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From Fr. Regis Scanlon:
The details of Don Bosco’s dream fit well with the events and challenges which face the Church in the 20th and 21st centuries.
First there is the “storm” and the rough “winds and waves” that “are
with the enemy” on the sea representing a major clash between good and
evil and between the Church and civil society. This clash erupted in a
serious way with the First and Second World Wars which broke out
respectively in 1914 and 1939 and was followed by the spread of
atheistic Communism throughout the world. Communism and its effects
still exist today and strangles the Church wherever it exists. This battle with Communism was certainly behind the wounding of John
Paul II on May 13, 1981 and this wounding represents the first possible
fulfillment of Don Bosco’s image of a fallen pope since he had the dream
in1862.
The worldwide war against the Church today would certainly
qualify for a fierce battle as described in Don Bosco’s dream. We are
witnessing the horrific martyrdom of Christians as Islamic terrorists
seek to wipe out Christianity throughout the Middle East. Christians are
being beheaded, burned alive and torn out of their ancestral homes by
militant forces which are gaining strength as they sweep across the
world, and there seems to be no government or nation with the courage to
stop them.
Meanwhile, the persecution of Christians intensifies in our own
society. Assaults on the family come from every direction. Catholics and
all Christians (including in America), are losing their civil
liberties, livelihoods, homes, and even their own personal safety when
they stand up against the secular governments which demand support of
contraception, abortion and same sex marriage.
It is sobering to note that Paul VI predicted events which could
relate to John Bosco’s dream. He did this with his own prophetic words
in no. 17 of his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.
The Pope warned Catholics that, if they should decide that artificial
contraception is lawful, who will blame governments if someday they took
those very means to solve social problems — and did it forcefully by
“imposing their use on everyone.”
This is arguably the first time we have had this level of
unchallenged, universal persecution of the Church since the time of Don
Bosco.
Don Bosco’s dream also predicts resistance to devotions to the
Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady imaged in the dream by the Pope’s futile
struggle to hook up his flag ship to the Two Columns. This is the case
in our own day, too. We know there are many good Catholic Christians,
but as Cardinal Ratzinger said:
there “seems to be more weeds than wheat” in the field of the Church.
In other words there are too many “Catholics” who receive the Eucharist
while living contrary to the Church’s teachings on marriage and purity
and who consider genuflecting and kneeling in adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament as pure naiveté. Often they are the same “Catholics” who make
fun of teaching children to be modest in dress and behavior and ridicule
others who they think are wasting their time on outdated superstitious
practices like praying the Rosary.
We must honestly admit that the disappearance of religious devotion
from the lives of the Catholic people, especially frequent “Holy”
Communion, public adoration and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and
the Daily Rosary, has opened a path for evil forces to take hold.
Undoubtedly, the worse of these evil forces–and the one which even the
secular world views with anxiety– is the spread of pornography among
both men and women. This wicked trend now includes unspeakable violence,
the corruption or children, and international sexual trafficking. .
Most forms of entertainment and fashions are infected by pornography in
some way. It is the worst of many evil forces because it breaks down
human dignity , devalues life, and corrupts the innocent, all of which
gravely offends God.
Even our Synod looming in October could be the fulfillment of that
part of Don Bosco’s dream in which the Pope calls his captains to a
meeting prior to the “storm.” Synods come and go, but the 2015 Synod on
the Family is arguably the first time such a gathering will take place
in the midst of worldwide hostility against traditional Church teachings
about family life. It would not be surprising if, after the Synod
concludes, the world condemns the Church because she has proclaimed,
once again, the truth of man-woman marriage, the protection of human
life from conception to grave, and the belief that each human being is
called by God to live the virtues of purity and chastity, no matter what
their state of life and sexual orientation.
Pulling it all together: For the first time since Don Bosco dreamed
his dream we have a confluence of all the main elements of his
revelation: the wounding of a pope (John Paul II); the worldwide war
between the Church and civil society; the struggle for the Church to
regain devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and devotion to Mary, and the
calling of a Church synod on grave human issues while a hostile world
watches. (Read more.)
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