Padraig let me offer another possibility. I think the strangle lhold of the media is to make us doubt and despair but I think it is very possible that we are about to throw off our shackles in the civil realm and see a real effort at purification and restoration of the American republic. That means exposing all the despicable corruption among the "elites" and it will encompass the Vatican and may very likely topple the institutional Church. So satan gets his way. Or so it appears. In the zeal of cleaning up the" Jesuit "mess the civil authorities will come after all Catholics. So the enemy wins again. Or so it would seem. But we are promised the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. It will end as God desires it to end. And it won't be the
W Way the enemy intended it to end. Now all of this is anybody's guess but this has been my sense for awhile. There will be a massive clean up but the latent antiCatholicism in America will probably try to "throw the baby out with the bath water." As Captain Reynaud said to Rick in Casablanca: "I hope you know this isnt going to be pleasant for either of us."
I hope so. At least with Catholic Prophecy we don't have to guess so much. I think I take Blessed Catherine Emmerich's as the best there is out there concerning the Church. Jesus told her that to no one else in all recorded history had he revealed so much of the future. She is stunning regarding the Church. Her exactitude. Learning from her; things are going to get very,very,very much worse before they get better. But they will get better. In fact better than ever.
All this being said, and it is all true, there is certainly something diabolic when ones words do not match ones actions. This is most concerning and yet we have many examples of unholy social justice movements, starting with the the Freemason's who of course hide behind their charity hospital and funny car parades and circuses and hardly no one, including those in the highest offices in the Church, make a mention of their evil, diabolical plans to crush the Church Jesus instituted. I don't know what a card carrying member looks like, but I know there have been and still are today many clerics in high positions who are beholding to this evil organization and one of the marks of who they are, comes from those who say one thing and do another, which is contrary to the truths of Christ's church.
Compared to most people on this forum, I am very old. I recall the days when all priests (that I ever came across anyway) taught exactly what the Church taught. If a priest said it was true, then it was true. You could rely on them. Confession was often painful because these guys 'pulled no punches' and hell was a reality that they would not be embarrassed to mention in the confessional or the pulpit. After the Council, thing went on pretty much as before for most of the sixties but, toward the end of the decade, I began to hear surprising things from priests and religious. I recall being astonished to hear a priest on TV say that, in the 'old days' he had regarded Protestants as heretics but now, he was happy to tell a Catholic who e.g. preferred a Methodist service to the Mass that he should go where he felt most comfortable and inspired! I recall reading an article by a nun 'counsellor' who spent most of her time assuring those suffering guilt that 'I wouldn't send anyone to hell, so certainly God wouldn't because He is more merciful than I am' and that Sunday Mass was only an obligation when the mood to attend took us there but not otherwise. Etc. etc. etc. In the fifties/early sixties most people would not consider receiving Communion unless they had been to confession on that day or the previous day but I became slowly aware that more and more people began to receive but the queues for confession grew shorter and shorter. It was not until the 80's that I began to suspect how bad things had become. A priest invited all of us attending a Mass to receive as 'I have never committed a mortal sin and I know that none of you ever have'. A very trustworthy priest told a friend that Masses exclusively for homosexual priests were being regularly celebrated in London and probably elsewhere in the UK and that the Dominicans in the US had begun to exclude heterosexuals who were not prepared to accept that homosexual acts were 'morally neutral'. Since then I have heard numerous heresies and heterodoxies in homilies along with just routine 'questionable teaching' and no mention of the realities of hell and purgatory for years. All I can say is, I am glad that I now know that an apparently substantial and influential segment of the hierarchy has little or no faith in Jesus or the traditional teachings of His Church and that a good number of them are shameless conspirators, obfuscators, liars, homosexuals who use their positions to gratify their lusts, embezzlers or those lacking in conscience about the 'widow's mite', using Church funds in order to live lives of lust, wealth and ease. Much good it will do them but we needed to know. It has also occurred to me that much as Pope Francis appears to despise the contemplative orders, we have in Benedict a 'contemplative pope' and many of the nastiest exposures (e.g. McCarrick) has come about since he took on this role. He might have been told to step back and pray to provide sufficient rope for the Gallen Group to 'hang' themselves.
I can identify Steve. I remember the Church when she was truly one holy Catholic and apostolic. And priests were intent on saving their souls and ours. I am so grateful I had those years. It has sustained me in this long pagan night we are enduring. Your thoughts on Benedict are very interesting. Very possible. Suffering and praying. All is being exposed. That's for sure and it needed to be done. Draining a gangrenous wound is not pleasant. Cauterizing it is even less pleasant but here we are where God has placed us.
What I find most peculiar is that Pope Francis was doing a teaching on the Our Father when he seems to have departed from his prepared text to denounce people who say lots of prayer or who spend all day in church and then say bad things, presumably gossip, about others and hate the world. I never had much interest in the Masons until all this confusion about what the Church teaches. It seems that there are two main strands of Masonry - the English one (which I think is a derivative of the Scottish rite and would be the one most prevalent in the US). European royalty has long been associated with the Masons, which probably explains why the Duke of Kent is grand master of the lodge in England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Edward,_Duke_of_Kent His wife and one of his younger sons converted to Catholicism. His brother is also a member: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Michael_of_Kent . He married a Catholic in a civil ceremony and the marriage was subsequently blessed by a Catholic priest with the consent of Pope John Paul 11. Their children were raised in the Anglican Church (probably to safeguard their very remote right of succession to the British throne). Continental Masonry is the other main type. According to Wikipedia, Continental Masonry is a breakaway or schismatic group more prevalent in Continental Europe, especially France. Traditionally, Masons were required to have a belief in some kind of God but the Continentals dropped that condition. The Continentals also have a few branches in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Freemasonry While the traditional brand of Masonry is said to be in decline, the Continentals appear to be growing. From what I can see, the difference between those two types of Masonry is that the traditional one would appeal to capitalists while the newer one would be more attractive to socialists on fiscal issues, with a lot of overlap on other issues, both being influenced by the so-called Enlightenment. While there are very likely to be Masons in the Vatican, a person wouldn't have to be a card carrying member to share or advance their beliefs. It's more likely that the vast majority of people who push the beliefs know little or nothing about the Masons. It's common enough nowadays to hear people, including Catholics and not excluding Catholic clergy, express beliefs more compatible with masonry than the Catholicism handed down to us. Here's an article from the Catholic Herald from July 2013: https://catholicherald.co.uk/commen...rk-in-the-vatican-im-not-sure-that-we-should/ There were certainly some links around the time of the Vatican Bank scandal. This Crisis Magazine article covers some of that although the main point of the article was debunking conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Pope John Paul 1: https://www.crisismagazine.com/2009/a-quiet-death-in-rome-was-pope-john-paul-i-murdered And here's something from 1Peter5 about the German Emperor sending word to the Vatican in 1918 about a Masonic plot to topple all European monarchs and "to destroy the Catholic Church and to bring Europe under the control of American Big Business": https://onepeterfive.com/secret-191...freemasonic-plot-to-destroy-throne-and-altar/
Many do not realize this, but as a 3rd degree member of the Knights of Columbus and and former Grand Knight of our local chapter, I am fully aware that Father McGiveny founded the KC's in 1882, to defend the Catholic Church against the errors of Freemasonry and now look at the poor KC's, as they have become another social justice movement in most places, when they should be front and center fighting against these errors in the Church and the world. There is no prophet that I know of that has provided more messages from our Blessed Mother on Freemasonry than Father Gobbi in his 'blue book" Our Lady Speaks to Her Beloved Priests, which one can purchase cheap on Amazon. There is a reason for this and it is because this is the tool that Satan and his minion puppets in Freemasonry are using for all the diabolical things we see first and foremost Sodomy in the Catholic clergy and secondly the attempted destruction of holy Catholic Church and then into all the structures in our World, starting with corruptness in all governments. If people understood this, that we have the blueprint for the Satan's end game laid out in Father Gobbi's blue book, then we will have the upper hand in knowing how to defeat it.
It is hard for a KOC Council to swim against the tide, but some are still attached to the Rosary. The relic heart tour of St. John Vianney was brought from Ars, France to the US to bolster the priesthood. I have had the privilege to venerate it in DC last month, and hope to venerate it again with my son, Grand Knight of his council, on January 11 in Westminster, MD. We need all the graces we can get for the priesthood. Fr. Cusick, in Maryland, on his twitter page, asked for parishioners to pray and fast on Fridays for their pastor. (and tell him... I haven't reached the point of telling him yet)
And then we have the example of St. John the Baptist, Matthew 12:34 "You brood of vipers, how can you say good things when you are evil? For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks." We have our years and years of personal discernment to draw the answer to the question, "should I say or do something?" For me, the last question I always ask myself is, how much do I wish to avoid the action I believe God is leading me to take? If my answer to myself is wishing I was invisible, sneaking out a side door, or hoping I could pay someone else to do the job, then I know God is calling me to a courageous act of love to defend Him when no one else will. He asked this of me recently and I did it. Now whether or not I made an impact on this Bishop, I do not know. This Bishop was angry with me and followed me out of the church but I reprimanded him with truth and charity and I believe God was at my side.
Well I suppose in this world you may never know how much good you have done. But in the World to come....
You are right, DJM, sometimes we just know when we have to say something and take a stand. And you did. Thank you.
Satan had his 100 years. The wreckage of the aftermath of his attempts to destroy the Church were sure to be horrible and they are. We are seeing it being exposed to the light of day and of truth. His attempt failed but it is no easy task to clean up such a mess. I pray that we not lose heart at the task given to us all.
I really don't know much about it, Beth, other than that Catholics have been forbidden to join it and until relatively recently (in Catholic terms) the Church was very explicit in saying that joining the Masons carried the penalty of excommunication. As far as I know, it's still forbidden but the language has changed from the explicit ban on Freemasonry to something like "secret organisations" incompatible with our Catholic faith. The more I read about it and its splinter groups, the more confusing it gets. For example, I read that Jesse Jackson was a member, didn't like his lodge and either joined a different lodge or started one of his own which better suited his activism against racial discrimination. I did know that the Masons were very involved in the French Revolution although they had a foot in both camps. They do seem to have a track record of being involved in civil unrest and having a foot in both camps, ensuring they will always be on the winning side. With the victors getting to write the history, they also get to glorify their wins and downplay or obscure anything that would cast them in a bad light. It's also possible that, as happens with many clubs or groups, people join, attend a few meetings and then drift away. In such cases, the record keepers would be able to supply proof of membership but wouldn't necessarily show evidence of inactivity unless it suited them. I get the impression that their ultimate aim is to replace the Catholic Church. In the old days they used more aggressive language like "destroy". That kind of language doesn't fit the image they like to present now, especially when recruiting Catholics, so they appear to have changed tactics. Opening hospitals and getting involved in helping the underprivileged is really copying what the main religions have been doing, and the Catholic Church set the standard for that centuries ago. Have a read of this article from the Catholic World Report from 2017: https://www.catholicworldreport.com...s-and-their-craft-what-catholics-should-know/ The comments are a real eye opener. The kind of all roads lead to God comments is what I meant about the Masons' agenda being pushed by people who aren't members and even by people who wouldn't be aware that there is such an organisation. Those comments are from Catholics who are also Masons but I've heard similar (without mentioning Freemasonry) from Catholics, including Catholic clergy. It's insidious. We Catholics must be careful of outside influences using divide and conquer tactics. I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that there are people on both sides of the current problems in the Church who have connections with masonry.
Great article. My best friend in 7th grade was in Job’s Daughters. I asked her about it and she said she couldn’t tell me, that it was a secret. I read some of the comments in that article and they “curled my hair”.
I. Think you have a talent for sizing up topics really well. You basically do our homework for all of us. You put a lot of time in researching your post. Saves me from having to do all of it. Lol I found this video from the Fatima Center. I thought it was worth the time to watch as the speaker was giving first hand knowledge of Freemasons...it’s interesting...and bothersome...
