Orthodox believers will remain unfazed by this, and one
may also assume that many followers of the
disintegrating Roman Catholic church will be equally
unimpressed, but nevertheless a recent Vatican
announcement about “consecrating” Russia and Ukraine on
March 25 (while some derision is allowed) should not be
taken lightly.
To be precise, it may and should be taken lightly only
in the religious sense, but it ought to be treated with
all due seriousness and respect where it counts for the
Vatican, politically. Coming in close coordination with
the initiation of the brutal campaign to annihilate
Russia politically, morally, and economically,
Bergoglio’s move, while dressed up in religious garb,
is a secular power play and geopolitics, pure and
simple.
The consecration is inextricably bound up with an
alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary to shepherds in
Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, essentially replicated,
following a similar pattern, many decades later, in
Medjugorje, Bosnia. This is not the place to analyse
the Fatima event in great detail. It suffices to say
that it was extremely controversial from the start.
The thrust of the Fatima “vision” was that the
subsequent fate of the world mystically depended on the
“consecration of Russia” to the heart of Virgin Mary,
because otherwise “Russia’s errors” would spread
throughout the world. At the time that the request for
Russia’s consecration was allegedly made from on high,
the Bolshevik revolution was in its initial stages and
the reference to “errors” which its victory might
propagate globally made some sense, not just to Roman
Catholics, but to people of other backgrounds as well.
The time frame and context in which the consecration
request was originally made (1917) for the purpose of
impeding the spread of “Russia’s errors” is extremely
important for assessing the true nature and the
probable motives behind Bergoglio’s current initiative
to finally bring it about, and in this particular
geopolitical situation.
The Bolshevik revolution succeeded in putting Russia
under Communist and atheist control, and the
simultaneous formation of the Communist International,
precisely for the purpose of spreading the errors that
concerned the Blessed Virgin, obviously should have
created a clear and present threat that ought
immediately to have triggered the requested
consecration, assuming that the Vatican seriously
believed in the authenticity of Fatima narrative.
Instead, the Vatican was engaged during most of the
1920s in pursuing an accommodation with the very Soviet
regime that the heavenly mediatrix was warning against.
It was offering it its implicit acquiescence in return
for a free hand to annex the battered remnant of the
persecuted Russian Orthodox Church and to freely
propagate Roman Catholic dogma to the Russian masses.
The accommodation ultimately fell through, and the
Vatican took up a militantly anti-communist and anti-
Soviet position. Various Popes subsequently did make
what appear to have been half-hearted and procedurally
defective attempts to fulfil the Fatima consecration
mandate, but in the end the consensus of most Roman
Catholic authorities was that they were improperly
executed (“botched,” deliberately or not) and therefore
were invalid and without effect by Roman Catholic
canonical standards.
In the wake of the “aggiornamento” and Vatican II, not
pushing the consecration too insistently made political
sense. While on one hand church conservatives had to be
kept at bay with some noises indicating openness to
carry out the Virgin’s mandate, practical political
considerations (always foremost in Vatican’s
calculations) favored building influence within the
Eastern bloc in order to more easily undermine it in
concert with the Western powers (the Reagan – John Paul
pact). Those considerations dictated that grossly
provocative gestures such as were allegedly demanded at
Fatima be temporarily shelved.
And so they were, except for some harmless PR games
that were played with reference to the content of the
“third secret” and speculation over the possible
substitution of Sister Lucia, one of the original
Fatima children, by another cloistered nun more
amendable to the current Vatican party line in the
post-Conciliar period.
Fast forward to 2022. Outwardly, it should have come as
a surprise that the until recently side-lined Fatima
matter suddenly became so urgent and central in the
mind of the holy father. Why the rush to fast-track a
ritual that for slightly over one hundred years has
lain on the Vatican’s back burner without any visible
prejudice to Russia, the Ukraine, or the rest of the
world?
It does not take a rocket scientist to answer that
question. There is no religious urgency whatsoever. The
overwhelming majority of Christians in Russia and the
Ukraine are Eastern Orthodox and Vatican, Roman
Catholic mumbo-jumbo is not even on their radar. It
does not concern or affect them in the least. A
legitimate side question, of course, is what gives the
Pope and the Vatican the right to “consecrate” millions
of souls who are not even affiliated with them? Would
it not be polite to at least ask for their consent? It
is probably late at this point to organize a
consecration referendum in the lucky candidate
countries because March 25 is too close, but the sheer
arrogance of designating subjects for religious ritual
without their consent is indeed stunning. And typical,
one is tempted to add.
There is just one coherent explanation for Bergoglio’s
rush to “consecrate.” It is the currently raging
Ukrainian crisis and the Vatican’s determination to
demonstrate urbi et orbi its political alignment with
the West’s general assault on Russia. It is a signal of
the Vatican’s determination that at last, over a
century later, the moment is finally ripe to openly
join the collective, political West in extirpating
“Russia’s errors,” and if possible annihilating Russia
itself.
A double irony is apparent in this charade which will
soon be perpetrated by a largely spent, but still
formidable, global political force masquerading as a
religious institution.
First, in 1917 “Russia’s errors” may have been a
genuine issue (in reality those were the false
doctrines of Russia’s new rulers, rather than the
beliefs of the Russian Orthodox people) and those
doctrines were indeed execrable not just from the
standpoint of traditional Roman Catholic teaching but
of all decent people everywhere. But those are errors
that contemporary Russia rejects completely, having
adopted instead many of the values that at the time the
Fatima Virgin allegedly spoke the Roman Catholic church
technically stood for but which it has since
opportunistically discarded. That fact alone gives the
lie to Bergoglio’s theatrical pretensions.
The other blatant irony is that it is the collective
West, with the Vatican as its spiritual centre, which
owes the world an accounting for the innumerable errors
that have become its dominant creed. If a ritual of
consecration is necessary to disperse the errors which
threaten the stability of the moral order, Bergoglio
would do better to reformat the event he has scheduled
for March 25. He should forget Russia and the Ukraine
and, if he must, make the collective West, including
the European Union and NATO, the object of his error
busting consecration.
The show set by the Vatican for March 25 is not a
religious exercise in any proper sense of that word. It
will be stage managed by the man who during his
relatively brief pontificate has hollowed out even the
vestiges of his church’s traditional teaching that he
found at the time of his investiture. Whether that man
even believes in God is not an unreasonable question.
He has far fewer divisions today than his predecessor
had at the time Stalin impishly popped his famous
question, but like a gambler who goes va banque he is
betting all his dwindling assets on the unconditional
victory of Russia’s enemies and symbolically
demonstrating his allegiance to them.
He is hoping for a piece of the action in the
ignominious world order that is being designed by the
ungodly coalition of which his fallen institution has
become an integral member. Unfortunately for him, he
may have overplayed his hand and met his match. Smart
money is betting that when rewards for service are set
to be distributed, and the Roman pontiff has even fewer
divisions than now under his command, he will be dumped
unceremoniously as over the centuries he himself had
dumped the Lord whose earthly vicar he insolently
claimed to be.
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