[Satan] will establish a counter-church, 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 two great forces—the Mystical Body of Christ and the Mystical Body of the Antichrist—are beginning to draw battle lines for the catastrophic conflict. 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 false church.
The Church of Christ, the Catholic Church, will be one; and the false prophet will create the other. The false church will be worldly, ecumenical (in every sense, even with pagans), and global. It will be a loose federation of churches and religions, forming some kind of global association. A world parliament of churches. It will be emptied of all divine content; it will be the mystical body of the Antichrist. The Mystical Body on earth today will have its Judas Iscariot, and he will be the false prophet.
The Antichrist will not be called that; otherwise, he would have no followers. He will not wear red stockings, nor vomit sulfur, nor carry a trident, nor wave a tail with an arrow like Mephistopheles in Faust. This masquerade has helped the devil convince men that he does not exist. When no one recognizes him, he exerts more power. God has defined Himself as "I am who I am," and the Devil as "I am who I am not."
Nowhere in Sacred Scripture do we find a description for the popular myth of the Devil as a jester dressed as the first "red" in the world. Rather, he is described as a fallen angel, as "the prince of this world," whose business 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 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 gain followers for his religion? The pre-communist Russian belief is that he will come disguised as the great humanitarian; he will speak of peace, prosperity, and abundance, not as a means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves.
The third temptation, in which Satan asked Christ to worship him and all the kingdoms of the world would be his, will become the temptation to have a new religion without the Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy religion, or a politics that is a religion, that gives to Caesar what is God's. Amidst his apparent love for humanity and his fervent pronouncements on freedom and equality, he will harbor a great secret that he will tell no one: he will not believe in God. He will establish his dictatorship.
Because his religion will be fraternity without the fatherhood of God, it will deceive even the elect. He will establish a counter-church that will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the marks and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that in all its outward aspects will resemble the mystical body of Christ.
Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, 1948.
Modernist heresy leads us toward this false religion and this false church.
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