Mgr. Fulton J. Sheen

Communism and the Conscience of the West (1948)


"[Satan] will set up a counterchurch 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."


Quote:

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 Himsel 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 counterchurch 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 counterchurch 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-Merril Company, Indianapolis, 1948], pp. 24-25)

link here


Sure sounds like it has come to pass to me.

Marsha

That was 1948.

But what a difference a "Pastoral Council" can make!

This is 1967:-

BISHOP SHEEN IN ROCHESTER : He has both startled and delighted the people of his diocese.

by Paul Hoffman.
Condensed from the New York “Times” Aug. 7, 1967, and published in Catholic Digest, December 1967

A simple brass pole on which a blacksmith mounted a crucifix is his crozier when Bishop Sheen acts as Bishop of Rochester. But most of the time he wears no insignia of his office. He looked like an eager parish priest when he climbed the stairs of the county poorhouse, with the agility of a man much younger than his 72 years, to say Mass for the residents.

The pastoral intensity shown at the poorhouse and the informality that did away with the traditional ornate crozier are some of many changes that Bishop Sheen has brought to Rochester. “He sure is shaking us up,”a priest said.

The bishop’s interests range far beyond his upstate diocese. He belongs to the leadership of the nation’s Catholic Bishops’ conference and is a member of the Commission on Missions in Rome that is charged with implementing Vatican II. He is one of the 24 prelates chosen by Pope Paul for the Synod of Bishops.

He subscribes to theological journals, mostly non-Catholic, from all over the world and keeps getting checks for Catholic missions from throughout the country. He forwards the checks to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, of which he was national director for 16 years. He still writes his newspaper column, which appears from coast to coast, and is taping a new series of television shows at the Channel 5 studios in New York for national broadcasting.

And with all the changes that he has brought to the religious life of Rochester, Bishop Sheen himself seems changed. To millions of television viewers and to readers of his more than 60 books, he had sometimes appeared as a proponent of a peace-of-mind faith with conservative overtones.

In Rochester, he is startling suburbanites by stressing his concern for the inner-city ghetto and his support for a militant Negro organization. He has said Mass for 50 Puerto Ricans crowded into two slum rooms and urged his priests to revive the early Christian “house church” by offering Mass in private homes and taking there the consecrated Host for nocturnal adoration in improvised “centers of spirituality.” To the bishop, the whole world and all its problems are reflected in his diocese in what he calls “a cameo view: this diocese is a microcosm.”

Since his arrival in Rochester last Dec. 15, he has brought in nuns with experience in social work and created a “secular mission,” whose three priests go into trailer camps, villages, and farms “wherever there is a door to knock on and a soul to save.”

He has renamed his diocesan headquarters the “pastoral office” because the previous term, chancery, smacked to him of bureaucracy. He has consulted the diocese’s 600 priests on how he should fill Church posts and has put the diocesan finances into lay hands.

He has discussed a plan to buy space in secular newspapers to express Catholic views because “the Catholic press talks only to Catholics, like trade journals, as a taxidermist talks to other taxidermists.”
Bishop Sheen has begun sounding out Protestants on the idea of an ecuмenical seminary, and he has asked Protestant scholars and a former communist from Britain, a convert to Catholicism, to become teachers in diocesan seminaries.

Soon after his arrival, Bishop Sheen visited the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Plymouth Ave., in Rochester’s 3rd Ward ghetto. A few days later he appointed the church’s assistant pastor, Father David Finks, Episcopal vicar in charge of the inner city’s problems, such as housing, education, employment, health, “social justice, equality, and the sharing of the common heritages of American well-being and Christian civilization.” It was the bishop’s first appointment, and Father Finks thinks that he is the only episcopal vicar for inner-city problems in the nation. The appointment was made under a Vatican Council decision allowing a bishop to delegate some of his powers to members of his clergy.

Father Finks told a visitor, “The thing I like about Bishop Sheen is that he has great instincts. He loves people; he has a real feeling for the poor.”

Another Rochester priest commented, “The appointment of Father Finks has bothered many middle-class Catholics here because he is so thoroughly involved in FIGHT.” The letters stand for Freedom, Integration, God, Honor—Today. The group was developed by Saul D. Alinsky, a community organizer who calls himself a “professional radical,” and was brought to Rochester by Protestant churches in 1965.

At the time Bishop Sheen arrived, FIGHT was battling the Eastman Kodak Co. over its disavowal of an earlier agreement to hire and train 600 unemployed Negroes. The dispute has meanwhile been settled. However, “the bishop’s support for FIGHT has caused many Catholics to drop buttons into the collection plate,” an influential resident remarked. “Many people still think of Rochester as a benevolent company town.”

In addition to his involvement in interracial affairs, Bishop Sheen has been calling for more interfaith dialogues. A member of Rochester’s Jєωιѕн community remarked with a smile, “Many among us were scared when Bishop Sheen’s appointment to Rochester was announced. After all, he had that reputation as a maker of converts! But he has been going slow on this.”

Bishop Sheen lives downtown in a 2nd-floor apartment below his diocesan headquarters at 50 Chestnut St. He keeps fit riding an electric bicycle for 15 minutes a day and playing tennis twice a week.