Barbarians at the Gates

 

“Lock ’em in and burn it down.”
—protesters at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, against a transgender debate
with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, March 6th, 2018; washingtontimes.com

Barbarians at the gate… It was absolutely surreal… 
The mob neglected to bring torches and pitchforks,
but the sentiment was there: “Lock them in and burn it down”… 
— Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson), Twitter posts, March 6, 2018

When you speak all these words to them,
they will not listen to you either;
when you call to them, they will not answer you…
This is the nation that does not listen
to the voice of the Lord, its God,
or take correction.
Faithfulness has disappeared;
the word itself is banished from their speech.

(Today’s first Mass reading; Jeremiah 7:27-28)

 

THREE years ago, I wrote of a new “sign of the times” emerging (see The Growing Mob).  Like a wave reaching the shore that grows and grows until it becomes a huge tsunami, so too, there is a growing mob mentality toward the Church and freedom of speech. The zeitgeist has shifted; there are a swelling boldness and intolerance sweeping through the courts, flooding the media, and spilling out onto the streets. Yes, the time is right to silence the Church—especially as the sexual sins of priests continue to emerge, and the hierarchy becomes increasingly divided on pastoral issues.

Anti-Church, anti-democracy sentiments have existed for some time now, decades even. But what is new is that they have gained the power of the mob. When they reach this stage, the anger and intolerance begin to move very fast.

What we are witnessing is a Global Revolution that has long been engineered by corrupt men—secret societies—intent on remaking the world in their own image:

No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself …that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view—namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism. —POPE LEO XIII, Humanum Genus, Encyclical on Freemasonry, n.10, Apri 20thl, 1884

You are aware indeed, that the goal of this most iniquitous plot is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism… —POPE PIUS IX, Nostis et Nobiscum, Encyclical, n. 18, DECEMBER 8, 1849

Today, we are watching in “real time” how the youth of this generation, brainwashed by ideologically driven institutions and groomed to embrace hedonism, are leading the charge in raising Socialist politicians to the mainstream. A cursory glance at polls reveals that it is college-aged students who not only support euthanasia, abortion, gender ideology, the redefinition of marriage, etc. but Socialist/Marxist platforms that have already proven disastrous for many nations over the past century (see “Venezuela”).  In 1917, this was precisely what Our Lady of Fatima warned would occur if peoples did not return to the Gospel: that Russia would “spread her errors” to the rest of the world. 

What we are watching unfold is what it looks like when a world no longer believes that God exists. It only makes sense that science and technology would attempt to fill this Great Vacuum. But that is a false hope.  They will fail because man is also a spiritual being in need of spiritual answers. 

It is also why totalitarianists always rise to the occasion at such times—pseudo “fathers” filling the longing in mankind’s heart to be fathered. Indeed, countries exist today where their Communist/Socialist leaders are often called “father” or “dear leader.” In America, they went much further: some made comparisons of Barack Obama to Jesus, Moses, and described the former president as a “messiah” who will capture the youth. In 2013, Newsweek Magazine ran a cover story comparing Obama’s re-election with “The Second Coming.”

All of this is serving as a warning shot across the bow of the world. We are all too ready to worship man instead of God. That is, after all, the ultimate deception awaiting “some” generation. 

The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 675

In Garabandal, Spain, at the height of the Cold War, one of the young seers there unwittingly predicted, not only the collapse of Communism, but its return. And when it returns, she said, God is going to give a “warning” to the world:

“When Communism comes again everything will happen.”

The author responded: “What do you mean by comes again?”

“Yes, when it newly comes again,” she replied.

“Does that mean that Communism will go away before that?”

“I don’t know,” she said in reply, “the Blessed Virgin simply said ‘when Communism comes again’.” —Garabandal – Der Zeigefinger Gottes (Garabandal – The Finger of God), Albrecht Weber, n. 2; excerpt from www.motherofallpeoples.com

 

THE CONDITIONS ARE RIGHT

When religion is banished from the school, from education and from public life, when the representatives of Christianity and its sacred rites are held up to ridicule, are we not really fostering the materialism which is the fertile soil of Communism? —POPE PIUS XI, Divinis Redemptoris, n. 78

At the very heart of this global crisis is an age-old spiritual condition: hardness of heart. Despite the hollow claims of the new atheists, God has not remained invisible. Every nation has felt the impact of Christianity to one degree or another in how it has not only reordered uncivilized societies but influenced science, politics, law, music and art. As well, the miracles of Christ continue to this very day with inexplicable healings, incorrupt saints, apparitions, and other “signs.” And finally, creation itself is like a “fifth gospel”:

Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God, they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened. While claiming to be wise, they became fools… (Rom 1:20-22)

At my recent Lenten missions, I have been sharing with congregations how the so-called “Enlightenment” period, with its sophistries and errant philosophies, cultivated the soil for this present culture of death. While claiming to be wise, we have become fools—and no one has been more fooled than the youth. They are a generation who has become the fertile soil for a new Communism—an emerging globalized system devoid of democracy and moral absolutes. 

Thus the Communist ideal wins over many of the better minded members of the community. These in turn become the apostles of the movement among the younger intelligentsia who are still too immature to recognize the intrinsic errors of the system. —POPE PIUS XI, Divinis Redemptoris, n. 78, 15 78

I would argue that the soil is fertile for an antichrist. History has proven over and over again that, wherever the Church marginalized or forced out in a society, ambitious dictators take her place. Indeed, seeing how atheism was taking root in nations, Pope St. Pius X wondered in 1903…

…that there may be already in the world the “Son of Perdition” of whom the Apostle speaks. —POPE ST. PIUS X, E Supremi, Encyclical On the Restoration of All Things in Christ, n. 3, 5; October 4th, 1903

Pope St. John Paul was no less blunt when, as a Cardinal in 1976, he stated that we are facing “the final confrontation between the Church and the antichurch… Christ and the antichrist.”^[1]Cardinal Karol Wojtyla (JOHN PAUL II ), at the Eucharistic Congress, Philadelphia, PA; August 13, 1976; Deacon Keith Fournier, an attendee at the Congress, reported the words as above; cf. Catholic Online Pope Benedict also warned that a new “global force” was rising that “without the guidance of charity in truth… could cause unprecedented damage and create new divisions within the human family.” ^[2]Caritas in Veritate, n. 33 And Pope Francis surprised many when he referred to the author of a “favourite” novel on the Antichrist, Lord of the World. The book, he said, is “almost as though it were a prophecy, as though he envisioned what would happen.”^[3]POPE FRANCIS, Homily, November 18th, 2013, catholicculture.org Namely, because we are seeing it unfold at this very hour:

Friendliness took the place of charity, contentment the place of hope, and knowledge the place of faith. —Lord of the World, Robert Hugh Benson, 1907, p. 120

 

THE CHURCH PREPARES HER OWN PASSION

However, any discussion of the hard-heartedness or deafness of this generation would be grossly incomplete without noting that the same crises lie within the Church. I cannot say it any better than what Blessed Cardinal Newman foresaw:

Satan may adopt the more alarming weapons of deceit—he may hide himself—he may attempt to seduce us in little things, and so to move the Church, not all at once, but by little and little from her true position. I do believe he has done much in this way in the course of the last few centuries… It is his policy to split us up and divide us, to dislodge us gradually from our rock of strength. And if there is to be a persecution, perhaps it will be then; then, perhaps, when we are all of us in all parts of Christendom so divided, and so reduced, so full of schism, so close upon heresy. When we have cast ourselves upon the world and depend for protection upon it, and have given up our independence and our strength, then [Antichrist] will burst upon us in fury as far as God allows him. Then suddenly the Roman Empire may break up, and Antichrist appear as a persecutor, and the barbarous nations around break in. —Blessed John Henry Newman, Sermon IV: The Persecution of Antichrist 

Ay, the barbarians are already here. 

And we Christians have no one to blame but ourselves for our cowardice, lukewarmness, and apathy… for our hardness of heart. Lulled to sleep by wealth and an overabundance of goods, the developed nations now face a real possibility of extinction, insofar as the identities that they have clung to are vanishing. 

The threat of judgment also concerns us, the Church in Europe, Europe and the West in general… the Lord is also crying out to our ears… “If you do not repent I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” Light can also be taken away from us and we do well to let this warning ring out with its full seriousness in our hearts, while crying to the Lord: “Help us to repent!” —Pope Benedict XVI, Opening Homily, Synod of Bishops, October 2nd, 2005, Rome.

Today, the apostasy is in full-bloom as bishops—entire conferences of bishops—are proposing a sort of anti-mercy contrary to the Gospels. On the other side, many so-called “conservatives” in the Church have also fallen asleep, safely hidden beneath blankets of apologetics and tidy laws—having forgotten that the Church exists in order to evangelize, not simply exist. Many of these, too, infected by the spirit of rationalism, have become tone deaf, unable to hear the Lord speaking through His prophets, most especially the Mother of God, who has been appearing throughout the world, for good reason. 

I have sent you untiringly all my servants the prophets. Yet they have not obeyed me nor paid heed; they have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers. (Jeremiah 7:25-26)

…the disciples’ sleepiness is not problem of that one moment, rather of the whole of history, ‘the sleepiness’ is ours, of those of us who do not want to see the full force of evil and do not want to enter into his Passion.” —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Catholic News Agency, Vatican City, Apr 20, 2011, General Audience

…the need for a passion of the Church. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, to journalists on flight to Portugal, May 11th, 2010

 

BE FAITHFUL

Brothers and sisters, I go back to one of the very first words that launched this writing apostolate: Prepare!  It is a word to us to come out of Babylon; to reject the spirit of the world; to renounce love of the world; to seek first the Kingdom of God; and to remain in a state of grace. But prepare for what? For a Great Storm that has already begun to pass over the world. 

Where are we now in an eschatological sense? It is arguable that we are in the midst of the rebellion [apostasy] and that in fact a strong delusion has come upon many, many people. It is this delusion and rebellion that foreshadows what will happen next: “and the man of lawlessness will be revealed.” —Msgr. Charles Pope, “Are These the Outer Bands of a Coming Judgment?”, November 11th, 2014; blog

The Great Antidote to this apostasy is simply to “be faithful.” It is to remain at The Center of Truth. ^[4]see
also Returning to the Center And it is to become a person of prayer, daily prayer, so that firmly grafted onto the Vine, who is Christ, you will know His voice, and follow Him—not the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

We must take this seriously, for the barbarians are already at the gates. 

 

 

Bless you and thank you!

 

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