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The people did not realize the full content of the messages for Melanie could not reveal them until the year of Our Lady's apparition at Lourdes, as the Blessed Mother had requested of her, "Melanie, what I am about to tell you now will not always be a secret. You may make it public in 1858." Both Maximim and Melanie stubbornly and faithfully refused to divulge their secrets. Though there were slight variations in the words of Our Lady as revealed by Maximim compared to the Melanie's account, the substance was nevertheless the same and the only difference in denoting details. The children were grilled again and again, often contradicting each other in regard to Our Lady's "costume." Melanie would write later, "How could ignorant children, as we were, be expected to find fitting words for the description of things so extraordinary? Probably what we described as crown coif, chain, fichu, and apron hardly had the form of such. There was nothing of earth in the costume we looked upon. Seen in the blaze of multi-colored rays, it presented a magnificent ensemble which we, in describing, have diminished and materialized." Every kind of persuasion was employed to get the children to reveal the secrets, but none were successful. In fact, after the apparition, Maximim applied to study for the priesthood. One priest from Grenoble assured him he'd be accepted if he'd reveal the secret. "If I must tell my secret to become a priest, then I shall never be one" Maximim concluded. It was in March 1851, nearly five years after the apparition that Pope Pius IX expressed a desire to know the secrets Our Lady had imparted at LaSalette. At first the children refused, but when finally introduced to the pontiff realized he was a special and his unique position was where Our Lady wanted it to be revealed - so that it could be disseminated from the top down. Thus they agreed to communicate their secrets but to him only. For a time Melanie was greatly distressed fearing that she must either disobey Our Lady or lose her soul by being separated from the Church for refusing the Holy Father. Yet when the time came, Melanie was filled with total peace and willingly obliged the Pope. As she wrote, she interrupted twice to ask his holiness the meaning of infallibility and what the word "antichrist" meant. It's interesting to note that although the Church does not depend on private revelation, Our Lady's assurance of the Pope's infallibility prompted Pius IX to proclaim this dogma 34 years later in 1870. While Maximim's secrets, as far as we know, dealt with Mercy and Consolation, Melanie's treated Divine chastisement and scourges upon the world. As Pius IX read Maximim's account he remarked, "Here is all the candour and simplicity of a child." As he read Melanie's his face was visibly emotional as he read the message from Our Lady, "May the curate of my Son, Pope Pius IX never leave Rome again after 1859; may he, however, be steadfast and noble, may he fight with the weapons of faith and love. I will be at his side." After reading all the messages conveyed in writing by Melanie he remarked, "These are scourges with which France is threatened, but she is not alone culpable. Germany, Italy, all Europe is culpable and merits chastisement. I have less to fear from open impiety, than from indifference and human respect...it is not without reason that the Church is called militant and here [pointing to himself] you behold its captain." The following day in an audience with Cardinal Fornari and the two envoys from the Diocese of Grenoble, the Pope declared, "I am terrified by these prodigies; we have everything that is needed in our religion for the conversion of sinners; and when Heaven employs such means the evil must be very great."
Little did he know how great the evil really was as we look back in retrospect. Her appearance in 1846 preceded by two years the release of Karl Marx' Communist Manifesto. Had the people realized what was happening and Our Lady's warnings, it's possible it would have died a natural death, but alas it was not to be as the serpent of communism slithered into Europe and Russia during the din of revolutions throughout Europe. It was also in 1848 that agitation over central Europe broke out in open revolt at Vienna when the Austrian Emperor Frederick I was forced to turn over the city. Similar revolutions rocked other cities throughout Europe as the Industrial Revolution took hold. Below the surface Marx and Engels were setting the stage for cleaning up the spoils and introducing one of the most vile evils this world has ever known. Though the messages were revealed to some extent in 1858, it wasn't until 1878 that they were fully released with an imprimatur by Bishop Zola in November 1878. From that time on it was promoted through the publication Les Annales de Notre-Dame de la Salette. The secrets were clarified even more and reprinted ne varietur at Lyon in 1904 and disseminated by the LaSalette Fathers throughout the world being translated into English a few years later. In the next installment, our final on LaSalette we will deal with the effects of LaSalette in the 20th Century both for Holy Mother Church and the world.
NEXT WEEK: The Effects of LaSalette 150 years later part four
This is a time of preparation for loyal Catholics. The Holy Father calls all of us to be evangelists, to reach out to others in spreading the Word of God and inviting them to be a part of His Church. If we are to be ready when the mass invasion back to the Mass comes, then we need to prepare now to be ready for the influx. And souls will flock to Catholic churches the world over, not because the Church is so lenient or looks the other way regarding sin as so many Protestant sects do now, but rather because they will realize it is the strictness of the Church that they need in order to achieve salvation - something every soul in the world will think more seriously of once the Warning, prophesied specifically at Garabandal and corroborated by so many messengers since then, is upon us. It will be a time of illumination - of the soul. And it will be then that the majority will realize the error of their ways in turning their back on Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Even those within the Church will realize there is no room for dissent or veering from doctrine and the Magisterium as so many modernists are wont to do.
The controversy last year over the modernists' manipulation vehicle of "Nothing Sacred" comes to mind on how NOT to run a parish. But this was fiction, or so we thought, until recently when we discovered life imitates art - if you want to call that trash and trashed series on ABC art!. You see in Rochester, New York there is a carbon copy of the liberal priest in the TV series - a pastor at an urban parish in the inner city where poverty, homelessness, prostitution, crime and drug addicts abound. This priest Father James Callan has tried to emulate the radical philosophy of the fictional Father Ray from his liberal policies of ignoring Church doctrine and liturgical laws to even employing a liberal woman Mary Ramerman as pastoral associate just like the liberal none (sic) Sister Mo from the short-lived (thank God) television program. He has allowed her to wear a stole in assisting him in priestlike participation at Mass. He has given Holy Communion to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, openly condoned homosexuality, and - well the list goes on and on. So, you ask, why hasn't his bishop had him removed? Good question. Maybe it's because his bishop is Matthew Clark - yes, you guessed it, that same Matthew Clark who is notorious for spurning what the Holy Father promotes and pushing his own agenda of gay Masses in his diocese. So what's a parish to do? Well, some went straight to Rome and, yes, they got results. The Vatican issued a decree removing Callan as pastor of Corpus Christi parish with a direct letter to Clark. Clark, under penalty of being removed himself, had to follow through on the strong "recommendation." He had no choice. Let's hope the vice grip of morality, obedience and strictness to all the Church teaches will clamp ever tighter on the modernists who are forging their own agendas in lieu of what the Magisterium teaches. Let's hope they, too, will have no choice but to comply with the Pope's teaching or take a hike. No church wants to lose souls, but, as the saying goes "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Their presence within the Mystical Body of Christ is, as we have emphasized before, like a worm in a barrel of apples: one rotten apple can spoil the rest. With all the problems the Church and her faithful encounter in these difficult times, they don't need more confusion. Ergo, like Martin Luther and that ilk, if they do not obey - it's sayonarra. We cannot compromise; the Church cannot compromise; his Holiness John Paul II has never compromised and therein lies the strength of this papacy. Unlike our country's leader - and I use that term loosely especially in light of the "wag the dog" fiasco he has been perpetrating - who waffles on almost every issue, the Holy Father is solid on every issue, forgoing any political agenda whatsoever in favor of the welfare of his flocks' souls.
Therefore, rather than dreading what lies ahead, we should eagerly look forward to what will occur within the next 500 days and concentrate on the task at hand - to build a base of knowledgable Catholics who will be able to assist the priests in ministering to the countless souls who will flock back to Holy Mother Church as safe refuge against the wiles of the devil. To do this we need to know our faith, to know the catechism, to know apologetics and, most importantly, to know the power of prayer and take the time to pray for through prayer all things are possible. And it is through prayer that the faithful can build the foundation for a solid base of catechists who will not teach the liberalism found in so many RCIA courses, but rather a return to the traditional teaching and moral values always held so dear to the Church. Through prayer and dedication in each parish this foundation will take shape to accommodate the many who will seek the truth. In other words, with the help of the Blessed Trinity and in obedience to the Magisterium, if we build it, they will come!
