Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Pax Christi!
When in 1907 Pope St. Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi identified modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies” and its “principal doctrine” as “evolution,” he seems to have foreseen the diabolical disorientation of our day and the way that the modernists would not only contradict the defined dogmas of the Faith but would even abandon the natural law. It is not difficult to see that the error of human evolution renders the natural law null and void, since the natural law is predicated on the fact that God created man as man and woman as woman and that by the very design of their human nature certain behaviors are natural, normal and good while others are unnatural, abnormal and evil. If the modernists do theological somersaults to reconcile the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the sacred history of Genesis with their abandonment of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, it is because they have abandoned the traditional doctrine regarding the special creation of St. Adam and St. Eve. Thus, they attempt to transform an historical account of a divine judgment on unnatural vice into a parable about the importance of hospitality!
No matter how hard they try to justify sexual sin, the efforts of the modernist theologians are as sterile as the contraceptive sexuality that they attempt to justify. And this should serve as a reminder to us that the modernist efforts to transform the Church and her teachings are doomed to failure because the teaching authority of the Church can never be used to contradict her prior defined teachings or the natural law. As more and more outrageous statements emanate from Church leaders associated with the so-called Synod on Synodality, it can be difficult to keep from feeling overwhelmed by the theological and moral chaos that reigns in the higher echelons of the Church leadership. However, it is important to remember that the modernists will never be able to find a basis in the Deposit of Faith for any of their heterodox ideas.
Indeed, it is ironic that modernists claim the authority that is attached to prior authoritative teachings for the Magisterium for themselves while contradicting those very teachings. But they can’t have it both ways. Either the Church has divine teaching authority and each generation of Church leaders is bound to maintain and defend the authoritative teachings on faith and morals that have been handed down to them—or the Church does not teach with divine authority in which case it is just a human institution that cannot command our obedience. Modernist hierarchs like to arrogate to themselves the divine teaching authority that they deny to their predecessors, but young people are not stupid and they are reacting to this catechetical incoherence by leaving the Church in droves. Meanwhile, the young Catholics who are taught the Faith of our Fathers on the foundation of the traditional doctrine of creation remain strong in the Faith. In this way, the modernists purify the Church by driving away all but the youth whose formation in the faith is solid enough for them to identify and reject modernist errors. In the not too distant future, these youth will become the leaders of a renewed, restored and purified Church.
“The Youth Must Be Prepared”
Before ending this newsletter, I would like to draw attention to a private revelation approved by the Church which speaks to our current situation and to the importance of forming young Catholics in the traditional Catholic Faith and in the interior life. Sacred Scripture assures us that “the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). Between 1945 and 1972, Archbishop Paul Leibold acted as spiritual director to a religious sister, Mildred Mary Neuzil, who, during many decades, received instructions from Jesus, St. Joseph, and the Blessed Virgin, under the title of Our Lady of America, concerning the current crisis of faith and its solution. Before his death, Archbishop Leibold—then Archbishop of Cincinnati—testified to his absolute conviction that this prophetic message was of divine origin and that it would be fulfilled after his death.
In 1981, long before sex scandals involving priests and religious were exposed in the media, Jesus told Sister Millie about them:
Many unnatural acts are being committed in the name of love. This evil is being disguised and tolerated as an intrinsic right like any other. Even some of My priests and consecrated virgins are being caught up into this web of evil, not realizing its terrible consequences.
From the beginning, the Blessed Mother showed Sister Millie that only the interior renewal of the Church could overcome the evil of this “darkest hour.” She asked her to tell her spiritual director of
The longings of my Immaculate heart to establish the reign of my Divine Son in the hearts of men and thus save them from the scourge of heaven both now and hereafter (emphasis added).
This “reign of Jesus in hearts” was no mere avoidance of mortal sin but a total transformation of hearts into the likeness of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
On February 3, 1956, Our Lady appeared to Sister Millie and told her:
To make your hearts grow more and more like to the Heart of the Son, you must go to the Mother, whose heart is most like His. From this Pure and Immaculate Heart you will learn all that will make you more pleasing to the Divine Heart of the Son of God. The Holy Trinity looks down with infinite delight upon such souls and makes them Its heaven on earth.
In Sister Millie’s spiritual diary, the Blessed Mother identifies the United States as a nation with a unique God-given destiny to lead the world to God. She explained:
It is the United States that is to lead the world to peace, the peace of Christ, the peace that He brought with Him from heaven in His birth as man in the little town of Bethlehem. The Savior did not come to enter this world in a big city but a small town, again, a little one among many. Dear child, unless the United States accepts and carries out faithfully the mandate given to it by heaven to lead the world to peace, there will come upon it and all nations a great havoc of war and incredible suffering. If, however, the United States is faithful to the mandate from heaven and yet fails in the pursuit of peace because the rest of the world will not accept or cooperate then the United States will not be burdened with the punishment about to fall (emphasis added).
Sister Millie feared that the United States would not be able to bear the burden of so great a responsibility, but
Our Lady assured me that Michael and the whole army of blessed spirits will give their assistance at all times.
Through her encounters with Jesus, the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, Sister Millie learned that the renewal of the nation depended upon the sanctification of individual Catholics, particularly the youth, and, through them, of Christian families. She wrote:
Our Lady made known to me that she is particularly interested in the youth of our nation. It is they who are to be the leaders of this movement of renewal on the face of the earth. Their ranks will be swelled by the youths of other nations whom Our Lady also calls to help in the accomplishment of this great renewal.
But the youth must be prepared, and this must be done by instilling into them, not only the knowledge of the Divine Indwelling, but a serious study of it, a living It in such a way that the Divine Presence becomes, as it were, an intimate and necessary part of their life and daily living. From this will flow a great love, a conflagration that will envelop the world in the flames of Divine Charity. This is what Our Lady is working for, because this is the great desire of her Divine Son, and it is to the youth of America that she is holding out this challenge.
Again and again, Jesus assured Sister Millie that obedience to Our Lady’s requests would obtain the sure grace of divine protection for the nation. One day the Guardian Angel of the United States told Sister Millie:
If the people of this land carry out faithfully the instructions and pleadings of the Lord Jesus and the Blessed Mother then they will be following me to the hour of peace. With this sword of the divine white flame of Love and the lightning bolts of His infinite Justice God will strike down his enemies and heal the repentant sinner. The Nation and all who follow in the pursuit of peace will know the protection of God and the destruction of those who fight and seek to destroy them through the evil powers of the infernal spirits of darkness and hate (emphasis added).
Inevitably, the objection will be raised that it will be “impossible” to persuade more than a small number of people to take Our Lady seriously—first and foremost in regard to her Fatima peace plan and secondarily in regard to other private revelations approved by the Church. Even if those few were to succeed in carrying out Our Lady’s wishes, the skeptics assert, the rest of the world would not respond. But Our Lady anticipated such objections, and when Sister Millie asked the Blessed Mother about the possibility of a nuclear war, she answered:
What happens to the world depends on those who live in it. There must be much more good than evil prevailing in order to prevent the holocaust that is so near approaching.
Yet I tell you, my daughter, even should such a destruction happen because there were not enough souls who took my warning seriously, there will remain a remnant—untouched by the chaos who, having been faithful in following me and spreading my warnings, will gradually inhabit the earth again with their dedicated and holy lives.
These will renew the earth in the power and light of the Holy Spirit. These faithful ones of my children will be under my protection and that of the Holy Angels, and they will partake of the life of the Divine Trinity in a most remarkable way.
Viva Cristo Rey!
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
