Not the Pax Romana, as now the call to Macedonia now faces great obstacles.
The governments of the world want to interfere with the universal Church. I know this from several sources. The governments have already passed laws in the EU which now restrict religious visas, preachers rights to preach, the acceptance of seminarians from other countries to join dioceses, the right to work and stay in some countries for more than five years. And so on…
Think about the travels of SS. Francis, or Dominic, or Catherine of Siena, or Francis Xavier, or Isaac Joques.
The Catholic Church is the only institution in the world which has always transcended boundaries.
Missionaries, nuns and priests, brothers and sisters, have travelled the world in the past without problems on entry or stay.
Convents could set up daughter houses with no problems and share nuns between these houses.
This has ended in some countries and will end in others.
Seminary students who are returning to their own countries may study abroad for a while, but the freedom of many will be curtailed.
Such is the power of the EU. I was talking to Carmelites who used to be able to stay in their father house in Ireland for years. They are from Kenya and Nigeria. Now, they can only stay months.
A pattern of restricting the movements of Catholics began in 2012.
This is all planned, as the only great enemy of socialism and communism is the Church and communists and socialists are also a world-wide organization. So are the Masons.
All Christians will be affected. I know of a Protestant minister who was recently told he could not preach in Great Britain if he wanted to come in on a visitor’s visa.
I was invited to give a series of talks on the virtue formation of children in the family in an EU country by a diocesan priest in charge of marriage and family spirituality, and I had to say no. I would have to apply for a religious workers visa from America. The Catch-22 is this. Some EU countries no longer allow lay people to come and work in a religious capacity-they cannot be sponsored by the dioceses. One can no longer do such a thing on a visitor’s visa in some countries, and the EU will insure this type of restriction spreads. The EU countries have lost or are losing their personal sovereignty in these matters.
The irony is that there are few European lay people who are trained as we are in the States to do such work. And, with the growing priest shortages, few people are there to catechize.
A Catholic is not allowed to volunteer on a visitor’s visa for any charity. I, for example, could not pray outside of abortion clinics while on a visitor’s visa. I could not raise money for a charity on a visitor’s visa. I could not give talks freely at schools or in parishes on a visitor’s visa. A visitor is a tourist, not an evangelist.
Lay people are more and more denied access on various grounds decided by governments.
Think about this. All the Christians in the countries of the world were converted by our missionaries, clerical, religious, lay.
Many of the great saints moved from Europe to other places as missionaries-the list is long.
The apostles and disciples of Christ came from the Holy Land into Europe, St. Paul being the first answering his call to go to Macedonia.
He was shipwrecked on Malta and brought Catholicism to that island. This event is presented in the last chapters of Acts, and I had the great delight of walking where St. Paul walked.
The Pax Romana allowed the movement of Christians and Christ came at the Fullness of Time, the time designated by the Father, for the optimum spreading of the Gospels.
Peace, order, good roads….frequent ships, lively ports. A Roman citizen was a citizen of the world.
Americans are not citizens of the world, by the way, and the so-called special relationships are gone, gone, gone.
Europe is closing its doors to many and opening these doors to others.
The days of freely travelling for those who want to spread the Gospel are numbered.
Think about this….as I do when I sit here and type in Illinois, while people in England and Malta want me to teach catechesis, and share my faith in those countries. I cannot do so at this point, and those dioceses are no longer allowed to sponsor me, as I am an American and not an EU citizen.
Please join me in prayer, as, like St. Paul, I feel called to Europe to work for Christ and His Church there. I have a great love for Europe in my heart and have since I was 14. That is fifty years of loving Europe and specifically, England.
So, too, were my ancestors called from Europe to America, as the very first person on my mother’s side to come was a missionary priest. He then asked my Great-Grandfather to come and set up schools, and even a monastery, and a Catholic printing press, and a college. This he did and the faith flourished in areas of northern Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri because of my ancestors’ works.
Just as miracles brought Paul to Rome, so, too, I need miracles. But, God’s Will be done.
My faith is strong, but one waits on the Lord. Shortly before I left Malta, I saw the double rainbow and God’s promise to Noah is our promise, not only that God will not destroy the earth by water, but that His Truth will spread through-out the world.
A selection from Blessed John Henry Newman seems appropriate this morning.
From Sermon Seven, Oxford Sermons:
15. The contempt of men!—why should we be unwilling to endure it? We are not better than our fathers. In every age it has been the lot of Christians far more highly endowed than we are with the riches of Divine wisdom. It was the lot of Apostles and Prophets, and of the Saviour of mankind Himself. When He was brought before Pilate, the Roman Governor felt the same surprise and disdain at His avowal of His unearthly office, which the world now expresses. "To this end was I born, … that I should bear witness unto the Truth. Pilate saith, What is Truth?" Again, when Festus would explain to King Agrippa the cause of the dispute between St. Paul and the Jews, he says, "The accusers ... brought no accusations of such things as I supposed, but certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive."
16. Such, however, are the words of men, who, not knowing the strength of Christianity, had not the guilt of deliberate apostasy. But what serious thoughts does it present to the mind, to behold parallels to heathen blindness and arrogance in a Christian country, where men might know better, if they would inquire!—and what a warning to us all is the sight of those who, though nominally within the Church, are avowedly indifferent to it! For all of us surely are on our trial, and, as we go forth into the world, so we are winnowed, and the chaff gradually separated from the true seed. This is St. John's account of it. "They went out from {134} us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not of us." And our Lord stands by watching the process, telling us of "the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the earth," exhorting us to "try them which say they are apostles, and are not," and to "hold fast that which we have, that no man take our crown."
17. Meanwhile, it is an encouragement to us to think how much may be done in way of protest and teaching, by the mere example of those who endeavour to serve God faithfully. In this way we may use against the world its own weapons; and, as its success lies in the mere boldness of assertion with which it maintains that evil is good, so by the counter-assertions of a strict life and a resolute profession of the truth, we may retort upon the imaginations of men, that religious obedience is not impracticable, and that scripture has its persuasives. A martyr or a confessor is a fact, and has its witness in itself; and, while it disarranges the theories of human wisdom, it also breaks in upon that security and seclusion into which men of the world would fain retire from the thought of religion. One prophet against four hundred disturbed the serenity of Ahab, King of Israel. When the witnesses in St. John's vision were slain, though they were but two, then "they that dwelt on the earth rejoiced over them, and made merry, and sent gifts one to another, because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth." Nay, such confessors have a witness even in {135} the breasts of those who oppose them, an instinct originally from God, which may indeed be perverted into a hatred, but scarcely into an utter disregard of the Truth, when exhibited before them. The instance cannot be found in the history of mankind, in which an anti-Christian power could long abstain from persecuting. The disdainful Festus at length impatiently interrupted his prisoner's speech; and in our better regulated times, whatever be the scorn or malevolence which is directed against the faithful Christian, these very feelings show that he is really a restraint on vice and unbelief, and a warning and guide to the feeble-minded, and to those who still linger in the world with hearts more religious than their professed opinions; and thus even literally, as the text expresses it, he overcomes the world, conquering while he suffers, and willingly accepting overbearing usage and insult from others, so that he may in some degree benefit them, though the more abundantly he loves them, the less he be loved.
(Preached on Sunday afternoon, May 27, 1832, in the Author's turn as Select Preacher.)
By the way, BBB stands for Broke Big Brother, another name for Europe.
