Times of diabolical disorientation...

300 Viennese priests are challenging the Church and sowing the seeds of rebellion.  CNS is reporting that "Michael Pruller, spokesman for Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, said the cardinal plans to meet in late August or September with the Viennese priests who are among the leaders of the 'Initiative of Parish Priests,' which launched a 'Call to Disobedience' in June.

The initiative, which says it has just more than 300 members, suggested saying a public prayer at every Mass for church reform; giving Communion to everyone who approaches the altar in good faith, including divorced Catholics who have remarried without an annulment; allowing women to preach at Mass; and supporting the ordination of women and married men.

In a telephone interview from Vienna July 11, Pruller said that as far as he knew, the Austrian bishops have not discussed a common response to the priests.

'No bishop has threatened disciplinary actions, but at the end of the day if a priest leads his parish away from what the church teaches, action would have to be taken,' Pruller said.

The 'Call to Disobedience' said the priests felt forced to follow their consciences for the good of the church in Austria because the bishops have refused to act.

Cardinal Schonborn issued a statement June 22 and said he waited three days to respond because he did not want to react 'out of the anger and sorrow' the priests’ initiative caused him.

'The open call to disobedience shocked me,' he said.

The cardinal said none of the priests was ordained by force and all of them vowed obedience as they strive to do God’s will." (See here).

How quickly many of those who vowed obedience are succumbing to the Father of Lies.  On September 15, 1993, at Tokyo Japan, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Mother of God told Fr. Stefano Gobbi:


"Today I see you gathered here in this cenacle of prayer and brotherhood, beloved Sons of my Marian Movement of Priests of Japan, and I am consoled by you in my great sorrow.

A cause of my great sorrow is all of these poor children of mine who are still living immersed in the darkness of paganism and who are unaware of the truth of the Gospel. In this great country, almost all are still far from faith in Jesus Christ, who has come into the world to be your only Savior, your only Redeemer.

I am the Mother of all these pagans as well, a Mother who is concerned and anxious for their salvation. I nurture seeds of life and goodness in their hearts. I help them to observe that law which the Lord has engraved in the depths of each man. I stir up in their minds a desire for the truth, and thus lead them gently to the encounter with my Son Jesus. Their full and total adhesion to the Gospel will be an extraordinary work of my Immaculate Heart.

A cause of my great sorrow is my Church which, in every part of the world, is passing through the painful and bloody Gethsemane of its great tribulation. You have seen, my little son, how even here in Japan, the Church is being threatened with the loss of faith, and with the increasingly vast and subtle spread of errors. It is wounded in its unity by the contestation and opposition directed against the Pope and his universal Magisterium. Its holiness is being obscured by the spread of sins and sacrileges.

Thus it is becoming paralyzed and its drive to evangelize has become greatly weakened.

A cause of my great sorrow is the hardness of your hearts and your incapacity to accept what your heavenly Mother is asking of you. How many times have I spoken to you and you have not listened! I have given extraordinary signs of my motherly intervention and you have not believed. How many have closed the door of their own hearts and have not wanted to receive me as a Mother in their lives!

In this very country I have given you an extraordinary sign, causing copious tears to fall more than a hundred times from the eyes of one of my statues, in which I am represented as the Sorrowful Mother beneath the Cross of my Son Jesus. And I have also given you three messages to warn you of the great dangers into which you are running.

I now announce to you that the time of the great trial has come, because during these years all that I have foretold to you will come to pass. The apostasy and the great schism in the Church is on the point of taking place and the great chastisement, about which I foretold you in this place, is now at the very doors. Fire will come down from heaven and a great part of humanity will be destroyed. Those who will survive will envy the dead, because everywhere there will be desolation, death and ruin.

And so, once again I have wanted you here, my little son. For you must tell all that the hour of the chastisement has come and that, in order to be protected and saved, they must all enter right away into the safe refuge of my Immaculate Heart.

Return to your homes, my beloved children, and bring to all this message of mine, as a final call from your heavenly Mother, who is calling you all and gathering you under her mantle, that you may be consoled and defended by her, during the painful trial of these last times of yours."

Our Lady said eighteen years ago that the Apostasy and the great schism in the Church were "on the point of taking place."  And where do we find ourselves today?  Is there anyone now who honestly doubts that the Church is in crisis?  That the forces of darkness have multiplied everywhere?

But we have Our Lord's assurance that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church.  When everything seems lost, it is then that Our Lady will have her greatest triumph as she crushes Satan's head, the seat of his intellect.

The battlefield is primarily in the mind right now.  The Evil One is confusing so many souls who have given up on prayer or who put stock in their own intelligence rather than trusting in the Lord God and His infallible Church.

Pray every day.  Confess your sins.  Live a sacramental life.  Avoid those who will not stand with the Holy Father.  Do not lose hope.  St. Padre Pio told us to pray and not to worry.