By: Fr Adolf Faroni, SDB and Ben T. Crisostomo

 

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

 

Lord, renew in your Church

The spirit you gave Saint Augustine.

Filled with this spirit,

May we thirst for you alone

As the fountain of wisdom

And seek you as the source of eternal love.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Your Son,

Who lives and reigns with you

And the Holy Spirit,

One God, for ever and ever.

 

“For many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: this is a seducer and an antichrist. Look to yourselves, that you lose not the things which you have wrought: but that you may receive a full reward. Whosover revolts, and continues not in the doctrine of Christ, has not God” (2John 7-8).

 

This article attempts to help lay Catholics persevere in the “doctrine of Christ” by exposing and opening for discernment three antichristian movements wreaking havoc in the field of doctrine and visions, namely: the New Age Movement, Modernism and Illuminized Freemansonry. Each movement is a synthesis of heresies which, at one time and in one form or another, the Catholic Church has battled. Today, these movements are uniting and coordinating their attack against the Catholic Church by undermining its doctrinal foundation, the Divine Person of Jesus Christ.

 

The Catholic faithful mistakenly think that these heresies are the problem of theologians. Nothing can be further from reality. The devil is prowling and nowhere is it said in Scripture that his appetite is reserved only for the clergy. The Catholic laity has to make a stand against the attack of these heresies while there is still opportunity. By doing nothing, Catholics will allow heresy to become so widespread to the point that the evil it breeds becomes the norm of life. In fact, society is already undergoing an inversion of values where deviant behavior is increasingly tolerated and good behavior rejected with moralistic fervor.

 

Let us never forget the concern of our Lord: “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on the earth?” (Lk 18:8).

 

FINAL CONFRONTATION

 

In 1972, Pope John Paul II, then a cardinal, spoke before American bishops in New York City where he warned of a grave trial facing the Catholic Church and the whole of civilization:

 

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think the Christian community realizes this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence; it is a trial which the whole Church must take up”.

 

In a speech before the Italian Congress of Preachers nine years later, Pope John Paul II’s deep concern in New York City had turned to profound sadness at the predicament of the Catholic laity whose faith has been set adrift as heresies continued to spread in the Church. “Today’s faithful,” he said, “in great numbers, walk amidst incertitude and error. They are often bewildered and deceived because doctrines which are contrary to revelation and to the doctrine taught from of old by the Church, are scattered worldwide. Worst of all, in the dogmatic and moral field were diffused true heresies which had the consequence of causing doubt and turning people away from the Church.”

 

At the turn of the Twentieth Century, Pope St. Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis already warned the Catholic faithful of this diabolic threat:

 

“There has never been a time when watchfulness…was not necessary to the Catholic body, for owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking ‘men speaking perverse things’, ‘vain talkers and seducers,’ ‘erring and driving into error’… These latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ. (They)…assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ.”

 

Pius XII also lamented in his encyclical Humani Generis: “Disagreement and error among men on moral and religious matters have always been a cause of profound sorrow to all good men, but above all to the true and loyal sons of the Church, especially today, when we see the principles of Christian culture being attacked on all sides.”

 

The attack against “all that is most sacred in the work of Christ” refers to the fundamental dogmas of the Catholic Church. Hilaire Belloc, writing after the Second World War, forewarned in his work “The Great Heresies” that the assault would be total:

 

“The faith is now in the presence not of a particular heresy as in the past - the Arian, the Manichean, the Albigensian –nor is it in the presence of a sort of generalized heresy as it was when it had to meet the Protestant revolution from three to four hundred years ago. The enemy, which the Faith now has to meet, …is a wholesale assault upon the fundamentals of the Faith – upon the very existence of the Faith. And the enemy now advancing against us is increasingly conscious of the fact that there can be no question of neutrality… The battle is henceforward engaged…between the Church and the anti-Church, the Church of God and anti-God, the Church of Christ and anti-Christ, involving the survival or destruction of the Catholic Church. And all-not a portion – of its philosophy.”

 

True, the Church cannot be destroyed. Our Lord Jesus Christ assures us: “You are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18). In the words of Pope Leo XIII, “her foundation is much too firm to be overturned by the effort of men.” However, the danger remains for each Catholic individual.  “A born Catholic may allow himself,” J. Wilhelm reiterated, “to drift into whirls of anti-Catholic thought from which no doctrinal authority can rescue him, and where his mind becomes incrusted with convictions, or considerations sufficiently powerful to overlay his Catholic conscience.” Once this happens, he will no longer fully assent to the truths of the Faith and obey them with firm conviction. It was of this deadly possibility that Pius XIII warned Catholics: “Let no Christian …embrace eagerly and lightly whatever novelty happens to be thought up from day to day, but rather let him weigh it with painstaking care and a balanced judgment, lest he lose or corrupt the truth he already has, with grave danger and damage to his faith.”

 

“It is our office,” Pope Leo XIII therefore said, “to point out the danger, to mark who are the adversaries, and to… make head against their plans and devices that those may not perish whose salvation is committed to us, and that the kingdom of Jesus Christ entrusted to our change may not only stand and remain whole, but may be enlarged by an everincreasing growth throughout the world.”

(Source A Book "Beware of Religious Errors" courtesy of Ms Pearl Martinez)