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WHILE<\/strong> praying before the Blessed Sacrament in 2007, I had a sudden and strong impression of an angel in the mid-heavens hovering above the world and shouting,<\/p>\n \u201cControl! Control!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n As man tries to banish Christ\u2019s presence from the world, wherever they succeed, chaos<\/em> takes His place. And with chaos, comes fear. And with fear, comes the opportunity to control<\/em>. But the\u00a0spirit of Control\u00a0<\/em>is not only in the world at large, it is operating in the Church as well… <\/p>\n <\/p>\n FREEDOM… NOT CONTROL<\/p>\n What is the opposite of control? Freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2026the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Cor 3:17)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Wherever there is a desire to\u00a0control<\/em> there is most often a spirit that is not of Christ. It may simply be a human response of fear; other times, it is a diabolical spirit intent on suppressing and crushing. Whatever it is, it runs contrary to the nature of God, contrary to what a Christian should be as we are made\u00a0in the image of God<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. (1 John 4:18)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Wherever I see an obsessive need to control, to shut down dialogue, to label and marginalize others, to mock and disparage, there is an immediate red flag. In The Reframers<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>I noted that one\u00a0of the key harbingers of The Growing Mob<\/a><\/em> today is, rather than engage in a discussion of facts, they often resort to simply labelling and stigmatizing those with whom they disagree. They call them \u201chaters\u201d or \u201cdeniers\u201d, \u201chomophobes\u201d or \u201cbigots\u201d, “anti-vaxxers” or “Islamophobes”, etc. It is a smokescreen, a reframing of the dialogue so as to, in fact, shut down\u00a0<\/em>dialogue. It is an attack on freedom of speech, and more and more, freedom of religion.\u00a0<\/em>It is remarkable to see how Our Lady of Fatima\u2019s words, spoken over a century ago, are unfolding precisely as she said they would: the \u201cerrors of Russia\u201d<\/em> are\u00a0spreading throughout the world, ie. practical atheism and materialism\u2014and the spirit of control <\/em>behind them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Based on his work in prisons, Dr. Theodore Dalrymple (aka. Anthony Daniels) concluded that \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d is simply \u201cCommunist propaganda writ small\u201d:<\/p>\n In my study of Communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of Communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One\u2019s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.<\/strong> \u2014interview, August 31st, 2005; FrontPageMagazine.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Sometimes, out of the blue, I have this sense of oppression all around us. And then I realize it this spirit of Control that seeks to eradicate my rights as a parent, my rights as a Christian, my rights as a child of God to live freely and enjoy His creation. You can feel it “in the air.” This is what happens when a society abandons Christ or rejects Him altogether: the spiritual vacuum<\/a> is filled with the spirit of\u00a0antichrist.\u00a0<\/em>This is a historical fact, witnessed in the previous century wherever dictatorships took hold, such as in Communist Russia, China, or Nazi Germany. Today, it is evident in North Korea, China, Venezuela, and the Middle East where Christianity is being razed to the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n And it’s begun now in North America, Europe and Australia where Christianity is being rejected and atheistic and Marxists ideologies are not only taking hold but being forced<\/em> onto the populace as the only permissible way of thinking. In the name of tolerance, tolerance is being eliminated (See\u00a0When Communism Returns<\/a><\/em>).\u00a0<\/p>\n It is not the beautiful globalization of unity of all Nations, each one with their own customs, instead it is the globalization of hegemonic uniformity, it is the\u00a0single thought<\/em>. And this sole thought is the fruit of worldliness.<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014POPE FRANCIS, Homily, November 18th, 2013;\u00a0Zenit<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n What can turn it around? According to Our Lady in her apparitions throughout the world, our response in prayer<\/em>,\u00a0fasting, consecration<\/em> and witnessing<\/em> to the Gospel can, at least to a certain degree, mitigate what is now upon us. But here’s the problem: the Church in many places no longer has the capacity to listen and discern the prophetic voice of Our Lady, and thus, engage in Heaven’s plan. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n CONTROL AND FEAR… IN THE CHURCH<\/p>\n As a lay evangelist, I have witnessed first hand how bishops have often crushed grassroots movements. Why? Because you cannot control the Holy Spirit. He is both the Spark that starts a grassfire and the Wind that fans it into flame. But some of our dear bishops want to contain that fire, build stones around it like a firepot. And in the process of controlling (rather than guiding) the flames, they extinguish it altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n These people are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o\u2019clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: \u2018It will come to pass in the last days,\u2019 God says, \u2018that I will pour out a portion of my Spirit upon all flesh.’ (Acts 2:15-17)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But can we lay people not do the same in our own way, especially when it comes to the unknown that we can’t measure, tame, or predict\u2014such as the manifestation of the charisms of the Holy Spirit or the spread of so-called “private revelations”? Modern man has been seized by a rationalist mindset that has lost its childlike capacity to accept God on His<\/em> terms (see Rationalism, and the Death of Mystery<\/em><\/a>). It’s not comfortable to the Western mind when the neat and tidy box we want our Sunday Catholicism to remain in is torn open. Apparitions don’t fit well on our apologetics bookshelf. We are embarrassed by them. A couple of years ago, I wrote\u00a0Why the World Remains in Pain<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>It’s because resistance to the prophetic voice of God has effectively\u00a0“quenched the Holy Spirit”<\/em>\u00a0[1]<\/sup><\/a>1 Thess 5:19<\/span><\/span>\n
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