For what it's worth, some historians suggest this actually intensified during the controversies of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Luther, for instance, was completely obsessed with damnation issues and had been constantly worried that he might be damned.
But talking about the idea of someone being damned, speculating that they might be, etc., is actually a temptation of pride. This is not the focus of Christianity (or Catholicism particularly). Forgiveness was supposed to be central to faith. Usually it is bitter, unhappy, and angry people who suggest in conversation that other people are damned. They are using Christian ideas as a form of hostile aggression against other people. What you end up having in denominational discussions on this issue is people spending an inordinate amount of time brooding on and deducing all sorts of things from the supposed teachings on Hell and damnation. "Well, if such and such a sin is mortal, etc., then someone guilty of such a sin, must be damned..." (IF they don't repent and are forgiven, etc.). That's a BIG assumption to leap to - that God would not forgive someone. Clearly, presumption is at work in all such leaps of judgment. The offender is trying to put limits on God's mercy, love, and forgiveness. Wild, loose, and uneducated discussions about Hell and damnation are a menace to a healthy life of faith. Or job is never to damn someone (for God).
The threat of damnation has always been a weird weapon in polemical religious controversies in Western culture and in the power struggles of denominational subcultures. But, of course, the uneducated and intemperate nonsense continues wherever someone perceives an apparent momentary advantage in suggesting someone else is damned. Weird. One could add that wild fantasies that Catholics are in league with the Devil and agents of the Antichrist are a similar pathology and a perverted expression of the ignorant and the sadistic.
I think that the threat of damnation, on a personal level, is a very valuable spiritual tool for eliciting a good Christian life within the believer -- that is, a fear of damnation motivating one to keep the faith. Of course, this can become unbalanced, but I dont' believe there's anything wrong with a healthy amount of "fear and trembling." And I also tend to find the baseless rants of non-Catholics about the evil, nefarious aspects of Catholicism and the Catholic Church (taken to such extremes, as you mentioned, with the antichrist, satan, etc.) to be born of a similar spirit that motivates Catholics (and others) to render judgment on any particular individual's immortal soul. It's no doubt a psychological condition in the individual that engenders such an attitude, encouraged by the particular flavor of religion that the individual practices.