The Abomination of Desolation

This commentary is provided by Traditional Catholics of Houston, Inc., the nonprofit organization that sponsors Saint Jude Shrine.

The commentary and associated passages which follow are essential to understanding why the evildoers who sought to force the rightful Pope into exile were successful, as such an act was prophesied in Scripture.

What was foretold is already taking place in our time, as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has been replaced by the false worship of Paul VI.

The remnant Church of today should ardently pray for the emergence from obscurity of a lawful Pope and his restoration to the Chair of Peter in Rome, and for an end to the present calamities so that the true Mass, the only worship pleasing to Almighty God, may be universally offered in our churches again.


Did the Church’s Fathers and Scripture Scholars of past centuries foresee the takeover of the Vatican by the forces of Antichrist, the overthrow of the Pope, and the abolition of the Holy Mass in our time?


The suppression of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was predicted by St. Matthew, according to the Church’s most eminent scripture scholars at the time that the Fathers of Douay University translated the Bible into English and published their work at the College of Reims in 1582. In their lengthy commentary (from the unabridged Annotations) on Matthew 24:15, the Church’s most learned authorities on Holy Writ interpreted the verse (“when you shall see the abomination of desolation . . . standing in the holy place . . .”) to mean that the: “abomination of desolation foretold, was partly fulfilled in diverse profanations of the Temple of Jerusalem, when the sacrifice and service of God was taken away. But specially it shall be fulfilled by Antichrist and his Precursors, when they shall abolish the holy Mass, which is the Sacrifice Of Christ’s Body and Blood, and the only sovereign worship due to God in His Church: and St. Hippolytus writeth in these words: The Churches shall lament with great lamentations, because there shall neither oblation be made, nor incense, nor worship grateful to God. But the sacred houses of Churches shall be like to cottages, and the precious Body and Blood of Christ shall not be extant (openly in Churches) in those days, the Liturgy (or Mass) shall be extinguished, the Psalmody shall cease, the reciting of Scriptures shall not be heard. . . By which it is plain that the heretics of those days will be special fore-runners of Antichrist.”


Commenting on II Thessalonians 2:3-4, the biblical scholars at Douay-Reims* interpreted the passage, “the son of perdition . . . sitteth in the temple of God,” to mean that: “Antichrist . . . shall rule over the whole world, and specifically prohibit that principal worship instituted by Christ in His Sacraments . . . by taking away the sacrifice of the altar . . .” They stated further that: “St. Augustine . . . and St. Jerome . . . think that this sitting of Antichrist in the temple, doth signify his sitting in the Church of Christ, rather than in Solomon’s temple. Not as though he should be a chief member of the Church of Christ . . . But . . . that this Antichristian revolt here spoken of, is from the Catholic Church: and Antichrist, if he ever were of or in the Church, shall be a renegade out of the Church, and he shall usurp upon it by tyranny, and by challenging worship, religion, and government thereof . . . And this is to sit in the temple or against the Temple of God, as some interpret. If any Pope did ever this, or shall do, then let the Adversaries [Protestants] call him Antichrist.”


In his book, The Present Crisis Of The Holy See, published in 1861, the English Cardinal Manning said: “The Holy Fathers who have written upon the subject of Antichrist, and the prophecies of Daniel, without a single exception, as far as I know, - and they are the Fathers both of the East and of the West, the Greek and the Latin Church - all of them unanimously, - say that in the latter end of the world, during the reign of Antichrist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar will cease. . . Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it were in the beginning, invisible, hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were, from the face of the earth. Such is the unanimous testimony of the Fathers of the early centuries . . .”


In the commentaries of the Church’s scripture scholars regarding the 17th Chapter of the Apocalypse, (again, found in the unabridged Annotations from the original Douay-Reims Bible) it is also written that: “In the beginning of the Church, Nero and the rest of the persecuting Emperors (which were figures of Antichrist) did principally sit in Rome, so also the great Antichrist shall have his seat there, as it may well be (though others think that Jerusalem rather shall be his principal city) yet even then shall neither the Church of Rome, nor the Pope of Rome be Antichrist, but shall be persecuted by Antichrist, and driven out of Rome, if it be possible. For, to Christ’s Vicar and the Roman Church he will bear as much good will as the Protestants now do, and he shall have more power to persecute him and the Church, than they have.”


“Tolle Papam; Tolle Ecclesiam; Tolle Missam.”

(Take away the Pope, and you will take away the Church - then, you can abolish the Mass.)


“The Church will be in eclipse . . . Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of Antichrist.”

- Our Lady of La Salette, September 19, 1846 -

*Excerpted from the Original and True Rheims New Testament of Anno Domini 1582 (Transliterated with modern type by Dr. William G. von Peters):