Prefatory Remarks

For many Catholics, the end of the world and the coming of the Antichrist are among the most interesting topics to study and talk about, and we confess that we are no exception. However, this branch of theology—properly called eschatology and coming from Greek: eschatos (ἔσχατος) meaning “last,” “final” or “uttermost”—is fraught with danger, in that no man knows the day or hour of his death, let alone the exact chronology of the end of the world and the events which precede it. In light of this, we were warned in Sacred Scripture (1 Thess. V, 1-2) about an unhealthy curiosity surrounding these subjects, yet in the same Divine Revelation are revealed certain markers by which we may carefully observe the “signs of the times”. These signs serving as a warning to the faithful and rule for the Church, by which we may prepare for those terrible days.>Noting that we must be on guard against making private judgments, i.e. those inconsistent with the mind of the Church and her approved theologians, or assigning certitude to that which is merely—more or less—probable, we do feel compelled to publish on this topic in The Journal of American Reform. Rather than merely presenting our own opinions, we will turn to the writing of a serious nineteenth-century Jesuit theologian, Fr. Raffaele Ballerini. Readers may remember him from two other essays and commentary we published on a separate, albeit indirectly related topic, the Jewish Question:

Originally published in The Journal of American Reform. Read original article