It was back several years ago that Cardinal Carlos Caffarra of Bologna in Italy shared a letter written by Sister Lucia of Fatima wherein the famous seer warned, as quoted by the cardinal, that “there will come a time when the decisive confrontation between the Kingdom of God and Satan will take place over marriage and the family.”
He said in a speech that Lucia had personally written to that effect in a letter to him. We’d never heard it put quite that way before.
Those words now — in a letter years ago (apparently in the early 1980s or so) — certainly resonate, whether in the way of the divorce rate, pre-marital sex, the replacement of matrimony with “living together,” pornography, same-sex marriage, gender neutralization, transsexualism, and so forth. We certainly recall her saying that Satan was “in the mood” for a “decisive battle.” That was back in 1957 during a conversation with a priest named Father Alonso Fuentes.
“Sister Lucy also told me: Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin,” he recalled. “And the devil knows what it is that most offends God and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way the devil will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.
“A decisive battle,” she added, “is one in which one side or the other wins.”
We’re there now — in the throes of the Final Battle.
We battle not humans but “spiritual forces in high places,” says Ephesians 6.
Re-read that chapter of Scripture. Keep the Good Book open to those pages. It is a palladium.
There were also the prophetic words of the “Fatima Pope,” Saint John Paul, who not only visited Fatima more than once, who not only beatified two of the seers, who not only released the third secret, who not only conducted the final, missing piece of the requested Consecration, but also, before he was Pope, during a visit to New York City in 1976, reportedly said:
“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.
“We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future; trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it. . . How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time.”
There has been disputation over whether, when, and where he said this. He was in the U.S. for a Eucharistic conference in Philadelphia, but he visited a number of cities, and the quote actually is traced to the “City News,” a temporary newspaper issued in New York during a newspaper strike that year and seems to have come from remarks the future Pontiff made to the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York.
Surely he was referring, in part, to Communism — which was so germane to Poland and which Pope he would take a key role in bringing down. But there is also communism with a small “c,” and that is everywhere.
The “anti-church” is not a religious body, but an irreligious or antagonistic body, represented best not by the Church of Satan, but far more pervasively by the rampant secularism that has swept across our entire culture.
A recent poll by (the liberal news outlet) MSN:
Do you consider yourself ‘spiritual’?
-
33%
Very much so
-
45%
A little bit
-
22%
Not at all
And so we are down to it. It has been ramping up every decade since the 1960s, with a few periods of false reprieve.
It has played all sides of the political aisle.
As Breitbart reports: “Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler Texas warned late Wednesday the Equality Act is destructive legislation that would do untold damage to the country if passed.
“The Equality Act being considered in Congress is a threat to people of faith in this nation,’ Bishop Strickland said on Twitter. ‘I urge all who believe in God and the truth of His Divine Revelation to speak up and let their members of Congress and Senators know that this bill threatens the heart of our nation.’
“Contrary to its stated intention of protecting people experiencing same-sex attraction or gender discordance from discrimination, the law would impose ‘novel and divisive viewpoints regarding ‘gender’ on individuals and organizations’ while ‘dismissing sexual difference and falsely presenting ‘gender’ as only a social construct,’ the bishops asserted.
“Rather than affirm human dignity in ways that meaningfully exceed existing practical protections, the Equality Act would discriminate against people of faith,” the U.S. bishops recently declared.
+[Here is the news story from yesterday:“The Democratic-led House passed a bill Thursday that would enshrine LGBTQ protections in the nation’s labor and civil rights laws, a top priority of President Joe Biden, though the legislation faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
“The bill passed by a vote of 224-206 with three Republicans joining Democrats in voting yes. The Equality Act amends existing civil rights law to explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identification as protected characteristics. The protections would extend to employment, housing, loan applications, education, public accommodations and other areas. Supporters say the law before the House on Thursday is long overdue and would ensure that every person is treated equally under the law.”]
[Further footnote from Crisis Magazine today:
“Although the Catholic Church is the oldest, most established institution in the Western world, our post-Christian-rapidly-becoming-anti-Christian world is on a path to making Catholicism anti-institutional and even driving it underground in some parts of the world. Name a ‘Big’ (Big Tech, Big Education, Big Media, etc.) that is not actively opposed to orthodox Catholicism. While no one can predict the future, you don’t have to be Nostradomous to see that practicing Catholics are being increasingly ‘canceled’ in society.”