The Faith cries out for Defenders!
Speak the truth as if you had a thousand voices! It is silence that kills the World. –St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
When St. Ignatius of Loyola was founding his Compania and when St. Ignatius of Antioch was battling the heresy of gnosticism, it was also necessary to emphasise the importance of Truth. However, at least everyone, Catholics and non-Catholics, recognized that man can attain knowledge of truths about God, human nature and the meaning of life.
Not so today. And, most perilous of all, for the first time, this skepticism has penetrated deep inside Catholicism, causing what one Bishop, Athanasius Schneider, has recently described as “the fourth great crisis” of the Church.
“If you look at the history of the Church, the deepest crisis was in the fourth century, that was Arianism. This was a tremendous crisis, all the episcopacy, almost all, collaborated with the heresy. Only some bishops remained faithful, you could count them on the fingers of one hand. This crisis lasted more or less 60 years.
“Then the terrible crisis of the so-called ‘obscure century’, the 10th century, when the papacy was occupied by some very wicked and immoral Roman families. They occupied the papal throne with their corrupt sons, and it was a terrible crisis.
“The next period of harm was the so-called exile of Avignon and was very damaging to the Church, causing the great Western schism. All these crises lasted some seventy to eighty years and were very bad for the Church.
“Now we are, I would say, in the fourth great crisis, in a tremendous confusion over doctrine and liturgy. We have already been in this for 50 years. Perhaps God will be merciful to us in 20 or 30 years. Nevertheless we have all the beauty of the divine truths, of divine love and grace in the Church. No one can take this away, no synod, no bishop, not even a Pope can take away the treasure and beauty of the Catholic faith, of the Eucharistic Jesus, of the sacraments. The unchangeable doctrine, the unchangeable liturgical principles, the holiness of the life constitute the true power of the Church.’ [….]
“We have to pray that God will guide his Church from this crisis and give to his Church apostles who are courageous and holy. We need defenders of the truth and defenders of the Eucharistic Jesus.” (Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Astana in Kazakhstan. From http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/06/bishop-athanasius-schneider-in-england.html )