The Prophecy of St. Nilus about Our Days
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| Saint Nilus of Mount Sinai |
St.
Nilus was one of the many disciples and fervent defenders of St. John
Chrysostom. He was an officer at the Court of Constantinople,
married, with two sons. While St. John Chrysostom was patriarch,
before his exile (398-403), he directed Nilus in the study of
Scripture and in works of piety. St. Nilus left his wife and one son
and took the other, Theodulos, with him to Mount Sinai to be a monk.
The Bishop of Eleusa ordained both St. Nilus and his son to the
priesthood. The mother and the other son also embraced the religious life
in Egypt.
From
his monastery at Sinai, St. Nilus was a well-known person throughout
the Eastern Church. Through his writings and correspondence, he
played an important part in the history of his time. He was known as
a theologian, Biblical scholar and ascetic writer, so people of all
kinds, from the Emperor down wrote to consult him. His
numerous works, including a multitude of letters, consist of
denunciations of heresy, paganism, abuses of discipline and crimes.
He also wrote about rules and principles of asceticism, especially
maxims on the religious life. He warns and threatens people in high
places, Abbots and Bishops, Governors and Princes, even the Emperor
himself, without fear. He kept up a correspondence with Gaina, a
leader of the Goths, endeavoring to convert him from Arianism. He
denounced vigorously the persecution of St. John Chrysostom both to
the Emperor Arcadius and to his courtiers.
St.
Nilus must be counted as one of the leading ascetic writers of the
5th century. His feast is kept on November 12th in the Byzantine
Calendar; he is commemorated also in the Roman Martyrology on the
same date. St. Nilus probably died around the year 430, as there is
no evidence of his life after that.
The Prophecy of St. Nilus
After the year 1900, toward the middle of the 20th century, the people of that time will become unrecognizable. When the time for the Advent of the Antichrist approaches, people's minds will grow cloudy from carnal passions, and dishonor and lawlessness will grow stronger. Then the world will become unrecognizable.
People's appearances will change, and it will be impossible to distinguish men from women due to their shamelessness in dress and style of hair. These people will be cruel and will be like wild animals because of the temptations of the Antichrist. There will be no respect for parents and elders, love will disappear, and Christian pastors, Bishops and priests will become vain men, completely failing to distinguish the right-hand way from the left.
At that time, the morals and traditions of Christians and of the Church will change. People will abandon modesty, and dissipation will reign. Falsehood and greed will attain great proportions, and woe to those who pile up treasures. Lust, adultery, homosexuality, secret deeds and murder will rule in society.
Apostasy: At that future time, due to the power of such great crimes and licentiousness, people will be deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which they received in Holy Baptism and equally of remorse.
The Churches of God will be deprived of God-fearing and pious pastors, and woe to the Christians remaining in the world at that time; they will completely lose their faith because they will lack the opportunity of seeing the light of knowledge from anyone at all. Then they will separate themselves out of the world in holy refuges in search of lightening their spiritual sufferings, but everywhere they will meet obstacles and constraints. And all this will result from the fact that the Antichrist wants to be Lord over everything and become the ruler of the whole universe, and he will produce miracles and fantastic signs.
Telephones, airplanes, submarines: He will also give depraved wisdom to an unhappy man so that he will discover a way by which one man can carry on a conversation with another from one end of the earth to the other. At that time men will also fly through the air like birds and descend to the bottom of the sea like fish. And when they have achieved all this, these unhappy people will spend their lives in comfort without knowing, poor souls, that it is deceit of the Antichrist. And, the impious one! – he will so complete science with vanity that it will go off the right path and lead people to lose faith in the existence of God in three hypostases.
The coming chastisement: Then the All-good God will see the downfall of the human race and will shorten the days for the sake of those few who are being saved, because the enemy wants to lead even the chosen into temptation, if that is possible... then the sword of chastisement will suddenly appear and kill the Perverter and his servants.
Notification by Cardinal Siri published on June 12, 1960
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To the Reverend Clergy,
To
all teaching sisters,
To beloved
sons of Catholic Action,
To
Educators intending truly to follow Christian Doctrine,
The first
signs of our late arriving spring indicate that there is this year a
certain increase in the use of men's dress by girls and women, even
family mothers. Up until 1959, in Genoa, such dress usually meant the
person was a tourist, but now it seems to be a significant number of
girls and women from Genoa itself who are choosing at least on
pleasure trips to wear men's dress (men's trousers).
The
extension of this behavior obliges us to take serious thought, and we
ask those to whom this Notification is addressed to kindly lend to
the problem all the attention it deserves from anyone aware of being
in any way responsible before God.
We seek
above all to give a balanced moral judgment upon the wearing of men's
dress by women. In fact Our thoughts can only bear upon the moral
question.
Firstly,
when it comes to covering of the female body, the wearing of men's
trousers by women cannot be said to constitute as such a grave
offense against modesty, because trousers certainly cover more of
woman's body than do modern women's skirts.
Secondly,
however, clothes to be modest need not only to cover the body but
also not to cling too closely to the body. Now it is true that much
feminine clothing today clings closer than do some trousers, but
trousers can be made to cling closer, in fact generally they do, so
the tight fit of such clothing gives us not less grounds for concern
than does exposure of the body. So the immodesty of men's trousers on
women is an aspect of the problem which is not to be left out of an
over-all judgment upon them, even if it is not to be artificially
exaggerated either.
II
However,
it is a different aspect of women's wearing of men's trousers which
seems to us the gravest.
The wearing of men's dress by women
affects firstly the woman herself, by changing the feminine
psychology proper to women; secondly it affects the woman as wife of
her husband, by tending to vitiate relationships between the sexes;
thirdly it affects the woman as mother of her children by harming her
dignity in her children's eyes. Each of these points is to be
carefully considered in turn:
A. Male dress changes the psychology of woman
In truth,
the motive impelling women to wear men's dress is always that of
imitating, nay, of competing with, the man who is considered
stronger, less tied down, more independent. This motivation shows
clearly that male dress is the visible aid to bringing about a mental
attitude of being "like a man." Secondly, ever since men
have been men, the clothing a person wears, demands, imposes and
modifies that person's gestures, attitudes and behavior, such that
from merely being worn outside, clothing comes to impose a particular
frame of mind inside.
Then let
us add that woman wearing man's dress always more or less indicates
her reacting to her femininity as though it is inferiority when in
fact it is only diversity. The perversion of her psychology is clear
to be seen.
These
reasons, summing up many more, are enough to warn us how wrongly
women are made to think by the wearing of men's dress.
B. Male dress tends to vitiate relationships between women and men
In truth
when relationships between the two sexes unfold with the coming of
age, an instinct of mutual attraction is predominant. The essential
basis of this attraction is a diversity between the two sexes which
is made possible only by their complementing or completing one
another. If then this "diversity" becomes less obvious
because one of its major external signs is eliminated and because the
normal psychological structure is weakened, what results is the
alteration of a fundamental factor in the relationship.
The
problem goes further still. Mutual attraction between the sexes is
preceded both naturally, and in order of time, by that sense of shame
which holds the rising instincts in check, imposes respect upon them,
and tends to lift to a higher level of mutual esteem and healthy fear
everything that those instincts would push onwards to uncontrolled
acts. To change that clothing which by its diversity reveals and
upholds nature's limits and defense-works, is to flatten out the
distinctions and to help pull down the vital defense-works of the
sense of shame.
It is at
least to hinder that sense. And when the sense of shame is hindered
from putting on the brakes, then relationships between man and women
sink degradingly down to pure sensuality, devoid of all mutual
respect or esteem.
Experience
is there to tell us that when woman is de-feminized, then defenses
are undermined and weakness increases.
C. Male dress harms the dignity of the mother in her children's eyes
All
children have an instinct for the sense of dignity and decorum of
their mother. Analysis of the first inner crisis of children when
they awaken to life around them even before they enter upon
adolescence, shows how much the sense of their mother counts.
Children are as sensitive as can be on this point. Adults have
usually left all that behind them and think no more on it. But we
would do well to recall to mind the severe demands that children
instinctively make of their own mother, and the deep and even
terrible reactions roused in them by observation of their mother's
misbehavior. Many lines of later life are here traced out—and not
for good—in these early inner dramas of infancy and childhood.
The child
may not know the definition of exposure, frivolity or infidelity, but
he possesses an instinctive sixth sense to recognize them when they
occur, to suffer from them, and be bitterly wounded by them in his
soul.
III
Let us
think seriously on the import of everything said so far, even if
woman's appearing in man's dress does not immediately give rise to
all the upset caused by grave immodesty.
The
changing of feminine psychology does fundamental and, in the long
run, irreparable damage to the family, to conjugal fidelity, to human
affections and to human society. True, the effects of wearing
unsuitable dress are not all to be seen within a short time. But one
must think of what is being slowly and insidiously worn down, torn
apart, perverted.
Is any
satisfying reciprocity between husband and wife imaginable, if
feminine psychology be changed? Or is any true education of children
imaginable, which is so delicate in its procedure, so woven of
imponderable factors in which the mother's intuition and instinct
play the decisive part in those tender years? What will these women
be able to give their children when they will so long have worn
trousers that their self-esteem goes more by their competing with the
men than by their functioning as women?
Why, we
ask, ever since men have been men, or rather since they became
civilized—why have men in all times and places been irresistibly
borne to make a differentiated division between the functions of the
two sexes? Do we not have here strict testimony to the recognition by
all mankind of a truth and a law above man?
To sum up,
wherever women wear men's dress, it is to be considered a factor in
the long run tearing apart human order.
IV
We address
a grave warning to parish priests, to all priests in general and to
confessors in particular, to members of every kind of association, to
all religious, to all nuns, especially to teaching sisters.
We invite
them to become clearly conscious of the problem so that action will
follow. This consciousness is what matters. It will suggest the
appropriate action in due time. But let it not counsel us to give way
in the face of inevitable change, as though we are confronted by a
natural evolution of mankind, and so on!
Men may
come and men may go, because God has left plenty of room, but the substantial lines of nature and
the not less substantial lines of Eternal Law have never changed, are
not changing and never will change. There are bounds beyond which one
may stray as far as one sees fit, but to do so ends in death; there
are limits which empty philosophical fantasizing may have one mock or
not take seriously, but they put together an alliance of hard facts
and nature to chastise anybody who steps over them. And history has
sufficiently taught, with frightening proof from the life and death
of nations, that the reply to all violators of the outline of
"humanity" is always, sooner or later, catastrophe.
From the
dialectic of Hegel onwards, we have had dinned in our ears what are
nothing but fables, and by dint of hearing them so often, many people
end up by getting used to them, if only passively. But the truth of
the matter is that Nature and Truth, and the Law bound up in both, go
their imperturbable way, and they cut to pieces the simpletons who
upon no grounds whatsoever believe in radical and far-reaching
changes in the very structure of man.
The
consequences of such violations are not a new outline of man, but
disorders, hurtful instability of all kinds, the frightening dryness
of human souls, the shattering increase in the number of human
castaways, driven long since out of people's sight and mind to live
out their decline in boredom, sadness and rejection. Aligned on the
wrecking of the eternal norms are to be found the broken families,
lives cut short before their time, hearths and homes gone cold, old
people cast to one side, youngsters willfully degenerate and—at the
end of the line—souls in despair and taking their own lives. All of
which human wreckage gives witness to the fact that the "line of
God" does not give way, nor does it admit of any adaption to the
delirious dreams of the so-called philosophers!
V
We have
said that those to whom the present Notification is addressed are
invited to take serious alarm at the problem in hand. Accordingly
they know what they have to say, starting with little girls on their
mother's knee.
They know
that without exaggerating or turning into fanatics, they will need to
strictly limit how far they tolerate women dressing like men, as a
general rule.
They know
they must never be so weak as to let anyone believe that they turn a
blind eye to a custom which is slipping downhill and undermining the
moral standing of all institutions.
They, the
priests, know that the line they have to take in the confessional,
while not holding women dressing like men to be automatically a grave
fault, must be sharp and decisive.
Everybody will kindly give thought to
the need for a united line of action, reinforced on every side by the
cooperation of all men of good will and all enlightened minds, so as
to create a true dam to hold back the flood.
Those of
you responsible for souls in whatever capacity understand how useful
it is to have for allies in this defensive campaign men of the arts,
the media and the crafts. The position taken by fashion design
houses, their brilliant designers and the clothing industry, is of
crucial importance in this whole question. Artistic sense, refinement
and good taste meeting together can find suitable but dignified
solution as to the dress for women to wear when they must use a
motorcycle or engage in this or that exercise or work. What matters
is to preserve modesty together with the eternal sense of femininity,
that femininity which more than anything else all children will
continue to associate with the face of their mother.
We do not
deny that modern life sets problems and makes requirements unknown to
our grandparents. But we state that there are values more needing to
be protected than fleeting experiences, and that for anybody of
intelligence there are always good sense and good taste enough to
find acceptable and dignified solutions to problems as they come up.
Out of
charity we are fighting against the flattening out of mankind,
against the attack upon those differences on which rests the
complementarily of man and woman.
When we
see a woman in trousers, we should think not so much of her as of all
mankind, of what it will be when women will have masculinized
themselves for good. Nobody stands to gain by helping to bring about
a future age of vagueness, ambiguity, imperfection and, in a word,
monstrosities.
This
letter of Ours is not addressed to the public, but to those
responsible for souls, for education, for Catholic associations. Let
them do their duty, and let them not be sentries caught asleep at
their post while evil crept in.
Giuseppe
Cardinal Siri
Archbishop of Genoa
(from: Dressing with Dignity)
