THE past several months have been a time for me of listening, waiting, of interior and exterior battle. I have questioned my calling, my direction, my purpose. Only in the stillness before the Blessed Sacrament did the Lord finally answer my appeals: He is not done with me yet.
The Time of Warning
On the one hand, I can identify with much of Glenn Beck’s recent powerful speech and the burning need to give people hope.
All around us, we see a generation that has been traumatized by the psychological warfare that has been waged upon it, especially the past three years through lies that are daily being exposed.
People need hope. They need assurance. But not a false hope that we can simply sit back and wait until God fixes it all. Our authentic hope is not that the Lord is going to take away the Storm but that He will be right beside us as we pass through it.
In a message to American seer Jennifer, Our Lord says that this is now a time of…
…great urgency, for the world has entered into the time of warning. I do not speak of the time of My visitation, rather this is a time of warning that will usher in the period when all of humanity will be brought to its knees to see their souls as I see them. My child, those who fail to recognize this time — when evil is seeking to elevate itself, yet is being simultaneously pierced by the light of truth — will find themselves like the foolish virgins. I tell My children with great urgency that it is time to repent. It is time to recognize the hour you are living in. —July 5, 2023; countdowntothekingdom.com
As a watchman, I too have questioned whether there is any further need for this role, especially as the subjects that I have addressed for decades — and was considered a lunatic for raising — are now in mainstream Catholic media. But every time I think I know what “time it is,” the Lord says, “I’m not done yet…” So, I have gathered my wits once more, to remain at this post for as long as He wants, especially as His Church as we know it disintegrates…
THE FALSE CHURCH
Disillusionment. Discouragement. Those are real temptations in the midst of the present corruption and rapid social decay as the voice of the Magisterium is almost non-existent. Where are the shepherds to lead and guard their flocks from the rapacious wolves? Where is the calm and clear proclamation of truth to pierce the clouds of confusion? Why is the Church virtually silent as our youth are being overrun by a veritable tsunami of sexual perversion, experimentation, and ideology? And why are “vaccines” and “global warming” suddenly more critical to the hierarchy than the eternal destination of the tens of thousands of souls who pass from this world each day?
It’s painful to say, but a great portion of our clergy have all but fled “the garden” like the Apostles of old.
What can we say when a future Cardinal and head of World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon declares:
We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all. We want it to be normal for a young Catholic Christian to say and bear witness to who he is or for a young Muslim, Jew, or of another religion to also have no problem saying who he is and bearing witness to it, and for a young person who has no religion to feel welcome and to perhaps not feel strange for thinking in a different way. —Bishop Américo Aguiar, July 10, 2023; The Catholic Telegraph
From where I stand as an educated Catholic, this is not accompaniment but compromise; not evangelism but indifferentism; not sound philosophy but sophistry. It is a near-complete abandonment of the Great Commission. Contrast Aguiar’s words to those of St. Paul VI:
The Church respects and esteems these non Christian religions because they are the living expression of the soul of vast groups of people. They carry within them the echo of thousands of years of searching for God, a quest which is incomplete but often made with great sincerity and righteousness of heart. They possess an impressive
patrimony of deeply religious texts. They have taught generations of people how to pray. They are all impregnated with innumerable “seeds of the Word” and can constitute a true “preparation for the Gospel,”… [But] neither respect and esteem for these religions nor the complexity of the questions raised is an invitation to the Church to withhold from these non-Christians the proclamation of Jesus Christ. On the contrary the Church holds that these multitudes have the right to know the riches of the mystery of Christ—riches in which we believe that the whole of humanity can find, in unsuspected fullness, everything that it is gropingly searching for concerning God, man and his destiny, life and death, and truth. —POPE ST. PAUL VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 53; vatican.va
And then there is the appointment of the very controversial Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández to the highest doctrinal office in the Church: Prefect for the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith. As recent as July 5, 2023, he continued to posit the possibility of “blessing” homosexual relationships — something that very same office not long ago clearly condemned:
Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons […and] avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. —Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons; n. 5; June 3, 2003
Fernández also said in an interview that although the Church’s doctrine cannot be altered, “our
understanding” of doctrine can change, “and that in fact it has changed and will continue to change.”[1]National Catholic Register, July 6, 2023 Contrast that to Pope St. Pius X:
I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. —September 1st, 1910; papalencyclicals.net
“Many have expressed their concerns to me,” said Cardinal Raymond Burke some time ago, that “at this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder… They are feeling a bit seasick because they feel the Church’s ship has lost its way.” [2]Religious News Service, October 31, 2014 Heaven appears to agree. In a recent appeal through Italian seer, Angela, Our Lady said:
Tonight I am again here to ask you for prayer — prayer for my beloved Church, prayer for this world, increasingly gripped and enveloped by the forces of evil… pray that the true Magisterium of the Church would not be lost. —July 8, 2023; countdowntothekingdom.com
The Church will never be lost. But the truth can be eclipsed, just as the Son of God, who declared “I am the truth”, was crucified.
What strikes me, when I think of the Catholic world, is that within Catholicism, there seems sometimes to pre-dominate a non-Catholic way of thinking, and it can happen that tomorrow this non-Catholic thought within Catholicism, will tomorrow become the stronger. But it will never represent the thought of the Church. It is necessary that a small flock subsist, no matter how small it might be. —POPE PAUL VI, The Secret Paul VI, Jean Guitton, p. 152-153, Reference (7), p. ix.
And yet, Our Lady reminds us regarding our clergy:
…pray and do not fall into the subtle temptations of judgment and condemnation. Judgment is not up to you but to God. —July 8, 2023; countdowntothekingdom.com
The Last Standing
But neither should we be cowards and silent when our shepherds cause public scandal. We have a duty, as baptized disciples, to proclaim and defend the truth. All of us. All of us!
At this point, dear brothers and sisters, the few of you who are still faithful to Sacred Tradition, still listening to Our Mother, still courageously defending the truth, are the last standing. You are, in large part, the laity, led by a handful of courageous and faithful priests who are now but a remnant. But it was the bishops and the pope himself who prophesied this very hour…
With the Council, the hour of the laity truly struck, and many lay faithful, men and women, more clearly understood their Christian vocation, which by its very nature is a vocation to the apostolate… —POPE SAINTJOHN PAUL II, Jubilee of the Apostolate of the Laity, n. 3; cf. Lumen gentium, n. 31
Our era could in some ways be called the era of the laity. Therefore be open to lay people’s contribution. —POPE SAINT JOHN PAUL II, To the Oblates of St. Joseph, February 17th, 2000
Following Christ demands the courage of radical choices, which often means going against the stream. “We are Christ!”, St Augustine exclaimed. The martyrs and witnesses of faith yesterday and today, including many lay faithful, show that, if necessary, we must not hesitate to give even our lives for Jesus Christ. —POPE SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Jubilee of the Apostolate of the Laity, n. 4
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Footnotes
| ↑1 | National Catholic Register, July 6, 2023 |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Religious News Service, October 31, 2014 |