The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, faced with persistent doubts raised about alleged apparitions and revelations from 1945-1959 in Amsterdam related to the devotion of the “Lady of All Nations,” recently made known the outcome of a long-ago “Ordinary Session” of what was then the Sacred Congregation held on March 27, 1974. The cardinals in attendance, it seems, had unanimously concluded negatively on the apparitions, a judgment that was directly approved by Pope Paul VI.

This was powerful news, for a number of faithful had been adhering to the apparitions and they had been given new life by those promoting a new formal title for the Virgin Mary of “Co-Redemptrix and Mediator of All Graces”–which the Vatican rejected as usurping Christ’s authority.

That view seemed to have been held also by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who never agreed to go forward with such new titles. It was certainly held by Pope Francis.

The apparitions, beyond urging a new title for Mary, predicted virtually every kind of punishment for errant mankind. She was portrayed as standing on a globe with a Cross behind her.

The visionary was a woman in Amsterdam named Ida Peerdeman, and she saw storms, waves, missiles, quakes, palace intrigue at the Vatican, and economic disasters.

Such a profusion of doom made us wonder decades ago if Satan had a hand in the disarray of Ida’s visions, yet also to wonder if their incomprehensibility was any greater than the incomprehensibility of the seven seals of Revelation.

“Let all the children of men, of all the countries of the world, be one!” said Our Lady of All Nations. “Seek and ask only for the true Holy Spirit. I have come to tell this depraved world, all of you, unite. I will lead all the dispersed flock back to one field.”

Ida—in visions that were often clipped and disjointed—saw a “strange war” and supposedly heard the Virgin warn of “disaster upon disaster” caused by phenomena of nature.

In Russia she saw a “hellish light” that seemed to explode from the ground upwards.

Was this a reference to what would occur in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor? Or the 1953 Soviet test of an atomic bomb?

She saw a hand of heavenly protection over the Ukraine, and things would go well for a while, said Mary, but then she pointed to a globe that looked like it was ready to burst. Indicating the sky eastward, where there were many stars, she supposedly said, “That is where it will come from.”

A meteor? A comet? An asteroid?

Ida claimed she was later told natural disasters would overtake the world “from north to south, south to west, and from west to east.” She saw a rent that ran diagonally across the earth.

Great misery and distress, she was “told,” were “imminent” (again, this in the 1940s and 1950s).

During an apparition on December 7, 1947, she saw thick clouds over Europe and titanic waves. “They will first have to perish by the flood,” the seer was “told,” which she further informed would constitute the “desolation.”

That seemed to fly in the face of Genesis, in which God tells Noah that “never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (9:11).

But for the sake of fleshing it out, let’s go on:

There were also premonitions of political upheaval, currency crises, boycotts, and economic warfare.

The “apparition” allegedly said Russia would try to deceive the other countries and Ida said she was shown a vision of “blue and white stripes intermingling and then stars. After that I see the sickle and hammer, but the hammer breaks away from the sickle and then all things whirl together. Then I see the crescent and the sun. These too comingle with the rest. And finally a sort of buck or mountain goat comes jumping through the lot. While all this is whirling around together, a circle appears on the left and through this the globe is turning. Now a big pointer appears and I hear the words, ‘The hand of the sun dial is going in the opposite direction!'”

After that, in this apparition of December 26, 1947, Ida saw “something like a cigar or a torpedo flying past me so rapidly that I can scarcely discern it. Its color seems to be of aluminum. All of a sudden I see it burst open.” She added: “Then I see faces before me, swollen faces covered with dreadful ulcers, as if it were a kind of leprosy.”

This was all in the wake, one must recall, of something that had just been witnessed in the world: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Was the breaking apart of the hammer and sickle a reference to the eventual break up of the Soviet Union? Was the goat Satan trotting through the former republics–Latvia, Ukraine, Georgia–and stirring up ethnic animosities? Was a nuclear warhead represented by the “aluminum torpedo”? How much was simply in Ida’s subconscious?

It hardly stopped there. Ida saw Jerusalem surrounded by battles and a “sword hanging over Europe and the East.” She saw multitudes in the East–presumably Asia–and heard “Our Lady” say, “These will rouse… A great disaster will occur; that will startle them. The Baltic is full You do not see this.” She saw the Chinese crossing a line and an insurrection in Manchuria.

Whew!

There were also warnings concerning the southern flanks of Communist Bulgaria and what was then Yugoslavia. “There is a war,” Ida said during the vision. “They are fighting again.” The civil war in Yugoslavia? “The Lady says, ‘Child, there will be a fierce struggle. We have not seen the end of this struggle yet. Economic disasters will come. The empire of England is tottering.'”

While there was the promise that “Japan will be converted,”  Ida saw a heavy cloud over India.

There were also clouds over St. Peter’s Square. She saw the Pope and above him the word ‘VIOLENCE.”

The shooting of John Paul II?

There would be warfare within the Vatican, Mary warned, and in what can only be described as an especially symbolic vision, Ida heard Our Lady say, “Look,” and saw a wolf standing before the Virgin to her left. Then a wolf or dog holding a torch in its mouth stood straight in front of her. Beside it was a lioness, and to the extreme right was a large falcon or eagle.

Who knew what to make of it?

Again, all the above is to put in a comprehensive way what Ida muttered in many non-sequitors.

Certainly, reading the messages bequeathed no peace.

Salubrious, they were not.

Was there however truth in some of it? Or might it be warned that the devil too can correctly see into the future?

The “other spirit,” said Mary, was “infiltrating with dreadful success.” There was a mingling of red and white clouds. The Virgin supposedly told Ida that realism and humanism were becoming the new paganism (who could doubt this?) and that the diabolical attack was no longer directed against nations so much as “the mind of man.” Righteousness and brotherly love were sorely lacking (see our times!); there was the “degeneration of mankind.”

Ida was also shown a glimpse of what Mary described as a “spiritual battle that is being carried on all over the world… much worse than the actual wars now being waged, because it is undermining mankind.” On June 9, 1946, the Dutch seer saw Mary step to one side, and from the other direction, demons approached.

All Christians needed to unite, Mary said during a 1948 apparition, because “the gates are opening.”

The gates were open and a wolf was at the door.

[resources: The Final Hour]