Let the reader discern.
“[Satan] will set up a counterchurch which will be the ape
of the [Catholic] Church … It will have all the notes and characteristics of
the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content.”
We are living in the days of the Apocalypse, the last days
of our era. The two great forces – the Mystical Body of Christ and the Mystical
Body of the anti-Christ – are beginning to draw battle lines for the
catastrophic contest.
The False prophet will have a religion without a cross. A
religion without a world to come. A religion to destroy religions. There will
be a counterfeit Church.
Christ’s Church the Catholic Church will be one; and the
false Prophet will create the other.
The False Church will be worldly, ecumenical, and global. It
will be a loose federation of churches and religions, forming some type of
global association.
A world parliament of Churches. It will be emptied of all
Divine content, it will be the mystical body of the anti-christ. The Mystical
Body on earth today will have its Judas Iscariot, and he will be the false
prophet. Satan will recruit him from our Bishops.
The Antichrist will not be so called; otherwise he would
have no followers. He will not wear red tights, nor vomit sulphur, nor carry a
trident nor wave an arrowed tail as Mephistopheles in Faust. This masquerade
has helped the Devil convince men that he does not exist. When no man
recognizes, the more power he exercises. God has defined Himself as “I am Who
am,” and the Devil as “I am who am not.”
Nowhere in Sacred Scripture do we find warrant for the
popular myth of the Devil as a buffoon who is dressed like the first “red.”
Rather is he described as an angel fallen from heaven, as “the Prince of this
world,” whose business it is to tell us that there is no other world. His logic
is simple: if there is no heaven there is no hell; if there is no hell, then
there is no sin; if there is no sin, then there is no judge, and if there is no
judgment then evil is good and good is evil. But above all these descriptions,
Our Lord tells us that he will be so much like Himself that he would deceive
even the elect–and certainly no devil ever seen in picture books could deceive
even the elect. How will he come in this new age to win followers to his
religion?
The pre-Communist Russian belief is that he will come
disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk peace, prosperity and plenty
not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves …
The third temptation in which Satan asked Christ to adore
him and all the kingdoms of the world would be His, will become the temptation
to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a
religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion–one that
renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.
In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his
glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will
tell to no one: he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be
brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He
will set up a counterchurch which will be the ape of the Church, because he,
the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of
the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a
mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the
mystical body of Christ …
But the twentieth century will join the counterchurch
because it claims to be infallible when its visible head speaks ex cathedra
from Moscow on the subject of economics and politics, and as chief shepherd of
world communism.
(Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West
[Bobbs-Merril Company, Indianapolis, 1948], pp. 24-25)
