Antichrist

====Catechism of the Catholic Church====

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which John Paul II said is a "sure norm for teaching the faith," puts the doctrine on the Antichrist under a subsection entitled "The Church's Ultimate Trial," equating it with "the supreme religious deception" and "pseudo-messianism" of human "self-glorification":

{{blockquote|Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. (CCC 675)}}

{{blockquote|The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism. (CCC 676)}}