All The 17s In A Row

1517 - Reformation 

1717 - Freemasonry 

1917 - Communism 

Those were the watershed years pinpointed by CFN (Catholic Family News; and yes, they are on Facebook! But don't look for it online however; they don't post their entire newspaper online - ever!) in their latest edition, which heavily criticizes the decision by the Pope to celebrate a mass jointly with Lutheran leaders in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's Reformation on October 31st 2017 by likening it to ''celebrating an apocalyptic plague'' - no less. While it is all in good faith (!) to demonize in such a virulent manner the beginning of such a rift within Christianity -schism that has never ceased to grow since and that the Virgin Mary lamented in such passionate ways as well, reputedly stating ''woe to he who created separation within the Church'' which does not bode well for Martin Luther's soul at all right there; but let God be His Judge- one has got to wonder, though, if all this isn't just detracting from other, truer and deeper problems...

For the Virgin Mary has spoken far more often of conversion of the souls, of prayer (most notably of the Rosary) and of Russia... as of Immaculate Conception, also. But we are talking about CFN - not Fatima.org here (although they are both of them, on the same side - no schism there, no.)

1517 was the beginning of a huge problem, absolutely; we see it now more than ever in 2017, where tentative unity is attempted and met by scorn and repulsion, such as this seen in CFN print...
Never mind that Lutheranism adheres to Sola Gratia, Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura - three very solid roads to the Light right there! However, one could argue that by focusing on God's Grace, one's own Faith (in the sense of general belief, perhaps) and the Scriptures' Truth, Old and New Testaments at once, one may not have... Christ, who is The Way, The Redemption and The Life.

Aye - we're the kind of Christians that tend to lean on 

the other two ''SOLAS'' there: 

SOLO CHRISTO, especially! 

1717 saw the birth of secret societies - perhaps. They existed before that, truly; but this was the first time it was a ''not-so secret'' one! Secret but out in the open; an elite, and proud of it, in other words.
And then we have the beginning of troubles of another kind with the rise of Communism in 1917, the year in which the Virgin appears at Fatima, Portugal, coincidentally enough; a year rife with events of all manners, from epic battles to explosions and calamities - but, truly, there are no coincidences, of course. Our adversary to us all, the deceiver in chief, was mad as hell - see...?

But aren't there glaring omissions on this short list here... or what?

And it isn't just 1617 either - as the same old shenanigans went on in Royal Courts throughout Europe (most notably in France, giving the throne to Louis XIII) while the wretched Ottoman Empire thrived and innocents (a saint, Rose of Lima, in Peru, and seven women in Finspång, Sweden, most notably) died. The latter seven were accused of witchcraft; very few, if any true witches were ever burned at the stake for having dabbled in darkness, let it be known if it truly isn't already. The true devil-worshipers pay for their crimes against God and their fellow man only in the afterlife. Most likely it was around those years (1600s all the way through the 1800s, verily) that the various dark sources (and resources) were put together into one single book which is reputedly the end-all, be-all of all grimoires for those who would dabble in the occult... A Scandinavian source claims to harken as far back as 1529, though; with a 3rd Century author, why not. Whatever it is, the collected tome is not fit for reading and one should go all out Fahrenheit 451 on its sorry rear - all editions of it.

What about 1817-1818 - epidemics like never before (cholera, from Bengal to Calcutta; typhus in Scotland, notably. Even the New World got its share; before and after too) were seen reaching more than ever before seen in history too; the direct result of some empires' expansionism and blind ambition (looking at you, ''Great'' Britons... Spaniard bastards, too... the Portuguese were part of this as well, granted...) and so they had to bring forth all of that - plus their germs, to the four corners of the world known to them, back then!  There were fairly impressive earthquakes in Greece and Italia in those years, too; old school Christianity used to believe that when the Earth trembled it was because God Wasn't Happy with us. And for good reason too! Plenty of reasons, actually; how about one that tops the list, for starters? Since the very beginning: we rebelled. And the spirit of rebellion spreads, too, just like an epidemic, just like a disease: as those are the years of the Great Rebellion in Sri Lanka. We've just come off the Secession in the Americas... And in Copenhagen, Denmark, the army is necessary to quell the largest riot they'd ever seen in a prison - that was in June of 1817.

We also have all of the preceding landmark anno domini...

1417 - the 206th Pope was elected, in November, following the preceding pope's abdication; the devil had already been in Rome behind the scenes, for several centuries... Restoration, rather than reformation, in England as King Henry V begins undoing the Norman Conquest, finally... Meanwhile, the Romanians were having trouble with the damnable Ottoman Empire; the voivode of Wallachia couldn't do a thing...

1317 - Civil war in Sweden and Finland. King Birger of Sweden was a jerk. And the Great Famine ended that year - wasn't that God's Punishment, or what? It had started in 1315... Perhaps it was the devil's machinations though; what better way to turn them away from God, at this point in time, then to test them through untold strife and desolation?

1217 - Year of the Fifth Crusade - as it culminates and reaches the Holy Land. Mongols go wild in North China and Islam is spreading, also, but back in Europe, Portugal is handing the Islamic caliphate a crucial defeat in Alcácer do Sal - it is all part of the Reconquista, ridding the Iberian peninsula of the islamic presence which has been there since the 8th Century. Chalk one up for King Afonso II, rei do Portugal. Church and State are one as it is Pope Honorius III who crowns the new emperor of the Crusade-leading Latin Empire of Constantinople - in Rome.

1117 - territorial conflicts blossom all over the place - as the devil relishes the symbiosis between church and state, religion and politics - faith and earthly power! Most distressing of all of these conflicts is the (mercifully brief) annoyance of seeing the Almoravids (raving arabic lunatics from Morocco) returning to Coimbra, cultured focal point in Portugal...

1017 - England is split into four as, for a Christmas gift, Eadric Streona has his head chopped off! Again, the histrionics of the power-mad royals of yesteryear... Islam was torn into pieces as well, as there was internal conflict against the Zirid dynasty (not my kind of Dynasty) in Tunisia...

17 B.C. until 917 A.D. --- the building of the Church! If all heathen observers lament the virtual absence of historical evidence of Christianity's foundation (what, with no records of deemed ''historical worth'' of even The Christ's passage on Earth, let alone his Apostles' testimonials, other than their very own Gospels... Without even a mention of the Shroud of Turin's existence before the late 1300s; lest one believes it bore a different name and was folded differently for the longest time... Even archeological digs and findings are refuted by the unbelievers!) it certainly should befall Christians (Catholics, on top of that, who pride themselves to be the ones with the one true Church built upon the Rock who is Peter, first de facto Pope...!) to underline the activities of Tertullian, Paul and all the First Christians who founded what they sit on right now - on top of Jesus The Christ and Peter themselves, obviously! The fact that they missed a golden opportunity to juxtapose the ''all-important reformation'' with the ''founding blocks'' of the One True Faith... is sad! After all, ''ML'' only pointed out what he thought was off-base with the way Christians went about things with regards to their faith; pointing out that he was just a pedantic nitpicker (just like a German to...) and that he doesn't even come close to measuring up with his elders; that he isn't a founding father of anything, unlike them, even the smallest of them all... it would have been great.

A t-shirt with just a couple of names 

(all right, technically, there are three - happy?) 

citing what is evident would have been... priceless, 

If the goal was to prove ''ML'' was way off the mark, why not? Maybe others mentioned it, in passing: 100 Huntley St... Faith Today? Or, perhaps, any one of the various and numerous denominational publications out there... The Adventists? The Mormons? The Witnesses?!?
But it is doubtful, actually! Hence, notch up another one for this Luminous Manifesto: the only one who dared elevate Tertullian, one of the very first Christians ever, past the pride of Eisleben!

(((We'll purposefully skip the years 317 and 417 here - for obvious reasons!)))
(And we'll leave you the pleasure of going through years 17 A.D. through 217 A.D. - and then 517 all right on through the year 1000... if you so choose! Wikipedia is there for *you*... Although I still stick to my Encarta -imagine that- and my old history books!)

Here's a fine history book for ya, folks...!

Catholic Family News obviously has it against both the Freemasons and the (Luminous?) Lutherans (for the reasons cited above) - and Communists deserve everything they get, certainly. However, accusing those three sources of trouble of all the woes of the world is too simplistic; there are many, many forces at work in the daily chaos out there; there are a great many factors at play and it isn't even fair to attempt to trace them all back to the devil itself, either! Man has shown his capacity to be evil all by his lonesome self - and he deserves some of the credit as of the blame, too!

The devil is simply too happy that some of his handiwork emulates God's Creation as well - it proliferates, expands and multiplies, all on its own...

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