1. Isaias 41:23
The true Catholic Church established by Christ can be recognised by the four visible Divine signs that God, Himself, have given her so that all men can easily recognise her apart from all sects and religions. These four signs stands out in that they are what makes the Catholic Church different from all other sects and religion. So they serve two purposes. They show which is the true Church and at the same time shows what makes the Church different from all others.
This is not the case with other sect and religions. What they use as signs that they are the true religion is common to all religions.
St. Robert Bellarmine gives an example. He wrote; if you want to point out a man for recognition you never describe him as someone who have two eyes. Everybody has two eyes. You must give a description that shows he is a man but different from all other men; like he has a halo around his head. That would make it easy to recognise the Church..
You cannot say that the true religion has a God; because all religions claim they have a god. But if you say that the Catholic Religion has a God that is a Blessed Trinity in which there are three persons in one God, then you are describing the Catholic religion rightly so that all men can see that she is different from all other religion.
So the four visible signs of the Church as mentioned in the Nicene Creed had become the most important issue today. Fortunately, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church had written much about these four signs. One of the most popular version of the four visible signs is the 15 Marks of the true Church by St. Robert Bellarmine.
This has become the most important issue today. more important than the dispute on the communion on the remarried proposed by Pope Francis; because if we ask the question who is Catholic and who is not, it will solve even the Bishop’s Synod discussion on the communion of the remarried.
If the bishops proposing that the remarried people who live in adultery do not have the four visible signs, then they should not be followed. If the Bishops who are against that proposal, also, do not have the four visible signs, then we should see the contents of the proposal.
If the contents of the proposal states that all previously married husbands but now separated and living in adultery should live their mistresses, return to their true wives and love them as Christ loves the Church……..then the doctrine is Catholic and should be followed by Catholics.
2. Testing. Testing. Testing. One, two, three.
With all the confusion in the Catholic Church today, it was appropriate that we begin to test everything, as St. Paul wrote, to see if they are of God. Or if they are Catholic or not. Of course, I would start with me and my surroundings. And what I found floored me. Not one of the religions order, not one of the lay organisation, not one of the Parish and not one of the Diocese here in the Philippine had the four visible signs of the true Church.
Fearing I made a mistake or a bad research, I applied the same visible signs of the Nicene Creed to parishes and Dioceses abroad and found the same thing. To make the story short, to double check my research I tried the 15 MARKS of the true Church, an elaboration of the four visible marks, authored by St. Robert Bellarmine. And worse, I was hoping they would, at least, have one or two out of the 15 Marks, yet they have absolute none.
3. One of the Marks mentioned by St. Robert which is contained among the four visible signs from the Nicene Creed, but not obvious in the Nicene Creed, yet very clear in St. Robert is the TWEFTH Mark – The Light of Prophecy. Bellarmine quoted ISAIAH 41:23. This is an explanation of that line in the Gospel ‘He will announce to you the things to come.’
4. ‘These future ‘things to come’ are not winners in the Lottery, nor the arrival of global warming. It is not the coming of future wars nor the election of future presidents. ‘These things to come’ are prophecies written in Divine Revelation whose future happening is unknown to all……until the Holy Spirit reveals it to those who are inside the Church. The Holy Spirit announces the things to come, the Spirit will announce when it is already coming and what we should do.
This makes the Catholic Religion the most unique religion in that we know the past, the present and the future. And we can prepare ourselves for all eventualities.
5. Prediction of the deaths of people or their conversions are common ‘things to come;’ these being exclusively the Acts of God, only the Spirit can predict them. The saints, like St. Benedict and St. Bernard, were known for this.
Let us take two examples mentioned by St. Bonaventure and announced by Pope Benedict. Both occurred on Good Friday. One, is the complete lack of Faith among the Jewish priesthood. And the other was the absence of the Jewish sacrifice because the Ark of the Covenant had disappeared years earlier during the time of the Maccabees. The two go together. Due to the lack of Faith of the priesthood, God takes away the Sacrifice from them. Bad priest equals no Mass. And don’t quote Canon law because God is exempted from observing Canon Law for evident reasons.
Two events happened on Good Friday prophetically. So it should happen again in the future. What will happen, when it will happen, is it happening now and what should we do when it does happen ……all these will be announced by the Holy Spirit to the Church.
Remember that the Holy Spirit will only announce this to a Church that has prepared herself for the abiding of God the Father through a life of repentance (Old Testament); had prepared herself for the abiding of God the Son through a life of Faith (New Testament) and have prepared themselves for the abiding of the Holy Spirit by the life of Charity (Pentecost.) With the Blessed Trinity abiding in the Church, the Holy Spirit can now announce the ‘things to come.’
So the Holy Spirit will explain to the Church the deeper meaning of Good Friday and teach her that this will happen again at the approach of His Second Coming. All the events in the Life of Christ will be repeated at the approach of His Second Coming. The preparation for the first coming of Christ is identical with the preparation for His Second Coming.
Christians are awaiting these announcements from the Holy Spirit. So we say after the Our Father, ‘as we await in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ.’ We await for the signs of the approach of the Second Coming. We do not wait for the Second Coming; that will be too late. We are awaiting for signs of the approach so we have time to prepare. And it is the Holy Spirit who will announce exclusively to the Church what are those signs; like the signs from Good Friday.
6.Announcements that the Spirit should had given the Church.
Based on Good Friday, the Spirit should have announced already to the Church as early as the 19th century that we were running out of priests with Faith. The Mass still existed. Pope Pius IX up to Benedict XVI had been informed by the Spirit and those Popes had been doing something about it.
The true Church knew even then that most priests do not know God the Son, they do not know the way to heaven, they cannot teach people what to do to save their souls……..just like the Pharisees and Sadducees. Their heresies were listed down in the ‘Syllabus’ and in ‘Pascendi.’ There will be a handful, like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who are good but nobody knows where they are.
It had been noticed that most Dioceses and Parishes do not have the four visible signs of the true Church mentioned in the Nicene Creed. In fact, most members of the hierarchy do not know that they have to have those four visible signs in their Dioceses, Parishes and in every Catholic family. Everything everywhere are like Jerusalem on Good Friday.
Pope Benedict’s solution to this announcement by the
Spirit is that he announced that all priest should go back to the seminary and review their Moral theology. This was during the ‘Year of the Priest’ in 2009-2010. Pope Benedict knew he had to react to what the Spirit was announcing to him. He, also, knew that to remedy the situation is impossible because no one can modify or prevent the fulfilment of a prophecy. Prophecies, like what happened on Good Friday cannot be prevented that time nor today because they are acts of God. We can only minimise its ill effects on us. How? Pope Benedict, again, inspired by the Spirit suggested the example of Blessed John Newman; ‘study Scriptures side by side with the Fathers of the Church. And do this in the solitude of a little place called Littlemore, in a small community that Newman organised, and living the monastic life. Get those words of Pope Benedict right and do it and you will be alright. See how the Spirit acted on the Catholic Church during the Papacy of Benedict XVI. We had a true Catholic Church those times.
7. The second thing that happened on Good Friday is that God had taken away the Sacrifice from the Jews. This happened as early as at the time of the Maccabees because of the infidelity of the Jews. In other words, they did not have a Mass. Faithless priest equals no Mass. God had often done that in the past. He will do it again in the near future, completely disregarding Canon Law.
Because of the ignorance of most of the priests and bishops, they have no Faith because Faith is based on knowledge of dogmas that man must know, not through human efforts, but by the grace of God. One can study in the best theological schools in Rome, but if God does not give the grace he learns nothing. And with nothing one cannot make the Act of Faith. God punished the Jews without Faith by taking away the Sacrifice. Today, because most Catholics do not have Faith then God must have already taken away the Sacrifice of the Mass. Most masses today are mere exercises in holding hands and dancing steps.
All these liturgical abuses where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass had been transformed into the dance around the Golden calf begun with some Benedictines, Odo Casel ( a German Benedictine from the Abbey of Maria Laach), who eventually influenced Bugnini, the terrible destroyer of the Mass. And the abuses were propagated by Benedictines from Sant ‘Anselmo that ruled the liturgical program of the Philippines with a vengeance.
It seem they were getting even for the treatment Bugnini got from Pope Paul VI for exiling him to Iran .
8. Anyway, the Holy Spirit must have whispered that God will take away the Mass from the world because of the infidelity of the priest (first described by St. Paul as the great apostasy and described by Blessed John Newman in his ‘the infidelity of the future.’) So Pope
Benedict issued ‘Summorum Pontifical’ to save the Mass. But he knew he could not because it is a prophecy that should be fulfilled. So what do we do when all Masses are invalid. Christ gave the answer to the Samaritan Woman at the well. He said; ‘one day you will not have to worship in Church. For true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth.’ The Spirit had spoken; we will, during these days, worship with our minds and with our hearts….which we are supposed to do, in the first place, at Mass.
We just saw how the Spirit announced to the Church headed by Pope Benedict ‘things to come.’ First, the total ignorance of priest on the Plan of salvation that Pope Benedict tried to minimise through the ‘Year of the Priest.’ And secondly, God’s withdrawal of the Sacrifice from a faithless Church which Benedict tried to minimise through his ‘Summorum Pontifical.’
Now, if some belongs to the true Church of Pope Benedict, he should see if the same thing is happening around his environment.
9. Has the Holy Spirit announced to the Church of the Philippines, the coming of the great apostasy and the taking away of the Mass?
Let us talk about what happened here in Cebu, during the international Eucharistic Congress , 2016.
Most of the speakers, if one checks their background in the Internet, do not believe in the transubstantiation in the Eucharist; they do not believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. We first read this heresy from a Dominican, Edward (whose family name is all consonants.) It was picked up by the Jesuits. And the
Dominican described in the Internet as ‘the evil Dominican’ for propagating this heresy is one of the main speakers in Cebu.
The question is this; it was the Bishop’s conference who invited them. Do they believe in the same heresy. If yes, then they have sinned against Faith and they would be Faithless, just like the Jews on Good Friday. Apparently nobody did anything to show their objection to the heresy.
Nobody is announcing that our priests have no Faith and that our masses are invalid. The Spirit has not talked to anyone?
With such a Faithless crowd do you think there was a consecrated host in that International Eucharistic Congress? If we follow the trend of God’s prophecy, there should be no consecrated host there. If God did it to the Jews, won’t He do it to us? The Jews were His Chosen People. We are not.
What the Spirit announced to the Catholic Church from Pius IX to Benedict XVI, how come it was not announced to the Church of Pope Francis and the Bishops of the Philippines. The Spirit does not talk to other churches or religion. The Spirit only talks to those in whom the Blessed Trinity abides.
10. We return to same important question.
In what Church does the Blessed Trinity abide in? There the Holy Spirit dwells. And where the Spirit is, there will be announcements of ‘things to come.’
If you have heard those announcement, you are in safe hands. If you have not heard those announcements, you are in the wrong church. And Pope Benedict, true to his role as Pope, gave the Spirit’s solution. The same solution received by Blessed John Newman, when as an Anglican he was already in spirit a true Catholic. The solution is what Newman did as an Anglican under the guidance of the Spirit. First, he left everything including his Anglican parish, St. Mary. Secondly, he studied Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church. Thirdly, he went into solitude in Littlemore.
Fourthly, he gathered a small community with him. And fifthly, they lived an experimental monastic life. The this the ‘new’ evangelisation of John Paul II and Benedict XVI which nobody is implementing today.
In no time, Newman was a Catholic. He became a priest and even rose to be a cardinal. And is now a Blessed. A man who knew his Old Testament, his New Testament and ‘the much more’ that Christ wanted to teach His disciple including what the Spirit wanted to announce to him of things to come. And he wrote all these things, including the things to come, a few of which; first, the infidelity of the future which is a description of the complete lost of Faith in todays world. And the lost of the Sacrifice of the Mass as a punishment for the infidelity of the priests prophesied by Daniel.