Questioning Manning

The Restrainer Of The Antichrist | Cardinal Manning
Return To Tradition | 19 Jan. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R387U5r-qHo

Who, before Manning, made this theory?

Because, the Haydock comment does not mention it.

While the comment should be on verse 6 and there is no separate comment on that, the comments on verses 3 and 4 do give a real comment on the question:

Ver. 3-4. First, &c.[2] What is meant by this falling away, (in the Greek this apostacy) is uncertain, and differently expounded. S. Jerom and others understand it of a falling off of other kingdoms, which before were subject to the Roman empire; as if S. Paul said to them: you need not fear that the day of judgment is at hand, for it will not come till other kingdoms, by a general revolt, shall have fallen off, so that the Roman empire be destroyed. The same interpreters expound the sixth and seventh verses in like manner, as if when it is said, now you know[3] what withholdeth, &c. That is, you see the Roman empire subsisteth yet, which must be first destroyed. And when it is added, only that he who now holdeth, do hold, until he be taken out of the way; the sense, say these authors, is, let Nero and his successors hold that empire till it be destroyed, for not till then will the day of judgment come. A. Lapide makes this exposition so certain, that he calls it a tradition of the fathers, which to him seems apostolical. But we must not take the opinion of some fathers, in the exposition of obscure prophecies, where they advance conjectures (which others at the same time reject, or doubt of) to be apostolical traditions, and articles of faith, as the learned bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, takes notice on this very subject, in his preface and treatise on the Apocalypse, against Jurieux. S. Jerom indeed, and others, thought that the Roman empire was to subsist till the antichrist's coming, which by the event most interpreters conclude to be a mistake, and that it cannot be said the Roman empire continues to this time. See Lyranus on this place, S. Tho. Aquin. Salmeron, Estius, and many others; though A. Lapide, with some few, pretend the Roman empire still subsists in the emperors of Germany.

Which was soon to become the emperors of Austria, then Austria-Hungary. When Haydock published, it was after 1806, but I suppose he wrote before that.

I would say the Roman Empire still subsisted till 1918. When Nicolas II and Charles of Austria were out of the way, you find Lenin, then his emissaries in Munich and Hungary (Lewien with Hitler, Bela Kun), and further SE, a massacre on Armenians starting soon after Charles' father and Nicolas II had started to take each other out of the way.

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I would say, the function of the Restrainer is kind of akin to the function of Homeland Security. In other words, it uses violence and is sometimes unfair.

I would say, when Habsburg Emperors were acting against Jews in the 1400's and the 1600's, on suspicion of their fomenting Hussites, and on condemnation of sacrilege, the death penalties in the 1600's were not unjust, but severe in not taking into account the blindness of the Jews, the acts in the 1400's were actually unjust, the Jews don't seem to have had that interest in Austria.

That's the kind of thing that a secular authority sometimes does (the expulsion from Spain, though understandable, was also more than unusually afflicting to the exiles), and not at their most creditable.

It would be a mistake for the Papacy to take up that role, I don't think the Papacy can, since Christ's vicar doesn't become, as such, the vicar of Pilate. I'm not saying Popes weren't exercising it locally as secular rulers within the Empire up to 1870, but that's not the inherent function of the Papacy and also not a function the Vatican State as founded in 1929, when Pius XI signed it was NOT a continuation of the Papal states, can assume.

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I'm very sure Manning wrote this before 1870, since he mentions Italy and Sicily (Kingdom of Two Sicilies) as two separate entities. I think his first reaction in that fateful day of 1870 (he may have been at the Vatican Council) was sth like "the katekhon is taken out of the way" ...

In other words, his view doesn't apply directly to post-1870 or post-1929 Popes, even if you accept "Francis" as being or "Benedict" as having been the Pope.

In a way, this view, taken this way, is also correct. WW-I and the end of the Kaiser of Austria and of the Czar of all Russia might not have come if there had been no Risorgimento and no setting aside of the Papacy in the secular sphere.

[tried to add]

There is a difference however between the Restrainer as Public Office with a Secret Agency of armed force, and the Restrainer as a principle of obedience.