What Do Catholics Believe About The End Times, The Rapture, And Assorted Related Things

One thing that strikes you on becoming Catholic, is often what you do not hear. Having been raised in a baptist tradition the Book of Revelation was a big topic at times. It was even bigger in my family because of the Seventh DayAdventist folks on my mother's side of the family. Catholic Priests for some reason don't go there often. That is a shame because people that Catholics interact with on a daily basis go there very often and especially with other Catholics. I hate to say it but I think the average Catholic's understanding of all this is pretty much based on the OMEN movies.

That is not to say that Catholics don't talk about the "end of days". When I converted the talk of the "three days of darkness" from various alleged visionaries was in the background. Alleged Marian apparations are associated with it and there has been some popular Catholic literature recently associated with the end times. The election of Pope Benedict of course started all this St Malachy stuff again.

Decades from now scholars will look back at a curious set of the books that were published called the Left Behind series. Many people that are not evangelical assume that evangelicals all believe this rapture stuff. I grew up in a mainstream Southern Baptist Church here in Louisiana. I can tell you back in the 80's if a Sunday School teacher had started talking about the theology that was in the "left behind" series someone would have been calling the Board of Deacons to complain. It is amazing how quickly this idea spread. The theology has been around since 19th Century that is true. However, until fairly recently it was still meeting quite a bit of resistance in some corners. The turning point can be traced largely to the publication of a book called The Late Great Planet Earth.

What do Catholics believe about the "end of the World"? Catholics need to know. They need to know because yes we Catholics believe in the end of the World , the Second Coming and things like the Anti Christ. But we also need to know because these misinterpretations of scripture often lure people away from the Catholic Church.

We are fortunate to have a man teaching in Louisiana that is quite a scholar on this subject. His name is Dr. Brant Pitre. He teaches in New Orleans and is quite a expert in this field. In the apologetic section of my links , I am putting his excellent PDF file which his very informative outline on the subject. Check it out.

You also might be interested to know that Dr Pitre and others will be speaking at this Catholic Conference in Texas early next year which is devoted to this topic.