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Where is the Truth, and where the lie?  Which is the cult, and which the Church? Which is the counterfeit, and which the Certified?  Who are the persecuted, and who are the persecutors?

The Catechism (CCC 675-677) teaches a time will come for The Passion of the Church – when we, the Church, will be given hatred, persecution, the Cross because we are followers of our Lord. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you,” (Jn 15:18). Mysteriously, we will find in our passion, that our enemies will be from both the secular world and the religious world – as it was in the time of our Lord, so it will be for us.  There is much world in the Church; there is still Church in the world.

From Bishop Athanasius Schneider (1):

When Christ was arrested and interrogated, the Apostle Peter, whom He constituted the visible rock of His Church, in a cowardly way thrice denied Him. When Christ was crucified, there remained only one faithful Apostle at His side, St. John, together with Our Lady and the other holy women. From the circumstances of Christ’s Passion, we can better understand the spiritual and even mystical sense of the suffering of Christ’s Bride, the Church. The current crisis within the Church represents the deepest form of suffering, since the Church is now persecuted, scourged, stripped, and derided not by her enemies but to a large extent by her Shepherds, by many of those who are successors of the Apostles, by many traitors in the clerical ranks who are the new Judases.

Bp. Schneider continues, and quotes a most familiar evangelist of the past who gave a startling prophesy.  (The prophecy I have edited – not changing any words, but writing in bulleted format.) The format is to help careful listening to every sentence separately and prayerfully.  Bp. Schneider continues: “Here I cannot fail to quote the following words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, which he wrote in 1948 and which are strikingly relevant and significant for the current situation:”

• “[Satan] will set up a Counter-church, which will be the ape of [the imitation of] the Church.
• It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content….
• The False Prophet will have a religion without a cross.
• A religion without a world to come.
• A religion to destroy religions.
• There will be a counterfeit Church.
• Christ’s Church will be one, and the False Prophet will create the other.
• The false Church will be worldly, ecumenical, and global.
• It will be a loose federation of churches and religions, forming some type of global association, a world parliament of Churches.
• It will be emptied of all divine content; it will be the mystical body of the Antichrist.
• The Mystical Body on earth today will have its Judas Iscariot, and he will be the False Prophet.
• Satan will recruit him from our bishops.”
  [This from Communism and the Conscience of the West (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948), 24–25.]

I repeat – Today, where is the Truth, and where the lie?  Which is the cult, and which the Church? Which is the counterfeit, and which the Certified?  Who are the persecuted, and who are the persecutors?

There is much world in the Church, and there is still Church in the world.  Come, Lord Jesus!

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(1) Schneider, Bishop Athanasius; Montagna, Diane. Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age (p. 306). Angelico Press. Kindle Edition.