1. A study of the Catholic Church today.
If we wish to study the personality of teen agers today, we usually gather data about their interests, their behaviour, their dreams and probably how they think. This would be the science of psychology. In the same way, if we wish to study economic systems today, we can go to many industrial advanced nations and find out their business principles. And this may be referred to as the science of economics. All scientific studies goes this way in that it consist in studying what exist now in all its variants.
But when we study the Catholic religion we go back to the past; to the Old and New Testaments and examine prophecies because the Catholic religion is a prophetic religion. It was instituted by God in the past but its present and future are contained in its past. Studying the Catholic religion, therefore, needs a knowledge of its continuity from the past, through the present and its fulfillment in the future. Her history does not follow the rules of science though it does not go against science; it follows the rules of prophecy.
The Catholic religion has a past, present and future; and all of them are contained in her prophetic past. So it is necessary, simply, to unfold the past and we can see her future.
2. St. Augustine and the Catholic Church.
St. Augustine is one of the saints who had splendidly unfolded the past to reveal the future of the Catholic Church. It is a history made by the Holy Spirit and directed by God, Himself, towards her future. So it is infallible. And the Catholic Church had always leaned her certainty on her trust in God who fulfill His promises. In this post we shall be using that most wonderful official prayer of the Catholic church, the Psalmody with its compliment, the Liturgy, in explaining the present from the past.
3. The prophetic images of the Catholic Church.
In both Psalmody and the Liturgy, we have the following images of the Catholic Church. First, we have an image of the Catholic Church as a young vibrant babe just like we see in Christmas cards. The baby Jesus is, certainly, the image of the baby Catholic Church. Secondly, we see the 12 year old young boy lost in the temple. That is, also, an image of the Church. And, thirdly, Good Friday is the last image of the Catholic Church here on earth. Every thing in the life of Christ are the images of the Catholic Church; and Christ’s life had been prophesied in the Old Testament. Knowledge of the life of Christ as prophesied in the Old Testament and His life as fulfilled in the New Testament should enable us to know what will happen to the Catholic Church today. The three stories should be identical or must have continuity.
Let us concentrate on the last image of the Catholic Church here on earth, as prophesied in the Old and New Testament.
4. The three events.
Here are the three events as an outline of the prophetic history of the Catholic Church; the birth of Christ, His being lost in the temple and His passion on Good Friday. In the Liturgy of the 3rd Sunday of Lent, the Gospel described these three events as the three years in which Christ checked on the fig tree and found it with no fruits, wrote St.Thomas of Aquinas on his commentary on the Gospel. The three events and the three years corresponds to the three stages in the life of a man; his childhood, his middle age and his old age.
These three events in the outline of the history of the Church can occur in the life time of a Catholic, in the life time of a community or in the life time of the Catholic Church. It has to be like this so that every soul can undergo these three events as their testing time on earth. Let us concentrate on these three events as happening to the entire Catholic Church. These three events should happen in the life of a person, in the life of a community and in the life of the entire Church because this is the path we have to pass before the predestined few can enter into everlasting life.
5. How will the Church look like today according to the prophecies.
Let us look at the image of the Church, not when she was a child because that is over, but when she is old as we expect her to be today. That would be the Catholic Church on the 6th day.
First, since the Catholic Church is made up of cockles and wheat, we will have to make a distinction. On Good Friday the Church as wheat is represented by Jesus Christ. And the church as cockles was represented by the Jewish people (remember, the Jews were the first members of the Church.) To be more complete, the image of the Catholic Church on Good Friday was; the true Church, the wheat, was composed of Christ, Mary, the first apostles and a handful of disciples. The cockles, which in the parable, were inside the church, was composed of the Pharisees, Sadducees, the entire population of Jerusalem and Judas.
Prophecy states that the Catholic Church will look exactly like that today. And this is called the Hermeneutics of Continuity, i.e. this is how the Church will look today, exactly as how she looked like on Good Friday. This was what St. Bonaventure explained in his theology of history and which Pope Benedict quoted in his audience speech about the 6th day. And this prophecy had been repeated several times in the Gospel using different images.
It is up to each one of us to decide whether we shall be cockles or wheat. Unfortunately, most of us do not know what we are.
A second image is the parable of the vineyard.
Another is the image of a vineyard that was neglected by the husband men. They were not giving the owner his due. The owner sent messengers to collect the dues but they mistreated the messengers. Until the owner sent his own son. And the workers killed him instead. What did the owner of the vineyard do? He took away the vineyard from the workers and gave it to another who would more faithfully work on it.
The vineyard is the Catholic Church and in this parable she did not have a happy ending. Due to the infidelity of the workers, the church was taken away from them and given to others. Who were the unfaithful servants? None other than the priests, the bishops, the cardinals and probably a pope.
Note that in this parable the vineyard was given to another group. This is the ‘new’ evangelization. This group came from no specific place. The Gospel says; from the cross roads, from here and there. But there was a stringent requirement from them. Not merely were they obliged to produce grapes; they were required to have a wedding gown. The wedding gown is the result of growing grapes faithfully. Growing grapes is the life of repentance, faith and hope. While the wedding gown is the perfection of Charity that can only be obtained after repentance, Faith and Hope.
A third image of the Catholic Church. The boat at sea; the apostles were fearful in the boat due to a storm and they were in danger of sinking. This again is not a very nice image of the Catholic Church. She was in danger of sinking. Not really a very glorious image. And St. Peter saw Christ walking on top of the water some distance away from the boat (because He was not in the boat unlike previous boat trips.) So St. Peter left the sinking boat, walked on water towards Christ to seek for help, sank in the sea but was caught by Christ and returned safely to the boat.
Like the vineyard that was removed from the workers, this boat that was in danger of sinking is, also, not a very triumphant image of the Catholic Church. It is, in fact, a sad picture, too. Peter had to leave the boat to seek for help in prayer; sort of resigning in order to pray. The help of Christ in evident because even Peter sank in the sea, as though overwhelmed by the storm buffeting the Church. But he was immediately caught by Christ and returned to the Church as head, again. And the boat was guided by Christ, Himself, to the shore of eternal life.
Note that in both Gospel narrative, the Church had a very, very big problem which only God could solve. And what does God do, He directly intervened! He did not summon a Synod or a Counsel or reformed the Curia. It would just make things worse. No. God directly intervened. In the first, He intervened by taking the Church away from those unfaithful pope, bishops and priests. St. Paul wrote that these unfaithful workers are the ones who would crucify Christ, again.
In the second He intervened by accompanying the Pope return back to the boat and guiding the Church to shore. The ‘new’ evangelization, according to St. Bonaventure and Pope Benedict, is no longer men evangelizing men. It is a direct intervention of God in the history of men. It will be a work of God, not of missionaries of mercy. That is why it is called ‘new.’
Let us see the third Gospel narrative describing the 6th day. Another boat trip. This time in Tiberias after the Resurrection. St. John described this as the last boat trip that is why it is in his last chapter of the last Gospel. It is the last story in the history of man and of the Catholic church. After which, he wrote, there is nothing else.
Having describe the cockle members in the vineyard of the Lord, John, now, describes the wheat within the vineyard. Both cockle and wheat were in the vineyard but they have separate stories and parables because they are separate members of the Church. Each going towards different directions, one to the left and the other to the right.
Unlike the previous boat rides that was in stormy sea, this boat ride was in very calm sea. In both, the apostles were fishing. In the previous boat ride (representing the Church in the middle age) all the apostles were present including Judas. In this last boat ride only apostles were present. Judas was no longer with them.
Again, in both occasion they were fishing. And as usual they caught nothing. The lesson is clear; in evangelization missionaries don’t evangelize or catch souls. It is God who catches after He gives the order to lower the nets.
In the Genesareth account, the apostles lowered the net anywhere after obeying Christ. In Tiberias, Christ, specifically, commanded the net to be lowered only on the right side. In the ‘new’ evangelization, Christ still orders when to lower the net. But this time He, also, commands where the net was to be lowered, on the right side. In the ‘new’ evangelization we cannot lower the net anywhere. The missionaries of mercies who had been instructed to lower the nets wherever they want will surely catch nothing.
While in the Genesareth boat trip they lowered the net anywhere and caught many fishes, both bad and good; in the Tiberias boat trip they lowered the net, only, on the ride side and they caught 153 good and large fishes. While in Genesareth the fish net was at the point of breaking symbolizing schism and apostasy, in Tiberias, though the fishes were plentiful and very large, there was no danger of the net breaking, symbolizing total unity and oneness, Note the difference between the two boat trips; one describing the middle age of the Church while the other describing the last days of the wheat in the Church. No cockles here, remember.
6. Summary.
The history of the cockles in the Church ends with Good Friday. The history of the wheat in the Church ends at the start of the Sabbath, with Christ resting in the tomb and completely ends on Easter. On the Sabbath, the Catholic Church will reach contemplation and the perfection of Charity and possess the garments needed for the grand wedding in heaven on Easter Sunday with Christ in Heaven.
Using the four visible signs of the true Church as described in the Nicene Creed, i.e. One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, and using, also, the popular 15 Marks of the true Church by St. Robert Bellarmine which is an expanded version of the four visible signs…..we can see that the Catholic Church, just like in the parable of the vineyard, can no longer be found in the Vatican, nor in the Curia, nor in most dioceses and most parishes. Sadly, as a consequence the signs are not in most Catholics either in Rome, in China, in India nor in Russia. The parable states that being taken away from the workers of the vineyard it was given to people from the crossroads. So my constant call for every one to use the visible signs of the Church, either the four in the Nicene Creed or the 15 signs of St. Bellarmine, to check if they are truly Catholics or not. There is no other way of checking if we are Catholics.
It was, indeed, given to some in Rome, in Europe, in India, in Russia. But not familiar with the visible signs of the true Church, nobody knows who and where they are. They exist here on earth. This is the church of the wheat, represented by Mary and the Apostles on Good Friday. This is what Pope Benedict was looking for in every ‘Ad limina’ visit he received. He knows from the prophecies that it exist but he does not know where is its geographical location. But he does not mind; he knows he is the Pope of this church. It was to pray for this church that he left the boat for a while to walk on water to go to Christ for help; though they are not back yet. At that time the Church was in great trouble that Peter, the Pope, thought he could not solve the problems. Christ had to intervene.
The workers in the vineyard are guilty of infidelity which St. Paul wrote is equivalent to crucifying Christ again; and indeed, most are doing so, today, by their disobedience to God’s command. Disobedience to God’s command on the indissolubility of marriage and the prohibition of contraception are just two examples. And now, the added proposal for the abolition of capital punishment which is a pretended act of mercy. Capital punishment was allowed by God to help the state diminish evil in this already evil filled world. Remember how God allowed the killing of entire populations in the Old Testament. He, still, does this through catastrophes like wars to partially reduce evil in the world…….and occasionally reward the good in heaven. Pope Francis’ proposal is against the Will of God.
Pope Francis and almost all the bishops are absent in the Tiberias boat trip because they do not fall under the category 153, the number of fishes caught. This number code describes a manner of formation consisting in a very strict new form of monasticism, as St. Bonaventure described it. These 153 fishes make up the Catholic Church that has the four visible marks of the true Church and the 15 Marks described by St. Bellarmine. Their common denominator is what Christ said on the 3rd Sunday of Lent ‘they are repenting every second up to the end of their lives.’ Definitely not Pope Francis who continues to scandalize the whole world by promoting all kinds of sins; from adultery to contraception; from not believing to worshipping nature. He cannot be repenting while he is committing the grave sin of scandal. As Christ said; the rest of the world, by the mere fact they are not repenting, like the Pope, is as bad as the worst criminals like the Galileans and those men on whom the tower of Siloam fell.
Here, we have described the Catholic Church today based, not on the facts from the news today, but from the parables of the Gospel; not by looking at the daily news but by looking back at the past prophecies.