May 27, 2017, Saturday
“The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.” —Sister Lucia of Fatima, in the 1980s, in a correspondence with the then-monsignor Carlo Caffara. Caffara, now a 78-year-old cardinal, reveals and discusses the correspondence below
The Last Battle
American journalist Diane Montagna published an interesting interview with Cardinal Carlo Caffara, 78, the now retired Archbishop of Bologna in central Italy, on May 19 on the website Aleteia.
At the same time, Caffara (photo) gave a very clear and powerful address on May 19 in Rome, against the attack on the traditional family, which is also published below, after the interview.
These two texts will give an insight into his mind, and that seems important, because Caffara is one of the four cardinals who signed the “dubia,” the five “doubts” (questions) regarding the text of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia submitted privately to Pope Francis and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith last September. After the dubia were not answered, they were made public in November. They have still not been answered.
(Below, the four cardinals who posed the five questions, or “dubia” (“doubts”) to Pope Francis last September: from left, Cardinal Walter Brandmueller, Cardinal Carlo Caffara, Cardinal Raymond Burke, and Cardinal Joachim Meisner)
So who is Caffara?
He was the choice of St. John Paul II in 1981 to be the first head of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Rome. John Paul made him a bishop in 1995 and appointed him archbishop of Bologna at the end of 2003. Pope Benedict made him a cardinal in 2006. He retired in 2015. He will turn 79 on June 1, in four days.
Caffara has spoken out on the immorality of contraception, and for this has been criticized by more progressive Catholic theologians. “Even the smallest moral wrong is so much greater than any physical wrong,” he has said. “I know this is hard for some to accept when the dangers are great, but the Church is here to combat moral wrongs.”
(Here, Caffara with Pope Francis)
Caffara in this interview goes into some detail about a correspondence in the early 1980s that he had with Sister Lucy, one of the three children to whom Our Lady of Fatima appeared in 1917. (The other two children, St. Jacinta and St. Francisco, both died very young, and were just canonized two weeks ago in Fatima, Portugal, by Pope Francis. Sister Lucia lived until February 2005, dying just before Pope John Paul II died.)
It is not new information. Some of the things Cardinal Caffara says were said already nine years ago, in 2008. He spoke on February 16, 2008, to the Italian radio station Tele Radio Padre Pio, after celebrating Mass at the shrine of Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo, on the eastern coast of central Italy.
The interview was published in the Voce di Padre Pio bulletin in March of 2008.
And the Rorate Caeli website translated portions of the interview two years ago, in June of 2015, here.
“At the start of this work entrusted to me by the Servant of God (now St.) John Paul II,” Caffara said in 2008, “I wrote to Sister Lucia of Fatima through her Bishop as I couldn’t do so directly. Inexplicably however, since I didn’t expect an answer, seeing that I had only asked for prayers, I received a very long letter with her signature — now in the Institute’s archives. In it we find written: the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, she added, because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.”
Here is the text of Montagna’s May 19, 2017 interview with Caffara…
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From Aleteia
(Exclusive) Cardinal Caffarra: “What Sr. Lucia wrote to me is being fulfilled today”
Diane Montagna | May 19, 2017
The Fatima visionary told him: “A time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family.”
VATICAN CITY — Sr. Lucia’s prophetic words that “the decisive battle” between the Lord and Satan would be over marriage and the family “is being fulfilled today,” Cardinal Carlo Caffarra has told Aleteia.
The Italian cardinal was speaking on Friday afternoon, May 19, at the fourth annual ‘Rome Life Forum,’ a gathering which brings together over 100 life and family leaders from over 20 nations to discuss how to defend and strengthen marriage and family life around the world.
Cardinal Caffarra is the Archbishop emeritus of Bologna and the founding president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. He has also served as a Member of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, Member of the Presidential Committee of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
He was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in March 2006. Cardinal Caffarra was one of Pope Francis’ 45 handpicked delegates chosen to attend the Ordinary Synod on the Family in 2015.
In this exclusive interview, given prior to his talk, Cardinal Caffarra also describes how Satan is attempting to destroy the two pillars of creation, so as to fashion his own “anti-creation”; and why, in this battle, woman is “the human being who must be defended the most.”
Your Eminence, what can you tell us about the letter you received from Sr. Lucia while you were working to found the Pontifical John Paul II institute for Marriage and Family in Rome?
Cardinal Carlo Caffara: In 1981 Pope John Paul II founded the Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. The first years (1983-1984) were very difficult. The Institute was not wanted.
Who didn’t want it?
Caffara: It was not wanted within and outside of the Church, because of the vision it was proposing. And so I was very concerned. Without asking anyone, I thought: “I will write to Sr. Lucia.”
How did that come to mind?
Caffara: Just like that. But as you know, from the beginning the patroness of the institute has been Our Lady of Fatima. It is contained in the Apostolic Constitution. There the pope places the institute under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin of Fatima. So much so — I hope it is still there — that when one enters the institute, at the end of the corridor there is a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, and the chapel of institute is dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima.
And so, I thought to write to her. So I wrote, but simply saying: “The pope wanted this Institute. We are going through a very difficult time. I ask you only to pray.” And I added: “I do not expect a reply.” Her prayers were enough for me.
As you know, in order to have any contact with Sr. Lucia, even by letter, one needed to go through her bishop. So I sent the letter to the bishop, and he passed it on to Sr. Lucia.
To my great surprise, after not more than two or three weeks, I received a reply. It was a hand-written letter and quite long. I have given sworn testimony of what the letter said. The letter ended, saying (in 1983 or 1984): “Father, a time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family. And those who will work for the good of the family will experience persecution and tribulation. But do not be afraid, because Our Lady has already crushed his head.”
This remained engraved on my heart, and amid all of the difficulties we have encountered — and there have been so, so many — these words have always given me a great strength.
When you initially read Sr. Lucia’s words, did you think she was speaking of that moment in history?
Caffara: I began thinking a few years ago, after almost thirty years: “Sr. Lucia’s words are taking place.” This decisive battle will be the thesis of my talk today. Satan is constructing and anti-creation.
An anti-creation?
Caffara: If we read the second chapter of Genesis, we see that the edifice of creation is founded on two pillars.
First, man is not something; he is someone, and therefore he deserves absolute respect.
The second pillar is the relationship between man and woman, which is sacred. Between the man and the woman. Because creation finds its completion when God creates the woman. So much so, that after he created woman, the Bible says God rested.
Today, what do we observe? Two terrible events. First, the legitimization of abortion. That is, abortion has become a subjective right of woman. Now, ‘subjective right’ is an ethical category and therefore we are here entering into the world of good and evil, and we say that abortion is a good; it is a right.
The second thing we see is the attempt to equate homosexual relationships with marriage. You see that Satan is attempting to threaten and destroy the two pillars so that he can fashion another creation. As if he were provoking the Lord, saying to Him: ‘I will fashion another creation, and man and woman will say: we like better here.’
The Scriptures say the devil is the father of lies, who presents himself as an angel of light…
In my talk, I will explain the words of Jesus, when he says of Satan: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44).
And so in my opinion — and I do not know if John Paul II had already seen this — in this sort of situation the human being who must be defended the most is the woman. In fact, early on in his pontificate he wrote Mulieris Dignitatem (August 15, 1988, “On the Dignity of Women”). There he sought to develop a theology of femininity, because he understood that this was a delicate point.
Is woman the battlefield then?
Caffara: There is a detail in the Bible that has always struck me. After the original sin, God addresses the serpent and says: “I will place enmity between you and the woman.” That is, God puts a particular enmity between the woman and evil, as if woman had a kind of instinct for the good, because God has put this enmity between woman and evil. The text continues: ‘and between your seed and her seed,’ and here the theologians see the foretelling of the Son of Mary. Therefore, woman has a particular involvement that has consequences for culture, society, and the family.
We are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady to the children of Fatima. What is the message today?
Caffara:For me, the originality of Fatima is this: At Fatima, Our Lady prophesied. In other apparitions, she doesn’t prophecy; she exhorts. Like at Lourdes: do penance, pray, tell the priests to build a chapel in this spot. She exhorts and recalls the strong exhortations of Jesus to penance and prayer. But at Fatima she prophesies; that is, she enters into and interprets human events. She had never done this before.
Did Sr. Lucia also prophesy?
Caffara: Yes, she fully entered into [Our Lady’s prophecy] and has left her Memoires. Some are very impressive. She sensed that this was the task Our Lady had given her, that is, to hand on and interpret this prophecy.
And were Sr. Lucia’s words to you about the “decisive battle” also a prophecy?
Caffara: Yes, absolutely. What Sr. Lucia wrote to me is being fulfilled today.
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And here is the text of the address Cardinal Caffarra gave at the Rome Life Forum on May 19.
CARDINAL CAFFARRA: “WE ARE NO LONGER WITNESSES, BUT DESERTERS, IF WE DO NOT SPEAK OPENLY AND PUBLICLY”
May 19, 2017
This address was given by His Eminence Carlo Cardinal Caffarra on May 19, 2017 at the fourth annual Rome Life Forum, which is organized by Voice of the Family.
By Carlo Cardinal Caffara
“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” [John 12, 32]. “The whole world is under the power of the Evil One” [1 John, 5, 19].
Reading these divine words gives us perfect awareness of what is really happening in the world, within the human story, considered in its depths.
The human story is a confrontation between two forces: the force of attraction, whose source is in the wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One, and the power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom.
The area in which the confrontation takes place is the human heart, it is human liberty.
And the confrontation has two dimensions: an interior dimension and an exterior dimension. We will briefly consider the one and the other.
At the trial before Pilate, the Governor asks Jesus whether he is a king; whether – which is the meaning of Pilate’s question – he has true and sovereign political power over a given territory.
Jesus responds: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” [John 18, 37].
“Jesus wants us to understand that his kingship is not that of the kings of this world, but consists of the obedience of his subjects to his word, to his truth. Although He reigns over his subjects, it is not through force or power, but through the truth of which he is witness, which ‘all who are from the truth’ receive with faith.” [Ignace De La Potterie].
Thomas Aquinas puts the following words into the mouth of the Saviour: “As I myself manifest truth, so I am preparing a kingdom for myself.”
Jesus on the Cross attracts everyone to Himself, because it is on the Cross that the Truth of which he is witness is resplendent.
Yet this force of attraction can only take effect on those who “are from the truth.”
That is, on those who are profoundly available to the Truth, who love truth, who live in familiarity with it.
Pascal writes: “You would not seek me if you had not already found me.”
He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies.
Jesus says of Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” [John 8, 44].
The wording is dramatic.
The first proposition – “He was a murderer from the beginning” – is explained by the second: “and he does not stand in the truth.”
The murder which the devil performs consists in his not standing in the truth, not dwelling in the truth. It is murder, because he is seeking to extinguish, to kill in the heart of man truth, the desire for truth. By inducing man to unbelief, he wants man to close himself to the light of the Divine Revelation, which is the Word incarnate.
Therefore, these words of Jesus on Satan — as today the majority of exegetes believe — do not speak of the fall of the angels. They speak of something far more profound, something frightful: Satan constantly refuses the truth, and his action within human society consists in opposition to the truth. Satan is this refusal; he is this opposition.
The text continues: “because there is no truth in him.” The words of Jesus go to the deepest root of Satan’s work. He is in himself a lie. From his person truth is completely absent, and hence he is by definition the one who opposes truth. Jesus adds immediately afterwards: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
When the Lord says “speaks according to his own nature,” he introduces us to the interiority of Satan, to his heart. A heart which lives in darkness, in shadows: a house without doors and without windows.
To summarize, this therefore is what is happening in the heart of man: Jesus, the Revelation of the Father, exerts a strong attraction to Himself. Satan works against this, to neutralize the attractive force of the Crucified-Risen One. The force of truth which makes us free acts on the heart of man. It is the Satanic force of the lie which makes slaves of us.
Yet, not being pure spirit, the human person is not solely interiority. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in construction of the society in which he or she lives. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in culture, as an essential dimension of human life as such. Culture is the mode of living which is specifically human.
Given that man is positioned between two opposing forces, the condition in which he finds himself must necessarily give rise to two cultures: the culture of the truth and the culture of the lie.
There is a book in Holy Scripture, the last, the Apocalypse, which describes the final confrontation between the two kingdoms. In this book, the attraction of Christ takes the form of triumph over enemy powers commanded by Satan. It is a triumph which comes after lengthy combat.
The first fruits of the victory are the martyrs. “The great Dragon, serpent of the primal age, he whom we call the devil, or Satan, seducer of the whole world, was flung down to earth… But they [= the martyrs] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of the testimony of their martyrdom” [cfr. Ap. 12, 9.11].
In this second section, I would like to respond to the following question: in our Western culture, are there developments which reveal with particular clarity the confrontation between the attraction exerted over man by the Crucified-Risen One, and the culture of the lie constructed by Satan?
My response is affirmative, and there are two developments in particular.
The first development is the transformation of a crime [termed by Vatican Council II nefandum crimen], abortion, into a right.
Note well. I am not speaking of abortion as an act perpetrated by one person. I am speaking of the broader legitimation which can be perpetrated by a judicial system in a single act: to subsume it into the category of the subjective right, which is an ethical category. This signifies calling what is good, evil, what is light, shadow. “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” This is an attempt to produce an “anti-Revelation.”
What in fact is the logic which presides over the ennoblement of abortion?
Firstly, it is the profoundest negation of the truth of man. As soon as Noah left the floodwaters, God said: “Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall that person’s blood be shed, for in his own image God made man” [Gen. 9, 6]. The reason why man should not shed the blood of man is that man is the image of God. Through man, God dwells in His creation. This creation is the temple of the Lord, because man inhabits it. To violate the intangibility of the human person is a sacrilegious act against the Sanctity of God. It is the Satanic attempt to generate an “anti-creation.”
By ennobling the killing of humans, Satan has laid the foundations for his “creation”: to remove from creation the image of God, to obscure his presence therein.
St Ambrose writes: “The creation of the world was completed with formation of the masterpiece which is man, which… is in fact the culmination of creation, the supreme beauty of every created being” [Exam., Sixth day, Disc 9, 10.75; BA I, page 417].
At the moment at which the right of man to order the life and the death of another man is affirmed, God is expelled from his creation, because his original presence is denied, and his original dwelling-place within creation – the human person – is desecrated.
The second development is the ennoblement of homosexuality. This in fact denies entirely the truth of marriage, the mind of God the Creator with regard to marriage.
The Divine Revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage: the lawful union of a man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent structure, based on the duality of the human mode of being: femininity and masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one with and for the other. Only thus does man escape his original solitude.
One of the fundamental laws through which God governs the universe is that He does not act alone. This is the law of human cooperation with the divine governance. The union between a man and woman, who become one flesh, is human cooperation in the creative act of God: every human person is created by God and begotten by its parents. God celebrates the liturgy of his creative act in the holy temple of conjugal love.
In summary. There are two pillars of creation: the human person in its irreducibility to the material universe, and the conjugal union between a man and woman, the place in which God creates new human persons “in His image and likeness.”
The axiological elevation of abortion to a subjective right is the demolition of the first pillar. The ennoblement of a homosexual relationship, when equated to marriage, is the destruction of the second pillar.
At the root of this is the work of Satan, who wants to build an actual anti-creation. This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan is hurling at God. “I am demonstrating to you that I am capable of constructing an alternative to your creation. And man will say: it is better in the alternative creation than in your creation.”
This is the frightful strategy of the lie, constructed around a profound contempt for man. Man is not capable of elevating himself to the splendor of the Truth. He is not capable of living within the paradox of an infinite desire for happiness. He is not able to find himself in the sincere gift of himself.
And therefore — continues the Satanic discourse — we tell him banalities about man. We convince him that the Truth does not exist and that his search is therefore a sad and futile passion. We persuade him to shorten the measure of his desire in line with the measure of the transient moment. We place in his heart the suspicion that love is merely a mask of pleasure.
The Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky speaks thus to Jesus: “You judge of men too highly, for though rebels they be, they are born slaves… I swear to you that man is weaker and lower than You have ever imagined him to be! Man is weak and cowardly.”
How should we dwell in this situation? In the third and final section of my reflection, I will seek to answer this question.
The reply is simple: within the confrontation between creation and anti-creation, we are called upon to testify. This testimony is our mode of being in the world.
The New Testament has an abundantly rich doctrine on this matter. I must confine myself to an indication of the three fundamental meanings which constitute testimony.
(i) Testimony means to say, to speak, to announce openly and publicly. Someone who does not testify in this way is like a soldier who flees at the decisive moment in a battle. We are no longer witnesses, but deserters, if we do not speak openly and publicly. The March for Life is therefore a great testimony.
(ii) Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the divine Revelation, which involves the original evidence, discoverable only by reason, rightfully used. And to speak in particular of the Gospel of Life and Marriage.
(iii) Testimony means to say, to announce openly and publicly the Gospel of Life and Marriage as if in a trial [cfr. John 16, 8-11].
I will explain myself. I have spoken frequently of a confrontation. This confrontation is increasingly assuming the appearance of a trial, of a legal proceeding, in which the defendant is Jesus and his Gospel. As in every legal proceeding, there are also witnesses in favor: in favor of Jesus and his Gospel.
Announcement of the Gospel of Marriage and of Life today takes place in a context of hostility, of challenge, of unbelief.
The alternative is one of two options: either one remains silent on the Gospel, or one says something else.
Obviously, what I have said should not be interpreted as meaning that Christians should render themselves… antipathetic to everyone.
St Thomas writes: “It is the same thing, when faced with two contraries, to pursue the one and reject the other. Medicine, for example, proposes the cure while excluding the illness. Hence, it belongs to the wise man to meditate on the truth, in particular with regard to the First Principle… and to refute the opposing falsehood.” [CG Book I, Chapter I, no. 6].
In the context of testimony to the Gospel, irenics and concordism must be excluded.
On this Jesus has been explicit. It would be a terrible doctor who adopted an irenical attitude towards the disease.
Augustine writes: “Love the sinner, but persecute the sin.” Note this well. The Latin word per-sequor is an intensifying verb. The meaning therefore is: “Hunt down the sin. Track it down in the hidden places of its lies, and condemn it, bringing to light its insubstantiality.”
I conclude with a quotation from a great confessor of the faith, the Russian Pavel A. Florenskij. “Christ is witness, in the extreme sense of the word, the witness. At His crucifixion, the Jews and Romans believed they were only witnessing a historical event, but the event revealed itself as the Truth.” [The philosophy of religion, San Paolo ed., Milan 2017, page 512].
“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” [John 12, 32].
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