At the time, it was good fiction, a chilling story about good and evil. That I remembered it these 25 years later is a testament to its prescience. The Last Fisherman by Randy England (1999, Convent Hill Publishing) deals with a faith-filled American pope versus the President of the United States of Europe who is hell-bent on destroying all that is good and holy on his way to totalitarian control of the world.
The parallels to our time are frightening.
The story begins with an alleged apparition of a woman who is presumed to be our Blessed Lady. She tells the children her son is already among those in the world, but hidden. Soon he would be recognized, he would heal the sick, heal hearts and nations, and “make us all one.”
The young auxiliary bishop of the local diocese, Brendan Shea, came to investigate the visions but he did not see the lady nor hear her words. He did not believe the vision to be heavenly.
A few years earlier, lukewarm pro-life Mason Wolfe had been elected to Congress from Kentucky. He’d quickly changed sides in the battle for life and was then picketed by pro-lifers wherever he showed up for an event. Some signs read “The Wolfe Is At The Door” – it seems in more ways than one as the unfolding story reveals. An incident at a pro-life protest gives a clue.
While guest speaker Wolfe’s car is stalled at an event promoting abortion, a priest appeared at his car door. Wolfe looked up at him “and there he [Wolfe] was held. Dread passed over his face and in that instant, he was completely undone” (p. 24). The priest, of course, was Brendan Shea.
Time moved on, Wolfe championed the murder of the unborn. Vigilantes began terrorizing abortionists and soon clinic entrances were protected by FACE laws, anti-abortion demonstrations became illegal, and the IRS imposed sanctions on churches whose leaders’ “rhetoric” endangered public welfare. Bombings by vigilantes increased and the country was at war over life issues.
The now-Bishop Brendan Shea was at a Bishops’ meeting in Kansas City when a hotel hosting an abortion event was bombed. He immediately went to the hospital and busied himself with anointing the sick and dying. He had just finished anointing a young lady whose lifeless, burned body lay before him when there was a commotion, television cameras and there appeared the now-Secretary of State, Mason Wolfe at the door. He had been at the hotel during the bombing but was uninjured.
Wolfe walked down the hallway toward Bishop Shea and the young woman. Wolfe bent over the young lady and Shea distinctly heard him quietly intone:
“Thank you Father and Lord of this World, that you have heard me.”
Then Wolfe told the woman loudly to “Wake up.” As he looked up, he saw Bishop Shea; evil clearly transformed Wolfe’s face but only momentarily.
Good versus evil, no doubt about it. Who was responsible for the “cure”? The holy sacrament or the hand of evil? Wolfe gained worldwide publicity for his “healing” and his later success for arranging peace in the warring Middle East. The people of the world were thus set to follow anything the miracle man Mason Wolfe would tell them to do.
Hard economic conditions described in the book mirror those of today. Crime and terrorism ruled, the moral climate sank to depravity. After a natural disaster in Israel and massive rebuilding, Mason Wolfe addressed the world from Jerusalem:
“We now behold the birth of a new age. What we have done in this hallowed place will be a symbol for our troubled planet…We now recognize our oneness. We reverence this earth, our mother, and source of all life” (p. 89).
His soothing words created a sense of well-being and belonging within all who heard him and Mason Wolfe was soon appointed President of the United States of Europe.
And then the reigning Pope died; there was trouble in the ranks. At the conclave, Brendan Shea is asked if Mason Wolfe will be revealed as the antichrist. His answer is “yes.”
To Brendan’s surprise, he is elected Pope. And the next day, the US Justice Department accuses Brendan of being a leader with the vigilantes involved in the hotel bombing in Kansas City because he was near the incident. His anointing of the sick as a priest of God is not mentioned as he faces 817 counts of murder.
The pace of the book increases as the hands of evil grip the earth. Concentration camps appear around the US and the globe, filled with believers in Jesus Christ. From then on, each person needed to choose between walking with Satan or death. Many chose death rather than kneeling before and swearing allegiance to Mason Wolfe.
I will not reveal the ending; it descends into the “terror of the night” as in Michael Joncas’ hymn, “On Eagle’s Wings.” And I stand by the book’s prescience. Written in 1999 by a newly minted attorney, the book describes the signs of our times:
“The whole world seems like it is bent on killing itself. The Jews and Arabs are fighting again and a month ago an Iranian bomb came within thirty minutes of vaporizing Tel Aviv. We have as many abortions as ever in this country. Euthanasia is legal in every state. Now the Supreme Court has decided that children and incompetent adults cannot be denied their right to choose euthanasia just because they lack the mental capacity to choose for themselves. So somebody must exercise that choice for them,” said a priest-friend of Bishop Shea.
“Moloch eating his children,” Brendan Shea said quietly, almost to himself. “G.K. Chesterton,” he explained. “We’re like the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians, offering even the lives of our children to insure our material comforts. Unless we can wake ourselves up and turn back to God, we can look ahead to even stranger, more startling obscenities. We are walking in our sleep, and trying to wake ourselves with nightmares.”
Scary stuff.
This article, Is This the Future? is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/is-this-the-future/
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