By your comment you admit that there is serious trouble with Europe and America. Even the Faith in Latin America is falling away, as Pope Benedict just addressed. Pope Benedict’s concern over the Faith in Europe, which he has addressed many times and his reaching out to the Russian Orthodox Church to help combat the onslaught of secularism must be just his own narrow view.
Dear jam070406,
Cordial greetings and a very good day.
It should not really surprise us, dear friend, that the current crisis within our midst is quite unparalled with what has gone previously, for St. Paul predicted that in the ‘last days’, that is to say this Messianic era in which we live, things would get progressively worse, not better - “evil men and
imposters will go from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived” (II Tim. 3: 13, emphasis mine). Thus whilst opposition to the authentic Catholic faith will always be the characteristic of the Gospel age, and men should be neither surprised nor dismayed by it, it admits of no doubt that Holy Mother Church will face terrible times as we move further towards the Second Advent of our Blessed Saviour. We will, and indeed are, witnessing today a fearful increase in wickedness, for sure, but we are also seeing widespread apostasy, the result of false teachers and teaching, within the bosom of our beloved Church.
True, false teachings were already being propagated in St. Paul’s own times and just after, nevertheless, as he looked further into the future he could forsee the dangers increasing with the unremitting flood of false teaching, and with it a corresponding corruption of morals. Having said that the endurance of the Church is assured, notwithstanding the propagation of false doctrine, and the true body of the faithful will remain firm and steadfast, its faith indestructible. However, dear friend, there is good reason for believing that the faithful remnant will be a quite small body prior to our Lord’s return, whenever that may be. In St. Luke’s Gospel, our Lord says, “Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will He find faith on earth” (18: 8). I cannot help but think that this faith is the ‘faith once delivered to the saints’ (S. Jude 3), the deposit of truth contained within Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Now whilst this faith may not, perhaps, be entirely denied, neither will it be *held *, and yet without the great eternal verities of our most holy religion, there cannot be any strong general faith either that is truly worth its salt. Alas, faith in
the faith is growing weaker and weaker at the present time, due largely (though not exclusively) to the dissemination of false teachings by progressives in faith and morals.
Secularism within the Church and wide loss of faith occasioned by ambiguous propositions and teaching, if not wholesale denial, are the chief cause of our present sickness. The deepest root of moral crisis is the fracture between faith and moral living. Some men have deluded themselves into believing that they can separate their faith and moral life and still regard themselves as Catholics in good standing with the Church. Thus you have the Church’s teaching on Original Sin presented in an ambiguous way; the gravity of sin passed over in silence and its consequences denied because they are deemed too harsh for modern ears and will only repel men, not draw them. As a result of all this, dear friend, children and young people are left in ignorance or only embrace an attenuated version of the faith. Men must wake up to the fact that erroneous teaching in faith and morals has very grave consequences for the life of the Church.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
