Yet, as we have seen during this time-span in a spiritual desert, this assurance by Jesus does not restrict the bad tree from being posed as a good tree, even forced on us. But the results - the 'fruits', if you will - belie the truth; a truth reinforced by Christ's infallible words. So why then do not the great majority of Catholics see this? Ah, that is the billion-dollar question! But then, why did millions abandon the True Faith in the sixteenth century during the devastating Protestant Reformation? Because they were misinformed, because they were caught up emotionally in a war between good and evil, because that fine line was crossed that blurred who was good and who was evil, because the faithful didn't truly know their Faith, because the populace were engulfed by world standards. There are a million more reasons but suffice it to say, the more things change, the more they stay the same: it is still a battle between God and satan. Always has been, always will be until his head is crushed beneath the heel of the Divine Son's Most Blessed and Immaculate Mother - the woman of the Apocalypse (Apocalypse 12: 1).

   Ah, yes, Blessed Mary. She is pivotal in all of this. It began with the first Eve and it will end with the second 'Eve' when Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph. In between this vast time-frame Mary's Immaculate Heart, along with her Divine Son's Sacred Heart, has been broken so many times Her sorrowful heart was pierced so as she stood there beneath the Cross. Only Mary Magdalen, the sinner, and the beloved disciple Saint John the Evangelist stood with her. Imagine her hurt that only three were brave enough to be associated with Him? Even Saint Peter - Simon Bar Jonah - Petrus - the 'Rock' denied Him, cowered from standing with Him when push came to shove. Indeed, all the more reason to understand that the first Pope and every Vicar of Christ who followed him are humans who can err, who do have feet of clay, and that the Church has remained indefectible only through the grace, guidance and protection of the Holy Ghost and Christ's assurance in Matt. 16: 19 that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" and Matt. 28: 20, "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world."

   That first part - "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you..." That is the crux for indeed over the past 40 years we have been fed a compromised doctrine that seeks to rationalize everything with an eye toward tolerance. To quote Our Lord's words from the cross recorded in Luke 23: 34, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." What follows in that same verse, "But dividing His garments, they cast lots." Today the post-conciliar church has cast lots, casting aside the wisdom and truths that sustained Holy Mother Church for centuries. Heaven saw it coming, today the world is starting to see the results of the 'bad tree.' It all goes back to what Our Lady warned would happen both at Fatima and prior to that at LaSalette if the Church Militant was not vigilant. I'm not even going to address today the one quote she made to the visionary Melanie that "Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist." Rather, all we need do is look at the content of much of the rest of that message:

"Melanie, what I am about to tell you now will not always be a secret. You may make it public in 1858.

   "The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the holy mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures, the priests have become cesspools of impurity. Yes, the priests are asking for vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads. Woe to the priests and to those dedicated to God who by their unfaithfulness and their wicked lives are crucifying my son again! The sins of those dedicated to God cry out towards Heaven and call for vengeance, and now vengeance is at their door, for there is no one left to beg mercy and forgiveness for the people. There are no more generous souls, there is no one left worthy of offering a stainless sacrifice to the Eternal God for the sake of the world."

   "God will strike in an unprecedented way. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth! God will exhaust His wrath upon them, and no one will be able to escape so many afflictions together. The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence. They have become wandering stars which the old devil will drag along with his tail to make them perish. God will allow the old serpent to cause divisions among those who reign in every society and in every family. Physical and moral agonies will be suffered. God will abandon mankind to itself and will send punishments which will follow one after the other for more than thirty-five years."

   "The society of men is on the eve of the most terrible scourges and of gravest events. Mankind must expect to be ruled with an iron rod and to drink from the chalice of the wrath of God..."

   "Italy will be punished for her ambition in wanting to shake off the yoke of the Lord of Lords. And so she will be left to fight a war; blood will flow on all sides. Churches will be locked up or desecrated. Priests and religious orders will be hunted down, and made to die a cruel death."

   "Several will abandon the faith, and a great number of priests and members of religious orders will break away from the true religion; among these people there will even be bishops."

   We all know St. Athanasius' famous quote, "The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." That was in the fourth century. He was, of course, referring to the Arian bishops. Consider the numbers then and the numbers today and we need to pray for today's prelates more than ever. We have quantity today, definitely not quality. St. Athanasius also said: "You have the bishops against you, that proves that they are all against the Church" and "if the world goes against the truth, then Athanasius goes against the world." We all need to be Athanasiuses and stand against the world, even if that includes present day prelates and clerics who have embraced the errors of the world. We should not fear. Christ's final agony should remind us we will have much to suffer, but so what! St. Athanasius assured us of God's protection in referring to the Arian usurpers which today we can equate to the post-conciliar usurpers:

"They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: What is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle - the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?"

   Consider also the great Saint Augustine, one of the greatest Doctors of the Church, who said "Wrong is wrong even if everybody is doing it, and right is right even if nobody is doing it." Our Lady at LaSalette warned of this quite clearly:

   "May the Pope guard against the performers of miracles. For the time has come when the most astonishing wonders will take place on the earth and in the air.

   "In the year 1864, Lucifer together with a large number of demons will be unloosed from hell; they will put an end to faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way, that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of hell; several religious institutions will lose all faith and will lose many souls.

   "Evil books will be abundant on earth and the spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening in all that concerns the service of God. They will have great power over nature: there will be churches built to serve these spirits. People will be transported from one place to another by these evil spirits, even priests, for they will not have been guided by the good spirit of the Gospel, which is a spirit of humility, charity and zeal for the glory of God. On occasions, the dead and the righteous will be brought back to life. (That is to say that these dead will take on the form of righteous souls which had lived on earth, in order to lead men further astray; these so-called resurrected dead, who will be nothing but the devil in this form, will preach another gospel contrary to that of the true Christ Jesus, denying the existence of Heaven; that is also to say, the souls of the damned. All these souls will appear as if fixed to their bodies).

   "...The Vicar of my Son will suffer a great deal, because for a while the Church will yield to large persecution, a time of darkness, and the Church will witness a frightful crisis. The true faith of the Lord having been forgotten, each individual will want to be on his own and be superior to people of the same identity. They will abolish civil rights as well as ecclesiastical, all order and all justice would be trampled underfoot and only homicides, hate, jealousy, lies and dissension would be seen without love for country or family.

   "The Holy Father will suffer a great deal. I will be with him until the end and receive his sacrifice. The mischievous would attempt his life several times to do harm and shorten his days but neither he nor his successor will see the triumph of the Church of God."

   Interesting isn't it that what Our Lady was referring to concerning Pio Nono and his successor Pope Leo XIII, who was given visions of the power of the devil, has been usurped, if you will, by the post-conciliar popes if you are to believe the supposed contents of the Third Secret of Fatima released in May 2000 by the Vatican. In truth, it would seem more in line with LaSalette than Fatima. Yet clearly the Blessed Mother has referred over and over to the "Apostasy in the Church." She was not referring to those who clung to what the Church always taught and followed Archbishop Lefebvre, nor the small remnant who hold sacred the Truths and Traditions of her Divine Son's Church, but rather those who sought to destroy the Church through the "bad fruits" produced by the "bad tree" of Vatican II. So great has satan penetrated the sanctuaries of the post-conciliar church that the Apostasy is universal!

   "All the civil governments will have one and the same plan, which will be to abolish and do away with every religious principle, to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritualism and vice of all kinds. In the year 1865, there will be desecration of holy places. In convents, the ...devil will make himself like the king of all hearts. May those in charge of religious communities be on their guard against the people they must receive, for the devil will resort to all this evil tricks to introduce sinners in to religious orders, for disorder and the love of carnal pleasures will be spread all over the earth."

   What it is assuredly is fodder for the liberals to push married, even women priests. In other words, let's totally Protestantize the Roman Catholic Church. 'She's almost there now, let's finish it' the progressives are saying. It is the same rhetoric used in the mid 1500's when, thankfully, wiser, holier minds prevailed, beginning with Pope Paul III who called the Council of Trent on December 13, 1545 and four pontiffs and 18 years later was closed on December 4, 1563 by Pope Pius IV. As we know his successor Pope Saint Pius V enacted the Counter-Reformation of Trent. Just think what would have happened without Trent!

   Now consider that Trent was still the Council of record in the Church when the Blessed Virgin appeared to Maxim and Melanie in the eastern Alps of France in 1846. Who could predict then the terrible afflictions that would visit the Church? Our Lady. Who can argue that the fact that all she foretold has happened and is happening?

   "The seasons will be altered, the earth will produce nothing but bad fruit, the stars will lose their regular motion, the moon will only reflect a faint reddish glow. Water and fire will give the earth's globe convulsions and terrible earthquakes which will swallow up mountains, cities.... Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.

   "The demons of the air together with the Antichrist will perform great wonders on earth and in the atmosphere, and men will become more and more perverted."

   "God will take care of His faithful servants and men of good will. The Gospel will be preached everywhere, and all peoples of all nations will get to know the truth."

   "I make an urgent appeal to the earth. I call on the true disciples of the living God who reigns in Heaven; I call on the true followers of Christ made man, the only true Savior of men; I call on my children, the true faithful, those who have given themselves to me so that I may lead them to my divine Son.... Finally, I call on the apostles of the Last Days, the faithful disciples of Jesus Christ who have lived in scorn for the world and for themselves, in poverty and in humility, in union with God, in suffering unknown to the world. It is time they came out and filled the world with light. Go and reveal yourselves to be my cherished children. I am at your side and within you, provided that your faith is the light which shines upon you in these unhappy days. May your zeal make you famished for the glory and the honor of Jesus Christ. Fight, children of light, you, the few who can see. For now is the time of all times, the end of all ends.

   "The Church will be in eclipse, the world will be in dismay. But now Enoch and Eli will come, filled with the spirit of God. They will preach with the might of God, and men of goodwill will believe in God, and many souls will be comforted. They will make great steps forward through the virtue of the Holy Spirit and will condemn the devilish lapses of the Antichrist. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth! There will be bloody wars and famines, plagues and infectious diseases. It will rain with a fearful hail of animals. There will be thunderstorms which will shake cities, earthquakes which will swallow up countries. Voices will be heard in the air. Men will beat their heads against walls, call for their death, an on another side death will be their torment. Blood will flow on all sides. Who will be the victor if God does not shorten the length of the test? All the blood, the tears and the prayers of the righteous, God will relent. Enoch and Eli will be put to death. Pagan Rome will disappear. The fire of Heaven will fall and consume three cities. All the universe will be struck with terror and many will let themselves be led astray because they have not worshipped the true Christ who lives among them. It is time; the sun is darkening; only faith will survive.

   "...Now is the time; the abyss is opening. Here is the king of kings of darkness, here is the Beast with his subjects, calling himself the Savior of the world. He will rise proudly into the air to go to Heaven. He will be smothered by the breath of the Archangel Saint Michael. He will fall, and the earth, which will have been in a continuous series of evolutions for three days, will open up its fiery bowels; and he will have plunged for eternity with all his followers into the everlasting chasms of hell. And then water and fire will purge the earth and consume all the works of men's pride and all will be renewed. God will be served and glorified."

   True Catholics are being crucified today because they refuse to follow false prophets and compromised principles, because they cling to all Christ taught and the Ten Commandments. Hell is a powerful deterrent to sin, but too many today - from princes of the church to prelates to priests to politicians to the parishioner - have embraced sin by de-emphasizing the consequences, thus allowing satan to penetrate deeper, saturating the soil of souls. While he does this, Christ is ready to give up the ghost, His precious blood mixed with water flowing through the surface beneath Golgotha to the souls beneath and spread out in a font of Divine Mercy for every soul ever born who clings to the hope. But remember grace cannot flow into a soul when mortal sin stubbornly remains. Because sin rules the day, grace is rejected. Because grace is rejected the apostasy grows greater and with every sin that covers up another the Mystical Body of Christ is crucified anew. The hush money paid out to victims so they 'keep quiet' is no different than the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas betrayed Christ. So also today many 'Judases' have betrayed the Mystical Body of Christ.

   What greatly troubles me is that rather than the post-conciliar church's concern for souls being harmed, there is more a fear for the reputation of the 'good' priests and a fear that parishioners will withhold donations. They should stop tithing bad fruits. No doctrine, no dollars!

   Yes, we understand Our Lord's words "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do", but what makes the sin all the more scandalous, much graver, more calamitous through cover-up and deceit - and which cries out to Heaven for vengeance because of the loss of so many souls - is that the Apostasy and rejection of God's laws make men of the cloth culpable for their actions. There is a price to pay. Our Lady confirmed this at LaSalette and Christ also in Matt. 18: 7, "Wo to that man by whom the scandal cometh." How sad and deplorable for the Mystical Body of Christ that today's shepherds do know what they do!

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March 25, 2002 volume 13, no. 56 CATHOLIC PewPOINT commentary www.DailyCatholic.org