Beginnings of a Catholic revival

“Even Richard Dawkins, God bless him, has decided to dial the God-hatred back a bit and now says he’s also a cultural Christian. Christianity, for him, is a “fundamentally decent religion,” unlike a certain other form of monotheism, of which Dawkins doesn’t approve”. Dr Philippa Martyr Taken from: https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/a-catholic-revival-is-upon-us-feel-free-to-enjoy-it/ A Catholic revival is upon us. Feel free to enjoy it By Dr Philippa Martyr April 14, 2024 If you’ve been reading the international Catholic media lately, you’ll know what an exciting Easter it’s been. Westminster Cathedral in London had to turn people away from the Triduum ceremonies because the cathedral was overflowing. Other churches reported record crowds over Easter. In France, around 1.6 million Catholics turn up to Sunday Mass on a regular basis. But there’s been a 30 per cent increase in adult baptisms since 2023, to a whopping 7,135 in 2024. Next door in Belgium, there’s around 460,000 Catholics going to Mass on Sundays. But the number of adult converts there has doubled in 10 years from 186 in 2014 to 362 in 2024. I wish I could tell you how many adult converts came into the Church in Australia this Easter, but outside Sydney where the bumper RCIA group was even noticed overseas, I don’t know. We don’t collect or publish that data centrally, which I think is a shame. This Easter, Tammy Peterson also became a Catholic. Tammy is the wife of Dr Jordan Peterson—the psychologist, speaker, and author who is probably best described as “Christian-adjacent.” Many of us have great hopes for Dr P’s eventual conversion. But I think it will need more prayers, as he’s already announced he won’t be rushing into anything soon. Media pundits are saying that there’s a Christian revival going on in the UK. Prominent public figures there like Tom Holland and Douglas Murray have publicly praised the social and cultural value of Christianity. Even Richard Dawkins, God bless him, has decided to dial the God-hatred back a bit and now says he’s also a cultural Christian. Christianity, for him, is a “fundamentally decent religion,” unlike a certain other form of monotheism, of which Dawkins doesn’t approve. But none of them has become a Christian yet (and Douglas Murray is openly gay so that’s going to be a hard sell). Nor has Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose recent embrace of Christianity is based not on her belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God, but her belief in Christianity’s ability to withstand the coming fall of Western civilisation. And that’s the rub. This kind of “secular Christianity” is a response to fears about radical Islam and its increasing public presence in the UK. Even the most virulent anti-Christian public figures have started to realise that radical Islam does not tolerate most of the things they value. Is any of this okay? Of course it is. It’s nice when prominent people stop publicly hating your religion 24 hours a day. We should all enjoy the breather. Huge influxes of people into our churches at Christmas and Easter are also not a new thing, and some of the crowds may have been coming in a tidal wave of post-COVID relief. But of course, they’re all welcome. There’s also an online social media trend in “ChristianCore” and “CatholicCore,” where getting your Catholic weird on is increasingly attractive to bored and disenchanted young people. …. The church is here to stay. It has been planted very firmly in the world to save it. But the Christian tide comes in and goes out in different parts of the world over time. God is very patient. He is deeply immersed in his relationship with the individual soul who he is wooing over time and space. We can help him best by getting out of his way. What won’t help is to rush in and start watering down church teaching in the hope of head-hunting famous people who aren’t ready to love God back just yet. Conversion is a journey. Some people like to admire the scenery on the way to the beach while they’re wondering just how cold the water will be when they decide to plunge in. This means that those of us already in the water should be having the best time we can in it. The water is glorious but we might need to signal that more often to the ones still waiting to come in.

Mercy of God the answer to the specific problems of our times

“The Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me… which I took with me to the See of Peter and which it in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate”. Pope St. John Paul II Taken from: https://www.thedivinemercy.org/message/john-paul-ii The Great Mercy Pope It was St. Pope John Paul II who told the Marian Fathers: “Be apostles of Divine Mercy under the maternal and loving guidance of Mary.” We've been faithfully following his instructions ever since. Both in his teaching and personal life, St. Pope John Paul II strove to live and teach the message of Divine Mercy. As the great Mercy Pope, he wrote an encyclical on Divine Mercy: "The Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me… which I took with me to the See of Peter and which it in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate." In his writings and homilies, he has described Divine Mercy as the answer to the world’s problems and the message of the third millennium. He beatified and canonized Sr. Maria Faustina Kowalska, the nun associated with the message, and he did it in Rome and not in Poland to underscore that Divine Mercy is for the whole world. Establishing Divine Mercy Sunday for the Entire Church When St. Pope John Paul canonized Sr. Faustina (making her St. Faustina), he also, on the same day, surprised the entire world by establishing Divine Mercy Sunday (the feast day associated with the message) as a feast day for the entire Church. The feast day falls on the Second Sunday of the Easter season. On that day, John Paul II declared, "This is the happiest day of my life." Entrusting the World to Divine Mercy In 2002, the Pope entrusted the whole world to Divine Mercy when he consecrated the International Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Lagiewniki, a suburb of Krakow in Poland. This is where St. Faustina’s mortal remains are entombed. The saint lived in a convent nearby. The Pope himself remembers as a young man working in the Solvay Quarry, just a few meters from the present-day Shrine. He also says that he had been thinking about Sr. Faustina for a long time when he wrote his encyclical on Divine Mercy. Further, the Holy Father has frequently quoted from the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska and has prayed The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy at the saint’s tomb. Beyond the Life of John Paul II Given all these connections to Divine Mercy and St. Faustina, is it any wonder that Pope John Paul II died on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday (the evening before the feast day), which fell that year on April 3? It is also no surprise that the Great Mercy Pope left us a message for Divine Mercy Sunday, which was read on the feast day by a Vatican official to the faithful in St. Peter’s after a Mass that had been celebrated for the repose of the soul of the Pope. Repeatedly Pope John Paul II has written and spoken about the need for us to turn to the mercy of God as the answer to the specific problems of our times. He has placed a strong and significant focus on the Divine Mercy message and devotion throughout his pontificate that will carry the Church long after his death.

Awe-inspiring lessons of Fatima July 13th

“Yet every pope from Pius XII to Francis has said “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” The refusal to repent — the belief that sin doesn’t really matter — is at the heart of the major moral disasters of our time, from abortion to human trafficking, from the pornography epidemic to the urban violent crime rate. Those who see no wrong do terrible things”. Tom Hoopes Taken from: https://aleteia.org/2017/07/10/fatima-how-july-13-1917-changed-the-church Fatima: How July 13, 1917 “changed” the Church Tom Hoopes - published on 07/10/17 What Our Lady of Fatima did that day inspired many to convert, but provoked others to reject the faith. This week marks the 100th anniversary of the most controversial apparition of Our Lady in Fatima, Portugal. What she did that day inspired many to convert but provoked others to reject the faith out of hand. It made some people a little nutty and won the begrudging respect of others. July 13 was the day Our Lady scared the daylights out of three shepherd children by showing them hell and sternly warning them about a second global war and a new age of martyrdom. But the surprising — and surprisingly harsh — July 13, 1917 apparition changed the faith of the Church in our time. First: July 13 returned hell to the center of Catholic consciousness. Little Lucia dos Santos was 10 when Our Lady of Fatima began to appear to her every 13th of the month starting in May, 1917, along with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 8 and 7. But in July, instead of just exhorting the children to say the Rosary and pointing them to heaven, she showed them a terrible sight. “We saw as it were a sea of fire,” Lucia wrote. “Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form … amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.” To give Our Lady of Fatima credit, the vision of hell only happened after a year of preparation, including visits by an angel and much reassurance about heaven. But the vision so badly rattled Jacinta, especially, that it seemed to change her personality utterly. The only thing that would make this vision okay, and not an example of emotional abuse, is if hell were a real place and we were in eminent danger of ending up there if we don’t do something drastic. It is. We are. Second: She reiterated the most unpopular — and most important — message of Christianity. The messages of Jesus (Mark 1:15), John the Baptist (Matthew 3:1-2) and Peter (Acts 2:38) were all the same: “Repent!” Jesus defined the Church’s mission as preaching “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47). Yet every pope from Pius XII to Francis has said “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” The refusal to repent — the belief that sin doesn’t really matter — is at the heart of the major moral disasters of our time, from abortion to human trafficking, from the pornography epidemic to the urban violent crime rate. Those who see no wrong do terrible things. Our Lady of Fatima’s vision of hell is an absolutely necessary corrective to the presumptuous expectation that we are all going to heaven no matter what. It is true that God wants to forgive everybody. But one thing stops him: We don’t repent. Third: Our Lady of Fatima de-romanticized war. “This war will end,” Our Lady of Fatima told the children in July, “but if men do not refrain from offending God, another and more terrible war will begin.” Whatever they understood about the particulars, the general sense of this message was clear to the children: War isn’t an occasion for God to reward victors, but to punish sin. The “reward” paradigm had existed for a long time in Christian history …. Every Christian culture had their Robin Hood and King Arthur figures: Heroes of the unconventional virtues of clever violence. But Our Lady of Fatima poured cold water on all of that. Martial virtues are real, but they are an example of God bringing good out of evil — not of God’s will being won by violence. Finally, July 13 de-romanticized martyrdom. For that matter, Our Lady of Fatima also level-set our understanding of martyrdom. In the at-home movies era, many of us are only now watching Silence by Martin Scorcese, which follows a Jesuit’s disillusionment as he looks for glory in the persecutions of Japan and finds soul-numbing horror instead. Our Lady of Fatima taught that lesson 100 years ago. The children saw a vision of the pope “half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow,” praying for the corpses he stumbled past until he was himself shot. Our Lady knows that in heaven martyrdom is glorious — and that on earth, it is painful and sad. The meaning of all of this was not lost on the three shepherd children. They learned that it was absolutely urgent that they console Jesus, convert sinners and commit to Mary. July 13 is only part of their story — a story that includes far more consolation than condemnation and was meant for every generation, including ours.

Vatican updates its rules on supposed weeping statues and other mystical events

“The faithful could be “misled by an event that is attributed to a divine initiative but is merely the product of someone's imagination, desire for novelty, or tendency to lie”.” Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez Vatican updates norms to evaluate visions of Mary, weeping statues as it adapts to internet age and hoaxers By Anna Matranga May 17, 2024 / 9:21 AM EDT / CBS News Vatican City – The Vatican's doctrinal office has released new norms regarding alleged supernatural phenomena such as apparitions of Mary, weeping statues and other supposed mystical events. For centuries, apparitions of Mary at sites such as Fatima, Portugal and Lourdes, France – eventually declared by church authorities as having divine origin – have become the basis for shrines visited by millions of pilgrims each year. But in a new document replacing the church's 1978 rules, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) declared that the Vatican and the local bishop will no longer formally declare such phenomena to be of divine origin. DDF chief Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez said in a press conference on Friday introducing the new norms that the Vatican would no longer affirm "with moral certainty that (such phenomena) originates from a decision willed by God in a direct way." Instead, after careful analysis, they would limit themselves to authorizing devotion and pilgrimages, he said. The new rules give the final word to the Vatican, requiring the bishop to conduct an investigation, formulate his judgment, and submit it to the DDF. The DDF will then respond with one of six possible outcomes. They range from a "nihil obstat" ("nothing stands in the way") allowing the bishop to promote the phenomena and invite devotion and pilgrimage; to proceeding with caution since some doctrinal questions are still open; to advising the bishop not to encourage the phenomena; to declaring based on concrete facts that the phenomena does not have divine origin. Fernandez said that since examination of alleged religious phenomena took many years, these new rules would help the church reach decisions much more quickly, which is essential in the internet age where such claims spread very quickly. In most cases, these apparitions have led to a growth in faith, leading to shrines that are at the heart of popular devotion, he said. But the cardinal also cautioned that they could lead to "serious issues that harm the faithful" and could be exploited for "profit, power, fame, social recognition, or other personal interest." The faithful could be "misled by an event that is attributed to a divine initiative but is merely the product of someone's imagination, desire for novelty, or tendency to lie," he said. Neomi De Anda, executive director of the International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton, told the Associated Press the new guidelines represent a significant but welcome change to the current practice while restating important principles. "The faithful are able to engage with these phenomena as members of the faithful in popular practices of religion, while not feeling the need to believe everything offered to them as supernatural as well as the caution against being deceived and beguiled," she said in an email. See also article: Medjugorje is all about the money (3) Medjugorje is all about the money | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu “In 2008, the exorcist Bishop Andrea Gemma said: “At Medjugorje, everything happens for the sake of money: pilgrimages, overnight stays, the sales of trinkets.” It’s “a mixture between personal and diabolical interests: the false seers and their helpers are pocketing the money, and the Devil creates discord between the faithful and the Church”.”