#4—Why We Are Likely in the End Times
The purpose of The Katechōn is to present a new universal theory of history informed by the pure fountain of Sacred Scripture, the Church Fathers, the Saints, and the teaching of the Church that can help us have eyes to see and ears to hear in the midst of these apocalyptic times.
We believe we are more likely than not to be in the end times, specifically in the days of the Great Apostasy just prior to the revelation of Antichrist.
This post will lay out, in broad terms, why. The many details behind each point will be discussed at greater length in future posts.
In Katechōn #3, we showed that in 2 Thessalonians 2, St. Paul provides three key elements in his outline of the end times: a (1) General Timeline; (2) Important Actors; and (3) Key Causes.
In his General Timeline (#1), St. Paul says the end times will proceed in the following chronological order: (a) the Great Apostasy; (b) the revelation of Antichrist; and (c) the return of Christ.
Among the Important Actors (#2), St. Paul identifies: (a) the katechōn (the “restrainer”); the (b) mystery of iniquity; and (c) Antichrist.
Finally, as for the Key Causes behind the main events of the end times (#3), St. Paul specifies: (a) the removal of the katechōn; the (b) revelation of Antichrist by false signs and wonders; and (c) the deception and punishment of the reprobate, consummated by Christ’s return.
The reasons we believe we are likely in the end times relates to item “a” of each of these key elements: the Great Apostasy; the katechōn; and the removal of the katechōn.
As we briefly explained in Katechōn #1, we believe the katechōn is Christendom itself, in both its spiritual and temporal aspects, and preeminently the Pope/papacy as its highest earthly authority and head. Thus, Christendom is the “restrainer” identified by St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2, the messianic kingdom on earth that restrains the “mystery of iniquity” until the end times.
This naturally leads to the question of how it does this? The answer is by the power of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, which is the efficient cause of the efficacy of the sacraments, and thus the rise and strength of the Christian civilization.
The Fathers virtually unanimously agreed that the cross bound Satan, delivering him a fatal blow which allowed the Gospel to go to the ends of the earth. However, we are informed in several places that Satan will be loosed prior to the end times. As we will argue in much greater detail throughout The Katechōn, we believe this is clearly taught throughout Scripture in places like Apocalypse 20, Christ’s parable of the binding and return of the strong man (Matt. 12:43-45; Luke 11:24-26; and by St. Peter in 2 Pet. 2:20), the entering of Satan into Judas prior to Our Lord’s Passion, which is itself a type of the end times (Luke 22:3; John 13:2, 27), God allowing Satan to viciously attack “my servant Job” (Job 1:8) after which he then restores him, etc.
This release of Satan is behind what St. Paul calls “the rebellion” (2 Thess. 2:3) and the removal of the katechōn which restrains the mystery of iniquity until it is “out of the way” (v. 7), both of which precede the unveiling of Antichrist.
While such rebellions have taken place throughout the history of the Church, the last and final one to which St. Paul refers is something fundamentally different, for it involves nothing less than the reversion of the world to something resembling its pre-Incarnation state.
We thus arrive at a question: if indeed Satan was bound by Our Lord’s cross, and prior to the unveiling of Antichrist we must witness the Great Apostasy alongside the moving of the katechōn “out of the way,” what will be the signs that this has in fact happened?
Two Signs of the Great Apostasy: Mass Defection of Temporal Powers, and Liturgical Chaos
We believe there are two signs that will indicate Satan has in fact been loosed, and that we have therefore entered the times of the Great Apostasy and the removal of the katechōn: the mass defection of temporal powers from Christ and His Church; and liturgical chaos within the Church.
When Satan tempted Christ, he offered him (among other things) the kingdoms of this world (Matt. 4:8-9; Luke 4:5-7). Prior to Our Lord’s Passion, these kingdoms were under the authority of Satan and his demons. In all places except Israel (and even they often fell into apostasy), false religion—often paganism—reigned supreme. The nations of the earth worshipped demons in the form of idols, and often worshipped their rulers as living gods.
This rapidly changed after the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Our Lord. Indeed, in commissioning the Apostles to preach the Gospel to the world, Our Lord explicitly says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” (Matt. 28:18-19) For the first time in history, nations other than Israel not only acknowledged the God of Israel as the one and only God, but recognized their duty to obey Him. As the seventh angel in the Apocalypse proclaimed (11:15), “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.” A similar statement is made in the book of Daniel. (Dan. 7:27)
Beginning in earnest with Constantine, temporal powers began submitting their swords to Christ the King, which meant submitting to the higher spiritual sword of the Catholic priesthood on matters of faith and morals. These two swords, together, represent “all authority in heaven and on earth” that was given to Christ. Thus the Church’s teaching on the Two Swords—the spiritual sword of the priesthood, and the temporal sword of rulers—both of which execute justice in their respective spheres as regents of God, and thereby “restrain” the mystery of iniquity. (2 Thess. 2:6-7) This was an essential part of the spread of the Gospel, as prophesied by the prophets. (See, for example, Isaiah 2:2, Micah 4:1, etc.)
Since this remarkable epoch began with, and was indeed empowered by Our Lord’s Satan-binding cross, it stands to reason that the loosing of Satan which precedes the end times will lead to the opposite.
And that is exactly what has happened.
Beginning in the sixteenth, and rapidly accelerating since the eighteenth century, the temporal powers of the earth have now almost completely reverted to their pre-Incarnation state—their novus ordo seclorum, or “new order of the ages.” They have reneged on their obedience to Christ the King and His Church, recognizing no power higher than themselves. Whereas for 1,500 years, many of the temporal powers of the earth explicitly acknowledged the authority of Christ as King and the Catholic Church as His Church, only a handful do today, and they are all either micro-states, or otherwise very small countries. This small list consists of only Vatican City, Monaco, Malta, Lichtenstein, and Costa Rica.
The epoch in which temporal powers acknowledged the right of the Church and the Vicar of Christ to authoritatively teach—to bind and loose—on matters of faith and morals has all but ended. As St. Thomas Aquinas observed in his commentary on 2 Thessalonians, this apostasy “should be understood not only as a revolt from the temporal [Roman empire] but from the spiritual empire, namely from the catholic faith of the Roman church. And it is fitting that, as Christ came when the Roman empire held sway over all, so conversely a sign of the Antichrist is revolt against it.”[1]
Indeed, separation of Church and state, along with complete liberty of conscience with respect to religion—both of which have been condemned by the Catholic Church—are considered essential “universal rights” promulgated all over the world by formerly Catholic western civilization.
If this is not what the Great Apostasy looks like, what else could it be?
But if indeed Our Lord’s cross is what bound Satan, and he will be loosed prior to the appearance of Antichrist, we believe we can deduce another sign of Satan’s release: liturgical chaos within the Church.
The deduction is straightforward: if Satan was bound by the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord, that means his binding is inherently related to the sacraments whose efficacy was likewise directly empowered by the very same events. The sacraments convey the grace won for us by Christ at the cross, the very same cross which bound Satan. As such, they are the “power source” of the sacramental polity of Christendom. They are the means by which merely natural societies previously enslaved to Satan have been elevated by grace, and empowered to attain their final end, namely eternal Beatitude in heaven.
But if Satan is loosed prior to the end, it is logical to deduce that part of his release will include liturgical chaos and profanation in the Church, and preeminently so in the mass, by which Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is perpetuated and continually offered to the Father until His return. If this very power is what enabled the rise of Christendom, its decline cannot be explained apart from it. Indeed, the Fathers of the Church teach that at the height of Antichrist’s persecution of the Church, he will outlaw this very sacrifice. (See, for example, Dan. 12:11) Thus, the most intense judgment this planet will ever endure will coincide with the virtual disappearance of the mass. It would thus be no surprise that the Antichrist, whose unveiling is itself a judgment on the world and those claiming to be Catholic, will also somehow be connected with the profanation of the sacraments, just as God’s judgments on ancient Israel were likewise associated with their profanation of the sacrifices ordained by the Torah.
It is thus interesting to note that Doctors of the Church like St. Pope Gregory the Great predicted that in the days preceding the unveiling of Antichrist, the Church would be greatly weakened in a variety of ways, and temporal powers will have been given over to Satan. (See Katechōn #5)
Liturgical chaos within the Church is precisely what has happened, in an utterly unprecedented way, since the 1960’s. Not only the mass, but the liturgy of all seven sacraments has been drastically altered in such a way that many of their most ancient prayers and formulations have been discarded, and substituted with relatively deficient replacements. We do not rely on merely our own opinion here, but cite the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), who was himself an advocate of liturgical reform[2]:
What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it—as in a manufacturing process—with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.
Likewise, according to liturgical scholar Monsignor Klaus Gamber, in the very book for which the words of Ratzinger above were part of the introduction to its French edition, the liturgical innovations that have taken place since the 1960’s have led to an unprecedented disaster[3]:
[T]he liturgical reform welcomed with so much idealism and hope by many priests and lay people alike has turned out to be a liturgical destruction of startling proportions—a debacle worsening with each passing year. Instead of the hoped-for renewal of the Church and of Catholic life, we are now witnessing a dismantling of the traditional values of piety on which our faith rests. Instead of a fruitful renewal of the liturgy, what we see is a destruction of the forms of the Mass which had developed organically during the course of many centuries.
This has never happened before in the 2,000-year history of the Church.
Incidentally, the first time a complete new form of mass was promulgated after Vatican II was in October 1967. This “first” novus ordo was called the Missa Normativa, and was celebrated by it and the future novus ordo’s architect, Annibale Bugnini—a figure whose darker associations have since become known. Why is this significant? Because only months earlier, on June 7, 1967, the State of Israel recaptured the Old City of Jerusalem, and thereby put the ancient city, the City of David, and the Temple Mount, once again under Jewish sovereignty. We cannot help but note Our Lord’s prophecy on this front: “Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24) We thank a scholarly friend of ours who pointed this out. We do not believe it is coincidence.
To be clear: we are not saying the inherent power of the sacraments themselves have been weakened, or that the new liturgical forms promulgated since the 1960’s are invalid. This shall never be the case, as all authority in heaven and on earth still belongs, and will ever belong to Christ, who has promised to remain with us to the end.
However, we would argue what to us seems now to be a self-evident truth: that the liturgy of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, has been degraded, and with it the Catholic belief and practice they are meant to inculcate. This degradation has led to unprecedented profanation of the sacraments, especially the most holy Eucharist. What should be the very source and power of not only their own sanctification, but the building of sacramental Christian civilization—the katechōn, Christendom itself—has for millions of Catholics become a source of condemnation, in accordance with the warning of St. Paul: “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” (1 Cor. 11:29)
Is it any wonder that the moral state of the world has concomitantly collapsed to a degree unimaginable even within the lifetime of many alive today? The mystery of iniquity is being unleashed, no longer restrained by the Christendom which formerly bound it and its dark lord. “For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Pet. 4:17)
With such profanation, and in an epoch in which the mass defection of temporal powers from Christ the King is all but complete, it is no wonder that the Church has been severely and unprecedently weakened in a manner we would expect if Satan had in fact been released. She, along with the civilization She nurtured and bore, are nearly “out of the way.” (2 Thess. 2:7)
As such, we have concluded we are likely in the midst of the Great Apostasy St. Paul warned would precede the appearance of Antichrist, the Man of Sin who will no doubt be a judgment we Catholics will have eaten and drunk upon ourselves.
—Ignatius de Montfort
REFERENCES
[1]St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on II Thessalonians (Chapter 2, Lecture 1, §35); St. Thomas Aquinas, Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, Volume 40: Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012), 218.
[2]Monsignor Klaus Gamber, Klaus D. Grimm, trans., The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background (Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, 1993), back cover.
[3]Ibid., 9.