The CatholiCity Message
Volume XVI, Number 12 – November 21, 2012
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
First, I want to welcome our new readers and thank the 99+% of you who decided to keep receiving the CatholiCity Message. My sobering post-election thoughts, due to its length, are the final Item #6 right after our group cyber-prayer.
1. THANKFUL FOR THANKSGIVING
Thanksgiving is nearly perfect in its simplicity: it honors God as the source of all good things, reflects the Christian foundations of our nation, successfully resists commercialization, and is quietly celebrated by relatives and friends getting together for a meal. As a bonus for most of us, its brilliant placement on a Thursday begs for a long vacation weekend. Happy Thanksgiving!
2. JOIN FR. JOHN'S EMAIL LIST
Our dear friend and no-nonsense writer Fr. John McCloskey has had articles published in virtually every major secular and religious publication in the land, and CatholiCity has long been the official archival website for all his works:
http://www.catholicity.com/mccloskey/
We recently set up a private, secure service to provide an email notification as soon as his articles become available (he is published somewhere in the world roughly once or twice a month). You can sign up to receive the instant benefit from his wisdom here:
3. COMING SOON
My next message is for our faithful readers who may not have distributed our CDs, booklets or novels in a while. In early December we kick off our annual Christmas Appeal, so keep your eye on your in-box. This year's fridge magnet, lapel pin, and art-house print gifts feature a truly beautiful and moving image of Jesus as a young boy.
4. QUOTES
"The only security is courage."
Francois La Rochefoucauld
"Alcohol narrows the mind and lengthens the tongue."
Bill Macfarlane, My Grandfather
"Prayer changes the course of human events, and the greatest prayer is the Mass."
G.K. MacBrien
"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home...
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet;
I do ask to see the distant scene,
One step enough for me."
John Cardinal Newman
"If you're not going to say something nice about someone, don't say it at all."
Patricia Macfarlane, My Mother
4. TENS OF THOUSANDS: LET US PRAY
The following prayer, in union with your tens of thousands of fellow CatholiCity Message readers, will change the world. Let us begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...
"Dear Jesus, thank you for our moms and dads, who gave us life, and for any health we have enjoyed during our years, and for the opportunity to spend time with you on the cross during those times we have endured illness and physical pain. As our friend and brother, please provide us each with the courage and grace on this very day and the days and weeks and months and years ahead to meet all the challenges of our lives: familial, emotional, financial, professional, and physical. Place in our hearts the desire to seek holiness, and to perceive then shake off the temptation to settle for anything less. We pray for our country, that You provide it with whatever is required, regardless of the sacrifices needed, to have it conform to your Holy Will, and we ask this in union with all of our relatives and their guardian angels in heaven. Amen."
4. THE ELECTION: CRISIS FOR THE CHURCH
Like many of you, I was deeply discouraged by the election results. The Catholic Church now faces an immediate crisis in our country, and I am in agreement with the following article by George Weigel, biographer of Pope John Paul II:
In particular, Weigel advises:
"As for the opportunity embedded in this crisis, it is nothing less than to be the Church of the New Evangelization, full-throttle. Shallow, tribal, institutional-maintenance Catholicism is utterly incapable of meeting the challenges that will now come at the Catholic Church from the most aggressively secular administration in American history. Only a robustly, unapologetically evangelical Catholicism, winsomely proposing and nobly living the truths about the human condition the Church teaches, will see us through the next four years. Radically converted Christian disciples, not one-hour-a-week Catholics whipsawed by an ever more toxic culture, are what this hour of crisis, in both senses of the term, demands."
Unfortunately, "full-throttle" Catholics like you to whom Weigel refers remain a small minority within our own Church (perhaps under 5% of the baptized and fewer than one out of five of the 20% who still go to Mass on Sunday). To bolster your hope, I wrote about the dramatic expansion of our numbers over the next two decades, along with our greater influence in positions of authority within the Church:
http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/macfarlane/bright-future.html
The thrust of my article is that the "radically converted Christian disciples" of which Weigel speaks do not materialize by happenstance. In a practical sense, there are only two sources for such Catholics: the grown children of our own devout families or the people we convert or revert.
This is why the Mary Foundation and the handful of other apostolates in America (such as Catholics Come Home, led by Tom Peterson, the speaker on our new CD, "Bringing Catholics Home") that emphasize or enable large-scale evangelization of fallen away and luke-warm Catholics are so critical to our nation during these dark times.
It is absolutely our responsibility to convert as many people as we can as soon as we can while we still have the civil freedom to do so. If you are game to get started or increase your efforts, you can order our free materials here:
https://secure.catholicity.com/
THREE SPHERES: THE ZEITGEIST IS DEATH
My long-time readers know that I have provided myriad reasons for hope in these messages, but my hope is based on supernatural faith, and I believe only an extraordinary intervention from God, along with our heroic cooperation, can defeat the Culture of Death in our nation and our world.
If we take a step back and look at the world in the three cultural-political spheres of the post-Christian West (Europe, America, and South America), the Islamic World (the Middle East, North Africa, and large parts of Asia), and the East (China, Japan, Korea, etc), you can see that the evil one has successfully institutionalized his anti-life agenda over the past century on a worldwide scale.
Japan has the lowest population replacement rate in the world. Korea is right behind. Communist China's forced abortion policies are well known.
European countries, with the U.S. not far behind, have been well below replacement levels for population growth for decades as our societies increasingly reject the traditional family. Larger percentages of the younger generation are postponing or are foregoing marriage and childbearing altogether at rates unseen in human history.
Our own federal government is now forcing religious organizations and those who own businesses to provide sterilization, abortifacients, and abortifacient contraception such as the pill. A handful of European nations (and states such as Oregon) now provide and/or encourage euthanasia for the old and infirm. Abortion not only remains a scourge, but was the centerpiece of the current administration's reelection campaign.
We documented in a recent message the dramatic drop in birthrates in the Muslim world over the past three decades. Radicalized Islam, and its hatred of Christianity and Judaism, as well as its imposition of barbaric Sharia law (which is simply a religious form of civil authoritarianism) is expanding successfully, not waning, in Muslim regions.
Furthermore, the permanent socialized welfare buracracies and policies which practically define modern first-world countries combined with these radical negative population shifts and anti-life policies, which are now deeply imbedded into western societies, guarantee long-term economic disruption, if not collapse (we lack the space to go into the economic details).
I could go on for page after page with variegated evidence of a *worldwide* embrace of the satanic Culture of Death. The evil one, "unchained" as Our Lady has confirmed in many approved apparitions in recent centuries and decades, fortified with his immense intellectual power, is ruthlessly executing his long-term plan to destroy Christianity and the civilization it has bequeathed to the entire modern world.
From this realistic perspective, the election of a candidate representing the pro-life party in our country may have slowed the rising tide of the worldwide death cult, but it would not have stopped it. Weigel is correct: the only hope is holy Catholic Christianity, not just for our country, but for the entire world.
Which means the only hope is you, your children (and grandchildren, if you are of a certain age), and the people you help God convert by your sacrificial efforts to evangelize and support others who ardently strive to evangelize.
DARK DECADES LOOMING?
The coming expansion of devout Catholics within the Catholic Church in America does not mean that our children will enjoy in the overall secular culture the religious freedom we took for granted just a few short years ago.
Our bishops face great challenges, both legally and in terms of courage, and it remains to be seen if they are up to the task. I believe most finally are coming to understand the nature of the battle. It no longer matters that the two generations of bishops who came before our current bishops decimated the Church in our country. We must pray for our bishops and for our country every day, and if possible, do so at daily Mass. Are you doing this? If not, please resolve to begin.
History and the world are littered with formerly Christian territory. Whole parts of Asia Minor and northern Africa, the heart of the Church in early centuries, now contain very few Christians. In recent years, millions of Christians have been persecuted, murdered, and legally marginalized in the Islamic-dominated countries such as Sudan, have been driven out of Iraq, and are currently fleeing Egypt in astounding numbers, to give just three examples.
Fr. John McCloskey has predicted a smaller, more faithful, persecuted Catholic Church in the pages of CatholiCity. We have all literally lived through the seemingly inexorable secularization (read: growing imposition of the godless anti-life agenda) of the United States in both law and cultural practice over the past two generations. Short of the break-up of the United States, with one or more resulting sub-nations providing a Christian safe haven (which would likely be preceded by calamities none of us would welcome), the trend is not our friend. God never promised that the United States, which has survived two civil wars, had to remain a fundamentally Christian nation, much less a unified republic of states.
Politically, all in not lost, and the nominally pro-life political party has strengths. 24 of 50 states rejected the pro-abortion candidate, usually by huge majorities. For those of you interested, here is a sober analysis by a political writer I respect, containing more than a few positive facts:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/11/16/the_political_landscape_after_2012.html
WERE OUR PRAYERS ANSWERED?
Before the election, here and on our own, we prayed for a pro-life outcome. Were our prayers rejected? From a human perspective, it seems that our plea for help from heaven was spurned. Perhaps God has had enough of America and her wanton, legalized sexual indulgence and her tens of millions of chemically and surgically murdered unborn. Perhaps He permitted the evil one to send Hurricane Sandy (which displaced my parents from their home on the ocean in New Jersey for months) to batter the northeast, to cause the death and suffering of so many, and reportedly, to sway a number of voters just in case an anti-life victory was in doubt.
My faith and my instinct tells me that our prayers were answered, just not in the way we foresaw, and that God still has a plan for America hidden from the evil one.
It took early Christians three centuries of suffering, martyrdom, outlaw status, and supernatural faith to usurp the Roman Empire from within, followed by centuries more struggle to convert the pagan barbarians. I told my sons after the election: if our beloved country continues down this path, it will likely do so while oblivious that modern democracy, education, and civilization (including the technology it spawned required to make smartphones) was the fruit of Christendom.
God chose for us to live in these particular historical times. We must not only accept His choice, but we must love it and embrace it fully. Here at the Mary Foundation, we have always looked at it this way: there are tens of millions of lukewarm and fallen-away Catholics in our country, the greatest potential harvest of converts and reverts in the history of mankind! And we have unprecedented tools and technology to reach and convert every one of them.
All we lack are harvest workers in the great field of souls. So Mary brought you to us. And you will bring more harvest workers. In short, let us convert everyone--first America and Canada, then the world!
MARY WILL CRUSH THE HEAD
There is still the promise of Our Lady in numerous approved appearances that there will be supernatural intervention via her intercession, after a period of unprecedented turmoil, to redress and reform a horrifyingly sinful world. I do not visit this topic often, despite having written the most widely read fictional (but non-prophetic) account of such events in my first novel, Pierced by a Sword. I do not know, nor do I try to anticipate, when God and our beloved Immaculate Mary will act decisively. It might be next month and it might be decades from now. Perhaps (and most likely, by my lights) her triumph has begun and will take years to become apparent. I sincerely do not know. Until that glorious era of the Eucharistic Reign, we can all enjoy it now by receiving Holy Communion, if at all possible, every day.
Thanks for reading and for being such a faithful part of our work. I remain yours...
With Saint Joseph,
Bud Macfarlane
Founder
