Putin Rattles Saber
over Missile Defense Shield

by Christopher A. Ferrara

On July 9, 2008 the London Times online edition reported that “Russia threatened to retaliate by military means after a deal with the Czech Republic brought the US missile defense system in Europe a step closer.”

The Times quotes a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry that because of the just-signed US agreement with the Czech Republic to host a radar site for the defense system, “We will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods.”

In other words, Russia will continue development of its single-warhead RT-2UTTH Topol-M missiles, which Vladimir (“the practicing Christian”) Putin has boasted during a televised press conference “are hypersonic and capable of changing their flight path,” and which, according to one military analyst, “act like a ‘swarm of bees.’” (USA Today, On Deadline, January 31, 2006). And, in response, the US military is developing its own hypersonic missile called the Falcon. The arms race is on again.

Not so long ago, Fatima revisionists within the Catholic Church were hailing the “conversion” of Russia according to a definition of “conversion” that involves anything and everything but Russia’s embrace of the Catholic faith — including the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which is at the heart of the Fatima Message — and unity with the Vicar of Christ. But as the Russian philosopher, poet and mystic, Vladimir Soloviev, writing at the turn of the 20th Century, prophesied, only a reunion of the Russian Orthodox with Rome would save the West during a coming conflagration the likes of which the world had never seen before.

As one commentator notes apropos Soloviev’s call for that reunification: “The most serious effect of the Russian Church’s schism (Soloviev doesn’t shy away from the term) is caesaropapism — control of the Church by the secular powers.” That is precisely the condition in which the Russian Orthodox Church finds itself today, as Vladimir Putin prepares for war: a condition of schism and subjection to the power of the State.

In the vision of the Third Secret of Fatima we see a hobbling Pope leaving a half-ruined city filled with cadavers and proceeding to a wooden cross atop a hill outside the city, where a band of soldiers executes him as he kneels in prayer. Is that clearly apocalyptic scenario part of the great conflagration predicted by Soloviev? Is the half-ruined city Rome, devastated by Russia’s hypersonic nuclear missiles?

With each passing day the urgency of Russia’s consecration to the Immaculate Heart becomes more apparent. Clearly that consecration is linked to Soloviev’s prophecy of the reunification of the Russian Orthodox with Rome, the salvation of the West and the period of peace Our Lady promised at Fatima.