Update August 24, 2018: This report has been updated with more information from Dr. Ward's talk. The entire talk is available in the video link below.
DUBLIN, August 23, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – An English family doctor has suggested that recent developments in the war against the family coming from the highest levels within the Catholic Church indicate the arrival of the final battle between God and Satan.
“Is this the final greatest historical confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, the Gospel and the anti-gospel,” said Dr Thomas Ward at a family conference this week running concurrent to the Vatican’s LGBT-affirming World Meeting of Families (WMOF) in Dublin, Ireland.
“Frankly, are we at this moment seeing an intent at a Vatican revolution which would be a culmination and fulfillment of all three previous revolutions [French (1789), Communist (1848), and sexual (1968)]?” he added.
Ward looked for evidence of a current “Vatican revolution” against the family among examples of how top leaders within the Church, including Pope Francis and many cardinals, have essentially caved in on perennial Catholic teaching about “marriage, contraception, abortion, homosexualism, and parental rights.”
For examples, Ward noted that Francis has spoken of the divorces permitted by the Orthodox Church as “a second chance.” He noted that Father Maurizio Chiodi, now a member of the revamped Pontifical Academy for Life, cited Francis’ encyclical Amoris Laetitia in his claim that there exist “circumstances…that precisely for the sake of responsibility require contraception.” Ward emphasized that Francis, by his own admission, does not believe contraception, abortion, and marriage are “essentials” to a missionary style of proclamation and mentioned the pontiff’s praise of abortion activist Emma Bonino as “one of Italy’s forgotten greats.”
Bishops have even advocated limiting the size of families. Ward cited Bishop Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, who said that with “education” parents will have no more than two children. Meanwhile, Cardinals Daneels has voiced his approval of same-sex civil unions, saying that he thinks “it’s a positive development that states are free to open up civil marriage for gays if they want.” Finally, Pope Francis stated in Amoris Laetitia that children should be given sexual education without referring to parents’ rights.
Because of the current confusion in the Church stemming from the influence of so-called “progressives,” Ward is worried that a new stage in the battle against the family has now been reached. He singled out Amoris Laetitia in particular as evidence of the “revolution” that appears to be happening in the Catholic Church.
Ward, president of the National Association of Catholic Families, detailed the history of the revolution against the family and God’s plan for human sexuality in an address he gave to the Conference of Catholic Families this week in Dublin. Well over 400 gathered in Dublin for the two-day conference (August 22-23) that was live streamed. It featured several leading voices of Catholic orthodoxy, including Cardinal Raymond Burke (video address), Fr. Thomas Weinandy, Dr. Robert Royal, Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg, LifeSiteNews' John-Henry Westen, John Smeaton, Edward Pentin, Bishop Athanasius Schneider (video address), and others.
In the written version of his speech, obtained by LifeSiteNews, Ward underscored that both Sister Lucia of Fatima and Saint John Paul II had implied, in their prophetic statements, that there would be a final battle over the Gospel and the family.
Ward believes the first major attack on the family was launched during the outbreak of the French Revolution when, in 1789, the notorious Marquis de Sade, writer of pornographic novels, was freed from the Bastille prison.
“[He] then became a revolutionary advocating the total uprooting of Christianity, claiming that blasphemy, theft, homicide, every type of sexual perversion, incest, rape and sodomy were revolutionary achievements which were only considered to be criminal deceptions by the [Catholic] Church,” Ward stated.
The next attack on the family began in 1848 with the writing of The Communist Manifesto. In their most famous work, Marx and Engels advocated that the state wrest responsibility for the education of children from parents.
“Communism was based on the abolition of the family and specifically targeted the abolition of the ‘hallowed’–their word, i.e. God-given–right of parents to be the primary educators of their children,” Ward wrote.
When Marx’s ideas were put into practice in Russia, the leaders of the 1917 October Revolution hoped to replace the natural family “with a great universal socialist family.” Divorce was legalized in 1918, abortion in 1920, and homosexual acts in 1922.
Some of Lenin’s pioneering sexual revolutionaries fell into disfavor under Stalin. One of the survivors, Georg Lukacs, fled to Germany where he helped to found the culturally revolutionary society known as the “Frankfurt School.” When it was closed down, its members joined the faculties of such leading American universities as Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and Berkeley.
“From these hub universities they successfully spread their ideology of world revolution using the vast commercial, media, and academic resources of the United States,” Ward explained.
These Cultural Marxists sought to transform American society by using the Freudian concept of “pansexualism” to undermine the specific roles of the mother and father and traditional relationships between men and women.
Ward wrote: “Faithful to Marx they strategically attacked the rights of parents when, as primary educators and protectors of their children they opposed the violation of innocence, modesty and chastity by school-based sexual and homosexual indoctrination.”
An emphasis on birth control is a particular concern of those who wish “the parental state” to replace biological parents as the guides of children.
“In the West the removal of parents rights as primary educators and protectors started with the provision of contraception for children and the indoctrination of contraception through sex education,” Ward said. “It has memetastasizedo include underage abortion, general medical services, school homosexual and gender theory indoctrination and, in Germany, even imprisonment of [homeschooling parents].”
“The removal of parents rights reached its final logical but evil culmination – to the nightmare of every parent- with the scandalous case of Alfie Evans.”
Alfie Evans was a brain-damaged infant whose parents fought England’s National Health Service through several courts to stop doctors from removing him from life supporting equipment. After judges ruled that it was not in Alfie’s best interests “to remain alive,” the child’s ventilator was removed and he died a few days later.
The next blow to the family came from the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and such thinkers popular to the era as Marquis-de-Sade-fan Herbert Marcuse, Saul Alinsky, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler—a new generation of Catholic churchmen.
For the rest of his talk, Ward compared and contrasted the statements of a number of Catholic bishops, including Pope Francis, regarding Catholic doctrines concerning marriage, contraception, abortion, population control, homosexuality, and parental rights. Because of the current confusion in the Church stemming from the influence of so-called “progressives,” Ward suggested that a new stage in the battle against the family has now been unleashed.
“Ladies and gentlemen because of Amoris Laetitia and of the deeply disturbing possibility of a revision of Humanae Vitae these questions must now be asked,” he wrote. “Has, in the field of sexuality, the teaching of the Church on the right of the parent [as[ the primary educator been revoked in this Pontificate? And, if so, who will protect millions of Catholic children from indoctrination by the wolves in the population and homosexualist lobbies and their powerful allies in the Vatican?”
“Where will our children hide?”
Ward encouraged Catholic families to strive for holiness.
“You are the frontline in this providential, decisive battle between the Lord and Satan,” said Ward. “The holiness of your marriages and your children's marriages and their families is being opposed in every way in this country.”
“But you're not alone,” he said “Your referendums have shown that in spite of huge international pressures and huge clerical betrayal that every servant, man and woman, in Ireland is with you in the fight. That's a lot.”
“Above all, the mother of God is with you,” he said. “Do not be afraid. The people who are your enemies in this country should be afraid. You are still here. You have a third of the population with you. You have the Queen of Heaven with you.”