- What he does
- Fr. Miceli surveys the Antichrist in Scripture, in the Greek Fathers, such as St. Irenaeus and St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and in the Latin Fathers, such as St. Cyprian, St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great, then in the Middle Ages. This part ends, the reviewer says, with “a précis of Cardinal Newman's perceptive thoughts on the subject, with which Miceli concurs.”
- What he concludes
- With the Fathers and Newman, he holds that the Antichrist is foretold in Scripture and “will be an individual person,” not merely an evil movement or idea; that he will hold worldwide power and lead a great apostasy near the end; and that forerunners of him have already appeared. That last point is Scripture's own: “so now many antichrists have appeared” (1 John 2:18).
- His own caution
- According to the review, he warns at the outset that much will remain unclear, that “irresponsible and sensational interpretations” abound, and that the prophecies will not let us foretell dates and places with precision. On this the site agrees with him (CCC 673–675).
Pillar III · Fathers, Saints & Teachers
Fr. Vincent P. Miceli on The Antichrist
A Jesuit philosopher who spent his life on the question of God and the modern rejection of God, Fr. Miceli wrote a full-length book on the Antichrist. He gathered what Scripture, the Fathers and Newman teach, then asked what that teaching means for Christians living in an age of unbelief.
Home › Fathers, Saints & Teachers › Fr. Miceli
At a glance
| Who | Fr. Vincent Peter Miceli (1915–1991), born in New York City to Italian immigrant parents. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1936, was ordained a priest in 1949, and earned a doctorate in philosophy at Fordham University with a study of Gabriel Marcel. He taught at Spring Hill College, Loyola University New Orleans and Christendom College, and as a visiting professor in Rome. Published accounts agree that he left the Society of Jesus in 1982, though they give few details of why or how; he continued to write and to host a Catholic radio program until his death in June 1991. |
|---|---|
| Standing | Approved teacher A priest and philosopher writing in communion with the Church. A respected voice, not an authority. His book has no official standing in the Church. We have not been able to confirm whether The Antichrist carried an imprimatur, and we have not read the book ourselves: what this page says about it rests on the sources named below. |
| The work | The Antichrist (West Hanover, Mass.: Christopher Publishing House, 1981; 297 pages), later kept in print in paperback by Roman Catholic Books. The book is under copyright, so this page describes it from published accounts and does not quote it. |
| Other work | Ascent to Being: Gabriel Marcel's Philosophy of Communion (1965); The Gods of Atheism (1971); Women Priests and Other Fantasies (1985); The Roots of Violence (1989); and an introduction to Newman's four Advent sermons on the Antichrist, published as Confederacy of Evil. |
Why Fr. Miceli matters here
Most modern writing on the Antichrist is either academic or sensational. Fr. Miceli tried to write as a priest: to hand on what the Church has received, and to help ordinary believers see their own time in its light. He leaned heavily on St. John Henry Newman, whose sermons on the Antichrist he admired and later introduced for a new generation of readers.
His earlier book, The Gods of Atheism (1971), explains why the subject drew him. According to its current publisher, it examines “seventeen Enlightenment theologians and philosophers,” among them Feuerbach, Marx, Engels and Camus, and argues that because we are made for God, whoever rejects the true God “will invariably create his own false god.” The Antichrist, in Scripture, is the last and greatest of those false gods: the one who “exalts himself above every so-called god” (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
The book
Information about the book's contents online is thin. What follows rests mainly on one detailed review published the year the book appeared, by Malcom Brennan in The Angelus (September 1981), a monthly of the Society of St. Pius X; on the publisher's own account; and on the Newman bibliography of the International Centre of Newman Friends. We describe only what those sources report.
- What he does
- In the last third of the book Fr. Miceli uses this teaching to assess, in the reviewer's words, “present conditions in the world”: materialism and false philosophy, the state of the liturgy, and the Catholic universities and theologians of his own day. This is the theme of his whole life's work, that the rejection of God prepares the way for a false god.
- Why two labels
- The Church teaches that a final trial will come and that it will take the form of a religious deception “offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth” (CCC 675). Seeing the spirit of antichrist at work in history is part of that teaching. Deciding which persons and movements of a given decade belong to it is the author's own judgment.
- What he does
- The book closes with Our Lady. The review counts this chapter as another valuable part of the book: Mary, especially at Fatima, offers no new revelation but comes to rebuke our sins, to plead for conversion of heart and to warn of what sin brings. The woman clothed with the sun stands against the dragon (Revelation 12).
Reading it with careThe same reviewer, who admired the book's survey of the tradition, judged it “good, but not quite very good.” He thought that in the applied chapters the word “Antichrist” was used “practically as a synonym for ‘bad,’ or at most ‘very bad,’” blurring the careful definition given earlier. That is a fair warning for any reader. The book also names institutions and individuals of its time; this site does not repeat those names, and it names no living person in connection with the Antichrist. Fr. Miceli set no date, and neither do we. Read him for the tradition he gathers and for his call to fidelity, and weigh his judgments on his own times as one priest's view.
For reflection
What false god is asking for my worship?
Fr. Miceli taught that those who turn from the true God do not live without a god; they make a false one. Is there something in my life, a comfort, an opinion, an ambition, that I am quietly putting in God's place?
Sources
- Malcom Brennan, “Partial Vision,” review of Vincent Miceli, S.J., The Antichrist, The Angelus, September 1981, archived text
- Roger A. McCaffrey, “Books Do Matter,” Catholic Answers Magazine, December 1, 2004, on the book's publication and Roman Catholic Books, catholic.com
- International Centre of Newman Friends, bibliography entry for V. P. Miceli, The Antichrist, newmanfriendsinternational.org
- “Miceli, Vincent P(eter) 1915–1991,” Contemporary Authors, Encyclopedia.com; “Vincent Miceli,” Wikipedia, citing the New York Times obituary of June 11, 1991
- Sophia Institute Press, The Gods of Atheism and Confederacy of Evil
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 673–677, vatican.va