"What Does ISIS Want?"

The Atlantic has a great article giving the run down. Some key points:

Baghdadi spoke at length of the importance of the caliphate in his Mosul sermon. He said that to revive the institution of the caliphate—which had not functioned except in name for about 1,000 years—was a communal obligation. He and his loyalists had “hastened to declare the caliphate and place an imam” at its head, he said. “This is a duty upon the Muslims—a duty that has been lost for centuries … The Muslims sin by losing it, and they must always seek to establish it.” Like bin Laden before him, Baghdadi spoke floridly, with frequent scriptural allusion and command of classical rhetoric. Unlike bin Laden, and unlike those false caliphs of the Ottoman empire, he is Qurayshi.

The caliphate, Cerantonio told me, is not just a political entity but also a vehicle for salvation. Islamic State propaganda regularly reports the pledges of baya’a (allegiance) rolling in from jihadist groups across the Muslim world. Cerantonio quoted a Prophetic saying, that to die without pledging allegiance is to die jahil (ignorant) and therefore die a “death of disbelief.” Consider how Muslims (or, for that matter, Christians) imagine God deals with the souls of people who die without learning about the one true religion. They are neither obviously saved nor definitively condemned. Similarly, Cerantonio said, the Muslim who acknowledges one omnipotent god and prays, but who dies without pledging himself to a valid caliph and incurring the obligations of that oath, has failed to live a fully Islamic life. I pointed out that this means the vast majority of Muslims in history, and all who passed away between 1924 and 2014, died a death of disbelief. Cerantonio nodded gravely. “I would go so far as to say that Islam has been reestablished” by the caliphate.

I asked him about his own baya’a, and he quickly corrected me: “I didn’t say that I’d pledged allegiance.” Under Australian law, he reminded me, giving baya’a to the Islamic State was illegal. “But I agree that [Baghdadi] fulfills the requirements,” he continued. “I’m just going to wink at you, and you take that to mean whatever you want.”

To be the caliph, one must meet conditions outlined in Sunni law—being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority. This last criterion, Cerantonio said, is the hardest to fulfill, and requires that the caliph have territory in which he can enforce Islamic law. Baghdadi’s Islamic State achieved that long before June 29, Cerantonio said, and as soon as it did, a Western convert within the group’s ranks—Cerantonio described him as “something of a leader”—began murmuring about the religious obligation to declare a caliphate. He and others spoke quietly to those in power and told them that further delay would be sinful.

Cerantonio said a faction arose that was prepared to make war on Baghdadi’s group if it delayed any further. They prepared a letter to various powerful members of ISIS, airing their displeasure at the failure to appoint a caliph, but were pacified by Adnani, the spokesman, who let them in on a secret—that a caliphate had already been declared, long before the public announcement. They had their legitimate caliph, and at that point there was only one option. “If he’s legitimate,” Cerantonio said, “you must give him the baya’a.”

After Baghdadi’s July sermon, a stream of jihadists began flowing daily into Syria with renewed motivation. ...

Before the caliphate, “maybe 85 percent of the Sharia was absent from our lives,” Choudary told me. “These laws are in abeyance until we have khilafa”—a caliphate—“and now we have one.” Without a caliphate, for example, individual vigilantes are not obliged to amputate the hands of thieves they catch in the act. But create a caliphate, and this law, along with a huge body of other jurisprudence, suddenly awakens. In theory, all Muslims are obliged to immigrate to the territory where the caliph is applying these laws. ...

Fr. Dwight Longenecker makes some interesting points:

the literalism of their interpretation of the Quran is fused with a frightening apocalyptic mindset. To the uninitiated, Muslim end-times prophecies seem just as complicated as the predictions in the Book of Revelation and the complex explanations given by apocalyptically minded Christians and Jews. Islamic prophecies envision that the armies of Rome will meet the armies of Islam in northern Syria, and after a near defeat, the stragglers of the Islamic army will go to Jerusalem to meet their messiah.

As some Christians see Armageddon as the plain where the final battle takes place, the Muslims see the Syrian city of Dabiq near Aleppo. Wood explains, “It is here, the Prophet reportedly said, ‘that the armies of Rome will set up their camp.’ The armies of Islam will meet them, and Dabiq will be Rome’s Waterloo or its Antietam.”

This is the conquest of Rome that the Muslim fundamentalists anticipate. Having taken Dabiq, the ISIS leadership has proclaimed, “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify … until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq.”

The prophecies say that the enemy is “Rome,” but as Rome has no army, interpreters have different ideas of who “Rome” is. Some think it refers to the Eastern capital of the ancient Roman Empire, meaning Istanbul. Neighboring Turkey, then, is the “Rome” the ISIS murderers plan to conquer.

Other Islamic commentators suggest that “Rome” is shorthand for any infidel army, which could be made up of apostate Muslims allied with Christians and Jews. Others believe “Rome” is a synecdoche for any Christian power or alliance. Therefore, when the terrorists say they will “conquer Rome,” it is unlikely that they are referring to a literal attack on the capital of Italy and the Vatican.

Nevertheless, the secular political leaders in the West need to understand the deeply religious nature of the Islamic State group and take stock. ...

The Odd Thomas Movie is Out!

And I'm excited, especially when every review seems to be complaining about the things Koontz put into the story for a reason.

• Wacky tone: Yes. Exactly.  Odd's got an odd way of speaking and writing. There's a certain amount of Forrest Gump monotone in the midst of impossible situations, a certain depth of humility which affects his entire worldview and the way he approaches the world. Everyone who's read the books knows that and wants it in the movie.
• Prediction versus payoff: "...In adapting Dean Koontz's series, Sommers nails the hero but bungles the world-building. Odd predicts mythological violence, but the climactic wreckage we see on screen is too real for what should play out as weightless entertainment. The tonal confusion persists through a mawkish epilogue that optimistically sets up a sequel, but by then it's too late: We have no reason to return to this world..."  But that precisely misses the point. The sort of violence we've come to accept as being "all too real" is precisely the sort of violence that's mythological in scope and size.  We can summon fire from the heavens, rain poison on our enemies, draw down the sun to blast those who oppose us--that is, we can drop napalm, chemical weaponry, or nukes on our opponents.  We live in mythological times.  Most of our movies don't appreciate that, and slog forward with a weird, realpolitik determination--nothing to see here, move along, nothing strange that we choose Machiavelli over St. Matthew or find WMD a permanent part of the foreign policy discussions.  Odd Thomas is an apocalyptic series, a modern chivalric romance, all incarnated into a supernatural thriller. The "tonal confusion" isn't confused at all--it's unusually clear eyed, and that's why it's popular.

It sounds like they did a good job. The author certainly liked it. Excerpts:

It is so wonderful that I am whacked flat by happiness. It makes no missteps, races forward with unrelenting momentum, is gripping, and has great heart, and even has an excellent score! It is a totally fresh wind in the genres upon which it touches, and we felt that we were seeing one of those rare productions with the potential to dramatically alter how other filmmakers approach such movies in the future.

Theater information and links for ordering it here.

There's an Odd Thomas Movie!

Gah.

It's always a good sign when the author of the books, Dean Koontz, likes the movie. Excerpts:

Gerda and I and two friends just saw the completed Odd Thomas film. It is so wonderful that I am whacked flat by happiness. It makes no missteps, races forward with unrelenting momentum, is gripping, and has great heart, and even has an excellent score! It is a totally fresh wind in the genres upon which it touches, and we felt that we were seeing one of those rare productions with the potential to dramatically alter how other filmmakers approach such movies in the future...

Unfortunately, it's held up in a financial and legal quagmire.  Excerpts:

...The film's producers, Two Out of Ten Productions, is suing several organisations which it claims owe $35 million for marketing and paying off production loans.

Odd Thomas is not expected to be released until the legal matter is settled.

The Mummy director Stephen Sommers helmed the film, which stars Yelchin (Star Trek into Darkness) as a short-order cook who can speak to the dead.

Patton Oswalt, Addison Timlin, Nico Tortorella and Gugu Mbatha-Raw also feature in the movie...

I'm going to cheat because I really want to see this movie in theaters: please pray for the successful release of this movie and excellent sequels to come.

The Eucharist, The Heart of Life

I was talking with a friend the other night, and she asked what the Catholic teaching on the end of the world (eschatology) was--whether we expected Christ to come again, or whether we thought that he came at each Mass.  I said, "Both."

As Dr. Hahn lays out explicitly, Jesus comes to us in the Mass in a uniquely strong sense.  Excerpts:

...The Eucharist is the parousia. I have given many lectures on this subject since 1999, when I published The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth. In that book, I examined the Book of Revelation in light of the liturgies of the Church and of Israel, and I examined the Church’s Mass in light of the biblical Apocalypse. Most of my readers and listeners were aware that the Book of Revelation had something to say about the coming of Jesus at the end of the world. Few knew, however, that the Book of Revelation had anything to say about Jesus’ coming in the Eucharist.

The idea seems alien to faithful churchgoers in the twenty-first century. Yet it was commonplace to Christians of the first, second, and third centuries; and, to scholars of history—whether Catholic or not—the notion appears so pervasive as to be obvious. The great historical theologian Jaroslav Pelikan, writing as a Lutheran, observed of the early Church: “The coming of Christ was ‘already’ and ‘not yet’: he had come already—in the incarnation, and on the basis of the incarnation would come in the Eucharist; he had come already in the Eucharist, and would come at the last in the new cup that he would drink with them in his Father’s kingdom.”

Though a final parousia will one day come, the Eucharist is the parousia here and now. Anglican scholar Gregory Dix wrote that this notion was “universal” by the third century, and probably long before, since he adds that there are no exceptions to this rule: “[N]o pre-Nicene author Eastern or Western whose Eucharistic doctrine is at all fully stated” holds a different view...

So at the Mass, the eschaton--the end of time and history, the end of the world--is present. The fulfillment of all desire--God--comes to us to be eaten and to transform us by our eating, by word and sacrament, bathing us in the blood and water which poured forth from his side on the cross. As Stephen Colbert said, "You are what you eat." So at the Mass, when we eat his body and drink his blood, we are drawn into communion with Christ, and through Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  As we are transformed, so too is the cosmos.  As Pope Benedict teaches:

...The substantial conversion of bread and wine into His body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of "nuclear fission," which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).--Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritas, art. 11

With every Eucharist, with every transubstantiation, with every time of communion between human beings and the Triune God, every aspect of the cosmos is touched. Humans participate in all layers of reality, being creatures of matter and spirit. As we are transformed, every part of creation is transformed. The end of the world comes as God becomes all in all, gradually permeating the cosmos until the forces of evil and privation, the forces of the devil, are pressed to a last stand. That shall be the great confrontation between anti-Christ and the Church, between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, where he shall crush the head of the serpent, and the serpent shall bite at the heel of the Body of Christ. Good shall triumph. God shall be all in all, leaving no room for the denizens of hell. They shall be cast into the outer darkness, where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

And to receive the Eucharist is to come to live his life, and love with his love.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day.  It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’

Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.  Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”--John 6:44-51

So we are called to live Eucharistic lives in this world, lives of thanksgiving and self-donation, lives of charity and bearing those crosses which God has laid upon us for the life of the world.

...By his command to "do this in remembrance of me" (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:25), he asks us to respond to his gift and to make it sacramentally present. In these words the Lord expresses, as it were, his expectation that the Church, born of his sacrifice, will receive this gift, developing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the liturgical form of the sacrament. The remembrance of his perfect gift consists not in the mere repetition of the Last Supper, but in the Eucharist itself, that is, in the radical newness of Christian worship. In this way, Jesus left us the task of entering into his "hour." "The Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving." (21) Jesus "draws us into himself."--Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritas, art. 11

Pace the Mayan Calendar, December 21, 2012, Will Not Be The End of The World

Oh, fun. This whole Mayan Apocalypse thing has really jumped the shark. Excerpts:

...This week, at sunrise on Friday, December 21, an era closes in the Maya Long Count calendar, an event that has been likened by different groups to the end of days, the start of a new, more spiritual age or a good reason to hang out at old Maya temples across Mexico and Central America.

"If it is the end of the world, hopefully Luke will come and blow up that Death Star," said Alex Markovitz, a 24-year-old consultant and Star Wars fan from Philadelphia, looking out over the site of Skywalker's rebel base. "I see why they shot here. It doesn't look real. It looks like an alien planet."

Once at the heart of a conquering civilization in its own right, the ancient city of Tikal is now a pilgrimage site for both hard-core Star Wars fans and enthusiasts of Maya culture eager to discover what exactly the modern interpretations of old lore portend.

In the 1960s, a leading U.S. scholar said the end of the Maya's 13th bak'tun - an epoch lasting some 400 years - could signify an "Armageddon," though many people trekking to the old temples believe it could herald something wonderful.

Discovered in 1848 when locals unearthed human skulls whose teeth were studded with jade jewels, Tikal draws tourists from around the globe. Visitors this week said they felt a powerful presence in the blue skies above them.

"The force is strong here," said Jimena Teijeiro, 35, an Argentine-born self-help blogger. "The world as we know it is coming to an end. We are being propelled to a new age of light, synchronicity and simple wonderment with life."

Maya scholars and astronomers have dismissed the idea the world is on the brink of destruction but mystics and spiritual thrill-seekers have flocked to feed off Tikal's energy. Park guards said they had to throw out 13 naked women who were dancing and chanting around a fire pit near the temples last week.

"Something big is going to happen," said the president of Guatemala's Star Wars fan club, entrepreneur Ricardo Alejos. "The Maya were an incredibly precise people. Something big is going to happen and we'll find out what in a few days."

Surrounded by thick jungle home to jaguars, monkeys and toucans, the view of Yavin 4 from the top of Tikal's Temple Four, known as the temple of the double-headed serpent, has changed little since Lucas filmed here in 1977...

Whatever may or may not happen, aside from the ticking over into the next Long Count (and ancient New World civilizations have managed to make some interesting predictions based on their stargazing, rather like some ancient Middle Eastern folk), December 21, 2012, will not be the end of the world.  Excerpts:

Signs that are to precede the general judgment

The Scriptures mention certain events which are to take place before the final judgment. These predictions were not intended to serve as indications of the exact time of the judgment, for that day and hour are known only to the Father, and will come when least expected. They were meant to foreshadow the last judgment and to keep the end of the world present to the minds of Christians, without, however, exciting useless curiosity and vain fears. Theologians usually enumerate the following nine events as signs of the last judgment...

• General preaching of the Christian religion...
• Conversion of the Jews...
• Return of Enoch and Elijah...
• A great apostasy...
• The reign of Antichrist...
• Extraordinary perturbations of nature...
• The universal conflagration...
• The Trumpet of Resurrection...
• "The sign of the Son of Man appearing in the heavens..."

And when, pray tell, have all of the above--repeat: all--occurred in the past few years?  As Jesus said:

But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In [those] days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be [also] at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left. Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.  Matthew 24:36-44

If you want an encounter with the living God, I've got some guidance for you.

h/t Catholic Memes

Also:

• Regular parousia and apokalypsis of God brought to you by these, as explained here.
• Pope Benedict explains how this whole end of the world thing works here and here.
• Three visions of apocalypse, one of which is brought to full incarnational life here.
• There's a number of reasons for this constant apocalyptic ferment, most deriving from the via moderna.

Pope Benedict Talks Apocalypse

Not now--later!  Excerpts:

"...Jesus does describe the end of the world. When he uses apocalyptic images, he is not acting as a 'seer'. On the contrary, he wants to rescue his disciples in every age from the curiosity about dates and soothsaying, and give them instead an essential key to understand especially the right path to follow, today and tomorrow, for entering eternal life."...

"Jesus uses images and words from the Old Testament," the pontiff explained. In particular, "he inserts a new centre; that is himself, the mystery of his persona, death and resurrection."

And if "today's passage opens with a few cosmic images of the apocalyptic kind," this element is relativised by what follows: 'And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds' with great power and glory' (v. 26)."

"Jesus himself is the 'Son of man' who connects the present with the future," the pope noted. "The ancient words of the prophets finally found a centre in the person of the Messiah from Nazareth. He is the true event that, amid the world's disorder, remains a firm and stable element."

Salt of the Earth, Light of the World..."IceNine of the Universe?"

An interesting analogy, drawn from science fiction.  Excerpts:

In his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle, science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut introduces a fictional polymorph he calls “ice-nine.” According to Vonnegut, ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature. It acts as a seed crystal which, when it comes into contact with liquid water below 45.8° C, causes the rapid freezing of the entire body of water...

Since publication of Vonnegut’s Hugo Award-nominated work, “ice-nine” has been used as a metaphor for anything that converts other things to more of itself.

And that’s where WE come in...

In reality, we are the “ice-nine” of the universe...

Michael O'Brien: Writing News Before It Happens

Sometimes prophetic.  Excerpts:

...The mutineers maintain, anonymously, that they are doing this for the good of the Church itself. It is a recurring justification in history. They say that from the scandal they want to produce a regeneration of Christianity. But many of their "secular" supporters are interested in a collapse of the Church. Not that it be regenerated, but humiliated.

Conflicts within institutions can be managed. But betrayal much less so.

Know Much to Love Much

Whether or not Maurin was a genius, Dorothy thought he was...His concern with ideas--his overall synthesis of history and of ideas--was such a passion with him that he could think of nothing else...

The elements of his "grand idea" came from years of reading. He read, not to engorge facts, but for ideas--to see how things went together and where they tended. In writing of this trait of Maurin's, Dorothy quoted some lines from "Bishop Prohaszka's Meditations on the Gospels,"...:"He wished to know much, so as to be able to love much. Let us therefore read and learn, not for the purpose of killing time or loading our memory but for refreshing our spirits and kindling our hearts to divine love.'"--William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, pg. 234.

The Legacy

What was her legacy? It was nothing material...Her legacy was vision--a vision of ending time with its evil nightmares by bringing Christ back on earth.--William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, pg. 518.

City of God, City of Man

In some final reckoning, Dorothy could not but be an outsider.  She sought another kingdom, one which, as her [radical] friends saw it, was at war with the one they would have.  That her kingdom, as she saw it, might also fulfill their own vision was beyond their belief.  They could only think that her vision had failed.  She was an anachronism.  Now it was their time.----William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, pg. 223.

God, Death, and Falling Cows

An interesting reflection from a former teacher.  Excerpts:

...At fifteen, the charming little man-lings in my class believed they could outfox God. They forgot (or never realized) the only important fact in these hypothetical end-of-life scenarios: not everyone gets a deathbed.

To drive this truth home to them, I would conjure up an image of the most ridiculous demise I could conceive of:

“You could be walking down the street one day and a cow might fall out of the sky and end you.”

“Whatever.”

“It could happen.”

“Whatever.”

The funny thing? Two years after I quit teaching high school, it actually did happen...

Antichrist: The End

From Bl. Cardinal Newman's pen, the fourth and last sermon:

We have been so accustomed to hear of the persecutions of the Church, both from the New Testament and from the history of Christianity, that it is much if we have not at length come to regard the account of them as words of course, to speak of them without understanding what we say, and to receive no practical benefit from having been told of them; much less are we likely to take them for what they really are, a characteristic mark of Christ’s Church. They are not indeed the necessary lot of the Church, but at least one of her appropriate badges; so that, on the whole, looking at the course of history, you might set down persecutions as one of the peculiarities by which you recognize her.

And the Lord seems to intimate how becoming, how natural persecution is to the Church, by placing it among His Beatitudes. “Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven;” giving it the same high and honorable rank in the assemblage of evangelical graces, which the Sabbath holds among the Ten Commandments,- I mean, as a sort of sign and token of His followers, and, as such, placed in the moral code, though in itself external to it.

He seems to show us this in another way, viz., by intimating to us the fact that in persecution the Church begins and in persecution she ends. He left her in persecution, and He will find her in persecution. He recognizes her as His own,-He framed, and He will claim her,-as a persecuted Church, bearing His Cross. And that awful relic of which He gave her, and which she is found possessed of at the end, she cannot have lost by the way...

Christ, Incarnate

forever:

...All other social teachings fall under the shadow cast by the dignity of the human person. Not only that, but all other social actions gain their legitimacy from how well they affirm the dignity of the human person.

There are two major reasons why this is true.

But first, here’s a little riddle from catechism class that will help us uncover the reason:  What are the only man-made things in heaven?  Take your time. Puzzle it out. We can wait…

Answer: The nail prints on the hands and feet of Jesus, and the scar in his side.
Why?

Jesus still has a human body. The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent almighty Savior of the World still has a human body, albeit a glorified one.

The post-resurrection Gospel accounts verify its amazing properties: walking through walls, startling appearances and disappearances (Cf. Luke 24: 31, 36-43, John 20:19-20). Most famously Jesus appeared to Thomas and the apostles, permitting Thomas to probe the nail prints to assuage his doubt. (Cf. John 20:24-29.)

The Word become flesh (Cf. John 1:14). The Son of God incarnate is both God and man.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, par.469 and 470:

The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother…

The Son of God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.

Even now, that mystical Body is united with the Trinity. The body of Jesus was not some kind of disposable earthly transport vehicle. No. Jesus completely united himself to humanity in a permanent way...

The Resurrection of the Dead

And the life in the world to come:

...St Paul writes to the Philippians of the glory that our currently lowly bodies will one day enjoy:

He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified Body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself. (Phil 3:19)

I once spoke with an older woman who wasn’t all that pleased to hear that her body was going to rise and be joined again to her soul: “Oh, Father, you don’t mean this old decrepit body?! If this body has to rise I am hoping for an improved model!”

Yes! I think most of us can relate to the need that our current lowly bodies will be improved. And they will surely be. Notice how the passage above says, that these lowly, often weak, diseased, and often over-weight bodies will be changed and reflect the glory of the resurrected body of Jesus. Yes, this old general issue clunker that I’m currently experiencing is going to be upgraded to a luxury model. We’re headed for first class...

Advent and Antichrist

Here's the fourth of Bl. Cardinal Newman's sermons on the Antichrist:

The Angel thus interprets to St John the vision of the Great Harlot, the enchantress, who seduced the inhabitants of the earth. He says, “The woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” The city spoken of in these words is evidently Rome, which was then the seat of empire all over the earth,-which was supreme even in Judea. We hear of the Romans all through the Gospels and Acts. Our Savior was born when His mother the Blessed Virgin, and Joseph, were brought up to Bethlehem to be taxed by the Roman governor. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. St Paul was at various times protected by the circumstance of his being a Roman citizen; and on the other hand, when he was seized and imprisoned, it was by the Roman governors, and at last he was sent to Rome itself, to the emperor and eventually martyred there, together with St Peter. Thus the sovereignty of Rome, at the time when Christ and His Apostles preached and wrote, which is a matter of historical notoriety, is forced on our notice in the New Testament itself. It is undeniably meant by the Angel when he speaks of ‘the great city which reigneth over the earth.”

The connection of Rome with the reign and exploits of Antichrist, is so often brought before us in the controversies of this day, that it may be well, after what I have already had occasion to say on the subject of the last enemy of the Church, to consider now what Scripture prophecy says concerning Rome; which I shall attempt to do, as before, with the guidance of the early Fathers...

For Advent, on the Antichrist

As is only appropriate for the season of Advent, we speak of the end of the world. Blessed Cardinal Newman on the Antichrist, sermon 2:

...I shall now make some further observations on the characteristic marks of the predicted enemy of the Church; and, as before, I shall confine myself to the interpretations of Scripture given by the early Fathers.

My reason for doing so is simply this,-that on so difficult a subject as unfulfilled prophecy, I really can have no opinion of my own, nor indeed is it desirable I should have, or at least that I should put it forward in any formal way. The opinion of any one person, even if he were the most fit to form one, could hardly be of any authority, or be worth putting forward by itself; whereas the judgment and views of the early Church claim and attract our special regard, because for what we know they may be in part derived from traditions of the apostles, and because they are put forward far more consistently and unanimously than those of any other set of teachers.

Thus they have at least greater claims on our attention than those of other writers, be their claims little or great; if they are little, those of others are still less. The only really strong claim which can e made on our belief, is the clear fulfillment of the prophecy. Did we see all the marks of the prophecy satisfactorily answered in the past history of the Church, then we might dispense with the authority in the parties setting the proof before us.

This condition, however, can hardly be satisfied, because the date of the Antichrist comes close upon the coming of Christ in judgment, and therefore the event will not have happened under such circumstances as to allow of being appealed to, Nor indeed is any history producible in which are fulfilled all the marks of Antichrist clearly, though some are fulfilled here and there.

Nothing then is left us, (if we are to take up any opinion at all,-if we are to profit, as Scripture surely intends, by its warnings concerning the evil which is to come), but to go by the judgment of the Fathers, whether that be of special authority in this matter or not. To them therefore I have had recourse already, and now shall have recourse again. To continue, then, the subject with the early Fathers a my guide...

As Is Appropriate for Advent

we turn our minds to the end of the world.  Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman delivered some famous sermons on the Antichrist.  Here's the first one:

...As long as the world lasts, this passage of Scripture will be full of reverent interest to Christians. It is their duty to be ever watching for the advent of their Lord, to search for the signs of it in all that happens around them; an above all to keep in mind this great ans awful sign of which St Paul speaks to the Thessalonians. As our Lord’s first coming had its forerunner, so will the second have its own. The first was “One more than a prophet,” the Holy Baptist: the second will be more than an enemy of Christ; it will be the very image of Satan, the fearful and hateful Antichrist. Of him, as described in prophecy, I propose to speak; and in doing so, I shall follow the exclusive guidance of the ancient Fathers of the Church.

I follow the ancient Fathers, not as thinking that on such a subject they have the weight they possess in the instances of doctrine or ordinances. When they speak of doctrines, they speak of them as being universally held. They are witnesses to the fact that those doctrines having been received, not here or there, but everywhere. We receive those doctrines which they thus teach, not merely because they teach them, but because they bear witness to all Christians everywhere then held them. We take them as honest informants, but not as a sufficient authority in themselves, though they are an authority too. If they were to state these very same doctrines, but say, “These are our opinions: we deduced them from Scripture, and they are true,” we might well doubt about receiving them at their hands. We might fairly say, that we had as much right to deduce from Scripture as they had; that deductions from Scripture were mere opinions; that if our deductions agreed with theirs, that would be a happy coincidence, and increase our confidence in them; but if they did not, it could not be helped-we must follow our own light. Doubtless, no man has any right to impose his own deductions upon another, in matters of faith. There is an obvious obligation, indeed, upon the ignorant to submit to those who are better informed; and there is a fitness in the young submitting implicitly for a time to the teaching of their elders; but beyond this, one man’s opinion is not better than another’s.

But this is not the state of the case as regards the Fathers. They do not speak of their own Private Opinion; they do not say, “This is true, because we see it in Scripture”-but, “this is true, because in matter of fact it is held, and has ever been held, by all the Churches, down to our times, without interruption, ever since the apostles: “Where the question is merely one of testimony, viz., whether they had the means of knowing that it had been and was so held; for if it was the belief of so many and independent Churches at once, and that, on the ground of its being from the Apostles, doubtless it cannot be true and Apostolic.

This, I say, is the mode in which the Fathers speak as regards doctrine; but it is otherwise when they interpret prophecy...

The rest of the sermon is at the original link.

Puzzle the Anti-Christ...er, Anti-Aslan

Interesting meditation on the AntiChrist:

For those who see good versus evil in an ever-battling dualism, the foremost lesson about the Antichrist comes as a shocking relief: He is not the opposite of Christ. The concept of “pure evil” has no place in the Catholic faith, for, even in their self-created hell of permanent separation from God, demons retain the good mark of having been created by God. Instead, the Antichrist comes in disguise, offering seductive lies that seem to satisfy humanity’s deepest yearnings at the deadly price of the full truth.

Drawing on the letters of Sts. Paul and John, the Catechism speaks of this time as “the Church’s ultimate trial ... a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh” (No. 675).

Our faith teaches, then, that God has already and definitively defeated evil for us. The Antichrist has no chance of winning, for he remains subject to God’s reign despite his rejection of it. What the Antichrist represents is not some final standoff between good and evil, with angelic swords blazing and the outcome uncertain. He comes, rather, in a last-ditch effort to be idolized, to bring down mankind in a vile bacchanal of creaturely worship.

Perhaps no other writer in modern times has fleshed out the nature of the Antichrist as artfully as C.S. Lewis...

The Three Visions of the Apocalypse

What does it mean that the two great memes of the last 50-70 years or so have included, not just the end of the world, but also stopping the end of the world? We have two avenues of thought. The one embraces it. Apocalypticism is a great hope--the transformative event, the step into the next realm, or simply release from the painful present. Then there's a middle genre--we shunt the end of the world sideways somehow, so that the properly old die but men can continue, can go on much as we have (Lord of the Rings may be in this). Not a proper eschaton, then, but a middle way. Then we've got the sort of mindset epitomized by the quest for eternal youth, the metahumans, the sort who worship the mind melded to the machine as a greatly liberating option. We go beyond ourselves by technology, or in some way gain immortality. Usually this view is still shadowed by the haunting presence of mortality, even if it does demand a lot longer to come and claim us, but we die eventually nonetheless--but we don't permit that to trouble us. We focus on the perpetual pursuit of youth, of life, of adventure, of cheating death and outwitting fate and being smarter than the Lord of all that is, represented by some appropriately God the Father like figure, or god-like figure at least. And we're smart. And we win. The first seems like an overeager Christian view--unhealthy, in a way, a failure of the patient waiting and trust that we're supposed to maintain--almost suicidal, in a way. Overeager for death. The second feels about right. We aim to defeat evil, willing to lose our lives in so doing, and thus have the hope of coming through, evil having been shed from the world and the good going to their proper place, wherever that may be. A harmonious wrapping up. Sorrow and loss, combined with great joy and victory. The proper end comes in its own time--it may be now--but we will have obeyed, will have fought the good fight. The last--this seems to smack of the evil one. The world ender is evil, and must be outsmarted. There is a way out, there must be a way out, there's always a way out! We can take him out, we can do it, we can make this world last forever! Even if it came from him, we'll take it back, we'll claim it, he has no right! Who is he to judge us? And we set ourselves to fight heaven. See Legion for an example of this. And possibly, thinking about it, the most recent Doctor Who called "The End of Time." Where are we, then? What does this indicate, if all three strands are powerfully present in human culture right now? The latter may incline us to fight, not just evil, but God as well since he shall bring about the end--indeed, God the Father is the only one who can. The first may cause us to be reckless and pursue death. The middle--there's Michael O'Brien, and Lewis, and Chesterton, and all of them. Robert Hugh Benson, all the great Christian apocalypticists. I have no idea if this illuminates anything--just got hit by the thought.