Karol Wojtyla (JPII) wrote,

“A non-Catholic philosopher once said to me: ‘You know, I just can’t stop myself reading and rereading  and thinking over the first  three chapters of Genesis.’

And indeed it seems to me that unless one does so reflect upon that fundamental Ensemble of facts and situations it becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to understand man and the world.

These are the key to understanding the world of today, both its roots and it’s extremely radical and therefore dramatic affirmations and denials. 

The Covenant springs from the great heart. From God’s love for man. At theame time it is built on Truth rooted in what is real, that is to say true. God gave man this commandment, 

“You shall eat freely of every tree in the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil you must not eat, for in the day you eat of it you will surely die (Gen. 2:16,17).” 

Thus from the very dawn of History man is faced with a tree, the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, the tree which is a symbol of his new human nature in that it is a sign of the limits implicit in his creaturely state, and, at the same time, in the frontier which development of the human person may not cross. The human person created in the image of God is not set beyond the confines of good and evil as Nietzsche and other propounders of the absolute autonomy of man would have it.”

The Anti-Word and the “Last Lap” and “Final Passover” of History.

The Pope continues

“Here, in  the third chapter of Genesis, at the very beginning of the Bible, it becomes clear that the history of mankind, and with it the history of the world, will botg be subject to rule by the Word and the anti-Word, the Gospel and the anti-Gospel…it all begins with the first lie…”

“We may now be wondering if this [our time] is the last lap along that way of denial which started out from around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To us, who know the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation, no stretch of that route can come as a surprise. We accept with trepidation but also with trust the inspired words of the Apostle Paul, “Let no one deceive you in any way; because first it is necessary for the rebellion to come, and for the man of sin, the son of perdition to reveal himself”. (2 Thess.2.3) — pp.29, 35 Sign of Contradiction, 1979 Seabury Press, NY.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Church’s ultimate trial

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.

— FBI Retracts Anti-Catholic Document Leaked by Whistleblower

A Culture of Death: “This is War,” He Said

For Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI there was no toning down or softening the Church’s Constant emphasis on and warnings about abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and a “Culture of Death”. 

“We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the ‘culture of death’ and the ‘culture of life.’ We find ourselves not only ‘faced with’ but necessarily ‘in the midst of’ this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life” (JPII EV 28)

JPII: “We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine Providence; it is trial which the whole Church, and the Polish Church in particular, must take up. It is a trial of not only our nation and the Church, but, in a sense, a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization with all of its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations.” — Wall Street Journal, Nov. 9, 1978

Pope Benedict XVI on September 7, 2007, reminded the authorities and diplomatic corps of Austria that “the fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other human right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception to its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right – it is the very opposite.” —CNA, Nov 2007

Pope JPII knew: “A greater danger than Communism is coming. This is war! And it’s going to get worse.”

Unlike Francis, alas, who said almost at the beginning of his pontificate that the Church had to stop obsessing on “abortion and gays,” Pope John Paul II could not have viewed what he called “the Culture of Death” in more starkly different terms, that is, set against Truth and the Church, the culture of “the Antiword”.

Mercedes Arzú Wilson

In a Women of Grace program on EWTN some years ago,  Mercedes Arzú Wilson, president, Family of the Americas Foundation and World Organization for the Family and  a Vatican representative and observer to the United Nations during his reign, was told by him as she went to Confess the Faith there:

“I want you to know there is a greater danger coming to the world than Communism”. “When he got serious,” she said, “he got serious”. He repeated it,  said again, “I want you to know that there is a greater danger coming to the world than communism. This is war! And it is going to get worse!”

She continued, “And I think we *are* seeing the fall of the Western world…Relativism, abortion, the failure (of families) to have children, sterilization, the schools,  pornographic sex education, Planned Parenthood, secularism”  Nihilism.

NYT: Pope Benedict XVI: “…saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour…”
Published: Monday, December 22, 2008

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict said Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

The Church “should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.

“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound.”The pope said humanity needed to “listen to the language of creation” to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work.”

He also defended the Church’s right to “speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected.” [Source NYT 2008]

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen on Homosexuality

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (today Benedict XVI) wrote in 1985: “A final question of pastoral practice pertains to ministry to homosexual men and women. The Archdiocese should withdraw all support from any group, which does not unequivocally accept the teaching of the Magisterium concerning the intrinsic evil of homosexual activity.

“This teaching has been set forth in this Congregation’s Declaration on Sexual Ethics and more recently in the document, Educational Guidance in Human Love, issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education in 1983. The ill-advised welcome of a pro-homosexual group to your cathedral, as well as events subsequent to the Apostolic Visitation, have served to make the Church’s position appear to be ambiguous on this delicate but important issue. A compassionate ministry to homosexual persons must be developed that has as its clear goal the promotion of a chaste lifestyle. Particular care is to be exercised by any who represent the Archdiocese, to explain clearly the position of the Church on this question.”—Prot. N. 102/79 00193 Romae, September 30, 1985 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s Report Issued on Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen

BVI 2003 document: “The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.” 
Full document here: 

Note: John Paul II sought to propagate an alternative Christian humanism rooted in Christ to the prevailing and, as he rightly saw it, very dangerous Enlightenment humanism which is rooted in a nihilistic understanding of evolution. 

Fom The Catholic Thing: “Although many prefer to brush aside the Biblical teachings on judgment or the teaching that many will be lost, Jesus says, “Watch!” to all of us. In other words, we should watch out; we should be serious, sober, and prepared for death and judgment. We must realize that our choices in this life are leading somewhere.“

— Tucker Carlson: The oligarchical billionaires and Planned Parenthood are thriving while small businesses are destroyed  —A seriously inflationary economy is now inevitable…”

— Thomist Joseph Pieper on the Pseudo-Order and World Dominion of the AntiChrist