Remember how the early news reports of the Wuhan Flu frightened nearly all of us? Recall the videos of people collapsing dead in the streets in China, screaming from apartment building windows as the doors were welded shut by “government men” in hazmat suits, vans loaded with bodies dumping them in mass graves, scenes allegedly from Italian hospitals showing corridors crowded with gurneys on which people were, so we were told, dying in huge numbers? And then came the “experts” predicting many millions of dead from this terrifying plague, hospitals that would be overwhelmed with dying people who could only be saved with millions of ventilators we didn’t have, food supply chains torn asunder causing worldwide famine…remember all that? Then the politicians started their massive exercise in CYA with all the lockdowns, the media finally decided this virus was a possible weapon against Bad Orange Man (instead of just another White Supremacist Racist Nazi Wingnut fantasy), so they began actively stoking the fear porn machine, and we were off to the races.
Not surprisingly, many faithful Catholics became convinced that the prophecies of Our Lady of Akita, to name just one of several, were in the process of coming true, and that the great scourging of the human race in advance of the Second Coming of Christ was underway. I have to admit I was starting to wonder myself, and began a little bit of “prepping” for possible societal collapse. Nothing extensive, just laying in some freeze-dried food supplies, stocking the pantry heavily with staples that have long shelf lives (rice, beans, flour, garden seeds) and shopping for basic home defense firearms. Then we waited…and got nothing but politicization of everything you can possibly imagine, and the media forgot all about THE VIRUS when some idiot of a cop in Minneapolis who should have been fired years ago managed to help kill a black thug on video, which led to even more politicization and some of the most moronic and dangerous social and cultural upheaval in probably centuries…
But no apocalypse, it seems. I think you can put your notes on Our Lady of Akita and the rest of the end times prohpecies back in the files for a while, at least. We seem to have dodged that particular bullet.
Although we do still have an apparent apostate/heretic/idol-worshipping/Marxist/Peronist/Homosexualist/Doofus occupying the See of Peter. I think I’m shifting my prayer intentions back to addressing that little problem for the foreseeable future. And maybe still secretly rooting for the Sweet Meteor of Death, because I seem to have lost my communicator and can’t call Scotty to beam me up.
Laudamus Te, Iesus Christus
In Ministerium Maiorum 