February 4, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The situation in the Church today is so severe that five Cardinals and two of the most prominent bishops in the world have spoken about these as the end times.
It is likely one of the most underreported stories of 2019 (and I bet even most of you missed it since it was so close to Christmas) but Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal representative to the USA who blew the whistle on Pope Francis’ knowledge of the abuses of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, gave an enormously important summary of the Francis papacy that must be heard.
I was blessed to spend some time speaking with Archbishop Viganò while I was in Munich, Germany last month for the Acies Ordinata. He remains in good health and in good spirits. He knows full well that the battle is the Lord’s and he said how much he appreciates all the prayers said for him by countless Catholics who pray for him every day.
Just before Christmas, Archbishop Viganò released another testimony. Never before have I seen from Archbishop Viganò this type of forthrightness. In his statement, he said the following:
The tragic story of this failed pontificate advances with a pressing succession of twists and turns. Not a day passes: from the most exalted throne, the Supreme Pontiff proceeds to dismantle the See of Peter, using and abusing its supreme authority, not to confess but to deny; not to confirm but to mislead; not to unite but to divide; not to build but to demolish.
Material heresies, formal heresies, idolatry, superficiality of every kind: the Supreme Pontiff Bergoglio never ceases stubbornly to humiliate the highest authority of the Church. His action seeks to violate the Sacred Deposit of Faith and to disfigure the Catholic Face of the Bride of Christ by word and action, through duplicity and lies, through those theatrical gestures-of-his that flaunt spontaneity but are meticulously conceived and planned, and through which he exalts himself in a continuous narcissistic self-celebration, while the figure of the Roman Pontiff is humiliated and the Sweet Christ on earth is obscured.
“For more than six years now we have been poisoned by a false magisterium,” he added.
But Archbishop Viganò points out that modernism has been affecting the church since at least the Second Vatican Council:
Over these last decades, the Mystical Body has been slowly drained of its lifeblood through unstoppable bleeding: the Sacred Deposit of Faith has gradually been squandered, dogmas denatured, worship secularized and gradually profaned, morality sabotaged, the priesthood vilified, the Eucharistic Sacrifice protestantized and transformed into a convivial Banquet…
Now the Church is lifeless, covered with metastases and devastated. The people of God are groping, illiterate and robbed of their Faith, in the darkness of chaos and division. In these last decades, the enemies of God have progressively made scorched earth of two thousand years of Tradition. With unprecedented acceleration, thanks to the subversive drive of this pontificate, supported by the powerful Jesuit apparatus, a deadly coup de grace [death blow] is being delivered to the Church.
With Pope Bergoglio — as with all modernists — it is impossible to seek clarity, since the distinctive mark of the modernist heresy is dissimulation. Masters of error and experts in the art of deception, “they strive to make what is ambiguous universally accepted, presenting it from its harmless side which will serve as a passport to introduce the toxic side that was initially kept hidden.” (Fr. Matteo Liberatore SJ). And so the lie, obstinately and obsessively repeated, ends up becoming “true” and accepted by the majority.
The result of this abuse is what we now have before our eyes: a Catholic Church that is no longer Catholic; a container emptied of its authentic content and filled with borrowed goods.
The advent of the Antichrist is inevitable; it is part of the epilogue of the History of Salvation. But we know that it is the prerequisite for the universal triumph of Christ and his glorious Bride.
Those of us who have not let ourselves be deceived by these enemies of the Church enfeoffed in the ecclesial Body, must unite and together face off against the Evil One, who is long defeated yet still able to harm and cause the eternal perdition of multitudes of souls, but whose head the Blessed Virgin, our Leader, will definitively crush.
He concluded his reflection, which you can read in full by clicking here, by saying that we are living in the “Gethsemane of the end times.”
But it is not only Archbishop Viganò who sees these times as apocalyptic.
Another bishop whose voice God has raised in these perilous times to international recognition is Kazakhstan Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
In a recent interview with the Remnant’s Michael Matt, aired in November, His Excellency makes the same comparison to the current time of calamity in the Church to Christ’s passion. His Excellency spoke in away that reminds one of what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, most especially when it notes that the Church will “enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.”
The Catechism also states that the kingdom will be fulfilled “not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.”
In terms of Cardinals in the Church who are speaking out on this subject, we turn first to His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke. In July 2017 at the Church Teaches Forum in Kentucky, Burke said that the “confusion, division, and error” within the Church are coming from shepherds themselves, even at the highest levels.
His Eminence said that this indicates that we “may be” in the end times. “We are living in most troubled times in the world and also in the Church,” he said. “In such a pervasively disordered cultural condition, there is legitimate fear of a global confrontation which can only mean destruction and death for many. Clearly, the present situation of the world cannot continue without leading to total annihilation.”
Cardinal Burke repeated those remarks in December 2017 in an interview with Paolo Gambi published at the Catholic Herald in the United Kingdom.
“In the present moment there is confusion and error about the most fundamental teachings of the Church, for example with regard to marriage and the family,” His Excellency said. He then described the debate in the Church over communion and divorce and remarriage. “There is today confusion as to whether there are acts which are intrinsically evil and this, of course, is the foundation of the moral law. When this foundation begins to be questioned within the Church, then the whole order of human life and the order of the Church itself are endangered.”
“So there is a feeling that in today’s world that is based on secularism with a completely anthropocentric approach…the Church itself seems to be confused. In that sense one may have the feeling that the Church gives the appearance of being unwilling to obey the mandates of Our Lord. Then perhaps we have arrived at the End Times.”
The feeling that we are in the end times was expressed also by the late, great Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, one of the signatories of the dubia.
Speaking at the Rome Life Forum in May 2017, Cardinal Caffarra recalled the letter Sr. Lucia of Fatima sent him speaking about “the final battle between Our Lord and the kingdom of Satan being over marriage and the family.”
He said that it was his conviction that what Sister Lucy had written him about “is being fulfilled in these days of ours.” Watch his remarks by clicking here.
A third Cardinal has also spoken of these times with apocalyptic references.
In the lead up to the Amazon Synod, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller said, “the frightening question arises whether the protagonists of this synod are not more concerned with the attempt secretly to replace religion as man's answer to the call of its Creator by a pantheistic natural religion of man – namely, by a new variant of Modernism from the beginning of the 20th century.”
“It is difficult not to think of the eschatological texts of the New Testament!” he exclaimed.
As the Pachamama scandal broke out during the Synod, Cardinal Brandmüller made direct reference to the apocalyptic warnings of Christ, calling the Pachamama idols in the Vatican “the abomination of desolation set up in the holy place.”
Cardinal Walter Brandmüller had made the reference while praising the actions of the two young men who threw the Pachamama idols into the Tiber River. “These two courageous 'Maccabees' who have removed the 'abomination of desolation in the holy place' are the prophets of today,” he said.
Use of apocalyptic language is not only coming from the dubia cardinals. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who was unceremoniously removed by Pope Francis was the head of the powerful Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, issued his Manifesto of Faith in February of last year.
In that heroic document, His Excellency said that, “To keep silent about these and the other truths of the Faith and to teach people accordingly is the greatest deception against which the Catechism vigorously warns. It represents the last trial of the Church and leads man to a religious delusion, ‘the price of their apostasy’ (CCC 675) it is the fraud of Antichrist. ‘He will deceive those who are lost by all means of injustice, for they have closed themselves to the love of the truth by which they should be saved.’ (2 Thess: 2-10)”
For our fifth Cardinal, we have Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk of the Netherlands.
Writing in the National Catholic Register in May 2018, Cardinal Eijk said: “Observing that the bishops and, above all, the Successor of Peter fail to maintain and transmit faithfully and in unity the deposit of faith contained in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, I cannot help but think of Article 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
“The Church’s ultimate trial Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”
In a follow-up interview with LifeSite’s Paris correspondent Jeanne Smits, Cardinal Eijk explained his reference this way:
“I quoted number 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Because there are cardinals who plead for the blessing of homosexual relationships, I referred to this paragraph of the Catechism as a warning. It states that shortly before the Apocalypse, voices will rise within the Church itself, and even among the highest authorities of the Church who will express divergent opinions in relation to Catholic doctrine. I did this as a warning: let us be careful not to find ourselves in this situation.”
As you can see, there are at least 5 cardinals and two prominent bishops who have raised the spectre of the end times. But as we’ve said here before, that is not something to be down about.
Let me return to the inspiring words of Archbishop Viganò who, after stating bluntly the catastrophic situation facing the Church today, concluded with encouragement.
Now it is our turn. Without equivocation, without letting ourselves be driven out of this Church whose legitimate children we are and in which we have the sacred right to feel at home, without the hateful horde of Christ’s enemies making us feel marginalized, schismatic and excommunicated.
Now it is our turn! The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary — Coredemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces — passes through her “little ones,” who are certainly frail and sinners but are absolutely opposed to the members enlisted in the Enemy’s army. “Little ones” consecrated without any limit whatsoever to the Immaculate, in order to be her heel, the most humiliated and despised part, the most hated by hell, but which together with Her will crush the head of the infernal Monster.
The Church is shrouded in the darkness of modernism, but the victory belongs to Our Lord and His Bride. We desire to continue to profess the perennial faith of the Church in the face of the roaring evil that besieges her. We desire to keep vigil with her and with Jesus, in this new Gethsemane of the end times; to pray and do penance in reparation for the many offenses caused to them.
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