Sometime later today the Rocky Mountains will come into view and I will be within sight of home. Thanks be to God. It has been a very busy couple of weeks, but an incredibly productive one. I can’t wait to tell you about the amazing field day we had in Lone Rock, Wisconsin.

I have a lot to say, but for now, I am pining for home and eager to hit the road for that last leg back. So I repeat (in part) this piece I published on Oct. 14, 2017. Another one that has held up quite well, I think. It was less than a month after the Revelation 12 sign appeared in the sky on Sept. 23, 2017. (I interpreted that as the beginning of the process of Rescue by revealing the depth of the rot in our culture. It was when I feared I had made a terrible error by interpreting rescue as an event rather than a process – and I had.) Here then, the piece…

What a wonderful celebration of the centennial of the penultimate Fatima apparition! Our Archbishop consecrated the entire Archdiocese to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Some Parishes held their own special Mass – and 73 Parishes live-streamed the consecration from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver. I went to Mass at the Cathedral at 5:30 on Friday, then stayed in Eucharistic Contemplation until the Holy Hour preceding the Consecration began at 7:30. During that time, I prayed for each member of my extended family by name, thinking of our joys and sorrows together. I prayed for all on the TNRS Team by name – and all of the regional coordinators, fondly remembering our times together. I prayed for the Priests who have guided me, both as directors and as friends, and for the Bishops who have done the same. It was a wonderful time of recollection. I prayed for renewal, renewal of my own heart and of our poor battered, bleeding world.

The True Division

I had been unusually depressed the last few weeks as so many things seemed to be coming to a head. After the hideous massacre in Las Vegas, the usual suspects lined up to lecture us that the only moral solution to such tragedies is to disarm more victims. Bizarre…not even a rational approach, much less a moral one. The more a society shows itself to be unable to defend its citizens, the more critical it is that they be prepared to defend themselves. The NFL self-righteously protests a negligible problem while lifting nary a finger to help with a huge one. Whites killing blacks amounts to less than 1 percent of all annual killings. Blacks killing blacks constitute almost 60 percent of such statistics. (Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute has done exhaustive research on this subject). NFL players, particularly black players, could be powerful role models going into the inner cities in the off-season, helping to support black churches and encouraging people to get married, stay married, be there for their kids, and work hard at education. The reality is that, outside of inner cities, Black and Hispanic crime rates mirror that of the larger society. We don’t have a serious racial problem – we have a serious behavioral problem, centered in inner-city ghettoes that are centers of hopeless dependency and disorder. The anti-God left is doing its best to whip it up into a racial divide, perhaps to hide the fact that nearly all the hellish centers of such disorder have been governed for half a century by leftists who dream of bringing their “success” to the whole country. I am not sure whether to be offended by NFL players for their offense or to be sorry for them for being so easily used in what Dennis Prager calls the greatest libel since the blood libel. It doesn’t matter much to me: I ended 31 years as an enthusiastic fan last year when the NFL refused to let the Dallas Cowboys honor slain police officers while enabling Colin Kaepernik’s honoring of cop-killers and contempt for America. I won’t be going back to the NFL whatever happens, for the players have revealed how shallowly vapid they are and what contempt they hold for their fans. Perhaps a new Patriot League will arise, and then I can enjoy professional football once more.

The true divide can only be between people who try to live honorably and criminals. The justice system needs overhauling in a multitude of respects. Violent criminals are repeatedly released to go on to greater violence. Inner city murders of black folks are rarely solved – which leads criminals to think it is not taken seriously and they can get away with murder. They are right. It is unjust that a suburban white kid gets a competent lawyer, while inner city black kids usually get over-burdened and inexperienced public defenders. But if your sole solution is to give inner city kids better lawyers without addressing the toxic fatherlessness and Godless culture they are mired in, getting them better lawyers will only enable more violence. When I was doing radio back in the early 90’s I spoke with a prominent sociologist in the state one day. Citing statistics on recidivism among juvenile offenders, I noted that the only programs which showed some positive results were faith-based programs, so why did the state completely avoid such programs. To my astonishment, she agreed that they were the only effective programs, but because they brought up God, they were oppressive and could not be used. I asked in disbelief if she really would prefer to condemn young offenders to unremitting misery than expose them to God. “It’s only fair,” she said. It was one of those moments where I thought, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” The reality is that to the secular left, God is not the answer: He’s the competition.

Then the Harvey Weinstein story broke. It proved that none of the Hollywood poseurs actually believe Donald Trump is a tyrant. Faced with an actual tyrant who had real power over their lives and careers, they cowered before him and covered for him. Like in their movies, they are not actually courageous, but can pretend to be courageous when playing to an applauding crowd. It struck me that hearts are being revealed. That process is nearly complete. Things are coming to a head. I haven’t even mentioned North Korea or the decertification of the Iran deal (though I am grimly amused to hear seemingly sober people solemnly say that if we don’t use the same plan that made North Korea a rogue nuclear state, we risk war. Do these people even listen to themselves?) The truth is that, while secular leftists claim the idea of sin is oppressive, they are actually expanding the definition of sin: they just want to be the enforcers. George Neumayr wrote a marvelous piece explaining how the left simply wants to replace the real God, who is steady, just and compassionate, with a statist god, which is shriekingly arbitrary and capricious. The left has succeeded in melding a libertinism that would make Caligula blush with a harsh puritanism that would shame John Calvin.

A quarter of a century ago I told my Priests that the Storm would be like a “global civil war fought on cultural lines.”  Seventeen years ago I wrote that we had begun the process that would lead to the collapse of the rule of law – that law would become perverted to be just another partisan tool in the grasping clutch for power.  Just three years ago I wrote a mournful piece on this site, stating that Republican control of Congress would not stop the trajectory of our disorder as there was no longer a political solution possible to what ails us. Over the summer, I thought longingly of setting up camp in the mountains near a stream and sitting out the Storm. I waited for the shrieking madness that followed Trump’s Inauguration to abate. Yet the Storm only gathers force, and the shrieking madness continues to rise. Things are gathering to a head.

Though we have gotten here in ways that I often did not expect, we are in the “world gone mad” I (envisioned) way back in the early 60’s and that seemed so utterly unbelievable to me. Heaven knows, if a modern-day Rumplestiltskin went to sleep in 1962 and woke up today, he would think he had been transported to a Bizarro universe where the elites all think good is evil and evil, good. So many have completely lost the capacity to ever find happiness, only perpetual grievance and rage. They rage against God, they rage against family…which are the real keys to finding happiness. I have to concede the devil has done his work effectively. I promised long ago that if these times came I would defend the faith, hearten the faithful, and defend the faithful. I know that however unfaithful we are, God is ever true to His promises. A century ago, Our Lady promised that, “in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” I haven’t made my last mistake. But God willing, so long as I draw breath, I will do my best to defend the faith, hearten the faithful, and defend the faithful, for I know His promises are altogether true.

Thinking back to 2017, it seems like such a simpler time. The madness was there, but it had not yet metastasized into the raw malignancy it is today. Yet the trajectory was clear, even then, if existing trends were not arrested. Now, in the face of the serial disasters they have created, the shrieking left claims them to be are great successes. Anyone with eyes sees the truth. But an amazing number of people have intentionally blinded themselves.

The end of the old culture is in sight. It has been a wild journey – and will get wilder yet. It is not the end, but the renewal of the faith and face of the world, under God. I think often of the Agony in the Garden. Yes, Jesus dreaded the torment coming the next day. But that was the sort of dread we have for a root canal – for He knew what the ultimate outcome would be and had chosen it. The deepest agony came from knowing how many people, despite the magnitude of what He was about to do, would not correspond to His gift and be lost to eternity. The time the devil and his acolytes have left is violent, but mercifully short. As you see people knowingly making themselves satan’s acolytes, how can you fail to weep and grieve? Their time is now very short, indeed.

We will make many mistakes as we push through to the Triumph of the Immaculate, but let us go forward with the firm resolve to stumble forward, asking God for His mercy for our mistakes and to strengthen us that we do not faint in battle. Let us ask for more time, even as the battle rages, that more might come home to Him. May the clouts coming to those we love who defy God serve to humble them and bring them to Him anew – and if a clout is what it takes to wake up those we love who hate Him, may those clouts come right soon. But whatever may come and however weary we become, may we steadfastly get up each day and continue our pilgrim way back to God. If we are steadfast, our children and our children’s children will call us blessed – for we will have merited it. Maranatha!

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim