Confusion! Confusion! Confusion!

 

 

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A colleague recently relayed an anecdote about an encounter with the late Servant of God Fr. Stefano Gobbi that another priest observed. When he was told that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio had just been elected as Pope Francis, Fr. Stefano apparently clasped his heart and exclaimed, “Confusion! Confusion! Confusion!”

 

The Great Confusion

I was taken aback by that testimony because that was essentially the same word that came to me weeks before Francis was elected, before I’d even heard of this Argentinian. When Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, I repeatedly heard over and over again one of the strongest interior “now words” I’ve ever received:

You are now entering into dangerous and confusing times.

I spoke at length about this with American seer Jennifer, who received similar words from Our Lord in 2005:

My people, this time of confusion will only multiply. When the signs begin to come forth like boxcars, know that the confusion will only multiply with it. Pray! Pray dear children. Prayer is what will keep you strong and will allow you the grace to defend the truth and persevere in these times of trials and sufferings. —Jesus to Jennifer, November 3rd, 2005

As I wrote in By Our Own Hands, the signs have indeed been piling up “like boxcars,” one after another. Most notably, spiritual confusion began in those days after Pope Francis was elected.

At first, his spiritual vision of seeing the Church as a “field hospital” was moving.^[1]cf. The Field Hospital His call to priests and bishops to come out from behind their dicastery and parish walls and to go out to the peripheries of society was prophetic and challenging to many clergy.

But then came those airplane interviews and ambiguous statements like “Whom am I to judge?” — a comment that emboldened the entire LGBT movement (even though the Pope’s words were twisted from their intended meaning). There was the projection of animals onto the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica; the alignment of Rome with the United Nations sustainable development goals (that include gender ideology and abortion); the endorsement of the highly fraudulent “global warming” agenda;^[2]cf. The Big Lie the “Pachamama” scandal;^[3]Putting the Branch to God’s Nose and The New Paganism – Part III questionable appointments to the Roman Curia; the closure of Catholic churches during COVID; and the tragic push of an experimental mRNA gene therapy^[4]cf. Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops that has now killed and maimed millions around the globe.^[5]cf. The Tolls

But the most troubling confusion has been in pastoral edicts — such as the seeming endorsement of admitting to the Holy Eucharist couples living in sin (Amoris Laetitia), or the sophistries of Fiducia Supplicans endorsing a form of blessing to same-sex couples, not just individuals.^[6]cf. Have We Turned a Corner And clearly, the suppression of Pope Benedict’s moto proprio that had allowed unrestricted celebration of the Latin Mass has only deepened the mistrust of Church leadership and fomented increasingly intense divisions.^[7]cf. A Great Schism?

Perhaps the icing on the cake, though, is this novel trajectory to make the Church more “synodal” by consulting the laity for direction. While the call to “listen” to the Body of Christ is certainly healthy, there is nothing sound about consulting the laity on doctrinal issues. In fact, it’s the very opposite of what Christ commanded; that is, for the Apostles — and by default their successors — to teach the world — not the other way around. 

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Such was the authority that Jesus imparted to the first bishops, He said to them:

Whoever listens to you listens to Me. Whoever rejects you rejects Me. And whoever rejects Me rejects the one who sent Me. (Luke 10:16)

To us, the laity, the words of Sirach apply:

Whoever obeys Me will judge nations; (cf. Rev 2:26) whoever listens to Me will dwell in My inmost chambers. (Sirach 4:15)

Therein lies today’s confusion: the Church has not only ceased to evangelize and teach faith and morals to this generation, but hardly anyone is listening when she does. As Cardinal Müller, former prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, warned:

…as the Church’s one and only indivisible magisterium, the pope and the bishops in union with him carry the gravest responsibility that no ambiguous sign or unclear teaching comes from them, confusing the faithful or lulling them into a false sense of security. —Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller; First Things, April 20th, 2018

It is painful to admit that the Vatican’s messaging has not only been confusing, but at times outright scandalous.

 

‘Smoke of Satan’

It would seem the first wisps of this general confusion entered the Church as the Second Vatican Council convened. Now, many point to the Council itself as the source of the confusion. But this is a short-sighted oversimplification. In a radio address in 1946, some 16 years before Vatican II, Pope Pius XII warned:

The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin. —POPE PIUS XII, Radio Address to the United States Catechetical Congress held in Boston [26 Oct., 1946: AAS Discorsi e Radiomessaggi, VIII (1946), 288]

The point of the Council was, in fact, to discover new language to pastorally address a world increasingly divorced from God. The pews were full… but were hearts? “I want to throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in!” said Pope John XXIII allegedly, after announcing the Council. But something else happened. As Paul VI observed nearly seven years after the Council closed…

…something preternatural… came into the world precisely to disturb, to suffocate the fruits of the Ecumenical Council, and to prevent the Church from bursting into the hymn of joy at having regained full self-awareness. —June 29, 1972; vatican.va (note: this is an auto-translation)

Instead, modernism seemed to burst out everywhere. As if to counter these revolutionaries who sought to “reform” every Catholic institution, including the Liturgy, Paul VI penned Evangelii Nuntiandi, one of the most beautiful papal documents ever written on the Church’s chief mission of evangelization. But instead of preaching the Gospel, modernists reinvented it.

I am reminded of the prescient words of Sr. Lucia, one of the Fatima seers, who said:

This is a diabolical disorientation invading the world and misleading souls! It is necessary to stand up to it… —Sister Lucy, to her friend Dona Maria Teresa da Cunha, April 12, 1970

She would later write to Mother Martins, “It is painful to see such a great disorientation and in so many persons who occupy places of responsibility…!”^[8]Letter, September 16, 1970 Paul VI framed it this way:

…from some fissure, the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.. —June 29, 1972; vatican.va (note: this is an auto-translation)

The commentary on his homily continues with words that seem even more fitting to our decade than his:

There is doubt, incertitude… disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation. There is no longer trust of the Church; they trust the first profane prophet who speaks in some journal or some social movement, and they run after him and ask him if he has the formula of true life… Scientists are those who more thoughtfully and more painfully exert their minds. But they end up teaching us: “I don’t know, we don’t know, we cannot know.” The school becomes the gymnasium of confusion and sometimes of absurd contradictions. Progress is celebrated, only so that it can then be demolished with revolutions that are more radical and more strange, so as to negate everything that has been achieved, and to come away as primitives after having so exalted the advances of the modern world.

This state of uncertainty even holds sway in the Church. There was the belief that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for the history of the Church. Instead, it is the arrival of a day of clouds, of tempest, of darkness… We seek to dig abysses instead of filling them in. —translation by Fr. Stephanos Pedrano; cf. “The Smoke Of Satan Homily”

Still, if Paul VI lamented the smoke of Satan, others accused him of spreading it by doing little to stop the revolutionaries.

…In sober truth, by empowering the liturgical radicals to do their worst, Paul VI, wittingly or unwittingly, empowered the revolution. —from The Desolate City, Revolution in the Catholic Church, Anne Roche Muggeridge, p. 127

So much confusion. The ultimate reason for it, as noted earlier, was actually foreseen over 1700 years ago by Church Father Lactantius, who foretold:

All justice will be confounded, and the laws will be destroyed. —Lactantius (c. 250 -c. 325), Fathers of the Church: The Divine Institutes, Book VII, Chapter 15, Catholic Encyclopedia; cf. The Lactantius Prophecy

Framed in modern terms, St. John Paul II said simply:

Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong… —POPE JOHN PAUL II, Cherry Creek State Park Homily, Denver, Colorado, 1993

By no means is Heaven surprised by this Storm of Confusion that has descended upon the world. St. Michael the Archangel, in a message to German seer Manuela Strack in Sievernich, Germany, allegedly said earlier this year:

You know that you are in the time of tribulation; this is the time of Great Confusion, and the ‘smoke of Satan’ has also penetrated the Church. —May 19, 2026

To Pedro Regis of Brazil, Our Lady allegedly said a few days ago:

Behold, this is the time of Great Confusion. The enemies will cause division in God’s House, and the pain will be great for the faithful. —August 29, 2026

More recently, Our Lord said to Jennifer:

Satan is seeking to gain as many souls as possible through the means of fear. He has unleashed his companions upon every corner of the earth in order to cause chaos and confusion. —September 17, 2022

 

The Faith of Many Will be Shaken

The end result of this confusion has been a growing disorientation within the Roman Curia itself, which often sounds more like a subsidiary of the World Economic Forum than the Mystical Body of Christ.^[9]For instance, in 2022, the Vatican officially joined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Climate Agreement while Pope Leo echoed the UN Secretary-General of the United Nations, claiming that “the world is burning”(lifesitenews.com; news.un.org). What they were essentially blaming was you and I for our lack of “ecological conversion”, thereby causing the climate to warm. However, what the Pontiff and UN General seemed unaware of is that the vast majority of these global fires are the result of arson and forest mismanagement, not man-made “global warming” (cf. Rethinking the Renewable Energy Thing). In fact, while doubling down on this climate change narrative, no one in Rome seems to have noticed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which promoted the Paris climate accord, recently eliminated the most extreme scenarios that have dominated climate research over much of the past several decades (cf. “Is the IPCC’s Climate Extremism Dead?”). Why? They were baseless to begin with, let alone failed to transpire (cf. The Big Lie).

As such, more than a few Catholics, troubled by the Vatican’s increasingly bewildering actions and borderline heterodox positions, are openly flirting with schism (cf. A Great Schism?), which itself is the fruit of disorientation in the guise of orthodoxy!

The closer you get to the Eye of the Storm, the greater the winds of chaos. 

One can’t help but reflect more deeply on these words in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. —n. 675

What would be wrong, however, would be to view this Great Shaking as though Heaven itself has lost a grip on human affairs; that Satan and man have overpowered Heaven itself. On the contrary, Jesus says to Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta:

Do you think that things will always be as they are today? Ah, no! My Will will overwhelm everything; It will cause confusion everywhere — all things will be turned upside down. Many new phenomena will occur, such as to confuse the pride of man; wars, revolutions, mortalities of every kind will not be spared, in order to floor man, and to dispose him to receive the regeneration of the Divine Will in the human will. And everything I manifest to you about my Will, as well as everything you do in It, is nothing but preparing the way, the means, the teachings, the light, the graces, so that my Will may be regenerated in the human will. (June 18, 1925)

 

The Great Restoration

So, while rebellious men promote the “Great Reset”, God is setting about the Great Restoration of the Kingdom of the Divine Will that we pray for every day in the “Our Father.” This restoration, or “Era of Peace,” has been foretold by prophets and popes alike:

It is God’s task to bring about this happy hour and to make it known to all… When it does arrive, it will turn out to be a solemn hour, one big with consequences not only for the restoration of the Kingdom of Christ, but for the pacification of… the world. We pray most fervently, and ask others likewise to pray for this much-desired pacification of society. —POPE PIUS XI, Ubi Arcani dei Consilioi “On the Peace of Christ in his Kingdom”, December 23, 1922

…turning our eyes to the future, we confidently await the dawn of a new Day… “Watchmen, what of the night?”(Is. 21:11), and we hear the answer: “Hark, your watchmen lift up their voice, together they sing for joy: for eye to eye they see the return of the Lord to Zion”…. Their generous witness in every corner of the earth proclaims: “As the third millennium of the Redemption draws near, God is preparing a great springtime for Christianity and we can already see its first signs.” May Mary, the Morning Star, help us to say with ever new ardor our “yes” to the Father’s plan for salvation that all nations and tongues may see his glory. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, Message for World Mission Sunday, n.9, October 24th, 1999; www.vatican.va

Our Lady of Good Success said some 400 years ago:

In order to free men from bondage to these heresies, those whom the merciful love of my Most Holy Son has designated to effect the restoration will need great strength of will, constancy, valor and confidence in God. To test this faith and confidence of the just, there will be occasions when all will seem to be lost and paralyzed. This, then, will be the happy beginning of the complete restoration. —Our Lady of Good Success to Venerable Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, on the Feast of the Purification, 1634; cf. catholictradition. org

And so, brothers and sisters, the more bizarre, inexplicable, and twisted the behavior and actions of people today becomes — whether they are politicians, laity, or churchmen… the more this is a sign that we are approaching, not only the end of this era, but the “Day of the Lord” when Christ will reign in…

…that “new and divine” holiness with which the Holy Spirit wishes to enrich Christians at the dawn of the third millennium, in order to “make Christ the heart of the world.” —POPE JOHN PAUL II, Address to the Rogationist Fathers, n. 6, www.vatican.va

We can do our part against this Storm of Confusion by heeding what Our Lady has asked, in part, in the words of Sr. Lucia:

People must recite the Rosary every day. Our Lady repeated this in all her apparitions, as if to arm us in advance against these times of diabolical disorientation, so that we would not let ourselves be fooled by false doctrines, and that through prayer, the elevation of our soul to God would not be diminished…. —Sister Lucy, to her friend Dona Maria Teresa da Cunha, April 12, 1970

And last, do not abandon Christ crucified all over again. By this, I mean: do not abandon His Church, which is the Body of Christ, due to the weakness of its members or the scandal of her shepherds.^[10]cf. A Great Schism?

The Holy Spirit truly is the soul of the Church, and we must remember this when the temptation arises to judge her in terms of the weaknesses and limitations of the human beings who are her members and shepherds. A Christian contradicts his faith and doubts the Holy Spirit if he does not love the Church, has no trust in her, likes to point out only the imperfections, the enormous sins, and the human misery of those who represent her, and judges her by those externals… —Cardinal Robert Sarah in Catechism of the Spiritual Life, Michael Miller (EWTN Publishing)

Like St. John, let us remain beneath the bleeding Body of Christ in these days of faithlessness. Our Lady is standing there with us, pointing to Jesus and saying, “He will never let you down. Will you remain faithful? For these Storm winds are but a test and purification of your faith. Will you remain faithful to my Jesus?”

For within the winds of confusion, powerful deceptions and strong temptations to reject the Catholic Faith are blowing. In the words of Benedict XVI:

Having a clear faith, according to the credo of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. Yet, relativism, that is, letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching’, appears the sole attitude acceptable to today’s standards. —Cardinal Ratzinger (POPE BENEDICT XVI) pre-conclave Homily, April 18th, 2005

It’s so sad today to see how many Catholics are being caught up in these winds and being blinded by the spirit of the world: Compromise: The Great Apostasy — it’s everywhere. 

So, hold on tight to Our Lady’s hand, fix your eyes on Jesus, remain firm on the rock which He himself established upon Peter,^[11]cf. The Chair of Rock and set your heart, not on temporal things, but on the Kingdom of Heaven. And this is Our Lord’s promise to you:

Because you have kept My message of endurance, I will keep you safe in the time of trial that is going to come to the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming quickly. Hold fast to what you have, so that no one may take your crown. (Revelation 3:10-11)

 

Related Reading

The Storm of Confusion

The Coming New and Divine Holiness

The Resurrection of the Church

 

 

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