Blog:Visions of Modernism Part 3: Prophesies & warnings

** draft under construction **

Writing this blog around the May 13, and looking around at the world, one can hardly think that Our Lady of Fatima's warnings of the Father's wrath expired with two world wars and the fall of Soviet communism. Indeed, I am hard put to imagine that the "sins of the flesh" that Mary warned were condemnnig more souls to perdition were anywhere greater in 1917 than today.

The spiritual world is far worse off today than in 1917, although you'd never hear it, since our Church leaders today are more concerned with our external than internal spirituality: we hear far more about serving others -- external spirituality -- than meeting our internal spiritual needs -- avoiding sin. Not that the external is less important than the internal. It's not ours to decide which of the Lord's commandments are more important than the other. Any single command is equal to all the others combined, and vice-versa.

So whatever Our Lady meant, when she told Jacinta,

The sins which cause most souls to go to hell are the sins of the flesh.

Here she spoke of preponderance, and not degree, of sin. Elsewhere, she instructed the children of Fatima,

Pray, pray a great deal and make many sacrifices

The immediate aim was to end the ongoing "Great War, but, along with "conversion of sinners", the ultimate goal of her instructions was

reparation for the countless sins by which He is offended

Scandal of 1917

The "Great War" was simply murderous, as was the subsequent Russian Revolution (upwards 5-10mm killed from 1917 to 1922). We can barely imagine the treatment and sufferings of the poor and displaced during this time, although we are taught more clearly the iniquities of class and racial divides back in the U.S.

To read a daily newspaper from the period, as I have while conducting research, one finds all manners of sin, especially robbery, murder, divorce, fighting, drunkeness, prostitution, maltreatment, and so on. Same as it ever was, that is. But one will not find explicit imagery, much less it's use as a commercial lure in advertisements. The most scintillating stories involve lovers and elopers, and the most revealing images are of fashionable women with low-cut dresses or bra advertisements. Graphic imagery existed, certainly, but was limited to particular corners of life, not broadcast nationally.

If pornographic imagery is what distinguishes us in 2024 from 1917, then not a lot has changed. A random search for "scandal" in 1917 newspapers yields a sad, but typical story of a car, a crash, and "damaged gowns." Seems a millionaire's son had an affair with a society "young widow, living in luxury", which ended in a tiff and, somehow, a 2AM crash of the society lady's limousine, from which the millionaire's son, an undesignated female, and a known "high police official." Nothing new there, and neither anything new in an accompanying article on a couple who were acquited of "contributing to the delinguincy of Hattie Porozoski, a fiftteen year old Gary girl"

"Scandal" is that which causes others to sin, and I think that in 1917 the word retained its original meaning. Today, it merely means "that which causes public outrage," its Godly meaning stripped, of course. Jesus spoke of scandal -- and its consequences -- most directly:

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe [in me] to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea." (Mk 9:42)

From the Presbyterian of the South, Aug. 1, 1917

Therein lies the difference between 1917 and today: scandal is inherent to popular culture. In 1917, we find a Presbyterian newspaper speaking about gossip and scandal as a warning to young men. City newspapers regularly published sermons from Sunday services and G. K. Chesterton's essays were published in the New York dailies.

Today, well, I thnk you know what our kids are exposed to -- which makes me think that Mary's warning at Fatima was not for that day alone. If we compare it to 1917, it seems almost quaint, but our Lord and his Mother are anything but, so the warning has to be current, and, perhaps was directed, even, to today than to 1917:

The sins which cause most souls to go to hell are the sins of the flesh.

External v. internal charity

Saint Pope John Paul II was rightly focused on ending the Soviet Union, and by his own words Mary of Fatima << what'd he say?

While John Paul II presided over the post-Soviet transition, Bennedict XVI arrived to an arguably more spiritually precarious world, which two of his predecessors from before Fatima saw coming and warned against loudly. Certainly, their warnings were drowned out by the "Great War" during which Mary arrived to announce two others, far worse than the first, the Second World War, of course -- and Communism.

> Francis?

Let's put to bed any dismissal of communism's relative damage to humanity versus the two global wars is meaningless, as these are essentially the same event, and of the same cause: modernism.

Saint Anthony Mary Claret

From the Autobiography of Saint Anthony Mary Claret,

On September 23 [1859], at 7:30 in the morning, the Lord told me, "You shall fly throughout the world or walk with great speed and preach of the great punishments that are approaching." The Lord gave me a deep understanding of those words of the Apocalypse (8:13): "As my vision continued, I heard an eagle flying in mid-heaven cry out in a loud voice, 'Woe, woe, and again woe to the inhabitants of the earth,' because of the three great chastisements that are to come." These chastisements are:

1. Protestantism, communism....

2. The four archdemons that will make fearful inroads: the love of pleasure, the love of money, independence of the mind, independence of the will.

3. The great wars and their consequences.

1859.

Modernism

Mankind didn't need modernism to learn how to slay or starve one another. War, conquest, forced starvation, slavery, and genocide have been the instruments of death following Cain's example. While plague and non-anthropormophic (man-made) starvation may not arise from hate, Satan reaps gleefully during any such time of distress.

As ever, God already explained it all. From Genesis 11:3-5:

They said to one another, “Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.” They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves;

At least the "sons of man" recognized their limits:

otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”

> Archie letter

PIux X > "Lamentabili sane exitu"

See: https://catholicism.org/anthony-claret.html