He will not join her. He will usurp her - because she is the only institution on earth with her feet already planted in nearly every village in the world.

Fr. Jason Charron's argument in this segment is narrower and more uncomfortable than the usual end-times talk. The Antichrist does not build his empire out of nothing. He inherits it.

Fr. Charron traces that inheritance back through St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Chrysostom, St. Robert Bellarmine and Cardinal Manning, all of whom read St. Paul's restrainer as the Roman inheritance and the institutional Church held together. Then he argues Rome never really left: the Ottoman sultans still struck coins calling themselves Romans, the Habsburgs carried an imperial title descended from the Holy Roman Empire down to Blessed Karl in 1918, and the Tsars called Moscow the Third Rome - a claim Fr. Charron says plainly he does not hold. Three separate lines, all pointing at a Roman presence that lasted into living memory. Which is why, he says, this is no tinfoil hat theory. Even Hitler reached for it, planning German cities rebuilt in the likeness of Rome for a Reich meant to last a thousand years.

The heart of it lands at 6:09. Evil cannot create. It is alien to the nature of evil to create, so it apes and it imitates. The coming empire will not invent a new religion - it will reissue temple worship with God taken out of the center and the man of sin put in His place. It will not invent a new politics - it will reissue the Pax Romana and sell it as peace, unity and universality. Copycat-isms, as he puts it.

Then the turn. Joe asks why any of this is worth talking about, and Fr. Charron answers with people instead of prophecy - the men and women he met who lived under the Soviet lie. The ones who went along are, in his words, one big wall of gray - empty, joyless, certain their lives were for nothing. The ones who resisted the red beast of atheistic communism were tortured, and they emit joy and light. God permits it, he says, because it is the best way to make happy, holy, healthy saints. There will be a few. That few will be the catalyst for the many.

Part 3 of our conversation on apostasy and the Antichrist.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open - he cannot do it alone
00:49 Welcome - Joe McClane, A Catholic Take
01:07 Greece, Rome, and the roads that carried Christendom
02:19 Aquinas and Manning: Rome and the Church as the restrainer
02:49 The coins - Ottomans and Habsburgs still claiming Rome
03:44 Moscow as the Third Rome - a claim he does not hold
03:59 No tinfoil hat theory: Bellarmine and Chrysostom said it
04:29 Hitler and a Reich rebuilt in the likeness of Rome
04:45 The last emperor and the ape of God
05:32 Why he needs the structure of the Catholic Church
06:09 Evil cannot create, so it apes God
06:46 Demystifying the Antichrist: knowledge is power
07:16 Why God permits it - the wall of gray and the light

SCRIPTURE REFERENCED (Douay-Rheims)
2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 - "And now you know what withholdeth, that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity already worketh; only that he who now holdeth, do hold, until he be taken out of the way."
2 Thessalonians 2:4 - "Who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God."
Apocalypse 19:16 - "And he hath on his garment, and on his thigh written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS."
1 Thessalonians 5:3 - "For when they shall say: Peace and security; then shall sudden destruction come upon them."
Matthew 24:13 - "But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved."

ALSO REFERENCED
St. Thomas Aquinas, commentary on 2 Thessalonians - Rome's temporal power and the Church's spiritual authority together as what withholds.
St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on 2 Thessalonians - the earliest plain reading of the restrainer as the Roman Empire.
St. Robert Bellarmine on the Antichrist and the break-up of Rome.
Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy (1861).
"The ape of God" - simia Dei, an old name for the devil.

FR. JASON CHARRON
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FrJason

THE FULL SERIES
Part 1 - Most Catholics Think They'd Spot the Antichrist. They Won't.: https://youtu.be/vX_MO8ikMTw
Part 2 - What Holds the Antichrist Back Isn't the Church: https://youtu.be/vGasiM-GT1k

JOE McCLANE
Books and pilgrimage: https://joemcclane.com/
A Catholic Take, weekdays: https://thestationofthecross.com/act/
Chi Rho Impact Media: https://chirhoimpactmedia.com/

Joe's novel on the rise of the Antichrist, "He Is Coming": https://joemcclane.com/

A Catholic Take is part of the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network, sponsored by CatholicMatch: https://www.catholicmatch.com/

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