littlerose said:If CM is right, that every parish and chapel is not at all Catholic anymore, meaning the actual priests and laity who are mostly just following the Vatican, then what is the point of continuing to address heresy in the Church? Just leave and start over. You can't claim that it is and is not the Church at the same time. It either IS the Church and is in need of winning back from heresy, or the Church is truly gone.
It's worse than just the priests following the Vatican. It's apparently all or most of the traditionalists and sedevacantists too.
As far as the laity goes, God expects less from them. I don't judge how God judges people in Novus Ordo or SSPX or anything like that. To believe that these men are Popes is a sort of implied insult to the Church, but at the same time, when the Archangel is weighing souls on the old scales, some pity might be shown to people who are just trying to be obedient, as they have been trained. For a Catholic to say someone isn't the Pope who appears to the world like a Pope is almost like a taboo, even when it's true.
I disagree with CM on baptism of desire being heresy, but we agree that there are no orthodox priests, at least none that I'm aware of. If NFP is an error rather than a heresy, then European priests might be in better shape -- I would consider going to a European priest who is unsure or tepid about NFP, even if he doesn't deny it outright. But in America they all believe you can be saved in false religions, as well as in NFP.
I explained this in other threads today but the way I see it is that the Church is like Sleeping Beauty. It is like the Church is in a poisoned sleep. It has a hierarchy, but they are all in heresy. But as soon as the clergy begin waking up, kissed by the prince who perhaps is the real Pope to come, they will find that they have valid Holy Orders.
This scenario is the only way I can keep my mind together. Otherwise I'd have to either believe that heresies aren't heresies, and just give in and go to chapel with those who I know for sure are wrong, or else I'd have to say that the Church has failed.
No, what appears to be happening is that the Church has gone into the tomb like Christ Himself on Holy Saturday. This fits with certain prophecies, like that of Nicholas of Flue:
"The Church will sink still deeper until she will at last seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and the other Apostles to have expired. After that she will be victoriously exalted in the sight of all doubters."
I can elaborate even more, if you wish. I'm not a prophet, I'm just using the Apocalypse, other prophecies, and my own sense of things. Here is what may happen:
*Nations taper off into further economic meltdown
*Minor Chastisement, taken by some to be of God, and others to be "2012"-style natural disasters
*After the Minor Chastisement, those who say it was God's punishment will be seized by religious fervor. They will demand an end to all errors and any priest who teaches something like NFP will find himself unpopular, to say the least
*The priests who survive the Chastisement will have to accede to public demand for the truth, which they will no longer be able to stop ( and yes, I think many of the clergy of today are deliberately suppressing truth )
* A holy Pope will be set on the Throne.
* As long as the public demands it, the Catholic faith will prevail. But before long, people will get bored and fall away from the faith once again
* Antichrist
I have another strange theory that our time is worse in some ways than the time of Antichrist, not in terms of violence, savagery and menace, but in terms of error. It is so bad that the Bible hardly warns us against it. If there is a Great Apostasy, why even bother putting people on their guard? If people could somehow avoid the Apostasy, then it wouldn't be an Apostasy, would it?
But I don't believe the Second Coming can happen until humanity is irremediably evil -- and I don't feel that has happened yet. It seems to me people of today are apathetic, torpid and frozen more than evil. Hence the Chastisement, rousing them out of their slumber. But for God to end the world, my clumsy guess ( I cannot fathom God's mind ) is that He doesn't want to do this until He has given us every chance to redeem ourselves.
Again, all this is just idle speculation. I have no special insight from God that I know of. But we are called upon to know the signs of the times, and there is a certain symmetry to history. If America is Mystery Babylon, it is because it has such striking parallels to the original Babylon. The once-oppressed Jєωs are now the oppressors of the new chosen people, the Catholics. It's as if the Jєωs have become Nebuchadnezzar.
Why "Mystery Babylon"? The "mystery" is that no one talks about what America really is -- the truth is hushed-up, and no one wants to hear it. America is a mystery in that its true monstrous nature was for centuries unrevealed, ignored, or covered up. And unlike in the original, non-mysterious Babylon, when the chosen people knew they were in exile and lamented their fate, the chosen people here, the Catholics, LIKE THEIR SLAVERY, and don't even see it as slavery.
They don't weep by the waters of the river of Babylon, longing for a return to a true Catholic nation. They don't weep at all -- they watch football and barbecue.
Read Apocalypse 18. It is apparent that it deals with the time period that we're heading towards. What other nation could be the one referred to here? "Because all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication; and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her; and the merchants of the earth have been made rich by the power of her delicacies." The fornication is RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, separation of Church and state -- and all countries have followed our lead into "liberty," that is the ʝʊdɛօ-Masonic nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr, which, for a while at least, was very profitable. Ironically the Apocalypse speaks of "kings" when the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr set out to eliminate them -- but "kings" here would refer to presidents and so on.
People speak about the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr as if it's always in the future when IT'S IN THE PAST AND IT IS ABOUT TO FALL ANY DAY NOW. It's over. You can feel it in the air. People think the economy will recover but it's just going to die a slow, morbid death -- what would it recover to? What drives the world today? The initial thrill of humanity's rebellion against God is gone. You can sense the death throes of neo-paganism, the joyless repetitiousness of it, there's a feeling of nihilism in the air, like life and death don't matter, everything is absurd, cartoonish and pointless... What else can happen now except the return of God and the Church in full force, the triumph of Mary?
I'm telling you, the smallest spark could light one of the biggest fires ever seen. Everything could change overnight, just as the prophecies say. No longer would people resist the truth; they wouldn't even be able to if they tried. All the work of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ and the Jєωs would just crumble like dead leaves; their magical force would be spent, gone. And what is even more amazing is that Anti-Christ after this STILL would somehow find a way to ruin everything. Here is Satan no longer working through secret societies but almost embodying himself as a man -- though the Anti-Christ is not strictly Satan.