On the Antichrist and Libertas Ecclesiae — the Freedom of the Church
The Moynihan Letters — Letter #17, 2026, Friday, March 20. By Robert Moynihan, Inside the Vatican. Shared for study. Read the original at insidethevatican.com.
What the Catechism Teaches
Today’s topic: the Antichrist. This is what The Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say on the topic, in Paragraphs 675 and 676, under the heading “The Church’s ultimate trial.”
Par. 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.
Par. 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.
Scriptural references: cf. Lk 18:8; Mt 24:12; Lk 21:12; Jn 15:19–20; 2 Thes 2:4–12; 1 Thes 5:2–3; 2 Jn 7; 1 Jn 2:18, 22. Par. 676 cites DS 3839 and Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, condemning the “false mysticism” of this “counterfeit of the redemption of the lowly”; cf. GS 20–21.
From Castel Gandolfo
I write from Castel Gandolfo, about 15 miles outside of Rome, on the rim of a volcanic crater which overlooks the blue-green Lago Albano. The summer palace of the Popes is here.
(Pope Francis visited here only three times during his 12 years as Pope, all three times in 2013, and he never spent a single night here. But Pope Leo has made it his practice to come here almost every week, on Monday evenings, staying until Tuesday evening; he evidently finds it peaceful and restful, and Castel Gandolfo is a peaceful little village — a place where one can find stillness, reflect, pray, looking out over the lake and the ancient gardens, and out toward the sea, beneath a vast blue sky…)
The Freedom of the Church — Libertas Ecclesiae
An essential need of the Church (I almost wrote “the” essential need of the Church) is to be free. Free from any worldly authority or power or control.
Free from the authority of earthly governments and kingdoms, free from the schemes of earthbound secret sects, free from the influence of any ideologies — whether humanism or communism or wokism — which claim pre-eminence over the traditions of the Church and her deposit of faith.
Free from any legal, political, financial or spiritual power which might influence the Church’s teaching in a distorting way, or demand some alteration in the Gospel of Christ once handed down — a Gospel which proclaims that Jesus is the savior of the world, overcoming sin and death, bringing forgiveness, holiness, and more abundant life (finally, eternal life), thus the center of time and of history.
Free, above all, from the power of “the Antichrist,” the one who would oppose Christ directly, seeking to replace Him or overthrow Him.
The essential motivation behind the writing of these letters has always been, and is, to support the freedom of the Church (libertas Ecclesiae), to assist the Church to be Herself — that is, to be faithful to the Gospel once handed down, and so to be the continuation, throughout all time, of the mystical body of the one Christ (the “anointed one,” that is, the Messiah), who walked the dusty roads of Nazareth and Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
The Church must be free. And yet, there are always threats to that freedom — some physical, some spiritual; some from without, and some from within.
Signs: Christ or Chaos
All of us are aware that the world today faces a series of profound challenges, from bloody war in the Middle East, to massive migrations, to transhumanism, to the rapid advance of artificial intelligence. How we face these challenges will be of fundamental importance for the future life of the Church, and of all men and women in this world.
There are several odd “signs” as these challenges emerge.
One such sign concerns the debate over the figure named “The Antichrist.” Another concerns the long debate over our liturgy — the summit and supreme form of our prayer, the words, gestures, actions and prayers which Christ asked his disciples to use in celebrating His memory. Another concerns the rise of the Promethean spirit which wishes, once again, to steal fire from heaven, and so to turn men into gods.
The emergence of such “signs” compels me to try to write to you today on the question of the Antichrist, as well as in future letters on the questions of the liturgy and the transhumanist Promethean spirit, in order to send a warning.
The Question of the Antichrist
I note that, in part due to the encouragement of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, I studied the reflections of many Church Fathers on the Antichrist. This included Tyconius, St. Augustine, the Abbot Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202), and two fundamental modern treatments of the matter: one by the Russian theologian Vladimir Soloviev, A Short Story of the Antichrist; the other in 1907 by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, The Lord of the World, which I have been serializing in the magazine Inside the Vatican for five years now.
An essential point of all of these writings is that the Antichrist will embrace much that seems reasonable, even good, demanding one thing only: that Jesus Christ (and so also His Church) be rejected, left aside, forgotten, abandoned. This is the point.
So, in this regard, what has been happening in Rome in these last few days?
Lectures on “The Antichrist” by Peter Thiel
A prominent German-born American investor and businessman, Peter Thiel, has just been in Rome for at least four days — from Sunday through Wednesday — giving four separate lectures, all by invitation only, on… “the Antichrist.”
And I note in passing that Thiel has been a key supporter and sponsor, for many years, of J.D. Vance, now the Vice President of the United States. This means that what Thiel is saying may have some connection to what Vance may be thinking, and therefore to what officials of the US government may be thinking, on these matters.
I wrote to the local Italian organizers of Thiel’s talks to ask if I might be permitted to attend, and they sent me an email saying they regretted it, but I would not be allowed to attend.
Dear Mr Moynihan,
Thank you for your kind message and your genuine interest in our initiative. Unfortunately, owing to the private nature of the event and the fact that registrations have now closed, we are not in a position to accommodate your request, much as we would have liked to do so. As we have done with other journalists who have contacted us, we would be pleased to offer a possibility for an interview with the Board of Directors of Associazione Gioberti, once the event has concluded. In the meantime you may wish to consult the press release published on our website.
We remain at your disposal, should you require any further assistance. Thank you for your understanding. Kind regards, (Signature)
So I did not attend the private talks, and do not know what Mr. Thiel said. But here is what political analyst Samuel Rubinstein had to say about what Thiel is thinking about and lobbying for, in a recent piece on UnHerd — which offers the startling suggestion that Thiel believes the Antichrist may be… Pope Leo XIV.
Rubinstein’s UnHerd Piece: Does Peter Thiel Think Pope Leo Is the Antichrist?
Who is the Antichrist? Thomas Cranmer gave an answer while he was burning at the stake: “As for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine!” Such formulations sound peculiar now to our enlightened, secular, post-confessional ears. Even the sectarians no longer seem to go in for it.
Ian Paisley famously heckled Pope John Paul II with Cranmer’s words during a session of the European Parliament; though spared the flames, he was punched in the face by Otto von Habsburg. It is an affecting sign of the times that, when Pope Francis died last year, the Democratic Unionist Party put aside the old invective and waxed lyrical about how he had been “held in deep affection.”
But there is one man who still talks of the “Antichrist” with an old-fashioned zeal: Peter Thiel. The Antichrist’s kennel, said John Milton, was Rome; Thiel would rather locate it in Davos, the Hague, or perhaps Greta Thunberg’s Freedom Flotilla.
The billionaire philosopher king has been jetting around the world in recent months, presenting his blockbuster “Antichrist” lectures. He kicked them off in San Francisco. Then, a few weeks ago, he found himself in Cambridge. Now he is in Rome.
Thiel knows from his Bible that the Antichrist is “an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times.” He believes that this figure will attempt to arrest the progress of science and usher in some kind of world state. The prime candidates, ironically enough, are doomsday naysayers in their own right — “luddites who want to stop all science,” such as Thunberg, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, or venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.
Thiel’s San Francisco lectures contained some cutting criticisms of Pope Leo XIV, to the point of raising an eyebrow at the religious activities of the billionaire’s one-time protégé, JD Vance. “I don’t like his popeism,” he said of the Vice President. “We have all these reports of fights between him and the Pope; I hope there are a lot more.”
What worries Thiel most of all is the possibility of a “Caesaro-Papist fusion.” For the Antichrist world government to exercise true tyranny, it would have to unite temporal and spiritual power. We all should tremble at the thought of a Vatican-Washington axis.
That Thiel is delivering these lectures so close to the Vatican is a sure rebuke of the “woke American pope.” His company, Palantir, is strongly supportive of the American-Israeli operation against Iran, which the Pope has condemned. Thiel also opposes government regulation of AI, which has been a central theme of the first year of the Leonine papacy.
Robert Prevost took on the name Leo partly with AI in mind. In the 19th century, Pope Leo XIII addressed the social question arising from the Industrial Revolution in an interventionist and communitarian way; this is what his namesake now seeks to emulate when he confronts “developments in the field of artificial intelligence.” Pope Leo XIV, who used to teach mathematics and physics, is always stressing the “moral dimension of emerging technologies” and the duty of governments to legislate accordingly. This, for Thiel, is the stuff of luddism — the stuff of Antichrist.
Thiel is no Luther, no Cranmer, no Paisley: he does not think that the Pope is literally the Antichrist. For one thing, Leo is much too old: the Antichrist ought to be in the prime of youth, perhaps a Thunberg or a Mamdani or an AOC. For another, not all popes are as bad as the present one, so it’s not as though “Antichrist” is somehow vested in the papal office.
Thiel nurses a particular warmth for Benedict XVI, who earns his praise for having “literally thought that the historic falling away from the Church during his papacy was a sign of the end times.” Still, Thiel’s concerns about world government might underlie his stated dislike of “popeism,” which does, after all, claim some kind of universal jurisdiction.
Nor is it any surprise that his preaching so close to the Vatican should ruffle some Curial feathers. The Franciscan friar Paolo Benanti, who advised the last pope on AI, has written an essay to coincide with Thiel’s Roman holiday, criticising him for worshipping at the altar of “competition, technology, and the individual.” It seems to forecast a new ideological struggle between the Catholic Church and its enemies. And, fittingly, it bears a rather 16th-century title: “The American Heresy: Should We Burn Peter Thiel?”
Where Does the Danger Lie?
So, where does the greatest danger for the Church now lie? It lies in the rejection of Christ, in the embrace of any leader, man, or ideology other than Christ Himself. And it lies in the weakening, by division, of the mystical body of Christ, His Church. The Church must remain united — as the Creed says, the Church is one by her very nature.
In Rome, Father Antonio Spadaro, a close advisor of Pope Francis, weighed in on this issue of the Antichrist and Thiel’s lectures.
“Thiel — Silicon Valley entrepreneur, co-founder of PayPal, architect of Palantir, bankroller of decisive political campaigns in the United States — arrived in Rome not merely as a man of technology but as an interpreter of the Apocalypse,” Father Spadaro, a prominent Jesuit theologian, told Variety.
“The religious horizon is thus progressively emptied of its faith content: what matters is not the return of Christ, but the identification of the Antichrist as a concrete political force. The Gospel becomes a tool for geopolitical analysis,” Spadaro continued.
“His practical conclusion is brutal: any attempt to regulate artificial intelligence, to establish global governing bodies, to put the brakes on technological development, becomes — in this context — a preparation for the reign of the Antichrist.”
Obviously, without having been able to hear Thiel, I cannot in this letter adequately assess his thought, or whether observers like Rubinstein have understood him correctly. But what I can already say is that there are enough elements already available — the secret, repeated lectures city after city; the wealth and influence of Thiel and others like him in the whole effort to develop AI; the connections between Thiel and members of the US government; the fact that Pope Leo seems to be a target of these men, to the point that some observers think they regard Pope Leo as the Antichrist — to suggest that we are watching preliminary moves in a very complex and important chess game in which the freedom of the Church, and the purity of Her doctrine, are at stake.
So now I offer something old: an excerpt from a Moynihan Letter I wrote 13 years ago, on February 18, 2013 — Letter #15, “Benedict’s Vision.” I wrote it just five days after Pope Benedict resigned, but I think it is still quite relevant today, and perhaps even more relevant now than 13 years ago.
Appendix — A Letter from 2013
Pope Benedict’s Vision for the Future
By Robert Moynihan, February 18, 2013
A vision for the future of the Church set forth in 1969, 44 years ago, by the relatively young theologian Joseph Ratzinger, then 42 — so at almost the exact midpoint of his life — was recalled today by Italian writer Marco Bardazzi on the Vatican Insider website.
It was a vision of a Church with “far fewer members” and with “little influence over political decisions,” to the point of being almost “socially irrelevant” and forced to “start over.” But it was also a vision of a Church that would find herself again and be reborn a “simpler and more spiritual” entity following “enormous confusion.”
The vision was set forth in a series of five radio homilies by Ratzinger in 1969, published in book form by Ignatius Press as Faith and the Future. Ratzinger said he was convinced the modern Church was going through a dramatic era similar to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. “We are at a huge turning point in the evolution of mankind,” he said. “This moment makes the move from medieval to modern times seem insignificant.”
From the crisis “will emerge a Church that has lost a great deal,” he warned. “It will become small and will have to start pretty much all over again. It will no longer have use of the structures it built in its years of prosperity… It will be a more spiritual Church, and will not claim a political mandate flirting with the Right one minute and the Left the next. It will be poor and will become the Church of the destitute.”
The process he outlined was a “long” one, “but when all the suffering is past, a great power will emerge from a more spiritual and simple Church.” Then, and only then, Ratzinger concluded, would Catholics begin to see “that small flock of faithful as something completely new… as a source of hope for themselves, the answer they had always secretly been searching for.”
The Destruction of the Church’s Mission Through Worldliness
Has Benedict’s vision for the Church’s future changed over the past 44 years? An exceptional talk he gave a year and a half before his resignation offers insight. On his September 22–25, 2011 apostolic journey to Germany, Benedict addressed Catholic workers in Freiburg im Breisgau on the final day.
“For some decades now we have been experiencing a decline in religious practice and we have been seeing substantial numbers of the baptized drifting away from Church life,” Benedict began. He then posed the question: “Should the Church not change? Must she not adapt her offices and structures to the present day, in order to reach the searching and doubting people of today?”
His answer: “Yes, there are grounds for change. There is a need for change. Every Christian and the whole community of the faithful are called to constant change.” But what type of change? That the Church must “set herself apart from her surroundings, become in a certain sense ‘unworldly.’”
This is an arduous, counter-cultural way of changing. The Church must change and make herself “up-to-date” — but she must not conform to the modern or progressive world; rather, she must “set herself apart” and “become in a certain sense ‘unworldly,’” because her mission is to point men and women beyond themselves to what is eternal, that is, to God.
“The Church’s mission has its origins in the mystery of the triune God, in the mystery of his creative love. And love is not just somehow within God, it is God; He Himself is love by nature. And divine love does not want to exist only for itself; by nature it wants to pour itself out… not merely to confirm the world in its worldliness and to be its companion, leaving it to carry on just as it is, but in order to change it.”
“The Christ event includes the inconceivable fact of what the Church Fathers call a sacrum commercium, an exchange between God and man… we have nothing to give God, we have only our sin to place before him. And this he receives and makes his own, while in return he gives us himself and his glory: a truly unequal exchange, which is brought to completion in the life and passion of Christ.”
The Church owes her whole being to this unequal exchange, Benedict said. Her raison d’être consists in being a tool of redemption, in letting herself be saturated by God’s word and in bringing the world into loving unity with God. But this mission can be frustrated:
“In the concrete history of the Church… a contrary tendency is also manifested, namely that the Church becomes self-satisfied, settles down in this world, becomes self-sufficient and adapts herself to the standards of the world. Not infrequently, she gives greater weight to organization and institutionalization than to her vocation to openness towards God.”
“In order to accomplish her true task adequately, the Church must constantly renew the effort to detach herself from her tendency towards worldliness and once again to become open towards God. In this she follows the words of Jesus: ‘They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world’ (Jn 17:16).”
Benedict’s own decision to “leave the world” and become “hidden” in a small convent inside the Vatican walls may be seen as his attempt to accomplish that true task. He added, provocatively, that “history comes to the aid of the Church here through the various periods of secularization, which have contributed significantly to her purification and inner reform.”
Those periods in which the Church has seemingly been diminished by secular forces, he argued, are actually needed for her “purification and inner reform.” We may lose many privileges and glories from a human perspective. Cathedrals may close. Schools and universities may be abandoned or lost. Religious orders may die out. Secular laws may put great pressure on the Church. But all of this can be freeing.
“Secularizing trends — whether by expropriation of Church goods, or elimination of privileges or the like — have always meant a profound liberation of the Church from forms of worldliness… In this she shares the destiny of the tribe of Levi, which… was the only tribe in Israel with no ancestral land of its own, taking as its portion only God himself, his word and his signs… and in this way her missionary activity regained credibility.”
And that is what Benedict is after, in the end: that the message of Christ be seen for what it is — something life-giving, something liberating. If scandals, corruption, hypocrisy, and cover-ups have made the message of the Church a message no one can hear without a sneer, then something must be done to free the message once again. Something dramatic. Something like resigning the papacy and devoting one’s life to prayer.
One senses in these words the terrible consequences of the priestly abuse of children — not so much for the Church as institution, but for the Church as the source of a message of healing and holiness. The scandals have rendered the Church almost incapable of preaching her essential message. This too helps explain why Benedict decided to resign.
“It is not a question here of finding a new strategy to relaunch the Church. Rather, it is a question of setting aside mere strategy and seeking total transparency… living the faith fully here and now in the utterly sober light of day… stripping away from it anything that only seems to belong to faith, but in truth is mere convention or habit.”
“For people of every era, and not just our own, the Christian faith is a scandal… That the eternal God should know us and care about us, that the intangible should at a particular moment have become tangible, that he who is immortal should have suffered and died on the Cross… for people of any era, to believe all this is a bold claim. This scandal… has unfortunately been overshadowed in recent times by other painful scandals on the part of the preachers of the faith.”
“As individuals and as the community of the Church, let us live the simplicity of a great love, which is both the simplest and hardest thing on earth, because it demands no more and no less than the gift of oneself.”
Those lines are worth repeating. They seem to describe the choice that Benedict has made:
“As individuals and as the community of the Church, let us live the simplicity of a great love, which is both the simplest and hardest thing on earth, because it demands no more and no less than the gift of oneself.”
Source: Robert Moynihan, “Letter #17, 2026 — On the Antichrist,” Inside the Vatican. Reformatted for study. Please support the original publication at insidethevatican.com.