The Story to Teach Our Children
“Our future,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, is “publicly owned systems.” AOC was born on October 13, 1989, three weeks before the Berlin Wall toppled, 82 years after Fatima’s Miracle of the Sun.
The Berlin Wall stood as a monument to “publicly owned systems” from August 13, 1961 to November 1989. The wall is in the background throughought “The Divine Plan,” a special film with a “one night only” national release November 6 to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall.
Just as the Great War (aka World War I) shaped the entire 20th century, the 1989 Revolution still shapes the 30 years that have followed. “The Divine Plan” connects the dots from Fatima and WWI (1917) to the rise of St. John Paul the Great and Ronald Reagan to our present age. Each are connected.
We are all actors on a great stage, each playing a role in God’s greater story and plan, each connected. “There are no mere coincidences,’’ St. John Paul the Great concluded.
“Everything happens for a reason,’’ Ronald Reagan said of God’s Divine Plan. From non-believers to Christians to Muslims to Reagan and John Paul (Fatima is named after Muhammad’s favorite daughter) there is a fascination with Fatima. Consider these details, small pieces of a bigger story:
- In 1917, Our Lady of Fatima, predicted the rise of communism (“Russia’s errors” that would spread throughout the world), World War II and the shooting of a pope. On October 13, 1917, her Miracle of the Sun was seen through much of Europe. The most hardened atheist witnesses became believers.
- On May 13, 1981, 64 years to the day after the first appearance of Our Lady of Fatima, the pope was shot in a plot ordered by Soviet communist rulers, just six weeks after the shooting of Ronald Reagan. Reagan and John Paul both believed God spared them for a bigger reason and together they forged an alliance to destroy communism.
- On October 13, 1989, 82 years after the final Fatima appearance, AOC was born. The Berlin Wall fell less than a month later. A little more than two years later, the Soviet Union itself collapsed. Communism fell but its temptations and false promises remain with us three decades later. Polls show young people in particular are open to these messages.
You can’t love what you don’t know. The latest Pew data released last week shows only 49 percent of U.S. Millennials (Americans born from 1981–1996) consider themselves to be Christians (compared to 85 percent of Americans born between 1924–45, 76 percent of Baby Boomers and 67 percent of Americans born from 1965–1980).
Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it
Deleting God from our culture, as communism attempted, is a grave danger.
“The future, and our future, is in public systems, and it’s in publicly owned systems, because we need to take power over our lives again,” AOC, the Democrat congressional superstar told a massive Bernie Sanders rally October 19. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Mark Zuckerberg making decisions over my life.”
St. John Paul the Great, like AOC, warned about the dangers of an amoral capitalism solely based on numbers and dollars rather than hearts and souls.
So St. John Paul would have understood AOC’s warning about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (and other billionaires) running our lives. Like AOC, John Paul understood how absolute power, a godless world, can corrupt absolutely.
But unlike AOC, St. John Paul and Ronald Reagan saw the tyrannies and evils of making government rulers (aka public owned systems) the ultimate authority.
In practice, turning control of everything over to the government makes the government rulers the new gods with supreme authority. John Paul saw Nazis and communists tear down crucifixes only to replace them with pictures of socialist and communist tyrants like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
The greatest miracle of modern times: how two best friends miraculously killed European communism and sent chills into the communists and socialists who remained, forever changing the whole world.
Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan, planning his 1980 run for the White House, watched the news of millions of Poles gathered to see the return of the world’s first Polish Pope, now St. John Paul the Great.
“(St. John Paul) brought so many people together while dictatorships isolate people,’’ author Anne Applebaum concludes in the new film. Millions saw they weren’t alone, that believers actually outnumbers the communist dictators and minds began to change.
Reagan turned to foreign policy advisor Richard Allen (who appears in the film) and exclaimed, “Dick, that’s it. The pope! The pope is the key!’’
In 1979, a time when the world thought the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain were permanent realities to be accepted, Reagan told Allen he had a four word plan: “We win. They lose.’’
Reagan’s alliance with John Paul and the people of Poland were the key. Asked how this dream could possibly work, Reagan would later explain: “It’s only going to happen because of the people’s desire to know God.’’
Fear gave way to faith. The two men shared regular letters, met in person, established official diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the United States and shared classified intelligence including the secret finding that the Soviets were behind the attempt to kill the pope.
“Both of these men shared the conclusion that communism could be defeated,’’ Papal biographer George Weigel explains in the film. Bishop Robert Barron adds: “They both saw it, they both understood it.’’
Neither took credit for these miracles since both believed it was God’s Plan and that they had been shot and survived, six weeks apart in 1981, because God had a Divine Plan to defeat evil without firing a shot. Reagan saw in 1979 that the pope was “the real power in Poland.’’
The two best friends, former actors and great communicators both shared views of the world. Reagan said “Every person is a res sacra, a sacred reality’’ while John Paul said “Every person is a unique and unrepeatable gift of God.’’
St. John Paul, who called Mikhail Gorbachev the “Providential Man,’’ himself explained, “I didn’t cause this to happen. The tree was already rotting. I just gave it a good shake and the rotten apples fell.’’
The film also recalls a conversation between Reagan and Solidarity candidates running in the June 1989 elections against the communists. When asked for his campaign advice, Reagan answered, “Listen to your conscience because that is where God speaks to you.”
“The Divine Plan” also explains how John Paul’s aide, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, caught the pope when he was shot and celebrated Reagan and John Paul in a June 27, 2011 Mass where he concluded: “The world is a battlefield of good and evil, truth and falsehood. Each of us faces a choice… Today we recall two great men who stood before this very choice and how their decision shaped the world in which we live.’’
We are all faced with this same choice. Let us pray that our children, AOC and the other Millennials of the world, will learn these stories as they shape their future and ours. Reviewing “The Divine Plan’’ would help.
One Night Only: Reserve tickets now to see “The Divine Plan.’’