In his landmark encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei (1922), Pope Pius XI warned against pursuit of an "illusory peace, written only on paper" following the First World War. His Holiness rejected the notion that there could be true peace in the world based on a secular "League of Nations." The true league of nations, he taught, is Christianity, and the center of that league of nations is the Holy Catholic Church, for "She alone is adapted to do this great work" of securing true peace in the world, and the Church alone "is divinely commissioned to lead mankind." Human schemes to create a secular peace "assuredly will fail," His Holiness accurately prophesied 17 years before World War II and the spread of world communism — the "errors of Russia" which continue to afflict the world in the present day.

        Post-conciliar churchmen have rejected Pius XI’s wise counsel. The Vatican apparatus — the same crew that has hounded Fr. Nicholas Gruner for so many years because of his success in promoting the Message of Fatima — now openly calls for a greater role for the United Nations as guarantor of "world peace." But the United Nations is infinitely worse in moral terms than the League of Nations Pius XI knew was doomed to failure. The U.N. has been instrumental in promoting throughout the world the "human rights" of abortion and contraception, even attempting to intimidate once-Catholic countries that have been insufficiently accepting of these "rights," as I have noted in previous columns. (See "New World Order Update" section of column archives.)

        Unconcerned about the overwhelming evidence of the U.N.’s evil agenda — which even concerned Protestant commentators have remarked over and over again — the Vatican’s former observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Renato Martino, at a recent conference in New York City to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in terris, argued "that the U.N. should have greater power." (CWNews, October 10, 2003) Archbishop Martino, now head of the "Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace," is reported to have said that "the U.N. currently lacks the resources and the authority necessary for its mission of preserving world peace." In other words, the U.N. needs more money and more authority over us.

        But what of the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, as enunciated by Pius XI in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno? According to this principle, political authority should be exercised at the lowest possible levels of government — by subsidiary, local organs, hence "subsidiarity" — in order to prevent the usurpation of local autonomy and the inevitable loss of freedom to Big Government. America’s current political regime is a veritable case study of what happens when the principle of subsidiarity is trampled.

        CWNews notes that Archbishop Martino "made the unusual argument that the principle of subsidiarity points to the need for a greater structure of global government. The U.N. itself must be reformed, he said, to guarantee the rights of the member-nations. But the international body must also have the authority to exercise greater influence in a global society."

        That certainly is an "unusual argument." How does one serve the principle of subsidiarity, which calls for political authority to be exercised at the lowest possible level, by promoting a global super-government dominated by militant secularists? This is more of the post-Conciliar nonsense we have become accustomed to since Vatican II. Along the same lines is the ridiculous claim that the New Mass of Paul VI, which he himself referred to as "this novelty," is really quite traditional. Global "subsidiarity" and novel "traditions" represent the sort of contradiction in terms which evidence that diabolical disorientation of the Church remarked by Sister Lucy.

        As the Pope’s death seems very near, we can only shudder at what the Vatican apparatus and the Pope’s successor will do if they persevere in the lines established by, sad to say, John Paul II himself: "Peace" through the United Nations and prayer meetings with the practitioners of pagan religions; "Christian unity" through an ecumenism that confirms Protestants in their errors, which grow more egregious by the day; "liturgical reform" consisting of the massive disruption of every settled liturgical tradition in the Church.

        Clearly, we live in a time when the Church has been invaded by an alien spirit. Or as Paul VI was forced to admit: "The opening to the world has become a veritable invasion of the Church by worldly thinking." That worldly thinking includes the Vatican’s insane campaign to increase the authority of the United Nations.

        As the next papal conclave fast approaches, the battle for the Church will reach new levels of intensity. We will witness the working out of what the Third Secret undoubtedly predicted. As Our Lord told Sister Lucy, the Consecration of Russia will inevitably be accomplished, but "it will be late." How late will determine how much more damage the Church and the world will have to suffer from the Church’s invasion by worldly thinking. We can only hope and pray that John Paul II’s successor will be the one to bring the Fatima prophecy, culminating in Russia’s conversion and the flowering of true world peace, to its glorious and inevitable fulfillment. Until that day, we can only expect our situation to worsen, for God will not provide any remedy other than the one He has decreed for the Church in this time of confusion. I mean the remedy prescribed to the three shepherd children at Fatima and confirmed by a public miracle on October 13, 1917, whose anniversary the Vatican has (predictably enough) completely ignored. Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for Us!