In His sermon to the Apostles during the Last Supper Our Lord spoke these consoling and encouraging words: “These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) God’s inscrutable providence allowed it, that we are witnesses of an unprecedented crisis of the Church, a hostile takeover within the strategic administrative structure of the Catholic Church, which is marked by the spread of not only poisonous doctrinal ambiguities but even by brazen heresies in the ranks of the high clergy, a phenomenon which in some cases comes close to apostasy. Our Lord and His holy Apostles used and understood the word “world” as human society, or culture and their values organized independently of God and hostile to Christ, the Incarnate God. In His High-priestly Prayer Our Lord said that His disciples and hence His Church were “not of the world, even as He Himself is not of it.” (cf. John 17:16) St. James left to the Church for all times this admonition:

“The friendship of this world is the enemy of God. Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becomes an enemy of God.” (Jas 4:4) To make peace with a human society or culture which rejects Divine Revelation and the uniqueness of Christ the Saviour means a complete illusion or a betrayal of Christ. The “world” with its spirit and ideology which rejects the commandments of God and the crystal-clear and unchanging doctrine of Christ gradually penetrated in the last sixty years to such an extent the structures of the Catholic Church, that one can say that the “world” Christ warned of seems to have occupied the Church’s strategic administrative positions, there took place a hostile takeover.

Over twenty centuries the Church fed itself on the purest sources of the Word of God in Scripture and Tradition, in the sacraments and the examples of her innumerable Saints and had, therefore, within herself always fresh air fresh spiritual oxygen. How can then all of a sudden in 1958 the Church’s life be characterized as having stuffy air and the need therefore of opening her windows so that an alleged fresh air of the modern unbelieving world may enter her, from a world marked by cold technology, consumerist materialism, by the spirit of the French Revolution and the Idealist Philosophy? Since the II Vatican Council we could observe the effects of this so-called “fresh air” which entered through the windows of the Church, opened by high clergy to the world. Pope Paul VI famously stated on June 29, 1972, that “the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God through some crack [fissure].”

“The ‘world’ with its spirit and ideology which rejects the commandments of God and the crystal-clear and unchanging doctrine of Christ gradually penetrated in the last sixty years to such an extent the structures of the Catholic Church, that one can say that the ‘world’ Christ warned of seems to have occupied the Church’s strategic administrative positions, there took place a hostile takeover.”Tweet this quote

Bishop Manoel Pestana, who was called the “Athanasius of Brazil”, Bishop of the diocese of Anapolis in Brazil from 1979-2004, and who was my teacher and ordained me priest, said in an interview in 1988 that he had serious misgivings about the Council’s aftermath. “I believe we have gone farther that what may be tolerated,” he said. Bishop Pestana continued to state: “It is not only the smoke of Satan which has entered into the Church through a hidden opening, as Pope Paul VI has said; it is rather through the main doors that the Devil has entered with triumph, even up to the highest places, entirely through his faithful servants”. Bishop Manoel Pestana, also wrote, in a preface to the book “An Exorcist Tells Us” by Fr. Gabriele Amorth that the Lord himself predicts the darkening of faith, the cooling of charity. Here are words of Bishop Pestana: “Who will exorcise [the devil] from our churches, from our episcopal and parish residences, from our community centres, from our seminaries and universities, from our Senates and Legislative Chambers, from our Government and Justice Palaces, from our banks and stock exchanges, from our media, our schools and hospitals, and from the consciences of all of us? And let us not hesitate: who will expel the demons from the Pontifical Palaces, the Congregations and Secretariats, the Nunciatures, the Episcopal Conferences and Episcopal Curias, the Shrines and Basilicas, the UN and the Parliaments, not to mention this ‘evil world’ that thrives ‘under the sun of Satan’? We urgently need exorcism!”

It is obvious, we are living in an extraordinary crisis in the Church, which I think is objectively unprecedented in its extent because it is touching all levels of Church life: doctrine, morals, liturgy, and discipline. There is a relativization in all aspects—”relativism” meaning there is no stable truth; you can choose one thing or its opposite and all is considered acceptable. Of course, we’ve had other crises previously, like the Arian crisis in the fourth century, which denied the divinity of Christ, the Son of God. That was very dangerous and infected the entire Church, but it was more concentrated on one topic: the divinity of Jesus Christ. Today, the crisis is general. It’s like a body where a sickness affects not just one organ, but all organs.

The entire body is completely weak. It is not a deadly sickness because the Church is indestructible, but the entire body is infected and weakened. However, this body can and will regain its strength and be renewed. And this gives hope. This is the divine characteristic of the Church. Contrary to all other human institutions, which collapse when a sickness affects the entire entity, the Church does not collapse because it is also Divine. She has a divine survival mechanism, a divinely given foundation. The Holy Spirit is always in the Church; Christ is the head of the Church. Our Lady is the Mother of the Church. The truth in doctrine, liturgy and moral life can be to a great extent and almost generally obfuscated and disfigured, as now in our day is the case, but it is only temporarily.

“Even if Catholics faithful to tradition are reduced to a mere handful, they are the true Church of Jesus Christ.”Tweet this quote

We have two images in the Gospels that help us see the reality of the Church’s crisis. The first is the boat in the sea where the apostles were with Christ during a heavy storm. The storm’s water started to fill the boat, and Christ was sleeping. The apostles felt alone and feared the boat would go down. Somehow the Lord was sleeping during a storm that normally no one would sleep through. This was a demonstration that we must trust, even in the greatest storms of the Church. The Lord is there, seemingly sleeping, but then He will stand up, command the storm, and calm will return. So too, the Lord will stand and command this storm of our current crisis. We don’t know the exact time, but it will happen.

Many years ago, during a spiritual retreat at which I took part and which Cardinal Robert Sarah preached to a group of bishops, the Cardinal compared the situation of the Church with the scene of the boat in the sea where the apostles were with Christ during a heavy storm and said to the bishops: “We must awaken the Lord!” Whereupon a bishop remarked: “Your Eminence, when we also sleep, who will then awaken the Lord?” We are called in our day to awaken the Lord, who is sleeping in the boat of the storm-torn Church. How we can awaken the Lord? It is primarily through a spiritual storm of prayers, through the loving offering of our manifold sacrifices, through acts of reparation.

As to the image of a seemingly sleeping Lord, I remember a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Zen in Hong Kong many years ago. Knowing about Cardinal Zen’s love for the traditional Latin Mass and the Gregorian chant, I asked him which were his favourite song, whereupon he answered: “The Introit of Sexagesima”. To be honest I did know be heart which was the text of the Introit of the Sexagesima Sunday. The Cardinal noticed it, and started to sing with much unction the Gregorian chant melody of that Introit:

“Exsúrge, quare obdórmis, Dómine? exsúrge, Dómine, ádjuva nos, et líbera nos.” In English: “Arise, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? arise, O Lord, help us and deliver us.” (Psalm 43: 23-26) The Cardinal observed that the course of the melody of this Introit impressively stresses the word “exsurge”, “arise, wake up”.

“The Pope and the bishops are in fact not the lords and the authors of the faith, but should be its faithful and scrupulous keepers, defenders and lovers.”Tweet this quote

Cardinal Zen then shared a hilarious story. He spoke once with a Cardinal in Rome, trying to make clear to that Cardinal an important issue for the Church. When however this Cardinal showed up stubborn and unimpressed, Cardinal Zen began to sing before the Cardinal in Gregorian the Introit: “Exsúrge, quare obdórmis, Dómine? Exsúrge!”, “Wake up, why are you sleeping? Wake up!”.

The second image of the reality of the Church is illustrated by the parable of the wheat and the tares. St. Augustine spoke about the Church on earth as a mixed body made up of the good and evils ones, a “corpus permixtum”. St. Augustine explaining the parable of the wheat and the tares said:

“O you Christians, whose lives are good, you sigh and groan as being few among many, few among very many. The winter will pass away, the summer will come; lo! The harvest will soon be here. The angels will come who can make the separation, and who cannot make mistakes. We in this time present are like those servants of whom it was said, Will You that we go and gather them up? for we were wishing, if it might be so, that no evil ones should remain among the good. But it has been told us, Let both grow together until the harvest. Why? For you are such as may be deceived. Hear finally; Lest while you gather up the tares, you root up also the wheat with them. What good are you doing? Will ye by your eagerness make a waste of My harvest? The reapers will come, and who the reapers are He has explained, And the reapers are the angels. We are but men, the reapers are the angels. We too indeed, if we finish our course, shall be equal to the angels of God; but now when we chafe against the wicked, we are as yet but men. I tell you of a truth, my Beloved, even in these high seats there (among the high clergy) is both wheat, and tares, and among the laity there is wheat, and tares. Let the good tolerate the bad; let the bad change themselves, and imitate the good. Let us all, if it may be so, attain to God; let us all through His mercy escape the evil of this world. Let us seek after good days, for we are now in evil days; but in the evil days let us not blaspheme, that so we may be able to arrive at the good days.” (Sermon 23 on the New Testament)

Saint Athanasius encouraged the faithful suffering under the Arian heresy that had swept through the Church in his time, saying:

“May God console you!… What causes sorrow… is the fact that others have violently seized the churches, while you find yourselves on the outside during this time. It is a fact that they hold the see, but you possess the apostolic faith. They may occupy our churches, but they stand outside the true faith. You remain outside the places of worship, yet the faith dwells within you. Let us consider: which is more important, the place or the faith? The true faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle—the one who holds the see or the one who upholds the faith? True, buildings are good when the apostolic faith is preached within them; they are holy if everything taking place there is holy… You are the blessed ones—you who remain within the Church through your faith, holding fast to the foundations as they have come down to you from apostolic tradition; and if some wretched person jealously seeks to shake that faith on various occasions, they do not succeed. It is they who have cut themselves off from it during the current crisis. No one will ever prevail against your faith, beloved brothers, and we believe that God will one day restore our churches to us. The more the violent seek to occupy places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim to represent the Church, but in reality, they are the ones being cast out of it and led astray. Even if Catholics faithful to tradition are reduced to a mere handful, they are the true Church of Jesus Christ.” (Coll. Selecta SS. Eccl. Patrum, a cura di  Caillaud e Guillon, vol. 32, pp 411-412).

Christians, we must always have hope. This belongs to the essence of being a Christian, to the nature of Christianity: to be persons of hope. We know to whom we gave our trust, we know in whom we have believed, as Saint Paul said, “I am with you all the days until the end of the world.”

These are God’s words; we have to believe them. A lack of trust and hope is contrary to our Christian identity. In the old times of Christianity, the Christian community was called a community consisting of guests, or travelers. It comes from the Greek word paroikia, from which we get the word “parish”. It means we are not living in our own home; we are travelers.

“One day, we will thank the Lord for every moment we had to suffer here on earth and even to have lived in such a tremendous storm within the Church.”Tweet this quote

This is Christianity, we know where we are going, so we have hope.  And then, as Christians, we are marked by the cross. The cross is not only a decoration we carry with us on a chain. It is the crucified Lord. Christ triumphs in and through His Cross. The Cross of Christ is our identity. In our churches we have the cross; in our houses we have the cross; on our grave there will be the cross. This is because we are saved by the Cross of the Lord, it is the sign of our salvation. As Saint Paul says, “In the cross is life; in the cross is hope.”  These are not empty words; this is really true. This is the way to heaven, the way to our salvation. If there were another way, God would have showed us that other way.

There is a beautiful phrase in the liturgy. In Latin it is: Ave crux, spes unica (“Hail, O Cross, you are my only hope.”) We have the privilege to unite our sufferings and trials with the cross of Christ, especially in our day when we witness that our Mother the Church, is going through her Golgotha hours. We do not simply suffer in an empty dimension, or with anger as people who do not have the faith do. When we unite any kind of suffering with faith and hope to that of Christ, then these sufferings, even if they are very heavy and strong, are not in vain. They are blessed by God, and they bear fruits for eternity in heaven. Because of the sufferings of Catholics due to a hostile takeover within the Church, due to the marginalization and persecution of all what is true Catholic within the Church, these all sufferings will bear fruits if they unite them with the sufferings of Christ, with the mystery of His Cross. One day, we will thank the Lord for every moment we had to suffer here on earth and even to have lived in such a tremendous storm within the Church.

The Lord is renewing the Church in our day, starting with the little ones: with families, large Catholic families, good and hidden sacrificial sisters and religious who are praying and sacrificing themselves in contemplative life, or hermits hidden who sacrifice themselves for the Church. There are young people who really love the true faith, the true liturgy, and a heroic Christian life. There are young seminarians and young priests who love the true Catholic faith of all times and the true liturgy of all times. These are signs of hope. They are small, but nevertheless, God loves to use the small ones, the little ones, to fulfill His almighty works. This is happening in our day. People may ask: Will the Catholic faith prevail once more in the world? If so, how might this happen? How long might it take? And what do we need to do?

Our Lord said in the Gospel that Christians are a small flock.  We do not know the plans of God. In our day we have almost apocalyptic signs, not only against Christianity, but we see explicit blasphemy. There is blasphemy of Christian values and public blasphemy of Christ. But the world is nevertheless in the hands of God, not of the devil. The Lord is the master of all history. He permits the devil and his helpers to do their work; we don’t know God’s plans. It is a mysterious permission but St. Augustine said God permits evil so that His almighty power can draw a greater good from it.

We must believe in our time, even with these horrible, apocalyptic scenarios even within the Church, that God will draw a greater good from this situation, that He will purify the Church. We don’t know if God will grant that we have a Christian society again, or at least a part of it is Christian. We don’t know. Our Lady at Fatima promised us that her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end. We do not know how long it will be until the triumph of her Immaculate Heart here on earth, but it will happen. This is our hope.

Ever more timely sound the famous words of Blessed Fulton Sheen: “Who’s going to save our Church?  It’s not our bishops, it’s not our priests and it’s not the religious.  It’s up to you, the people.  You have the minds, the eyes and the ears to save the Church.  Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops and your religious act like religious.” (Address to the Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus in June 1972).

“Indeed, we believe and hope in Christ’s victory over the hostile takeover within the Church. Christus Vincit!”Tweet this quote

The more the high clergy betrays in our day the pure doctrine of Christ and the unchanging teaching of His Church, the more shines in the ranks of the laity, of the little one the purity of the Catholic Faith, the holiness of life and the spirit of martyrdom. We possess some striking examples from Church history. It is the martyrdom of an entire parish in the city of Abitene in North Africa during the persecution of Diocletian, at the beginning of the fourth century. The priest saint Saturninus was celebrating the Holy Mass on a Sunday at which assisted the faithful of his parish, yet secretly, because it was forbidden for Christians to gather for worship. The police suddenly raided the room and arrested all. The children of the priest Saint Saturninus, who we borne to him before his ordination, were present, they were: Saturninus and Felix, lectors, Maria a consecrated virgin and Hilarion a six-year-old child. All parishioners and their priest were led to the judge and then to prison for execution. On the way to the tribunal they met with their bishop Fundanus, who just returned from committing the act of apostasy. The little boy Hilarion, when asked by the judge answered:

“I am a Christian and I have been at the liturgy. I went of my own accord, nobody made me go.”

When the proconsul ordered them back to prison to be executed, little Hilarion with all the parishioners cried out: “Thanks be to God”.

With their martyrdom these little boy, the other teenagers and fathers and mothers of family with their priest Saturninus made also amends for the apostasy of their own bishop, who betrayed Christ in order to save his short earthly life. By this fact we see that God permits that in some periods of the history of the Church the little ones, the faithful, have more strength and fidelity of faith than some members of even the high clergy.

Another example of the bravery and fidelity of the lay faithful to the integrity of the Catholic faith is from the 7th century during the heresy of monotheletism. In 654 was elected a new Pope Eugenius I. He then sent legates to the heretic Emperor in Constantinople. The Papal legates came back from the Emperor with the request that the new pope should declare himself in communion with the heretic patriarch of Constantinople and approve a letter from that patriarch, which was if not not directly heretic, at least doctrinally ambiguous and unclear. This doctrinally ambiguous letter was then publicly discussed in the Roman Basilica of St. Mary Major.

The assembled clergy and lay faithful were so scandalized by the doctrinal ambiguities of that letter that they let Pope Eugenius begin to celebrate Holy Mass only when the pope publicly promised not to recognize the heretic patriarch of Constantinople and to condemn his doctrinally ambiguous letter. (cf. Butler’s Lives of the Saints. Complete edition. Edited, revised, and supplemented by Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. and Donald Attwater, London 1956, Volume 2, p. 458)

What it would be, if laity in some so-called synodal assemblies in our day would ask the Pope and the Bishops to condemn the most spread heresies and ambiguities in doctrine and practice within the Church? Such would be a truly Catholic synodal method! The Pope and the bishops are in fact not the lords and the authors of the faith, but should be its faithful and scrupulous keepers, defenders and lovers.

We have a moving witness of this Catholic truth that in the life of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, those in power, especially the hierarchy, are sustained spiritually by the lowest ones in the hierarchical order. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa from the 15th century was deeply moved by a dream-like vision, which he had. In the vision, he was given a guide who needed to show him something. Together they entered a small, ancient church from the early centuries, and there the Cardinal saw an amazing sight. More than a thousand nuns were praying in the little church. Despite the limited space, they all fit due to their slender and composed nature.

The sisters were praying, but in a way that the Cardinal had never seen. They were not kneeling but standing; their gaze was not cast off into the distance but rather fixed on something nearby which he could not see. They stood with open arms, palms facing upwards in a gesture of offering. Surprisingly, in their poor, thin hands they carried men and women, emperors and kings, cities and countries. Sometimes there were several pairs of hands joined together holding a city. A country, recognizable by its national flag, was supported by a whole wall of arms, and yet even then there was an air of silence and isolation around each one of them in prayer. Most of nuns, however, carried one individual in their hands.

In the hands of a thin, young, almost childlike nun, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa saw the Pope. You could see how heavy this load was for this thin, young nun, but her face was radiating a joyful gleam. Standing in the hands of one of the older sisters he saw himself, Nicholas of Cusa, Bishop of Brixen, and Cardinal of the Roman Church. He saw the wrinkles of his age; he saw the blemishes of his soul and his life in all their clarity. He looked with stunned and surprised eyes, but his fright was soon mixed with an unspeakable bliss. His guide whispered: “Now you see how sinners are sustained and carried and, in spite of their sins, have not given up loving God.”

“What about those who do not love anymore?” the Cardinal asked. Suddenly, he was in the crypt of the church with his guide, where once again, more than a thousand nuns were praying. Whereas the former ones were carried in the nuns’ hands, here in the crypt, they were carried in their hearts. They were exceptionally serious because the fate of eternal souls was at hand. “So you see, Your Eminence,” said the guide, “that also those who have given up loving are still carried. It happens occasionally that they become warm again through the ardent hearts which are being consumed for them—occasionally, but not always. Sometimes, in the hour of their death, they are taken from these saving hands into the hands of the Divine Judge, and they must also answer for the sacrifice that has been made for them. Every sacrifice bears fruit.”

Our Mother the Church is going through an unprecedented time of trials. There is a hostile take-over up to the high ranks of the administrative power in the Church. And yet, in view of this situation, as true Catholics we should not fall into an attitude of anger, bitterness and despondency. Through the current interior trials the Church is being purified. Christ will overcome His enemies who managed to occupy influential positions within the Church. The faithful and the little ones in the Church pray day and night with the voice of the psalmist: “Behold, the Protector of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Ps 121:4).

The voice of Holy Mother Church in her liturgy continue to pray in midst of the darkness: “O God, eternal Shepherd, you are not abandoning your Church, but guard it with constant protection.” (Preface of the Apostles).” And: “O God, Your right hand upheld Saint Peter as he walked upon the waves, so that he would not sink.” (from the Collect of the Octave of the Feast of Saint Peter and Paul)

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich had once a vision of the Church that offers us comfort today: “I beheld a majestic woman walking across the great square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. She held her wide mantle gathered in both arms and floated gently upwards. She stood upon the dome and spread her mantle—which shone as if made of gold—far and wide over the entire expanse of the church. Those who had been tearing down the St. Peter’s Basilica had paused for a moment. Now they sought to return to the task of demolition, yet they found it impossible to approach the area covered by the majestic woman’s mantle. From the other side, however, there arose a flurry of activity among people engaged in rebuilding the church. Very old, sick, and forgotten men arrived, alongside many vigorous young people—women and children, clergy and laity—and soon the structure of St. Peter’s was fully restored.

Then I saw a new Pope approaching with a procession. He was much younger and more austere than his predecessor. He was received with great solemnity. A great double feast of the Church was to take place: a universal jubilee and the restoration of the church. Before commencing the celebration, the Pope had already prepared his team; from the assembled crowd, his new team singled out—without meeting any resistance—a number of clerics, both high-ranking and lowly, and dismissed them. He then enlisted entirely different people into his service, both clergy and laity. Thereupon, the great solemnity began within St. Peter’s Basilica.” (Vision during the Octave of Christmas in 1819)

Let us invoke Our Lord, day and night, offering Him our little and big sacrifices, calling Him to arise and command the storm and restore to His Church again all the purity of doctrine, all the sacredness and sublimity of the liturgy, all the holiness of life, in first place that of the clergy, of the priests, bishops and the Popes. Let us implore the Lord saying: Adorn the Holy See with holy popes who neither fear the powerful of this world nor compromise with the spirit of the age, but preserve, strengthen, and defend the Catholic Faith unto the shedding of their blood, and observe, protect, and hand on the venerable liturgy of the Roman Church. Through an era of holy popes, may the Holy See—which is home to all who promote the Catholic and Apostolic Faith— always shine as the cathedra of truth for the whole world. Hear us, O Lord, and through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of the Church, grant us holy Popes, grant us many holy Popes!

In deed, we believe and hope in Christ’s victory over the hostile takeover within the Church. Christus Vincit!

Bishop Schneider, The Remnant Newspaper