By Cris D. Putnam
Tom Horn and I have suggested the next pope could be the predicted false prophet (Rev 13:11). While some find this offensive, the best sources supporting this notion have been Catholics. For example, I would like to bring to your attention today the priest, John O’Connor. In 1987, O’Connor gave a homily titled “The Reign of the Antichrist,” in which he described how changes within the Roman Catholic Church were already at work before his death to provide for the coming of Antichrist.
Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
As this prescient sermon reveals, Catholic sources make the case for us. O’Connor’s worst fears have certainly been realized. An associate of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI who is considered one of the most important Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, Hans Urs von Balthasar, wrote a provocative essay, “Casta Meretrix,” (“Chaste Harlot”) that not only identified the Roman Catholic Church as the Great Harlot, but embraced it:
The figure of the prostitute [forma meretricis] is so appropriate for the Church…that it…defines the Church of the New Covenant in her most splendid mystery of salvation. The fact that the Synagogue left the Holy Land to go and be among the pagans was an infidelity of Jerusalem, the fact that “she opened her legs in every road in the world.”
But this same movement, which brings her to all the peoples, is the mission of the Church. She must unite and merge herself with every people, and this new apostolic form of union cannot be avoided.[i]
While the embrace of whoredom is astonishing, the convicting words of prophecy, “Come out of her, my people, That ye be not partakers of her sins, And that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4), seem to forecast such apostasy. In sharp relief, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians implies that Christ’s “Bride” is the body of believers who comprise the universal Christian Church (ἐκκλησία “called-out ones”). The one’s called out in order, “That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). The stage is set for the judgment of the harlot as predicted in Revelation and the prophecy of Saint Malachy. In Exo-Vaticana we suggest a scenario for why the world will be enticed to unite under this Great Harlot spearheaded by Rome.
See: http://www.exovaticana.com/
[i] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Casta Meretrix, in Sponsa Verbi, (Brescia: Morceliana, 1969), 267. Translated here: http://www.traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_043_BalthasarMeretrix.htm.
This is an online translation of the entire Essay “CASTA MERETRIX” by Hans Urs von Balthasar. http://www.newtorah.org/Casta%20Meretrix.html