[Satan] will set up a Counter-church, which will be the ape of the 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 Antichrist - 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 Antichrist.
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 Counter-church 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 Counter-church 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-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, (1948), pp. 24-25.
