These Last Days News - August 15, 2023
URGENT: Forward a link to this web page to your clergy, family, friends and relatives.
20-14. Cardinal Burke: Chinese Communists Have ‘Rebelled Against God,’ ‘Cruelly Persecuted’ Catholics...
BRUTALITY OF COMMUNISM
“You do not know, My poor children, what Our eyes have seen as We looked into the dungeons of the communist organizations: the beatings, the
scaldings, the torturings. It is beyond all human reasoning that a human being could try to destroy the whole faith of an individual by beatings, by torturings, even by cutting out the tongues of those who had dared to speak against them. And who are these peoples, My children, who are doing these vile things? In those days when communism enters your country, it will be your own family and your neighbors.”
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, October 2, 1987
TO REMOVE CHRISTIANITY
"One arm of the octopus is communism, atheistic communism. This arm of the octopus will promote discontent, revolution, death. This arm of the octopus will seek to remove Christianity from the earth. O woe unto a man who joins this force!"
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, June 10, 1978
The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York.
LifeSiteNews.com reported on August 15, 2023:
by Michael Haynes
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has come under fresh criticism for its treatment of Catholics in the country, as Raymond Cardinal Burke recently delivered a homily decrying the “continuing persecution of the faithful Catholics in China” at the hands of the government.
The cardinal’s strong condemnation of the Chinese authorities formed part of his homily for a recent Mass that he celebrated in late July for the persecuted clergy and faithful of the underground Catholic Church in China.
Held in Stamford’s Basilica of Saint John the Evangelist, the Mass was a votive Mass of Our Lady Help of Christians, with the cardinal regularly invoking the intercession of Our Lady of She-shan, the Mother of China.
Urging the congregation to pray for the Church in China, Cardinal Burke noted how Chinese Catholics “suffer relentless persecution at the hands of a government which, for decades, has rebelled against God and His Incarnate Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and has cruelly persecuted His children, the members of the Mystical Body of Christ.”
He referenced also the Chinese authorities’ “unilateral appointment” of a new bishop of Shanghai — with the CCP moving Bishop Shen Bin from his Vatican-approved see of Haimen to lead the Shanghai diocese, and removing the incumbent Vatican-approved Shanghai bishop in doing so.
“In these very days,” said Burke, “we have witnessed the utter disdain of the communist government of China for the Catholic Church in its unilateral appointment of the Bishop of Shanghai, the see once under the care of the saintly Bishop Cardinal Ignatius Kung, without any respect for the office of the Successor of Saint Peter.”
Such a “manner of the appointment is a glaring example of the continuing persecution of the faithful Catholics in China who are loyal to the See of Peter and, therefore, reject the control of the Church by a government which openly and brazenly rejects any form of religion,” he added. In recent weeks, Pope Francis subsequently confirmed the appointment of Bishop Shen to Shanghai, in what appeared to be an attempt to save face after the Chinese authorities so effectively removed the Vatican from exercising its power.
While proponents of the Vatican’s secretive deal with Beijing have defended the deal as a way to move forward in building a relationship with China, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen has repeatedly criticized it strongly. He described the agreement as an “incredible betrayal” of China’s Catholics, and accused the Vatican of “selling out” Chinese Catholics.
Burke echoed this sentiment, stating that “we express our solidarity with the faithful Catholics in China who, because of the government’s relentless persecution, are the Underground Church.”
With that in mind, Burke highlighted the “heroic witness” of Cardinal Kung, the former bishop of Shanghai who was imprisoned by the CCP for 30 years, due to refusing to lead the schismatic “Patriotic” church run by the state. Dying at the age of 98 in Stamford, Connecticut, his funeral was held in the same basilica in which Cardinal Burke offered Mass.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, named in his honor, now works to assist Underground Catholics in Communist China through a multitude of ways, as well as advocating for the canonization of Cardinal Kung.
The late cardinal’s life “is more than compelling today when so many faithful Catholics in China are daily subjected to persecution and death because of their fidelity to Christ and to His Vicar on earth, the Roman Pontiff,” said Burke.
Kung’s life and death, said Burke, “inspire and strengthen us to remain firm against the attempt today, as has happened in the past, to deny Christ the King as the only true Head and Shepherd of the Church and to make the Church a national entity, putting it, in some way, under the governance of the nation or of a national body, even of a national group of Bishops.”
While Chinese authorities have exercised their campaign of control and “Sinicization” over the Catholic Church in the name of being “patriotic,” Burke condemned such a notion.
The Church is governed by Christ alone Who is her Bridegroom, her Head and Shepherd, according to the constitution which He divinely gave to her during His public ministry and through His saving Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, entrusting her into the pastoral care of the Apostles and their successors, the Bishops, under their head, Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and his successor, the Roman Pontiff.
Furthermore, he defended the Church as already being “patriotic according to the divine law written upon every heart, because she teaches her members to worship God alone and to put divine worship into practice by obedience to the moral law, including the precept to honor one’s parents and one’s homeland.”
The Church is patriotic, but there is no such thing as a patriotic Church in the sense that the Church becomes an entity of the state and subjects herself to governance by the state. When the then Bishop Kung was brought before a mob in Shanghai, some months after his arrest on September 8, 1955, to make a public confession of his so-called crimes, he simply proclaimed: “Long live Christ.”
Cardinal Burke also highlighted the example of Cardinal Zen as an “indefatigable shepherd today for Catholics in China who, remaining true to Christ and to His Church, suffer persecution at the hands of an atheistic communist government.”
While Zen has been public in his condemnation of the Vatican-China deal, Pope Francis and Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin have consistently defended the agreement. In an early defense of the deal, Pope Francis went so far as describing it as forming a “new chapter of the Catholic Church in China.”
But the deal has led to a heightened increase in religious persecution, which the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China described as a direct consequence of the deal. In its 2020 report, the Commission wrote that the persecution witnessed is “of an intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution.”
"My children, I do not wish to place fear in your heart, but I cannot allow you to go forward without knowing what is happening about you. I assure you, My children, it is not productive to keep the truth from all and to substitute a climate of false hope and false peace. Know, My children, it is by peace, peace, peace--when the world cries peace the highest and the loudest, know that the destruction is at hand! Do you think there is honesty among thieves? Do you think there is honesty among atheists? Are you so blind, My children, not to recognize that communism has a great hold upon your country and the countries of the world?
"O My children, I warned you many years ago, I warned you in Fatima that, unless you prayed and did penance, Russia and the agents of the sickle and the hammer would go throughout the world cutting down nations and bringing death, destruction, and slavery."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, April 2, 1977
THE WAR OF THE SPIRITS
“You cannot understand the Eternal Father in His ways, My child. The Eternal Father allows man to proceed upon his own course. No evil is ever triumphant. The Eternal Father will turn all evil to good.
"This is, My child, you must understand, the war of the spirits. As Lucifer and his agents--satan roams your world now, known as, through history, as 666. He will be allowed but a short time longer for his reign. But the Eternal Father will allow him to proceed as a manner to separate the sheep from the goats, and to cleanse My Son's Church.”
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, September 28, 1979
SOURCE:
The electronic form of this document is copyrighted.
Quotations are permissible as long as this web site is acknowledged with a hyperlink to: https://www.tldm.org
Copyright © These Last Days Ministries, Inc. 1996 - 2021 All rights reserved.