If it seems, globally and nationally, as if our institutions are melting down, that’s because they are.

We’ve said this before—long ago—and quoted prophecies to that effect. Among those we cited more recently (2018) was a locution to the late Father Michael Scanlan, a devout Franciscan, Harvard-trained lawyer, and once president of Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.

From Congress, to bureaucratic government agencies, to the corporate world, to the executive branch, the judiciary, the media, and academia, especially to the health-care industry—to those who are supposed to protect us from consumer fraud, and environmental hazards, to law enforcement, and even at times in the Church: institutions are losing prestige and respect, and that threatens chaos.

Already, in the West, galimatias reigns, especially online: Institutions are under attack, prominent people (even royalty) are in disarray, once credible sources are no longer credible, and this breakdown will persist as part of what long has been foreseen in the way of purification or chastisement. No side is immune. Deception abounds.

As dramatic as it seems, one can cite a number of similar periods in the past, such as the High Middle Ages (plague, Huns) and, before that, the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Everyone everywhere is attacking anyone with a contrary view in often vile terms. Partisanship has reached the point of totality; we are in a “post-truth” state, to quote one former official. Truth has melted down.

It was back in 1975 at the Vatican, during an historic charismatic conference in Rome, that an American evangelist named Dr. Ralph Martin of Michigan—who once served as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization—was also given a so-called “word of knowledge.”

As his website explained, “Dr. Martin is an internationally known evangelist. He is the founder and president of Renewal Ministries, which he established in 1980 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to renew the faith of Catholics through retreats, publications, conferences, and through television and radio. He has published numerous books, articles, pamphlets and videos on living out the Christian faith in a more effective way. And while fired in July 2025 from his role at Sacred Heart Major Seminary (by the Archbishop of Detroit, a move he described as a “shock”), Martin holds a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome.

What Martin felt “told” by the Lord, back in 1975 was that “days of darkness are coming on the world, days of tribulation…

“Buildings that are now standing will not be standing. Supports that are there for My people will not be there. I want you to be prepared, My people, to know only Me and to cleave to me and to have Me in a way deeper than ever before.

“I will lead you into the desert… I will strip you of everything that you are depending on now, so you depend just on Me. A time of darkness is coming on the world, but a time of glory is coming for My Church, a time of glory is coming for My people. Because I love you I want to show you what I am doing in the world today. I want to prepare you for what is to come.”

That was more than fifty years ago, and at the time, those who heard and believed it expected it to occur rather quickly. It seemed imminent and that meant “soon” in our rushed human time. It did not transpire right away—at least not in obvious terms.

But Martin’s prognostication, like Father Scanlan’s, can be viewed as having unfolded in subsequent decades. Whether it was an intuition or locution is left to individual reckoning. Looking back, one can perceive that what it foretold began to take shape around 1975 in subtle unveiling as the evil from the Sixties became institutionalized and refined during that decade and then furthered during the Eighties (see the Wall Street scandals back then) and through to the present. This is all detailed in Where the Cross Stands.

Reality is now as ephemeral as a bitcoin, UFO, or AI.

In 2010, a writer for Time began an article on the fall of trust in the U.S. by saying (as if in affirmation of Father Scanlan’s prediction) that “in the past decade, nearly every institution in American society—whether it’s General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, major league baseball, the Church, or the mainstream media—has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent, or both.”

Though it has been thoroughly rocked by the invasion of homosexual predators, and other issues, including current ones, Time went too far, perhaps, with the Church. It’s built on a Rock. A new list could add to or replace it. Big-tech. The pharmaceutical industry. The judicial system. Real estate. The medical profession. Education. Social media.

But the point is made.

Add other branches of government and especially all forms of entertainment to the list. It is a very long list.

A meltdown: like snow on a mountain in spring.

First trickles, then streams…now torrents.

We are in a time of whitewater; we are in a time where God is the only and a sure reserve; He alone can we completely depend upon. To Him alone, the Heavenly Court, in the Name of Jesus of Nazareth, should we turn as confusion intensifies. In Lenten prayer is reassurance.

[resources:  Michael Brown online retreat and Where the Cross Stands]