different senses. The American patriot assumes that the nationalist loves this country with an affection like his own, failing to perceive that what the nationalist really loves is an abstraction — “national greatness,” or something like that. The American nationalist, on the other hand, is apt to be suspicious of the patriot, accusing him of insufficient zeal, or even “anti-Americanism.”
When it comes to war, the patriot realizes that the rest of the world can’t be turned into America, because his America is something specific and particular — the memories and traditions that can no more be transplanted than the mountains and the prairies. He seeks only contentment at home, and he is quick to compromise with an enemy. He wants his country to be just strong enough to defend itself.
But the nationalist, who identifies America with abstractions like freedom and democracy, may think it’s precisely America’s mission to spread those abstractions around the world — to impose them by force, if necessary. In his mind, those abstractions are universal ideals, and they can never be truly “safe” until they exist, unchallenged, everywhere; the world must be made “safe for democracy” by “a war to end all wars.” We still hear versions of these Wilsonian themes. Any country that refuses to Americanize is “anti-American” — or a “rogue nation.” For the nationalist, war is a welcome opportunity to change the world. This is a recipe for endless war.
In a time of war hysteria, the outraged patriot, feeling his country under attack, may succumb to the seductions of nationalism. This is the danger we face now.
The USA has done more to save the lives of Catholics and than any other country on Earth. Ask the Eastern European Catholics freed from Soviet rule, or the Chaldeans of Iraq and they will tell you that the USA is far from “of Satan”.
If those who hold the Catholic ping lists think this way, please remove me.
Thank you.
And how many dead babies?
“”Can a Masonic foundation be seen as a solid foundation?””
No. As Pope Leo XIII clearly states..”So also the studious endeavour of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race.”
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON FREEMASONRY
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18840420_humanum-genus_en.html
For as soon as the constitution and the spirit of the masonic sect were clearly discovered by manifest signs of its actions, by the investigation of its causes, by publication of its laws, and of its rites and commentaries, with the addition often of the personal testimony of those who were in the secret, this apostolic see denounced the sect of the Freemasons, and publicly declared its constitution, as contrary to law and right, to be pernicious no less to Christendom than to the State
Freemasons. No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruction of holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set purpose of utterly despoiling the nations of Christendom, if it were possible, of the blessings obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Lamenting these evils, We are constrained by the charity which urges Our heart to cry out often to God: “For lo, Thy enemies have made a noise; and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head. They have taken a malicious counsel against Thy people, and they have consulted against Thy saints. They have said, ‘come, and let us destroy them, so that they be not a nation.
For as soon as the constitution and the spirit of the masonic sect were clearly discovered by manifest signs of its actions, by the investigation of its causes, by publication of its laws, and of its rites and commentaries, with the addition often of the personal testimony of those who were in the secret, this apostolic see denounced the sect of the Freemasons, and publicly declared its constitution, as contrary to law and right, to be pernicious no less to Christiandom than to the State; and it forbade any one to enter the society, under the penalties which the Church is wont to inflict upon exceptionally guilty persons. The sectaries, indignant at this, thinking to elude or to weaken the force of these decrees, partly by contempt of them, and partly by calumny, accused the sovereign Pontiffs who had passed them either of exceeding the bounds of moderation in their decrees or of decreeing what was not just. This was the manner in which they endeavoured to elude the authority and the weight of the apostolic constitutions of Clement XII and Benedict XIV, as well as of Pius VII and Pius IX.(10) Yet, in the very society itself, there were to be found men who unwillingly acknowledged that the Roman Pontiffs had acted within their right, according to the Catholic doctrine and discipline.
. What, therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ. - So also the studious endeavour of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race.
Mark,
I believe the end result of state run pluralistic societies ends in a type of state run atheistic communism at some point because eventially no religion will be tolerated to achieve what the state calls political correctness.
...and Christians will be persecuted and killed just like the early church was because we will not conform to the state.
Come Lord Jesus. Come soon!
If you study the history of totalitarian regimes, you will find that they run the gamut of suppressing religion to encouraging it (albeit normally only a tame or controlled one). Regardless; the aim of power is power continued. A very good political study (disguised as comedy) is Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister filmed in the 80s in Britain. Completely and totally applicable to any political system including the US of A. Power is power and control is control. The episode in which the Prime Minister is to name a bishop in the Church of England is particularly illuminating.
...and Christians will be persecuted and killed just like the early church was because we will not conform to the state.
Some of us. Most will not. Let's face it; most people do not have the courage of their convictions in the face of discomfort. Deprive them of Wheel of Fortune, Bud Light and the local Chinese food buffet, and they will fold like a Prius in a 5 mph crash.
Come Lord Jesus. Come soon!
The Lord will come for each of us in His own time.
Agreed!... And good analogy!
The Lord will come for each of us in His own time.
Correct. We are not privy to know this time,even though many seem to have inside information to the exactness of this time to their folly.
Buried in a document of the Pontifical Council for Culture, dated March 13, 2004, is this surprising observation concerning the state of religious belief in the world: “[A] certain cultural hostility is being spread against religions, especially Christianity and Catholicism in particular, notably through the means of social communication, and is promoted by Masonic sources active in different organisations.”[i]
Just like that a Vatican pronouncement reminds us that the Church is still at war with Freemasonry. And we thought they had forgotten. This discovery can only be an embarrassment to those Catholic sophisticates who turn up their noses at what they view as an aberrantly traditionalist “preoccupation” with the role of Masonry in world affairs. Here we have a very recent document from the distinctively non-traditionalist Pontifical Council for Culture matter-of-factly remarking the existence of a worldwide campaign against the Church by “Masonic sources active in different organizations.” That sounds awfully like the sort of Masonic conspiracy the sophisticates belittle in their supposedly more nuanced understanding of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment history.
The Church versus the Masonic Sect
In their yen for historical nuances, however, the sophisticates always miss the big historical picture: Since the early 18th century the course of Western history has been determined largely by the outcome of a great conflict between the universal Church and the worldwide Masonic sect. As Pope Leo XIII observed in his monumental encyclical on the subject: “[T]he sect of Freemasons grew with a rapidity beyond conception in the course of a century and a half, until it came to be able, by means of fraud or of audacity, to gain such entrance into every rank of the State as to seem to be almost its ruling power. This swift and formidable advance has brought upon the Church, upon the power of princes, upon the public well-being, precisely that grievous harm which Our predecessors had long before foreseen.”[ii]
The Vatican’s own recognition, only two years ago, that the Masonic sect continues to exercise worldwide influence against the Church reminds us why not only Leo XIII but a long line of Popes were no less “preoccupied” with Freemasonry than present-day traditionalists: from Gregory XII, writing within only a few years of the creation of the first grand lodge in London in 1717, to Pope Pius XII, who declared in 1958 that the “. . . the roots of modern apostasy lay in scientific atheism, dialectical materialism, rationalism, illuminism, laicism, and Freemasonry—which is the mother of them all.”[iii]
As Fr. Stanley Jaki noted in his introduction to Barruel’s famous Memoirs on Freemasonry’s role in the French Revolution, it was a Freemason who admitted in a letter to a French Jesuit priest, Père Berteloot, that “one outsider alone has understood Freemasonry, namely, Leo XIII. His condemnation of Freemasonry is, of course, logical, necessary and justified from the Catholic viewpoint. The Sovereign Pontiff went to the very root of Freemasonry. He found it harmful, wants it extirpated, and he has good reasons for it.”[iv]
It was Pope Leo who elucidated the fundamentally religious opposition between the Church and “the sect of the Freemasons.” The goal of the Masonic sect, Leo wrote, was nothing less than “the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions.” The very root of Freemasonry was its design to supersede Christianity as the universal religion, with religious particularities, most especially Catholicism, put aside at the Lodge door. This would require the reduction of the Catholic Church to the status of one sect among many, with only the Freemasonic religion being capable of providing a unity that transcends the sects “in the bonds of friendship and charity… without regard to kindred, sect, tongue or nation.”[v]
Masonry claims for itself divine origins as the cult of the descendants of the builders of Solomon’s Temple. In his definitive work on American Masonry from 1730-1840, Steven C. Bullock notes that Masonry’s “Constitutions and rituals firmly placed Jewish biblical tradition at the heart of all Masonry…”[vi] (Those who say Freemasonry has nothing to do with Judaism know nothing of the history of the Craft.) Yet the religion promoted by the Freemasonic sect eschews divine revelation, whose content was cast into doubt by the Protestant rebellion and the rationalism of the “Enlightenment.” As the renowned historian Gordon S. Wood observed in his Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the American Revolution: “It would difficult to exaggerate the importance of Freemasonry for the American Revolution…. Freemasonry was a surrogate religion for an Enlightenment suspicious of traditional Christianity.”[vii]
The Freemasonic sect preaches a form of natural religion that aims to inculcate the civic virtues of brotherhood and tolerance deemed essential for life in the new order to be erected upon the ruins of Christendom. As Fr. Jaki has put it: “Christian religion, steeped in the supernatural, can for genuine Freemasons be but a stepping stone to their religion, which consists in a resolute step away from the supernatural to the level of mere nature.” In a word, Masonry is the religion of pluralism.
Christ’s divinely revealed commission to baptize and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all things He has commanded, is a heresy in the Masonic system. For the Mason, the only god to whom all nations must be converted is Liberty. Before Liberty every knee must bend. Christ Himself must bend His knee to Liberty, respecting the autonomy of the newly created Masonic realm of secular politics.
And what is Liberty? In Propaganda and the American Revolution, historian Philip Davidson provided this amusing description of what the new idol meant to the American colonials:
What did liberty mean? Who can tell? To one it may have meant simply freedom from English restrictions, perhaps nothing more than freedom from the Stamp Act; to another it may have meant complete freedom from England; to still a third it may have meant internal freedom from local oppressors. It may have meant political, economic, religious freedom—free government, free land, free trade, free religion, free liquor, free anything the people want. It meant just as much or as little as ‘Liberty, Fraternity, Equality’ in another revolution… The power of the word was its vagueness. Who would not choose Liberty to Slavery? Some there might have been who would not fight for the merchants, or for the political bosses, some there might even be who would not fight for the preachers, but it was a craven spirit who would not fight for Liberty.[viii]
However imperfectly Liberty was understood by the common man in revolutionary America, in the minds of those who wielded Liberty as a philosophical concept its meaning was crystal clear: freedom from any external authority not subject to the “sovereign will of the people”—which is to say, the overthrow of the Catholic social order of altar and throne, the dreaded memory of which was invoked to stoke the passions of the colonial masses. A typical example of this propaganda is a sermon by one Reverend Holly in defense of resistance to British taxation and other violations of “Liberty.” If the colonists were to submit to British tyranny, Holly warned, it would only be a matter of time before their consciences would be
bound by Popish chains, which, when thoroughly fastened upon us, away must go our Bibles, and in lieu thereof we must have imposed upon us, the superstitions and damnable heresies and idolatries of the church of Rome. Then we must pray to the Virgin Mary, worship images, believe their doctrine of purgatory, and the Pope’s infallibility, and such like. And last of all, the deepest plot of hell and Rome, the holy inquisition, must guard the Catholic faith of the church of Rome, and bind us thereto with all its terrors and cruelty.[ix]
When all is said and done, Liberty has always meant emancipation from the claims of the Catholic Church on men and nations, or what Pierre Manent has called “the Church’s complete subordination to the body politic.”[x] Hence the incessant propaganda of colonial pamphleteers against “Popery” had the same object as the outright genocide of the Catholic hierarchy by the Jacobins of France: the suppression of what Pope Leo called “the power of that divine religion which the Freemasons hate in proportion to their fear of it.” The Masonic mind’s hatred and fear of Christ and His Church was summed up in Voltaire’s famous epithet “ecrasons l'infame!” (“let us crush the infamous one”). The Lodge of Nine Muses inducted Voltaire into the Craft in 1778. In attendance was his American Masonic brother, Benjamin Franklin. Masonic hands across the sea of revolution.
With the Church’s subordination to the body politic came the rise of the absolute monarchs, and then, with the revolutions in America and France, the absolute nation-states wherein, as Pope Leo observed, Masons wielded the levers of power. The absolute nation-state that arose in America almost immediately after the Revolution, for the sake of which 600,000 Americans would be slaughtered in the Civil War, was largely a Masonic affair. Prof. Davidson notes that “Fifty two of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons, as were many of the lesser politicians.”[xi] Indeed, the Capitol building was ritually consecrated as the Masonic equivalent of St. Peter’s Basilica. Prof. Bullock describes the ceremony thus: “If, as Thomas Jefferson argued, the Capitol represented ‘the first temple dedicated to the sovereignty of the people,’ then the [Masonic] brothers of the 1793 ceremony served as its first high priests. Clothed in ritual vestments, Washington and his brothers consecrated the building by the literal baptism of corn, oil and wine—symbols of nourishment, refreshment and joy, or, as some versions interpreted them, Masonry, science and virtue, and universal benevolence.”[xii]
In place of the true religion as the moral matrix of political society and the true God as the ultimate source of political authority, the Masonic enterprise helped to erect neo-pagan republics—first and foremost America—whose citizens were to be inculcated in the new civic religion of brotherhood and tolerance. The pursuit of religious particularities, most especially Catholicism, was to be confined strictly to the sphere of private activity. The governments of these neo-pagan states, for the first time in the history of the West, would publicly profess no religion whatever.
In condemning the Freemasonic sect, Pope Leo remarked the supreme irony that the ancient pagans themselves would never even have contemplated such an arrangement: “To have in public matters no care for religion, and in the arrangement and administration of civil affairs to have no more regard for God than if He did not exist, is a rashness unknown to the very pagans; for in their heart and soul the notion of a divinity and the need of public religion were so firmly fixed that they would have thought it easier to have a city without foundation than a city without God.”[xiii]
Cities without God are precisely a Masonic conception, as Leo rightly discerned. But they are not cities without a god. Their god is Liberty. It is Liberty that the Freemasonic sect has successfully enshrined as the summum bonum of Western political life.
The Catholic sophisticates will tut-tut that the age of active Masonic conspiracies is long since past. Putting aside the Vatican’s own recent recognition that this is not so, it hardly matters whether the claim has merit. Members of the Brotherhood still have their hands on the levers of power at every level of government. But, far more important, practically speaking we are all Masons now, having been forcibly converted to the fundamental Masonic dogma by the power of the State.
Even Roman Catholic traditionalists generally practice a high degree of external conformity to the dogma for fear of persecution or merely appearing foolish, while less militant Catholics positively praise the pluralism that renders impossible the moral and spiritual rejuvenation of the West. And, as even a liberalized Vatican apparatus has noticed, the Freemasonic sect is always there, promoting its anti-Gospel throughout the world lest there be any backsliding by the converted.
How It Will All End
Yet the very hopelessness of our plight as captives of the Masonic worldview signals the approach of divine intervention. In 1611 Our Lady appeared at Quito, Ecuador to Venerable Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres under the title Our Lady of Good Success, an apparition approved as authentic by successive bishops of the Diocese of Quito. Our Lady appeared some 250 years before Ecuador’s martyr-president, Garcia Moreno, was assassinated by the Masons on account of his successful restoration of Catholic social order in that country. In her message to Mother Mariana, Our Lady said of Moreno: “In the 19th Century there will be a truly Catholic president, a man of character whom God Our Lord will give the palm of martyrdom on the square adjoining this Convent. He will consecrate the Republic to the Sacred Heart of My Most Holy Son, and this consecration will sustain the Catholic Religion in the years that will follow, which will be ill-fated ones for the Church. These years, during which the evil sect of Masonry will take control of the civil government, will see a cruel persecution of all religious communities, and they will also strike out violently against this one of mine.”
The Message of Quito further predicts the 20th century apostasy in the Church and “a total corruption of customs [morals], for Satan will reign almost completely by means of the Masonic sects.” The parallel between Our Lady’s words and Pope Leo’s description of Masonry as a sect cannot be overlooked.
But the Message of Quito, like the Message of Fatima, concludes with the promise of a Marian triumph. When things seem most hopeless, said Our Lady of Good Success, “My hour will arrive… I, in an amazing manner, will overthrow proud Satan, crushing him under my feet, chaining him in the infernal abyss, leaving the Church and the land free of this cruel tyranny.”
Thus has Our Lady herself twice assured us that before God closes the universe like a book (Isaiah 34:4) there must first come a time when Catholics will be free once again to build a Catholic town, and there will be neither a Howard Simon to sue them nor a court to hear the case. It is this second American Revolution—the divine one—that will secure the blessings of true liberty to ourselves, should we live to see it, and to our posterity.
[i] “CONCLUDING DOCUMENT OF THE PLENARY ASSEMBLY: Where is Your God? Responding to the Challenge of Unbelief and Religious Indifference Today,” March 13, 2004, n. 3.2.
[ii] Humanum Genus (1884), n. 7.
[iii] Pius XII, Address to the Seventh Week Pastoral Adaptation Conference in Italy (1958).
[iv]A. Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (American Council on Economics and Society: Fraser, MI, 1958), p. xxxvi.
[v] De Witt Clinton, “Address Before the American Bible Society” (1823), cited in Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), p. 165.
[vi] Bullock, op. cit. p. 11.
[vii] Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 223.
[viii] Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), p. 137-138.
[ix] Davidson, op. cit., p.
[x] Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 8.
[xi] Davidson, op. cit., p. 101.
[xii] Bullock, op. cit., p. 137.
[xiii] Humanum Genus, n. 24.
Excellent post, stfassisi. I always like Mr. Ferrara’s work, though. But pertinent and appropriate here.
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