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Rosary to the Interior: For the Purification of the Church

 

James Larson, the author of these writing, died on Monday July 6th of heart disease. His last conscious breath was on a First Saturday. The bible on his desk was opened to Jeremias and he was in the middle of an article about him and our present day when he died. The Article was not finished, but it is presented below. Please pray for his soul and for the purification of the church.

 

Image result for Our Lady of Sorrows

Hope and Delusion

In the Face of Impending Chastisement

 “Knowing this first, that in the last days there shall come deceitful scoffers, walking after their own lusts, saying: Where is his promise or his coming? For since the time that the fathers slept, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” (2 Pet. 3: 3-4).

“Son of man, behold the house of Israel, they that say: The vision [of Jerusalem’s destruction, and the ensuing Babylonian Captivity] that this man seeth, is for many days to come: and this man prophesieth of times afar off. Therefore say to them: Thus saith the Lord God: Not one word of mine shall be prolonged any more: the word that I shall speak shall be accomplished, saith the Lord God,” (Ezechiel 12: 27-28).

 

There is a time of what we might call God’s usual providential dealings with men – a time when God works in non-catastrophic ways by allowing the weeds to grow among the wheat until the time of harvest (Mt. 13: 24-30).  

But there is also a time of God’s catastrophic providence, when in God’s determination it becomes necessary to inflict extraordinary chastisements upon peoples and nations for their sins, and for purification and return to Him. Such was the case of Juda at the time of Jerusalem’s destruction and the carrying away of its people into captivity:  “Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord, thou art gone backward: and I will stretch out my hand against thee, and I will destroy thee: I am weary of entreating thee.” (Jer. 15: 6).  It would seem from Biblical evidence, and also from a great deal of historical evidence available down through the Christian centuries, that people are seldom able to “read the signs” which lead to such catastrophic chastisements. In the face of abundant evidence that such chastisement is imminent, the “usual” response of the vast majority of nations and peoples (Nineveh is certainly the exception) is to deny this imminence, and to bury themselves in the self-delusion that “all things will continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” Such delusion only leads to deeper self-deceit and multiplication of evils.

It is the hope and position of a great many traditional and orthodox American Catholics that what we are facing in the near future falls under God’s “usual providence”, and that we may justly entertain a strong confidence in some soon-to-be-accomplished restoration in this country. This hope largely focuses on two things: 1) the promise of Our Lady of Fatima concerning the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, and 2) the almost-messianic belief in President Donald Trump as some sort of modern-day King Cyrus of Persia, who ordered the return of the Jews to Jerusalem and the rebuilding the Temple. We will deal with each of these delusive “hopes” in turn.

The reader may be startled that we have included imminent hope in the Triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart under the category of a delusion. Our Lady’s eventual Triumph is in no way a delusion, but rather a certainty. What is almost certainly delusive lies not in our belief in Our Lady’s prophecy concerning Her Triumph and its eventual fulfillment, but rather in our confidence that it is in any way imminent without our first experiencing some sort of catastrophic chastisement. In order to understand the depths of such self-deceit, we need to begin by offering to the reader Our Lady’s own words which she spoke immediately after the three children experienced the horrifying vision of Hell on July 13, 1917:

You saw Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If people do what I ask, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end. But if people do not stop offending God, another, even worse, will begin in the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, know that it is the great sign that God gives you that he is going to punish the world by means of war, hunger and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father.
To prevent it, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of reparation on the first Saturdays. If people attend to my requests, Russian will be converted and the world will have peace. If not, Russian will spread its errors throughout the world, fomenting wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me; it will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world.”

The supreme prerequisite for receiving the extraordinary blessings of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is that people must stop offending God. It is absolutely integral to Our Lady’s message that if people do not do this voluntarily, then God will send catastrophic chastisements in order to hopefully cause them to return to His ways. The entire history of the 20th century (and now 20 years into the 21st) is largely comprised of catastrophic chastisements from God, and a corresponding massive failure of peoples to benefit from these chastisements. The 20th century saw more people killed in war than in all the wars in human history. Outside of war, Communism murdered approximately 150, 000,000 people. Since 1973, there have occurred over 60 million surgical and chemical abortions in the United States, and world-wide this figure is estimated at over one and one-half trillion. We must also consider that reliable estimates of the number of already-conceived children (possessing equal dignity and value in the eyes of God) murdered through artificial contraceptives is 10-18 times higher than those killed through surgical and chemical abortions. In this country alone, therefore, we might place the figure for this holocaust of “littlest ones” at 600 million to almost 1,100 million.

Sins of the flesh of course become crystallized in belief.  Any notion therefore that the American people have learned anything from God’s chastisements during the past 100 years is belied by the following statistics:

In the United States, according to polls (Pew and Gallup), 91% of its citizens believe in contraception, and this despite the fact that, as we have pointed out, 10 to 18 times as many unborn babies are murdered by contraception than surgical or chemical abortion. Somewhere around 80 % of all Americans approve of surgical or chemical abortion at least in some cases, 77% of Americans approve of the legality of divorce, 71% approve of the legality of sex outside of marriage, 64% approve of embryonic stem cell research, 63% approve of the legality of same sex relations, 52 % believe that doctor-assisted suicide should be legal, etc.

All of the above therefore offers profound testimony to the self-delusive nature of any hope we may entertain for deliverance from the chaos that now descends upon us, unless we first experience something which will bring us to our knees collectively. Only supernatural intervention can now save us, and such supernatural intervention demands a Nineveh-like response. And this requires that we all acknowledge that “We have sinned”. It is not sufficient that we spend our time pointing the finger at others, or exposing particular evil agendas either in the Church or the world. It is not now a time for petitions to the Pope for the Collegial Consecration or anything else. God requires not petitions, but rather purified hearts. All of the millions of signatures that were sent to various Popes for the Collegial Consecration over the past several decades simply flew in the face of the truth that what we now have before us in terms of both belief and morality makes what existed in the world of 1917 appear as a very faint foreshadowing of the evil that we now have upon us. To expect the Triumph of Our Lady to come without our first experiencing a severe chastisement which will bring us collectively to our knees is therefore tantamount to asking God to cover over and bless us in our sins. This may be Lutheranism.  It is not Catholicism.

This leads us to the second “delusive hope” which we mentioned at the beginning of this article:  the almost-messianic belief in President Donald Trump as some sort of modern “type”of King Cyrus of Persia, who ordered the return of the Jews to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple after the 70 years of the Babylonian captivity. In the Book of Isaiah, despite the fact that God designates Cyrus as “thou who hast not known me”, he is still termed as “my anointed – the ruler destined by God to return the Jews to their homeland. The “Biblical” comparison that is now being embraced by many traditional Catholics is that Donald Trump, like Cyrus, is a “servant of God” somehow pre-ordained to bring America “back to her Christian roots”.  The delusions present here are multiple. We shall begin with the Babylonian Captivity.

 

The Babylonian Captivity

The great prophet of the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying-away of the people of Juda into the Babylonian Captivity was Jeremias. The primary image of the life of the Jews which is offered as the reason for this necessary chastisement by God is adultery-prostitution-harlotry: “For on every high hill, and under every green tree, thou didst prostitute thyself.” This prostitution was first and foremost spiritual – the abandonment of obedience to, and worship of, the true God, and descent into idolatry and worship of the various pagan deities collectively given the name Baal, and also the pagan cults of Astarte and Moloch:: “As you have forsaken me, and served a strange god in your own land, so shall you serve strangers in a land that is not your own.” (Jer. 5:19)   

Such abandonment of the true God also descended into every form of perversion in the flesh: the sacrifice of sons and daughters on the altars of Baal, actual physical fornication and adultery (including sexual orgies as part of their pagan worship), persecution of the prophets sent by God, the thirst after riches and luxury, and every form of injustice, especially towards the poor, widows, and orphans.

The people of Juda are repeatedly given the choice of repenting from their sins and returning to worship of the one true God. If they did so, God would “repent” of the destruction and terrors which He intends to bring upon them: “Now therefore amend your ways and your doings, and hearken to the voice of the Lord your God: and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath spoken against you”. (Jer. 26:13); and, “If that nation against which I have spoken, shall repent of their evil, I also will repent of the evil that I have thought to do to them.” (Jer. 18:8).  Right up until the end, there was always the choice: to turn in repentance towards God and to seek salvation and peace in Him alone.

At the same time, there is the recognition by God that the hearts of this people had become so hardened in idolatry and sin, that this chastisement was inevitable. Thus, the Lord says to Jeremiah at one point: “Pray not for this people for their good. When they fast I will not hear their prayers: and if they offer holocausts and victims, I will not receive them: for I will consume them by the sword, and by famine, and by the pestilence.” (Jer. 14: 11-12).

Therefore, throughout the Book of Jeremiah, Nabuchodonosor (and the Babylonian empire of which he was King) is also portrayed as a “servant of God” (Jer. 25: 9, 27: 6, 43:10) who is to be sent for the chastisement and purification of the Jewish people. In the face of the overwhelming threat of King Nabuchodonosor and the Babylonian Empire, however, the Jews (including kings, false prophets, priests, and people) refused to do penance and return to the one true God of Israel, and instead turned to reliance on themselves and upon political solutions to solve their problems – notably, alliances with other pagan Empires such as Egypt and Assyria. Constantly, Jeremiah preached that any such political alliances, or any sort of resistance of the Jews to the coming exile and chastisement, would result in the utter destruction of the nation and of Jerusalem (by fire), the slaughter of innumerable men, women, and children, and the taking of the rest of the people in captivity to Babylon: “Thus saith the Lord: whosoever shall remain in this city, shall die by the sword, and by famine and pestilence: but he that shall go forth to the Chaldeans, shall live, and his life shall be safe, and he shall live.” (Jer. 38: 2).

Opposed to the true vision given to Jeremias by God in regard to the necessary chastisement of the Jewish people and the destruction of Jerusalem, was the “lying vision” of false prophets: In regard to these false prophets, we read from Jeremias 14: 15-16:

Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that prophesy in my name, whom I did not send, that say: Sword and famine shall not be in this land: By sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed. And the people to whom they prophesy, shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword, and there shall be none to bury them: they and their wives, their sons and their daughters, and I will pour out their own wickedness upon them.”

We do well to meditate upon what factors could possibly make such false prophets (and all who would believe in their “lying vision” – kings, priests and people) believe that, in the face of all that may now seem so obvious to us when we consider their idolatries and sins, things could possibly “continue as they were from the beginning of creation”. Encapsulated in a simple sentence, it is because they believed they were the chosen people of God. They possessed the Temple, they possessed the Promised Land, they possessed the exterior form of worship which God had prescribed for them, they possessed the Holy Scriptures and the Prophets, and they possessed all of God’s Promises.

But they had blinded themselves to the one thing that made all these gifts and promises possible. Such could only be truly possessed in the depths of their souls if God was in possession of their undivided hearts. In fact, the opposite was the case. Theirs was the state of soul condemned as total hypocrisy by Jesus when He quoted the words of Isaiah: “This people honoureth me with their lips: but their heart is far from me.” In a similar vein, God pronounced the following sentence upon the Jews through Jeremias: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord”. Exteriorly we may possess innumerable gifts of God, while our hearts lay “under every green tree” (Jer. 3:6) in prostitution to the many other “Loves” which the world offers us in its manifold deceits. The concept of “heart” (or “hearts”) as the meeting place which determines whether man lives in friendship with God, or on the other hand in duplicity and enmity with God, occurs 62 times in the Book of Jeremias. God, while He certainly is patient and merciful, only tolerates to a certain point. As the Lord said to Jeremias, “Therefore do not thou pray for this people, nor take to thee praise and supplication for them: and do not withstand me: for I will not hear thee.” (Jer. 7; 16). A terrible passage indeed for those who claim to worship a God for whom mercy always trumps justice.

 

The Return

The prophecies of Jeremias are not, however, all of chastisement, destruction, and death. They are also a promise of what would be the fruit of this chastisement for those who would accept it, learn from it, repent of their sins, and return to God with all their heart:

For thus saith the Lord: When the seventy years shall begin to be accomplished in Babylon, I will visit you: and I will perform my good word in your favour, to bring you again to this place [Jerusalem]. For I know the thoughts I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of affliction, to you an end and patience.

“And you shall call upon me, and you shall go: and you shall pray to me, and I will hear you. You shall seek me, and shall find me: when you shall seek me with all your heart.” (Jer. 29: 10-13).

Possibly the most succinct expression of  the method of God’s working in regard to the Babylonian Captivity and its role in the purification of the Jews is to be found in Jer. 31: 9: They shall come with weeping: and I will bring them back in mercy”. It is a cyclic dynamic, verified many times throughout human history. God’s gifts are received and lived with some integrity for a certain amount of time, and then decay, duplicity, and abandonment of Him spirals both individuals and nations downwards into idolatry and sin. Severe chastisement then follows: “”For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth; and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” (Heb. 12:6).

The purifying results of the Babylonian captivity are best seen in the prophetic Book of the prophet Baruch. Baruch was Jeremias’ disciple and personal secretary who, unlike his master, went into the Babylonian Captivity. Five years into that captivity he wrote his prophetic book to be read to all the Jews “who came to hear” (Bar. 1:3) these words from the lips of God’s prophet in Babylon, and then sent it to the Jews remaining in Juda. It is vivid testimony to the effects of this catastrophic chastisement upon the hearts of the captives.  The following passages encapsulate the change which had taken place in the hearts of those who would hear:

“We have sinned, we have done wickedly, we have acted unjustly, O Lord our God, against all thy justices. Let thy wrath be turned away from us: for we are left a few among the nations where thou hast scattered us. Hear, O Lord, our prayers, and our petitions, and deliver us for thy own sake: and grant that we may find favour in the sight of them that have led us away: That all the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thy name is called upon Israel, and upon his posterity. Look down upon us, O Lord, from thy holy house, and incline thy ear, and hear us. Open thy eyes, and behold: for the dead that are in hell, whose spirit is taken away from their bowels, shall not give glory and justice to the Lord: But the soul that is sorrowful for the greatness of evil she hath done, and goeth bowed down, and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul giveth glory and justice to thee the Lord.”  

“The hungry soul giveth glory and justice to thee the Lord.” It is this “hunger” which was accomplished through God’s severe chastisement. As succinctly stated by God’s prophet: “For it was your mind to go astray from God; so when you return again you shall seek him ten times as much.” (Bar. 4: 28).

We may await the severe scourging of God (such as the Babylonian Captivity), or we may pay heed to the words of St. James:

“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners: and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into sorrow. Be humbled in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.” (James 4: 8-10).

Such is the hunger – the seeking of God with all our heart – which is the only means of our now avoiding God’s extreme chastisement upon us. And this, in turn, is all rooted upon upon the act of spiritual integrity which cries out “We have sinned” rather than just “They have sinned”.

It is extraordinarily important to realize that we always have the choice. We may voluntarily take upon ourselves such necessary purification. We thus participate in what might be considered God’s “usual” providential dealings with fallen man through constant efforts at penance and conversion.  Or we may delay, descend deeper into self-delusion and duplicity, and await catastrophic chastisement by God.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: Where do we now stand?

 

Idolatry Transformed

We tend to look back at the Jews and their idolatries at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Captivity, and feel rather secure in the knowledge that we do not do such things. We do not see idols of stone and wood (with the exception of course of the “Pachamama”) dotting our landscapes or worshipped in our churches. We do not see children offered in bloody sacrifice upon their altars. The story of the Jews and their destruction and captivity is therefore seen as an interesting Bible story – maybe with some metaphorical significance in regard to our own contemporary spiritual lives – but basically something which we as Christians have risen above.  If we think in such a manner, however, we fail to understand the real meaning and depths of the concept of “idolatry”.

For thousands of years, idolatry was largely externalized in the form of idols of stone, wood, and precious metals. Over time, however, and especially during what we call the “Christian dispensation, idolatry has been internalized. It is now the worship of ourselves – our minds, our ideas, our own wills, our own “loves” at the expense of God’s Truth and Will.

There is possibly no more graphic portrayal of this transition from external idolatry to internal idolatry than that which occurs in the visions of Blessed Catherine Anne Emmerich. In this respect, she relates to us two visions.

The first vision concerned the conversion of the Pantheon in Rome into the Catholic Church called Sancta Maria ad Martyres  ( or popularly called Santa Maria Rotunda) by Pope Boniface IV on May 13, 609 A.D.  This of course entailed the cleansing of the building of the “pantheon” of idols [“exterior” idols of wood, stone, precious metals, etc.] which had been the focus of pagan worship in the past. According to Blessed Catherine, “It seemed as if all the idols that ever existed were gathered together there in every conceivable posture.” She then states that she saw “the consecration of the temple, at which ceremony the holy martyrs assisted with Mary at their head”, that the altar was against the wall”, and that “more than thirty wagon-loads of sacred relics were brought into the church”.

Blessed Catherine Emmerich’s second vision concerns what appears to be a “dark” church in the future in which there was no altar against the wall, “but only benches, and in the middle of it something like a pulpit”. Further:

“They had preaching and singing, but nothing else, and only very few attended it. And lo, a most singular sight! Each member of the congregation drew an idol from his breast [an “interior” idol] set it up before him, and prayed to it. It was as if each man drew forth his secret thoughts or passions under the appearance of a dark cloud, which, once outside, took some definite form….The most singular part of it was that the idols filled the place; the church, although the worshippers were so few, was crowded with idols. Then the service was over, everyone’s god re-entered into his breast. The whole church was draped in black, and all that took place in it was shrouded in gloom.”

After having seen these two visions, Blessed Catherine offers the following:

“It was also shown me that those pagans [who had constructed and worshipped physical idols in the first vision] humbly adored gods other than themselves, and that they would have been willing to admit in all simplicity the only God, the Most Holy Trinity. Their worship was preferable to that of those who adore themselves in a thousand idols to the total exclusion of Our Lord. The picture was favorable to the early ages, for in them idolatry was on the decrease, while in our days it is just the contrary.”

It might at first seem extraordinary that Blessed Catherine equates the worship of what we call “pagan idols” with a certain humility in comparison with the interior idols of her second vision. But it begins to make sense when we consider that in such worship of exterior idols there is at least the acknowledgement that the ultimate source of our blessings and curses lies outside of ourselves. Such is not true with interior idolatry which increasingly identifies power and authority over our lives as residing within. The latter, in fact, is the ultimate accomplishment of the temptation which culminated in original sin: “You shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil [independently of God].” Adam’s Fall to original sin resulted in all the faculties of his human nature becoming disordered. The process of complete penetration of this fall into disorder within the human mind and heart is accomplished through the complete internalization of idolatry. Man indeed does have the power to tear down idols of stone and wood. Only God possesses the power and grace to free man from the interior idols of mind and heart.

The exterior idolatry practiced by the Jews at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Captivity was obvious. The Jew who physically knelt before, and offered sacrifices to Baal, Astarte, or Moloch was easily identified.  On the other hand, the person who, while exteriorly worshipping in a Catholic manner, is in reality spiritually and interiorly kneeling before the idols of his own concoction, is not so easily identifiable either by himself or others.  Interestingly enough, Blessed Catherine says in the above passage that such interior idolatry is done “to the total exclusion of Our Lord”. We must understand, however, that her vision occurs in what is at least nominally a Catholic Church, and that such interior idolatry can be fully present where there is exterior, but duplicitous, worship of Our Lord. In other words, “total exclusion of Our Lord” can also be a solely interior reality in which even the worshipper himself is deceived by means of his own duplicity and consequent self-deceit into believing otherwise. Consequently, it is fully possible for us to interiorly mirror (in a much more profound and spiritual way) the exterior idolatry of the Jews at the time of the Babylonian Captivity, who rested in the demonic pride of possessing the Temple and the traditional worship established by God, while at the same time attempting to syncretize the true worship of God with the worship of pagan idols.

This interior idolatry now seems to be quite clearly coming to fulfillment in this country in the the identification and syncretization of the theological virtue of Hope on the part of traditional and conservative Catholics with Americanism and the Presidency of Donald Trump.

 

 

The Idolatry of Americanism

We do well to begin with the now common delusion among traditional Catholics which sees in Donald Trump a modern-day type of King Cyrus of Persia, who ordered the return of the Jews to Jerusalem after the 70 year Babylonian Captivity and the rebuilding of the Temple. According to such people: just as King Cyrus returned the Jews to Jerusalem, and consequently to  the true worship of God under the Old Testament Covenant , so President Trump is destined to return America to its true Christian roots.

The grievous errors involved with this Biblical analogy are twofold.

First, King Cyrus did not return the Jews to the true worship of God. He truly was the “anointed one” under God’s providence to return them to Jerusalem and to order the rebuilding of the Temple. But the man who was truly the “servant of God” in accomplishing that interior purification of hearts absolutely necessary for the Jews to return to their “roots” of true worship of God was King Nabuchodonosor. In the book of Jeremias he is in fact three times (Jer. 25: 9, 27: 6, 43:10) called “servant of God” for this purpose.

Unlike the Jews, who had been suffering purification in Babylonia for 70 years at the time of Cyrus, and had been purified through the Babylonian Captivity and the actions of King Nabuchodonosor, we are still, in our own nation, living in the midst of all the idolatries and sins of our present “post” and anti-Christian world. If Donald Trump were to be a “servant of God” for our purification he would therefore have to be seen as an agent of such purification and severe chastisement. He would, in other words, have to be seen in the likeness of King Nabuchodonosor rather than King Cyrus. Those who are now publicly claiming President Trump as some sort of “servant of God” for this country’s return to God might consider that they are performing a “mirror” function in imitation of those false prophets who did something similar in regard to the Jews at the time of the Babylonian Captivity, and to whom God proclaims: “And the people to whom they prophesy, shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword, and there shall be none to bury them: they and their wives, and their sons and their daughters, and I will pour out their own wickedness upon them. And thou shalt speak this word to them: Let my eyes shed down tears night and day, and let them not cease, because the virgin daughter of my people is afflicted with a great affliction, with an exceeding grievous evil.”

The second grievous error involved in this analogy consists in the belief that the United States was ever really founded or established in “Christian roots”. 

In our article Democracy and the Spirit of Antichrist, we explored extensively the historic roots of modern democracy(dating back especially to the 13th and 14 the centuries) which culminated in the “American experiment” and the present apostasy in both the Church and the world. We strongly recommend reading this article for help in liberating minds and hearts from the enormously destructive “interior” idolatry stemming from democracy and its manifold errors. (Article ended here, on the next page was the quote:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Set thee up a watchtower, make to thee bitterness: direct thy heart into the right way, wherein thou hast walked: return, O virgin of Israel, return to these thy cities. How long wilt thou be dissolute in deliciousness, O wandering daughter for the Lord hath created a new thing upon the earth: A WOMAN SHALL COMPASS A MAN.” (Jer. 31: 21-22).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Archbishop Viganò, Donald Trump

And the Americanist Delusion of Traditional Catholics

 

In his June 7, 2020 open letter to President Donald Trump, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò offers his analysis of the present crisis. In the Archbishop’s own words:

“In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides that I would call Biblical: the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of light constitute the most conspicuous part of humanity [and therefore, we may presume, a very significant majority], while the children of darkness represent an absolute minority. And yet the former are the object of a sort of discrimination which places them in a situation of moral inferiority with respect to their adversaries, who often hold strategic positions in government, in politics, in the economy and in the media. In an apparently inexplicable way, the good are held hostage by the wicked and by those who help them either out of self-interest or fearfulness.

“These two sides, which have a Biblical nature, follow the clear separation between the offspring of the Woman and the offspring of the Serpent. On the one hand there are those who, although they have a thousand defects and weaknesses, are motivated by the desire to do good, to be honest, to raise a family, to engage in work, to give prosperity to their homeland, to help the needy, and, in obedience to the Law of God, to merit the Kingdom of Heaven. On the other hand, there are those who serve themselves, who do not hold any moral principles, who want to demolish the family and the nation, exploit workers to make themselves unduly wealthy, foment internal divisions and wars, and accumulate power and money: for them the fallacious illusion of temporal well-being will one day – if they do not repent – yield to the terrible fate that awaits them, far from God, in eternal damnation.” [all bold emphasis ours].

In accordance with the Archbishop’s view of reality, the children of light (who are “in the obedience of God”) are the majority in this country. Later in this letter, he states: “The American people are mature and have now understood how much the mainstream media does not want to spread the truth but seeks to silence and distort it, spreading the lie that is useful for the purpose of their masters. However, it is important that the good – who are the majority – wake up from their sluggishness and do not accept being deceived by a minority of dishonest people with unknowable purposes.  

It is the absolute minority (the “deep state”, “invisible enemy”), according to Archbishop Viganò’s further analysis, who,  being the children of darkness, are responsible for conspiring against this good majority through the coronavirus “pandemic” and the violence perpetrated in cities in response to the George Floyd murder. They have done so through the power of international finance, the liberal media, liberal politicians, the “social engineers’ promoting a New World Order, etc.

The problem in Archbishop Viganò’s analysis does not lie in his depiction of what is indeed a reality in regard to the central figures and forces of Antichrist now promoting social engineering in service to the formation of a New World Order at the expense of the destruction of Christian Civilization and the Catholic Church. The problem lies in his absolutely erroneous – and seemingly profoundly ignorant – depiction of the majority of American who he claims are children of light in obedience to God, and therefore to be considered the offspring of Our Lady.

Let us look at this “most conspicuous” majority:

In the United States, according to polls (Pew and Gallup), 91% of its citizens believe in contraception, and this despite the fact that an estimated 10 to 18 times as many unborn babies are murdered by contraception than surgical abortion. Somewhere around 80 % of all Americans approve of abortion at least in some cases, 77% of Americans approve of the legality of divorce, 71% approve of the legality of sex outside of marriage, 64% approve of embryonic stem cell research, 63% approve of the legality of same sex relations, 52 % believe that doctor-assisted suicide should be legal, etc.

The phrase children of light can only refer to those who truly follow Christ, are living in sanctifying grace, and therefore in the state of friendship with God. In light of the above statistics, Archbishop Vigano’s depiction of the majority of Americans as children of light is therefore not only inexplicable, but absurd. Rather, the vast majority are believing and/or living in service to the Serpent. Certainly, we may rightly concur in the existence of a deep state minority consciously and calculatingly bent upon our enslavement; but it amounts to complete blindness to not see that the vast majority of Americans are living in rejection of the obedience of God, and are therefore in deep moral cooperation with the Enemy towards their own future enslavement, and a deserved chastisement by God. We should rather compare them to the vast majority of the Jews living at the time of the Babylon Captivity. The Book of Jeremiah would be much more worthy of reading and contemplation at this time in American history than Archbishop Viganò’s letter.

In his letter, Archbishop Viganò declares to President Trump, “I dare to believe that both of us are on the same side in this battle, albeit with different weapons”. Donald Trump is of course pro-contraception (pro-murder), pro surgical abortion in at least some cases, pro-divorce, supportive of homosexuality and the legality of “gay marriage”, etc. He has done some things to support the pro-life cause and the family, but there is nothing to indicate that he is anywhere near being integrally pro-life, pro-family, or pro-Catholic in his moral beliefs. There is of course, no way of determining how calculated or cynical in terms of political “opportunism” is his courting of the Catholic and evangelical vote on such issues. In either case, any notion that the current battle with the forces of antichrist can be engaged in effectively, and defeated, by such poisoned conservativism is pure fantasy. The same may be said of the promotion of the program “Make America Great Again”. America never was great, except from the standpoint of its unending growth in pursuit of the things of this world, and consequent denial of that poverty of spirit towards all the things of this world which is integral to the Gospel. The American Constitution, with its alleged establishment of all power of government being rooted in the people, and its explicit denial of the Kingship of Christ in the First Amendment, is itself a recipe for what we now have with us (see our article The World Cometh: Democracy and the Spirit of Antichrist).

The question must be asked as to how Archbishop Viganò could be so wrong and so lacking in spiritual depth of discernment in regard to what actually comprises light versus darkness in respect to the current situation and conflict. The answer almost certainly lies in the overwhelming human tendency, rooted in original sin, which always divides the world into “We” and “Them”. It is the sin of Pharisees of all ages. It now appears to be that sin which is most seductive towards those who still seek to hold on to the traditional Catholic Faith, especially if that Faith is in any way identified with “Americanism” (and this identification has existed from this country’s founding). And now Archbishop Viganò has appeared to yoke himself to such American Traditional Catholicism and its blindness.

Having demolished the myth concerning the virtuosity and innocence of the vast majority of American people in the face of the “Enemy”, we yet need to speak of ourselves. What about those of us who possess the traditional Catholic Faith, are not in mortal sin (as far as we know), and can firmly answer “No!” to all of the questions asked in the polls mentioned above?  Are we not innocent? Are we not worthy of claiming to be children of light in relation to all the rest of Americans?

In order to answer this question, we need to look at what has led the American people in their majority (including the majority of Catholics) into its present apostasy from Christ, and whether we also are participants in this ongoing and accelerating process.

We must first realize that possession of sanctifying grace (which is what constitutes being a child of the light) is something that is lost only through mortal sin (including rejection of the Faith), and that this loss is instantaneous. There is no living in half- friendship with God, no gradualness in loss of sanctifying grace.

But there certainly can be a profound decrease of the penetration of this grace into our souls through failure to live the Christian virtues and beatitudes, and the consequent failure to bear fruit in the Holy Spirit. In other words, there can indeed be a quite long and extended process, both in individuals and nations as a whole, leading up to such loss. And during this extended process, there can be many individuals who indeed still justly claim to possess the Faith and who even might still be considered to be free from mortal sin (and therefore in possession of sanctifying grace), but who through their increasing “friendship with the world” are on that rapidly descending slope by which they are not only participants in the process that leads to general apostasy, but have settled into that seductive path of self-deception which will lead them eventually to full companionship with the children of darkness.

Is it any wonder therefore that our prayers against the enemy, who we view almost exclusively as existing “out there”, seem to produce so little fruit?

In this light, we cannot fail to mention Archbishop Viganò’s appeal to President Trump to join in prayer “to protect you, the United States, and all of humanity from this enormous attack of the Enemy”.  And he adds, “Before the power of prayer, the deceptions of the children of darkness will collapse, their plots will be revealed, their betrayal will be shown, their frightening power will end in nothing, brought to light and exposed for what it is: an infernal deception.”

Such words do indeed seem appealing. They may also be seen as profoundly deceptive. As scripture says, “Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner” (Ecclus. 15:9).  Nor is prayer effective in the mouth of those who seek friendship of God in adultery with friendship with this world:

You ask and receive not; because you ask amiss: that you may consume it on your concupiscences. Adulterers, know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God?” (James 4: 3-4).

We are in a profound state of emergency. Our hope is not to be found in lying down on the peripheries of God’s infinite waters of grace, while occasionally lapping a drink which sustains our faith and our lives for the moment. Our hope, and our faith, will not ultimately survive lying in the muck of believing we can be a friend of this world – especially the American dream of prosperity and affluence – while at the same time being a friend of God. Nor will our hope achieve any fulfillment in the “Make America Great Again” of Donald Trump. And our prayers will not be answered if they are offered primarily against the deep state or the invisible enemy without. They will only be answered in the desert of “We have sinned” rather than “They have sinned”. Here lies the ocean of God’s grace which is Mary, who awaits our immersion in Her Immaculate Heart for the sake of our own purification and the purification of the whole Church. It is only this which the Enemy truly fears.

The entirety of the effort which we have called The Rosary to the Interior: For the Purification of the Church is established upon an attempt to infuse within the hearts and minds of Catholics the self- knowledge which will enable them to see the truth of what we have offered above, and to propose the course of action which must be taken if we are to survive. This is very succinctly laid out in our Original Proposal. We ask all reader to meditate upon this very carefully, and to take action upon it. The primary Feast proposed for its implementation is the Feast of the Purification and Presentation on February 2nd. For reasons spelled out in our proposal, we believe it singularly appropriate. Quite frankly, however, we have no idea whether the” Enemy Without” will not have again succeeded in depriving us of our churches – places of united worship – by that date. We therefore implore people to begin to implement this now at every opportunity within their churches and wherever else possible. If we do not enter our collective desert now in profound unified surrender to the purifying fires of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, we may well end up in isolated aloneness in the wilderness of the world by next February 2nd.

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Note:  None of the above is intended as a personal attack upon Archbishop Viganò or anyone else. Archbishop Viganò’s letter has only been employed as a singularly appropriate opportunity to expose the superficiality and lack of self-knowledge which characterizes the “operation of error” (2Thess. 2: 10) which is now descending upon us all.

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Ask your pastor to Implement this Event!

For those who would like to join in this missionary effort, please refer to  our sample letter which you can send to any priests whom you feel might be interested in promoting this initiative.  Since this is a group effort, you may simply assume and sign the letter as your own.

Alternatively, simply find an open Catholic Church in which to pray the Rosary for this intention, either with a group or alone.

We invite the whole world to join us!

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