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By Stephen Shenfield

In 2002, the AGRAF publishing house, one of the main vehicles used by Alexander Dugin, a currently prominent Russian fascist ideologist] to spread his ideas, brought out a volume under the title Evrei i Evraziia (The Jews and Eurasia). The book is a collection of writings by Yakov Abramovich Bromberg (born 1898) and of articles on associated “Jewish” themes by Dugin and his associate Avigdor Eskin.

Bromberg was a member of the émigré Eurasianist movement of the 1920s and 1930s who strove to develop a specifically Jewish approach to Eurasianist ideology. The publication of his work is part of a sustained effort to make the writings of classical Eurasianist thinkers available to the contemporary Russian reader (see, in particular, Savitskii 1997). More specifically, it is part of an effort to strengthen ties between Dugin’s EURASIA movement and non-Christian confessions by making available works of Eurasianist thinkers of non-Russian and non-Christian background: in the same year AGRAF published a book by the “Buddhist Kalmyk Eurasianist” Erenzhen Khara-Davan (1883–1942) (Dugin 2002). At the same time, Dugin’s discovery of Bromberg evidently played a crucial role in the evolution of his position on the “Jewish question.”

I shall return to the matter of the relationship between Bromberg and Dugin toward the end of this paper. My main goal, however, is to understand Bromberg on his own terms, in the political and intellectual context of his own time. And, first of all, I would like to offer a few remarks on the general phenomenon of “non-Russian” Eurasianisms (using “Russian” in its narrow ethnic sense[1]).

“Non-Russian” Eurasianisms

Eurasianism is generally discussed in the context of ethnic-Russian nationalism. This is understandable enough: after all, its best known proponents were and are ethnic Russians. However, in view of the self-consciously multi-ethnic and multi-confessional content of Eurasianist ideas, the question naturally arises of the extent to which these ideas may appeal to other “Eurasian” peoples. And, in fact, Eurasianist ideas can readily be found among some, though far from all, of the non-Russian peoples of the post-Soviet region. For example, a variety of Eurasianism is an important component of the official ideology, both domestic and international, of the Nazarbayev regime in Kazakhstan. Even more pertinent to my theme is the Eurasianism espoused by “official” intellectuals in the “autonomous” Republic of Tatarstan (2) within the Russian Federation.

I have before me a booklet on Tatar history, published in Kazan in 1999. The author, Rafael Khakim, is a prominent figure in the republic–director of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan as well as a state counsellor on political questions to President Mintimer Shaimiyev (most sources identify him as “Khakimov”; the omission here of the last two letters is, of course, highly significant). Pointing out that many of “the indigenous peoples of Russia are more ancient than the Russians,” the author protests against the practice customary in Russian historiography of ignoring the states of those peoples and starting the history of the country with Muscovy or Kievan Rus. The first Russian state, he asserts, was actually the Turkic kaganate that arose in the middle of the sixth century in the Altai and gradually conquered much of present-day Russia. Several other non-Slavic Rossian states also deserve their rightful place in the history books. Khakim, naturally, focuses especially on two states that contemporary Tatars might claim as a heritage: the Kingdom of the Volga Bulgars (3), which existed on the territory of modern-day Tatarstan before it was invaded by the Mongol Golden Horde in 1223–36, and—paradoxically enough—that same Golden Horde by virtue of the post-conquest incorporation into it of Volga Bulgaria. Citing in support the Russian historian Mikhail Khudyakov and Russian Eurasianist Lev Gumilyov, the author characterizes Muscovy as the successor to the Golden Horde, which was “not a ‘wild horde’ but a highly developed civilized state” (Khakim 1999, pp. 2, 7, 9-13).

This example permits us to guess which non-Russian ethnic groups might be open to the appeal of Eurasianism. Such groups are likely to be those that on account of cultural ties and/or practical considerations seek not separation from Russia but its transformation into a multi-ethnic Russia within which they will enjoy autonomy and equal status. Such groups are also likely to be those with some grounds to identify themselves with one of the great states that at one time or another have dominated the “Eurasian heartland.”

As we have seen, the Tatars fit the bill, and so do the Kalmyks, who are of Mongol descent. And so do the Jews, for they can look back to another of the states listed by Khakim—the Kaganate of the Khazars, another semi-nomadic Turkic people of the steppes. At the height of their power in the seventh to tenth centuries, the Khazars ruled over a vast realm in what is now southern Ukraine, southern Russia, and the Northern Caucasus. The ruling caste adopted Judaism as the state religion in 740; although, in practice Khazaria always remained a multi-confessional as well as multi-ethnic polity. The capital city, Itil, consisted of four quarters: Jewish, Moslem, Christian, and pre-monotheistic (4). Khazaria qualifies in this respect as a microcosm of “Eurasia.” Moreover, like the Golden Horde, the Khazars left their cultural imprint on Muscovy despite wars between the two. Prior to the diffusion of Cyrillic, Hebrew script was used throughout Khazaria to transcribe Slavic speech, and three letters of the Cyrillic alphabet were modeled on Hebrew counterparts.

Bromberg’s biography

Unfortunately, I have been able to find very little biographical information about Bromberg. He was born in 1898, but I do not know when he died. (I suppose it is just conceivable that he is still alive.) From Budnitskii (2005, p. 95), we learn that he was called up for military service in 1916 and became a cadet at the Kiev Konstantinovsky College. He took part with his fellow cadets in fighting against the Bolsheviks in Kiev in November 1917, was taken prisoner, and was interrogated by a commissar’s council (5). Apparently, he was the only one among his Jewish friends who chose not to seek some way of avoiding military service, whether by studying medicine or by means of self-inflicted injury (Budnitskii 2005, pp. 167-8).(6)

From this we may infer with a fair degree of confidence that Bromberg came from a well-to-do family who shared the social and patriotic values of Russian high society and sought acceptance therein. Jews from this kind of background—there were not many of them—tended to support moderate reformist parties like the Octobrists and Constitutional Democrats (Cadets). In 1917–21 they faced a painful dilemma: as members of the upper classes they loathed the Bolsheviks and felt drawn to the Whites, while as Jews they were alienated by the Whites’ anti-Semitism. Despite the latter, some did conclude that the Whites were a “lesser evil” and resolved to lend them active support. Later, in emigration, a group of such Jews established a Patriotic Union of Russian Jews Abroad, based in Berlin, where they published what they intended to be the first in a series of collections of essays entitled Russia and the Jews [Rossiia i evrei] (Bikerman et al. 1923).(7).

Although Bromberg does not appear to have belonged to this group, he shared many of their attitudes. In The Jews and Eurasia, he criticizes the Whites, whose ideology he regards as superficial, but he “[does] not wish to throw dirt on its truly heroic tragism” merely on account of the “anti-Jewish excesses of its evil geniuses” (Bromberg 2002, p. 172). It is not clear to me exactly when he left Russia or joined the Eurasianist movement; his main works appeared in the Russian émigré press during the first half of the 1930s. At some point he left Europe for the United States and settled in New York. In 1934, in response to a questionnaire in Evraziiskie tetradi (Eurasian Notebooks) on the topic “Is the World Moving Toward Ideocracy?” (the Eurasianists considered ideocracy a good thing, provided that the ruling ideas were the right ones), he sent that journal his acerbic reflections on the “vulgar materialism” and mercenary nature of American life.

Bromberg as a religious and political thinker

Bromberg’s main concerns are the degeneration (as he sees it) of Russian Jewry, the revival of true Judaism, and the relations between Judaism and Christianity (8). He stresses the special historical and spiritual affinity between Judaism and Christianity, and more particularly between Judaism and Orthodoxy, and calls for mutual respect between the two faiths and the renunciation of proselytism. In this connection he expresses his approval of the position adopted by his fellow Eurasianist, the Orthodox priest and theologian Lev Platonovich Karsavin (1882–1952), who speaks of the “primordial tie between the Jewish people and Russia” (Bromberg 2002, p. 161).

Bromberg cites Khazaria as a model of religious tolerance (9). He adds that the Khazar episode completes a historical cycle in which Judaism was a proselytizing religion and the Jews attempted to “go beyond their ethno-cultural confines” (p. 245). He appeals to two other historical precedents that to his mind demonstrate the special affinity between Judaism and Orthodoxy. One is the sects—the Sabbatarians, for instance—that have sought to return to the Old-Testament Judaic roots of Christianity. The other is the so-called “heresy of the Judaizers” of 1470–1520, which was patronized for a time by the court of Tsar Ivan III. In contrast to the received version of the “heresy,” which attributes it wholly to Jewish proselytism, Bromberg sees it as an attempt to create a hybrid faith: “The Crimean Jew Scharia brought with him to Moscow (actually to Novgorod–S.D.S.) the seed of a new doctrine that tried to reconcile the Old and New Testament aspects of the [Judeo-Christian] religious tradition” (p. 250).(10)

Bromberg repeatedly deplores the apostasy, moral depravity, and hypocrisy of the stratum he calls the Jewish “peripheral intelligentsia” (or “semi-intelligentsia” or “pseudo-intelligentsia”). Echoing a theme that is salient in Russia and the Jews, he argues that the disproportionate participation of this stratum in the Bolshevik movement, which—he is convinced—has “demonic roots,” cannot be dismissed as a coincidence. It should, instead, prompt Russian Jews to heed the warnings of the biblical prophets and engage in “repentance and purification of [their] spiritual weaknesses” and “healthy and sincere self-criticism of the sins of [Jewish] spiritual and religious-cultural life” such as the “shameful sin of self-idolatry” (p. 94).

Bromberg’s approach to religion is that of a fundamentalist reformer rather than that of a traditionalist. Thus, he rejects the exegetical talmudic literature as irrelevant to present-day problems. “We Russian Jews [have to] work out an independent and original system of ethnic-religious views that will precisely outline the dogmatic-philosophical content of Judaism in relation to other religions and be capable of illuminating and comprehending all the nooks and crannies of man’s spiritual life in these turbulent times” (p. 132). This would seem to place him in the same camp as Reform Judaism. However, he also hopes for a revival of “the stream of messianic-eschatological energies that has dried up in our spiritual life” (pp. 168-9)—a stance directly opposed to the anti-messianic spirit of Reform Judaism.

Russian-Eurasian culture, Bromberg believes, provides the conditions needed for the revival of Judaism. “In our search for a model for the renewal of our own faith, [we can draw on] the rich tradition of Russian thought and have the legitimate right to take pride in the contribution of Jewish thinkers to that tradition” (pp. 133-4). One of the Russian-Jewish thinkers of whom he has an especially high opinion, despite the political and religious differences between them, is Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon (1869–1925).(11) Like Gershenzon himself, Bromberg aspires to create a Judaic counterpart to the Orthodox Christian theological revival of the Silver Age.

An area of partial convergence between Gershenzon and Bromberg concerns the foundations of statehood. Both categorically reject nationalism and the principle of national self-determination, both in general and as applied to the Jews—that is, Zionism. They do so, however, from rather different positions. Gershenzon rejects nationalism—especially nationalism of the “Germanic” type, to which Zionism in his view belongs—as incompatible with liberal ideals. Bromberg, as a Eurasianist, denounces national separatism in the former Russian empire as a threat to “the organic unity of multi-tribal and multi-confessional Russia” (p. 179). But he is also against liberalism as well as nationalism (including Zionism) as “a false political ideal of the state built exclusively on rational and utilitarian foundations” (p. 81).

Bromberg and Dugin

Ostensibly, Dugin’s discovery in Bromberg of a fellow Eurasianist who was also a Jew led him to rethink his position on the “Jewish question” and distance himself from the rabid anti-Semitism of most radical Russian nationalist circles. He realized that there are “good” Jews and “bad” Jews–or, in terms of his ideology, “Eurasian” Jews and “Atlanticist” (Western) Jews. Thereby the Jews acquired the curious privilege, shared by no other people, of being simultaneously on both sides of the Manichean divide. This position was also adopted by the writer Eduard Limonov, Dugin’s former associate in the leadership of the National Bolshevik Party, which duly proceeded to admit Jews—Eurasian ones, presumably—to membership.

It is possible, of course, that Bromberg merely provided a convenient pretext for a decision taken on pragmatic grounds. By renouncing anti-Semitism, he may have hoped to broaden his appeal to the respectable mainstream of society and recruit new allies at home and abroad.

At a very general level, I would agree that Dugin borrowed from Bromberg the distinction between a Eurasian (Eastern) and an Atlanticist (Western) Jewishness (Laruelle 2006). However, when one examines more closely how the two theorists draw this distinction in Jewish history, one sees that Dugin has derived his schema not so much from Bromberg as from his own fertile imagination. Thus, Dugin places on one side of the divide the (good) mysticism and messianism of the Kabbalists, the Sabbateans (followers of Sabbetai Zvi of Smyrna, who proclaimed himself messiah in 1666), the Chasidim, and the Jewish revolutionaries of modern times. On the other side he puts the (bad) rationalism of the Aristotelian theology of Maimonides, the mitnagdim (opponents of the Chasidim), the haskalim (nineteenth-century enlighteners), and the Jewish bourgeoisie (12). Only a fantasist with no real knowledge of Judaism could produce such a mishmash. What sense does it make to lump together in the same camp such bitter enemies as the mitnagdim and the haskalim? A crucial difference between Bromberg and Dugin is that the former denounces the Jewish revolutionaries while the latter admires them. Bromberg is basically with the Whites, Dugin with the Reds. When Dugin speaks of the “Chasidic-Marxist milieu” (Bromberg 2002, p. 280), he gives the impression that he is paraphrasing Bromberg, but in fact only Dugin could think up such an absurd expression.

As Marlene Laruelle points out, a further shift has now taken place in Dugin’s position on the “Jewish question.” This latest shift is apparently connected with his cultivation of ties with the religious-nationalist right in Israel on the basis of a shared anti-Americanism and anti-globalism (13). Dugin has incorporated Zionism into his “traditionalist” ideology, evidently not realizing that from the point of view of traditional Judaism—as represented, inter alia, by Bromberg—Zionism is the ultimate in heresy and collective “self-idolatry.” And how will the Zionist Dugin keep his friends in the Moslem world happy–the mullahs in Iran, for instance? Even his ingenuity must have its limits.

Notes

1. For the classical Eurasianists it was especially important to distinguish between “Russian” in the ethnic sense ([I]russkii[/I]) and “Russia” ([I]Rossiia[/I])–equated with “Eurasia” ([I]Evraziia[/I])–as an organic unity or “symphony” of many ethnic groups. [I]Rossiia-Evraziia[/I] has been embodied historically in a long succession of different states, many of them not in the least ethnically Russian or Slavic. In order to stress the radical distinction between this concept and the usual meaning attributed to “Russia” in English, I intend to use the neologism “Rossia,” as proposed by Valery Tishkov, director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Rossian Academy of Sciences.

2. True, under Putin no longer all that autonomous.

For another discussion of non-Russian versions of Eurasianism inside as well as outside the Russian Federation, see: Mark Bassin, [LINK=http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no17_ses/14bassin.pdf]Eurasianism “Classical” and “Neo”: The Lines of Continuity[/LINK].

1. The Volga Bulgars have no connection with the Bulgarians of the Balkans in modern times. The name is anachronistic inasmuch as the river that the Russians know as the Volga was then called the Itil.

2. I use this term to avoid the negative connotations of “pagan.” After a long decline, Khazaria was obliterated by the Mongols in 1259.

For more on the Jews of Khazaria, see Koestler (1976) and Brook (2006). I do not enter the controversy surrounding the question of whether present-day Ashkenazi Jews are predominantly descended from the Khazars. The evidence of family names and traditions suggests that at least some are. It should be noted that “Jews of Khazaria” is a broader category than “Khazar Jews” because it also includes converts of Slavic and other non-Khazar origin and refugees, mainly from Byzantium.

1. One of those interrogating him was a Jew fighting on the other side.

2. Methods included pulling out one’s teeth, swallowing acid, and giving oneself a hernia.

3. The collection was republished in Russian – still, indeed, in the old Russian orthography – in Paris in 1978 by the YMCA-Press. Despite its historical interest, it does not seem to have been published in English, French, or German translation.

4. I aim here not at a full analysis or even summary of Bromberg’s views, but only to outline a few characteristic themes.

5. Another Eurasianist hero, Genghis Khan, was also renowned for his religious tolerance.

6. On the “heresy of the Judaizers,” see Vernadsky (1933). The received version may well be unreliable, coming as it does from those who suppressed the “heresy.” Wieczynski (1975) also challenges the view of the “heresy” purely as a product of Jewish proselytism and places it in the broader context of the questioning of religious dogma throughout Europe at the time of the Renaissance.

7. Western scholarship has devoted considerable attention to Gershenzon as a liberal political thinker and cultural critic, but very little to his religious thought. The only exception known to me is the unpublished Ph.D. dissertation of Brian Horowitz, Director of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, New Orleans (Horowitz 1993). For an excellent collection of Gershenzon’s writings on the Jewish question and other topics, see Gershenzon (2001). See also Horowitz (1996, 1997).

8. The key article on the dual character of Jewry is reproduced from Dugin (2000) in Bromberg (2002, pp. 278-91); see especially pp. 280-82.

9. In an essay entitled “Doomed Israel” Dugin expresses his solidarity with Israel in face of the threat of a globalist plot to destroy it (?!) (Bromberg 2002, pp. 292-7).

[B]References[/B]

Bikerman, I.M., Landau, G.A., Levin, I.O., Linskii, D.O., Mandel’, V.S., and D.S. Pasmanik. [I]Rossiia i evrei: sbornik pervyi[/I] [Russia and the Jews: First Collection]. Otechestvennoe ob”edinenie russkikh evreev zagranitsei [Patriotic Union of Russian Jews Abroad]. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1978.

Bromberg, Iakov. [I]Evrei i Evraziia[/I] [The Jews and Eurasia]. Moscow: AGRAF, 2002.

Brook, Kevin Alan. [I]The Jews of Khazaria[/I]. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.

Budnitskii, O.V. [I]Rossiiskie evrei mezhdu krasnymi i belymi (1917–1920)[/I] [Russian Jews Between Reds and Whites (1917–1920)]. Moscow: Rosspen, 2005.

Dugin, A.G. [I]Osnovy geopolitiki[/I] [Foundations of Geopolitics]. Moscow, 2000.

Dugin, A.G. Theses of Address to the Political Conference of the Pan-Russian Social-Political Movement EURASIA, March 1, 2002. [LINK=http://eurasia.com.ru/dugin0103_eng.html]http://eurasia.com.ru/dugin0103_eng.html[/LINK]

Gershenzon, M.O. [I]Sud’by evreiskogo naroda i drugie proizvedeniia[/I] [Fate of the Jewish People and Other Works]. Moscow: Zakharov, 2001.

Horowitz, Brian. [I]The Myth of A.S. Pushkin in Russia’s Silver Age: M.O. Gershenzon, Pushkinist[/I]. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996.

Horowitz, Brian. M.O. [I]Gershenzon and the Intellectual Life of Russia’s Silver Age[/I]. Ph.D. dissertation. Tulane University, New Orleans, 1993.

Horowitz, Brian. “Jewish Identity and Russian Culture: The Case of M.O. Gershenzon.” [I]Nationalities Papers[/I], v. 25, no. 4, December 1997, pp. 699-714.

Khakim, Rafael’. [I]Istoriia tatar i Tatarstana: metodologicheskie i teoreticheskie problemy[/I] [The History of the Tatars and of Tatarstan: Methodological and Theoretical Problems]. Special issue of [I]Panorama-Forum[/I] (Kazan), 1999, no. 19.

Khara-Davan, Erenzhen. Rus’ mongol’skaia: [I]Chingis-khan i mongolosfera[/I] [Mongol Rus: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Sphere]. Moscow: AGRAF, 2002.

Koestler, Arthur. [I]The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage[/I]. New York: Random House, 1976.

Laruelle, Marlene. [I]Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?[/I] Occasional Paper No. 294. Washington, D.C.: Kennan Institute, 2006.

Savitskii, Pyotr N. [I]Kontinent Evrazii[/I] [Continent Eurasia]. Moscow: AGRAF, 1997.

Vernadsky, George. “The Heresy of the Judaizers and the Policies of Ivan III of Moscow.” [I]Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies[/I] (The Mediaeval Academy of America), October 1933, pp. 436-54.

Wieczynski, Joseph L. “Hermetism and Cabalism in the Heresy of the Judaizers.” [I]Renaissance Quarterly[/I], Spring 1975, pp. 17-28.

By Timothy Fitzpatrick

What explains the contradictory theological and political positions of so called traditional Catholic E. Michael Jones is the dark art of Hermetic Kabbalah.

All the things his critics accuse him of being that seem to contradict the bowtie-wearing Catholic image: a Communist, modernist defender of the Second Vatican Council, Islamophile, Eurasianist, Duginist, anti-Semite, race denier, Opus Dei member, gun grabber, Kremlin asset—can all harmoniously fit together under the context of an undercover Hermetic Kabbalist within traditional Catholic circles.

Hermetic Qabalah (Kabbalah) was developed during the Renaissance under so called Catholics Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino (see this author’s book review Pico della Mirandola the true father of Second Vatican Council, claims author). These two subversives adapted the Jewish Kabbalah, Christianized it, and claimed that it could be used by Catholics to validate the divinity of Jesus Christ. As well, they claimed Kabbalah revealed secret truths not available in Catholic Canon. But beneath their sophistry is a heretical philosophy no true Catholic would ever accept were it presented in its raw form. That is the neo-Platonic “perennial philosophy” or Prisca Theologia, which is a form of universalism or syncretism that sees core truths in all belief systems (what Jones calls the “ultimate reality”). The Catholic Church condemns this as religious indifferentism (the heretical idea that no belief is superior to another and that all beliefs are valid ways to truth or to god[s]). It seems that the goal of this syncretism, under Eastern Kabbalistic Jewish management, is to centralize all beliefs, as it did with the social and political order under Bolshevism, to usher in their false messiah. Russian-Jewish Kabbalist rabbi Mikhail Laitman, with whom Jones debated and agreed in a 2019 interview, sees the Eurasian powers ushering in a utopic Kabbalistic new age of absolute centralized power and worship, under the guise of the redemptive messianic age.

E. Michael Jones claims that he left the anti-war hippy movement of his youth (a Marxist movement) after reading a book by Catholic monk Thomas Merton, himself a seeming perennialist.^[1] Jones’ 2020 book Logos Rising: A History of Ultimate Reality is perhaps the biggest indication that the 78-year-old Indiana-based influencer falls into the perennial school and continues the centuries-old dark legacy of kabbalistic subversion of the Catholic Church begun by Pico. In his book, Jones attempts to depersonalize the unique person of Jesus Christ (God in the flesh) and turn Him into some abstract, pantheistic notion^[2] of the ordering principle of the universe—something perennialists have done for hundreds of years with their idea of “god” (see this site’s review of Logos Rising by Ryan Augustine). While it is not incorrect to refer to Jesus Christ as the Logos (or even loosely as the light) described in the Book of St. John, it is Jones’ overemphasis and overdevelopment of this theme that takes him out of a Catholic position and places him in the Hermetic camp, or at the very least a perennialist camp. St. John does not allow any kind of depersonalization of the Messiah, nor does any other book of the New Testament. The idea of a depersonalized “Logos” (the Adam Kadmon of Ein Soph, to “traditionalist” kabbalists like Jones contemporary Alexander Dugin) is central to perennialist philosophy as well as to its more advanced form of hermetic Kabbalah in Aleister Crowley’s Thelema magik and Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Jones’ logos book happens to depict on its front cover a golden dawn, perhaps over Renaissance Florence—once home to Pico della Mirandola). Crowley’s logos (also Dugin’s “dark logos”^[3]) helps the adept to “do what though wilt”. Jones is an associate of Crowleyite Dugin, an admitted Rene Guenonian perennialist. Jones says he first met Dugin at the Kremlin-sponsored 6^th International New Horizon Conference at Mashad, Iran in 2018. Since then, the two have cross-promoted each other. Jones, who claims “I always felt that my gaze was to the East”^[4] and who prays for the end to the “American Empire, is an ardent supporter of Dugin’s Eurasianism in the form of so called “multipolar” geopolitics, which is nothing more than a repackaged form of anti-Western Soviet Communism. Anti-Zionism is his excuse for embracing this position (see Operation SIG), as the West is just a Zionist lackey state that needs to be abolished in order to achieve world peace, according to Jones. Dugin’s worldview is almost identical to Jones’ except Dugin dresses his agenda in Eastern Orthodox/Fascist garb instead of Catholic. As a side note, Dugin’s late daughter Darya once used the pseudonym surname of Platonova, in honour of Plato. Neo-Platonism lurks behind all the Kabbalah of all these perennialists, it seems.

Jones’ longtime support of the Eurasianist agenda—the idea that the rulers of the Eurasian landmass have an inherit and even messianic right to rule over the rest of the planet—fits into a perennialist worldview, where borders and races are erased to make way for the universal Soviet man (global Communism) who follows a universal religion of religions. Jones glowingly claims God is bringing about a “Eurasianist…New World Order”.^[5] This perennialism also explains, to a large degree, Jones’ absurd denial of race. If Jones were smart politically, he would back off this position, but he can’t help himself, which seems to suggest he is more than just an opportunistic perennialist. He must be an ideological subverter (and, yes, money factors in as well, as Jones allegedly is a millionaire). Then again, it could merely be his narcissism seeping through on this issue (they can never be wrong). In order to harmonize the world under centralized governance, you have to create the borderless, raceless Soviet man. Jones also isn’t very smart when he makes the implausible assertion that Communism and China were never a threat, so he relies on the ignorance of his audience (narcissists are always smarter than everyone else). Communism becomes a guarantor of his perennialist worldview, for only a collectivist society under a collectivist religion can achieve utopia. He must defend Communism, although couched in vague terms like “solidarism” and “multipolarism”, at all costs if his fellow perennialists are to reach the apex of civilization. We now know that materialistic atheism was never the ultimate goal of the Soviet system but only a step. To institute Kabbalah globally, you have to first destroy the existing order, which is Christianity. To destroy Christianity, you have to implement a temporal phase of anti-religionism but also a permanent phase of collectivism.

“Russia will become the capital of Kabbalah,” writes Laitman. “Marxism-Leninism prepared us for Kabbalah.”^[6]

Showing the Eastern Jewishness of Communism presents a problem for perennialists like Jones. This is why he completely ignores Chabad Lubavitch (the most powerful, kabbalistic, Soviet-derivec Jewish organization in the world)^[7] and instead tries to separate the two and seemingly neutralize them individually. To achieve this, Jones instills in the reader the idea that the threat of Communism is long past and was merely a “category of the mind” and that the Jewish question is really only about Zionism or Western capitalist liberal Jewry. This decouples real Jewry (based in the East) from Communism and, simultaneously, Russia from Jewry. It also leaves the door open for “dialogue” with so called anti-Zionist Jews like Neturei Karta, with whom Jones is chummy. Chabad is also arguably anti-Zionist at its core.

The reader of Jones might argue that Jones attacks Jewry at a fundamental level (namely in their rejection of Christ, which was the theme of The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History). To that I would say that it is more obfuscation, for the different schools of Judaism (Eastern Hasidism vs. Western Talmudic/Zionism) will oppose each another, even to the point of condemnation. These so called Christian Kabbalists can even say anti-Semitic things, for it is the Jew who misinterpreted the Kabbalah, not the learned like the Pico Della Mirandolas, Ficinos, and Joneses of the world. As it is, however, Jones never really goes deep in his critiques of the Talmud (which he doesn’t even mention all that much), and especially not the Kabbalah. He keeps the reader focused on Zionism and the culture warring coming from Jews of the Western Left. He keeps his audience fixated on general, simpleton issues like abortion, feminism, pornography, and war, which are easy to pin exclusively on the West using highly controlled narratives. He knows that as long as he says the word “Jew” enough, his audience will applaud him and not notice the glaring holes and contradictions in his positions or the deeper subjects he ignores. Jones dualistic relationship with Jewry corresponds with Eurasianism founder Yakov Bromberg’s dualism between Eastern Jewry’s Hasidic orientalism that he championed against Western Jewry’s Talmudic-capitalist-liberalism. Dugin seems to have merely repackaged Bromberg’s concept of a Jewish-based Eurasianism and, in turn, Jones has internalized Dugin’s Eurasianism and repackaged it in Catholic dressing. Therefore, Jones’ so-called anti-Semitism is merely selective and strategic, with kabbalistic syncretism as its goal.

Jones’ support for the obviously error-ridden Second Vatican Council appears to be another perennialist-based position. The conciliar errors are all about fostering acceptance of all faiths as equally valid; thereby, preparing the world for acceptance of the false Christ world leader. Jones must defend this robber council above all else, even if he has to attack the traditional Latin mass itself. Jones attacking sedevacantism and the SSPX is one thing, for they are technically schismatic, but for him to attack the Latin mass in general makes no sense from a Catholic point of view. What does make sense is that Jones is not actually Catholic and knows the threat the TLM poses in attempting to undo Vatican 2 prescriptions and restore the Church. The TLM strengthens the idea of one, true faith, tradition, a knowable and personal messiah, and exclusivity; therefore, Jones must deconstruct the TLM and promote the V2 mass in order to prevent any hindrance to the agenda. That’s what Vatican 2-inspired clown masses are all about—to merge Catholicism with every other belief and make a mockery of Catholicism’s uniqueness. These snakes are preparing us for the anti-Christ one-world syncretic religious system, which will accompany a form of global Communism led by Jewish orientalists.

Now that we understand that Jones’ goal is religious pluralism, we can easily understand his championing of Islam and horrendous Islamic regimes like Iran. But his Islamophilic position serves another purpose. Islam is one of the most effective instruments of direct revolutionary terrorism with which to destabilize non-Communist nations in preparation for global collectivism. Jones can declare “Allahu akbar!” with no reservations, as he did with fellow Islamic Communist Kevin Barrett, and have no problem calling himself Catholic.^[8] See this site’s index on the close association between Islam and Marxist revolutionary terrorism.

The “Catholic” cult Opus Dei was started by a man named Josemaría Escrivá, who is believed to have been a Kabbalist^[9]. Opus Dei also has connections to the Communist world, especially Communist influence networks and their operatives posing as traditional Catholics. Jones has denied being a member of this cult, but “the work”, like Freemasonry, instructs its members to obscure their membership from the public. Jones’ overrepresented associations with Opus Dei are well known.^[10]

To finish off any remaining resistance to the New World Socialist Order agenda, the right of the citizenry to bear arms must be removed. E. Michael Jones is all for this. He seems to use his Soviet-based anti-war, anti-U.S. imperialism agenda to validate being anti-gun. His audience should not be fooled by this, though. It makes no sense from a truly Catholic point of view. Jones knows that in order to create the socialist Soviet utopia, individual arms possession must be eliminated in order to create a smoother transition from the free world to absolute anti-Christ collectivism.

Notes:

1. The Engaged Contemplative Spirituality of Thomas Merton, Issue 4, 2017, Beshara Magazine – https://besharamagazine.org/metaphysics-spirituality/thomas-merton-engaged-contemplative-spirituality/ ↑
2. Augustine, Ryan, Logos Rising Book Review Chapter Notes, Oct. 3, 2023 – https://fitzinfo.net/forum/topic/logos-rising-book-review-chapter-notes/ ↑
3. Kazachkin, Andrey, Dugin’s ‘dark logos’ sponsored by Russian Orthodox Church, Jan. 6, 2023 – https://fitzinfo.net/forum/topic/dugins-dark-logos-sponsored-by-russian-orthodox-church/ ↑
4. “I never had that identification with America. I always felt that my gaze was to the East.” —E. Michael Jones (54:07 mark-Guillermo Vásquez Interviews E. Michael Jones: What Is Identity?) – https://player.fm/series/culture-wars-podcast/guillermo-vasquez-interviews-e-michael-jones-what-is-identity ↑
5. Jones, Eugene Michael, Who Is destroying our civilization?, Interview – https://odysee.com/@Fitzinfo:c/Screen-Recording-2026-10-02-at-21.07.14:4 ↑
6. Laitman, Michael, ‘Russia will become the capital of Kabbalah…Marxism-Leninism prepared us for Kabbalah’: rabbi Michael Laitman, Feb. 24, 2003, IZ – https://fitzinfo.net/2024/02/22/russia-will-become-the-capital-of-kabbalah-rabbi-michael-laitman/ ↑
7. Fitzpatrick, Timothy, Most powerful Jewish organization in world Chabad completely absent from E. Michael Jones’ writings, The Fitzpatrick Informer, Jan. 28, 2023 – https://fitzinfo.net/2023/01/28/most-powerful-jewish-organization-in-world-chabad-completely-absent-from-e-michael-jones-writings/ ↑
8. Odysee – https://odysee.com/@Fitzinfo:c/Jones-and-Barrett-praise-allah:8 ↑
9. Carlos de Borbon, Alfonso, Opus Judei, Orion Publications, 1994 – http://www.reductio.net/OpusJudei-Index.html ↑
10. Engel, Randy, All the Men Behind the Opus Dei Curtain – https://newengelpublishing.com/all-the-men-behind-the-opus-dei-curtain/ ↑

By Timothy Fitzpatrick
October 13, 2026 Anno Domini
Pictorial

The purpose of this critique of the Fatima apparition is to illustrate the similarities between the Fatima apparition and UFO apparitions from the standpoint that UFOs are actually demonic manifestations in technological disguise, according to this age. Therefore, the evidence seems to suggest that the Fatima apparition is really a demonic manifestation posing as a being of light (in this case, the Blessed Virgin Mary). For more on skepticism of Fatima officialdom, click here.

By Timothy Fitzpatrick
October 10, 2026 Anno Domini

On 4 November 2011, Eurasianists gathered in Rostov-on-don, Russia before marching on Ukraine with an icon of the Virgin Mary and shouting imperialist slogans.

“Russians, forward!”, “Glory to the Empire! “Russian, get up!”, “Russian means sober!”, the 200 members of the International Eurasian Movement’s youth wing shouted as the Marian icon Our Lady of Kazan led the “imperial run”  into Ukraine’s Crimea region—a highly symbolic display of theatrics by a movement started by neo Bolshevik and Kremlin strategist Alexander Dugin.

“The purpose of the event was the symbolic transfer of three imperial symbols—the flag of the Russian Empire, the Victory Banner, and the Eurasian Banner to the territory of Ukraine,” read a statement on the Eurasian group’s portal rossia3.ru.

The Eurasian Youth Union (ESM) performs the march, ‘For the Russian Empire’, every year on November 4, which happens to fall on a day before the beginning of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Catholic Church calendar. The inclusion of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the flags of the Eurasian group is ironic at best, blasphemous at worst, as the Eurasian flag symbol of an eight-pointed star is based on chaos magic, the Victory Flag of Russia includes the Soviet hammer and sickle, and the Russian Federation flag represents a secretly Communist nation entirely hostile to Catholicism and the free world. The Kabbalist perennialist Dugin is also openly anti-Catholic and anti-Western.

“Both they (New World Order) and we (Eurasians) want to deprive you of your Catholicism; Orthodoxy…is much closer to what we call paganism.”

The icon of Our Lady of Kazan is an Eastern Orthodox icon. The original went missing in 1917, the same year as the Bolshevik Revolution and the same year as the alleged first apparition of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal. The exact demise of the original icon is disputed, with some believing that the “copy” that ended up in the hands of the Vatican—before a short stint at the Fatima shrine until 1993—was actually the 16th century original. The Vatican under Pope John Paul II, in an apparent act of ecumenism, eventually returned the Kazan icon to the Russian Orthodox Church in 2004, with Pope John Paul II showing it to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a 2003 visit to the Vatican.

The stunt by the ECM was not only symbolic of Russia’s ongoing neo-Soviet imperial objectives, it was also symbolic of the Russian state’s ongoing exploitation of Fatima to align Western conservatives, especially Catholics, with its imperial objectives, now disguised as Eurasianism or multipolarism. Russian propaganda panders to Fatimist Catholics who believe that Russia was or will soon be consecrated to “the immaculate heart of Mary” and thus Russia’s supposed turn to conservatism, nationalism, and Christianity represents some kind of messianism. The inclusion of Christian icons in the Eurasianist movement march into Ukraine is also sinister considering the resolution to establish the neo-Soviet Donetsk and Luhansk’s Peoples republics was first drafted by the Russian Federation Communist Party (CPRF), the official “opposition” to Putin’s dominant United Russia Party. Three years after the ECM march into Ukraine and after Putin’s United Russia adopted the resolution of the so called opposition party CPRF, the Russian Federation would invade Eastern Ukraine for real.

Papal acquiescing to the hostile neo-Soviet regime in Moscow is nothing new to the Vatican. In 2022, Pope Francis hosted for the first time ever the Eurasian Jewish and World Jewish congresses in the Apostolic Palace. (See more at Communism and the Vatican index)

By Timothy Fitzpatrick
October 8, 2026 Anno Domini

A purported lineage document has surfaced online showing that Putin’s brain Alexander Dugin had a Jewish grandfather, supporting evidence the occultist is secretly advancing Jewish interests.

The document—posted by an apparent Russian Jew living in Tel Aviv, Israel, who runs a Jewish genealogy site—appears to be an archival record from a Moscow synagogue. The right-hand column shows Dugin’s grandfather to be “Akiva Abramovich”.

In January this year, an unrelated post from ssmirnoff of Russian social media platform Live Journal corroborated Dugin’s Jewish lineage by saying Dugin’s father was “a halakhic Jew” (halacha refers to the collective body of Jewish law, which would include the Talmud and Kabbalah) and an “urka” (gangster). Perhaps both his father and grandfather were Jewish.

In an article published by dissident Soviet historian Vladimir Pribylovsky on his site anticompromat.org, the late author claimed Dugin only pretended to be an anti-Semite and that he and Islamic Russian-Azerbaijani philosopher Geydar Dzhemal were expelled from a Russian nationalist organization for being “Jewish Masonic agents and Zionists”. Pribylovsky may have been referring to the National Bolshevik Party which Dugin claims he voluntarily left in 1998. Pribylovsky’s claim was from his memoir about Avrom Shmulevich, a Eurasianist and Russian kabbalist rabbi who admitted that Kabbalah is political and associated with Communism.

”Jewish youth are still very noticeable in all kinds of radical organizations—up to National Bolsheviks and Russian ultra-nationalists,“ Shmulevich admitted in a 2006 article.

One of Dugin’s National Bolsheviks Ruslan Sumkov participated in a Kabbalist convetion in Tel Aviv, Israel. Another member of Dugin’s Nazbols is Jewish agitator Vladimir Linderman. Not only is Dugin’s Nazbol movement affiliated with Jews, so is his “old believers” movement, a schismatic sect from the Russian Orthodox Church. Even the close friends of perennialist philosopher Rene Guenon, Dugin’s role model, “were both Jews and Kabbalists”. With crafting Putin’s conservative image in the halls of St. Petersburg State University, Dugin had help from Jew Mikhail Leontyev.

In 2012, Socialist Stephen Shenfield wrote that Dugin’s Eurasianism was borrowed from early Jewish Eurasianist Yakov Abramovich Bromberg and that Dugin envisioned a dialectical struggle between Eurasianist Jews and Atlanticist Jews. Russian Zionist Avigdor Eskin, also a Eurasianist, hinted that Dugin was Jewish when he spoke of his similarity as a Jewish leader to Soviet Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky.

Perhaps, though, the most convincing evidence that Dugin is Jewish is his ringing endorsement of Jewish Kabbalah:

“The kabbalah tradition is the greatest achievement of the human spirit.”

The wizard also said Jewry, freemasonry, and anti-Catholicism were the best part of Polish history. “Muslims and Jews are not just our partners, but our brothers”. What solves the dilemma of Dugin’s possible Jewishness and his sometimes superficial anti-Semitism is that he is only referring to “Atlanticist” Jews or Western liberal Jews when he speaks negatively of them. Eurasian Jewry is king!

Dugin playing the anti-Semite while actually advancing Jewish interests as a Jew would be nothing new for the Kremlin. It is consistent with the Soviet Operation SIG (Zionist Government), which is still in effect. This operation uses a feigned anti-Semitism to galvanize animosity against the capitalist West using anti-Zionism (that America and Great Britain are Zionist-occupied states).

For more, see this site’s lengthy dossier on Dugin.

By Timothy Fitzpatrick

Idaho-based agent provocateur David Reilly made several accusations Tuesday that call into question the legitimacy of the persona of famed alt Catholic personality E. Michael Jones.

Reilly’s post on X, which was soon after deleted, alleged that the 78-year-old Jones made millions with his help, was abusive to employees and even his own children, and encouraged his own son to get a divorce. Reilly, who once worked for Jones’s Culture Wars Magazine as a digital media producer and columnist, also alleged Jones had been slandering Reilly.

“I worked with EMJ and made him MILLIONS of dollars, and he has spent years seething and lying about me,” Reilly said in the post.

“I guess it’s fair game to reveal to the world that @EMichaelJones1 (sic) pressured his son Peter to get a divorce from his wife, which he had 10 kids with,” Reilly continued. “He’s also been abusive to both his employees and children.”

The outburst from Reilly, a popular online pro-Kremlin operative, follows an earlier post on X by Nathanael Kapner, another pro-Kremlin alt media personality, in which Kapner announced he would be appearing on a podcast with Jones this Friday to “expose pedo sex crimes of SSPX and David Reilly’s cover up”. It also follows a previous post several months ago where Reilly posted video footage of Jones apparently making the heil Hitler salute, to which Jones countered was merely made in jest and edited to make him look bad.

“This is your big ‘Catholic’ theologian everyone,” Reilly went on to mock Jones in the post.

That Jones might be abusive to those around him is disturbing, especially being a so called Catholic. American Attorney David Wemhoff, who apparently knew Jones, in 2016 described him as a “malignant narcissist”. Reilly has also accused Jones of being a narcissist on more than one occasion. Watching Jones on his videos and listening to his podcasts, it seems that Jones likes to dominate, so perhaps none of these accusations should come as a surprise.

Traditional Catholics tend to perceive Jones as being docile to the reforms made at the controversial Second Vatican Council, so if the accusation is true that Jones encouraged his son to get a divorce, something which is highly discouraged and difficult to obtain from the Church, according to traditional Catholic teaching, perhaps they are correct that Jones is indeed a modernist, or a wishy washy Catholic. Jones’ adherence to Catholic Orthodoxy is already in question due to his associations with occult perennialists like Alexander Dugin, Jones’ outspoken Islamophilia, and Jones’ fixation on the depersonalized and universalist descriptor for Jesus Christ as “Logos”. Jones has also been outspoken in condemning the Latin mass, which is the Church’s original form of the Holy Liturgy and is permitted in the Church even today, although scaled back in most parishes. An interesting anecdote can be found online favourable to Jones and mentions in passing that Jones wears sandals to mass (presumably the Novus Ordo mass). According to Catholic teaching, wearing sandals to mass is considered irreverent and inappropriate attire.

Lastly, the accusation by Reilly that Jones is a millionaire tends to show Jones as a hypocrite. While strongly denouncing capitalism and the West and being promoted by Marxist media outlets, he has no problem making a lucrative living, presumably selling books. There is a growing body of evidence that Jones might be pursuing a Communist agenda and certainly his anti-Western, pro-Eurasian rhetoric is useful to KGB objectives.

This latest controversy is highly ironic considering that all three players involved, Jones, Reilly, and Kapner, all seem to be pursuing the same anti-Western, pro-Kremlin agenda, although through slightly different means. Recently, Kapner claimed to have converted to Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy, to which Jones was very welcoming.

Reilly claimed he has a trove of documents on Jones’ dirty laundry and suggested he would release them, but as of this writing, nothing more has been posted on X by Reilly and his deleted post has not been re-instated.

Jones’ son Peter is not the son married to a Russian national that this author wrote about in 2023.

By Sholem Lugov
August 10, 2026

Donald Trump and the book “Zohar” is a combination that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago. But now a man who knows Trump not from newspapers talks about it.

Marla Maples, the former wife of the President of the United States, said that Trump carries an Aramaic copy of the book “Zohar”—one of the main texts of the Jewish mystical tradition.

This detail is especially interesting against the background of Trump’s long-standing connection with the Jewish people.

His daughter Ivanka accepted Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner. Their children are brought up in the Jewish tradition. Trump himself has repeatedly emphasized his support for Israel and his special attitude to the Jewish people.

And now there is another detail – “Zohar”, a book that reveals the deep secrets of the Torah, the soul and the spiritual structure of the world.

This, of course, does not mean that Trump has become a Kabbalist or that he studies “Zohar”. But if Maples’ statement is true, this detail itself is very unusual.

A man whom the whole world is used to seeing primarily as a businessman and politician turns out to be connected with the Jewish tradition not only through his daughter and his own family, but perhaps also through a book that occupies a special place in the history of Jewish spirituality.

Sometimes a big story manifests itself in one small detail. “Zohar” at the heart – perhaps just such a detail.

(Disclaimer: the author of this article is a sedevacantist—a position which I firmly reject. However, the article focuses mainly on the Fatima apparition and its arguments are well supported. Generally, it seems free of bias and is an important and timely topic; therefore, I have obtained permission from the author to repost it here. —Timothy Fitzpatrick)

By Steven Speray
May 13, 2026 Anno Domini

We are not bound to believe in private revelations. When the Church presents liturgies or churches in honor of a private revelation such as an apparition, it doesn’t imply the revelation is true and must be believed. Our faith doesn’t depend on them at all.

A liturgy or church in honor of an apparition may appear that the Church believes in it, but this is a matter of perspective. It would appear the Church, at one time, believed popes could be deposed. It would appear that it believed the Roman line during the Great Western Schism was the true line. These opinions are just opinions.

What is not an opinion is the Church saying a private revelation is worthy of belief. When the Church says a private revelation is worthy of belief, it means it’s free from doctrinal or moral error, and this declaration must be accepted and believed. However, the Church is not saying the revelation is free from historical inaccuracies, silly ideas, fraud, or demonic activity. It may have all of the above.

The Mystical City of God by Mary of Agreda was approved by the Church. However, there are errors in the work. The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

In particular instances, these visionaries have been mistaken: thus Marie de Agreda teaches, like her contemporaries, the existence of crystal heavens, and declares that one must believe everything she says, although such an obligation exists only in the case of the Holy Scripture. In 1771 Clement XIV forbade the continuation of her process of beatification “on account of the book”. [1]

Yet, in 1900, Pope Leo XIII granted an Apostolic Blessing to a Canadian lay woman who informed the pope of printing a book of all the instructions found at the end of each chapter in The Mystical City of God. Pope Leo XIII then ordered the book to be printed on the presses of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda in Rome. The book is titled Sublime doctrine de la Mère de Dieu sur les vertus chrétiennes (extrait de la ‘Cité mystique de Dieu’ par le Vén. Marie d’Agreda- Rome, Impr.de la Sacrée Congrégation de la Propagande, 1900. vii + 403pp.+ frontispiece.)

When I wrote about the problems with the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe [2], I discovered problems with the Fatima apparitions.

Much of what we’re told by Lucia of Fatima comes from her memoirs twenty years after the apparitions.

Bishop José Alves Correia da Silva approved the 1917 Fatima apparitions including the later apparitions in Spain as part of the Fatima message. For instance, Lucia claims that Our Lady appeared on December 10, 1925 at Pontevedra, to manifest Her Heart pierced with thorns, and to request the practice of the communion of reparation on the five First Saturdays of the month. The same bishop sanctioned the First Saturdays devotion on September 13, 1939.

According to Lucia, Our Lady came back one more time, on June 13, 1929, at Tuy, to ask for the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, which is also included as part of the overall approval of Fatima.

The 1930 approval of Fatima is interesting despite the problems the Church noticed during its investigation.

With all charity, respect to the Church, and all those who strongly believe in Fatima, I would like to bring up some of those seriously troubling problems about Fatima. If we were in normal times, I would have submitted this to the Holy See, but under the circumstances, this is impossible. Also, due to the same set of circumstances, I believe this information is critical for Catholics and the continued questioning to what happened to the Church since the death of Pope Pius X in 1914. The Second Vatican Council didn’t come out of thin air. Who’s really responsible for this Great Revolt that’s been brewing long before Vatican 2? Does Fatima hold a key?

The following information comes from the Critical Documentation of Fatima at fatima_critical1.pdf

In case one thinks the documentation is fake, one can also find much of the info in the 1950 book The True Story of Fatima | EWTN by Fr. John de Marchi, I.M.C.

First Problem

Clothing and jewelry that’s not proper for Our Lady

The children described Our Lady:

“The attire consisted of a white cloak that reached from the head to the bottom of the skirt, gold from the waist down, with the strings crossing it, and from top to bottom, and the edges were more closely spaced. The skirt was white all over, with gold strings running along and across, but only reaching to the knee; a white coat, not gold, with only two or three strings at the cuffs; no shoes, white stockings, not gold; around the neck was a gold chain with a medal at the tips; her hands were raised; she had very small buttons on her ears, very close to her ears; she parted her hands when she spoke; she had black eyes; she was of medium height.” (emphasis mine) (Fatima Doc. 1 1917-05-c.27  Interrogation of Father Manuel Marques Ferreira, parish priest of Fátima, to Lúcia de Jesus Santos about the first apparition.)

The apparition doesn’t appear to be Our Lady, especially with a skirt reaching only to the knee, with white stockings, necklace, and earrings. Imagine an image of Our Lady as described being reproduced and placed in churches to be venerated. The image shown above is the best most reverent image I could generate based on the children’s description. It should not be a problem having a statue as described in church by an apparition approved as worthy of belief, but it is a huge problem!

Second Problem and Serious Issue

Two Major False Prophecies from Fatima

If we go back to the day of the “miracle of the sun” Lucia was telling everyone on Oct. 13, 1917 that World War 1 would end that day. After the “miracle” of the sun on Oct. 13, Father Manuel Marques Ferreira interviewed Lucia on Oct. 16. Lucia tells him that Our Lady told her:

“I want to tell you not to offend Our Lord anymore; that they pray the rosary to Our Lady; build a little chapel here for Our Lady of the Rosary (Lúcia is unsure whether it was like that: build a little chapel here, I am Our Lady of the Rosary); the war ends today; wait here for your military, very soon.”

In another interview three days later on Oct. 19, 1917, she told Father Manuel Nunes Formigão STD, JCD:

She [Our Lady] said: “The war ends today; wait here for your soldiers very soon.”

Fr Formigão: Did she say: “wait here for your military” or “wait here for your soldiers”?

She said: “Wait here for the military.”

Fr Formigão:  But look, the war is still going on!… The newspapers report that there have been fights since the thirteenth!… How can this be explained, if Our Lady said that the war ended on that day?

Lucia: I don’t know. I only know that I heard her say that the war would end on the 13th. I don’t know anything else

Fr Formigão:  Some people say that they heard you say on that day that Our Lady had declared that the war would end soon. Is this true?

[Lucia] I said it just as Our Lady had said it.

Fr Formigão also asked Jacinta on the same day:

Did she say that the war would end that day or that it would end soon?

Jacinta: Our Lady said that when she got to heaven, the war would end.

Fr Formigão: But the war isn’t over yet!

Jacinta: It is ending, it is ending

Fr Formigão: But when will it end?

Jacinta: I think it ends on Sunday.

In yet another interview following Oct. 13, Father António dos Santos Alves writes:

[Our Lady] told [the children] that she was Our Lady of the Rosary; that the war ended that day; that our soldiers would soon come; that they were to build a chapel to Our Lady of the Rosary on the site of the apparition and that the people amend their sins that have greatly offended her Son.

If Lucia misunderstood back when she actually heard Our Lady, how is it that she would remember so clearly 20 years later when writing her memoirs?

The excuse given was that exhaustive interrogating to exhausted children caused them to get the date wrong. That might be the case for little Jacinta, but Lucia doubled-down, even triple-downed her assertion that the war would end on Oct. 13, 1917. The end of the war date would be one thing you would remember and Lucia most certainly remembered it!

This huge contradiction and weird description of Our Lady’s appearance are overlooked by the “miracle of the sun” and massive influence of the people in persuading the authorities to accepting the whole thing and approving belief in it.

Bottom line, Lucia got it wrong repeatedly, which is highly unlikely, indicating a false apparition. If she got it wrong so badly within a couple of days, how can we trust anything that she said, not to mention what she recounts by memory twenty years later as seen in her memoirs? Her own parish priest Father Manuel Marques Ferreira never believed the story even after the “miracle” of the sun. He thought it was all demonic!

The failed second prophecy is far worse!

Second False Prophecy and the Third Secret

Lucia told Father Augustin Fuentes on December 26, 1957,

“Father, the Most Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her message, neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way but without giving any importance to Her message. The bad, not seeing the punishment of God actually falling upon them, continue their life of sin without even caring about the message. But believe me, Father, God will chastise the world and this will be in a terrible manner. The punishment from Heaven is imminent.

Father, how much time is there before 1960 arrives? It will be very sad for everyone, not one person will rejoice at all if beforehand the world does not pray and do penance. I am not able to give any other details because it is still a secret. By the will of the Blessed Virgin, only the Holy Father and the Bishop of Fatima can know the secret. Both have chosen, however, not to open it in order not to be influenced by it.

This is the third part of the Message of Our Lady, which will remain secret until 1960.

 Tell them, Father, that many times the most Holy Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation.

Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin. And the devil knows what it is that most offends God and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus, the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way, the devil will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.

According to Lucia, part of the third secret is also part of the great chastisement that happens between 1957 and 1960.

Cardinal Ottaviani asked Lucia 1955 why not before 1960, and she said, “Because then it will seem clearer (mais claro).” In fact, she stated, “it cannot be made known before 1960.” When pressed to why it had to be in 1960, she and Bishop José Correia da Silva replied to Canon Barthas in 1946: “Because the Blessed Virgin wishes it so.”

We see wars and people dying in the first two secrets. In the third secret, we hear about another major chastisement which will happen between 1957 and 1960.

Lucia said the world (not the Church) was going to be punished severely. The world would understand the contents of the third secret when revealed in 1960 just as people would understand the second secret when revealed after the fact. (World War 2 and revealed by Lucia in 1941.)

Logically, the election of Roncalli couldn’t be this part of the secret because in 1960, virtually everyone believed him to be a true pope and rejoiced something Lucia said would not happen. There would be no rejoicing.

The secret couldn’t say we have a fake pope only to be revealed by a fake pope. Therefore, it couldn’t have referred to the pope as some type of imposter pope.

Another critical point is that Lucia said, “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.”

If we draw an inference that this might mean apostasy in other places around the world, where would this be seen in 1960 from something from within 2 years prior to 1960?

The question is what kind of terrible chastisement would befall on the whole world that could be seen by 1960 that would be as big as the first two secrets to verify the prophecy was true?  Again, we’re talking about part of the third secret because that is what Lucia said.

China was the only country to suffer a major chastisement with the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), which caused the Great Chinese Famine, resulting in an estimated 15 to 55 million deaths. This is huge for China, but not the world.

Surely, the great chastisement Lucia is referring would be greater than China’s catastrophe.

Think of all the possibilities and what we find is absolutely nothing!

If any other religion put something out like this, we Catholics would call it out for what it is, a false prophecy, because that’s simply what it is.

We have another false prophecy. However, the Church did not approve this prophecy as told in 1957 as worthy of belief. It was unknown when approved in 1930. Is Lucia not trustworthy? Does the whole Fatima event and the false prophecies go hand in hand? Absolutely!

Third Problem and Serious Issue

Too many exceptions are needed.

Fatima is nothing like Lourdes and St. Bernadette. The message at Lourdes was nothing new to Catholicism. It confirmed a recent dogma. The three secrets were for Bernadette herself. Its message was simple with a miraculous healing spring as a reward for having faith. It was a beautiful and wonderful event in every way. No real problems, no real confusions.

Fatima on the other hand has everything Lourdes doesn’t: Problems, Confusions, Demands or else, and Major prophecies that don’t come as stated.

When the angel appeared in the beginning, he gave the children Communion. Jacinta and Francesco hadn’t even received their First Communion yet. When Francesco received from the Chalice, he asked Lucia what he had received because he was unaware of what it was.

There are several strange things about this occurrence. In the West, we don’t receive from the Chalice and preparation and knowledge of Communion is absolutely demanded for those of the age of reason. Infants don’t need to know because they are not able. However, when the Sacraments are given to those of the age of reason, it’s imperative to understand what’s being received except perhaps in cases of danger of death.

If the angel is truly from Heaven, why would he go against the norms of the Church on such an important thing as Holy Communion? How would or could you know he was truly from Heaven if the only way to test the spirit are by the norms of the Church?

In the West, we fast before Communion, but are we to expect the children had no breakfast that day? It’s possible, but it seems like one exception after another is needed to legitimize the event as coming from Heaven.

We are not told about the angel story in 1916 or 1917 but years later in 1937 and 1941 by Lucia through her memoirs. Why did it take over twenty years before we hear about this incredible angel story?

The problem with the story is the strange way Holy Communion was given to the children under the circumstances. St. John tells us, “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God.” (I John 4:1) We test the spirits with Catholic belief and practice. Yet, the actions of the angel were contrary to Catholic belief and practice. However, the Church didn’t approve of the angel story because it came from the memoirs of Lucia over twenty years after the fact.

Lastly, if there’s no doctrinal problems with Fatima, does that mean receiving Communion without knowledge what’s being received at the age of reason not problematic doctrinally? If problematic, does that not call into question the approval by the Church? Should the Church not have warned or explained this problematic detail? Does the approval of Fatima call into question whether it’s really the Church doing the approving, especially in light of the missed prophecies?

Other problems with Fatima are covered in the Footnotes. However, these three suffice to show Fatima is not from Heaven.

What about the Miracle of the Sun?

The miracle of the sun was also seen many times at Medjugorja. I had friends who not only saw the miracle of the sun at Medjugorja, but their rosary beads turned to gold on each bead as they prayed it. They were strong believers in John Paul 2 and the Vatican 2 religion because of Medjugorja. Yet, these apparitions have blunt heresies even by Vatican 2 standards.

I have another friend who saw the miracle of the sun at Garabandal. The apparitions of Garabandal from 1961 to 1965 also have other spectacular miracles, yet its prophecies also failed miserably proving it to be a false apparition.

What I find interesting is that not all 70,000 people saw the “miracle” on that day as reported by apparitionists. Many reported seeing nothing unusual, which of course included the many skeptics, atheists, etc. the very ones that would need to see to believe. Everyone described the event quite differently, too.

The skeptical explanations for the “miracle” are also quite reasonable. In Pentecostal settings, we see how the power of suggestion make masses of people believe they’ve been “slain in the spirit.” I’ve seen it first-hand. “Speaking in tongues” is another example. We definitely see the power of suggestion at Fatima and many other places. Combine that with starring at the sun for a long period of time and then expecting to see something unusual. If a real weather condition happened on that day with all the other conditions, the event would certainly be magnified.

We read about this very thing in the book “God and the Sun of Fatima” written by the priest, physicist and philosopher of science, Father Stanley L Jaki, who believed in Fatima.

Fr. Jaki tells of the devout Catholic lawyer and Third Order Franciscan Domingo Pintos Coelho who was there in the Cova on Oct. 13, 1917. He published what he witnessed that day on Oct. 16^th in the local Catholic newspaper titled “Ordem.” (Keep in mind that in 1917, permission to write and publish on the Church was required as seen in canon law.)

Jaki didn’t like what Coelho wrote and breaks down everything he wrote to make Coelho appear to look irresponsible and/or faithless. However, Jaki was a strong believer in the miracle and he wouldn’t let anything get in his way in spreading what he believed was a miracle, but the fact remains that there is another side to the story.

Coelho wrote (p. 53): The leading newspapers began to speak of this case with great frequency and it will therefore be good not to reach a wrong conclusion before considering some ideas that rightly present themselves in cases of this nature. It is clear that as Catholics we accept the full possibility of the miracle. God, since He made the laws which rule natural phenomena, can also alter or suspend them. Simply put, a miracle is an exception. And exceptions are not presumed. They require certain proof. The Catholic Church has constantly insisted on the matter of proofs before it would agree to establishing the miraculous character of any fact of series of facts.

He continued in the next few pages…

In reference to what happened on Saturday the thirteenth, we can give witness because we were there, not as a pilgrim, note that well, but as a curious spectator.

From eleven until one-thirty the rain was constant and driven by a strong wind; a frankly rough and disagreeable weather which the enormous crowd of many thousands of people endured with excellent humor, without shelter other than rain hats and the vehicles, since not even one building is to be found in the vicinity.

Thirty-seven and a half minutes after one o’clock—or noon by solar time—was the hour set for the vision with which it was hoped that the phenomena in the heavens would coincide.

At this moment it continued to rain.

Some moments later the rain slackened and at one forty-five it stopped altogether. The sun, until then concealed, showed itself among the clouds that moved fairly fast. Because their density was variable, the veil which they threw over the king of stars [sun] was diaphanous. Like the multitude, we then looked toward the sun with rapt attention, and through the clouds, we saw it under new aspects—new for us, mark it well… Now surrounded by reddish flames, now with a ring of yellow or bright violet, now seemingly enlivened by a very rapid rotating movement, now even apparently detaching itself from the sky, approaching the earth, and giving forth a strong heat…

Why deny it? These phenomena, which we had never before witnessed, impressed us greatly. Among the crowds, a collective psychology established itself. And generally speaking there passed over the vast majority of that crowd a tremendous wave of faith that was very moving.

But then Coelho continues to explain….

One doubt remained with us, however.

Was what we saw in the sun an exceptional thing? Or could it be reproduced in analogous circumstances?

Now it was precisely this analogy of circumstances that presented itself to us yesterday [Sunday]. We could see the sun half overcast with clouds as on Saturday. And sincerely, we saw on that day the same succession of colors, the same rotary movement, etc.

(p. 57)

Coelho concluded his article:

Eliminating, then, the only extraordinary fact, what remains? Right now, the statements of the three children and nothing else.

It is very little.

Will the children be found sincere? We have no reason to doubt that they will be; their humble state is a guarantee of this for us.

We ask pardon for the crabbed stories of the investigators of popular belief who have attributed mysterious profit motives to the shepherds, for not believing this story without proof. Do the strongminded [espiritos fortes or freethinkers] want us to believe without proof? Very well. But with the same right we could demand from those who see in all this but Jesuit trickeries the same proofs they demand from us, regardless of whether they find them inconvenient and therefore dispense with them.

In sum, we returned from Fatima in the same state of mind in which we went there—in doubt.

Was there a miracle, were there apparitions? It is possible but between possibility and reality there is an abyss.

We will therefore continue with an open mind, benevolent, if so desired, but nothing more.

And let us be permitted to advise those who by their position and intelligence can influence others not to go beyond this limit.

(pp. 59-60)

After this article was published on Oct. 16^th, 1917, Coelho published another article the next day Oct. 17, again, talking about Fatima.

If miracles are rare today, it does not mean that they can no longer occur. For example, the lives of Don Bosco, the founder of the Salesians, and of the Curé d’ Ars were full of miracles. The history of Lourdes is also a series of miracles verified with the greatest rigor. …

St. Augustine says: “A miracle should never be proclaimed when a natural explanation is possible”.

This rule has always been scrupulously observed by the Church, the teacher of truth.

Now what did we say about the case of Fatima? That we, the obscure author of these lines, had not observed any fact that would prompt us to consider as supernatural. But not only did we treat it from a personal and unauthorized point of view but in no way did we wish to disclaim the observations which others have made and which differ from ours.

We would want nothing more than to witness events to which no natural explanation can be fitted. Our disappointment was great, when on Sunday, as we said, we verified the vacuity of what on the day before had seemed to be miraculous; our disappointment was heightened since we were greatly impressed by the coincidence that the rain of three hours’ duration had stopped almost exactly at the moment when the children prayed, and that the sun then appeared in the clouds.

Simply put, it is necessary in a matter of such weight not to yield to the principle Quod vohumus facile credimus.

We therefore conclude as we did yesterday: it is fitting to replace premature enthusiasm with the most prudent reserve. If in Fatima there is something of the supernatural our holding back will not impede the march of events upon which God in His infinite wisdom has decided.

On the other hand, a fiasco following hasty exaltation would not fail to be exploited by the enemies of the Church; they are always numerous, very active, and constantly on the watch for the propitious moment for the attack.

End of Coelho.

Coelho called the “Miracle of the Sun” vacuous and he got backlash immediately by other papers. I included this report to show there was another side, which many apparitionists don’t include in their stories. Jaki was an exception.

Simply put, the “miracle” of the sun doesn’t prove a heavenly apparition. The devout Catholic lawyer and writer who witnessed the event didn’t even think it was miraculous and publicly tells us so in two articles in a Catholic magazine within a week of the “miracle”. The same so-called miracle of the sun is seen at all the modern apparition sites, which we know are false. Yet, it was this very “miracle” that has convinced most Catholics that Fatima is a true apparition from Heaven.

Conclusion

The prophecies definitely failed. Is that the fault of Fatima or Lucia? We don’t separate the two. However, we know that Garabandal was false precisely because of the false prophecies. Why are the false prophecies of Fatima overlooked?

People would rather believe in a hoax, a deception of the devil, or any lie if it makes them feel better. The pope, many bishops, and many theologians and canonists have bought into Fatima but that doesn’t mean it’s true. They bought into Our Lady of Guadalupe apparition and it’s a proven myth where the Church tells us Marcos Aquino painted the image and not a single priest historian during that time mentions Juan Diego or the apparition while telling the whole history of Mexico. They even explain the millions of converts. See footnote [2] for the proof.

The Church has declared that nothing in the Fatima apparition is heretical or dangerous morally or doctrinally. However, is it possible the Fatima apparitions are a demonic deception as a distraction to something else? For instance, what was really behind the Spanish Flu and Vaccines? See page 27 of the COVID-Report-from-Rep.-Weyler-3.pdf

Both Jacinta and Francisco Marto were killed by the Spanish Flu. 100 million people died from this chastisement that’s never mentioned by “Our Lady” of Fatima. That’s as many people as both world wars put together! How could the Spanish Flu be overlooked? How is it still overlooked? This missed cataclysmic catastrophe is enough to call into doubt the whole Fatima event as something not from Heaven! Besides the Flu, what about the vaccines? We don’t even know the real death numbers to all the vaccinated throughout the last 100 years.

What’s more, even the Chinese catastrophe is overlooked when Lucia said the whole world would suffer some great chastisement between 1957 to 1960 that never came to pass.

Another possible deception by distraction concerns the Church. Is Fatima a demonic plan hidden within the demonic plan? What was going on with the Church then? After all, following the death of Pope Pius X, his successor, Pope Benedict XV, immediately began to ease the intense crackdown on “Modernism” that had characterized the previous pontificate. One of his first moves was to remove the staunch anti-modernist Cardinal Merry del Val as Secretary of State and replaced him with the liberal Cardinal Pietro Gasparri.

In his first encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, Benedict XV requested that the accusations of modernism stop. He writes, “23 As regards matters in which without harm to faith or discipline – in the absence of any authoritative intervention of the Apostolic See – there is room for divergent opinions, it is clearly the right of everyone to express and defend his own opinion. But in such discussions no expressions should be used which might constitute serious breaches of charity; let each one freely defend his own opinion, but let it be done with due moderation, so that no one should consider himself entitled to affix on those who merely do not agree with his ideas the stigma of disloyalty to faith or to discipline.”

Other key individuals who regained freedom of action or saw their previous restrictions eased include Moderate Modernist sympathizers and scholars. The Sodalitium Pianum (a network of informants established by Pius X) was largely ended by Benedict XV. Those who had been ostracized or prevented from teaching under the anti-modernist oath were given more freedom.

Many of the French clergy who were under intense pressure during the separation of church and state (and accused of being too compromising) found more space for dialogue under Benedict XV. The anti-modernist plan under Pope Pius X never returned and we begin to see the ugly head of modernism in the hideous architecture of church building and women getting into public offices throughout the pontificates of Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII.

Are we really surprised we got a Second Vatican Council? Talk about cataclysmic doom!

We see more Fatima issues in our times with all kinds of ideas and conspiracies floating around with the 3rd secret predictions, consecration of Russia, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, etc. all of which have nothing to do with the real Gospel, and which confuse the end times as told in Scripture. There’s no end to Fatima predictions, which are borderline heretical if not heretical. Just more distractions.

All these are the bad fruits of Fatima and there’s more bad tasting fruit waiting for you in footnote [3].

We know how Pope Leo XIII in the 1880’s tells us how in his vision Christ gives the Devil the time and power to deceive the Church. Was Fatima part of that plan in the grand scheme of things?

Based on these and other problems, Fatima appears to be a real and great deception of the devil to fool the masses to distract from something far greater!

Footnotes:

[1] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Private Revelations

[2] Problems with the Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe – Part I

Problems with the Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe – Part II

[3] Other problems with Fatima include:

Fatima becomes a tool for the Vatican 2 religion

Roncalli (“Pope John XXIII”) read the contents of the third secret. He knew the prophecy and the fact that it hadn’t come to pass. He said the third secret was not for “our times” and he refused to reveal it. Cardinal Silvio Oddi confronted him over not revealing the secret in 1960. John XXIII told Oddi, “Do not speak to me of this again.” It seems he refused to read the third secret in 1960 because he it didn’t square with his plans. Did he even believe in Fatima, since he refused to do what was supposed to be asked of him? It would appear not. In 1962, at the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII referred to the three seers of Fatima as “Prophets of Doom.”

One thing is for sure, Fatima can be useful, everyone knew it, and it was!

John XXIII called Fatima, “the center of all Christian hopes.” Fatima was used to bolster the Vatican 2 teaching on Our Lady.

Fatima was later used by John Paul 2 to legitimize his legacy as the Marian and Fatima Pope. The attempted assassination of John Paul 2 in 1981, occurred exactly at the same time as the apparition of Our Lady in Fatima, and it is believed by many Vatican 2 Catholics that Our Lady of Fatima saved the life of their beloved pope.

John Paul II visited Fatima, Portugal, three times (1982, 1991, 2000) to thank Our Lady for saving his life during the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt. He famously placed the bullet that struck him into the crown of the Fatima statue, formally consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and beatified the shepherd children Francisco and Jacinta.

The Vatican revealed what they called the third secret which stated that the “Holy Father…was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him.” It continues to say other clergy, religious, and lay people were also killed one after another in the same place.

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The Vatican left out anything about apostasy or anything like that. As bad as their obvious fake third secret was, the Vatican also claimed the secret referred to the assassination attempt on John Paul 2.

If Sister Lucia died at some point around 1960 as many think and replaced with an imposter, the Vatican would use her to legitimize itself. For instance, the Lucia of 1984 said John Paul II’s consecration of Russia fulfilled the request of Our Lady.

She is used in many other ways that’s irrelevant insofar as this article is concerned, but the point is Vatican 2 Catholics are hooked on Fatima because it points to their “Pope” and “Saint” John Paul 2.

Whether or not the 1984 Lucia was the real one or not (I think not), Fatima is constantly in the forefront in the minds of everyone who calls himself Catholic.

A fake Lucia keeps the Fatima deception going for Vatican 2 Catholics believing John Paul 2 was great and the Vatican 2 religion is true, or perhaps expecting a pope to consecrate Russia correctly as asked. Many traditional Catholics expect a pope to consecrate Russia so that the nation converts to Catholicism. Many sedevantists are expecting a special triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary where a Church comes out of this great apostasy with a true pope because that’s how Fatima is interpreted.

We know that Our Lady would know the future as even Fatima indicates. Would she present herself at Fatima knowing full well how Fatima is used against real Catholicism with so much vagueness, confusion, and division? Perhaps, but it also seems to fit the biblical prophecy in II Thess. 2:10.

Fatima keeps people in the Vatican 2 religion.

Unnecessary cause for division among Catholics and contradiction

Almost no Catholic says the Fatima prayer in the Rosary correctly. William Thomas Walsh interviewed Lucia and she flatly denied what Fr. Jenkins of the SSPV said about it. It’s on page 225 of the 1947 book Our Lady of Fatima:

“In many books about Fatima, the prayer Our Lady asked you to say after the decades of the Rosary is given in some such form as this: ‘O my Jesus, pardon our sins, save us from the fire of hell, have mercy on the souls in Purgatory, especially the most abandoned.’ Is that correct?” “No, it is not,” she replied positively. “The correct form is the one I have written in my account of the apparition on July 13: ‘O my Jesus, pardon us, and save us from the fire of hell; draw all souls to heaven, especially those in most need.”

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What happens when those who believe are mixed with those who don’t believe when praying the Rosary together? This may not be a big deal but the next thing I’ll mention most certainly is.

Apparitionists demand Fatima be believed and accepted when the Church demands no such thing. While it permits belief in Fatima, it doesn’t demand it. The Church doesn’t say Fatima is true.

However, the message is for the pope to do something or else. Acceptance of Fatima becomes critical.

If Fatima is true, then the pope better do it and do it right. It’s not just about believing or not believing a private revelation. Lives are at stake because Communism is the most murderous state ever seen in history. Accepting, believing, and obeying Fatima concerns the expansion of Communism and the results thereof.

There’s a threat to the world if the pope doesn’t do what’s asked in a private revelation. It really fuels the apparitionists demand for belief and in a strong way vindicates apparitionists in their position on apparitions. How can such a condition be merely a private revelation that may or may not be accepted? It just so happens that Pope Pius XII nor any Vatican 2 pope did what Our Lady of Fatima asked, so did any of them truly believe in Fatima?

Fatima is a private revelation, yet it demands belief outside of the usual parameters of the Catholic Faith, which is precisely what a private revelation can’t do or can it? We have major divisions and animosity over an apparition.

ORIGINAL FIRST DRAFT BELOW

The Great Fatima Distraction?

We are not bound to believe in private revelations. When the Church presents liturgies or churches in honor of a private revelation such as an apparition, it doesn’t imply the revelation is true and must be believed. Our faith doesn’t depend on them at all.

A liturgy or church in honor of an apparition may appear that the Church believes in it, but this is a matter of perspective. It would appear the Church, at one time, believed popes could be deposed. It would appear that it believed the Roman line during the Great Western Schism was the true line. These opinions are just opinions. The Church has opinions, too, and private revelations are one of them.

What is not an opinion is the Church saying a private revelation is worthy of belief. When the Church says a private revelation is worthy of belief, it means it’s free from doctrinal or moral error, and this declaration must be accepted and believed. However, the Church saying a private revelation, such as an apparition is worthy of belief, it doesn’t imply it’s free from historical inaccuracies, silly ideas, fraud, or demonic activity. It may have all of the above.

The Mystical City of God by Mary of Agreda was approved by the Church. However, there are errors in the work. The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

In particular instances, these visionaries have been mistaken: thus Marie de Agreda teaches, like her contemporaries, the existence of crystal heavens, and declares that one must believe everything she says, although such an obligation exists only in the case of the Holy Scripture. In 1771 Clement XIV forbade the continuation of her process of beatification “on account of the book”. [1]

Yet, in 1900, Pope Leo XIII granted an Apostolic Blessing to a Canadian lay woman who informed the pope of printing a book of all the instructions found at the end of each chapter in The Mystical City of God. Pope Leo XIII then ordered the book to be printed on the presses of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda in Rome. The book titled Sublime doctrine de la Mère de Dieu sur les vertus chrétiennes (extrait de la ‘Cité mystique de Dieu’ par le Vén. Marie d’Agreda- Rome, Impr.de la Sacrée Congrégation de la Propagande, 1900. vii + 403pp.+ frontispiece.)

When I wrote about the problems with the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe [2], I discovered problems with the Fatima apparitions.

Much of what we’re told by Lucia of Fatima comes 20 years after the apparitions.

Bishop José Alves Correia da Silva approved the 1917 Fatima apparitions including the later apparitions in Spain as part of the Fatima message. For instance, Lucia claims that Our Lady appeared on December 10, 1925 at Pontevedra, to manifest Her Heart pierced with thorns, and to request the practice of the communion of reparation on the five First Saturdays of the month. The same bishop sanctioned the First Saturdays devotion on September 13, 1939.

According to Lucia, Our Lady came back one more time, on June 13, 1929, at Tuy, to ask for the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, which is also included as part of the overall approval of Fatima.

The 1930 approval of Fatima is interesting considering some problems the Church noticed during its investigation.

With all charity, respect to the Church, and all those who strongly believe in Fatima, I would like to bring up some those seriously troubling issues about Fatima. The following information comes from the Critical Documentation of Fatima at fatima_critical1.pdf

In case one thinks the documentation is fake, one can also find much of the info in the 1950 book The True Story of Fatima | EWTN by Fr. John de Marchi, I.M.C.

First Issue

Our Lady’s clothing and jewelry are not proper for Our Lady

The children described Our Lady:

“The attire consisted of a white cloak that reached from the head to the bottom of the skirt, gold from the waist down, with the strings crossing it, and from top to bottom, and the edges were more closely spaced. The skirt was white all over, with gold strings running along and across, but only reaching to the knee; a white coat, not gold, with only two or three strings at the cuffs; no shoes, white stockings, not gold; around the neck was a gold chain with a medal at the tips; her hands were raised; she had very small buttons on her ears, very close to her ears; she parted her hands when she spoke; she had black eyes; she was of medium height.” (emphasis mine) (Fatima Doc. 1 1917-05-c.27 Interrogation of Father Manuel Marques Ferreira, parish priest of Fátima, to Lúcia de Jesus Santos about the first apparition.)

The bottom line, the apparition doesn’t appear to be Our Lady. If we made an image of Our Lady as described, would it be accepted by the Church, reproduced, and placed inside churches? After all, it should not be problem with a statue as described in church by an apparition approved as worthy of belief.

Second Serious Issue

Two Major False Prophecies from Fatima

If we go back to the day of the “miracle of the sun” Lucia was telling everyone on Oct. 13, 1917 that WW1 would end that day. After the “miracle” of the sun on Oct. 13, Father Manuel Marques Ferreira interviewed Lucia on Oct. 16. Lucia tells him that Our Lady told her:

“I want to tell you not to offend Our Lord anymore; that they pray the rosary to Our Lady; build a little chapel here for Our Lady of the Rosary (Lúcia is unsure whether it was like that: build a little chapel here, I am Our Lady of the Rosary); the war ends today; wait here for your military, very soon.”

In another interview three days later on Oct. 19, 1917, she told Father Manuel Nunes Formigão STD, JCD:

She [Our Lady] said: “The war ends today; wait here for your soldiers very soon.”

Fr Formigão: Did she say: “wait here for your military” or “wait here for your soldiers”?

She said: “Wait here for the military.”

Fr Formigão:  But look, the war is still going on!… The newspapers report that there have been fights since the thirteenth!… How can this be explained, if Our Lady said that the war ended on that day?

Lucia: I don’t know. I only know that I heard her say that the war would end on the 13th. I don’t know anything else

Fr Formigão:  Some people say that they heard you say on that day that Our Lady had declared that the war would end soon. Is this true?

[Lucia] I said it just as Our Lady had said it.

Fr Formigão also asked Jacinta on the same day:

Did she say that the war would end that day or that it would end soon?

Jacinta: Our Lady said that when she got to heaven, the war would end.

Fr Formigão: But the war isn’t over yet!

Jacinta: It is ending, it is ending

Fr Formigão: But when will it end?

Jacinta: I think it ends on Sunday.

In yet another interview following Oct. 13, Father António dos Santos Alves writes:

[Our Lady] told [the children] that she was Our Lady of the Rosary; that the war ended that day; that our soldiers would soon come; that they were to build a chapel to Our Lady of the Rosary on the site of the apparition and that the people amend their sins that have greatly offended her Son.

If Lucia misunderstood back when she actually heard Our Lady, how is it that she would remember so clearly 20 years later when writing her memoirs?

The excuse that exhaustive interrogating to exhausted children caused them to get the date wrong. That might be the case for little Jacinta, but Lucia doubled-down, even triple-downed her assertion that the war would end on Oct. 13, 1917. The end of the war date would be one thing you would remember and Lucia most certainly remembered it!

This huge contradiction and weird description of Our Lady’s appearance are overlooked by the miracle of the sun and massive influence of the people in persuading the authorities to accepting the whole thing and approving belief in it.

Bottom line, Lucia got it wrong repeatedly at the time or the apparition is false. If she got it wrong so badly within a week, how can we trust her memory twenty years later from her memoirs? Her own parish priest Father Manuel Marques Ferreira never believed the story even after the “miracle” of the sun. He thought it was all demonic!

The second prophecy is far worse!

Second False Prophecy and the Third Secret

Lucia told Father Augustin Fuentes on December 26, 1957,

“Father, the Most Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her message, neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way but without giving any importance to Her message. The bad, not seeing the punishment of God actually falling upon them, continue their life of sin without even caring about the message. But believe me, Father, God will chastise the world and this will be in a terrible manner. The punishment from Heaven is imminent.

Father, how much time is there before 1960 arrives? It will be very sad for everyone, not one person will rejoice at all if beforehand the world does not pray and do penance. I am not able to give any other details because it is still a secret. By the will of the Blessed Virgin, only the Holy Father and the Bishop of Fatima can know the secret. Both have chosen, however, not to open it in order not to be influenced by it.

This is the third part of the Message of Our Lady, which will remain secret until 1960.

 Tell them, Father, that many times the most Holy Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation.

Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin. And the devil knows what it is that most offends God and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus, the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way, the devil will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.

According to Lucia, part of the third secret is also part the great chastisement that happens between 1957 and 1960.

Cardinal Ottaviani asked Lucia 1955 why not before 1960, and she said, “Because then it will seem clearer (mais claro).” In fact, she stated, “it cannot be made known before 1960.” When pressed to why it had to be in 1960, she and Bishop José Correia da Silva replied to Canon Barthas in 1946: “Because the Blessed Virgin wishes it so.”

We see wars and people dying in the first two secrets. In the third secret, we hear about another major chastisement which will happen between 1957 and 1960.

Lucia said the world (not the Church) was going to be punished severely. The world would understand the contents of the third secret when revealed in 1960 just as people would understand the second secret when revealed after the fact. (World War 2 and revealed by Lucia in 1941.)

Logically, the election of Roncalli couldn’t be this part of the secret because in 1960, virtually everyone believed him to be a true pope and rejoiced something Lucia said would not happen. There would be no rejoicing.

The secret couldn’t say we have a fake pope only to be revealed by a fake pope. Therefore, it couldn’t have referred to the pope as some type of imposter pope.

Another critical point is that Lucia said, “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.”

If we draw an inference that this might mean apostasy in other places around the world, where would this be seen in 1960?

The question is what kind of terrible chastisement would befall on the whole world that could be seen by 1960 that would be as big as the first two secrets to verify the prophecy was true? Again, we’re talking about part of the third secret because that is what Lucia said.

China was the only country to suffer a major chastisement with the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), which caused the Great Chinese Famine, resulting in an estimated 15 to 55 million deaths. This is huge for China, but not the world. Surely, the great chastisement Lucia is referring would be greater than China’s catastrophe.

Think of all the possibilities and what we find absolutely nothing!

If any other religion put something out like this, we Catholics would call it out for what it is, a false prophecy, because that’s simply what it is.

Bottom line, we have another false prophecy. However, the Church did not approve this prophecy as told in 1957 as worthy of belief. It was unknown when approved in 1930. Again, was the approval in 1930 provisional? Is Lucia not trustworthy? Does the whole Fatima event and the false prophecies go hand in hand? Absolutely!

Third Serious Issue

Too many exceptions are needed.

Fatima is nothing like Lourdes and St. Bernadette. The message at Lourdes was nothing new to Catholicism. It confirmed a recent dogma. The three secrets were for Bernadette herself. Its message was simple with a miraculous healing spring as a reward for having faith. It was a beautiful and wonderful event in every way. No real problems, no real confusions.

Fatima on the other hand has everything Lourdes doesn’t. Problems, confusions, demands or else, and major prophecies that don’t come as stated.

When the angel appeared in the beginning, he gave the children Communion. Jacinta and Francesco hadn’t even received their First Communion yet. When Francesco received from the Chalice, he asked Lucia what he had received because he was unaware of what it was.

There are several strange things about this occurrence. In the West, we don’t receive from the Chalice and preparation and knowledge of Communion is absolutely demanded for those of the age of reason. Infants don’t need to know because they are not able. However, when the Sacraments are given to those of the age of reason, it’s imperative to understand what’s being received except in cases of danger of death.

If the angel is truly from Heaven, why would he go against the norms of the Church on such an important thing as Holy Communion? How would or could you know he was truly from Heaven if the only way to test the spirit are with the norms of the Church?

In the West, we fast before Communion, but are we to expect the children had no breakfast? It’s possible, but it seems like one exception after another is needed to legitimize the event as coming from Heaven.

We are not told about the angel story in 1917 but years later in 1937 and 1941 by Lucia and her memoirs.

The bottom line is the radically strange way Holy Communion was given to the children under the circumstances, where the testing the spirit with Catholic belief and practice is impossible. However, the Church didn’t approve of this story of the Angel as it came from the memoirs of Lucia over twenty years after the fact. Again, is Lucia trustworthy and was the approval provisional?

Other problems with Fatima are covered in the Footnotes. However, these three suffice to show Fatima is not from Heaven.

What about the Miracle of the Sun?

The miracle of the sun was also seen many times at Medjugorja. I had friends who not only saw the miracle of the sun at Medjugorja, but their rosary beads turned to gold on each bead as they prayed it. They were strong believers in John Paul 2 and the Vatican 2 religion because of Medjugorja. Yet, these apparitions have blunt heresies even by Vatican 2 standards.

I have another friend who saw the miracle of the sun at Garabandal. The apparitions of Garabandal from 1961 to 1965 also have other spectacular miracles, yet its prophecies also failed miserably proving it to be a false apparition.

What I find interesting is that not all 70,000 people saw the “miracle” on that day as reported by apparitionists. Many reported seeing nothing unusual, which of course included the many skeptics, atheists, etc. the very ones that would need to see to believe. Everyone described the event quite differently, too.

The skeptical explanations for the “miracle” are also quite reasonable. In Pentecostal settings, we see how the power of suggestion make masses of people believe they’ve been “slain in the spirit.” I’ve seen it first-hand. “Speaking in tongues” is another example. We definitely see the power of suggestion at Fatima and many other places. Combine that with starring at the sun for a long period of time and then expecting to see something unusual. If a real weather condition happened on that day with all the other conditions, the event would certainly be magnified.

We read about this very thing in the book “God and the Sun of Fatima” written by the priest, physicist and philosopher of science, Father Stanley L Jaki, who believed in Fatima.

Fr. Jaki tells of the devout Catholic lawyer and Third Order Franciscan Domingo Pintos Coelho who was there in the Cova on Oct. 13, 1917. He published what he witnessed that day on Oct. 16^th in the local Catholic newspaper titled “Ordem.” (Keep in mind that in 1917, permission to write and publish on the Church was required as seen in canon law.)

Jaki didn’t like what Coelho wrote and breaks down everything he wrote to make Coelho appear to look irresponsible and/or faithless. However, Jaki was a strong believer in the miracle and he wouldn’t let anything get in his way in spreading what he believed was a miracle, but the fact remains that there is another side to the story.

Coelho wrote (p. 53): The leading newspapers began to speak of this case with great frequency and it will therefore be good not to reach a wrong conclusion before considering some ideas that rightly present themselves in cases of this nature. It is clear that as Catholics we accept the full possibility of the miracle. God, since He made the laws which rule natural phenomena, can also alter or suspend them. Simply put, a miracle is an exception. And exceptions are not presumed. They require certain proof. The Catholic Church has constantly insisted on the matter of proofs before it would agree to establishing the miraculous character of any fact of series of facts.

He continued in the next few pages…

In reference to what happened on Saturday the thirteenth, we can give witness because we were there, not as a pilgrim, note that well, but as a curious spectator.

From eleven until one-thirty the rain was constant and driven by a strong wind; a frankly rough and disagreeable weather which the enormous crowd of many thousands of people endured with excellent humor, without shelter other than rain hats and the vehicles, since not even one building is to be found in the vicinity.

Thirty-seven and a half minutes after one o’clock—or noon by solar time—was the hour set for the vision with which it was hoped that the phenomena in the heavens would coincide.

At this moment it continued to rain.

Some moments later the rain slackened and at one forty-five it stopped altogether. The sun, until then concealed, showed itself among the clouds that moved fairly fast. Because their density was variable, the veil which they threw over the king of stars [sun] was diaphanous. Like the multitude, we then looked toward the sun with rapt attention, and through the clouds, we saw it under new aspects—new for us, mark it well… Now surrounded by reddish flames, now with a ring of yellow or bright violet, now seemingly enlivened by a very rapid rotating movement, now even apparently detaching itself from the sky, approaching the earth, and giving forth a strong heat…

Why deny it? These phenomena, which we had never before witnessed, impressed us greatly. Among the crowds, a collective psychology established itself. And generally speaking there passed over the vast majority of that crowd a tremendous wave of faith that was very moving.

But then Coelho continues to explain….

One doubt remained with us, however.

Was what we saw in the sun an exceptional thing? Or could it be reproduced in analogous circumstances?

Now it was precisely this analogy of circumstances that presented itself to us yesterday [Sunday]. We could see the sun half overcast with clouds as on Saturday. And sincerely, we saw on that day the same succession of colors, the same rotary movement, etc.

(p. 57)

Coelho concluded his article:

Eliminating, then, the only extraordinary fact, what remains? Right now, the statements of the three children and nothing else.

It is very little.

Will the children be found sincere? We have no reason to doubt that they will be; their humble state is a guarantee of this for us.

We ask pardon for the crabbed stories of the investigators of popular belief who have attributed mysterious profit motives to the shepherds, for not believing this story without proof. Do the strongminded [espiritos fortes or freethinkers] want us to believe without proof? Very well. But with the same right we could demand from those who see in all this but Jesuit trickeries the same proofs they demand from us, regardless of whether they find them inconvenient and therefore dispense with them.

In sum, we returned from Fatima in the same state of mind in which we went there—in doubt.

Was there a miracle, were there apparitions? It is possible but between possibility and reality there is an abyss.

We will therefore continue with an open mind, benevolent, if so desired, but nothing more.

And let us be permitted to advise those who by their position and intelligence can influence others not to go beyond this limit.

(pp. 59-60)

After this article was published on Oct. 16^th, 1917, Coelho published another article the next day Oct. 17, again, talking about Fatima.

If miracles are rare today, it does not mean that they can no longer occur. For example, the lives of Don Bosco, the founder of the Salesians, and of the Curé d’ Ars were full of miracles. The history of Lourdes is also a series of miracles verified with the greatest rigor. …

St. Augustine says: “A miracle should never be proclaimed when a natural explanation is possible”.

This rule has always been scrupulously observed by the Church, the teacher of truth.

Now what did we say about the case of Fatima? That we, the obscure author of these lines, had not observed any fact that would prompt us to consider as supernatural. But not only did we treat it from a personal and unauthorized point of view but in no way did we wish to disclaim the observations which others have made and which differ from ours.

We would want nothing more than to witness events to which no natural explanation can be fitted. Our disappointment was great, when on Sunday, as we said, we verified the vacuity of what on the day before had seemed to be miraculous; our disappointment was heightened since we were greatly impressed by the coincidence that the rain of three hours’ duration had stopped almost exactly at the moment when the children prayed, and that the sun then appeared in the clouds.

Simply put, it is necessary in a matter of such weight not to yield to the principle Quod vohumus facile credimus.

We therefore conclude as we did yesterday: it is fitting to replace premature enthusiasm with the most prudent reserve. If in Fatima there is something of the supernatural our holding back will not impede the march of events upon which god in His infinite wisdom has decided.

On the other hand, a fiasco following hasty exaltation would not fail to be exploited by the enemies of the Church; they are always numerous, very active, and constantly on the watch for the propitious moment for the attack.

End of Coelho.

Coelho called the “Miracle of the Sun” vacuous and he got backlash immediately by other papers. I included this report to show there was another side, which many apparitionists don’t include in their stories. Jaki was an exception.

The bottom line, the “miracle” of the sun doesn’t prove a heavenly apparition. To one devout Catholic who witnessed the event didn’t even think it was miraculous and publicly tells us so in two articles in a Catholic magazine within a week of the “miracle”. The same so-called miracle of the sun is seen at all the modern apparition sites, which we know are false. Yet, it was this very “miracle” that has convinced most Catholics that Fatima is a true apparition from Heaven.

Conclusion

The prophecies definitely failed. Is that the fault of Fatima or Lucia? It’s hard to separate the two. However, we know that Garabandal was false precisely because of the false prophecies. Why are the false prophecies of Fatima overlooked?

People would rather believe in a hoax, a deception of the devil, or any lie if it makes them feel better. The pope, many bishops, and many theologians and canonists have bought into Fatima but that doesn’t mean it’s true. It doesn’t mean it’s probably true.

Lastly, the Church has declared that nothing in the Fatima apparition is heretical or dangerous morally or doctrinally. However, is it possible the Fatima apparitions are a demonic deception as a distraction to something else? For instance, what was really behind the Spanish Flu and Vaccines? See page 27 of the COVID-Report-from-Rep.-Weyler-3.pdf

Both Jacinta and Francisco Marto were killed by the Spanish Flu. 100 million people died from this chastisement that’s never mentioned by Our Lady of Fatima. That’s as many or more people than both world wars put together! How could the Spanish Flu be overlooked? How is it still overlooked?

Another possible deception concerns what was then the future of the Church. Is Fatima a demonic plan hidden within the demonic plan? All kinds of ideas floating around Fatima predictions, consecration of Russia, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, etc. all of which have nothing to do with the real Gospel and confuse the end times as Scripture tells us.

These all are the bad fruits of Fatima.

We know how Pope Leo XIII in the 1880’s tells us how in his vision Christ gives the Devil the time and power to deceive the Church. Was Fatima part of that plan in the grand scheme of things? After all, the whole reason we pray the St. Michael prayer after mass is because of Satan’s plan to destroy the Church. Pius XI shorten the prayer in 1934 and leaves out those critical points Pope Leo XIII put in the prayer. See the Original St. Michael Prayer of Pope Leo XIII. Why was the crackdown on modernists put to an end after Pope Pius X?

I don’t know how you get around the false prophecies, but it looks to me to be another great deception of the devil to fool the masses to distract from something far greater.

Check out Footnote 3 to see more of the Fatima deception.

Footnotes:

[1] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Private Revelations

[2] Problems with the Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe – Part I

Problems with the Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe – Part II