Carlos Caso-Rosendi
This article was previously published by The Lepanto Institute
When contemplating the trouble and confusion spreading throughout the Church today, many good Catholics wonder what is going on. The origin of this battle harks back to the Garden of Eden but we don’t have to retrace it from its very origin. In our age, the troubles began in earnest after the Second Vatican Council. And they worsened after many bishops and priests decided to ignore the encyclical Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI. Modernism was in the ascent in the Church regardless of the warnings sounded off by many Popes and saintly scholars of the previous centuries.
The true objective of the Modernists was the destruction of the Church. Some of them were fooled into believing that they were merely updating the old edifice to make it better. They were used as tools in a destructive project.
The first step of that operation was to reform the Church. What the Reformers of the 16th century could not do from the outside, the Modernists intended to accomplish working from the inside. Once infiltrated they gradually climbed to the top of the hierarchy. In the early 20th century they allied with Communists and Homosexualists and initiated the final attack.
To achieve their goal of changing the Catholic faith they needed to alter the practice of the faith, the Catholic religion. They set up to convince the Catholic faithful to abandon those things that the Reformers of the 16th century had abandoned, and then some. The first changes were almost timid, minimal. Allowing ladies to wear pants to Mass was one of the early moves. It caused a mild stir but it was accepted. Some religious orders changed their garb; others were allowed to live outside convents and monasteries. There were alterations in the Catholic calendar, some prayers, etc. Those minor modifications gradually prepared the faithful for the changes in the Holy Mass that followed. The Novus Ordo Liturgy was born and it was quickly imposed universally. The Modernists were shaping the peripheries of the Catholic religion at first, but eventually they were ready to go after some important things: the Mass, the moral precepts, and the principles underlying it all.
The new morality of the Modernists is no morality at all. It was injected first in the minds of seminarians and among those faithful who were already debilitated by decades of bland homilies, bad catechesis, and the acceptance of the sexual mores that flooded the western world after 1968. Their insidious work progressed until we arrived at the decisive hour. The infiltration in the hierarchy is now almost complete.
The dark flowers of Modernism are in full bloom. If it were not for the heavy homosexual component that got out of control, the Modernist would have completed the demolition of the Catholic Church in a matter of a few more decades. They reached the top of the hill only to find out they were surrounded. The disclosures of Monsignor Viganò came first. The prosecution of thousands of cases of homosexual abuse of minors and others are now threatening the Modernist project from all sides. These are momentous times.
“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination causing desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then let those in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.” Matthew 24:15-21
Are we living in the times described by Jesus in his “Little Apocalypse” registered in Matthew 24-25? I do not know for certain, but if this is not the time, it surely looks like the final dress rehearsal. Jesus calls us to use our understanding. Remember the words of the prophet Daniel himself: “Many shall be chosen, and purified, and shall be tried as fire: and the wicked shall deal wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand, but the learned shall understand.” (Daniel 12:10) The difference between wicked and faithful resides in the understanding. Jesus repeats the words of Daniel for good reason: “let the reader understand” means that we have to discern the situation carefully, knowing that the wicked will be blind to their impending doom. While they remain in darkness we have to be wise to seek refuge and “flee to the mountains.”
The Fathers of the Church believed the mountains Jesus is referring to, are the eternal truths we have learned from Christ. That makes a lot of sense. In a time of apostasy and heresy, it is in our best interest to seek refuge in the familiar truths, the everlasting doctrine of the Church. We have a treasure of twenty centuries of teachings. That is available to most people at the click of a button in these technological times. Whatever contradicts that treasure needs to be compared carefully with what we know is true.
The battle may extend for years. Families will be formed, children will be born, and sinners may repent and seek instruction in the ways of God. While the world rages, our duty is to live and teach the truth we have received. Mind the counsel of Christ in Matthew 24:45-51…
“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Do your best to be counted among the blessed.
Carlos Caso-Rosendi 