This Great Scattering

 

Woe to the shepherds of Israel
who have been pasturing themselves!
Should not shepherds pasture the flock?
(Ezekiel 34:5-6)

 

IT’S clear the Church has entered a period of great confusion and division — exactly what Our Lady predicted at Akita when she said:

The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. —to the late Sr. Agnes Sasagawa of Akita, Japan, October 13th, 1973

It follows that if the shepherds are in disarray, so too, will be the sheep. Spend an hour or two on social media and you’ll find Catholics openly and bitterly divided in unexpected ways.

When I began this apostolate nearly 20 years ago, the dividing lines were somewhat straightforward. There were the so-called “progressives” or “modernists” who wanted to see the Church liberalized and who frequently dissented from papal authority; and then there were the so-called “conservatives” or “traditionalists” who upheld Church teaching and readily united around the pope as “the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.”^[1]Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 882 Radical traditionalists or “rad trads” were a relatively small number.

But with the advent of the pontificate of Francis, the clear teaching of the 2000-year-old Church has been cast into shadows. The once-calm waters on which the Barque of Peter sailed have become tumultuous as rocks and shoals threaten her safety as the winds of the Great Storm assail her unity. Suddenly, Rome has become obsessed with mass vaccination, climate change, elements of wokism, and furthering the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Once stalwart outposts of orthodoxy, such as the Pontifical Academy for Life, have been gutted and liberalized; known adversaries to the Gospel have been frequently invited to the Vatican while questionable appointees have taken high-ranking positions. It led Dr. Ralph Martin to warn earlier this year: “It is now unmistakably clear where we are being led.”^[2]cf. countdowntothekingdom.com/unmistakably-clear-where-we-are-being-led

Perhaps no Roman document has produced more division than Fiducia supplicans (FS) that authorized the blessing of “couples” in irregular unions as couples. This led to bishops’ conferences, including the entire continent of Africa to issue a “fraternal correction” that the Vatican’s doctrinal overseer, Cardinal Victor Fernandez who wrote the document, was grossly off course. For once, the mainstream media headlines weren’t twisting the truth: “Pope Francis approves allowing Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples” (ABC News) and: “Vatican approves blessings for same-sex couples in landmark ruling.”(Reuters). 

This has only led to further fissures in the Body of Christ. Self-proclaimed “popesplainers” have taken to social media to condemn anyone who questions the wording of FS as “dissenters” and “schismatics”; rad-trads have used the confusion to declare that Pope Francis is a “demonic freemason” who cannot be trusted; a handful of priests and bishops have publicly declared that Francis is not a valid pope throwing the legitimacy of his election into question; conservative news outlets are outright flirting with sedevacantism ^[3]see LifeSiteNews article here… and so on. Caught in the crossfire are Catholics who remain loyal to the papacy, but reject the extremist positions emerging that either whitewash the valid problems coming out of Rome, or that enter de facto into schism. All the while there is a conspicuous silence among the majority of the hierarchy…

God will permit a great evil against the Church: heretics and tyrants will come suddenly and unexpectedly; they will break into the Church while bishops, prelates, and priests are asleep. —Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser (1613-1658 A.D.); Antichrist and the End Times, St. Andrew’s Productions, P. 31

 

Striking the Shepherds

According to St. Gaudentius of Brescia,

It was the Lord’s will that… we who have been redeemed by His precious blood should constantly be sanctified according to the pattern of His own passion. —Liturgy of the Hours, Vol II, P. 669

That being the case, it seems we are living through Gethsemane:

Jesus said to them, “This night all of you will have your faith in me shaken, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed.’” (Matt 26:31)

In Ezekiel’s warning to shepherds, the scattering of the flock is the result of sloth, negligence, and self-serving:

You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured. You did not bring back the stray or seek the lost but ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and became food for all the wild beasts. They were scattered and wandered over all the mountains and high hills; over the entire surface of the earth My sheep were scattered. No one looked after them or searched for them. (Ezekiel 34:4-6)

In fact, Ezekiel may even have alluded to the global rise of Communism and a veritable robbery of collective wealth with little to no resistance from the shepherds:

…My sheep became plunder, because My sheep became food for wild beasts… (vs. 8)

Church Father Lactantius prophesied of the general confusion and chaos of those times:

That will be the time in which righteousness shall be cast out, and innocence be hated; in which the wicked shall prey upon the good as enemies; neither law, nor order, nor military discipline shall be preserved… all things shall be confounded and mixed together against right, and against the laws of nature. Thus the earth shall be laid waste, as though by one common robbery. When these things shall so happen, then the righteous and the followers of truth shall separate themselves from the wicked, and flee into solitudes. —Lactantius, Church Father, The Divine Institutes, Book VII, Ch. 17

Here, Lactantius introduces the concept of refuges (solitudes) where the sheep, left to the wolves, will find some sort of divine protection.^[4]cf. The Refuge For Our Times This becomes all the more relevant as we see the Vatican vigorously backing experimental vaccination that has already injured and killed countless people (see The Tolls), and a “climate change” agenda that is essentially “communism with a green hat.” As the prophet Ezekiel goes on to say:

Look! I am coming against these shepherds. I will take my sheep out of their hand and put a stop to their shepherding My flock, so that these shepherds will no longer pasture them. I will deliver My flock from their mouths so it will not become their food… As a shepherd examines his flock while he himself is among his scattered sheep, so will I examine My sheep. I will deliver them from every place where they were scattered on the day of dark clouds… I Myself will pasture my sheep; I Myself will give them rest… The lost I will search out, the strays I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, and the sick I will heal; but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd them in judgment. (vs. 11-16)

Those are beautiful words I frequently call to mind — the promise that Jesus Himself will shepherd us in these times — but still with and in His Church. At the same time, the narrow road has become narrower in our times as a Great Shaking continues to sift the Bride of Christ. As Our Lady said recently to Pedro Regis:

Behold, difficult times have come for men and women of faith, but do not retreat. You are not alone… You are headed towards a future of great spiritual battle in the House of God. Pay attention. Listen to me and you will be victorious. Onward in defense of the truth! —August 20, 2024

If Christ allows us to be scattered, to be divided, to be tested and tried, it is only to bring the lost home, to bind up the injured, and to heal the sick. Indeed, I believe we are heading into a healing season amidst the trials and Passion of the Church…

 

Related Reading

The Great Scattering

The Great Fissure

The Shaking of the Church

 

Support Mark’s full-time ministry:

 

with Nihil Obstat

 

To journey with Mark in The Now Word,
click on the banner below to subscribe.
Your email will not be shared with anyone.

Now on Telegram. Click:

Follow Mark and the daily “signs of the times” on MeWe:

Follow Mark’s writings here:

Listen on the following: