The Age Of Godlessness And Its Consequences
Awful lot of reprobates...
It is abundantly clear that we live in an age of unprecedented crisis of faith. If we compare our times with every past generation in Europe in the last many centuries and until very recently, we must admit that our forefathers would even struggle to agree that we live in Christian Countries. Our forefathers would, in fact, struggle to recognise as Catholics even many of those who unhesitantly define themselves as such (and then pick and choose their beliefs).
It is not only the sinfulness per se (I am pretty sure fornication and drunkenness have been popular sins in any age), it is the way people deal with their own sinfulness that is utterly scary. Once upon a time sinners were certainly easy to find, but the lines at the confessional were long, too. Abortion was a rare event. Fear of hell was much more widespread. A strong Church provided Catholics with a robust barque to safely sail through the weaknesses and the sinfulness of their life.
Today, many of your friends and colleagues are probably not even baptised and if they are, their children possibly aren't. The very basis of Christianity is crumbling under our eyes. Europe at least (and part of the US and Canada) are simply deChristianised, they have become frontier territory!
We, who live in this context, cannot kid ourselves that, for our generation, “everything will be fine”. If it is true that everything will be fine, then Francis is right. If an age of astonishing irreligiousness does not lead to an age of great reprobation, then there is no need to deal with any of that Catholic stuff.
The (earthly) Church herself is now being raped by Satan. If the desertion or evil doing of countless priests and almost all bishops and cardinals has no meaningful consequence, what is the use of the Church? Why pray for holy priests and bishops? Heck, why have them in the first place? If the sheep are saved anyway, why have shepherds at all?
It is obvious that, if Christianity is to make sense, the contrary must be true. We must live in an age of reprobation. Satan must be having a wonderful time. A generation rejecting Christ must perforce be rejected by Him.
If you live in Northern Europe, and have a feel for history, you can see history being made under your eyes. The English Countryside has hundreds, probably thousands, of beautiful churches now empty. Those who even define themselves Christian are merely a plurality. Many of them would be unrecognisable as Christian to every generation of their forefathers, Catholic or Protestant, until a very recent time. The Country has become largely heathenish or atheist, with merely a Christian presence. Habits previously considered typical of heathens have become commonplace or largely tolerated and even celebrated (tattoos, cohabitation, abortion, divorce, even sodomy). France and Italy are not much better, Germany and Spain might not be better at all, Belgium and the Netherlands are certainly worse, the Nordic Countries are just appalling.
If we look at it in the great numbers, we must recognise that loss of Christianity means reprobation in great numbers, or else the entire Christian Faith makes no sense. If we look at our own Catholic world we must recognise that an age of astonishingly lax, by now barely understood Catholicism must do great damage to souls even among Catholics.
This can only have one consequence: that many of us – and certainly yours truly – live, walk, work, breathe in the midst of reprobates like pretty much none of our ancestors for possibly forty or more generations. It is fair to say that whenever you find yourself in a crowded train, underground carriage, cinema or restaurant, you are surrounded by a great number, and very possibly a majority, of reprobates. Scary, I know. It goes to show what madness V II and the generalised loss of faith all over Western Europe and parts of North America was.
Yes, we can and should pray for our friends and beloved ones. But prayers are no enchantments, and we cannot force our friends – much less God – to do what they do not want to do.
“But wait! Are you saying that my friends are not going to be saved? They are such fun guys and gals! How could God not do me this favour? I am so prayerful, you know!”
Well, good for you. But unless you are one in the mould of Padre Pio it is unlikely that you will change the life of dozens, or that God will grant all your such wishes.
The brutal reality is that your prayers for your friends will, besides benefiting you, providentially give them a help, a prop; which, if they – again, as it is providentially decreed – do not take, will not profit them.
As I have written many times, God on the one hand decides and decrees infallibly what our destiny is, and on the other hand leaves us still wholly free to make the decisions that lead us in the one or other direction (search this blog for “physical premotion”, “providence” or “reprobation”). Decisive here is – besides God's will – the free will of the person, not the prayer of his friends.
So yes: with Western Europe rapidly dechristianising, Satan is scoring a small jackpot every day, and I am sorry to say that – unless you are another Padre Pio – God is not going to spare your friends because of you. It was given to you, to us, to live in the midst of heathens, very possibly with some of your beloved ones not even baptised. You know what will happen to them if they die in their error.
Naturally, the temptation is strong to think: “I know that I live in an age of reprobation. But God will listen to my prayers and allow me to, one day, enjoy Paradise with all the people I love”. The questions here are: why would He do it for you and not for everyone else, thus saving a couple of dozen for the prayers of one? (This means universal salvation merely for the prayers of 3 or 4 percent). Also: Why would He not respect the will of those who choose to behave in a way that will merit them hell?
We already have the answers to these questions: if it were so easy to be saved Christianity – and certainly orthodoxy and perseverance in faith – would be pretty useless, giving right to the Francises of the world that salvation is, basically, automatically built in in the Gospel; and, on the other hand, the fact that we know as a truth of faith that God respects the will of His creatures.
The Age of Godlessness will demand that a terrible price in souls be paid. Not as terrible as deserved by strict justice, but terrible nevertheless.
This does not mean that we need to pray less; it means that we need to pray more as we recognise a greater danger for our beloved ones than the one faced by our grand-grandfathers.
What we should not do is to think that things are easy, and that an age of apostasy will receive the same treatment as an age of devotion merely for the sake of the few devotees.
M
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Posted on October 20, 2017, in Catholicism, Conservative Catholicism, Traditional Catholicism and tagged Reprobation. Bookmark the permalink. 13 Comments.
Mundabor's Blog 
Thank you for fleshing these concepts out, Mundy:+) God bless~
I like to think I don’t have many misconceptions about those around me on a frequent basis. I can’t make them want God’s grace. After a recent parish mission with one of our SSPX priests, I have added another decade or two of the rosary each day for my family members, especially the apostates. And I try to also pray for everyone in my sphere. But my focus is very specific: I and my loved ones are far from what could be desired and so I pray for us first. I try to pray for all of my acquaintances in my general prayers.
Great reminder, and excellent food for thought
God Bless,
Victoria
Well said M.
Thank you!!
Ok, so you listed tattoos “(tattoos, cohabitation, abortion, divorce, even sodomy)” among the common practices of heathens. I understand that they are (minimally speaking), as you said, ‘practices of heathens’; however, the others are more in the category of sins (divorce minimally leading to sins and perhaps a sin itself if not annullable). How are we to understand tattoos? Are they merely common practices of heathens and if done modestly & moderately, not sinful—or—do they ipso facto fit into the category of sin?
Note: I have no tattoos and would never waste my resources on such
Tattoos are grave matter. If one wilfully gets a tattoo knowing this and dies unrepentant, he goes to hell.
That occasionally people ask about this is another sign of the decay of Christian thinking in our Country.
When I was a child, this belief was still so strong in my native Italy that we thought it my be a mortal sin to use the water tattoos found in the crisps.
The Holy Virgin Mary said, at Fatima, that “many souls go to Hell because they have no one to pray for them or make sacrifices for them.”
So i think that assuming that prayer can have a great role is not that farfetched. Obviously, as you said, nothing goes against what God has providentially decreed.
But it’s unlikely that He would inspire someone to pray continuously for a person if that person is going to be roasted anyway.
I think that what the Holy Virgin said at Fatima implies that, with prayer, we can gain for them the efficacious Grace which will lead them to repentance.
Otherwise the Holy Virgin’s words would make no sense. So i think that prayers for our loved ones doesn’t change what God has providentially decreed because they are included in the decree itself.
Saint Augustine, for example, was converted because of Saint Monica’s prayer (Saint Monica was his mother).
I think your example is reasonable (and Garrigou-Lagrange states the same) if taken correctly: the unceasing prayer of one person for one beloved one.
However, there cannot be any generalisation of the sort: praying “for world peace” or “for my atheist friends” will not cause either the end of war or the salvation of your atheist friends. If it were so, it would make of us as many wizards.
I am, by the way, pretty tired of these prayers for world peace. I prefer to pray for victory in the wars unavoidably coming.
“I think your example is reasonable (and Garrigou-Lagrange states the same) if taken correctly: the unceasing prayer of one person for one beloved one”
Yeah, of course.
What i meant is that it’s highly unlikely that God would inspire someone to pray everyday for a reprobate, you know what i mean? The reprobates damned themselves for they fault because they refused to cooperate with sufficient Grace, but this is included in God’s permissive will, that is, God permits the fall of the reprobates, He permits that the reprobate refuse His Grace.
But, on the other hand, if He inspires someone (say, a mother, or a close friend, or an husband, whatever you want) to pray for a person, i think it is because it was providentially decreed that the prayer of this person will benefit this wayward sinner and gain for him/her the efficacious Grace which He/She will not want to refuse (because as you know efficacious Grace doesn’t take away our free will but makes sure that we freely want to cooperate, despite retaining the potential ability to not cooperate).
“However, there cannot be any generalisation of the sort: praying “for world peace” or “for my atheist friends” will not cause either the end of war or the salvation of your atheist friends.”
Well, of course. The more prayers are “general” the more they are likely to succed. If we have to pray for loved ones, our prayers should be more specific.
Corrige
“Well, of course. The more prayers are “general” the more they are likely to succed”
UNLIKELY to succeed, instead of “likely”. It was a typo, my bad.
I want to say that having Masses said for persons we desire to see converted and saved it’s a very great help and very great source of Grace for them.
I think that these things aren’t emphasized as much as they should, expecially in this day and age. Speaking for myself, 7 years ago i was lost, i was very far from the faith, I didn’t even think about God and the afterlife. I believed that something could be true but i had lost the catholic faith, my faith resembled the faith of a common heathen, who believes in an undefined “higher power”.
But, in an August’s evening, i felt this “attraction” towards the faith of my childhood, and i started typing on the Internet seeking for witnesses about the afterlife and our faith. After that, in a year, my relation with God returned to what it was when i was a child and i started to praying and going to Mass and confessing my sins again after more than 45 years (since a i was an underage kid i left out faith) lived as a wayward heathen.
Why? Because my father, with which i didn’t talk anymore, had prayed all those years for his son, in order that his son could be saved and repent. I would have never repented if it wasn’t for his prayers, i would have certainly continued to refuse the sufficient Grace which God continued to give to me. But that sudden “attraction” i felt that night towards heavenly things, towards God and the supernatural… that was the fruit of a greater Grace, which was gained for me by my father. I’ve come to know this because he said that to me, he said that he prayed for me every single day and that he was even willing to sacrifice his life and to offer his life to God if that could gain the Grace of repentance for me.
That’s why i think that the importance of prayer is huge and very undermined in this day and age. Maybe my father would have tought that i was going to be saved anyway if someone convinced him that “God is only lurv”.
That’s why i would say to the other readers which wrote that they praying for loved persons to never give up. Continue to pray for them, calling them by name when you pray and entrusting them personally to God’s mercy, don’t give up.
What a beautiful story! I know of similar things happened in my very family. However, I would warn of making of this an unavoidable success story, or something which (in typical VII fashion) can apply to a multitude of people.
I am pretty sure there must be an army of V Ii Catholics out there who think no one goes to hell because they pray the Fatima Prayer every day.
please, for us the uninformed catholics could you tell us what is vatican II, its teachings, different teachings from tradition, what teachings, how it harms or has harmed the catholic world, etc. take your time, i assume it’s a complicated issue
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