The Third Secret continues:
A schism will tear apart the holy tunic of My Son. This will be the end of times, foretold in the Holy Scriptures and recalled to memory by Me in many places. The abomination of abominations will reach its peak and it will bring about the chastisement announced at La Salette.
And what is the chastisement announced at La Salette?:
The Church will be in eclipse…Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.
Such a thought is still quite astounding to most people, and in spite of all the evidence, rather controversial. Virtually all of the Fathers of the early Church spoke of this frightening reality to come. From the great Cardinal Henry Edward Manning (d. 1892):
The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism…Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning—invisible; hidden in the catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.
Without question we are living in those times. How we respond to the situation that God has placed us in by His Providence might very well determine where we spend eternity. It’s clear that we should spurn the Novus Ordo church with all of our heart, mind and soul, even though there are still “conservative” factions in that body that some might find appealing.
The schism spoken about in the secret is not what is happening now in Rome or talk of the split of Germany away from the Novus Ordo Church. It is almost probably true that the real schism occurred sometime from the election of John XXIII in 1958 to the publication of Lumen Gentium on November 21, 1964, when Vatican II took it upon itself to “change the nature of the Church,” something that in reality it can’t do.
All of this, as distressing as it is, are things that have been foretold in the Bible, Tradition and other prophetic works as the Third Secret indicates. We have been warned.