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J.M.J.
Feast of Pope St. Leo II
But yet the Son of Man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you,
Faith on earth? (Lk. 18.8)
"[NOT IN ROME] will the dogma of the Faith
[be] always preserved, etc." - The Great Sign in Heaven in Her visitation
at Fatima, Portugal ending the Second Part and introducing
the Third Part of the "Great Secret of Fatima"
But yet the Son of Man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you,
Faith on earth? (Lk. 18.8)
"[NOT IN ROME] will the dogma of the Faith
[be] always preserved, etc." - The Great Sign in Heaven in Her visitation
at Fatima, Portugal ending the Second Part and introducing
the Third Part of the "Great Secret of Fatima"
From the "Voice" of Catholic Resistance...
Cardinal Pie (1815-1880) was a great
churchman of 19th century France, one of the great defenders of the
Faith against that liberalism which was eating up the world from the
French Revolution (1789) onwards. Pope Pius X kept his works by his
bedside and read them constantly. No doubt the Cardinal's profound
grasp of the key ideas driving the modern world played a major part
in enabling Pius X to obtain a 50-year reprieve, say from 1907 to
1958, for the doomed Catholic Church.
Doomed ? But the Catholic Church cannot
be doomed ! True, by God's protection it will last to the end of the
world (Mt. XXVIII, 20), but at the same time by God's Word we know
that by then the Faith will scarcely be found on earth (Lk. XVIII,
8), and that it will have been given to the forces of evil to defeat
the Saints (Apoc. XIII, 7). These are two important quotes to bear in
mind in 2014, because everything around us today tells us that the
followers of Christ must be prepared for one seeming defeat after
another, e.g. the fall of the Society of St Pius X. Here is what
Cardinal Pie had to say on the matter, some 150 years ago ! –
“Let us fight, hoping against hope
itself, which is what I wish to tell faint-hearted Christians, slaves
to popularity, worshippers of success and shaken by the least advance
of evil. Given how they feel, please God they will be spared the
agonies of the world's final trial. Is that trial close or is it
still far off ? Nobody knows, and I will not dare to make a guess.
But one thing is certain, namely that the closer we come to the end
of the world, the more and more it is wicked and deceitful men who
will gain the upper hand. The Faith will hardly be found on earth,
meaning that it will almost have disappeared from earthly
institutions. Believers themselves will hardly dare to profess their
belief in public, or in society.
"The splitting, separating and
divorcing of States from God which was for St Paul a sign foretelling
the end, will advance day by day. The Church, while remaining
always a visible society, will be reduced more and more to dimensions
of the individual and the home. When she started out she said she was
being shut in, and she called for more room to breathe, but as she
approaches her end on earth, so she will have to fight a rearguard
action every inch of the way, being surrounded and hemmed in on all
sides. The more widely she spread out in previous ages, the greater
the effort will now be made to cut her down to size. Finally the
Church will undergo what looks like a veritable defeat, and the Beast
will be given to make war on the Saints and to overwhelm them. The
insolence of evil will be at its peak.”
These are prophetic words, coming truer
by the day, not at all pleasant to admit, but anchored in Scripture.
A wise Anglican Bishop (Butler) said in the 18th century, "Things
are what they are. Their consequences will be what they will be. Why
then should we seek to deceive ourselves ?" Notice especially
how the Cardinal foresees the impossibility of defending the Faith on
any larger scale than just the home. Not everybody agrees that we
have already reached that point in 2014. I might wish they were
right, but I have yet to be persuaded that with disintegrated people
one can make an integrated society. Contrast with us democratic
citizens of today the Roman centurion in the Gospel who understood a
chain of command and recognized naturally the authority of Our Lord
(Mt. VIII, 5-18) -- how Our Lord praised him !
Patience. Next... how the Cardinal
himself reacted to what he foresaw. He was no defeatist !
Kyrie eleison.
A Cardinal saw how far the Church must shrink
In these end times, yet never will it sink.
[Emphases, ours - Ignis Dei]
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