'PROPHECY', NOT 'VISION'. THERE'S A DIFFERENCE

‘Where there is no vision the people perish’, says Bishop Charles Drennan of Palmerston North, in a piece published by Cathnews.co.nz.

+Charles is quoting Proverbs 29, 18. In the Douay Rheims Bible, translated word for word from the Vulgate which in turn was translated by that towering genius  St Jerome from the original Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, and was the only bible used in the Catholic Church for over 1500 years, this verse is rendered as ‘When prophecy shall fail, the people shall be scattered abroad’.

Prophecy, not ‘vision’. What a difference in meaning.

+Charles is quoting ‘vision’ in relation to Donald J Trump in the US, Duterte in the Philippines, and John Key in NZ. I’m sorry but not surprised to see +Charles subscribe to the popular view of Donald Trump as “a maverick” and “Facebook on steroids”. His election, he says, left “almost everyone … disturbed and perplexed.”

Not me. Donald Trump’s election filled me with joy and thanksgiving. His behaviour might not have been and still isn’t what it should be (whose is?), but he defeated Hillary Clinton, whose achievements and ambitions were thoroughly evil.

That aspect of the US election campaign seemed to escape the Catholic Church in NZ. I was told by a priest, after I interceded in the POF at a weekday Mass in regard to the American elections, not to expect him to pray for Trump. Apparently I’d implied I was interceding on behalf of Donald Trump.

Not so. I was asking for God’s will to be done. God being Goodness itself could not have wanted a win for Hillary Clinton, who proudly and totally supported Planned Parenthood, for goodness’ sake, for devoting 97% of their business to exterminating unborn children, and profiting by the sale of those children’s body parts, while taking $500m annually from the American taxpayer - as we ourselves are forced as taxpayers to fund abortions here in New Zealand.

Trump is resolutely opposed to abortion. He pledged to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court who would overturn the infamous Roe v Wade ruling, which opened the Pandora’s box of legal abortion for the US and then for NZ, and that was his first executive action as president. We should remember, in regard to Trump and his past, and his silly utterances  in the present, that every saint made mistakes – think St Peter – which they bitterly regretted and repented, and were converted.

This is where ‘prophecy’ comes in. We know that ‘prophecy’ doesn’t mean just foretelling the future. It also means the interpretation and expounding by a preacher of Scripture or of divine mysteries (Shorter Oxford).

+Charles has the wisdom to see that politics and religion cannot be unmixed, and asks us as Catholics for a vision for our nation.  Well my personal vision, for every child in the womb to be welcomed and loved, is blurred by the fact that while in the past NZ’s pro-life organisations were largely run by Catholics, in my neck of the woods at least Catholics have been replaced by Protestants, who freely quote Scripture to support their stand and who pray outside abortion clinics.

The only reason as far as I can see, for Catholics’ falling support for the right to life, is lack of leadership in the Church. We need to hear truth prophesied - the sacred nature of human life from conception till natural death - as proclaimed by God in Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. And if you’re going, “What?” at mention of the Magisterium, that’s proof in itself that Catholics are no longer taught the doctrine which for centuries was unchanged and is unchangeable.

And it’s not just preaching that we need. We need encouragement to pray for the United States and for Donald Trump, for his repentance, healing and conversion.

We need to have prayer taught and modelled, most of all in fervent and frequent participation in the Mass. Protestants are shown by their pastors how to pray and fast, and they take to it like a duck to water. In the Catholic Church however, fasting has been whittled away to next to nothing, and most Catholics know next to nothing about the prayer practised and taught by the saints down through the ages, in a tradition older even than the Douay-Rheims bible. It’s called mental prayer, and we all need to learn it.

Because as internationally renowned psychiatrist Dr Philip Ney stated in NZ recently, people need to realise there is a discrepancy between what they believe and what they live. “It’s time for pro-life people who say they are pro-life” (i.e. Catholics) “to live it and stop giving themselves all sorts of excuses.”

To know oneself like that and get up and doing, one needs to know Christ and the only way to Christ is prayer.

Listen to St John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church: “Those who are great actives, that think to girdle the world with their outward works and their preachings, take note here that they would bring far more profit to the Church, and be far more pleasing to God (apart from the good example they would give) if they spent even half of this time with God in prayer.”