The Faithful Abandoned

by Father Nicholas Gruner, S.T.L., S.T.D. (Cand.)

       Perplexed Catholics must remember Our Lady said: "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph!

       Many true Catholics these days, in the laity and in the priesthood in Canada, the United States and overseas, increasingly see themselves without help and without any apparent solution. It is a terribly upsetting situation for them all because they see many Church officials and organizations and individual Catholics falling by the wayside to the spirit of the world. The apostasy seems to have invaded Church officials, parishioners and chancery offices.

       No longer do many of our true-Catholic brethren look up to the bishops and their pastors for help in the distress they feel and the hunger they experience for pure, simple Catholicism which they expected to find proclaimed, taught and experienced at the parish level, in the catechisms, in the liturgical and prayer life of the parish, in the books and sermons that are offered to them within the Catholic community, and in the exemplary lives they have been taught to look for in those publicly professing the evangelical counsels.

       As Father Paul Crane, S.J., editor of Christian Order, puts it so aptly: "It is not merely a case of the hungry sheep looking up and not being fed. Nowadays the hungry sheep are not even bothering to look up, so certain are they that they will not be fed. Experientia docet, they know from bitter experience that there is no point in their doing so."

       And Father Crane further explains: "It is greatly to their credit, enormously so, that despite the frustration that besets them, they have held fast to the Faith of their Fathers, the Faith for which the English Martyrs died. To my way of thinking, contemporary Catholics who hold so firmly to their Faith, often against all odds, are the true martyrs of our own time. May God bless them for it."

       It is a great credit to the orthodox Catholics that they have held on to the faith, despite the bad example, the heretical teaching, the heteropraxis of the "modern Catholic" parish.

What can any true and loyal Catholic do?

       We must pray. At Fatima Our Lady insisted on the Rosary, at least five decades of the Rosary every day. We must pray because it is by prayer that we will save our souls. "He who prays will be saved. He who does not pray will be condemned" said St. Alphonsus de Liguori. This is especially true in our time because we are living in a time of apostasy, the Great Apostasy predicted in Sacred Scripture when even the elect would be deceived, if that were possible.

       Our Lady promised to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan that if we prayed the Rosary every day we would not fall into heresy. And if one had already fallen into heresy, that is, been deceived by the devil and his followers into denying an article of faith so that he would be led to hell if he persisted in that error, Our Lady promised if he prayed the Rosary, he would not long stay in heresy. Prayer, especially the Rosary, is more important for all of us today than ever.

       It is true that some few, a remnant of Faithful, will be left even in the time of full blown apostasy and the conquest of worldwide anti-Christ victory, which is certain to happen if the Pope does not soon give the order to consecrate Russia.

       All the Pope needs to do is give the order, under pain of excommunication, to all the Catholic bishops, to consecrate Russia on the same day in a solemn, public ceremony.

       If some of the bishops do not cooperate, their cooperation would not be necessary because they would be excommunicated and would no longer be Catholic bishops.

        And it seems that it is only necessary for the Pope to give the order to the bishops to conform to Our Lady’s request for the conversion of Russia to take place and peace given to the world. Of course he, himself, must personally carry out this command of Our Lady.

       Sister Lucy did not suggest that the Pope had to wait until he had the consent of the bishops before formally asking them, rather, she said it was for the Pope to give the order. That order given, plus the Pope’s own obedience, is all that is necessary, and I quote from her letter of May 29, 1930 to Father Bernard Goncalves, her confessor.

       "The good God promises to end the persecution of Russia if the Holy Father deigns to make and orders that the bishops of the Catholic world make a solemn and public act of reparation and consecration of Russia to the Most Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and His Holiness promising that upon the end of this persecution that he will approve and recommend the practice of the already indicated Reparatory Devotion" (i.e. The Five First Saturdays).

       So we must pray for the Pope, we must pray especially the Rosary for him because the first triumph of Our Lady will be the obedience of the Pope. And the Pope now hesitates because he is persecuted.

       As the Fatima Message tells us that the Pope would be persecuted, we must free him from his persecutors like the first Christians freed St. Peter by praying for him, and he was freed from Herod’s prison by an angel because of their unceasing prayers.

Return to
Table of Contents