The anti-Christ



Interest in the anti-Christ is something that seems to never wane. It is often a clever tool of certian groups of Christians, a way of casting an evil eye toward a rival group (sometimes even other Christians), if you will. I recall a woman, very devout, telling me that she had figured out who the anti-Christ was--I think she believed that the source was a Divine revelation that she had received--anyway after some rather convoluted reasoning she announced that Saddam Hussein was the Antichrist and he was the 666 referred to in the Book of Revelation. This was in the early 1990's during the Gulf War. My problem with it at the time and even today as I write this is thta it suited her political beliefs as much as it did her religious beliefs. At the same time people like Ossama Bin Laden held Hussein to be something of a demon who was secularizing the Moslem world. So such demonizing of people often finds strange bedfellows.



In this country the topic of continues to hold the public's interest. The "Left Behind" series continues to be a bestseller that rivals anything the secular presses can release. Televangelists continue to predict that the antichrist is in our midst and that the end it near. Now Bishops of the Midwest have released a pastoral where they warn that such publications might themselves be the "false prophets" that Jesus warned His followers to both be on the lookout for and not to fall prey to when they appeared.



I have often thought that whoever and whatever we conceive of as the antichrist can be a temptation away from the Gospel for us. We can demonize someone or some institution so that we do not have to apply the Gospel message to them. Again the Lord told us that judgment is not ours, it is His and His warning to "watch" carries with it the notion that we are ever to be vigilant for His coming under the many guises that He chooses to visit us in.



Here is some of the Catholic Bishop's of Illinois Statement:



When Jesus told us to be alert and ready for his return, he also warned there would be false prophets. One of the most attractively marketed recent false "prophets" has been the Left Behind series, published by Tyndale House Press in Wheaton, Illinois. Since 1995, the series by Mr. Tim LaHaye and Mr. Jerry B. Jenkins has been a tool for active promotion of a fundamentalist theology of the end times in conflict with Catholic teachings. More than that, the series has been a vehicle for anti-Catholic sentiments by the way Catholics are characterized and treated in the plot line.



Promoted nationally in grocery checkout aisles, discount outlets and bookstores, over the Internet and even through book sale fundraisers in Catholic schools, these novels are now in the tenth installment of the adult series and the twenty-fourth volume of the children's version. There are also two videos, (produced by Cloud Ten Productions) a board game, and other marketed items. These materials, about fictionalized end-times, popularize a common fundamentalist belief in a time of tribulation after the "rapture" (when the "good people" are secretly taken up overnight to Heaven) and before the Second Coming of Christ. This belief is not supported in Scripture.



Responding to similar fundamentalist agendas back in 1937, Pius XI, in "Divini Redemptoris" said any such speculations about a period when a remnant of the Church progresses towards its own ultimate victory might of themselves be a sign of the Antichrist:



The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism ...



The Catechism of the Catholic Church continues:



The kingdom will be fulfilled then, not by a historic triumph of the church through a progressive ascendancy, but only in God's victory over the final unleashing of evil ... (676-677)



The scenario in Left Behind, of a "tribulation force" of born-again former sinners who attempt personally to derail the progress of the Anti-Christ, is broadly classifiable as pre-millenarianism. The pseudo-historical backdrop for the story ties apocalyptic scripture to specific events in history, an error known as pre-millennial dispensationalism. In later books in the series, the new Pope is depicted as instrumental in establishing a relativistic world religion encouraged by the AntiChrist and operated from New Babylon (formerly Rome). The Left Behind series is anti-Catholic in content and form, consistent with Mr. LaHaye's other writings, in which he associates the Church with "Babylonian mysticism."



Tyndale House, and by association Cloud Ten Productions, have made clear in their marketing that they feel divinely inspired to promote their theological agenda among the most vulnerable. A recent promotional mailer, created by the Christian Film and Television Commission for their second Left Behind video, claims: "God is using the "Left Behind" films, as He has used the books, to reach out and touch the lives of people who won't go to church, but in their hearts are looking for the answers to life's questions." If there are any doubts that the aim of the Left Behind series is as much to promote a fundamentalist agenda as to make money, these marketing techniques should put them to rest.

The Iraqi Information Minister Resurfaces on Abu Dhabi TV



He looks a lot older now...







From We Love the Iraqi Information Minister.com:



"The information I received from the governorates was more precise and comprehensive than the information I got from the Baghdad area. I was sincere in everything I said, even just before the fall of Baghdad international airport."



"The information was correct, but the interpretations were not," he said. "I did my duty up to the last minute."

Michael Rose Responds to Inside the Vatican



From The Diocese Report:



Dear Inside the Vatican,



Your June-July 2003 issue included a letter to the editor entitled "Enraged" and signed "Michael Rose." Unfortunately, many people--including some at Inside the Vatican--have mistaken me for the author of this letter, which is anti-Papal in content and woefully intemperate in tone. The letter does not express my views in the least; nor is the letter written in a manner even remotely consistent with my style. To be sure, I am not the author of the letter.



I have written four books (Goodbye Good Men, Priest, Ugly As Sin, and The Renovation Manipulation) as well as hundreds of articles dealing with a variety of topics of interest to Catholics all over the world. I am a contributing editor of the New Oxford Review and a news correspondent for The Catholic World Report. I do not need to write a letter to the editor of Inside the Vatican in order to express my views. It seems the only time I write letters to Catholic periodicals is to correct false or misleading information about myself or my work.



Michael S. Rose

Cincinnati OH

Spirituality and Today's Mass Reading



From the First Reading at Mass Today:



The LORD's messenger found her by a spring in the wilderness,

the spring on the road to Shur, and he asked,

"Hagar, maid of Sarai, where have you come from

and where are you going?"

She answered, "I am running away from my mistress, Sarai."

But the LORD's messenger told her:

"Go back to your mistress and submit to her abusive treatment.I will make your descendants so numerous," added the LORD's messenger,

"that they will be too many to count.



I have put the passage that struck me in bold. Interestingly other translations do not translate this passage in the same way. The RSV translates it as "Return to your mistress and submit to her." But back to the text as it exists in the Lectionary, Hagar who flees the harsh treatment of Sarah is told to go back and to submit to it. When I attended Mass the priest ignored the reading commenting rather accurately that it would be hard to offer a pious homily on the first reading, I would differ with him on that point.



The reading and the verse in particular point to a certain way of approaching life. Do we flee the reality we are placed in (this is obviously the "way" many approach life in our culture) or do we face the good and the bad? What is more is to look at how we view the world around us and in particular the part of the world where we are placed, is it a curse or a blessing?



Hagar's return to Sarah is accompanied by a promise of blessing. The Christian's taking up the cross with Jesus carries with it a promised blessing.



I recall many years ago hearing Father Benedict Groeschel, at that time a Capuchin, preach on the mental health of some of the saints. His diagnosis is that many of them suffered from neurotic states but through their devotion to God while not relieved of their condition it was sanctified. Grace building on nature.



Every day we all suffer at the hands of our "Sarah's" who abuse us out of jealousy and envy. The small mindedness that backs such abuse is easy to understand but difficult to deal with when directed at yourself. We all are tempted to flea but God tells us to stay and what is more to see a blessing in it all.



The next time you read the life of a saint, take off your pious sunglasses and try to imagine what it must have been like to live in a community with such a person. Would you have experienced them as a gift or a burden? It is clear from the testimonies of many who have enjoyed the blessing that it hardly seemed like a blessing to them at the time.



In the case of facing our abusers we have to understand that if they can be helped we can lead them in that direction. Perhaps that is why God wants us to go back so that they may face their own activity even as we face up to it.



The severity of life is often ignored both by those who make it harsh for others and for those whe enjoy it's cruel deserts.

A Note from the Publisher of Sophia Publishing



Dear Friends:



Just a brief note to forestall possible scandal.



The magazine Inside the Vatican just published a harsh letter

attacking the Pope, and it was signed by Michael Rose.



Our author, Michael S. Rose, did not write that unfortunate

letter and does not know who did. Nor does he hold the views

expressed in the letter.



Michael has contacted Inside the Vatican about this, and I told

him that I would let my contacts know that he did not write it,

lest he be misjudged for intemperate words that are the product

of another's pen.



John



I'm surprised that Inside the Vatican would have published the letter in the first place if it is critical of the pope and without checking with Michael Rose to see if he wrote it.

Back from a whirlwind trip. First to Kentucky where we (Amy, Joseph and I) saw my parents, my two nieces, one nephew and my youngest sister and her husband. Then after a day there we drove to Tennessee where we saw Amy's Father and wife Hilary, and Amy's oldest son Christopher. The trip back was made longer because of snow, ice and salt-less roads in Ohio. Fortunately the roads in Indiana were well salted so the trip went a little quicker once there.

Need a Rosary Book?



A comment from one of Amy's posts:



That little book you guys did on the rosary is great.