All traditions within the broad Christian spectrum believe in a Great Apostasy, with many thinking it is a present or a future reality. For example, the 1566 Catechism of the Council of Trent (“The Roman Catechism”), in part 1, chapter 12 reads as follows:
By
what Signs the General Judgment will be perceived to be impending
The Sacred Scriptures declare, that these three principal signs shall
precede the general judgment; the preaching of the Gospel throughout the whole
world, a falling away from the faith, and [the coming of] Antichrist; for our
Lord says: This Gospel of the kingdom
shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations, and then
shall the consummation come; and the apostle admonishes us, that we be not deceived by any one, as that the day of the
Lord is at hand; for, unless there come a falling away first, and man of sin be
revealed, the son of perdition, the judgment will not take place. (The
Catechism of the Council of Trent [trans. Theodore Alois Buckley; London:
George Routledge and Co., 1852], 81-82)
Many Sedevacantists
believe this Great Apostasy is a present reality (e.g., Bp Donald J. Sanborn).
Origen (185-254)
believed that Romans 11 prophesied of a potential future falling away of the
corporate Church (see this
post).
While reading the
7th-century Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, I read the
following which predicted such a then-future Great Apostasy:
For the Holy Apostle says, “They are not all Israel, which are of
Israel.” So not all those who are called Christians are indeed Christians. As
scripture says, “For seven thousand of the sons of Israel were preserved who
have not bowed the knee to Baal,” and the whole people of Israel was preserved
through them.
Thus also in the time of the falling away and of the chastisement of
the sons of Ishmael few will be found true Christians, just as Our Savior said
in the Holy Gospels, “When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the
earth?” and in that time the spirit of the perfect will be diminished.
And many will deny the true faith and the life-giving cross and the
holy mysteries, and without violence or punishment or ill-treatment they will
deny the Christ and follow the apostates.
For anticipating these things the godly apostle preached and said “in
the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of
seduction, and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their
conscience seared with a hot iron.”
And again the same said, “In the last days perilous times shall
come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud,
blasphemers, disobedient to parents, useless, unholy without natural
affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of
those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more
than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.”
And all those who are weak in the faith will be made known in that
chastisement and they will separate themselves from the holy churches by their
own choice. For the time itself summons them to error. The humble and quiet,
useful and trusty, frank and select will not be sought out in that time.
But in their place those will be sought out who are lovers of their
own selves, money-loving boasters, proud, blasphemers, extortioners, covetous,
drunkards, unmerciful, apostate, truce-breakers, without natural affection,
unthankful, unholy, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, wild, traitors,
heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, fornicators,
adulterers, thieves, perjured persons, liars, men-stealers, those having
a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.
These will be the servants of those days, and all of the orders given
to them will be carried out with ease by them. And those who fear the Lord will
be esteemed as nothing in their eyes; they will be held in dishonor, in the way
dung is trampled underfoot. (Apocalypse Pseudo-Methodius: An Alexandrian
World Chronicle [trans. Benjamin Garstad; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 14;
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012], 49, 51, 53)
