This Golden Age for the Church, we believe, is gone forever.

We are now heading into a new kind of Penal Age.

 

These are the words our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, uses whenever, it seems, he addresses an audience.  Remember [that] this is the man who has lived through, and survived, both the Nazi and Soviet Communist regimes in his native Poland.  He has absolutely no illusions as to what awaits us, as Catholic Christians, in the near future.

What he is trying to tell us is that however dark it may seem for us now, there was an even deeper midnight gloom for Christians [as well as Jews] in Poland during the Nazi period (1929-1945) and then after this, during the much longer period of Soviet rule from 1945 until 1990.

Those of us who have lived through that period are well aware of the fate that awaits those who may dare to oppose the current regime; whatever it may call itself.

Both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes Pope John Paul II faced in Poland are dead.  They have been, thanks be to God, consigned to the “dust bin of history,” as Karl Marx put it!

Unfortunately, while the Nazi/Soviet political structures have been crushed, the evil ideas that gave them birth live on; surprisingly, often in the very countries that defeated them.

Essentially, this is a Nazi/Soviet mindset that regards all human beings – whether born, preborn, elderly, or handicapped – as more or less disposable units who may be used according to the wishes, the whims? of those who hold the levers of power in a society.

As a result, we Catholics (and other Christians) now live in a society under a political/social structure that is resolutely opposed to everything we believe in.  We owe it no loyalty or obedience; it should be regarded and treated as our adversary.

Many of us grew up in a kind of Golden Age (1860-1960) of the Church in this country.  We lived in a Catholic world where our friends, relations, and associates were Catholic; where the Church was respected, even revered by, not only its members, but even those outside the Church.  The idea of Catholics being persecuted in this country would have been preposterous.  No politician with an ounce of sense would have even mentioned the word abortion, let alone call for its legalization, fearing that the all-powerful Catholic Bishops would hurl down thunderbolts upon their heads, as indeed they would have!

This was a nice, pleasant world where we could kind of coast along, carrying out our religious duties with a minimum of effort but giving our primary efforts to getting on in the world.  The present well-off status of most Catholics shows that we have been quite successful in this.  Those of us who have taken a different tack, that is, confronting the American Pro-Abortion Establishment face to face via picketing, rescues and other forms of direct action, have found out to their dismay, they all too often received little but lip service from Church authorities.  Indeed, in a few instances, these have even directed Catholics not to take part in life-saving work, such as prayer vigils at abortion mills.

This Golden Age for the Church, we believe, is gone forever.  We are now heading into a new kind of Penal Age.  We must learn to think and to act according to this reality.

We must be prepared, as others have before us, to hang on by the skin of our teeth, to endure all kinds of horrors with, as the cliché goes, no light at the end of the tunnel.

This is where our Lord God has chosen to place us; this is His Will for us.  A Golden Age might have been nice to live in, but He wants us for His Penal Age.  Truly, this is a high compliment.  A commander always picks his best, his most staunch men, to man the place where his enemy must NOT penetrate; the Gap of Danger, as the Irish called it.

We must live up to this great Honor that Christ, our Commander, has assigned us; to hold the line until the enemy realizes that he is defeated and falls back in disarray.  How long will this last — a generation or fifty generations — it is not given to us to know.  We must simply do our duty and follow orders.

This is the Soldiers’ Credo and we are… Soldiers of Christ.

Let us then go forth to join in the Battle!

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