DAILY CATHOLIC - THURSDAY, April 30, 1998    volume 9, no. 84

WHERE IS HOLY MOTHER CHURCH HEADING AS WE NEAR THE MILLENNIUM?

Installment Sixty-Seventh

Wake-up Call to all Catholics the thirty-first clarion

installment sixty-seven

One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic - part twenty-seven: A Spiritual Battle

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you."

Matthew 7: 7 and Luke 11: 9
      As mentioned in the last several installments there is a concentrated effort to remove Pope John Paul II from the chair of Rome by liberals and modernist radicals within the Church. There is a schism brewing just below the surface ready to erupt. Only one thing can prevent this from boiling over and that is prayer. In this installment today we will show how prayer was able to offset threats of schism, subterfuge and heresy as well as bring you examples of popes and saints who God raised up during those turbulent times. Two of those principals we celebrate this week in Saint Catherine of Siena and Pope Saint Pius V. Throughout the history of Holy Mother Church there have been well over thirty times that the College of Cardinals have selected a pope even while another sits on the throne. This, most times, has resulted in the former being the antipope. Such was the case in the early years of the fourteenth century when Pope John XXII was the rightful successor of Peter, but when the Bavarian Emperor Louis IV purportedly deposed John XXII in 1328 at Avignon the conclave elected Nicholas V as his successor. The trouble was he was not succeeding John since John was still validly supreme pontiff. Therefore Nicholas became an antipope. However, in time Nicholas realized the error and submitted to the true Pope in 1330. These times are considered some of the darkest times for the papacy - the seventy-year "Avignon Exile." It was only through fervent prayer that God chose to use a holy woman in a macho European world. That was, of course, St. Catherine who ultimately convinced the Pope to return the papacy to Rome. She did it through grace and prayer; not just her own but by organizing others to campaign in a prayer crusade for God's Will to be accomplished. So also did Pius V two centuries later. During the later part of the sixteenth century the Turkish navy was gaining an alarming foothold in the Mediterranean, terrorizing all Christians. Pius was extremely concerned and called on the powers of Heaven for help. Guided by the Holy Spirit he formed a holy league against the Turks, enlisting the aid of Spain and Venice and, in a last-ditch effort to stop the infidels from usurping Christianity, called on the faithful to pray the Holy Rosary. In an upset of major proportions, the holy league soundly defeated the superior Turks in the Gulf of Corinth at the Battle of Lepanto. It was a victory that would go down in Church annals as one of the greatest ever and Pius V credited it all to the power of the Rosary! To perpetuate this he established the Feast of the Our Lady of Victory on October 7, the day of the victory. His successor Pope Gregory XIII permanently changed the name to the Feast of the Holy Rosary.

     Prayer was the key and is so today. That is why the Blessed Mother of God constantly asks for our prayers in all her apparitions and messages; that is why the Church her Divine Son Jesus founded asks all the flock and shepherds to pray in unison; that is why the Rosary has been called the most powerful weapon we have in our spiritual arsenal. Our Lady said at Akita, Japan and in Amsterdam when she appeared once again as Our Lady of All Nations that the clergy was in turmoil with cardinals fighting cardinals, bishops opposing bishops, and that the only salvation was through prayer and by employing the laity - the infantry of the Church militant. Her words were "The clergy are too few. Mobilize the Laity!" Just as Pius V mobilized the holy league made up of lay warriors willing to do whatever it took for victory against insurmountable odds, so also John Paul II, along with Heavenly help from the Two Hearts, is calling the Church Militant to mount their artillery of prayer as the only defense against the threatening schism.

     This schism is ready to explode and satan is fueling the fuse. The evil one hates to hear John Paul II's pronouncements of praise for Mary and her Divine Son and he shudders to think of this Polish Pope leading the Church into the next millennium. He hates to hear of talk of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart and knows the consequences. He is in a serious state of self-denial for he knows his time is limited, but refuses to admit it. He will do anything he can to prevent the Holy Father from fulfilling this mission of leading the Church into the third millennium as well as this Pope, whose pontificate is dedicated to Our Lady through Totus Tuus and who many are expecting will declare the "Final Dogma" of Mary as Co-Redemptrix, Advocate and Mediatrix of all grace before Jubilee 2000. This is one of satan's greatest fears and so he is stirring up dissent among the faithful, preying on liberal fears and spreading the lies that such a declaration will do much damage to ecumenism and be a terrible divisive tool that will tear the Church apart. That is exactly what lucifer wants - to destroy the Church and he is clever. He thrives on turning one against another in distrust and the liberals and modernists, blinded by their own agendas, are buying into it, just as so many are buying into the heresy that Christ is not truly present in the Holy Eucharist but just a symbol. This is Protestant from the roots and needs to be chopped off there. The Catholic teaching, the infallible teaching has always been and ever will be that Jesus is present Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Blessed Eucharist confected from bread and wine at the Consecration during the Canon of the Mass. Yet so many liberal nuns, deacons and pastoral administrators are trying to take charge that they have believed this heresy and are either knowingly or unknowingly spreading it to the masses. No wonder the majority of faithful are confused, no wonder these nuns and deacons are confused. They have been taught this in the liberal scholastic circles and have accepted whatever their teachers told them at face value without questioning their sources because it is easier that way than knowing the true teachings of Holy Mother Church and challenging anything that diverts from the Dogmas, Doctrines and Traditions. So many of these teachers are of a liberal, radical bent that it is finally causing serious concern among bishops who are beginning to see the light, opting to send their candidates to schools who teach a more orthodox curriculum not just for the sake of the future of the Church, but, sadly, to avoid the confrontations with traditional, loyal Catholics who are besieging the bishops in many diocese about the aberrations that are going on right under their noses. Fortunately many bishops are hearing the message and even amending their own liberal ways, but there are still too many who cling to the modernist notion and the lie that John Paul II is taking the Church in the wrong direction. Blinded by their own agendas, they have forgotten that powerful weapon - the Rosary and the Holy Eucharist. In dioceses where the Bishops have intensified devotion to the Eucharist with adoration and encouraged recitation of the Rosary, vocations are beginning to flourish and the faithful are returning in droves. Not only that but donations and tithing is up. That has to wake up the bishops who too often put so much credence on the bottom line.

     But the bottom line is really not how much money is accrued, but how many souls are saved. Like the times of Catherine and Pius V, God gives extra strength to the laity as we shall see in our next installment when we shall cite a few more examples of how the Laity mobilized to fend off threats against Holy Mother Church.

To review all past installments of this on-going series, go to Archives beginning with the inaugural A CALL TO PEACE internet issue in January 1996. volume 7, no. 1.