Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) was a German Augustinian nun of great sanctity. She was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II on 3 October 2004, Vatican City. Progressives were not pleased.
Anne Catherine Emmerich endured a life of sufferings and bore the stigmata of our Lord. She was a seer who witnessed scenes from the life of Christ with the vividness of one who was there. Those visions were one of the sources used in making Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ.
The following excerpts are from her visions pertaining to the emergence of a subversive theology of Darkness, amounting to the Evil One’s longed for crucifixion of the Church.
May 13, 1820: “Last night, from eleven to three, I had a most wonderful vision of two churches and two Popes and a variety of things, ancient and modern…. I saw heretics of all kinds flocking to the city. I saw the ever-increasing tepidity of the clergy, the circle of darkness ever widening. And now the vision became more extended. I saw in all places Catholics oppressed, annoyed, restricted, and deprived of liberty, churches were closed, and great misery prevailed everywhere with war and bloodshed.
“I saw rude, ignorant people offering violent resistance, but this state of things lasted not long. Again I saw in vision St. Peter’s undermined according to a plan devised by the secret sect while, at the same time, it was damaged by storms; but it was delivered at the moment of greatest distress. Again I saw the Blessed Virgin extending her mantle over it.”
June 1, 1821: “I saw the Holy Father very prayerful and God-fearing, his figure perfect, though worn out by old age and manifold sufferings, his head sunk on his breast as if in sleep. He often fainted away and seemed to be dying. I often saw him supported by apparitions during his prayer, and then his head was upright. When it sank upon his breast, then were the minds of many turned quickly here and there; that is, viewing things in a worldly light…. These visions were so frightful that I came near crying out. I see in the future religion falling so low that it will be practiced only here and there in farmhouses and in families protected by God during the horrors of war.”
“Last night I was taken to Rome where the Holy Father, plunged in affliction, is still concealed in order to elude dangerous exigencies. He is very feeble, quite worn out by distress, anxiety, and prayer. His chief reason for lying concealed is because he can now trust so few.”
August 25, 1822: “I know not now how I went to Rome last night, but I found myself near the church of St. Mary-Major. Around it I saw crowds of poor, pious souls, in great distress and anxiety on account of the Pope’s disappearance and the agitation and alarming reports throughout the city. Led by one common impulse, they had come to invoke the Mother of God. They did not expect to find the church open, they intended only to pray outside. But I was inside, I opened the door and they entered, astounded at the door’s opening of itself. I was standing aloof where they could not see me. There was no service, only the chancel-lamps were burning, and the people knelt in quiet prayer.
“Then the Mother of God appeared. She said that great tribulations were at hand; that the people must pray earnestly with extended arms, if only for the length of three Our Fathers, for it was thus that her Son had prayed for them upon the Cross; that they should rise at midnight to pray thus; that they should continue to come to her church which they would always find open; and that they should, above all, pray for the extirpation of the dark church.”
September 27, 1822: “I saw heartrending misery, playing, drinking, gossiping, even courting going on in the church. All sorts of abominations were committed in it; they had even set up a ninepin alley in the middle of it. The priests let things go their way and said Mass very irreverently; only a few of them were still a little intelligent and pious. I saw Jews standing around the doorways. All this grieved me deeply. Then my Heavenly Spouse bound me as He Himself had been bound to the pillar, and He said: ‘So will the Church yet be bound. She will be tightly bound before she shall again arise.’”
October 22, 1822: “Very evil times are coming,’ [my guide] said. ‘The non-Catholics will mislead many. They will use every possible means to entice them from the Church, and great disturbances will follow.’
And now I saw the battle. “They want to take from the shepherd his own pasture grounds! They want to fill his place with one who will hand all over to the enemy!”
All quotations taken from Volume 2 of The Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich by the Very Rev. Carl E. Schmoger.
Still, we are taught “…no man ought to sever himself from the unity of the Church before the time of the final separation of the just and unjust, merely because of the admixture of evil men in the Church” —Saint Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, Bk. IV, The Complete Works of Saint Augustine. Ch.12.19, (1407). Emphasis added.
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