The Wild Tears Fall

At least I hope I speak that truthfully. When we were children studying the history of vile deeds, I know we all asked ourselves how common, ordinary people no different from us in essentials, did--without dissent--deeds that most individuals would never contemplate for a moment. Genocide, rape, enslavement, apostasy. 

One of the most chilling moments in the film Beyond the Gates, a vivid recounting of the atrocity of Rwanda, is when the English teacher at a religious school sees one of his Hutu friends after the blood bath has begun. He has known this man for some time; this person even worked for the church to which the school is connected. When the Englishman sees him again after the ethnic cleansing has begun, the man is covered with blood and wielding a machete. Even with the grace of the sacraments, he turned to unspeakable evil.

Will most always be united with grace. While God must always reach out for us, while we can do nothing of ourselves, we must choose to wake when He calls.  A sort of spiritual drowsiness, a deliberate blindness, a surrender of one's reason and volition to a stronger agent is the only thing that can account for the Satanic manipulation of whole peoples. It is strange how often we choke on the submission due to God, yet we render it unto Lucifer quite readily. And all because he presents the act in the form of a bargain, and man thinks he retains his dignity merely because he got something for his soul.

Degenerate evil is fast becoming the theme of our day, and the call for a rescue against our bellicose animosity towards one another has become the anthem even of those who do not believe:




We must be awake! It is hard, especially in this epoch of multitudinous distractions, and even the five wise virgins of the parable dozed while waiting for the Bridegroom. We have drifted off ourselves, but now we must right our course.


The first step of waking is to open our eyes. Every one has talked with that friend who said, 'Of course, I'm listening to you...I'm just resting my eyes.' Indeed. She was soon napping after saying that. When we wake in the morning we open our eyes and draw the curtains immediately, letting the sun's light dispel our bodily lethargy. Well, what is the light of the soul? 


Wisdom is the universal answer, but who is she? And why has her patronage not protected many purportedly wise men from committing diabolical acts? A brilliant musical scholar, Molly Gustin (who strove to show how right reason was wed with good music), was once explaining why the worst music was always made by the educated man. Only scholars produced atonal abominations after all. She said that their education, willfully twisted, had snuffed out the light of truth that a folk musician or even a rocker still retains in his natural state: 'You have to go the university and became an intellectual in order to be perverted.' she gleefully teased her students.


So both the simple brute and the erudite ninny may be drowsing in moral torpitude. Then who is Wisdom, and where may we find her? How can we obtain her when she is found?


Well, the man who has truly awakened himself in mind, heart, and soul, will first say that wisdom cannot be obtained. Remember the ancient image of Wisdom as Athena. She is an armoured woman, and she would skewer any mortal that dared to make her his slave. You bear her yoke; she does not bear yours. The Renaissance made man 'the measure of all things', and until that error is unlearned, we cannot even hope to begin the journey to the light.

And in the multitude of the elect she shall have praise, and among the blessed she shall be blessed, saying: I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures: I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom of the deep, and have walked in the waves of the sea, And have stood in all the earth: and in every people, And in every nation I have had the chief rule: And by my power I have trodden under my feet the hearts of all the high and low: and in all these I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord. (Ecclesiasticus XXIV:4-11)


Humility is the prequisite condition for receiving wisdom. Without it, we may gain knowledge, but will not otherwise profit from any study. For proud creatures, such as fallen human beings, humility has always been hard, but at least it was properly held as a virtue in many creeds and cultures of the past. The postmodern First World however has thoroughly rejected meekness in all its forms, particularly where it concerns feminine-like submission.


The idea of femininity in a position of governance is a concept not to be countenanced by the movers of our times, be they men or women. 'Feminists' did the world a great injustice in choosing to agree with the apostatized West that femininity was of no value and that it was only in imitating man, woman could achieve real worth.


The Catholic neurologist and psychiatrist, Karl Stern, explained the problem thus:


The problem of activism--a lack of balance between action and contemplation--is said to be characteristic of our time...Now whenever we psychiatrists have an opportunity to observe this kind of person as a patient, we find at the bottom of it all a maternal conflict and a rejection of the feminine. (Stern, The Flight from Woman, Chapter I: Introduction)


A 'maternal' conflict. And what is the maternal conflict of our age? Whose motherly voice have we refused to hear? What enlightenment have we refused from fair Wisdom?


Either one believes in a thing, or one does not, so rather than attempting to set the supports for a bridge in the abyss, I shall try to leap it. 


It has been ninety-four years now today that we, both the low and the high of humanity, have chosen to ignore the requests of the Lady of Fatima. That non-Catholics have done so is understandable (even with the well-documented miracle that occurred in Cova de Iria, Portugal on this day in 1917). But that Churchmen and the faithful have done so? Granted, one is not obliged to believe in private revelation. One is also not obliged to exercise his body, illumine his mind, or love from the heart in order to stay alive, but such lack of exertion is generally frowned upon by mankind in general.

So what is one to say of the actions of the Vicar of Christ in 1960 in refusing the request of Fatima? Well, nothing in fact. It is impossible to pronounce on the plans of the Lord's anointed, for there is no way of knowing what instruction he might have received from the Holy Spirit. We have never sat in the Chair of Peter. Yet, as we are meant to pray for the Pontiff, we must be alert in some way to what duties he may have to perform. It is necessary for us to know when to double our mortifications for his sake, to know when the lone, white-robbed figure most earnestly needs our prayers to strengthen his fortitude. In that sense, while we may draw no conclusions, we must to some extent ruminate about the duties of a pontificate.


Now in 1962, a certain spirit was about to be unleashed upon the world from the Roman Catholic Church, and we have come to call it the 'Spirit of Vatican II.' When someone finds the good fruits of that spirit, they must write of it. Until then, the faithful will suffer from its effects (whether consciously or no), and those outside the Faith will see it as a sign of the Church's eventual collapse. 


Papa Roncalli of course did not envision such an effect from his Council. Father Malachi Martin, in spite of what that priest's detractors have said, believed completely in Pope John XXIII's good intentions and wrote this of the kindly pope:


...May...during the second session of the Council. By then, Pope John knew that the Council was out of his control; his agenda for a deep renewal of activist faith in the Church had been set on a course the Pontiff had not foreseen, and it would serve someone else's agenda instead. And he also knew that he would have no time to alter that fact. One June 3, Angelo Roncalli died in his faith and his regrets. (The Keys of This Blood, Book II: The Geopolitics of Faith, Chapter XXX: Papal Training Ground: Under the Sign of Solidarność)

One particular regret may have reached as far back as 1960, when the behest of Our Lady, penned by the hand of a nun who had been a simple shepherdess, was refused by His Holiness. Whether that is true, it must have struck the Pope as very strange with the Polish Primate, Stefan Wyszyński, later approached him with a request bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Madonna's in the very midst of the Second Vatican Council.

Mainly...Wyszyński wanted to urge upon Pope John that he dedicate the Council, the bishops of the Church, and the laity of the world, whose servants they were, to the same bond of servitude to Mary that the Cardinal was preparing in Poland...

...it was nonetheless widely known by now that Mary had called for dedication of more or less the same kind Wyszyński was urging on Papa Roncalli; and that she had apparently done so for more or less the same georeligious and geopolitical reasons that had motivated Wyszyński.

...Roncalli listened with indulgence and interest...and admitted that if he had heard Wyszyński out before he had made and implemented his decision, he might have acted differently. But his attitude to Wyszyński's urgings was the same as it had been when he had first read the secret instructions of Fatima in 1960...was that this time ''our time as Pope'' was not the time for such an act of dedication. Had the Cardinal been privy to the full contents of the ''three Fatima secrets," he might have wondered if there would be another time. (ibid.)

The heads of great men have of late not steered the barque of the world very well. Perhaps, it is time the Immaculate Heart of the Woman Clothed with the Sun took the helm, and we might begin to cede control to her in honouring this day and the bidding connected with it: pray the rosary.

In June 1863 after more than two years of bloody conflict the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee commanding, slips across the Potomac to begin the invasion of the North...Their objective is to draw the Union army out into the open where it can be destroyed...General Lee knows that a letter has been prepared by the Southern government; a letter which offers peace. It is to be placed on the desk of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States the day after Lee has destroyed the Army of the Potomac somewhere north of Washington... (Opening Narration: Gettysburg, 1993 [emphasis mine]) 

Surely there are few literal pacifists living on this earth. The majority of us would acknowledge the necessity of violence in the case of self-defense or the defense of others. To feel one's self in danger invokes all the natural instincts necessary to commit physical evils in order to prevent moral evils. Love, which moves us to will the good of another, brings other persons into that realm of one's own being which we wish always to protect. It may even be more intense than the attachment one has to one's literal self. The more loving the husband and father, the more tender the wife and mother, and the more devoted the brother or sister, the more capable they are of turning viciously on a wicked aggressor in a way which they would never even wish their loved ones to witness. 


This is rather self-evident to anyone who has truly loved. What is not self-evident is when the ratiocinations of which man alone is capable projects beyond our emotive, animal instincts and thinks of defense in the light of attack. Here the avenging hand falters. Less than two centuries ago, at just such a juncture, i.e., the Mason-Dixon line, thousands of the grey army of the Confederacy, though bound to their General Robert E. Lee with the most intense filial affection, laid down their arms and refused to go further:

'They had volunteered willingly enough to defend their homes,' a regimental historian explained, 'but some did not think it right to invade Northern territory.' _(Landscape Turned Red, Stephen Sears) 


On such a subject as attacking in the name of defense, I am writing of something completely out of the reach of my personal sympathies, both as a woman and as one of melancholic temperament. When I hear of one nation bearing swords across the boundaries of another, I shudder with the same repugnance that I would feel on seeing an armed man entering another man's home. Yet, with my reason, I must acknowledge that my emotive reaction is not necessarily an intution of what is true. Reason must govern emotions. 'The heart can and should obey the head.'


An officer of the state must take in a dangerous criminal, even if he must do so before the man's wife and children. Her pleas and their tears must not alter the course of justice. However clemency may wish to provide for these unfortunates later, evil must not be tolerated to spare them pain. The sacredness of the threshold of hearth and home is not an absolute thing in the case of the individual. Nor is it the case with the State. A nation that has been bellicose against another is not often sufficiently rebuked by merely being defeated on the foreign soil where it had no right to go: 

Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow... _Stonewall Jackson


The enemy must be pursued and soundly chastened. It is not enough to make a thief return his booty. He must give expiation for the evil in his act--providing some recompense to the injured party. He must be punished enough himself so that he shall never wish to commit the crime again.


Lee therefore justly overruled his generals in taking his army North. What seemed a desecration of the cause to some, was the best chance of ending the war and securing victory. Considerations of feeding the Confederate army and the hopes of impressing--even galvanizing--European allies also played a great part in the decision. The ability to carry a hard or even severe idea into act is the reason choleric men exist. Once vindicated by their minds, they see--and rightly see--that the time has come to lock up their hearts. 


Lucy Maud Montgomery observed this well through one of her finest works. In her narrative, it is revealed that it is possible for a woman's husband to have a surgery that may restore his senses after years of living life only half-aware. The trouble is that he was an unkind, selfish, immoral bore beforehand, and his wife's life has at least been easier after her husband became an idiot. Anne naturally wishes to spare the wife, who is also her friend, but the men in her life come down against her:

"Oh, Captain Jim, I didn't think you'd say that," she exclaimed reproachfully. "I thought you wouldn't want to make more trouble for her." 

Captain Jim shook his head. "I don't want to. I know how you feel about it, Mistress Blythe-- just as I feel meself. But it ain't our feelings we have to steer by through life--no, no, we'd make shipwreck mighty often if we did that. There's only the one safe compass and we've got to set our course by that--what it's right to do. I agree with the doctor. If there's a chance for Dick, Leslie should be told of it. There's no two sides to that, in my opinion." 

"Well," said Anne, giving up in despair, "wait until Miss Cornelia gets after you two men." 

"Cornelia'll rake us fore and aft, no doubt," assented Captain Jim. "You women are lovely critters, Mistress Blythe, but you're just a mite illogical. You're a highly eddicated lady and Cornelia isn't, but you're like as two peas when it comes to that. I dunno's you're any the worse for it. Logic is a sort of hard, merciless thing, I reckon." (Anne's House of Dreams, Chapter XXX: Leslie Decides) 

Leslie's decision was one for the truth. In the end, it set her free. Ergo:

'When a human mother sheds tears in front of her children, there is a serious reason. So I thought that when the Heavenly Mother sheds her tears through a statue, she would have an urgent message for all of us.' _Denjiro Fujimoto


To all familiar with Fatima, that day and that month are extremely significant and mark the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. It is also thirteen years after Pope John XXIII refused to reveal the Third Secret of Fatima, saying 'It is not for our times.' And the Third Secret has still yet to be revealed to the world.

Christopher Ferrara, among others, has produced exhaustive arguments in text and video giving factual evidence that the selection of the message that has been made public is not the full one. I will not reiterate what they have so well demonstrated. Rather, I shall argue that what the Vatican has printed does not in anyway explain the reluctance of previous pontiffs in publishing it. It hardly makes any sense in and of itself! The other messages of Fatima were explicit and brutally comprehensible. This vision of the bishop in white is ambiguous, and it is difficult to see how it is fulfilled by the incident to which the Vatican links it: the assassination attempt on John Paul II.

Does a mad Turk amount to an army? Is a surprise sniping at all similar to a public execution (an act which succeeded in the vision)? What of the 'half-ruined' city's significance? There are a lot of old buildings in Rome to be sure, but only a mad man would say it is in ruins. And in the happy crowd greeting the Pope that day, are we to assume that they were all 'cadavers' spiritually? I do not see how that part of the prophecy and the assassination attempt dovetail at all.

Also, were this the secret, its importance pales in comparison to the first two. Our Lady understands her children and knows what an ignorant, stiff-necked group of people we have become. She knows her warnings must be explicit. For that reason, it is certain that her wishes were not fulfilled.

To be sure, the Pope is not bound by private revelation, and public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. It is not for us to say that any pope has sinned by not obeying a legitimate apparition, but it does make him appear ungracious at best, mad at worst. It must be admitted that we have not sat in the throne of Peter, nor have we been promised such graces as he by the Holy Spirit. However, many are skeptical at the idea that a refusal to obey Fatima would garner any good fruit.

Then again, if the Vicar of Christ does not obey, Christ can always bypass him. We may well know Fatima's Third Secret (or a great part of it), because Our Lady herself returned to Earth again. She left clear signs to link her new visit with the older one: i. the seer's guardian angel appeared to her first, instructing her to the Fatima prayer concluding each decade of the rosary, ii. the Virgin concluded her comings on the most significant day of the Fatima apparitions, and iii. she repeats her exhortation concerning the rosary in the message.

The place where the gracious Virgin deigned to appear on Earth again was Akita, Japan. And she came shedding tears and her own blood. The seer was Sister Agnes Sasagawa of the Eucharist Servants. She had made the journey to God through a great deal of suffering in her health. Though she had grown in strength, perhaps due to the waters of Lourdes so often sent to her, by the time the visions occurred, she was completely deaf (a deafness later cured as she knelt before Blessed Sacrament nine years later).

Eight days before she heard the first message, her hand was given a cross-shaped wound. The day Our Lady spoke to her, a like wound was discovered in the statue's hand. Later, the statue wept and even sweated. Doctors from the faculty of Legal Medicine of the University of Akita pronounced the liquids to be human blood, tears, and sweat. Accompanying these signs was a terrifying message:

My dear daughter, listen well to what I have to say to you. You will inform your superior.

As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by My Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and priests.

The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres...churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.

The demon will be especially implacable against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of my sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will be no longer pardon for them.

With courage, speak to your superior. He will know how to encourage each one of you to pray and to accomplish works of reparation.

It is Bishop Ito, who directs your community.

You have still something to ask? Today is the last time that I will speak to you in living voice. From now on you will obey the one sent to you and your superior.

Pray very much the prayers of the Rosary. I alone am able still to save you from the calamities which approach. Those who place their confidence in me will be saved.

As it is said in Genesis 3:15 (a verse which Sr. Agnes's angel gave her to contemplate): I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

As we contemplate the horrifying pains of Japan, we ought to intensify our Lenten mortifications for their sake, and for ours. The waves of black waters and the spread of radiation are not yet so terrible that the 'living envy the dead' and we must pray, lest things worsen to that extreme not only for the Japanese, but for the world. The prophecy begins with 'if...' and in that syllable there is a world of mercy beckoning to us. This may v erywell be the Third Secret of Fatima; let us not be deaf to it.

Centuries ago yesterday, an exhausted, wronged, and ill woman received the news that she was to be executed by foreigners who had no jurisdiction over her nor any God-given right to take her life. It was Mary Stuart, and I hold that the charges against her for conspiring against the queen were quite as feeble as those for the murder of Darnley, which even Elizabeth herself did not believe.

For those who do think that a woman under lock and key for nineteen years, of bad physical health, who had been implicated only by a man who had been brutally tortured for his confession, and whose letter had been discovered at the bottom of a beer bottle (naturally Francis Walsingham would have known where to find a letter he himself had likely written), then I can say nothing to you. As all acquainted with this matter know, the division is along the line of first principles and there can be no meeting halfway. For either side to give way, minds must be changed, not convinced.

Siding with Elizabeth are feminists who abominate the fact that Mary had affections, those who believe that because Elizabeth stayed on the throne she was a better ruler, and of course Anti-Catholics. Siding with Mary are the romantics, the advocates of natural law (overthrowing a just monarch is not natural), and of course, the Catholics.

I fall into the latter camp for all three reasons above. However, I also find the evidence against the rightful Queen of England and Scotland absurd, and even if it were not, the memory of Elizabethan martyrs and the current state of England gives me cause to think that had Mary Stuart attempted such a bid for her own freedom and for natural justice, I--among many--would not fault her. Both Esther and Judith were virtuous, but I do believe that she had chosen the lot of the former:

I do not desire vengeance. I leave it to Him who is the just Avenger of the innocent and of those who suffer for His Name under whose power I will take shelter. I would rather pray with Esther than take the sword with Judith. _Mari R.

The reason I dubbed a portion of Elizabeth's advocates as Anti-Catholic was not lack of generosity on my part. How could I write 'Protestant' when Elizabethan Protestants only exist in pockets of the Bible Belt of the United States? Even they are a vanishing breed. How could I write 'atheists' when I have known romantic and/or rational atheists who do not side with Elizabeth? How could I write that her advocates are 'free-thinking' when under Elizabeth so many more died for the Catholic Faith than under Mary Tudor for the Protestant one? Granted Elizabeth had much more time than her half-sister, but that time also rendered her far bloodier. The death of those such as Margaret Middleton belie the notion of any 'tolerance' in Elizabeth's regime:

You must return from whence you came, and there, in the lowest part of the prison, be stripped naked, laid down, your back on the ground, and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear, and so to continue for three days without meat or drink, and on the third day to be pressed to death, your hands and feet tied to posts, and a sharp stone under your back.

These were the words of Judge George Clinch to Margaret Middleton, a pregnant housewife, who had committed the iniquitous crime of housing a priest. Popular in Yorkshire, many refused to give evidence against her. Those in court pleaded for her to stand trial that she might have a less gruesome death. She heroically refused to subject her children to such a trial where they would be forced to betray their mother, as well as holding to this principle: 'I know of no offense whereof I should confess myself guilty. Having made no offense, I need no trial.' With that staunch resolve, Elizabeth's tolerant system extinguished her life and that of her unborn child's.

Given this division of principles at the very outset of the argument, to what might one appeal? I would look at the impact that the lives these women led had on their own hearts, minds, and souls.

Tribulation has been to them as a furnace to fine gold - a means of proving their virtue, of opening their so-long blinded eyes, and of teaching them to know themselves and their own failings. _Mari R.

One way to judge the rightness of a soul's journey on this earth is how this soul greets her end. Elizabeth killed Mary, but whose was the truly disturbing death?

When Mary heard that she was to be executed on February the 7th, she accepted it with Stoic grace and only asked that she be given time to put her affairs in order. The Count of Shrewsbury spoke to her as a modern jail warden would not dare to speak to a murderer or a rapist: 'No, no, Madam you must die, you must die! Be ready between seven and eight in the morning. It cannot be delayed a moment beyond that time.'

She must die. They are indeed her enemies, and not merely enemies of the enemies of the queen.

Well, Jane Kennedy, did I not tell you this would happen? I knew they would never allow me to live, I was too great an obstacle to their religion. _Mari R.

When she approached the scaffold--regal, calm and clad in black--her serenity must have incensed her enemies who knew that an evildoer does not meet death peaceably. When she asked that her chaplain be allowed to accompany her, her executioners refused. Was she not allowed to worship as she wished even on the last day of her life? The Count of Kent sneered at her for carrying the cross (as the Emperor Constantine had been told by Heaven to do so centuries earlier). Mary made a reply worthy of St. Teresa of Avila that:

'...it would be difficult to hold a thing so lovely in my hand and not feel it thrill the heart, and that what became every Christian in the hour of death was to bear with him the true Symbol of Redemption.'

She refused the mockery of a minister whose religion she did not recognize, and as she removed her ornaments, she attempted to prevent her royal person being touched by a vulgar (some believe drunken) executioner. He did roughly seize her, ripping off the doublet and revealing the red gown of the martyr beneath her sombre black.

She blessed her maids and asked them not to weep, but to rejoice for their mistress's coming freedom. Her eyes having been bound, she knelt at the block making her last prayers, repeatedly interrupted by the surly executioner. At last, her arms held by another executioner, her head was severed, not with a sword as would have been legitimate for her status, but with an axe. It was 'obvious' to Pierre de Bourdeille, an observer, that the brute wished to exacerbate the pain of her death, as it took him three strokes to cut off the head of a woman. When her head was shorn of its wig, it was revealed that a lady too young to be grey, had hair of silvery white and shorn close to the head. The evidence of her long suffering at the treachery of her nobles and of Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth died, she was a frail old woman, likely poisoned in her blood by the white cosmetics fashionable at the time. She was a nervous, lonely, frightened creature. Crying in darkened rooms, afraid to sleep, and as from the beginning of her reign, irresponsibly reluctant to name the heir to the throne.

Being so fearful of death, she sat on the floor for four days towards the end before being carried to her bed. There were no last words as she could not speak. Some speculate that she assented to James's succession by a physical sign. The death of this woman is indeed a pitiable thing to contemplate.

She had betrayed so many close to her and had been betrayed by those whom she loved as well. It had likely always hung over her head that the only reason she was queen was by the intercession of her older sister's Spanish husband (who had feared an English-Scottish-French alliance), and that it had been sealed by virtue of the promise she had made to her sister to preserve the Catholic Faith against the Protestant nobility. She either lied then or later broke her word. It is ironic that it was often those most dear to her that conspired against her.

Had she been a good queen for her own people? Well, she chose to side with heretical noblemen rather than the common, Catholic people of England, using her long reign to stamp it out via persecution both fiscal and physical. In court, she was hasty and hot-tempered (woe unto a lady-in-waiting who either caught Bess with a lover or a stole a lover from her). She was also easily flattered, being pitiably insecure about her looks following her disfigurement from small pox. This weakness in her pride is how many explain her indulgence of the flattering Earl of Essex. Such a failing is understandable in an ordinary woman, but hardly befitting a monarch.

It seems also that advisers such as Burghley, Cecil, Essex, Walsingham, etc. and even courtiers, were as much queen as she. When she was confronted with accumulated economic abuses (supposedly perpetrated by these parties) in the 'second' part of her reign, her grand defense was 'ignorance.' This 'ignorance' would have been characteristic of her then, as her defenders protest again and again that where deeds of blood and violence were committed via religious persecution and piracy, Elizabeth cannot be held responsible.

Even modern statesmen, such as Ronald Reagan, know that one must take responsibility where one has authority, and when he reluctantly bought into a plan of Colin Powell's, which later failed, he took complete responsibility for it; only Powell himself made the truth known later. A ruler cannot be great by virtue of a regime and simultaneously be innocent of its failings.

And Elizabeth's policies abroad? She persecuted Ireland, though not without blundering, sought to undermine the crown in France, succeeded in doing the same in Scotland, and aided any rebellion that was directed against Catholicism on the continent. Iniquitously, she also traded with the Ottoman Empire, selling them metals to use against other nations of her own continent. Anyone who has read of the atrocities committed by the Ottomans ought to be aghast at such disgusting and heartless pragmatism. At home in England, her military campaigns of course meant very high taxes, yet even then she never financed her allies well enough to help them gain a victory that might erase the memory of the cost.

She had a Tudor's mind: 'sharp, but narrow,' and perhaps had she been in better hands, would have made a better queen. Mary's situation however had been impossible, as the defection of the oligarchy was due in great part to their apostasy. Possessing a greater sense of ethics than modern leaders who rather idiotically claim that their personal beliefs do not influence their lives as statesmen, Mary knew that she could not sacrifice the Truth for political expedience, as Elizabeth had done under Mary Tudor's reign.

The tragedy of Mary was in so many ways the tragedy of the West. Though GKC was quite the romantic, I find his essay 'If Don John of Austria Had Married Mary, Queen of Scots' to be so realistically compelling that it was heartbreaking. A medieval warrior wed with an educated woman of the Renaissance? The merging of two worlds, rather than their bloody and tragic clash against one another? The speculation is of course merely that, but every time I turn my eyes to the story of Juan and Mary, I can't but wish their paths had met as he had planned.

It was five hundred years before Joan of Arc was canonized. We may have to wait just as long for 'Mari R.'

On the horizon gleamed a magenta sun whose glory seeped like molten gold along the lines of lavender grey clouds. It would have been lovely if that gentle mist could but have lingered a few hours into our journey. In truth, it was the least it could do after the mischief it had caused in the night. I glanced at the clothes I had washed and left to dry the night before, now thoroughly drenched, and made my decision. 
 
There was nothing clean amongst my clothes, except the deep blue skirt I was wearing and the white top into which I would change along the way. Both of those items would be dirty before the day's end. Furthermore, we would have the day's Mass in Częstochowa, not along the way. Pecuniary issues further helped to settle the question. I would go back to Warsaw that very night, and what I had accomplished in nine days would be undone in a matter of three hours.

Music seeped into the morning air as I listened to our wake-up playlist for the last time. I hardly understood a word of the first song, but I laughed every time. It probably did wonders to squash any sort of grouchiness that may otherwise have arisen from weary pilgrims deprived of coffee.



Tents were being collapsed, and many were donning their white and blue or white and black garb for the entrance to Jasna Góra. Our Lady's icon would likely be wearing the Diamond gown, and she would be beautiful in her queenly attire, though my personal favourite was either the Millenium dress or the Totus Tuus robe. More people were hastening to pack in flurries of white, blue, and black when Piotrek sleepily strolled by in a T-shirt and pair of shorts.

'Not getting dressing yet?'

'Wha'? oh no, no. These people are crazy,' he gestured drowsily, yet demonstratively, towards the pristinely decked out individuals, 'by the time we get there, they will all be sweaty and dirty, they'll look like drunks--' Whereupon Piotrek illustrated his point with characteristic economy and humour by leaning against a fence that turned out not to be very well supported.
Bittersweet gaiety brewed within me as I reflected with pleasure on the past eight days and then on the fact that this ninth was the last. I supposed I would enjoy the first bath I had on returning home, but it did not seem so superior to bathing in a shed with a basin of water for washing one's self. I had missed cooking, but what I had been eating was of so little account on the journey that I could hardly say I pined for the activity. My bed...well that was a thing I looked forward to with relish, though again not every night had been uncomfortable, especially when surrounded with the best company.

It had all been nine days of reality, and Reality Itself is what Catholics worship. The Earth was a thing barren and unyielding until man made it his own with effort; every day was a weary journey, water did not rush from a natural spiggot that man might easily clean himself. A distance of nearly two hundred miles could not be covered by man's natural powers in three hours. Life, away from the inventions of modernity, was in essence more like what we had been taking part in on our odyssey through the plains of Poland--a daily, physical exertion alongside clear-eyed people, with God so close and present that one could feel His warmth through the veil of matter.

With backsides saturated with the heat of the sun, we slowly mounted the hill to St. Pio of Pietrelcina's sanctuary. Alas, it was disheartening to see the church devoted to a holy man of such a traditional bent was a monstrously abstract edifice. When I looked to see how others were reacting, I saw they were all facing away from the church in one direction. With a gawkish stare, I followed their gaze. Then I saw it, and I am sure I must have blanched in spite of my sun-burned visage.

In the distance was the seat of the Queen, the spire of the Bright Mountain. At last, it stood within our view! Eight and a half days of walking, and now we were nearing journey's end. We crossed ourselves and broke out in a joyous Salve Regina.
(thanks Krzysztof! :)

Descending the hill, we made towards our last stop, and all took to the water closets to put on Our Lady's colours. I regretted my infantile grasp of Polish quite passionately as we convened in the open field to hear Father Grzegorz's final address. Many times passing through encampments we could heart priests bantering and chit-chatting on the microphone as they addressed the groups. Though there was no fault in this, it did mean that the cleric was not always saying something one ought to heed.

With our priests it was different. As someone had pointed out to me earlier, every word they said was meant to either inform or instruct. Not a syllable was wasted. Thus, I knew that as he was speaking to us in the glare of the sun, he was not going on about anything trivial or obvious, and I deeply wished that I could understand him. When he finished, we all lined up to have the event commemorated in film.
Now the last six miles (nine and a half kilometres) began. I was asked if I wished to carry a flag. Having but held one on the entire journey, I eagerly accepted. I was presented with the larger standard of Lech's white eagle, and I was to stand on the left of the procession while Our Lady's standard, an indigo field emblazoned with golden fleurs-de-lys, was upheld on the right of it.

Andrzej, a doctor who had lived in New York, was standing next to me and observed with good humour that I was carrying a strictly Polish standard and chivalrously offered to relieve me of it when it grew too heavy. I knew that it would eventually as I tried to balance it upright in the wind, but I purposed to carry it as long as I could. Commencing our march in prayerful song, we made towards Jasna Góra.

As we walked the longest trek of our journey, I took a moment to look meditate on the icon's history. St. Luke had been listening to the Gospel as told by Our Lady. A Greek very likely raised according to the empirical wisdom of Galen and Aristotle, an enemy of Oriental mystery, particularly when it came to the health of man's body, he must have sat with flabbergasted awe before her--the Mother of the Great Healer, He who had cured both flesh and spirit.

The pious doctor would have listened to the soft-spoken, regal woman with zealous docility rather than hurling thoughtless, importunate questions at her. As Simeon had prophesied:

Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed. (Luke II:34-35)

Her heart had been brutally stabbed, but ours would be exposed. Therefore when she stated each event of the Gospel in her simple way, he would not have pressed her for her thoughts at the time. Allowing her contemplations to remain a mystery, he merely recorded:
But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. (Luke II: 19)

So it is when one contemplates the icon he painted. Her beautiful eyes are heavily-lidded, as on Juan Diego's miraculous tilma, as in the paintings of the sainted Fra Angelico. Her fair mouth is closed, as she stares out towards us, her right hand gesturing to the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

One of two paintings made by the hand of the Evangelist, this one sojourned from Jerusalem to Constantinope to Bełz to the Pauline monastery in Poland where she now resides. Yet, as venerated as she is by the Polish people, her image was not to have any more peace than she had had on Earth. On her way to Poland, the army carrying her image was attacked by Muslim Tartars. Perhaps it was a random shaft, or a way of showing his disdain for the Divinity of Christ, but one archer left a mark in Our Lady's face. A horizontal scar in the centre of her cheek.

The Easter of 1430, a band of Hussite ruffians, whether for reasons of heresy of simply those of greed, stormed her chapel, stripped her image of the decorative gown adorning it, slashed her beautiful face twice, broke it in three places, and left it in bloodied mud.

Restoration was a gruelling, comprehensive process undertaken in Kraków. The restorers decided to leave the two long slashmarks stretching from her jaw to just under her right eye as a reminder.
Thirty-six years later, the King of Bohemia attacked the Bright Mountain. This convinced the Polish monarchs to begin fortifying the famous Marian shrine. Thus it became a Fortalitium Marianum.

Almost two centuries later, General Muller of the army of the King of Sweden, with a force of 3,000, was standing without the monastery calling upon it to yield. With only 170 soldiers, 20 noblemen, and 70 monks at his disposal, the abbot refused to surrender. Thinking to take the 'henhouse' quite easily, the general found himself exceedingly humiliated when forty days of fighting, resulted in victory for Our Lady and defeat for him. This miraculous success encouraged the entirety of Poland to halt the Swedish deluge. A year later, it was vowed that Our Lady of Częstochowa would be crowned Queen of Poland. With a papal blessing, this coronation took place in 1717 A.D.
A few miles into our trek, I ceded the flag. Even in the midst of my elation, impatience was beginning to burn inside me. As I cheerily waved to the onlookers, I could imagine the horrified expressions that would have met such a procession in my native land.

That moment I tried to see Our Lady as our separated brethren see her, devoid of her universal maternity and queenship. I found the exercise only intensified my devotion to her. If she was not given to us as our Mother, if she was not crowned Queen of Heaven, then imagine the debt the human race owes her! If any of the sacrifices she made had been asked of an ordinary woman, the hardest heart would feel the greatest attachment to such a creature. The sacrifice of a stranger is less expected and not even required, whereas that of a mother is.

In all fairness and with the keenest desire for Christian unity, I can never concede the Protestants any ground concerning Our Lady. This woman was chosen from all time to bear the God-man. The Angelic salutation is the only instance in Scripture were a heavenly emissary praised the recipient in such terms. Where God nods, I kneel.

She carried the burden of Simeon's prophecy, and that sooth-saying priest himself implied the necessity of her pain for the salvation of souls. My heart has been laid bare before God, and so that could be, her Immaculate Heart was pierced with a sword. Contemplating her as she is, merely human, provides one with the justification of glorifying her.


Linking hands to hold our group together, we entered the Gate of Victory then passed through the narrower Gate of Mourning. Weaving through the shrine's lanes, passing the entrance to the grand Basilica, we turned to the right and processed down the centre aisle of the Chapel.

I was weeping when I looked for the fifth time upon her face, seeing it for the first time as I should. I, a weary, dirty child that wanted her mother, yearning to know what she ought to do to please her, and too often blind to that maternal hand gesturing towards the Child on her arm. She was staring at me now, with a beautiful visage that might have belonged to any race on earth, with eyes that might have been swollen by weeping. Clemency is in her face, yet this merciful, tender nature only renders it the more hungry to see souls turn to her Son.

And He looks on us with a gesture of benediction, a face disposed to illuminate and to save. One however cannot gaze into their faces together. If one meets eyes with the image of Christ, hers gazes out into the beyond, into the masses of those who do not yet love Him. If one meets her eyes, she abjures the onlooker to contemplate Him. She that is not is turned perfectly towards Him that Is.

There is one mitigating consolation on contemplating the Passion of the Christ, and that is the presence of His Mother throughout His sorrows. It is our consolation when we fail to live as good Christians, that somewhere in Heaven is a creature that has never displeased God, but loves Him perfectly. That was my greatest token of gratitude as I knelt before that immemorial icon; it remains so as well.

I do not know how long we remained before the image before proceeding to the penance chapel where we had Mass. As I knelt waiting for Mass to begin, I fell asleep in the feverishly warm room. Happily, the beginning of Mass more than roused me from drowsiness and, but for the homily, I could savour all of the Sacrifice. In conclusion to the Vigil Mass of the Assumption was the O prima Virgo prodita:

O prima, Virgo, pródita O Virgin who of all God's work E Conditóris spíritu, From His creating breath came first,
Prædestináta Altíssimi Predestined in thy womb to bear
Gestáre in alvo Fílium; The eternal Son of God most high.
Tu perpes hostis fémina Thou art the woman fore-ordained
Prænuntiáta dæmonis, Victorious o'er man's enemy,
Oppléris una grátia Uniquely filled with heaven's grace, Intamináta orígine. Unblemished in thine origin.
Tu ventre Vitam cóncipis, The life by Adam's sin extinct, Vitámque ab Adam pérditam, That Life thou didst in thee conceive,
Diæ litándæ Víctimæ Clothed with man's flesh and perfected
Carnem minístrans, íntegras. A Host divine for sacrifice.

Merces piáclo débita Death, once the wages owed to sin, Devícta mors te déserit, In its defeat deserteth thee;
Almíque consors Fílii Thou, consort of thy dearest Son,
Ad astra ferris córpore. In body to the stars art raised.

Tanta corúscans glória, Higher, resplendent, glorious, Natúra cuncta extóllitur, Woman most perfect doth ascend: In te vocáta vérticem Our human nature doth in thee Decóris omnis tángere. The peak of every beauty reach.

Ad nos, triúmphans, éxsules, O Queen triumphant, turn thine eyes Regína, verte lúmina, On us exiled from heaven and thee
Cæli ut beátam pátriam, With thee to help us may we reach
Te, consequámur áuspice. The happiness of home in Heaven.

Jesu, tibi sit glória, O Jesus, who wast Vigin-born, Qui natus es de Vírgine, May every glory be to Thee, Cum Patre et almo Spíritu, The Father, and the Spirit so kind,
In sempitérna sæcula. Throughout the ages evermore. Amen. Amen.

Once in the fifteenth century, there was a troubled, young, English prince born to a morally bankrupt father and second in line to a brother who was equal to their father in personal laxity. Though devoted to the Faith and to study, this younger royal would likely have been distracted, sometime in his thirteenth or fourteenth year, by the many whisperings in court of the desperate struggle of the English to outpace the King of Scotland by securing a Spanish princess as bride for the heir to the English throne.

The turn of the tide in Spain--effected by Isabella's succession of her ineffectual half-brother, united with the efforts of her husband--had restored order in the now bonded realms of Aragon and Castille. So impressed were the British lords that they had taken arms to assist in the Reconquista, and wrought the beginning of what might have been a strong alliance betwixt Spain and England.

When the beautiful, sprightly, Spanish princess, Catherine, arrived at last on Britain's shore, Henry VII gloated. His son, Arthur, leered, and the young Henry VIII fell in love. So much so, that when he came of age he took no heed of his deceased father's connivance after a more profitable marriage for the new heir to the throne (Arthur having died from syphilis). After all, England now had the royal, Spanish widow--and cheaply too, as she was nearly starving in the damp castle where Arthur so quickly met his end. However, Henry immediately wed the still beautiful woman, though she was seven years his senior.

She became bone of his bone in everyway. His confidante, his aid, his co-ruler. She was willing to ride out with the troops to cheer them or to act as regent while he was abroad. In the early stages of her misfortunes in child-bearing, the 'Defender of the Faith' at first consoled her, bearing the pain with his wife as a true husband. But then, for some horrific reason, Henry VIII lost the Faith, or rather, he did his best to lose it.

Popular culture for once has it quite right when it either sternly or jokingly states that only the poison of lust can truly account for the king's defection. The argument of requiring a male heir or the scruples over the possibility of incest are as feeble as claims that Cardinal Wolsey was papist or that St. Thomas More was a pettifogger. Did Henry want a son? Undoubtedly. Did he need one? Come now! This was not the world that the Left would make it out to be.

Catherine was the daughter of the woman who had had the naked sword of sovereignty borne before her in the procession of her coronation--the woman and the one who had taken her nation's destiny back. When her husband, Ferdinand, felt a tinge of macho resentment at his wife's independence, she gently reminded him that as they only had daughters at that point in their marriage, even the feminine right to rule must be recognized. Ferdinand conceded this argument, and it is unlikely that Henry VIII was less reasonable.

Turning aside a moment--it is bitterly ironic that Henry's son would perish from the disease Henry contracted in attempting to beget him. The rotund monarch's daughters would be his only successors, and yes, they remained on the throne until their deaths.

Did Henry truly have scruples over taking his brother's wife? What! after receiving a dispensation allowing the marriage from the Vicar of Christ in whose authority he believed? In fact, it was a dispensation that was only necessary in form, as Arthur's health did not permit him to consummate his brief marriage to Catherine. It is true that we have only the queen's word for this, but also no reason to distrust it. Her devotion to the truth and the physical condition of her bridegroom support her word.

Futhermore--concerning the king's conscience again--the same reasoning that would have nursed uneasiness in Henry's conscience would also have clearly forbidden him to have wed Anne Boleyn. Was she not the sister of Henry's former mistress? Where did those fastidious reservations fly? For whatever vile, sensual working in his mind, Henry was bent on union with a temperamental shrew, and likely for a reason as petty as this: Catherine's bloom was fading. As Hilaire Belloc said, the mind of a Tudor was acute, but not large.

What stood in this Tudor's way was the Church to whom he had always been devoted. He had hated the Protestant Revolution--both its doctrines and its habits from the beginning, but when Holy Mother Church would not let him have his way, he broke off all ties with Rome. Again, he was likely acting through his passions only, not seeing the ruin in store for the world of Christendom.

Henry then cruelly separated his wife from their daughter and left his spouse to die in the rotten hole from which he had previously rescued her. For the next 59 years (interrupted by the five year reign of Mary Tudor I), Henry VIII and Elizabeth I would spend their reigns stamping out vibrant English Catholicism via looting, persecution, and mass murder. A secular historian, who was documenting this era, spoke thus while touring a former home of Catholic nobility:

'What happened to Catholicism which had been so strong in England?' he opened a trapdoor, familiar to well taught schoolchildren as a priest's 'hidey hole,' and said curtly, 'It disappeared down here.'

What was left behind after this persecution? What was this new 'Anglican' Church? It looked like the Church of Rome ('tainted' with the 'gross shadow of popery' according to the Puritan and Pilgrim, William Bradford). But it was very much as if a man had murdered the woman he loved, constructed a machine, and did his best to fashion it after her image and being. Did this sect Henry fashioned to soothe his anti-Reformation sensibilities have any substance to it?

Cardinal Newman observed in the Development of Christian Doctrine that Protestantism, having rebelled against any religious authority, ritual, or devotion, often fades into agnosticism or atheism when it introduces logical speculation into its doctrine.

England's religious revolution was truly engineered by the powerful rich, the erstwhile 'reformers,' and the deluded Henry VIII. Of these three parties, that errant monarch died. The men who sought to revive 'primitive Christianity' quickly became irrelevant. Albania was left with a puppet of the opportunist aristocrats and the merchants who lived on generation after generation.

Their puppet of a church undoubtedly lost any right to the name 'creed' some time ago.

'I believed in the Church I joined, but it has been revealed to have no doctrine of its own. I personally think it has gone past the point of no return.' _Bishop Broadhurst [emphasis mine]

The disillusionment of orthodox Anglican bishops brought droves of converts into the Catholic Church last year. Now the American Episcopalians have been removed from the Anglican Communion's ecumenical dialogues. The African Anglican Church is wedged further and further apart from the modernist errors of the Anglican community. Some Anglican converts are even speaking of regaining the churches stolen from Rome long ago. One may at last be seeing the return of Mary's Dowry, at least as far as believers are concerned. The majority of England is unabashedly secular.

It's strange that it has taken so many centuries for the cleavage in England to show signs of healing. What would have been a slight tug of war between monarch and pope in any previous age, was a complete severance due both to England's economic circumstances and Europe's revolutionary climate. Henry VIII managed to destroy everything he cared for: Catherine, the Church's place in England, and within a century and two years, the monarchy.

I have heard it said that there is no such thing as private sin. Every time we look up to the Heaven and shake our fist, every time we say 'no' to Reality, we can be sure that we will not be able to keep what we have done to ourselves. Failing in our duties, failing those we love the most, and failing God are crimes too great to be contained in our personal lives. They will spill out into the world, and we will have made ourselves part of what's wrong with this life.