Chai Brady
Fr Pat Collins CM Priest calls on Christians to unite
A well-known Irish priest has warned of “stormy seas” ahead and that Christians must face the “common enemy” of secularism and godlessness together.
Vincentian priest Fr Pat Collins CM, who is an expert in deliverance ministry and is due to speak at the Divine Mercy National Conference in the RDS this weekend, told The Irish Catholic he feels “a very strong sense of urgency about this conference”.
Regarding his message to the faithful, he said it will “be a call to arms really for Catholics and Christians in general – because I’m going to be talking about ecumenism – and saying we have a common enemy and we need to unite and pray very strongly and read the prophetic signs of the times and respond appropriately.
“Secularism and godlessness are the common enemy. Fighting among ourselves, disagreeing among ourselves, seems to me to be ridiculous in the face of what we’re all facing as Christians, which is the forgetfulness of God and living as if he doesn’t exist,” Fr Collins said.
The theme of the February 21-23 conference is taken from the Acts of the Apostles, ‘Repent… so that a time of refreshing may come’.
“I think we’re heading into very stormy seas in the coming years and a lot of this has been predicted in terms of prophetic words we have gotten from popes, from saintly men and women, from Marian apparitions. We are going to pay a price for the forgetfulness of God and living, as Pope John Paul II said, as if God does not exist,” warned Fr Collins.
“I think it is our job at the conference to warn people and to give them indications of how to react to the growing dangers that there are in the world today. I think we are at the beginnings of World War III,” he added, “But it is not inevitable, if people respond appropriately we can mitigate or even stop what is about to happen, but I don’t see much sign of that – that people are going to respond very much.”
Fr Collins, who is also a prolific author and psychotherapist, said that people face “very dark times”, which the Church is already experiencing, but also in the secular world.
“I have always thought that the secular agenda would turn out to be a disappointment and that without a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose things will go wrong in secular society and there is abundant evidence that instead of getting more cohesive and happier, there’s every indication that the opposite is the case,” he said.
“In Christian terms that is not surprising because we see there is a spiritual war going on all the time between good and evil, and the dark side is prevailing more and more.”
Fr Collins added that there is a moral breakdown and a “tide of sin sweeping the world because… people have re-written the 10 Commandments just to suit themselves”.