“the laborer is not worthy of his hire” Michael Grimm - GOP Party Line

“the laborer is not worthy of his hire” Michael Grimm - GOP Party Line

“the laborer is worthy of his hire”  Saint John XXIII – JESUS Party Line

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2014/04/slave-wage-boss-gop-congressman-michael.html

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Canonization of Two Popes - Two Saints? - John XXIII and John Paul II - But Only One Halo!

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Pope Francis Signs OFF on Patron Saint of Pedophilia Protectors / Enablers Karol Wojtyla aka Langley's Favorite Son John Paul II – Half Baked Order of John XXIII on the Side

$anto Marcial Maciel Degollado and Saint Karol Wojtyla

“I never met a Pedophile Priest that I would Not Lie for or Not Protect.” Anonymous Graffiti, Vatican City (a, the one true synagogue of Satan).

“Everything he (John Paul II) did was holy.” ~~Gigi Barnett, Baltimore

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/07/07/baltimore-catholics-celebrate-after-pope-john-paul-ii-cleared-for-sainthood/

Benedict XVI Pope Francis the Last has signed off on the desired Patron Saint of Pedophile Clergy Protectors and Enablers – None other than John Paul II.  Blah. Blah, Blah, Dogma, Dogma, Dogma.

Whose says that Francis did not sell his soul to satan to escape his personal hell in Buenos Aires? 

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Pope Francis the Cheapskate Stiffs Vatican Serfs on Traditional New Pope Bonus

Pope Francis, used to stiffing little people on the truth i.e. his role in the Dirty War in Argentina, has decided to forego the transitional bonus given to Vatican employees on the election of a new pope.

The reason? 

A 2011 deficit. Money that lined Bertone’s relatives and cronies' pockets then, and now a cool million or two to refurbish the New Retirement Palace of EPBXVI - Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI.

Like Margaret Thatcher’s 10 million pound funeral made so easily available when 11 million is cut from the national budget for school arts programs, the peasants in the rank and file Vatican staff category just don’t understand the big picture of global finances from crony crook great financial minds.

Now that Francis is eating cafeteria food in the his hotel cafeteria, I wouldn’t eat it if I were him. 

Disgruntled little people like cooks and servers may spit in it like in the rest of the western world in a new sacred tradition of a new emerging wage slave class of unappreciated, ignored, unseen labor.

 “…The worker is likewise entitled to a wage that is determined in accordance with the precepts of justice. This needs stressing. The amount a worker receives must be sufficient, in proportion to available funds, to allow him and his family a standard of living consistent with human dignity…” 

 ~~ Pacem In Terris, John XXIII, April 11, 1963

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/18/pope-francis-vatican-bonus/2094171/

(P.S. Kiss any cooperation from the ranks regarding any so-called desired for reform of the Vatican bureaucracy – kiss it goodbye Jack! LOL)

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Benedict’s Demotion Back to High Priest of the Inquisition – March 1, 2013

Reading some progressive Catholic Blogs in the last few days, I get the sense that once Josef Ratzinger got promoted to pope, he found out how little real power a pope has in the Vatican.

That John Paul II made it look easy. That Joe thought that he too could be a rock star pope.

Truth is that JPII was only a media star and his role as conduit for cash through the Vatican and into the Eastern Bloc i.e. Poland for political intrigue fit into pro bono American East Coast media gold during the Cold War.

Well, along comes Joe the Pope and the first thing he does is he wants to show the world what a great scholar he thinks he is and then insults all of Islam with his scholarly Cliff Notes at Regensburg in September 2006.

The man clearly does not understand Islam or he thinks himself insulated in some small college delivering his cheesy little college work that nobody outside the college will know or care about.

No doubt Joe’s best moment came in May 2006 when he finally, after years of writing private secret memos about Maciel to General Wojtyla who never read them apparently, he pushed an aged Legion of Christ founder and general all around pervert and Madoff like crook Marcial Maciel Dellogado into a forced retirement. Not that hard to bring down an old toothless lion at the zoo.

All well and good. And like Henry VIII’s breaking up of the very corrupt obsolete Monastery system in England, the breakup and redistribution of wealth and serfs and seminarians and foot soldiers is still underway for that Legion of Christ empire.

Aside from that, the pope these days is little more than Mickey Mouse at Disneyland who must ride around in his ridiculous pope mobile and wave to the tourists, the majority of practicing Catholics in Rome on any given day of the week, that far outnumber the non-practicing natives etc. and then once a week arrive in Superstar Audience Hall and deliver a pithy little moral sounding message to inspire the rich tourists and justify their very expensive trip to Rome and the Vatican museum.

All this time, the thousands of folders on all the pedophile Priest and pedophile religious members of his church worldwide have been sitting on his old desk collecting dust at the Inquisition, toxic waste that nobody other than a good German clerk could deal with in terms of classifying, stamping and filing away for future reference and or possible authoritative action. Yeah right.

I think that Joe the Pope got bored, and worse than that, that pile of toxic files back in the Inquisition office were becoming his only legacy, a full floor's worth in acreage no doubt in the underground bombproof eternal Vatican Library.

Ratzinger’s, Benedict’s, recent obsessive ranting about homosexuality no doubt is from his long term memory both from his own personal past, the type of distorted sexuality of the average Roman cleric, and along with his past as John Paul’s chief clerk, gatekeeper and fire putter outer of the child abuse thing that got out of the Vatican Fire Brigade’s control both under John Paul II and the overlapping John Paul/Benedict united regime.

The modern world, democracy and communication technology brought perversion to the surface of the pond in the form of all the Bernard Laws of the Hierarchy, one state and one country at a time.

When I see somebody like Cardinal O’Brien finally getting some kind of payback from the Vatican, I see a man without a political party in the Vatican being picked off as road carrion for the sake of public example to all the incoming Cardinal’s about to rush in and crown Benedict’s hand-picked successor from a field of stooges hand-picked over three decades during the John Paul/Benedict Magisterium period of the church.

That and stabbing a Britain in the back fits well into the Wehrmacht training of his youth, a story that he has controlled all along his timeline btw.

That Mahony in Los Angeles carries the Gomez’s Opus Dei Vote to Rome. Rigali certainly knows the details of the Cedric Tornay Swiss Guard Murders and can vote because he has the blackmail power to do so. 

And no doubt there are a handful of Cardinals now who as younger men heard their older cardinal bosses discuss the results of the secret autopsy of John Paul I. Blackmail power there too I think.

John Paul II in his obsession with the dead, dare I call it necromancy, had the bones of some Polish saint, a national Polish hero examined and cat scanned, and also had the body of Celestine V, the last pope to voluntarily resign forensically examined, an object of obsession now for Benedict also.  

Also some sense of trying to make papal sense out of the bizarre way that popes fuck things over for the sake of personal power and prestige masked in a face of that strange bizarre truly unknown to them Christ creature.

John Paul II, and his obsession with dead papal royal bodies and Polish national heroes, in his role of also turning John XXIII’s body into another tourist thingy in St. Peter’s, a Vatican II trophy?, did not under his watch order an autopsy of John Paul I because he already knew the results or did not want to know those results that catapulted him into global power and fame. Believe it or not.

Now Joe’s only role left is to protect his niche in papal history, is to shred or misfile those thousands of pedo files in the Office of the Inquistion’s vaults, not to be refound in next thousand years by the average mediocre Vatican scholars of the future allowed to examine them.  LOL

“Wenn Sie einen Job richtig zu erledigen wollen, müssen Sie es selbst zu tun.”

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The Secret of Fatima - The End of the Papacy?

I remember this thing from first grade in 1958 and it was related to the apparition of Mary at Fatima. The thing of course was the secret letter containing prophecy and to be opened in 1960. Suspense, mystery and absoluteness were hallmarks of this then urban legend.

The legend no doubt twittered out from the convent of Lucia who wrote down these memories twenty five years after their happening. Twenty five years can change a bit of context or connotation. The four gospels were in general consensus written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. Of course Sister Lucia’s memory and voice were of one person and not many.

I have read this so-called third letter and released from the Vatican that got spun in different ways. Before I comment, here is the text of that so-called third “secret” prophecy:

"I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.

 "After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God." 

No doubt Pius XII read this letter in private. He may have shit himself if he read it in early 1944 with the Nazi army camped outside the gates of the Vatican. He probably put it away to 1960 as recommended by Sister Lucia when it was supposed to be clearer in its meaning.

John XXIII became pope in 1958 and called for a Council within three months of his taking office, in early 1959. I think he read that “secret” letter and it may have helped in his decision to call a Council.

The difficult part of any “prophecy” is in who interprets and or who understands the prophecy.

Cardinal Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, is one of a handful of people, mostly popes, who had access and read this message of Mary in Fatima before its official release in 2000.

The fringe conspiracy types put a blanket of doubt over the full disclosure by Ratzinger and or the Vatican in that this is a vision interpreted by Lucia and there are no words and or message in this third part of a whole message package.

John Paul the Great, superstar of the Vatican, took this vision to mean that he was the Bishop in White and that instead of being killed, he was saved from death by the divine intervention of Our Lady of Fatima. He was shot in 1981 in St. Peter’s Square and survived on the feast of that Lady of Fatima. Indeed, the big “M” on his coat of arms stood for Mary. He felt that his survival after Fatima Day was more than a coincidence but divine. He was strongly into the Mary cult wing of the RC church which has a tendency to be medieval or “traditional” on its religious perception of the church’s mission.

John Paul II takes the prophecy or vision of Sister Lucia literally. As a playboy superstar who was privately criticized for spending more time on planning with worldwide rockstar tours than spending time on the nitty gritty of politics and bureaucracy at the Vatican, John Paul thought it was “all about me” in the opinion of some who worked with him.

The one man who Pope Rockstar could always turn to in the nitty gritty bureaucrat role was Joseph Ratzinger, the present pope. Appointed as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith – formerly known was the Holy Office of the Inquisition - in 1981, Ratzinger was the hard nosed bureaucrat you came up against if you did not follow the party line in your role of layman, nun, priest or bishop.

Joe was John Paul’s bad cop in the good cop/bad cop routine of John Paul raking in the glory and PR success. Now in retrospect, perhaps the historic case or label might be good pope/bad pope in the scheme of things.

This past duty roster and his twenty four year methodology of being a power behind the throne until he himself is now in the superstar spotlight (a hard to follow act of that of JPII) perhaps first and foremost this past is the greatest obstacle to Benedict XVI’s public interface and the public’s perception of him as Bishop of Rome. That and Benedict’s perhaps personal and private thought that anybody can be a rockstar. Yeah right.

John Paul II had the same medieval, backward looking, not friendly user attitude toward the laity that Benedict XVI is now being trashed for. John Paul II could get away with it. John Paul II, if you read current history books, single handedly brought down the evil Soviet Empire. The west, masters of the liberal media, and pro-western, anti-Soviet propaganda, makes John Paul some sort of Nietzsche religious superman if such a combination could possibly occur.

In fact, I think that in fifty years, I believe that historians if they are able to be honest will paint the source of the present crumbling western culture on three people. They will be Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II. Not a true axis of evil so to speak but maybe a goofy “Gang of Three” who set the western civilization down a wrong road toward Global fascism and away from human liberation and freedom – a secular real time salvation.

Right now my personal advice to Benedict XVI is to stop trying to be a rockstar. Tear down the Rockstar Audience Theatre and go back to being a Pope in a photograph on the wall or a holy card in the missal of all good and faithful Catholics. Keep your mouth shut or at least have twenty bureaucrats review your remarks before releasing them to the public

Getting back to Sister’s Lucia’s prophecy/vision – John XXIII understood the meaning of the letter of Fatima all too well. Pope John understood the vision on a symbolic level while John Paul took it on a literal level.

On a symbolic level, if the White Bishop is the all too powerful head of a Catholics only Church, then the organization will die if the Papacy dies or is prevented from acting in an actual political or religious sense. The death of the RC church drags her sister churches down as well with her. The whole world becomes a truly darker place then. This is not unlike the so-called prophecy of the now defunct sister churches in Asia Minor in the Book of Revelation – a book, as prophecy, that I personally do not subscribe to.

The pope and or the Vatican is not the Church. The Church is not buildings – it is people – it is the People of God.

Fifty years from now I can picture not a dead Christian Church but a living, thriving, growing institution on all continents and being the Anglican, Lutheran, Roman, Orthodox Church for want of a better term for a United Christianity that I think is the Great (unrecognized) Legacy of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council.

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2009/03/secret-of-fatima-end-of-papacy.html

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Birther and Sedevacantist Movements - Similarities

Is the Oval Office truly empty???

Doing my hobby of researching the millions of pages of faith, Christian and otherwise, a thought occurred to me (I do have them on occasion) (and they are not all eccentric).


It struck me that the whole birther movement, in the denial of legitimacy of the 44th POTUS (a god of sorts with a small g) is not unlike the Sedevacantist (empty chair) movement in the RC church.


That aside from the Clinton campaign starting this whole birth certificate thing in 2008, the ferocity of this continued meme/myth/urban legend thing has overtones of religion all over it as much as it has coded racism.


Just looking at the flash mobs at the White House, Times Square and the Phillies/Mets game on Sunday night reminds me that the super patriotism thing is a tribal, almost secular religion thing. Every recognizable country has at the base of its identity this “we are great” “we are the only true ones” “we are first” tone of things.


As such I wish I had the time and money to follow through on this theme. I see a parallel between the Birther movement and the “Sedevacantists” in the RC church who believe that the Chair of Peter has been empty (Sede Vacante) since the death of Hitler’s pope Pius XII – the Great Appeaser.


John XXIII and his Vatican council thing ticked off a lot of traditionalists and their worship of the Latin mass thingy going in favor of the vernacular service. Modernism and democracy are both sins/depravities in the eyes of the RC dogma.


I have to wonder if the birther movement is a pure redneck populist movement. I have to wonder if big bucks behind the scenes from the likes of Mel Gibson and his more catholic than the pope Dad, along with Opus Dei justice Scalia and Sen. Santorum etc., have not been bankrolling this insane belief that the Oval Office is empty?


And all this birther religious like fervor or insanity is not being funded by church tax free money that should be otherwise taxed and put to better use?

Tale of Sainthood and Three Popes

The ancient Romans used to cremate their dead. Then they ran out of fuel and then burial underground in catacombs became popular with most Romans, as was already popular with the Jews/Christians in town.

One of the legacies of this bone ossuary type thing with Christians became this worship of bones and or relics from ancient Rome onward.


I thought it quite disgusting from a western secular civilized sense when I saw a picture of Joe the Pope kissing a vial of John Paul II’s blood in some silver reliquary at the beatification service on May Day, May 1, the great eternal pagan earth thing.


John Paul II lowered the high standards, Sacred Tradition, that got put into place centuries ago to document and certify so-called saints within the pagan sect and or RC sect of Christianity.


Indeed, I was quite disgusted when then tore John XXIII’s eternal rest from him in order to put his body on display in a glass case in St. Peter’s Basilica awaiting his second miracle to make him a saint.


And of course, you have the so-called Hitler pope of Pius XII and his ongoing PR war with Zionist propaganda against him that he did not save enough Jews when he was CEO of the catholic religion business during WWII.


Most accounts will say that John Paul II helped bring down the hegemony of communism. All well and good. But was that a moral thing or a political thing? Tough question.


Anyway, his blood, in other vials, is at home in Krakow and is being used to raise money for a John Paul II memorial church/shrine. Relics have always been a great way to bring in the tourist/pilgrim money. That, and the sale of indulgences etc.


Hell, even I in the secular world would pay a buck to see Walt Disney’s frozen head. But when you do the fantasy magic relic thing on the so-called religion side of the aisle, well, it just seems so primitive to me.


Perhaps it is the fact that John Paul the Great was on the throne for so long. Many political and moral issues got entangled together and John Paul more or less with his crony underlings covered up sexual abuse by their clergy for so long as well. That, to me, comes under the heading of mismanagement and not sainthood. But then again I am only a Cultural Christian and not a catholic Christian.


Pius XII, and I have done much research on him, lasted nineteen years. His hottest critics do not see that as a CEO he wore many hats. And that is his problem as well. There is too much documentation to hold him accountable for the actions or inactions of his bureaucracy. One day he made efforts to save Jews and the next he was totally indifferent to their plight or so it would seem.


That he, as a lifetime diplomat, was more the first Appeaser with Hitler in Europe, setting that precedent, in that he as the Vatican representative made and signed a bad treaty between the Vatican and Germany in 1933 in order to get on with his greater career ambitions back at the Vatican.


Pius XII, by his silence, tried to save the institution founded by Constantine. He did so at the expense of Jews, Catholics in Poland and the Balkans, Orthodox Christians, as well as Protestants dissenting against the Reich. He let a lot of people down for the sake of a lot of institutional dust, marble and glory.


The two career politicians, John Paul II and Pius XII, are only eligible for sainthood after they changed the rules of the game in the 1980s, moving the outfield to fifty feet and everybody gets to have five hundred homeruns per season now, that is, if in retrospect you are found worthy, and your blood or relics can be sold to raise cash etc.


Angelo Roncalli however, John XXIII, broke and bent the rules and directly saved not hundreds of Jews like Pius XII, but thousands. He did so not for ambition it would appear but for the sheer humanity of doing what was right and within his limited powers to grant and act in a time of great moral crisis during World War Two.


John XXIII deserves the title of saint. He earned it. He deserves it and would make it under the old six miracle requirement, 4 and 2 miracles, for sainthood, and not the current saints on steroid rules, 1 and 1, put in effect by General Wojtyla, the prince bishop of Krakow and Rome.


Have a nice day.




Christian Madness Vacation Tour! (sales tax extra)

I only did half a rant on the Kook who was running around Haiti shanghaiing children to populate her soon to be built orphanage in the Dominican Republic.

The other half of the rant had to – has to – do with the weird state of “Christian” people in this second world country (checked our credit ratings lately?) towards the people, mostly of a different color in most cases, and in the third world.

Add to that the bizarre threat or was it a command to “Go teach all nations” the Christian way whatever that flavor of the month philosophy is this month on (Comedy Central) TV evangelism or Capitol Hill (by way of non-profit lobbyists with loads of cash).

Apparently that same article that describes the possible criminal activities of Laura Silsby and her bunch of Baptist do-gooders out on a little adventure in the bush – is how offensive this whole thing plays in the rest of the planet.

Haiti earthquake: In God's name

If I was a Muslim, or a Buddhist or a non-believer, I would look at Haitians, poor as they are, and see that they do have a social network of relatives they can turn to in times of needs. And if not, there are the orphanages. Plenty of them. Trying to get the rest of the planet to adopt children nobody else wants.

And here is this nose up in the air white Baptist American grabbing kids and running for the border to set up shop for her own gain. Americans, to the rest of the world, no longer look like the sane providers and saviours they once did seventy odd years ago when we helped, by force of arms, to directly defeat global Fascism and indirectly Stalinist Communism.

What did Laura Silsby think she was going to do? Did God have a plan for her success? (suddenly I sound like Joel Osteen). Build a Jim and Tammy Baker Amusement Park/Orphanage and rake in the cash as she made commercials showing sad little children and give interviews on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club?

What kind of a bubble world does she live in? Where is her humanity and her old fashioned sense of dignity and self worth? Where is she in this whole freaking Jesus Christ Ponzi scam that Christianity seems to have become in the past forty years or so?

She lives in the modern American E-Van-Gel-ical Christian reality of selling Jesus as a market commodity or product. “Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour?” I have heard a thousand times from some nitwit in the streets, in the mall, at a bus stop, at my front door. And my straight man line back is - “Does he come with a guarantee or at least a ten year warranty?” You have no idea how many times I have stopped the Jesus Freaks in their tracks with that line. Amen!

But seriously folks, since the Reformation, intelligent people have built, put a challenge on themselves to both learn to read and to learn to decipher the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Somewhere along the timeline for the Americans at least, it turned into a consumer product and a “don’t worry about anything else” once you bought the Jesus Gizmo, whatever it really is. That’s why when we started a war on Iraq and Afghanistan, George Bush felt safe to tell us to “forget about it” and go to the mall and shop some more on your grandchildren’s credit.

Getting back to the article about the crazy American missionaries, there is a ending note about how the Baptists, like the rest of all corporations, have outsourced the old fashioned missionaries who tried to get to know the people they were trying to convert. (outsourcing – reduces the benefits and retirement costs of evangelism)

The way I see it on a timeline, John XXIII did more than try to put some fresh air in the Vatican that now has it windows hermetically sealed. He also set a fire under paranoid white people in the South and the Heartland that saw a threat from a word called “Ecumenical”. Scared the shit of these “good” “Christians” enough to build walls and hunker down for the “end times”. What losers some of these evangelicals be. It is truly sad.

Now religion in America is a full corrupt arm of the politics of this country in sore need of unity, love and fairness – but instead we get “NO” or latte liberals who don’t really want to touch the unwashed masses either.

I see a sad person. I feel his sadness two thousand years later. I see the great sadness of Jesus as he lived in a very sad time and place such as our own when everything had a price including one’s immortal soul.

Nowadays, why be a missionary from modern burned out humanity America? Why be a missionary when you can be a tourist missionary two weeks in the third world vacation plan to enrich you spiritually and so you do not to have to touch the rest of humanity outside your tour guided bubble – not really touch global non-Christian reality. (Take a picture of me, won’t ya, with the poor people for me to show the folks back home?)

Best Christian Vacations

The white American gated community mentality and gated on their mind and soul Christianity (madness) is one reason I am shopping around to call myself anything but a Christian, cultural or otherwise, these days.

Secret of Fatima - End of the Papacy?

I remember this thing from first grade in 1958 and it was related to the apparition of Mary at Fatima. The thing of course was the secret letter containing prophecy and to be opened in 1960. Suspense, mystery and absoluteness were hallmarks of this then urban legend.

The legend no doubt twittered out from the convent of Lucia who wrote down these memories twenty five years after their happening. Twenty five years can change a bit of context or connotation. The four gospels were in general consensus written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. Of course Sister Lucia’s memory and voice were of one person and not many.

I have read this so-called third letter and released from the Vatican that got spun in different ways. Before I comment, here is the text of that so-called third “secret” prophecy:

"I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.

"After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people
different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God."

No doubt Pius XII read this letter in private. He may have shit himself if he read it in early 1944 with the Nazi army camped outside the gates of the Vatican. He probably put it away to 1960 as recommended by Sister Lucia when it was supposed to be clearer in its meaning.

John XXIII became pope in 1958 and called for a Council within three months of his taking office, in early 1959. I think he read that “secret” letter and it may have helped in his decision to call a Council.

The difficult part of any “prophecy” is in who interprets and or who understands the prophecy.

Cardinal Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, is one of a handful of people, mostly popes, who had access and read this message of Mary in Fatima before its official release in 2000.

The fringe conspiracy types put a blanket of doubt over the full disclosure by Ratzinger and or the Vatican in that this is a vision interpreted by Lucia and there are no words and or message in this third part of a whole message package.

John Paul the Great, superstar of the Vatican, took this vision to mean that he was the Bishop in White and that instead of being killed, he was saved from death by the divine intervention of Our Lady of Fatima. He was shot in 1981 in St. Peter’s Square and survived on the feast of that Lady of Fatima. Indeed, the big “M” on his coat of arms stood for Mary. He felt that his survival after Fatima Day was more than a coincidence but divine. He was strongly into the Mary cult wing of the RC church which has a tendency to be medieval or “traditional” on its religious perception of the church’s mission.

John Paul II takes the prophecy or vision of Sister Lucia literally. As a playboy superstar who was privately criticized for spending more time on planning with worldwide rockstar tours than spending time on the nitty gritty of politics and bureaucracy at the Vatican, John Paul thought it was “all about me” in the opinion of some who worked with him.

The one man who Pope Rockstar could always turn to in the nitty gritty bureaucrat role was Joseph Ratzinger, the present pope. Appointed as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith – formerly known was the Holy Office of the Inquisition - in 1981, Ratzinger was the hard nosed bureaucrat you came up against if you did not follow the party line in your role of layman, nun, priest or bishop.

Joe was John Paul’s bad cop in the good cop/bad cop routine of John Paul raking in the glory and PR success. Now in retrospect, perhaps the historic case or label might be good pope/bad pope in the scheme of things.

This past duty roster and his twenty four year methodology in being a power until himself is perhaps first and foremost the greatest obstacle to Benedict XVI’s public interface and the public’s perception of him as Bishop of Rome. That and Benedict’s personal thought that anybody can be a rockstar. Yeah right.

John Paul II had the same medieval, backward looking, not friendly user attitude toward the laity that Benedict XVI is now being trashed for. John Paul II could get away with it. John Paul II, if you read current history books, single handedly brought down the evil Soviet Empire. The west, masters of the liberal media, and pro-western, anti-Soviet propaganda, makes John Paul some sort of Nietzsche religious superman if such a combination could possibly occur.

In fact, I think that in fifty years, I believe that historians if they are able to be honest will paint the source of the present crumbling western culture on three people. They will be Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II. Not a true axis of evil so to speak but maybe a goofy “Gang of Three” who set the western civilization down a wrong road toward Global fascism and away from human liberation and freedom – a secular real time salvation.

Right now my personal advice to Benedict XVI is to stop trying to be a rockstar. Tear down the Rockstar Audience Theatre and go back to being a Pope in a photograph on the wall or a holy card in the missal of all good and faithful Catholics. Keep your mouth shut or at least have twenty bureaucrats review your remarks before releasing them to the public

Getting back to Sister’s Lucia’s prophecy/vision – John XXIII understood the meaning of the letter of Fatima all too well. Pope John understood the vision on a symbolic level while John Paul took it on a literal level.

On a symbolic level, if the White Bishop is the all too powerful head of a Catholics only Church, then the organization will die if the Papacy dies or is prevented from acting in an actual political or religious sense. The death of the RC church drags her sister churches down as well with her. The whole world becomes a truly darker place then. This is not unlike the so-called prophecy of the now defunct sister churches in Asia Minor in the Book of Revelation – a book, as prophecy, that I personally do not subscribe to.

The pope and or the Vatican is not the Church. The Church is not buildings – it is people – it is the People of God.

Fifty years from now I can picture not a dead Christian Church but a living, thriving, growing institution on all continents and being the Anglican, Lutheran, Roman, Orthodox Church for want of a better term for a United Christianity that I think is the Great (unrecognized) Legacy of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council.