By default, the Catholic Church is undergoing a de-Christianization. Catholics and their descendants are no longer making their acts of faith.
The cause is the fact that an act of Faith is a purely supernatural act. And man today is so natural (and unnatural) that they are unable to climb up to the supernatural. Or, even though the act of Faith is purely an act of God, man is unable to dispose himself to deserve it. Unfortunately, our culture and our times, our system of Catholic education and our defective catechesis, and our parents all contribute to our present indisposition.
So what is happening is that Catholics with faith are losing their faith because of sins against faith and our young ones are unable to make their act of faith because of the bad examples around them. Blessed Alberione, in fact, put the blame on parents, particularly the mother. Our mothers are more like Eve than the Blessed Virgin Mary. Unlike Mary who brought Christ to the temple, mothers are bringing their children to the forbidden tree. Should we still wonder why we are killing one another as Cain killed his brother Abel?
And it is the children of Eve who are becoming priests and bishops, nuns and future mothers. Where are the true children of Mary? The book of the Apocalypse points at the desert where the woman fled to a special place prepared by God Himself. There, in that special place, is where the true children of Mary are to be found.
St. Louis de Montfort knew this and tried to establish a community that would truly become children of Mary, truly a community of Faith. St. Bonaventure knew about this, too, and was hoping that that community was that of St. Francis of Assisi. Pope Benedict knows about this “small Church” shining with true Catholic Faith, which, perhaps, explains his interest in new emerging small communities.
Christ has prophesied that “when the Son of man comes, will He find Faith on this earth?” Of course there will always be, for the Church will always exist. But He emphasizes its smallness.
Sion, and especially the temple of Jerusalem, pre-figured the Catholic Church. Because of the unbelief of the Jewish people the temple was destroyed, wherein “not one stone was left on top of another.” Could this be the same vision at Fatima: the ruined Church wherein not one stone is left on top of another …. because of her de-Christianization, because of her absence of Faith?
Only those with Faith can transmit the faith, says Leo XIII addressing exegetes. We have had a crisis of faith since the middle ages. With faith practically dying with the Saints raised by God, the world would be devoid of it by now. Of course, God always raises up Saints and Popes to confirm us in the faith, but who gives their intellectual assent to their teachings as words of God? (Painting is “The Dream of Innocent III” from the Basilica of St. Francis.)