Are prophecies about the Church unfolding before our eyes?

At Akita in Japan, on October 13, 1973, the Virgin allegedly told the deaf nun Sister Agnes Sasagawa, “The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres…churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.”

The current chaos over a new Vatican document (on blessing irregular couples, including gays and other recent contretempts) certainly brings them to mind.

There is Bishop Robert Barron with one view, taking a positive view of the document (saying it undermines no doctrine), Archbishop Charles Chaput with a polar-opposite attitude, Cardinal Blase Cupich with an almost joyful perspective, a bishop in Kazakhstan going so far as to declare the recent document “evil.” Bishops in Poland and Ukraine are vowing to ignore it while others have implemented it already.

It is a real rift.

One thing few could dispute: there is a sense of confusion, if not chaos.

Confusion and dissension

Back in 1963, a German publication called Neues Europa claimed to have obtained excerpts from the third Fatima secret, and while those excerpts never proved to be in the actual secret released by the Vatican in June of 2001, and have been denounced in some quarters as a fraud, the similarities of that to what Sister Sasagawa was to say a decade after are startling. It had quoted the so-called “secret,” after dire prophecies of a nuclear event, as saying:

“There will also come a time of the hardest trials for the Church. Cardinals will be against cardinals, and bishops against bishops. Satan will put himself in their midst. In Rome, there will also be big changes. What is rotten will fall, and what will fall must not be maintained. The Church will be darkened and the world plunged into confusion….

“The time of times is coming and the end of all ends, if mankind is not coverted and if this conversion does not come from above, from the directors of the world and the directors of the Church. But woe, woe if this conversion does not come about and if all remains as it is, nay, if it becomes even worse.”

[resources: Future Events]