The Objections

Rev. Fr. Fabrice Delestre

       Certain priests sometimes formulate the following objection to the union of all the bishops with the Pope in the act of the consecration of Russia: One can understand that the good God requires the Pope to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, since the Pope has jurisdiction over the whole world. But diocesan bishops do not have jurisdiction over Russia, and hence do not have the authority to consecrate this land.

       Such reasoning forgets one of the essential elements of the Message of Fatima: reparation. Our Lady came to request "a solemn and public act of reparation and consecration of Russia." If it is true that the bishops do not have jurisdiction over Russia, they most certainly do have the power to make reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for their own sins and those of their diocese, by organizing propitiatory ceremonies in their respective dioceses. This reparation concerns, of course, all sorts of sins, but if one considers the general tenor of Our Lady’s words at Fatima, it seems to apply more especially to two categories of sins: Firstly, the "five types of offenses and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary" as our Lord enumerated them to Sr. Lucy on May 29, 1930, at Tuy:

       It is evident that these offenses and blasphemies have the effect of corrupting the integrity of the faith and morals of Christian peoples. (See Fatima: Intimate Joy World Event, ibid., Ch. 6, p. 159. [See also English edition, Book II, Ch. III.])

       The second category of sins would be the sins of apostasy, and especially the apostasy of souls who abandon the true faith to embrace, more or less openly, the erroneous doctrines of atheistic and materialistic Communism, or its variants (the much-vaunted "liberalism" is but a form of sugar-coated Communism, as the great Pope Leo XIII perfectly demonstrated in his magnificent encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum of June 20, 1888).

       These two categories of sins against the morals of Christians and the true faith are without doubt the most serious and the most widespread sins of our era. That is why the good God wants, before the actual consecration of Russia, the purification of souls by means of the devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is certainly to allow the most ample and most general purification possible throughout the whole world that the union of all the bishops with the Pope is required.

       It is undoubtedly in order to allow this purification of souls to be efficacious and at the origin of a real spiritual renewal of the world, one deep and long lasting, that Our Lady requested the specific consecration of Russia, that is to say, of the country which, from 1917 to the present, has been the principal instigator of agitation, subversion, and of revolutions and wars throughout the whole world:

• The grace of the conversion of Russia: A twofold conversion is to be seen in this promise: (1) religious conversion, from the Orthodox schism to the true Catholic faith; and (2) the logical consequence of the first conversion, the political and social conversion of the country, with passage from a materialistic, atheistic, egalitarian regime to a political and social order founded on the doctrine of the Church.
• Once the great instigator of worldwide subversion and agitation has disappeared, thanks to the conversion of Russia, "a period of peace will be given to the world."

       What magnificent wisdom and ordinance can be perceived in the divine plan which nevertheless allows everything to depend upon the decision of a single man: the Holy Father! This should encourage us to pray more insistently to obtain from the Pope this consecration, which will be accomplished despite all the obstacles, as our Lord promised to Sr. Lucy during an interior communication at Rianjo (Spain) on August 29, 1931: "... they will repent and do it, but it will be late. Russia will have already spread its errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecutions against the Church ..."

       On the other hand, since one of the most serious aspects of the current crisis in the Church is the unprecedented eclipse of authority, it is certain that, once the consecration of Russia has been carried out, the re-establishment of traditional authority in the Church will be greatly facilitated because the act of consecration will highlight at one and the same time the monarchical and the hierarchical character of the divine constitution of the Church.

Related Articles:

• Why Isn't the Mother of God Being Obeyed?
• Alexandrina of Portugal and the Consecration
• The Importance of the Beatification of the Little Seers of Fatima

This article is reprinted with permission from the June 2000 issue of The Angelus

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