The Rapture

pngfutbol83 · Aug 14, 2011

Do we as Catholics believe in the Rapture like protestants do? I hear my friends talking about this Rapture like its a historical fact that it will happen and i don’t know how to respond to them.

Ron_in_minden · Aug 14, 2011

No.
blackieschurchmilitant-apocalypsis.blogspot.com/2007/07/rapture.html

Pfaffenhoffen · Aug 14, 2011

pngfutbol83 said:
Do we as Catholics believe in the Rapture like protestants do? I hear my friends talking about this Rapture like its a historical fact that it will happen and i don’t know how to respond to them.

The Gospels are enough. There is always somebody who foresees the end of the world or a catasrophy that never happens…

the problem is that you have got to be polite and smile othrwise you would always be in discussions

Joe_Kelley · Aug 14, 2011

I attended a course by Father Barham on the Tribulation and Rapture many years ago. My memory is fuzzy, but as I recall it was a late 19th century development by some U.S. denomination. While there are earlier roots in Europe, the current beliefs were mostly “Made in USA” and most of the believers are in the US.

Fidelis · Aug 14, 2011

OK, here is the Catholic understanding of the “End Times”:

When each of us dies, our souls are immediately judged by God. This is called the Particular Judgment. At this point we begin our eternal destiny. If we are going to hell, our souls go directly there. If we are deemed worthy of heaven, our souls will go directly to heaven, or if we are going to heaven but are in need of purification, we may go to Purgatory first for a while (everyone in Purgatory will eventually go to heaven). Whatever our fate, our souls will stay there (heaven or hell) until the end of time, at which time the Second Coming will occur. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

675 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.

**676 **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.

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.

At the Second Coming at the end of time, those Christians still alive and who are in a state of sanctifying grace will be taken to heaven (what some Protestants think of as of “the rapture”). Then will occur the General Judgment. At that time the souls of the living and the dead will be reunited with their bodies and brought together in God’s presence and judged before all. Those who have already been judged in the Particular Judgment will be brought from wherever their souls were -heaven, hell or Purgatory-- and have their judgment confirmed before all, so that both the justice and mercy of God will be manifest to all. No one will then have any doubt about the fairness of God’s judgment on those they thought would be in heaven but are not, or those they thought would not be in heaven but are.

After this, time and Purgatory will be no more and all will enter with their souls and bodies into their eternal destiny, either hell or heaven.

This is an extremely bare-bones sketch, so if you want to get the details, see the five articles I linked below:

rosary-center.org/ll57n1.htm
rosary-center.org/ll57n2.htm
rosary-center.org/ll57n3.htm
rosary-center.org/ll57n4.htm
rosary-center.org/ll49n6.htm

Fidelis · Aug 14, 2011

The Rapture

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