Böcker av Edward L Helmrich

In 1961 at Garabandal, at the height of power of the Soviet Union, Mary told Conchita and the other three girls that "When Communism comes back, these things [marking the end of time] would begin." The girls asked: "Come back? Where is it going?" Now we''ve seen Communism go, overcome by Pope St. John Paul II and other leaders, and now we''re seeing it come back. At Fatima, Mary said that if the Holy Father in union with the bishops of the world consecrated the world to her Immaculate Heart, "An era of peace would be granted to mankind." Pope St. John Paul II made this consecration in 1984. But how long is an era of peace? In the Psalms a man''s life is 70 or 80 years, an average of 75. The Soviet Union lasted for 75 years (1917-1991). Perhaps the Chinese CCP will last for 75 years, having begun in 1949. If the era of peace is 75 years long, and if it began with the end of World War II in 1945, the era of peace ended in 2020.Mary also said that "in the end [her] Immaculate Heart would triumph."

Perhaps the most fundamental barrier to faith is that every scheme of meaning is seen as a construction, i.e. that reality in itself is meaningless. One constructs a meaning and lives within it to make life workable and bearable. This current view though is based on the assumption that reality has no meaning. In contrast, the claim here is that reality is not meaningless in itself, and that Judeo-Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, and other understandings to the extent that they agree with these two, are not constructions but are true in reality. Reality has meaning, and that meaning is revealed and accessible to us. It''s not pushing one construction over another, it is to claim that Catholicism / Christianity describes the nature of reality.At the same time, it has to be acknowledged that our culture has recently moved beyond discourse and discussion, of which this collection is a part, making it sort of out of date: we have moved on to simple conflicts of power, and now to even worse. In general, it might be that our situation is that of Revelation (22:11): "Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy." (From the forward.)