“Various nations will be annihilated.”
What does annihilation mean?
Being the 90th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima, one cannot help but ponder the Blessed Virgin’s warnings to us if her requests went unheeded. She said: “If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.” Well, the good are martyred, the Holy Father has suffered, now what nations are on their way out?
For the past few years I have wondered if the part, “various nations will be annihilated” may not refer to the effects of contraception and abortion rather than some sort of nuclear war or cataclysmic event. Considering that native Europeans are fast becoming a minority in Europe due to low rates of reproduction and the influx of Islamic immigrants, this may not be such an “off the wall” theory.
Fr. George Welzbacher, a retired professor of History at the University of St. Thomas, currently pastor for the Church of St. John in St. Paul’s East Side, composes excellent “Pastor’s Pages” for his weekly bulletin. This past Sunday he comments on the subject of Europe’s decline, reprinting a review of a book dealing with the prospect of an Islamic Europe; The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent. By Walter Laqueur. The review is good, but Fr. Welzbacher’s introduction to the article is also very good. Presented here is an excerpt:
Joining the chorus of the those rejecting Humanae Vitae were far too many Catholic priests and nuns and even here and there a bishop, rallying behind, in the USA, such theological mediocrities as Father Charles Curran or that vicious promoter of abortion “rights”, Father Robert Drinan, S.J., the Pied Piper of Congress, who led many legislators who like to think of themselves as Catholic into voting for immoral laws. These enemies from within, having persuaded legions of the laity to defy the solemn teaching of Christ’s Vicar on earth, became in effect the heralds of a New Reformation, one in which ungovemed appetite has jettisoned by now the entire supernatural order and much of the natural order, too, a Reformation so radical that it would have appalled Martin Luther.
Judged by the multitude of their adherents the enemies of Humanae Vitae have prevailed. Contraception in the West has almost become the norm. But as always happens in the end, though sometimes it takes a while to reach its term, when we revolt against the order established by God, we evoke catastrophe. And so today, forty years after Humanae Vitae, Western Europe-and Russia and Japan-are dying. - Fr. Welzbacher
Fr. Welzbacher is a highly respected historian and dear friend of Fr. John Zuhlsdorf. This week’s Pastor’s Page concludes with this thought:
“To punish our sins God doesn’t usually need to intervene. He just lets us pull the roof down on our own heads. Forty years after Humanae Vitae even many secularists are beginning to wonder if maybe Paul the Sixth wasn’t right.” - Fr. George Welzbacher
October 15th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Good post. We were watching the news tonight and it’s nothing but doom and gloom as the boomers age. We are just not producing enough future tax-payers to pay for health care and work in health care.
October 16th, 2007 at 8:18 am
from Humanae Vitae:
“17. Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men-especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point-have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anticonceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no loner as his respected and beloved companion.”
What a silly idea. That would never happen in the West.
October 16th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Replace “loner” with “longer”.
Next paragraph:
“Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who could blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious.”
What a silly idea. That would never happen in the East.
Pope Paul VI. Just another dead white guy who tried to control women.
October 16th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Rest of the second paragraph:
“In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy.”
Wait. Is he implying that God is calling us to be inconvenienced by our beliefs?! What did a guy in 1968 know about today’s world?
October 16th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Interesting how we think alike, Terry. I added Father Welzbacher’s columns to my blogroll last night.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:48 am
what rubbish you write! Still it’s good if it gets people thinking, discussing, acting…