Rome does not take a comprehensive dogmatic position on the end times beyond some basics, but here is some of what the Catechism teaches:
670 Since the Ascension God’s plan has entered into its fulfillment. We are already at “the last hour”.554 “Already the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even now anticipated in a certain real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real but imperfect.”555 Christ’s kingdom already manifests its presence through the miraculous signs that attend its proclamation by the Church.556
673 Since the Ascension Christ’s coming in glory has been imminent,566 even though “it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.”567. This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if both it and the final trial that will precede it are “delayed”.568
674 The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel”, for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus.
The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles”,572 will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, in which “God may be all in all”.573
675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.574 The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth575 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.576
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,577 especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.578 [fill in blank]
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.579 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.580 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.581 http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c2a7.htm#673
988 The Christian Creed - the profession of our faith in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in God’s creative, saving, and sanctifying action - culminates in the proclamation of the resurrection of the dead on the last day and in life everlasting.
989 We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day.534 Our resurrection, like his own, will be the work of the Most Holy Trinity:
1001 When? Definitively “at the last day,” “at the end of the world.”557 Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ’s Parousia:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.558
1053 “We believe that the multitude of those gathered around Jesus and Mary in Paradise forms the Church of heaven, where in eternal blessedness they see God as he is and where they are also, to various degrees, associated with the holy angels in the divine governance exercised by Christ in glory, by interceding for us and helping our weakness by their fraternal concern” (Paul VI, CPG § 29). http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a12.htm#V
► The Catholic bishop Arnulf of Orleans was the first to apply the 'man of sin' prophecy in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-9 to the papacy.[7][26] The same interpretation was given by the Catholic abbot Joachim of Floris in 1190[7] and the archbishop Eberhard II in 1240. — EB Elliott, 'Horae Apocalypticae', volume IV, Appendix I, fifth edition, 1862; Leroy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith Of Our Fathers, volume I (1950) pages 541-542
*Some Traditional Catholics believe that a pope was anti-Christ:
Fr. Herman Kramer was a Catholic priest who spent 30 years studying and writing a book on the Apocalypse. In his book, he wrote the following about St. Paul’s prophecy concerning the Antichrist sitting in the Temple of God.
“St. Paul says that Antichrist ‘sitteth in the temple of God’… This is not the ancient Temple of Jerusalem, nor a temple like it built by Antichrist, as some have thought, for then it would be his own temple… this temple is shown to be a Catholic Church, possibly one of the churches in Jerusalem or St. Peter’s in Rome, which is the largest church in the world and is in the full sense ‘The Temple of God.’" (http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/section1.pdf )
Our Lady of La Salette, Sept. 19, 1846: “Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Anti-Christ… the Church will be in eclipse.”
►The Catholic Encyclopedia article on “Antichrist” indicates that St. Bernard believed that the Antichrist would be an antipope.
► According to the prophecy of St. Malachy, the last pope would be “the glory of the olive”, which is a phrase that has been associated with Pope Benedict XVI. http://papalprophecies.com/obama-pope-benedict-december-2012-the-anti-christ-the-last-pope.html
► Also, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1351430/posts:
"When the great ruler (the Great Monarch who is to rule Europe after the collapse of Communism) exterminates the Turks almost entirely, one of the remaining Mohammadans will be converted, become a priest bishop and cardinal, and when the new pope is elected (immediately before Antichrist) this cardinal will kill the pope before he is crowned, through jealousy, wishing to be pope himself; then when the other cardinals elect the next pope this cardinal will proclaim himself Anti-pope, and two-thirds of the Christians will go with him. He, as well as Anti-christ, are descendants of the tribe of Dan. - Yves Dupont (a staunch anti-communist, and a learned Catholic historian, September 1975 A.D.)
► Roman Catholic theologian Father Hubert J. Richards agrees that the Revelation 12 woman refers to Israel. His book, What The Spirit Says to the Churches: A Key to the Apocalypse of John, carries the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur of the Roman Catholic Church.13 Concerning the woman of Revelation 12, Father Richards writes:
The vision proper, then, begins with the figure of a Woman clothed with the sun and the stars. We think naturally enough of our Lady, to whom this description has traditionally been applied. After all, we say, of whom else could John be thinking when he speaks of the mother of the Messiah? However it is clear from the rest of the chapter that this interpretation will stand only if the verse is isolated: what follows has very little relevance to our Lady. Nor is it any honor to Mary to apply any and every text to her without thought....
Who then is she? The source to which John has turned for his imagery throughout this book is the Old Testament. There, the Woman, the bride of God who brings forth the Messiah, is Israel, the true Israel, the chosen people of God. It is quite certain that this is what is in John's mind when he begins his description with a quotation from Gen. 37:9-10, where the sun and moon and twelve stars represent the twelve-fold Israel.
This Woman will later be contrasted with the Harlot (the collective personality of Rome, opposed to the true Israel), and will be specified at the end of the book, again appearing in light and splendour for her marriage with the Lamb, as the twelve-gated Jerusalem which forms the new Israel. In fact the number twelve occurs so frequently in the Apocalypse in reference to Israel that it cannot have a different meaning here. All the early Fathers of the Church interpreted these verses as about the Israel of God.14 See http://www.eternal-productions.org/PDFS/Revelation12Woman.pdf
► Here are some of Catholic Ron Cote’s (catholicplanet) predictions for 2010
May 13th - Pope John Paul II canonized; perhaps also Pope Pius XII will be canonized on the same day.
At some point after the Miracle, and probably before the end of 2010, Pope Benedict XVI dies.
The next Pope is the one St. Malachy called ‘Peter the Roman’. But he does NOT take the name Pope Peter II. I believe that this Pope will be Cardinal Arinze and that he will take the name Pope Pius XIII. He will die a martyr in late 2012 or early 2013.
World War III begins in 2010, and lasts throughout most of the 2010’s.
I believe that this war begins with an attack on New York City; a nuclear bomb (not a missile; not a dirty bomb) sent by the Arab/Muslim nations of the Middle East and northern Africa. (http://www.catholicplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3822)
► Prophesy is not much my (daniel1212) focus, but I tend to see the Lord coming for his own toward the end of the Tribulation, the faithful having been protected during it, during which God shall reverse the curse of blindness, the fullness of the Gentiles having entered in, with Jews believing then witnessing and entering into the Millennial reign of Christ, and so all Israel - the natural branches now granted repentance, and the “Israel of God” - shall be saved. Israel’s repentance is what i see Rm. 11 teaching.
The resurrected saints (resurrection of life: Jn. 5:29; first resurrection: Rv. 20:5) come with the Lord in judgment at Armageddon, (Jude. 1:14,15) and reign with Christ for a 1,00 years before the final war, and then judge angels as well as men (resurrection of damnation: Jn. 5:29; Rv. 20:12) (http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/israel-chosenorforgotten.html )
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.579 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.580 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.581 http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c2a7.htm#673
Notice that it says that the “church” which they surely mean the RCC “will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection”. Does that mean that the entirety of the membership will be killed or die before the final battle? It does say that the “final unleashing of evil” will “cause His bride to come down from heaven”. That means that either the entire Christian community will die or be killed and raised again or that it’s only a part of the bride that will come with Christ.
Now they have a problem with their statements because in 989 they claim that Christ “will raise them up on the last day”. Is that two resurrections of the righteous? Will some be raised to “come down from heaven” with Him then others who were “left behind” be raised on the last day to join those who “came down from heaven” with Him?
989 We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day. Then in 1001 they say that the resurrection of the dead is associated with Chris’s Parousia. So they have gone from the “church” the bride of Christ coming with him on that last day to the “dead in Christ” being risen on that last day.
1001 When? Definitively “at the last day,” “at the end of the world.”557 Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ’s Parousia:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.558
We know that the CC condemns the belief of the Rapture but they claim in 677 that the bride will come down with Christ but that the “dead in Christ” will not be raised until He returns to earth. It appears to me that they have some serious contradictions in their stated beliefs. How many resurrections do they believe in?
Isolating verses to force an interpretation? Surely the CC doesn’t do that do they? /s Who then is she? The source to which John has turned for his imagery throughout this book is the Old Testament. There, the Woman, the bride of God who brings forth the Messiah, is Israel, the true Israel, the chosen people of God. It is quite certain that this is what is in John's mind when he begins his description with a quotation from Gen. 37:9-10, where the sun and moon and twelve stars represent the twelve-fold Israel.
Certainly no confusion of conflict in the interpretation of that passage in the CC is there. /s