(Summary: Is the Catholic Church in the middle of an Apostasy described by various prophecies & apparitions, especially that of Our Lady of Fatima?)
Matthew 16:18 – And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
From time to time, you will encounter Catholics who will hurl the well meaning, oft repeated above scripture verse, whenever one talks about problems with the papacy online. Whether it is on X, or Substack, or Facebook, or other assorted social media avenues where you usually post, it is inevitable. Even if a Catholic may not say it out aloud for want of time, they perhaps are looking at your post in disdain, thinking of the above scripture verse in silent contemplative hubris. I was on that side of the fence at one point.
Note that this post is not meant to be a full fledged apologetic piece on the primacy of Peter or other such nuances, but to address the oft misrepresented view that “…the gates of Hades will not prevail against it”
Prophecy in paragraph 675?
Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.(574) The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth (575) will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh
The point of this blog is not to unpack every line of that CCC reference, but to draw focus to three aspects (already emphasized in bold fonts above):
- It is the Church that will be put through an enormous and final trial. One that will shake the faith of many a believer. This can be said to mean the Catholic Church, although by this time Ratzinger and Wojtyla were already part of the ‘separated brethren’ and ‘people of God’ revolution-codes.
- This Church will face an “APOSTASY”, also referred to a falling away from the faith by many.
- This Apostasy will be a falling away from “the truth”, viz; the entirety of revelation and the deposit of faith (depositum fidei) handed down once and for all (Jude 1:3) to the Apostles.
What is the precedent for CCC paragraph 675?
The Communism of today, more emphatically than similar movements in the past, conceals in itself a false messianic idea. A pseudo-ideal of justice, of equality and fraternity in labor impregnates all its doctrine and activity with a deceptive mysticism, which communicates a zealous and contagious enthusiasm to the multitudes entrapped by delusive promises.
However CCC paragraph 675 goes beyond that into an “[…] apostasy from the truth”. This isn’t what Divini Redemptoris alludes to at all. So what was the precedent for CCC paragraph 675? It’s footnotes do not convey as much as they should apart from more scripture verses.
Now bear in mind that John Paul II, had access to the Third Secret of Fatima, which has been linked to such an “apostasy from the truth”, right from the time he was elected as Pope in 1978. The Fatima Center documents that John Paul II knew about the Third Secret in 1978, although it was denied by Cardinal Bertone, who claimed that it was only in 1981 that the Pope read the Third Secret revealed by Our Lady to Sister Lucia after the assassination attempt on his life.1 Either ways, the CCC was published in 1992, roughly ten years after the assassination attempt on John Paul II.
Recall also that it was John Paul II’s theologian, Cardinal Ciappi, who had stated2 in 1995 that:
“In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top”
Based on the timeline, one can thus theoretically & reasonably deduce that Pope John Paul II, the soft-modernist that he evidently was, had provided Catholics a vital clue to the origin & the source of the crisis within the oft criticized CCC itself!
Though paragraph 675 is not referenced or cross-linked to the Third Secret of Fatima in the footnotes, it serves those with eyes to see, who should be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Summary
- It is Conservative/Semi-Trad sources that have published the timeline related to the Third Secret of Fatima at the Fatima Center, not Sedevacantists or Rad-Trads who usually get ignored for their extreme views. Christopher Ferrara, one of the main combatants for the Fatima Center can best be described as a Conservative/Semi-Trad as can be gleaned from his rather ‘motivated’ interview with LifeSite news sometime after the election of Prevost as Pope, wherein all the trappings of Trad Inc. are on full display.
- This Conservative/Semi-Trad source (that recognizes the problems in the Church since 1965, yet holds the current Pope to be a valid Pope), publishes articles that reveal that the Third Secret of Fatima deals with an apostasy.
- Further, a Cardinal no less, disclosed that this prophesized apostasy would begin right at the top (obviously referring to the Pope himself).
- This is supplemented by The Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 675 as mentioned above in the first section.
Now recall that we have a ‘Pope’ who has claimed on more than one occasion that “truth” is not known and we have to search for it. His underlings are repeating this subjective lie.
Recall the fact that the new ‘Pope’ wants to build on the foundation of his predecessor (a vision statement termed ‘synodality’), but not on the “truth” handed down once and for all (Jude 1:3) to the Apostles.
Recall the fact that the new ‘Pope’ desires unity with those condemned and separated from the Catholic faith by the entirety of pre-conciliar Popes. And recall that this unity is desired to the exclusion of most Catholic doctrines and beliefs (examples: the primacy of the Pope, the real presence in the Eucharist, and Marian doctrines to name a few).
Recall that the new ‘Pope’ wants to change attitudes before we change doctrines – although he does believe that Church doctrine will not be changed for a long time at least. (Whew, that’s a relief, right? right??). The attitudes to be changed are about the LGBTQ+, which is to welcome them to the point of an exclusion of the repentance factor.
(There is more that we can say about the papacy of Leo. However for brevity, I will limit myself to the above instances or examples.)
Yet, after all this, we have people who will hesitate to critique the ‘developments’ in Rome after the election of Leo.
Can a Catholic know all about (1) CCC 675, (2) the Fatima Prophecy/Secrets & (3) the above ‘accomplishments’ by Leo, in conjunction and in continuation with the Francis papacy, and honestly deny that we are on the road to apostasy, if not already smack in the middle of it? And perhaps the bit about the “gates of hell” not prevailing may not necessarily mean that the Church will be spared from a trial in the form apostasy – It may just mean that the faith will be preserved in spite of it.
Ave Maria
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