"Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs.."

“The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism. ...Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.”- Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90)

Protect the Pope is reporting that, "In his address to the plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Pope Benedict has warned that the Faith is in danger of being snuffed out in vast areas of the world due to a loss of the religious sense:


‘As we know, in vast areas of the world the Faith is in danger of being snuffed out like a flame that no longer has any sustenance. We are at a profound crisis of faith,at a loss of a religious sense that constitutes the greatest challenge for the Church of today.

The renewal of the faith must therefore be the priority in the undertaking of the whole Church in our times. I hope that the Year of Faith can contribute,with the cordial collaboration of all the members of the People of God, to bring God back anew to this world and to open to men an access to the faith,to a reliance on the God who loved us to the end (cf John 13,1), in Christ Jesus,crucified and risen.’

The Year of Faith is an ’opportune moment to point out to all the gift of faith in the Risen Christ,the clear teaching of the Second Vatican Council and the invaluable doctrinal synthesis offered by the Catechism of the Catholic Church’."  See here.

Everywhere we look today, signs of persecution against the Church are emerging. Our Lady told Father Gobbi of the Marian Movement of Priests that, "My Adversary will one day think that he is celebrating a complete victory: over the world, over the Church, over souls. It will be only then that I will intervene - terrible and victorious - that his defeat may be all the greater when he is certain in his conviction that he has conquered once for all...You, my sons, have been called to live through these events. It is now the time for you to know this, that you may be consciously prepared for the battle. This is now the time for me to begin disclosing part of my plan. First of all, it is necessary that my Enemy have the impression of having conquered everything, of having everything now in his hands. This is why he will be permitted to penetrate even into the interior of my Church, and he will succeed in plunging the sanctuary of God into darkness. He will reap the greatest number of victims from among the ministers of the sanctuary. This will in fact be a time of great falls on the part of my beloved sons, my priests. Satan will seduce some of them by pride, others by love of the flesh, others by doubts, others by unbelief, and still others by discouragement and loneliness.." (October 18, 1975).


Our Lady, speaking to Barbara Reuss on April 25, 1946 at Marienfried, said that, "There are dark incomprehensible events. In the place where the greatest confidence is found and where the people are taught I can do everything, I will make preparations for peace. I am the sign of the living God. I place my sign on the foreheads of my children. The star (Lucifer) will persecute the sign. But my sign will conquer the star."

While Our Lady is placing her sign on the foreheads of her children [those who are consecrated to her and who live out a true devotion to her], the Devil is also placing his mark on the foreheads of his children. Our Lady explained to Father Gobbi that, "These are the times when the followers of him who opposes himself to Christ are being signed with his mark on the forehead and on the hand. The mark on the forehead and on the hand is an expression of a total dependency on the part of those who are designated by this sign. The sign indicates him who is an enemy of Christ, that is to say, the sign of the Antichrist. And this mark, which is stamped, signifies the complete belonging of the person thus marked to the army of him who is opposed to Christ and who fights against his divine and royal dominion. The mark is imprinted on the forehead and on the hand. The forehead indicates the intellect, because the mind is the seat of the human reason. The hand expresses human activity, because it is with his hands that man acts and works. Nevertheless, it is the person who is marked by the mark of the Antichrist in his intellect and in his will. He who allows himself to be signed with the mark on his forehead is led to accept the doctrine of the denial of God, of the rejection of his Law, and of atheism which, in these times, is more and more diffused and advertised. And thus he is driven to follow the ideologies in mode today and to make of himself a propagator of all the errors..."

I'm not a pessimist.  I will respond - as I have been for many years - to the Holy Father's call for working to renew the faith.  But all of us have to understand, as the prophetic Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski once said, "Certain events are willed by the Lord of history, and they shall take place."

Related reading here.

Recommended reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675.