With dozens of new subscribers coming on board now each week, old questions are popping up such as this one: Why aren’t the Pope’s speaking about the end times? The answer will surprise many, reassure others, and challenge many more. First published September 21st, 2010, I have updated this writing to the present pontificate.
SINCE Pope Benedict XVI renounced his office, I have received several emails asking about papal prophecies, from St. Malachi to contemporary private revelation. Most notable are modern prophecies that are completely opposed to one another. One “seer” claims that Benedict XVI will be the last true pope and that any future popes will not be from God, while another speaks of a chosen soul prepared to lead the Church through tribulations. I can tell you now that at least one of the above “prophecies” directly contradicts Sacred Scripture and Tradition.
Given the rampant speculation and real confusion spreading throughout many quarters, it is good to revisit this writing on what Jesus and His Church have consistently taught and understood for 2000 years. Let me just add this brief prologue: if I were the devil—at this moment in the Church and the world—I would do my best to discredit the priesthood, undermine the Holy Father’s authority, sow doubt in the Magisterium, and attempt to make the faithful believe that they can only rely now upon their own inner instincts and private revelation.
That, simply, is a recipe for deception.
As I asked Our Blessed Mother to guide my writing this morning, immediately this meditation from March 25th, 2009 came to mind:
HAVING traveled and preached in over 40 American states and nearly all of Canada’s provinces, I have been afforded a wide-ranging glimpse of the Church on this continent. I have met many wonderful lay people, deeply committed priests, and devoted and reverent religious. But they have become so few in number that I am beginning to hear the words of Jesus in a new and startling way:
When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?(Luke 18:8)
It is said that if you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump out. But if you slowly heat the water, it will remain in the pot and boil to death. The Church in many parts of the world is beginning to reach the boiling point. If you want to know how hot the water is, watch the attack upon Peter.
Peter Martyr Enjoins Silence, Fra Angelico
EVERYONE’S talking about it. Hollywood, secular newspapers, news anchors, evangelical Christians… everyone, it seems, but the bulk of the Catholic Church. As more and more people are attempting to grapple with the extreme events of our time —from bizarre weather patterns, to animals dying en masse, to frequent terrorist attacks—the times we are living in have become, from a pew-persepective, the proverbial “elephant in the living room.” Most everyone senses to one degree or another that we are living in an extraordinary moment. It’s jumping out of the headlines every day. Yet the pulpits in our Catholic parishes are often silent…
Thus, the confused Catholic is often left to Hollywood’s hopeless end-of-world scenarios that leave the planet either without a future, or a future salvaged by aliens. Or is left with the atheistic rationalizations of the secular media. Or the heretical interpretations of some Christian sects (just cross-your-fingers-and-hang-on-until-the-rapture). Or the ongoing stream of “prophecies” from Nostradamus, new age occultists, or hieroglyphic rocks.