Our Lady of Medous, Fatima, and Vatican II by Lyle J. Arnold, Jr.

Fatima Issues

Our Lady of Médous, Fatima and Vatican II

Lyle J. Arnold, Jr.

The Parisan novelist J.K. Huysmans was one of the most distinguished converts of France in the early 20th century. He dreamed of forming a semi-monastic order of Catholic artists and writers, and had a special devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes. In one of his books, he tells us of several precedents of Our Lady's visits in the Pyrenees region, prior to her apparition to St. Bernadette. He notes:

“If you take a map of the dioceses of Bayonne and Tarbes, you can draw a circle round Lourdes with the hamlets and chapels which were formerly centers for pilgrimages of Our Lady; and then Lourdes will appear in the middle of the ring as a living planet surrounded with nine satellites..."(1)

A statue marks where Our Lady appeared to Liloye

A statue in a grotto of Medous marks the place where Our Lady appeared to Liloye

Of these "nine satellites," the visit of Our Lady at Médous has special interest, not only for devotees of Lourdes, but also of Fatima. Like her warnings in the Fatima apparitions about the chastisement, the Médous apparitions describe severe punishments to befall those who do not take her threats seriously. This apparition took place in 1587, when she revealed herself to a poor shepherdess named Liloye, who was praying before her image. The reason for the Virgin's visit was to bade Liloye to warn the clergy and the people of Bagneres to do penance for their sins (2).

The reaction of the clergy and people to what Liloye's message from Our Lady was to heap scorn and contempt upon her. They ignored the command to do penance. Liloye returned to the Virgin, and told her what had happened. Our Lady responded to this news by repeating her original orders. This time, however, she declared that if there was no compliance with her demand, she "would decimate the town with a dreadful plague."

Once again Liloye delivered the news of Our Lady to the people of Bagneres, and once again the warnings were rebuffed. So, in 1588 the plague came and took all those who were unable to flee the town. Bagneres was deserted for a year; and then the guilty, who had avoided the scourge by withdrawing from the infected town, gradually returned.

One of those who escaped and returned was a woman named Simone de Souville, who jeered at Liloye’s warning, telling her “we shall expect less maladroit reproofs before we are converted." When Liloye related Simone's words to Our Lady, she told Liloye, "Go and warn the black sheep that the scourge shall next smite the rich, and that she will be the first victim.”

A pilgrim visiting Medous in the 19th century

Below, the church in Medous

The prediction was fulfilled to the letter, and Simone died soon afterward. The people were terrified and repented, and numerous processions filed past the altar dedicated to Our Lady year after year. As for Liloye, she became a nun in the Convent of Balbonne, near Montserrat in Spain, for all the religious houses of her own country had been burnt by the Huguenots.

The event at Medous can be viewed as a microcosm of Fatima and Vatican II. At Medous, the warnings of Our Lady were disregarded, and so came the plague. But the recalcitrant wealthy escaped, later returning to their town, unrepentant. It took the death of Simone and "the rich" before the people believed. In 1917, during Our Lady's July 13th visit to Fatima she said World War I would soon end, but she warned that if the people did not stop offending God, another "even worse war will begin in the reign of Pius XI."

In the Medous case, despite the warning, the people did not change and the plague was sent. In the Fatima case, the same happened: The people did not change, and World War II came. So, as at Medous, the Virgin of Fatima tried a second time to correct the people.

On January 2, 1944, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucy, instructing her to write down the Third Secret (from the July visit) and to have it made public no later than 1960 (3). Thirteen years after the 1944 instructions came a third attempt, this time through an interview on December 26, 1957 by Father Fuentes with Sister Lucy (4). She told the priest "of many nations disappearing from the face of the earth and of many souls going to Hell as a result of ignoring Our Lady's Fatima message." This interview was published in 1958 with the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Fatima (5).

But these new attempts by Our Lady to warn the people were not heeded. Because the published interview of Sister Lucy in 1958 was "widely read," this nonetheless could easily have caused a new grace to enter the Church (6). In the case of Medous, after the third warning, the "scourge" inflicted caused the people to believe and repent. In the case of Fatima, however, the Secret was withheld, and the third warning was followed by the scourge of Vatican II. Instead of waking up the people to Our Lady’s warning, it served to anesthetize them, causing them to lose their vigilance. Thus began the "auto-demolition" of the Church, which became blackened by the progressivist "smoke of Satan."'

June 26, 2000 - Cardinals Bertone and Ratzinger affirm that Fatima and the third secret are "part of the past"

How long will this progressivist smoke continue to asphyxiate the Church? Until Our Lady lets the punishment fall, not against "the rich" as in Medous, but against whole peoples, with complete nations being annihilated? Even though all serious scholars of Fatima conclude that the Third Secret refers to the crisis in the Church, official Church authorities have claimed that the Third Secret is about John Paul II being wounded! (8) This, despite the fact the alleged Third Secret released in June of 2000 has him being dead, "killed by a group of soldiers." (9) Only the Catholic remnant has protested against this double think. The anesthetized "people of God" are accepting the official line that Fatima is "a dead letter" (10), belonging "to the past" (l1). Unlike those at Medous, they have not become fearful and repented. They haven't the will to respond to the desperate crisis in the Church.

In Liloye's time, the Protestant Hugenots were burning the Catholic convents in France, and she was forced to fulfill her vocation in a neighboring country. For decades, until her death in 1995, Sister Lucy lived out her vocation (no doubt heroically) as a Carmelite nun under a progressivist regime. Today convents aren't burned. They don't have to be. The black smoke of Progressivism works from within, and does the job of corrupting the Faith better than the torch from without. These are truly evil and perilous times, but Our Lady has given us the promise, that "finally My Immaculate Heart will triumph."

1 The nine “satellites” where Our Lady appeared are in Héas, Barbazan, Saint-Savin, Poueylahün, Bourisp, Nestès, Médous, Bétharram, Garaison. J.K. Huysmans, The Crowds of Lourdes, London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, Ltd., 1925, 1f.
2 Ibid, pp. 4-5.
3. Fr. Paul Kramer, The Devil's Final Battle, Terryville, CT: The Missionary Assn, 2002, 264f. 4. Ibid, p. 267.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Paul VI's allocution to the Lombard seminary of December 7, 1968, and his sermon of June 29. 1972, respectively.
8. Mark Fellows, Sister Lucy, NY: Immaculate Heart Pub. 2007, p. 189.
9. Ibid, 188.
10 Mark Fellows, "Lucy and the Pirates," www.fatimacrusader.com.
11. Ibid.

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Posted September 29, 2008

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