Catholic Replies
Q. The Supreme Court has a history of immoral decisions, such as declaring black slaves as property, permitting credit card companies to charge usurious interest rates, allowing the public sale of contraceptives, okaying the killing of unborn babies, and approving sodomy. What’s next? Polygamy? Incestuous “marriage”? Person-animal “marriage”? It would appear that we are on a par with Sodom of the Bible, and we know what happened to Sodom.
Didn’t Sr. Lucia of Fatima indicate that the last evil before the end would involve attacks on the family and, with out-of-wedlock births in this country over 40 percent, it appears that we are quickly approaching the Last Judgment? Your thoughts, please. — R.B.K., via e-mail.
A. Ever since Jesus ascended into Heaven, we have been approaching the Last Judgment. Recall that St. Paul had to admonish those Thessalonians who had stopped working because they were convinced that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent (2 Thess. 3:6-15). And that was 2,000 years ago! Earlier in the same letter, Paul warned his listeners not to be deceived into believing that the end was near. His warning is summarized in the introduction to Second Thessalonians in the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament:
“Paul considers this a deception (2:3) because Christ will not return in glory until a whole series of events have taken place first. Specifically, Paul insists that a nefarious ‘man of lawlessness,’ an agent of Satan, must first be allowed to spread confusion throughout the world and impress the wicked with signs and wonders of his power (2:3, 9-10). This villain has yet to arrive because a mysterious force restrains him from showing his face until the appointed time (2:7-8). Only after this period of turmoil and tribulation will Christ come again as the divine Warrior and Judge to slay the offender and condemn the ungodly (2:8).”
Some people may point to the calamities and catastrophes, the wars and rumors of war, that Jesus talked about in chapter 24 of Matthew’s Gospel. But a closer reading of that chapter shows that Jesus said these tribulations, which, by the way, preceded the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, would only be “the beginning of the labor pains” (24:8) and that the end would come only after “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a witness to all nations” (24:14).
Whether we are approaching the Day of Judgment “quickly” is debatable. The conditions set forth by St. Paul and by Jesus have not yet been fulfilled. The end will come at God’s appointed time and, while we can be justifiably concerned about the immorality sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court, our cultural slide into Hell can be reversed because nothing is impossible for God. Prayer and fasting were the remedies suggested during Bible times, and they can be efficacious today as well.
Q. I would like information about America Needs Fatima in Hanover, Pa. Is this organization approved by the Church? — J.R., via e-mail.
A. America Needs Fatima was founded in 1985 by the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). According to its mission statement, its purpose is to “capture the heart and soul of America with the message of Our Lady of Fatima. In 1917, Our Lady appeared at Fatima to three young seers with a message of warning and hope for humanity. If the world did not convert, the Blessed Mother said there would be much suffering, famines, and wars. To avoid such disasters, Our Lady asked for prayers, penance, and other measures. She also promised that ‘in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph’.”
The group attempts to spread this message by visiting homes with a statue of our Lady, distributing millions of rosaries and devotional items, organizing thousands of Public Square Rosary Rallies, and protesting films, plays, and art exhibits that are “blasphemous” or offensive to Catholicism.
According to publicity releases sent out by Robert E. Ritchie, executive director of America Needs Fatima, the group hopes to sponsor 14,000 Rosary Rallies in 2015 in the United States and other countries. For a donation of $400 or more, they will send a 30-inch statue of our Lady “to a poor Catholic family in Africa.” Another release seeks signatures on a petition to Pope Francis to save the family by opposing any change in Church teaching on marriage at the Synod on the Family in Rome next month.
We are not aware of any Church statement approving or disapproving the work of America Needs Fatima. Spreading the Fatima message is a laudable goal, and the tens of thousands of public rosaries being said each year are a positive thing.
Q. How does one reconcile in the Old Testament God directing the Jews to take over by force areas inhabited by several tribes with the just-war concept proposed by St. Augustine? Also, in a recent reading at Mass from the Book of Judges, Jephthah appears to offer his only daughter as a burnt offering to God. This is quite disturbing. Please explain. — D.K., Virginia.
A. Taking the second question first, Jephthah had made a vow to God that if the Lord delivered the Ammonites into his hands in battle, he would offer up as a holocaust “whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in triumph” (Judges 11:31). When Jephthah came home victorious, the first person to greet him was his only child. After allowing her two years to mourn the fact that she would never be able to bear children, her father had her put to death. This certainly is disturbing to us, but God is the Master of life and death and could hold Jephthah to his vow, and we can assume that He eventually rewarded the girl with eternal life in Heaven. This is the same God, by the way, who offered up His own Son in atonement for our sins.
As for the first question, there were things that God permitted under the Old Law that we don’t find under the New Law and that do not come under Augustine’s just-war principles. We are not saying that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament; they are the same God. As Dr. Peter Kreeft has written:
“The opposition between nice Jesus and nasty Jehovah denies the very essence of Christianity: Christ’s identity as the Son of God. Let’s remember our theology and our biology: like Father, like Son. But is not God a lover rather than a warrior? No, God is a lover who is a warrior….In fact, every page of the Bible bristles with spears, from Gen. 3 through Rev. 20. The road from Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained is soaked with blood. At the very center of the story is a cross, a symbol of conflict if there ever was one. The theme of spiritual warfare is never absent in Scripture, and never absent in the life and writings of a single saint.”
In explaining the extermination of tribes and nations in the Old Testament, Fathers Leslie Rumble and Charles Carty wrote in volume three of Radio Replies:
“The Jews had God Himself as their Supreme Ruler, even as regards their earthly welfare. Those who abandoned God for idolatry were guilty of treason, and punitive measures were justified. Also, they were giving themselves up to all manner of wickedness and immorality, and did not deserve to retain a life they were so abusing. God, therefore, the Supreme Author of life and death, decreed their extinction, but only after they had been afforded an opportunity to repent and return to Him. Those who refused to repent were to be put to death, and no tie of friendship was to hinder the execution of justice. . . .
“God is the Author of life, and we have no right to live longer than He wills. He who makes a thing has the right to unmake it, if it does not fulfill the purpose for which He made it. God has no obligation to keep rebellious men in existence, and He can appoint any given means of removing them from this world; above all, when it is supremely necessary to impress the gravity of man’s obligations upon others” (pp. 33-34).
Like you, we wonder how much longer God will put up with the wickedness and immorality that is so rampant today. Perhaps we have been spared thus far because, as St. Paul said, “Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more” (Romans 5:20).
