The Anti-Christ

[RileyG]

Does the RCC teach there will be a coming of a single man known as the antichrist? I can never find an answer to this question.

Thank you

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Does the RCC teach there will be a coming of a single man known as the antichrist? I can never find an answer to this question.

Thank you

Maybe the Church has never given an official answer.

 

[RileyG]

Ok. Thank you

 

[fide]

Does the RCC teach there will be a coming of a single man known as the antichrist? I can never find an answer to this question.

Thank you

As I read the Catechism and Scripture, the antichrist could be a single man or a group. I don't believe the Church has defined the question one way or the other, but here is the current Catechism on the matter:

CCC 675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. [Cf. Lk 18:8; Mt 24:12] The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth [Cf. Lk 21:12; Jn 15:19-20] will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. [Cf. 2 Th 2:4-12; I Th 5:2-3; 2 Jn 7; I Jn 2:18, 22]
CCC 676 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 judgement. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, [Cf. DS 3839] especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.<Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, condemning the “false mysticism” of this “counterfeit of the redemption of the lowly”; [cf. GS 20-21]

Rev. 13:1 ff speaks of a "beast from the sea" having 7 heads, which could be read as an alliance of 7 following one spirit - the evil one. He/they will become the godless evil secular dictator over all sometimes identified with the antichrist. He/they will have an ally in the ecclesial world in Rev. 13:11 - the beast from the earth, "it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon". This beast is of the same mind and heart and spirit as the one from the sea, and is identified as the "false prophet"(Rev.16:13, 19:20, 20:10) who leads the false church into the Lie. This is also identified as "antichrist", and both/all are - one secular ruler(s) and one a "church" leader.

 

[RileyG]

As I read the Catechism and Scripture, the antichrist could be a single man or a group. I don't believe the Church has defined the question one way or the other, but here is the current Catechism on the matter:

Rev. 13:1 ff speaks of a "beast from the sea" having 7 heads, which could be read as an alliance of 7 following one spirit - the evil one. He/they will become the godless evil secular dictator over all sometimes identified with the antichrist. He/they will have an ally in the ecclesial world in Rev. 13:11 - the beast from the earth, "it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon". This beast is of the same mind and heart and spirit as the one from the sea, and is identified as the "false prophet"(Rev.16:13, 19:20, 20:10) who leads the false church into the Lie. This is also identified as "antichrist", and both/all are - one secular ruler(s) and one a "church" leader.

Thank you