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"She shall crush thy head"

In Catholic teaching, angels have a rational intellect, intelligence, as do we, (though much more immense) but not bodies, as do we. What of the fallen angels? There exists a dark kingdom, using this same intelligence and power to prevent the spread of God’s kingdom. In the Gospel we read:

And the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours.” 

Of course Jesus avoids the temptation, but we tend to overlook the fact that Our Lord does not contradict Satan’s assertion of power. With some restrictions, the power is there. Thus the life we live on earth includes extraordinarily intelligent, gifted, influential and murderous demons. How else to fully explain all of the evil that the inquiring mind seeks explain?

In my book I recount the tale of Pope Leo XIII’s vision of Satan, which gave rise to the prayer said after all low masses prior to Vatican II:

Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell, Satan and all the other evil spirits, who prowl throughout the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen

It thus shouldn't surprise us that the Vicars of Christ on earth have discerned diabolical opposition, given that they are the successors to the one to whom Our Lord said:

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.”

My book offers a comprehensive account of Pope Paul VI’s warning about the “smoke of Satan” in the Church. These pages have noted that Pope Francis has offered many recent remarks ascribing the persecution of Christians to the devil, urging: “Let us renounce Satan and all his works and seductions because he is a seducer.”

Stop and think on the tremendous advantages that Satan has in his mission of subverting the Church—the tireless assistance of human cronies bent on annihilating Christianity in the larger culture, sometimes aided by well-meaning Christians, concerned for the Church to be relevant to all who are “of the world”.

In The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God I break down down Paul VI’s prophetic voice concerning the Church’s need to be defended from the Devil. It is my view that currently sex may have pride of place as the principal way He invades the Body of Christ. Recall that the Blessed Mother in the 1917 visions to Sister Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta Marto pointed to “sins of the flesh” as the main cause of souls ending up in hell—fornication, adultery, sodomy, pornography, the abortions caused by those seeking to avoid the consequences of sex, or the use of abortifacients for purposes of “safe sex,” etc.

In Genesis God commands us to procreate, embedding the sexual instinct in our nature, a command coming from within! God really wants to “fill the earth,” and thus secular attempts to reduce procreation in ways that block God’s plan, amount to an abominable offense against God Himself.

As I discuss at length in Smoke, the dissent that followed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae on contraception set the stage for the widespread sacking of papal authority in matters of faith and morals. Even today priests at Mass think that preaching about Catholic teaching on contraception, divorce, sodomy, etc. would reduce their numbers in the pews. Do you suppose that silence on these mattes helps or hinders Satan in his desire?

What to do? Recall the warning of God about enmity from a woman, and about Satan’s head being crushed, in Genesis 3:15?  Here are some of Our Lady of Fatima’s tactics in crushing the head:

Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me; and say that I promise to assist, at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.


For those of us hoping for salvation in spite of a world descending into the bog, here is one solid solution to the spiritual befuddlement already mentioned. Would anyone disagree that the plea for reparation to Mary’s Immaculate Heart has gone unheard?

In my fifth chapter, relying on an eyewitness account, I take up the story of the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Los Angeles, whose program of updating after Vatican II was guided by the psychologist Carl Rogers (d. 1987), and exemplified a paradigm for many other orders. Many religious deserted traditional spiritualties and ministries in favor of politics, environmentalism, and secular feminism. Such irony! Sisters dedicated to Mary’s Immaculate Heart became innovators seeking changes far removed from the intentions expressed by Our Mother, when the surest weapon against the onslaughts of Satan is confidence in, imitation of, and devotion to she who is far ahead of the strategies and nefarious designs of those fallen angels.  I am writing to say that this weapon still offers us the assurance of defeating the current subtle strategy of a superlatively evil Mastermind. OREMUS.


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