Question 6 – How Will The Church Prevail Against Evil When There are So Few Holy and Brave Bishops?

Transcript:

We have to renew our faith and trust that our Lord said, "I will remain with you until the end of the world," and He is with us. This is His Church. It’s not our Church. It’s not the Church of the Pope. It’s not the Church of the bishops. It is the Church of Jesus Christ. It is His mystical body. It is His bride, the Church, and He is God. He always protects His Church. And He permits that we are now passing through the Golgotha hours of our Mother Church, but these Golgotha hours will pass.

But you know that during the Golgotha hours, the representatives of the Church teaching and the apostles fled. They went away from Golgotha, although there remained one, John. Imagine, in some way, one of the bishops and priests. And then there remains Our Lady, and then Mary Magdalene, the penitent soul, and the other women sort of representatives of the laypeople.

And so, God permitted this, and they remained faithful. There were also difficult times for the Church, especially during the fourth century, during the Arian crisis, when the overwhelming majority of the bishops betrayed the Catholic faith by collaborating with the heresy of Arius. The Catholic faith was mostly kept, preserved, and transmitted by the laypeople. This was demonstrated, for example, by St. John Henry Newman in his famous book on the Arians of the Fourth Century.

Also, from those times, there remained, in the first century, very few bishops who courageously defended the integrity of the Catholic faith and the fullness of the divinity of the Son of God.

From those times, one of these faithful bishops, St. Hilary of Poitiers, wrote this famous phrase, which is known, and I think it’s very relevant for our time: "The ears of the faithful are holier than the mouth of the bishops." Therefore, we have hope that in our days, even more Catholics lay people, young people, and even Catholic families are growing slowly. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

In my opinion, the Catholic faith will be kept and transmitted after this crisis, mostly by faithful laypeople like you. And it’s a pleasure for me to meet you now, too.