Trial and Rescue: a larger view.

As western societies continue to slide into panic about one thing or another - panic, which is one of the many consequences of embracing "progressive" ideology that, using language and methods that mimic Christian vocabulary and practices, directs hearts and minds toward empty headed thinking and behaviour - we can expect sooner than later that many, awakening to the danger to their health and well being, will seek out alternatives that anchor a person in the transcendentals. The transcendentals - truth, goodness and beauty - are fresh water to souls left parched by dwelling in the arid wasteland of western progressivism, which is socialism on steroids.

Said seekers will find communities that embody the transcendentals. Such communities are those among the Ordinariates - currently located in North America, Oceania and the United Kingdom - or will be associated with a society such as the FSSP, or will be a diocesan community that hosts the Extraordinary Form Mass. Eastern rite communities, that preserve liturgical integrity and the orthodox Faith, will also be refuges for orphans of a declining civilization.

It is easy to understand why the current mania plodding its way through many populations is gaining a stranglehold on minds. When people abandon reason they are readily given to irrational fear. They adopt the politics of fear imagining that by giving shape to their fears they will gain control over them by doing so. It's one thing to acknowledge a real threat and take necessary precautions; it is another thing entire to shut down schools, businesses and governments thinking those actions will completely inhibit the spread of a flu virus. Reduce the threat? Sure. Eliminate the threat? Wishful thinking. Wash your hands regularly; don't pick your nose or rub your eyes. If sick, stay home. Most will successfully weather another outbreak of a flu bug. Sadly, very sadly, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are most susceptible to such a disease. The Christian's "job" is to remain calm and continue serving our sisters and brothers who require time and practical support to recover from both the flu and spiritual ailments.

How long will it take to reverse the pandemic effects of the progressive (left wing fascist) ideology currently sanitizing our communities and nations of reason, to flush the fecal godlessness that is washing over our children in public schools and those Catholic schools that have been co-opted by misguided liberal religionists? The signs are already there affirming a quickening migration toward liturgically coherent communities. There is enough commonsense remaining among members of the current generation to argue that a shift away from soul destroying socialism (progressivism, liberal religion, etc.) toward the Catholic understanding (e.g., of the human being, of reality, etc.) is quietly and irrepressibly underway. Even while many abandon the Barque of Peter, in the midst of scandal, converts - i.e., former non-Catholics, ex-agnostics, ex-atheists - are trickling in, drawn by the Truth and the joy that accompanies true belief in the True God.

As Pope Benedict said as then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ("The church will become small." from Faith and the Future; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009),

(the Church) will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members... .

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution [...]. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man's home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

We still have a long, long way to go before the tide may fully turn and civility may once again occupy the hearts of a majority of men and women. And, sadly, many lives will be destroyed by, for example, a promotion and enactment of death on demand for the dying and despairing. The culture of death has built many cities of despair; casualties abound.

Colleges are prison camps operated by progressive thugs; universities are factories producing fascist liberals who are blind to the fact that they themselves are responsible for manufacturing the plague infecting society. - A.B. Anderson

To restrain that pseudo-intellectual, sociopolitical plague, a successful prescription must include inoculating parents and their children to resist ideologies that condition them to seek power at all costs, ideologies that foment among people a willingness to abandon reason and seek the destruction of others' reputations in order to remove obstacles to their "success". The manipulations of left wing ideologues must be exposed for what they are: irrational, and therefore inhuman. The conservation of truth requires individuals to expose the real bullies, the terrorists who have an allergic reaction when their wayward antics are exposed as such and who resort to verbal intimidation and physical violence, fear mongering and gossip to rob people of goodwill and reason of an opportunity to share the marketplace of ideas.

To counter the deforming progressivist drug cocktail being poured into children's ears and eyes, families must be solidly formed in and sustained by the Catholic Faith. Children must be taught and shown the Gospel and taught how to live the Gospel without compromise, to live as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves. The formation of faithful disciples of Jesus Christ is most likely to be offered and sustained in traditional communities of the Ordinariate and those other places identified earlier in this post. Where Tradition lives, faith and hope and love thrive.

Matthew 10:16

Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

There is nothing original about the above prediction. Many others know full well the litany of charges against the current generation or at least those members of our societies who willingly adopt the anti-human agenda invented and sustained by evil itself.

God will win the war; God is in control. Our struggle is, as scripture reminds, an epic one against spiritual forces that can only be defeated by those allied to the one true God. Apart from God we can do nothing; with God all will be well and good.

John 15:5

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

All the more reason to fast and pray with increased fervour, to offer the Mass and prayers on behalf of others who are in most need of God's mercy.

Holy Michael, Archangel: pray for us.