End of Days, End of Times or just the end of the Catholic Church?

The Blue Marble

Imagine the Earth, which has sometimes been described as a Blue Marble floating in space, as being a real marble laying on a playing field where other marbles are being smacked around. In reality that is a fairly accurate description of the cosmic game being played above our heads right now. Astronomers have detected several small asteroids passing by our little world in the last few days. Some of them large enough to obliterate a city if they hit us. Scientists have proven that an End of Life event took place 60-million years or so that wiped out the dinosaurs. That End of Life event happened when a larger asteroid, about a mile in diameter, collided with our planet near the Yucatan Penninsula. Within the last hundred years smaller asteroids or meteors have impacted our planet with the most recent being in Russia a few weeks ago and then there was an asteroid or comet that exploded 5-10 miles in the air over Russia in 1908 called The Tunguska event. It had the explosive force of a thermonuclear bomb and destroyed 830 square miles of forest in Siberia. 

It makes no difference whether the Laws of Physics are controlling this cosmic game of marbles or whether it is the Hand of God that is shooting them. Those same scientists have stated we are well past the time for a larger asteroid impact.

Then there is more bad news to think about.

WND EXCLUSIVE
Pope Francis history's 'final' pontiff?

An author who predicted Pope Benedict XVI would be the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to resign believes the election today of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the 266th Roman Catholic pontiff lines up with a medieval prophecy that would make him the “final pope” before the End Times.

Tom Horn, co-author with Cris Putman of the book “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here,” told WND today Bergoglio’s selection was a “fantastic fulfillment of prophecy.”

His book examines St. Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes,” said to be based on a prophetic vision of the 112 popes following Pope Celestine II, who died in 1144.

Malachy’s prophecies, first published in 1595, culminate with the “final pope,” “Petrus Romanus,” or “Peter the Roman,” whose reign ends with the destruction of Rome and the judgment of Christ.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/pope-francis-historys-final-pontiff/#tQJhut9yx7rxVEum.99

WND.com has been following this story for a year or so about an ancient prediction made by St. Malachy over 800 years ago that foretold the time period some called the End of Days. One thing is for certain and that is the world is really messed up today with so much bloodshed on every continent that our Creator must be very angry. We have Muslims invading Europe with millions of immigrants who are changing the culture of every country they occupy. We have Christians hunted and slaughtered by Muslims throughout Africa and India and Indonesia. We have wars in more countries that I can count, both fought by hostile governments, radical Islamists and profiteering drug lords but the one significant event of the last few decades has been the influx of sex scandals in the Catholic Church. Before the sex scandals involving pedophile priests came to light there were years and years of cover-ups by high ranking Bishops, some of whom have undoubtedly now become Cardinals. Quoting one more paragraph from the WND.com story is the actual prediction that St. Malachy made.

St. Malachy, an Irish saint and the archbishop of Armagh, who lived from 1094 to 1148, described the “final pope” this way: “In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will nourish the sheep in many tribulations; when they are finished, the City of Seven Hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people.”

It is quite possible that St. Malachy's prediction does not foretell the End of the World but just the end of Rome and the end of the Catholic Church. What fitting conclusion could there be to forever wipe out the corruption in the church founded by St. Peter that brought so much harm to innocent children than the destruction of the Vatican itself? And possibly by one of those as yet undiscovered asteroids. 

Traditional Mass before the 2nd Vatican Council

The demise of the Catholic Church began with the liberalization that resulted from the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s that rewrote the liturgy and substituted Latin for English or the local language. Wikipedia mentions: "From the 1960s onwards, Western countries have experienced a drop in Mass attendance (in the United States, from 75% of Catholics attending in 1958 to 25% attending by 2002). These same countries saw a decline in seminary enrollments and in the number of priests (in the United States, from 1,575 ordinations in 1954 to 450 in 2002), and a general erosion of belief in the doctrines of the Catholic faith. Opponents of the revision of the Mass liturgy argue, citing opinion poll evidence in their support, that the revision contributed to this decline." Some say when they turned the altar around to face the people it made the celebration of the Mass too much like the Protestant religion. That diminished image of the priests who had previously had led their congregation in the Celebration of the Mass, now celebrated the people instead. This, as Wikipedia points out, led to a drastic decline in the number of men entering the priesthood. This decline subsequently caused the lowering of the acceptance standards that allowed homosexuals into the seminaries. I was told of this first hand back in the 1970s by someone I knew who was in a seminary studying to become a priest. And years later at the outset of the pedophile scandal one court case in Virgina revealed one pedophile priest was an active member in NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association. A group with such a disgusting name that it should be banned from existence. 

Over the years lawsuits resulting from the scandal bankrupted parish after parish and that fact, combined with the decline in faithful Catholics attending Mass who had objected to the changes, closed hundreds if not thousands of churches. And the coverup continued with virtually no church officials ever reporting the crimes to law enforcement. And those who aided the coverup advanced up the ladder to higher positions within the church.

Maybe God feels the same way as we do that the coverup was worse than the crime.

My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Oldironsides and I am a Catholic.

UPDATED 3-17-2013
Some Cardinals in the Catholic Church still don't seem to understand the problem with pedophile priests. The Raw Story web site reported this interview with Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, the Archbishop of Durban, South Africa. This kind of perverted irrational logic used by church officials to defend pedophile priests could also justify covering up a homicide committed by someone who was diagnosed with a severe mental disorder. Sure, the mentally ill shouldn't be punished for their sickness but what about their criminal acts. Liberals in America used this logic to keep mentally ill people from being banned from making gun purchases and many suspect it was done to create justification for more gun control.

Catholic cardinal says that pedophilia is not a ‘criminal condition’

By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, March 16, 2013 8:37 EDT

South African cardinal who helped elect Pope Francis said on Saturday that paedophilia is a psychological illness, not “a criminal condition”.

Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, the Archbishop of Durban, told BBC radio that people who become paedophiles after being abused as children should be treated by doctors.

His comments come as Francis, the first pontiff to hail from Latin America, takes the helm of a Catholic Church rocked by thousands of cases of child abuse by paedophile priests.

Napier, who was among the 115 cardinals who elected Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday, told the BBC: “From my experience paedophilia is actually an illness — it is not a criminal condition.”

The 72-year-old added: “What do you do with disorders? You have got to try and put them right.”
He spoke of two priests he knew who were abused as children and went on to become paedophiles.
“Don’t tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that,” he said.

“I don’t think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished when he was himself damaged.”

Read more here:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/16/catholic-cardinal-says-that-pedophilia-is-not-a-criminal-condition/