Torrents of iniquity

Our own time is a fulfillment of the prophecy issued by St. Louis de Montfort in his Prayer for Missionaries: "Tempus faciendi, Domine, dissipaverunt legem tuam: it is time to act, O Lord, they have rejected your law. It is indeed time to fulfill your promise. Your divine commandments are broken, your Gospel is thrown aside, torrents of iniquity flood the whole earth carrying away even your servants. The whole land is desolate, ungodliness reigns supreme, your sanctuary is desecrated and the abomination of desolation has even contaminated the holy place.." (PM, 5)

See here.

Rousas Rushdoony exposes the nature of the demonic Moloch State which so many now willingly serve:

"The Moloch state simply represents the supreme effort of man to command the future, to predestine the world, and to be as God.  Lesser efforts, divination, spirit-questing, magic and witchcraft are equally anathema to God.  All represent efforts to have the future on other than God's terms, to have a future apart from and in defiance of God.  They are assertions that the world is not of God but of brute factuality, and that men can somehow master the world and the future by going directly to the raw materials thereof."

The Devil seduces men through the deceitful tactics of pseudo-saviors.  And ours is a perverse age in which many pseudo-saviors pretend to offer liberation through sex without love, violence and drug abuse as well as the occult.  As Fr. Miceli, S.J., warned: "In the name of its new secular gods, Progress and Liberty, titles that are false fronts for Rebellion and Licentiousness, many formerly Christian nations are driving their sons and daughters through the demonic fires of sacrificial murder.  Thus..so-called Christian nations, having legalized abortion and while preparing to to legalize euthanasia, have become Moloch states."

Because President Donald Trump opposes the pedophile maggot culture, the hatred against him is intensifying

As reported here, "Donald Trump has vowed to tackle the child abduction crisis in the United States by giving pedophiles a fast trial resulting in the death penalty. In October of 2012, Donald Trump tweeted that there are 'too many incidents' and something 'must be done about these perverts.'"

This is yet another reason why the "cultural elites" who represent our maggot culture want to destroy Trump at any cost.  They secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, are in favor of pedophilia.

It should come as no surprise that The New York Times published a 1,225-word obituary entitled "Harry Hay, Early Proponent of Gay Rights, Dies at 90."  For, as Dudley Clendinen wrote in this long eulogy, Hay was the founder of the Mattachine Society which, "proved to be the catalyst for the American gay rights movement." (Dudley Clendinen, "Harry Hay, Early Proponent of Gay Rights, Dies at 90," The New York Times, October 25, 2002).

Harry Hay, who deserted the Catholic Church after having homosexual relations at the age of 14 (with a sailor ten years his senior), was himself a proponent of man-boy sex and gave a speech at an October 7, 1984 conference of NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) in San Francisco.

Harry Hay spoke frequently at NAMBLA events and periodically came to the defense of the organization when other homosexual groups attempted to prevent it from partipating in "Gay Pride" parades.

So, one of the founders - some would say the founder - of the American "gay rights" movement, was a proponent of sexual relations between men and boys. Why doesn't this trouble those in the mainstream media?  Because the mainstream media has bought fully into the radical homosexual agenda and is incapable of any objectivity whatsoever with regard to the subject of homosexuality.

Within the Church, homosexuals and pedophiles are now in control and are most anxious to have young boys served up to satisfy their filthy desires. See here.

A Cardinal who preyed upon boys has finally been removed.  The question remains: What did the Vatican know and when?  See here.

Pray for President Trump.  He is a man who hasn't bought into the Culture of Pederasty.  And, because of this, those who have embraced the filth hate him. Even to the point of suggesting that his son should be served up to pedophiles. See here.

Texas shooter Devin Patrick Kelley: Avowed atheist and Dishonorably-Discharged veteran

The Daily Beast is reporting that Devin Patrick Kelley, the Texas shooter who killed at least 26 people who were at worship, was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force and was an avowed atheist.

This comes as no surprise.  The atheist is crippled by an intellectual insecurity. He must strive continually to convince others - and even himself - that God does not exist. But he is always haunted by the fear that he has not really banished the presence or power of the Divine Other. This canker of insecurity, which gnaws at his heart unceasingly, manifests itself in the incessant need to propagandize against belief in God.

For example Richard Dawkins, an atheist who authored "The God Delusion," devotes much if not most of his time attempting to convince others that belief in God is even dangerous This charge is most ironic since, as Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., reminds us, "When man becomes his own absolute center, then God becomes his hell, because God sets limits to man's greatness. But once having attained autoerotic sovereignty, a monstrous metamorphosis takes place in atheist man. He begins to feed on his fellow men, for they now are his hell, threatening to rob him of his freedom. When God is rejected because he is seen as man's hell, then man, whom God loves, suffers the same fate and for the same reason. There is a frightening resemblance between the atheist humanist as a cell of society and a malignantly cancerous cell in the human body. Both cells have thrown off any service of subordination to the health of the communities in which they thrive. They act and grow according to their own uncontrolled ravenous appetites feeding parasitically on the whole organism. As runaway cells they invade and destroy every healthy cell in the body until they extinguish life and speed to completion the total disintegration of the unity of the body. Atheistic humanism is a psychic cancer. It shares two major characteristics with physical cancer. Both these human cancers arise from the arbitrary rebellion of a subordinate cell against the established social harmony of the whole. Secondly, both these cancerous rebellions are metastatic and messianic in their aggression to the death against organism and community." (The Gods of Atheism, pp. 463-464).

Gilbert Keith Chesterton reminded us that when man denies God he does not believe in nothing. Rather he will believe in anything. Moreover, he will not do nothing but as a fanatic he will do anything:

"There are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization if they may ruin also this old fantastic tale. This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the sword that cuts their own fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes...He [the atheist fanatic who is crippled by his own insecurity] sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all." (Orthodoxy, pp. 238-239).

Atheistic fanatics have a long history of unmatched violence. Today, fanatical rhetoric from atheist fanatics has resulted in actual violence against the Church as well as calls for such violence.

God is not the delusion. The myth of the atheistic humanist who truly values reason is the real delusion.

Archbishop Fulton John Sheen and the Double Cross...

On April 6, 1941, Bishop Fulton John Sheen gave a sermon on his radio show "The Catholic Hour" in which he reminded listeners that, "The basic spirit of the modern world for the last century has been a determination to escape the Cross." He told his audience as well that, "There is no such thing as living without a cross. We are free only to choose between crosses." And then he asked them: "Will it be the Cross of Christ which redeems us from our sins, or will it be the double cross, the swastika, the hammer and sickle, the fasces"?Bishop Sheen believed, as I do, that America is at a crossroads. In his own words, "We in America are now faced with the threat of that double cross...Our choice is not: Will we or will we not have more discipline, more respect for law, more order, more sacrifice; but, where will we get it? Will we get it from without, or from within, Will it be inspired by Sparta or Calvary? By Valhalla or Gethsemane? By militarism or religion? By the double cross or the Cross? By Caesar or by God? That is the choice facing America today.

The hour of false freedom is past. No longer can we have education without discipline, family life without sacrifice, individual existence without moral responsibility, economics and politics without subservience to the common good. We are now only free to say whence it shall come. We will have a sword. Shall it be only the sword that thrusts outward to cut off the ears of our enemies, or the sword that pierces inward to cut out our own selfish pride"?Thus far, America has chosen the double cross. Fleeing from the Cross of Christ and the supernatural kingdom established by the Son of God; one of sacrifice and sanctity, America has chosen to pursue a terrestrial kingdom of pleasure and power founded upon a distorted idea of what constitutes liberty or freedom. But this city of man, which has certainly achieved astounding advancements in various spheres while increasing the affluence of some, has also contributed to a climate where men are regarded as mere machines whose only value is to be found in what they produce or consume. This in turn destroys the individual’s sense of personal dignity and responsibility.Americans, in their tragic desire to flee from the Cross of Christ, have rushed to embrace this distorted notion of "freedom" and have forgotten that, as created beings, they only possess contingent rights. That is to say, rights which are accorded by Almighty God. Consequently, in their zeal to promote the fallacious idea that the basis of public morality should be whatever the majority of citizens are prepared to accept, they have also forgotten that man does not possess, and never will possess, the right to perform or engage in any act which is displeasing to God.

And where has this flight from the Cross of Christ led us up to this point? Was Bishop Sheen being an alarmist? In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, taken from his Commencement Address at Harvard University entitled "A World Split Apart": "Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. This is considered to be part of freedom, and theoretically counterbalanced by the young peoples’ right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil."

Getting back to Bishop Sheen. What did he mean when he said that, "Our choice is not: Will we or will we not have more discipline, more respect for law, more order, more sacrifice; but, where will we get it"? I believe Pope Benedict XVI was providing us with a hint toward an answer when he spoke of the "dictatorship of relativism." Americans who have gleefully embraced the tenets of liberalism have not learned the lesson the concentration camp and the gulag. These unfortunate souls refuse to acknowledge that atheistic ideology (and make no mistake, the current idea of "freedom" which has taken root in America is itself rooted in atheistic ideology) always, and without exception, gives birth to sheer violence. This is the lesson of atheistic humanism. A lesson which the majority of Americans would rather not think about.

Who would deny that Bishop Sheen’s warning, issued some 76 years ago, was highly prophetic? America, and the West in general, is at a crossroads. We have before us two crosses: The Cross of Christ and the double cross (which may also be referred to today as the "dictatorship of relativism"). Which will we choose in the end? Will we continue on our present course or change direction and finally come to embrace the Cross of Christ? Will we embrace Christ and His kingdom of sacrifice and sanctity or continue to rush headlong into the idolatry of unbridled hedonism while declaring ourselves, albeit tacitly, to be God?

If we continue to choose the latter, then we should remember the words of Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., "When man becomes God, history testifies that then millions of men become imprisoned slaves, terrified automatons and murdered corpses. Society, in the words of Gabriel Marcel, becomes a ‘termite colony.’" (The Gods of Atheism, p. 463).

Francis to journalists: Belief in God isn't necessary, only honesty

Francis just told journalists:

"The question here isn't to believe in God or not.  The question is to be or not to be honest with oneself and with others. This is the journalist's job -we might say his mission too-: to get as close as possible to the truth and never to say or write anything that one knows, in his conscience, to be false.”

This isn't the teaching of Vatican II's Inter Mirifica:

3. The Catholic Church, since it was founded by Christ our Lord to bear salvation to all men and thus is obliged to preach the Gospel, considers it one of its duties to announce the Good News of salvation also with the help of the media of social communication and to instruct men in their proper use.

It is, therefore, an inherent right of the Church to have at its disposal and to employ any of these media insofar as they are necessary or useful for the instruction of Christians and all its efforts for the welfare of souls. It is the duty of Pastors to instruct and guide the faithful so that they, with the help of these same media, may further the salvation and perfection of themselves and of the entire human family. In addition, the laity especially must strive to instill a human and Christian spirit into these media, so that they may fully measure up to the great expectations of mankind and to God's design.

4. For the proper use of these media it is most necessary that all who employ them be acquainted with the norms of morality and conscientiously put them into practice in this area. They must look, then, to the nature of what is communicated, given the special character of each of these media. At the same time they must take into consideration the entire situation or circumstances, namely, the persons, place, time and other conditions under which communication takes place and which can affect or totally change its propriety. Among these circumstances to be considered is the precise manner in which a given medium achieves its effect. For its influence can be so great that men, especially if they are unprepared, can scarcely become aware of it, govern its impact, or, if necessary, reject it.

5. It is, however, especially necessary that all parties concerned should adopt for themselves a proper moral outlook on the use of these media, especially with respect to certain questions that have been vigorously aired in our day.

The first question has to do with "information," as it is called, or the search for and reporting of the news. Now clearly this has become most useful and very often necessary for the progress of contemporary society and for achieving closer links among men. The prompt publication of affairs and events provides every individual with a fuller, continuing acquaintance with them, and thus all can contribute more effectively to the common good and more readily promote and advance the welfare of the entire civil society. Therefore, in society men have a right to information, in accord with the circumstances in each case, about matters concerning individuals or the community. The proper exercise of this right demands, however, that the news itself that is communicated should always be true and complete, within the bounds of justice and charity. In addition, the manner in which the news is communicated should be proper and decent. This means that in both the search for news and in reporting it, there must be full respect for the laws of morality and for the legitimate rights and dignity of the individual. For not all knowledge is helpful, but "it is charity that edifies."(1)

6. The second question deals with the relationship between the rights, as they are called, of art and the norms of morality. Since the mounting controversies in this area frequently take their rise from false teachings about ethics and aesthetics, the Council proclaims that all must hold to the absolute primacy of the objective moral order, that is, this order by itself surpasses and fittingly coordinates all other spheres of human affairs-the arts not excepted-even though they be endowed with notable dignity. For man who is endowed by God with the gift of reason and summoned to pursue a lofty destiny, is alone affected by the moral order in his entire being. And likewise, if man resolutely and faithfully upholds this order, he will be brought to the attainment of complete perfection and happiness.


Pope John Paul II, speaking to journalists, echoed this teaching:

"You are very concerned about freedom of information and of expression: you are right. Think yourselves lucky to enjoy it! Use this freedom well to grasp the truth more closely and to admit your readers, your listeners or viewers into "whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious", to repeat the words of St Paul (Ph 4:8); into what helps them to live in justice and brotherhood, to discover the ultimate meaning of life, to open them up to the mystery of God, so near each of us."


It is critical that journalists remain open to the order created by God.  Yet Francis the Masonic Destroyer would have them believe that belief in God simply isn't relevant to their vocation.

Francis is preparing the Church and the world for an age without Christ, for the reign of Antichrist.

Who will be able to resist the Antichrist when he reveals himself? - which could be at any time now. As I mentioned in a previous post, Romano Guardini has provided us with the answer:

"One day the Antichrist will come: a human being who introduces an order of things in which rebellion against God will attain its ultimate power. He will be filled with enlightenment and strength. The ultimate aim of all aims will be to prove that existence witout Christ is possible - nay rather, that Christ is the enemy of existence, which can be fully realized only when all Christian values have been destroyed. His arguments will be so impressive, supported by means of such tremendous power - violent and diplomatic, material and intellectual - that to reject them will result in almost insurmountable scandal, and everyone whose eyes are not opened by grace will be lost. Then it will be clear what the Christian essence really is: that which stems not from the world, but from the heart of God; victory of grace over the world; redemption of the world, for her true essence is not to be found in herself, but in God, from whom she has received it. When God becomes all in all, the world will finally burst into flower."

Those who believe in their own intellectual prowess will succumb to the lie. They will be seduced by the Antichrist. Already we see the spirit of Antichrist seducing so many as they scramble to find teachers who will tickle their ears and tell them what they want to hear. But their end is destruction.

Francis: A more sophisticated form of atheism...

As Francis leads so many souls to pantheism and a New humanitarian religion, it would help to reflect upon the words of Father Livio Fanzaga, known as the "radio priest" in Italy, in his book "Wrath of God: The Days of the Antichrist": "Atheism is the religion of the future.  At its root, atheism is always a negation of God and every such negation presupposes His affirmation. Rather than saying 'God does not exist,' a more sophisticated form of atheism will assert that 'Man is God, humanity is God, God is immanent in human history and in the lives of individuals.'  This is a form of religion which has assimilated the characteristics of a true religion.  Adore man and satisfy the religious needs present in every human heart.  Do not renounce the Kingdom of God, construct it, instead, on earth.  Just as the Catholic religion tries to unite all men under a supernatural principle represented in the person of the Vicar of Christ, so too, humanitarianism strives to unite all men and to conciliate all religions.  It seeks to institute universal peace by recognizing the supreme unifying authority of the Antichrist - perfect image of the immanent god in the world,  the man-god.  God did not become man.  The man-God is the savior of the world...Benson [Robert Hugh Benson] had greater foresight [than Feurbach and Marx].  At the turn of the century he clearly perceived that the crisis of faith will not be followed by the growth of atheism but by the rise of a new religion which deifies man...The new religion will have its own ministers of cult, its own rites and ceremonies, and its own books to celebrate those rites.  Churches and abbeys will be transformed into temples of the new religion of humanitarianism and the Mass will be displaced by the celebration of the new rites.  The statue of Christ will disappear and in its place the statue of 'man' will be raised up in the form of 'Apollo,' symbol of corporeal beauty and virility....While churches in which Christ is still adored and Our Lady honored will be empty, those of the new religion will be filled to capacity...Man will go to church to worship himself.  He will incense the altar of his own 'virility' and the statue of 'maternity' and 'continuous life.'  The crisis of faith is the crisis of the supernatural.  Man no longer believes in a God whom he cannot measure or control and who is different from him." (pp. 119-120).

Is there any real doubt that this new humanitarian religion is now rising?  The way of the new religion of the man-God is being prepared by agnostics, atheists, apostates, lovers of this world who have embraced hedonism and materialism and who have nothing but contempt for the true Church, her ministers, sacraments, devotions [especially those to Our Lady] and the lowly faithful who have consecrated themselves to the Immaculata.

As Catholics, we pray - in the Nicene Creed -  "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven.."

All orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is the only Son of God and that, "There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the whole world given to men by which we are to be saved." (Acts 4: 12).

But the world is being prepared to believe differently.  Many are now willing to abandon the only Son of God for the new religion which will proclaim the divinity of man.  President Obama, while speaking to a group of Christian clergy several years ago at the Easter Prayer Breakfast, referred to Jesus not as the "only Son of God" but as "a son of God."  And he received applause from his audience.

What is this but the spirit of Antichrist?  In 1 John 4: 2-3, we read, "This is how you can recognize God's Spirit: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, while every spirit that fails to acknowledge him does not belong to God.  Such is the spirit of the antichrist which, as you have heard, is to come; in fact, it is in the world already."

Recommended reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 441-445.

And so, let us offer an act of reparation as the world is prepared to worship the devil in the flesh:

Act of Reparation to the Blessed Sacrament
By St. Louis de Montfort



"Soupirons, gemissons, pleurons amerement"


Let me cry, let me weep bitter tears to God above,
For Jesus is abandoned in his Sacrament of love;
Forgotten and insulted in the dwelling of the Lord,
Derided and rejected where once he was adored.


The mansions of the nobles are all clean and set with care,
Yet the house of God's forgotten, its altars standing bare;
The floor is all broken, the roof lets in the rain,
The crumbling walls are marked with holes and every kind of stain.


The crucifix is broken, the pictures green with damp,
The altar cloths are rotting, no light burns in the lamp,
The missals torn and battered, the brasswork stained with rust,
The things of God are thrown about and scattered in the dust.


The ciborium is tarnished, the chalice turning black,
The monstrance, which is made of tin, is mouldy at the back;
From font right up to sacristy the picture is the same,
Such disorder in the house of God is our reproach and shame.


The pagans in their temples dare not spit upon the floor,
But in our church a crowd of dogs run in and out the door;
They bark and fight continually and fill the place with slime,
But no one cares enough of this to avenge the dreadful crime.


There is just one exception in all this sorry scene:
My Lord and Lady's special pew is always neat and clean;
And standing out in bright new paint upon the dingy wall
Their gaily-colored coat-of-arms looks down upon it all.


Above the Lord's own altar, instead of the Lord's own name,
The banners of his Lordship, a place of honor claim;
Both priest and mule are flaunting the badges of their thrall,
The former at the altar, the latter in his stall.


The houses of the nobles are so crowded and gay,
And fashionable young ladies are courted night and day;
But the Church of God's deserted, unless they condescend
To go to church for one short Mass they think will never end.


Behold the worldly cleric coming in with haughty face
How his lady friends admire him as he bows with courtly grace!
He bobs a genuflection, then seeks whom he should greet;
He strolls about and chatters as though walking in the street


Still worse, he has a snuff-box, which he opens with a jest,
And delicately takes a pinch, then passes around the rest
Puffed up with self-importance and with his graceful ways,
He squirms about and poses, making faces as he prays


Alas, it's often happened, the way to church he's trod
To pay reverence to Venus, to a goddess not to God;
Every thought and aspiration, every word and loving glance
Are but homage to a creature, a prayer to find romance


Behold upon the other side a sorry scene is played,
A shameless hussy sitting in all her fine brocade;
In her dainty little slippers and head-dress trimmed with lace,
Come simply to parade herself within the holy place


This empty-headed madam, with an impudence unknown,
Up to the very altar ostentatiously is shown,
And poses on a bench in front, so to be seen by all,
To captivate the eyes of men and hold their hearts in thrall


To think this devil's agent, while her knee to Jesus bends,
Must rob him of his glory and lead astray his friends!
The splendor of her finery the thought of Jesus harms,
Forgotten is the altar in the presence of her charms.


And if the time seems tedious, she always has her fan,
Her dog and gloves, to pass the time, and often her young man;
She'll read a bit, and roll her eyes, and fix her hat with care,
Then look around the chapel to see who's watching her


O strike them, God almighty, strike this ungrateful lot!
At least let them respect thee, if they will love thee not
Too long hast thou been patient; thy justice let them see;
Let fear replace that insolence with which they now mock thee


Thy glory has been ravished, dishonored is thy name,
Such sinners against thy majesty must bow their heads in shame
And yet restrain thy anger, at least a while I pray;
The greatness of their wickedness with greater good repay


Forgive them, dearest Jesus, for they know not what they do;
Remember thy great Passion, and have mercy on us too
And if we are unable to atone for all our guilt,
Accept our feeble homage, and treat us as thou wilt


We confess before thy altar that we are sinners still;
Thou canst punish us or spare us according to thy will
But remember thy great mercy and the tears that we have shed,
And hear our cries for pardon, for our hearts are full of dread.


Our Eucharistic Lord waits for you. He waits alone in an empty Church. Outside the world and all its noise appears attractive. But this world and everything in it is passing away. It is, as C.S. Lewis said, a "shadowland." Approach the Light. Pray before the Eucharist and be filled. For your heart will never be filled until you give it totally to Him Who has created and redeemed you.

Wild Bill on the Cult of Softness...

On April 6, 1941, Bishop Fulton John Sheen gave a sermon on his radio show "The Catholic Hour" in which he reminded listeners that, "The basic spirit of the modern world for the last century has been a determination to escape the Cross." He told his audience as well that, "There is no such thing as living without a cross. We are free only to choose between crosses." And then he asked them: "Will it be the Cross of Christ which redeems us from our sins, or will it be the double cross, the swastika, the hammer and sickle, the fasces"?

Bishop Sheen believed, as I do, that America is at a crossroads. In his own words, "We in America are now faced with the threat of that double cross...Our choice is not: Will we or will we not have more discipline, more respect for law, more order, more sacrifice; but, where will we get it? Will we get it from without, or from within, Will it be inspired by Sparta or Calvary? By Valhalla or Gethsemane? By militarism or religion? By the double cross or the Cross? By Caesar or by God? That is the choice facing America today. The hour of false freedom is past. No longer can we have education without discipline, family life without sacrifice, individual existence without moral responsibility, economics and politics without subservience to the common good. We are now only free to say whence it shall come. We will have a sword. Shall it be only the sword that thrusts outward to cut off the ears of our enemies, or the sword that pierces inward to cut out our own selfish pride"?

Thus far, America has chosen the double cross. Fleeing from the Cross of Christ and the supernatural kingdom established by the Son of God; one of sacrifice and sanctity, America has chosen to pursue a terrestrial kingdom of pleasure and power founded upon a distorted idea of what constitutes liberty or freedom. But this city of man, which has certainly achieved astounding advancements in various spheres while increasing the affluence of some, has also contributed to a climate where men are regarded as mere machines whose only value is to be found in what they produce or consume. This in turn destroys the individual’s sense of personal dignity and responsibility.

Americans, in their tragic desire to flee from the Cross of Christ, have rushed to embrace this distorted notion of "freedom" and have forgotten that, as created beings, they only possess contingent rights. That is to say, rights which are accorded by Almighty God. Consequently, in their zeal to promote the fallacious idea that the basis of public morality should be whatever the majority of citizens are prepared to accept, they have also forgotten that man does not possess, and never will possess, the right to perform or engage in any act which is displeasing to God.

And where has this flight from the Cross of Christ led us up to this point? Was Bishop Sheen being an alarmist? In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, taken from his Commencement Address at Harvard University entitled "A World Split Apart": "Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. This is considered to be part of freedom, and theoretically counterbalanced by the young peoples’ right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil."

Getting back to Bishop Sheen. What did he mean when he said that, "Our choice is not: Will we or will we not have more discipline, more respect for law, more order, more sacrifice; but, where will we get it"? I believe Pope Benedict XVI was providing us with a hint toward an answer when he spoke of the "dictatorship of relativism." Americans who have gleefully embraced the tenets of liberalism have not learned the lesson the concentration camp and the gulag. These unfortunate souls refuse to acknowledge that atheistic ideology (and make no mistake, the current idea of "freedom" which has taken root in America is itself rooted in atheistic ideology) always, and without exception, gives birth to sheer violence. This is the lesson of atheistic humanism. A lesson which the majority of Americans would rather not think about.

Who would deny that Bishop Sheen’s warning, issued some 64 years ago, was highly prophetic? America, and the West in general, is at a crossroads. We have before us two crosses: The Cross of Christ and the double cross (which may also be referred to today as the "dictatorship of relativism"). Which will we choose in the end? Will we continue on our present course or change direction and finally come to embrace the Cross of Christ? Will we embrace Christ and His kingdom of sacrifice and sanctity or continue to rush headlong into the idolatry of unbridled hedonism while declaring ourselves, albeit tacitly, to be God?

If we continue to choose the latter, then we should remember the words of Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., "When man becomes God, history testifies that then millions of men become imprisoned slaves, terrified automatons and murdered corpses. Society, in the words of Gabriel Marcel, becomes a ‘termite colony.’" (The Gods of Atheism, p. 463).

The fruit of secular humanism in the public schools: Terrified children who no longer feel safe

As reported by NBC Chicago, "When a 13-year-old Chicago boy wrote a letter to Santa asking simply for 'safety' this Christmas, he didn’t expect to get a response from the president of the United States.

Malik Bryant, who lives in a high-crime neighborhood on the South Side called Englewood, didn’t ask for your typical Christmas toys when he participated in a charitable Letters to Santa program in the city.

“All I ask for is for safety. I just want to be safe,” his letter read, according to Direct Effect Charities' website."

What is this but the fruit of secular humanism?

Secular Humanism has all the characteristics of a religion. The Secular Humanist places man at the center of things. In the Humanist Manifesto II, which was released in 1973, humanists called for a new faith: "...traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them is an unproved and outmoded faith. Salvationism, based on mere affirmation, still appears as harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter. Responsible minds look to other means for survival." (Humanist Manifesto II, The Humanist; September/October 1973, p. 4). Humanism is, therefore, fundamentally at odds with Christianity which regards God and not man as the supreme value of the universe.

Because Humanists recognize the importance of the public schools in advancing their man-centered religion, they do everything in their power to ensure that children are indoctrinated into the tenets of Humanism even as they attack faith-based schools. It was Paul Blanshard, writing in The Humanist, who said, "I think that the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16 tends to lead toward the elimination of religious superstition. The average American child now acquires a high school education, and this militates against Adam and Eve and all the other myths of alleged history." (The Humanist State, March/April 1976, p. 17).

Humanist John Dumphy, also writing for The Humanist, said "I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preacher, for they will be ministers of another servant, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subjects they teach regardless of the educational level - preschool daycare or large state university. The classroom must and will become and area of conflict between the old and the new - the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery and the new faith of humanism resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never realized Christian idea of 'love thy neighbor' will finally be achieved." (The Humanist, January/February 1983, p. 26).

Has the last fifty years of secular humanist agitprop resulted in love of neighbor and a peace-filled environment where children feel safe?

How many school shootings must we endure before we realize where secular humanism is taking us? How many Sandy Hook style episodes before we realize we're on the wrong track?

The atheist is crippled by an intellectual insecurity. He must strive continually to convince others - and even himself - that God does not exist. But he is always haunted by the fear that he has not really banished the presence or power of the Divine Other. This canker of insecurity, which gnaws at his heart unceasingly, manifests itself in the incessant need to propagandize against belief in God.

For example Richard Dawkins, an atheist who authored "The God Delusion," devotes much if not most of his time attempting to convince others that belief in God is even dangerous. This charge is most ironic since, as Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., reminds us, "When man becomes his own absolute center, then God becomes his hell, because God sets limits to man's greatness. But once having attained autoerotic sovereignty, a monstrous metamorphosis takes place in atheist man. He begins to feed on his fellow men, for they now are his hell, threatening to rob him of his freedom. When God is rejected because he is seen as man's hell, then man, whom God loves, suffers the same fate and for the same reason. There is a frightening resemblance between the atheist humanist as a cell of society and a malignantly cancerous cell in the human body. Both cells have thrown off any service of subordination to the health of the communities in which they thrive. They act and grow according to their own uncontrolled ravenous appetites feeding parasitically on the whole organism. As runaway cells they invade and destroy every healthy cell in the body until they extinguish life and speed to completion the total disintegration of the unity of the body. Atheistic humanism is a psychic cancer. It shares two major characteristics with physical cancer. Both these human cancers arise from the arbitrary rebellion of a subordinate cell against the established social harmony of the whole. Secondly, both these cancerous rebellions are metastatic and messianic in their aggression to the death against organism and community." (The Gods of Atheism, pp. 463-464).

Gilbert Keith Chesterton reminded us that when man denies God he does not believe in nothing. Rather he will believe in anything. Moreover, he will not do nothing but as a fanatic he will do anything:

"There are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization if they may ruin also this old fantastic tale. This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the sword that cuts their own fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes...He [the atheist fanatic who is crippled by his own insecurity] sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all." (Orthodoxy, pp. 238-239).

Atheistic fanatics have a long history of unmatched violence. Today, fanatical rhetoric from atheist fanatics has resulted in actual violence against the Church as well as calls for such violence. And secular humanist propaganda has produced

 a public school system rife with violence where students simply cannot feel safe.

God is not the delusion. The myth of the atheistic humanist who truly values reason and peace is the real delusion.

Franklin Graham: America glorifying sin

Writing for the Christian Post, Melissa Barnhart notes that, "The Rev. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritans Purse, says the government's attacks against Christianity and bans on traditional Christmas themes while society glorifies sin is 'like little children shaking their fist at Almighty God.'

'What's happening is we're glorifying sin, we're lifting up sin. And it's like little children shaking their fist at Almighty God,' Graham told Fox News host Megyn Kelly during a Wednesday segment of 'The Kelly File.'

Speaking about atheists and secularists' actions to ban celebrations of Christmas in schools and government buildings, Kelly commented on American Atheists' 'skip church' billboard ad campaign, which The Christian Post has reported on. She also cited the city of Pittsburg's previous plan to rename the Christmas holidays 'sparkle days' and the ban on poinsettias at a Minnesota court house, among others.

'It's all over the country,' Graham asserted. 'You have the secularists and the humanists who are wanting to deny that Jesus ever existed. And they want to take His name off of everything.'" See here.

In his classic work entitled "Trojan Horse in the City of God," Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote that, "Incessantly we hear today the self-satisfied slogan, 'Man has finally come of age.' Yet there are so many features of the present epoch - the dethronement of truth by historical relativism, the fetishization of science, the devastation of our lives as a result of the laboratory view, and many others - that make it more than doubtful that modern man has really and truly come of age. There is, moreover, something inherently self-deceptive in the very idea. It is a characteristic symptom of immaturity to feel oneself more mature and independent than men of previous times, to forget what one owes the past, and, in a kind of adolescent self-assertion, to refuse any assistance. One need only recall Dostoyevsky's masterly description of the puberty crisis - Kolya Krassotkin in The Brothers Karamazov, Hypolit in The Idiot, the hero of The Adolescent - to grasp the special immaturity of the man who is convinced of his superior maturity, who thinks that in him humanity has in a unique way come of age, who is dominated by one preoccupation - to show his independence. His ludicrous smallness is manifest as he looks down on everything passed on through tradition, even the most timeless values. The illusion of an historic coming of age is not the exclusive possession of our epoch. In the period of the so-called Enlightenment, man also felt themselves to have come of age and looked down on former times as periods of darkness and immaturity. This illusion is a recurring phenomenon in social history and it bears a striking resemblance to the puberty crisis in the life of the individual person. But the contemporary assertion that whereas this perennial boast was never before justified, it is now really true makes its self-serving character all the more clear.One of the many indications of the intellectual and moral immaturity of the present age is the fact that the percentage of worthless books and articles that captivate the minds of intellectuals seems greater today than in any other time in history." (pp.143-144).


This illusion of man having "come of age" is a characteristic of psychological, spiritual and intellectual immaturity. It is also at the core of atheistic humanism. For atheistic humanism advances the notion, rooted in adolescent pride and rebellion, that the human race has reached a leap of advancement, a new stage of development and enlightenment in which man must abandon any notion of divine authority and rely only upon himself to build a utopia here on earth. A utopia where there are no dogmas, no permanent truths, no objective principles or fixed concepts. In the words of Harvey Cox, "Religion is in a sense the neurosis of culture; secularization corresponds to maturation, for it signifies the emancipation of man first from religion and then from metaphysical control." (The Secular City).


This is America's brand of atheism. It is represented in mythology by Prometheus challenging the old gods and stealing fiery power from them to bring man on earth a freedom from divine authority, liberation from childish beliefs and sexual taboos so that man come of age may create for himself a temporal utopia of plenty and a society of peace. This atheism was advanced in 1933 in The New Humanist magazine in a document entitled the "Humanist Manifesto I," by a group of 34 "liberal humanists." However, forty years later The Humanist magazine published "Humanist Manifesto II." This was necessary because the foolish optimism of the "liberal humanists" regarding the natural goodness of man was utterly demolished by the sheer brutality and horror of the Second World War. Not to mention the savage and evil systems of Nazism, Fascism and Communism.


The adolescent rebellion from God which is atheistic humanism continues. It has not learned anything from the harsh realities of history. It refuses to. And this refusal will only lead to more such disasters in the future for mankind. For as George Santayana reminded us, "Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it." Already we are witnessing the brutality of an atheistic humanism which declares its "love for humankind" even as it approves of the worst form of child abuse - abortion - as well as euthanasia and all varieties of sexual experimentation and immoral "lifestyles" such as fornication and homosexuality. And when those who believe in objective truth and morality object, as did those who opposed same-sex "marriage" in California, Churches were attacked and Christians and Mormons were subjected to violence and intimidation - all in the name of "love" and "freedom."

A violent persecution is coming against Christians.  Militant atheists are poised to kill.

More confusion from Pope Francis as the Diabolical Disorientation spreads

"So often [people ask]: 'But do you believe?': 'Yes! Yes! '; 'What do you believe in?'; 'In God!'; 'But what is God for you?'; 'God, God'. But God does not exist: Do not be shocked! So God does not exist! There is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, they are persons, they are not some vague idea in the clouds ... This God spray does not exist!" - Pope Francis; See here.


In his powerful classic entitled, "The Flight from God," the eminent Swiss philosopher Max Picard writes: "In every age man has been in flight from God. What distinguishes the Flight to-day from every other flight is this: once Faith was the universal, and prior to the individual; there was an objective world of Faith, while the Flight was only accomplished subjectively, within the individual man. It came into being through the individual man's separating himself from the world of Faith by an act of decision. A man who wanted to flee had first to make his own flight. The opposite is true to-day. The objective and external world of Faith is no more; it is Faith which has to be remade moment by moment through the individual's act of decision, that is to say, through the individual's cutting himself off from the world of the Flight. For to-day it is no longer Faith which exists as an objective world, but rather the Flight; for every situation into which man comes is from the beginning, without his making it so, plainly a situation of flight, since everything in this world exists only in the form of the Flight." (The Flight from God, Gateway Editions, 1951, pp.1-2).

Picard goes on to explain in this critically important work that, "The man of the Flight cannot bear the feeling that there is one thing and one thing only: the Flight. He needs something wholly other, something, now threatening, now friendly, which is above him, like a heaven beneath which he can make his journey...This is Art...The very existence of Art in a sphere of its own already means that it is 'wholly other,' and from the beginning it is other than reality itself. The strange thing about Art is that a work of art is indeed made by man, but that once it is made it stands there independently of man. This gives it a semblance of otherness." (The Flight from God, pp. 138-139).

This is of the utmost importance for "modern man" as he flees from his God Who is Wholly Other. Nature abhors a vacuum after all. And so, in his flight from the Divine Other, man in the flight substitutes "Art" for the Divine Being as the Wholly Other." Picard explains that the cinema "..is the perfect Flight" and that here is where "men may learn how best to flee." For this reason, "..cinemas are everywhere erected, examples of the Flight. The figures on the screen are fashioned only for the Flight, they are disembodied. Like one in a hurry who drops his luggage, the figures have laid down their bodily substance somewhere in the background, while they themselves make off in the foreground of the screen, outlines only of their bodies. Sometimes they are still for a moment, looking backwards fearfully, as if there was one who pursued them. Alas, it is only a game, they do but pretend to be afraid. No one can reach them, these things without being. And now, as if they want to fool the one who pursues them, they move more slowly, they even translate a movement which ought o be fast into a slow one; they demonstrate slowness in the Flight, so sure are they that nothing can reach them, these things without being. Here in the cinema it is as if there were no more men, as if the real men were somewhere in safety, had for long been in safety, and as if these shadows had been left behind simply to flee in place of the real men. They only pretend to be in flight and even the men who sit in front of the screen in order to gaze at the shadows there seem nothing but dummies, arranged to complete the illusion,while the real men have long since departed." (pp. 8-9).

Dr. Von Hildebrand was right when he said that, "Modern man has lost that consciousness of being a creature which even the pagan possessed, and he lives in the illusion that by his own powers he can transform the world into a terrestrial paradise." (The New Tower of Babel, Sophia Institute Press, 1994, p. 21).

Having decided against God, "modern man" has embraced the Flight. This flight from the Divine Other has led to the decline of man's confidence in the powers of human reason to attain reality and truth. Man in the Flight has concluded today that all truth is relative. In the same way that Pilate asked Our Lord, "What is truth?" and hastened in his flight to the judgment-hall without waiting for an answer (John 18:38), so "modern man," in his embrace of relativism, joins the flight without any thought of inquiring for the truth. Instead, he settles for illusion, rejecting the permanent authority of truth as founded by the Divine Other in reality, reason and revelation while setting himself up as the autonomous source of all truth:"Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the 'mystery of iniquity' in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675).

The Antichrist is behind the Flight, urging "modern man" to hasten in his Flight and not to look back. How will this Flight end? In the words of Romano Guardini:"One day the Antichrist will come: a human being who introduces an order of things in which rebellion against God will attain its ultimate power. He will be filled with enlightenment and strength. The ultimate aim of all aims will be to prove that existence without Christ is possible - nay rather, that Christ is the enemy of existence, which can be fully realized only when all Christian values have been destroyed. His arguments will be so impressive, supported by means of such tremendous power - violent and diplomatic, material and intellectual - that to reject them will result in almost insurmountable scandal, and everyone whose eyes are not opened by grace will be lost. Then it will be clear what the Christian essence really is: that which stems not from the world, but from the heart of God; victory of grace over the world; redemption of the world, for her true essence is not to be found in herself, but in God, from whom she has received it. When God becomes all in all, the world will finally burst into flower." (The Lord, p. 513).

Are we not approaching the Reign of Antichrist? "Modern man" strives to build a godless world where he is subject to no one but himself. Having eliminated God from this world, "modern man" deifies and absolutizes himself. Having rejected his place as a creature dependent upon God, "modern man" is moving, "..not toward divinity, but toward dehumanizing, toward the destruction of being itself through through the destruction of truth. The Jacobin variant of the idea of liberation...is a rebellion against being human in itself, rebellion against truth, and that is why it leads people - as Sartre percipiently observed - into a self-contradictory existence that we call hell." (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, p. 248).

"I saw the secret sect relentlessly undermining the great Church..."

The staff of The Week reports:

Disgusted by waves of scandal, Ireland’s Catholics are boycotting Mass and turning their backs on the church    

June 28, 2014     

 

Ireland's Catholic Church is losing its faithful fast.   

 

 

 

How Catholic was Ireland?
It used to be easily the most Catholic country in the world. The church's connection to the island nation dates to St. Patrick's conversion in the 5th century, and the modern Irish state is explicitly bound up with the church. The constitution opens with the words, "In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority..." and continues with reference to "obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial." In Ireland, the church, not the state, runs almost the entire education system. Until recently, social life, too, revolved around the local church. In 1984, nearly 90 percent of Irish Catholics went to Mass every week. But by 2011, only 18 percent did. It's a massive cultural shift.

 

What changed?
Mass attendance began dropping rapidly during the 1990s, as Ireland began its "Celtic Tiger" economic boom. The country was modernizing, urbanizing, and taking on a more global perspective, and the local church was no longer the only nexus of community life. For the first time, the country had a vigorous debate about abortion and began teaching sex education in schools. At the same time, several long-hidden scandals began to emerge. In 1992, the Irish learned that a powerful and beloved bishop, Eamon Casey, had a fathered a son, and that the Rev. Michael Cleary, the "Singing Priest" with best-selling records and his own radio show, had a secret family with his housekeeper. But the biggest seismic jolt came over the last decade, when the priestly sex-abuse scandal horrified the entire country.

 

How widespread was the abuse?
The scale was greater in Ireland than in any other country. Across the world, the Vatican routinely protected individual priests who were raping boys and, to a lesser extent, girls, responding to complaints of abuse by transferring offenders to other parishes. Ireland had hundreds of such cases, but because of the church's enormous power there, it was not just individual priests who were involved, but large institutions. Until the 1990s, the church ran orphanages and industrial schools that warehoused 30,000 children deemed delinquents — pickpockets, or the poor, or those with unmarried parents. The 2009 Ryan Report found that thousands of children were savagely raped or molested in these homes, while thousands more were beaten and starved and forced to work. Boys described nights of terror, lying in bed waiting for priests to come and molest them. "In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine," the report said. A new scandal has rocked the church, with the recent discovery that up to 4,000 infants and children — many malnourished and poorly treated — had been buried in unmarked graves at homes for unwed mothers run by Catholic nuns.

 

How have the Irish reacted?
The string of revelations has undermined the very legitimacy of the church. To a great extent, the church's authority was premised on control of sexuality. "They made this island into a concentration camp where they could control everything — and the control was really all about sex," says Father Mark Patrick Hederman, abbot of Glenstal Abbey. "Generations of people were crucified with guilt complexes. Now the game is up." Since priests were the enforcers of sexual purity, to have so many exposed not merely as sexually active, but as sexual predators of children, has deeply shaken Irish faith. The priesthood has lost its luster, and enrollment at seminaries has plummeted.

 

Will there be a priest shortage?
There already is. In Dublin, there are just two priests under the age of 40. Across the country, two thirds of priests are over 55. Some towns are already sharing priests, having Mass at the local church only every other week. In about a decade, church authorities say, the number of priests in Ireland may decline to 1,500 — down from 4,500 a few years ago — and the church will have to start importing priests from other countries. Well over 80 percent of the Irish still identify as Catholics, but now they practice their religion privately. Tourism at Station Island, where St. Patrick had his religious epiphany in the 5th century, is way up. Disaffected Catholics are using the site as a kind of private church, a way to worship unmediated by the hierarchy.

 

What will the church do?
The Association of Catholic Priests, an Irish group, has recommended that women be ordained and that priests be allowed to marry. Surveys have found that the Irish people would support both changes by huge margins: 77 percent for women's ordination and 87 percent for married priests. Even in the unlikely event that the Vatican approved such changes, it may be too late to reverse Ireland's secular tide. "No one doubts that a growing anti-Catholic element exists in Irish society," Father Gerard Moloney wrote in The Irish Times. "The church has provided its enemies with weapons of mass destruction. It has no one to blame but itself."

 

Northern Ireland, too
Northern Ireland, which is part of Great Britain, has seen nearly as steep a decline in weekly Catholic Church attendance, from 90 percent in the 1980s to some 40 percent today. That drop is not the result of the abuse scandal alone. In fact, in Northern Ireland, the official inquiry into priestly abuse didn't begin until last fall, and it has yet to release its findings. But Northern Ireland was the center of the Troubles, the violence between Protestants and Catholics, and there Catholicism was as much a political identity as a religious one. Once the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 ended the armed struggle, religious adherence began to fade as political polarization eased. Now, overt religiosity is widely seen as backward — as a form of resistance to peace. "There's no stigma in not going to church," said William Crawley, a Presbyterian minister in Belfast. "In fact, there's a stigma to going. Parents need to explain why they are sending their children to church."

The situation is worse in France, where only 1 in 20 attend Holy Mass.  See here.

Some years ago, Fr. Vincent Miceli warned that: "The West has divinized Security and Technocracy; the East, Science and Revolution. But in both camps atheistic humanism has become the State religion. And both of these systems of secular humanism eclipse the person, eliminate his freedom, deny his human-divine value and subject him to the tyranny of technological impersonalism. The alarming signs of the times testify to a fierce spirit of evil advancing everywhere. It is the spirit of rebellion against God and man. Hitherto the powers of government in each country, as yet relying on God and reason, were firm and vigorous enough to restrain this rebellion. But today many agnostic countries can barely contain that lawless spirit, while many others have actually legalized the principle of lawlessness itself, the principle of license masquerading as liberty.

We are reminded of St. Paul's warning to the Thessalonians. In the last days there will be an awful, unparalleled outbreak of evil everywhere. This will be called the Great Apostasy. In the midst of this general falling away a certain Man of Sin, having the image of Satan and breathing hatred toward God and man, will appear. He will exercise frightening preternatural powers of destruction against the just. This Child of Perdition will be so special and singular an enemy of Christ that he will be called Antichrist. For just as types of Christ went before Jesus, heralding his coming, so shadows of Antichrist have already preceded him....
But compared to the final Antichrist all forerunners of him were so many mini-Antichrists. This Arch-Antichrist will orchestrate revolutions so expertly that the very framework of society will shatter into pieces under his wicked hand. In a stunningly evil way, he will knit together his totalitarian rule of heresy, sedition, revolution, schism, war - indeed of every evil movement - and hurl them effectively against the Church. Preceded by apostasy, conceived in apostasy, gestated in apostasy, born in apostasy, the Man of Sin will come to power through a General Apostasy. In other words, Antichrist could never have existed except for the decision of the majority of persons in East and West to apostatize from God and to join the forces of atheism.." (Essay entitled "Detente All Around: Prelude to Antichrist?").

Evil is indeed spreading everywhere. Men have grown weary of being men and are beginning to deny Christ more and more. Even in the Church, many are coming to accept homosexuality and abortion as good. Such persons, such enemies of Christ, may still use Christian jargon as they go through the motions of Christian worship, but at base they have opted for evil and radiate the spirit of Antichrist. More than a century ago, Cardinal John Henry Newman predicted the Desolate City which we find ourselves in today: "Surely there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it..."

Our own time is a fulfillment of the prophecy issued by St. Louis de Montfort in his Prayer for Missionaries: "Tempus faciendi, Domine, dissipaverunt legem tuam: it is time to act, O Lord, they have rejected your law. It is indeed time to fulfill your promise. Your divine commandments are broken, your Gospel is thrown aside, torrents of iniquity flood the whole earth carrying away even your servants. The whole land is desolate, ungodliness reigns supreme, your sanctuary is desecrated and the abomination of desolation has even contaminated the holy place.." (PM, 5)

The Church and the world are in crisis.  Even in the Church, however, there are deluded souls who insist that "all is well" and that anyone who sounds a prophetic warning is an "alarmist," a "reactionary," a fanatic who should be either silenced or ignored altogether.

These people would have us believe that we have begun a New Age, a Civilization of Love where man has "come of age" and is no longer in need of the "myths" of the past.

The words of Soren Kierkegaard seem prophetic on this score: "Having refused to use their freedom of thought, men claim freedom of speech as compensation."

Dr. Von Hildebrand reminds us that: "This temporal parochialism - this feeling above others who are not living in the same historical epoch - performs the same psychological function that pride in Aryan descent performed for many Germans during the National Socialist epoch. The most insignificant German, suddenly exalted by the mere fact that he was of pure Aryan descent, could now look down on the most gifted intellectual who happened to have a Jewish grandmother. There is a general tendency in human nature to seek such compensations for inferiority or to look for ways of 'putting oneself up' in pride...This epochalism existed in former times just as did nationalism, yet the revolt against tradition is especially strong today.."
And why is this revolt against tradition stronger than ever today? Dr. Von Hildebrand doesn't say. But I would like to present my theory. It hinges around prophecies given to us by an Augustinian nun and stigmatist named Anna-Katarina Emmerick - whom the Church venerates as Blessed.

In the 1820's, Sister Emmerick had visions of the Church in the future. On September 12, 1820, Sister Emmerick said:

"I saw a strange church being built against every rule....No angels were supervising the building operations. In that church nothing came from high above....There was only division and chaos. It's probably a church of human creation, following the latest fashion, as well as the new heterodox church of Rome, which seems of the same kind....I saw again the strange big church that was being built there [in Rome]. There was nothing holy in it....Everything was being done according to human reason. I saw all sorts of people, things, doctrines, and opinions. There was something proud, presumptuous, and violent about it, and they seemed to be very successful. I did not see a single angel nor a single saint helping in the work. But far away in the background, I saw the seat of a cruel people armed with spears, and I saw a laughing figure which said: 'Do build it as solid as you can; we will pull it to the ground.'"
Is this "future church" a preparation for the Man of Sin, the Antichrist? From August to October of 1820, Sister Emmerick says: "I see more martyrs, not now but in the future....I saw the secret sect relentlessly undermining the great Church. Near them I saw a horrible beast coming up from the sea....When the Church had been for the most past destroyed [by the secret sect], and when only the sanctuary and altar were still standing, I saw the wreckers enter the Church with the Beast. There they met a Woman of noble carriage who seemed to be with child because she walked slowly. At this sight, the enemies were terrorized, and the Beast could not take but another step forward. It projected its neck towards the Woman as if to devour her, but the Woman turned about and bowed down [towards the altar], her head touching the ground. Thereupon, I saw the Beast taking flight towards the sea again, and the enemies were fleeing in the greatest confusion....Then I saw that the Church was being promptly rebuilt, and she was more magnificent than ever before."

The armies are poised for battle. On the one side, Satan and his cohort (which includes many priests and religious as well as lay people) who are building a church in their own image and likeness, a "FutureChurch" where sin is not confessed (see here) but celebrated and where lying and homicide serve as ersatz "sacraments." On the other, the Immaculata and her little children who are humble and despised by the world.

Satan and his followers have their tactics which revolve around the false idols of money, power, lust, and greed all clothed in the mantle of pride. The Immaculata and her cohort have their own tactics: prayer, fasting, penance, reconciliation, humility and a smallness which is clothed in the mantle of love.

Since 1984, over 1 billion, 600 million children have been murdered in their mother's wombs.  And the world continues its slide toward the abyss as homosexual "marriage," contraception and pornography claim countless souls.  At the same time, a Pollyanna element within the Church would have us believe that things are looking up.  See here for an excellent response to such blatant stupidity.


 

"Public and private atheism is exalted in such a way that God and His law are being abolished..."

"This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved." (Lumen Gentium, No. 14).

In his Encyclical Letter Dominum et Vivificantem, No. 38, Pope John Paul II says, "The analysis of sin in its original dimension indicates that, through the influence of the 'father of lies,'* throughout the history of humanity there will be a constant pressure on man to reject God, even to the point of hating him: 'Love of self to the point of contempt for God,' as Saint Augustine puts it. Man will be inclined to see in God primarily a limitation of himself, and not the source of his own freedom and the fullness of good. We see this confirmed in the modern age, when the atheistic ideologies seek to root out religion on the grounds that religion causes the radical 'alienation' of man, as if man were dispossessed of his own humanity when, accepting the idea of God, he attributes to God what belongs to man, and exclusively to man! Hence a process of thought and historico-sociological practice in which the rejection of God has reached the point of declaring his 'death.' An absurdity, both in concept and expression! But the ideology of the 'death of God' is more a threat to man, as the Second Vatican Council indicates when it analyzes the question of the 'independence of earthly affairs' and writes: 'For without the Creator the creature would disappear...when God is forgotten the creature itself grows unintelligible.' The ideology of the 'death of God' easily demonstrates in its effects that on the 'theoretical and practical' levels it is the ideology of the 'death of man.'" (Citing Gaudium et Spes, No. 36). 

"That which seems to Us not only the greatest evil but the root of all evil is this: often the lie is substituted for the truth, and is then used as an instrument of dispute. On the part of not a few religion is passed by as a thing of no importance, and elsewhere absolutely prohibited in family and social life as a remnant of ancient superstitions; public and private atheism is exalted in such a way that God and His law are being abolished, and morals no longer have any foundation. The Press also too often vulgarly reviles religious feeling, while it does not hesitate to spread the most shameful obscenities, agitating and with incalculable harm leading into vice tender childhood and betrayed youth.

By means of false promises a people is deceived and provoked to hatred, rivalry and rebellion, especially when the hereditary faith, the only relief in this earthly exile, is successfully torn from its heart. Disturbances, riots and revolts are organized and fomented in continuing series, which prepare for the ruin of the economy and cause irreparable harm to the common good.

We must above all deplore with overwhelming sadness that in not a few nations the rights of God, Church and human nature itself are outraged and trampled upon" (Pope Pius XII, Anni Sacri, Nos. 3-5).

* John 8:44

A new form of atheism....have we succumbed to it?

"I had a little tea party this afternoon at three.
Twas very small - three guests in all - just I, myself and me.
Myself ate all the sandwiches, while I drank all the tea.
Twas also I who ate the pie, and passed the cake to me."

                                   - Author unknown.


In his January 19th audience with workers and leaders of Catholic charities and members of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, Pope Benedict XVI warned that while there is "a growing consensus today about the inalienable dignity of the human being" and people's interdependence and responsibilities toward others, there are also many "dark spots" that are obscuring God's plan.

The Holy Father warned of a new form of atheism which views people as independent and autonomous with happiness lying solely in realizing one's own self.  Here the Pope is referring to those who are crippled by the sin of selfishness, a sin as old as humanity which has taken deep root in the heart of "modern man."  As Archbishop Fulton John Sheen reminded us, "Selfishness does not mean that there is not to be a proper love of self.  Our Blessed Lord told us: 'Love thy neighbor as thyself' (Mt 19: 19).  God made 'self' the standard by which the neighbor is to be loved.  This could not be, if love of self did not have a legitimate basis.  Selfishness, is the love of the wrong self; that is, the self that is indifferent to the feeling and the interest and the safety of others.  People are not selfish because they wish to earn enough to raise a family, but they are selfish if they consult only their own gains regardless of the losses that they may bring on others." (Essay entitled Selfishness).

The Lord Jesus has put us here on earth to serve Him and not ourselves.  Many today, and sadly even within the Church, have succumbed to a philosophy of self-indulgence which is often indicative of pride and may even represent a failure to trust in the Lord, a practical atheism which renders others invisible and irrelevant.

Damien Fisher, writing for The Gardner News, relates the story of Vietnam veteran Jesse Stallings, a soldier who became invisible and irrelevant to those around him who should have welcomed him.  Mr. Fisher writes, "Jesse Stallings served in Vietnam, and then came home to a difficult life.  His trouble coming back and becoming part of society again was partly because of the negative attitudes many had about the Vietnam War, and by extension, the men who fought it.  Mr. Stallings' troubles also stemmed from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition not widely understood at the time, and not well-treated either...Mr. Stallings was proud to put on his uniform to march in the parade in Fitchburg, one of the first in the region to welcome Vietnam vets....But his long hair and beard did not mesh with how the other, older veterans wanted him to look.  He was sent away.  Dejected after leaving the parade ground, Mr. Stallings went home and killed himself." (MVOC opens new Winchendon campus, January 26-27 edition of The Gardner News).

Have we become so self-indulgent that others have practically become invisible to us?  We can answer this question only through honest self-examination.  Hence the need for frequent sacramental confession.  Self-deception is so very easy.  As Saint Francis de Sales noted, "Self-love is cunning; it pushes and insinuates itself into everything, while making us believe it is not there at all."

If we wish to deepen our relationship with the Lord Jesus and to be of genuine service to Him, then we must struggle against self-deception and be completely honest with ourselves, petitioning the Lord to reveal to us our hidden motives and attachments.  And then we must, with the help of His grace (without which nothing is possible), reorder our priorities.

Related meditation here.

President Barack Obama and the spirit of Antichrist

In his book "Wrath of God: The Days of the Antichrist," Fr. Livio Fanzaga, known as the "radio priest" in Italy, explains that, "Atheism is the religion of the future.  At its root, atheism is always a negation of God and every such negation presupposes His affirmation.  Rather than saying 'God does not exist,' a more sophisticated form of atheism will assert that 'Man is God, humanity is God, God is immanent in human history and in the lives of individuals.'  This is a form of religion which has assimilated the characteristics of a true religion.  Adore man and satisfy the religious needs present in every human heart.  Do not renounce the Kingdom of God, construct it, instead, on earth.  Just as the Catholic religion tries to unite all men under a supernatural principle represented in the person of the Vicar of Christ, so too, humanitarianism strives to unite all men and to conciliate all religions.  It seeks to institute universal peace by recognizing the supreme unifying authority of the Antichrist - perfect image of the immanent god in the world,  the man-god.  God did not become man.  The man-God is the savior of the world...Benson [Robert Hugh Benson] had greater foresight [than Feurbach and Marx].  At the turn of the century he clearly perceived that the crisis of faith will not be followed by the growth of atheism but by the rise of a new religion which deifies man...The new religion will have its own ministers of cult, its own rites and ceremonies, and its own books to celebrate those rites.  Churches and abbeys will be transformed into temples of the new religion of humanitarianism and the Mass will be displaced by the celebration of the new rites.  The statue of Christ will disappear and in its place the statue of 'man' will be raised up in the form of 'Apollo,' symbol of corporeal beauty and virility....While churches in which Christ is still adored and Our Lady honored will be empty, those of the new religion will be filled to capacity...Man will go to church to worship himself.  He will incense the altar of his own 'virility' and the statue of 'maternity' and 'continuous life.'  The crisis of faith is the crisis of the supernatural.  Man no longer believes in a God whom he cannot measure or control and who is different from him." (pp. 119-120).

Is there any real doubt that this new humanitarian religion is now rising?  The way of the new religion of the man-God is being prepared by agnostics, atheists, apostates, lovers of this world who have embraced hedonism and materialism and who have nothing but contempt for the true Church, her ministers, sacraments, devotions [especially those to Our Lady] and the lowly faithful who have consecrated themselves to the Immaculata.

As Catholics, we pray - in the Nicene Creed -  "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven.."

All orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is the only Son of God and that, "There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the whole world given to men by which we are to be saved." (Acts 4: 12).

But the world is being prepared to believe differently.  Many are now willing to abandon the only Son of God for the new religion which will proclaim the divinity of man.  President Obama, while speaking to a group of Christian clergy at the Easter Prayer Breakfast this past Wednesday, referred to Jesus not as the "only Son of God" but as "a son of God."  See here.  And he received applause from his audience.

What is this but the spirit of Antichrist?  In 1 John 4: 2-3, we read, "This is how you can recognize God's Spirit: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, while every spirit that fails to acknowledge him does not belong to God.  Such is the spirit of the antichrist which, as you have heard, is to come; in fact, it is in the world already."

Recommended reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 441-445.