Antichrist’s Apocalyptic Fury Against the Priesthood

David Martin | The Daily Knight

St. Padre Pio was perhaps the most exemplary priest of the 20th century. His example of holiness and obedience to sacred tradition makes him a shining model for the clergy of our time to look to.

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As we are in the latter days when Antichrist is waging his full fury against the Church, we should understand that Antichrist’s focal point of attack is the Catholic priesthood since the devil knows that if he can take down one priest he can take many souls with him.

The Blessed Virgin of Garabandal echoed this very point toward the end of Vatican II, when She said:

“Many cardinals, many bishops, and many priests are on the road to perdition and are taking many souls with them." (June 18, 1965)

If priests and bishops were on the road to perdition in 1965, what shall we say of today’s LGBT infested hierarchy that seeks to make a religion out of sex and revolution? Satan entered the Church at Vatican II and set in motion this anti-Church revolution, which we see coming to a head now under Pope Francis. We today are witnessing the fulfillment of the Third Secret of Fatima, namely, that Satan would capture and possess cardinals at the highest levels of the Church and use them to misguide the Church but in such a way that this would be done under the illusion of divine guidance. What they would call the “Holy Spirit” would in fact be the devil goading the Church to its own destruction.

This is all part of the “diabolical disorientation” prophesied by Sr. Lucy of Fatima. The Fatima Secret spoke of a “bad council” to come and foretold how large masses of Catholics would be deceived by “disoriented” priests who would foolishly accept the guidance of this pseudo-Council and thus lead the Church into apostasy.

This ties with the words of Cardinal Mario Ciappi, papal theologian to four popes who read the Third Secret of Fatima and who said:

“In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”

If this causes Catholics to stagger, let them consider the words of Pope Paul VI himself, delivered on October 13, 1977, the 60th anniversary of Our Lady’s last apparition at Fatima.

“The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the Faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church.”

The Priest is the Representative of Christ

Satan’s fury against the priesthood is only natural. The priest is the representative of Jesus Christ, the alter Christus, through whom Christ perpetually reenacts His Sacrifice on Calvary, from which emanates all power, light, and truth. Hence the institution of the Catholic priesthood is the center of all moral authority on earth, which is why Antichrist furiously seeks to raise the clenched fist against it. This revolution against the priesthood was initially set in motion at the ‘Council gone wrong.’

The New Concept of the Priesthood

A key part of Satan’s plan at Vatican II was to warp our conception of the priesthood and delude the faithful with the idea that they are part of a “common priesthood.” With the Council came the new definition of the priesthood as The People of God. It sees the whole Church as one priesthood but in different ranks, with the ordained ministerial priesthood being only one rank thereof. “The people of God is not only an assembly of various peoples, but in itself is made up of different ranks.” (Lumen Gentium 13) What is promoted here is the fallacy that we are all priests of one hierarchy.

The common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood are nonetheless ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ. (LG 10)

For the record, there is 1 no such thing as a “common priesthood of the faithful.” This was Luther’s idea. The priest alone offers the Holy Sacrifice and there is nothing that lay people can do to reenact this Sacrifice for the simple reason that they are not empowered from On High. The present-day empowerment of the laity was promoted by infiltrated Marxists to instigate a peoples’ revolt against hierarchical authority in keeping with Vatican II’s theme of human rights. Today’s lay empowerment is nothing more than the Leninist clenched fist applied in a liturgical way.

Eucharist Undermined

In every which way Vatican II undermines the Christo-centric concept of the Eucharist as opposed to the old Tridentine formula which so beautifully nurtured it through the centuries. This is seen in section 7 of Institutio Generalis, governing the celebration of the Novos Ordo, which sets forth a new and humanistic definition of the Mass never before seen in Church history.

The Lord’s Supper or Mass is a sacred meeting or assembly of the people of God, met together under the presidency of the priest, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. Thus the promise of Christ applies eminently to such a local gathering of holy Church: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in their midst.” (Mt. XVIII, 20)

Here we see the Mass reduced to a meeting or assembly in which Christ’s Sacrifice is merely remembered (if it even is). There is no reference made to the reenactment of Our Lords’s Sacrifice, which is the essence of the Mass and the very heart of Christ’s Mystical Body. The miracle of Transubstantiation—the marvelous change of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity—is effected solely by the priest upon pronouncing the words of Consecration at Mass, yet the document heretically implies that His presence is brought about by the assembly of people numbering two or three (or more), as if they collectively were the priest.

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Ego-Centric Concept of the Priesthood

The assembly is not a priesthood nor is the presence of “two or three” necessary for a valid Mass. This is a Protestant idea, which underlies the new post-conciliar church of man, which is ego-centric and not Christo-centric.

Because of these socialist and Protestant principles of lay empowerment that were introduced at Vatican II, the role of the priest has been greatly diminished where he is seen more as the “president” of an assembly. The idea of appeasing God through the Holy Sacrifice has virtually been replaced with appeasing the people with change. The constant fuss about "Scripture" and "Liturgy of the Word" was deliberately introduced to take away from the Mass and to plug the Protestant idea of "sola scriptura." The constant harping on pet terms and clichés foreign to the Church’s vocabulary (People of God, ministry, reconciliation, initiation, renewal, etc.) was a clear signal to the faithful that a new program of indoctrination was underway. The clamor circulated at the Council about human rights, human dignity and religious liberty worked together to nourish this tumor of intellectual pride so that the Church today is now infected with its cancer.

A Seminarian Must be Committed to Restoring Tradition

Hence, one should not think of being a priest today unless he is willing to divest himself of self-interest and be ready for spiritual warfare and persecution. He should not consider Holy Orders unless his intention is to fight for the restoration the Catholic Church.

The Church is presently engaged in the most intense and climactic battle of its 2000-year history fulfilling the prophetic warning of the late Cardinal Wojtyla in summer 1976 (later Pope John Paul II), when he said: "We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, between the gospel and the anti-Gospel.... It is a battle that the entire church must take up."

The Church’s Mission is to Convert Humanity

The "anti-Church" is the leftist-rebel faction with its Marxist agenda of “change,” “social justice,” and “dialogue” with the world — a plague being fueled most especially by today's Vatican deep-state under Francis. Christ never commissioned the Apostles to “dialogue” with the world but rather to convert the world, which is true charity. The Church's mission is to reach out and bring the knowledge of God to all peoples that they might leave their religions, vices, and miseries and be brought to the bosom of Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Mass Ad Orientem Must be Returned

To be effective in this, the priest must always face the altar when he says Mass, and the most perfect and legitimate way of doing this is by offering the Holy Sacrifice according to the old Tridentine Rite as done through the centuries before Vatican II.

A key reason for installing the New Mass was to turn the priest around so that he says the Mass facing the people with his back to the tabernacle. The ruling for this innovation is found in the September 26, 1964, Vatican II Instruction, Inter Oecumenici, section 91, wherein it states:

The main altar should preferably be freestanding to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people

What has ensued is a historic shift of focus where the emphasis today is on the community and not on God. A new rite of human encounter has taken precedence where we see man turning to one another in guru fashion with his back to the tabernacle, as if man were a god. This fulfills the prophetic statement of Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) after his reading of the Third Secret of Fatima in 1933, when he said:

“A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God.”

Poor liturgy has had everything to do with this illusion. The Freemasons had long conversed among themselves concerning how they would hijack and use the priesthood as an instrument to advance their Novus Ordo or New World Order.

Mass Facing the People Unprecedented

We should point out that Mass versus populum (facing the people) is unprecedented in the history of the Church. Acclaimed liturgist Monsignor Klaus Gamber, held by Benedict XVI to be “a prophet for our time,” sets the record straight concerning this.

“We can say and convincingly demonstrate that neither in the Eastern nor the Western Church was there ever a Celebration vs. populum.” (The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, 1993)

According to Monsignor Gamber, Mass versus populum was the most destructive of all the post-conciliar “reforms,” citing that “there is no basis for it in liturgical history, not theologically, nor sociologically.”

Novus Ordo Ordinations Not Encouraged

Seminarians indeed should 2 not embark on a priestly vocation unless they are resolved to embrace tradition and work for the full restoration of the Church to its pre-Vatican II status.

Being Catholic means adherence to Sacred Apostolic Tradition in all its undiluted purity, which leaves no room for humanistic or half-hearted pursuits. The priestly vocation is one of dedication and selfless giving as symbolized by the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday when the priesthood was first instituted. The priest's allegiance is to sacred tradition.

To Fight Within the Context of the Church

Even so, a true soldier of Christ will always wage his fight for tradition within the hierarchical context of the Church, i.e., within the parish Church framework, regardless of how misled the clergy and bishops have become. If we want to win the battle we must remain in the arena and not run from the battle under the illusion of fighting it. We must keep our tradition 3 within the main body of the Church so as to "edify the Church." (Ephesians 4:12) A priest more than all others must "edify the Church" (Eph. 4:12) and let his "light shine before men" (Mt. 5:16), which will never happen if he runs away and preaches to the choir.

Over and above all, he must be consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, for as it was She who nursed the Church in its infancy, so She has come forth in our time to revive the Church in its final battle.

Priests Should be Holy

Our Lady calls upon her faithful sons to serve at the altar as true sacrificial victims in imitation of Her Son whose physical and supernatural presence is reenacted during the Consecration of the Mass. In the spirit of St. Padre Pio, the priest and Christ should be wholly one during Mass since the priest is Christ's representative through whom Christ becomes truly present at Mass. The priest should ardently aspire to liberate the people from bondage and bring them to the love of God. He must foster in them a disregard for the world and a love of things eternal.

For the priest is the ‘ambassador’ or intercessor for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20) whose task is to wean the people from the world and bring them to the love of God. He must engrave in their hearts the First and Greatest Commandment that we love God above all persons, places, and things.

The Church is the House of God

To this end, priests should do everything in their power to nourish a keen awareness and respect for Christ in His Tabernacle. Talking in Church should be condemned from the pulpit as should any form of irreverence, and priests should not tolerate shameful immodesty of women in Church. The clergy should stand up against any attempts of the laity to set up their own enterprises in Church. They should point out to the congregation that any form of socializing, pop-culture, or guitar strumming in Church are abominations.

For the Church is The House of God. Man must enter the Church in silence with the sole intention of reverencing his Creator Who dwells in full Body and Spirit on the altar. If the priest doesn't do his part to make the people sensitive to this, he falls down in his duty as a pastor.

The New “Bla, Bla” Church of Man

Unfortunately, poor pastoral leadership has given rise to the new “bla, bla” church. It’s now the “palabra” church of noise and busy-body activity where clergy and laity feel they’re supposed to keep up with loud-mouth Luther and his “sola scriptura” idea—a rebellious idea that landed him “in Hell.” (St. Padre Pio)

The priesthood indeed has fallen (Apoc. 12:4) and is being used as a tool to destroy the Faith. Priests today are obsessed with small-minded isms of humanism, modernism, and ecumenism, and have become disciples of ecology, “LGBT inclusion,” and “immigration reform” as they relentlessly carry on with this buzz of political chatter aimed at ending tradition and uniting the Church with the world. What they should be doing is exhorting the faithful to forget the world and draw close to God through the Mass and Rosary.

St. Padre Pio Never Gave Sermons and Saved More Souls

If priests would cut the socializing and diligently attend to reverent observance of sound liturgy, this would dispel the plague and draw the Church back into union with God. The salvific goodness of Christ is already built into the old liturgy so there is no need for all the noise and discussion in Church. St. Padre Pio never gave sermons for fifty years and he probably saved more souls for Christ than did any other priest of the 20th century — perhaps even more than St. Pius X did!

Some will retort by citing the great sermons of the saints that wrought salvation for thousands of souls. These sermons indeed were orations of gold that brought salvation to the teeming multitudes, but the keeping of discipline is what gave them their value, without which they would have been worthless. A priest could preach as an angel for hours on end, but disobedience and poor liturgical discipline will short-circuit the good he’s trying to do. Holy words do not pan out when God’s rule of law is slighted.

Bringing it Home

Bringing it home, if a priest preaches wonderfully on the Faith but allows abuses like Communion in the hand, immodesty, and pop-music at Mass and makes no effort to warn the faithful against the evils of the “Charismatic Movement” or against receiving Communion from “lay Eucharistic ministers,” his efforts will not bear the desired fruit. Better that he say nothing and let holy discipline do the work for him.

Some will argue that a priest must have compassion and charity for his fellow man, but charity means keeping the laws and discipline. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

The law of God concerning the Mass was laid down five centuries ago by St. Pius V in his Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum, wherein history’s final 4 revision of the Roman Rite Mass was codified and declared the everlasting ordinance of the Church. Therein, the pope says:

“Let Masses not be sung or read according to any other formula than that of this [Tridentine] Missal published by Us. This ordinance applies henceforth, now, and forever, throughout all the provinces of the Christian world…

“Therefore, no one whosoever is permitted to alter this notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept, grant, indult, declaration, will, decree, and prohibition. Would anyone, however, presume to commit such an act, he should know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”

To date, no pope since that time has abrogated the Mass of St. Pius V but it remains in force to this day. This was verified by a panel of nine cardinals that was commissioned by Pope John Paul II to look into the legal status of the Latin Tridentine Mass in 1986. And while Paul VI approved 5 the Novus Ordo Missal in 1969 this was simply done as an indult with no explicit mandate to have to use it.

Moreover, Pope Paul never gave bishops the right to restrict or to forbid priests from saying the Traditional Latin Mass in their parishes. While some bishops may try to prohibit the use of the Latin Missal in their dioceses, priests are not obliged to listen. A priest doesn’t need permission to say the Latin Mass no more than he needs permission to keep the Ten Commandments. Obedience to the rule is a priest’s duty to God, regardless of what his bishop thinks, and if a priest breaks the commandment just to please his bishop he becomes culpable before God.