The glue which kept Europe together as
Christendom has finally dried up. Nations are becoming less
accessible to each other despite the EU, as nationalism, rather than
patriotism, rears its ugly head again. What kept borders open in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance was Catholicism, and the presence of
the universal Catholic Church.
Can one imagine St. Bernard, St.
Dominic, or St. Catherine being refused entry to any country.
Can one imagine the lack of the sharing
of scholarship and prayer which formed Europe ending?
Can one imagine the purposeful stopping
of community life among orders, which pre-date the very nations which
now seek to discourage the presence of missionaries?
Even 15 years ago, as I am discovering,
this tightening of borders, because of the unwillingness to allow
Americans of a certain ilk, that is Catholics, into countries, to
study or work or even get married, began. Stories shared with me in
the past week indicate that at least 13 years ago, perhaps because of
9/11, but I doubt that, boundaries and barriers to Catholics were
beginning to occur.
Silently, slowly, surreptitiously,
people here and there were being denied access to certain countries,
Great Britain being the most obvious.
Why?
I repeat what I have written here
before on this blog. What institution threatens the nation-states,
communism, socialism, and all the modernist heresies which now are
the new glue binding people together in Europe?
What institution created by God Himself
stands for Truth in the face of greed, selfishness, ideologies,
idolatry?
The one, true, holy, Catholic and
apostolic Church—period.
Many years ago, people who were
oppressed could leave nations under tyrannies. Now, where do these
people rest?
The Jews are being chased out of Europe
again.
The Catholics have been marginalized
and not one bishop or cardinal here on this continent has spoken out
against the encroachments of the states against the Church.
Seculars and those of man-made
religions have made unspoken pacts against Christ and His Church.
Unless Catholics wake up and rally, the
moment of strength will be lost. Perhaps, it is too late already.
Souls, which could have been saved by the preaching of the true
Gospel will be lost because doors have been shut to the spreading of
the Good News of Christ.
Ours is the only religion which looks
not to material goods, the goods of this world, as rewards, but to
the Love which we hope to experience in the next world.
Ours is the only religion which
internalizes spiritual growth, as opposed to those religions which
only emphasize the exterior acting out of religion. The Catholic
Church from the beginnings of Peter's declaration of faith has
pointed to our eternal life with God as the goal of all labor and
prayer on earth.
Without this sense of who man is, why
he was created, and for Whom he owes his very being, false religions
and isms crush humanity under the weight of gross materialism—either
in the siren song that this life is all there is or in the false
ideal that heaven is merely a series of materialistic rewards and not
Union with the Trinity.
Preach and teach while you can. The
doors to evangelization slam shut daily. And, tragically, those who
stand on the outside of the Church will be facing the onslaught of
evil without grace, without community.
If God wills to shorten the
tribulations to come for our benefit as believers, how will those
without the means to cope with the devastation of their cultures, all
once based on Christendom react?
There are pockets of remnant people,
but some still cannot see the truth of what is happening around them.
The early, persecuted Church had room
to move, disperse, grow. We shall not have this luxury.
Either Catholics stand firm against the
three-pronged evils of false religion, secularism and
neo-nationalism, or the Church will disappear in many, many places.
