I myself just have no use for those prophecies at all. I have yet to see a prophecy that even touched on the obscene reality of the Vatican II church.

As I said, some have, and pretty clearly. As I said, it was considered so horrible that a Pope might even be associated with such. What's not clear - is what comes next, what the apostate church does, what Catholics do. There's no gameplan, as it were, in such prophecies. And they do tend to make sense after the fact. Interpretations of the same words, and contemporaneously, tend to adopt the local paradigms or incorporate wishful thinking.

The interesting thing about these isn't that each is some Revelation. None are. But these are separated by place, and by centuries. And yet these speak often the same sort of thing, in much the same wording, and putting all right in the 20th century, specifically, just so recently past. Now, you might say, they were just mulling over the same talk of an apostate church from Revelation. Or you might say they borrowed and built on known prophecy of the past. But it seems unlikely that the latter would be the case. Many are fairly obscure. As for essentially day-dreaming this when contemplating John's Apocalypse, again they do tend to speak of the same thing, in the same way.

I don't say one HAS to believe. But then one doesn't HAVE to believe in Lourdes, perhaps, or Fatima. But I see no reason not to.

You are familiar with the visions of Anne Emmerich from 1820, and so on, of course. She was one of two visionaries who partly inspired Gibson to fill in as he did in The Passion. She speaks plainly of a heterodox church following the fashions of the world. And so on. You're surely also familiar with the speculation about the true third secret of Fatima speaking about the same thing. But then, some could question the third secret, to begin with, even though many, including Popes, did take it seriously. They just didn't want people to know.

But there are many others. I refer to Yves Dupont, Catholic Prophecy, from TAN, not necessarily his commentary, which I think is a bit off, but the quotes he uses from Saints, religious and others with these visions and dreams.

In short, the Monarch and the next actual Pope sort of are a type of Enoch and Elias, someone suggested. And the timeframe could be very short between their genuine restoration and the next falling away and overt oppression. But when they make their move, is unknown. Again, it could be years, decades, or more. I would think the time is short. But I couldn't possibly know for sure. For each of us, personally, of course the time is short because our mortal lives are brief.

I've GOT to say this.  I have lost all hope in Rome.  Not one scintilla left.  And with that hope went a lot of pain, anger, etc.

As for the reference to the Mercedes and the Swiss Guard etc... , that is supposed to be withering sarcasm. It is not gratuitous. It is based on the reality of what I've read about some likely candidates for both the French and the Holy Roman thrones.

Why would a Great Monarch candidate do something like that? For the same reason why a guy would let himself be elected Roman Pontiff by his family and friends at the local Holiday Inn in Podunk or Kankakee or wherever and walk around in a white cassock and beanie cap. I said that he would have gone NUTS - he would have tried to fulfill prophecy with available means. His Mecerdes crashing Vatican City's gates, so to speak...

In any case, Pope Leo XIII demanded that French Catholics accept the Republic and thereby come to peaceful terms with the Revolution. If I were the prophesying type I would simply say that there will be no glorious Great Monarch, French or German, acting in tandem with a Holy Pope. That in the sociopolitical field there will be only more of what we have now and worse until the world ends in fire one fine day.

So much of practical Catholicism depends on not seeing the truth about certain things. On not owning up to shameful or just embarrassing facts. On covering up Father's nakedness and defending the indefensible with a Jesuit's pious cunning. It is one thing to look back on Church and papal history and not see the dark side of what was there in the name of piety and humility: it is another to look ahead and see bright and wondrous things there based on things that were never really there in the past. Great Christian Kings and Holy and Wise Popes and giants who carried the ever weightier Christ Child on their shoulders and all that sort of thing.

Meanwhile Catholic kids get taught in Catholic schools that gαy people are people of the same sex who love one another. Meanwhile complaining parents are told by the top dogs in Rome to be docile towards their Local Ordinaries, whom Christ has placed over them. We don't need no stinking Great Monarch or Holy Pope to tell us that this is wrong and displeasing to the god, if that god be good.

We all know conservatives and Bible thumpers who would gladly tar and feather those responsible for teaching such ungodly enormities. And none of us knows of any REAL candidates for Great Monarchy or Holy Popehood who would be likely to outrage the current Catholic System as accepted by all Catholics from ultramodernist to sedevacantist by being too "harsh" or "Manichean" or "imprudent" or  "rash" or "intolerant" or "rhetorically over-the-top" when it comes to REAL scandal and REAL reaction to scandal.

I think that it is a bad mistake to fantasize about Great Catholic Monarchs and the social and spiritual blessings they will supposedly bring. It is better to ask what Catholics from Hans Kung to Bishop Dolan would say about a staunch Fundamentalist mayor of a small town in Arkansas who boarded up the local Catholic church, freed TLM or not, and threw priests and nuns into jail for teaching what the Pope of Rome said they may teach about the trendier vices of the day. Natural Law and the god, of course, would be on that Protestant mayor's side. How about the Great Catholic Monarch? Whose side would he be on?  I would think he would be on the side of the Catholics, no matter what. I don't think that he would be any Greater than that crazy mixed-up kid named Sebastian who was king of Portugal in the 16th century and perished trying to make some quixotic religious fantasy come true. But if we shared his delusions we might think that someone like him was Great enough for God's purposes and we would call him the Great Monarch. That's how cold hard reality works. That might make us dangerous.

How about even that Holy Pope who might nonetheless be as "prudent" about giving aid and comfort to Protestant heretics by putting down the ordinary Satanism of ordinary post-Vatican II Catholic life as Pope Leo was about the Republic?

"All things are possible to Thee. Let this cup pass from Me." After THAT mundanely anticlimactic let-down from the high dramatic pathos of "Now is the Son of Man glorified", out of sheer personal loyalty to the Master we should have a visceral aversion to the dramatically fitting and satisfying in the religious realm. To any kind of soothing fantasy about ideal characters such as Great Monarchs and Holy Popes who save the world.

"What was, that same thing shall be."

"He who has had a dream, let him speak of a dream."

We shall see the Risen God Man in the Flesh. That is all the Great Monarch that we shall ever see on this earth. I believe that He and His prophesies should be enough for us.

The Incarnation and the Resurrection were not visible to the world and the eyes of nature the way the Great Monarch and the Holy Pope and the complete restoration of Christendom would be if the prophesies came true.

I consider those kids and their parents Catholics. I don't consider those top dogs in Rome Catholics.

I agree that we have to disagree on the prophesies. I think that the danger in thinking about those prophesies at all is that it takes precious time away from thinking harder about the plight of souls at the hands of Beastly Rome and the justice due them.