For every Roman Catholic bishop or cardinal or priest who resigns in disgrace – happening across Europe with the spreading sexual abuse scandal – another nail is pounded in the Church’s coffin. These could be the last days of the Roman Catholic Church as a worldwide power.

Consider:

1. Reports in Europe shows members leaving the Church in high numbers.

2. Abuse scandals have rocked the Church from Australia to Zimbabwe.

3. Relentless negative pressure – largely deserved after tone-deaf public comments from Vatican officials – is keeping the Church in a publicity death spiral.

4. Prophecy says so.

Seems a saint-type person (St. Malachy) had one “hell” of a vision foreseeing all of the Popes to the end. We’re down to the last two, Benedict and whoever is next (if our saint was correct), and every day that prophecy is looking more inevitable. Consider:

The bills that the Church pays and what their balance sheet must look like! The Church has already paid billions in U.S.-based settlements after years of sex abuse scandals, and is looking at another wave of lawsuits and investigations across Europe. Latin America has some scandals brewing, too. The Pope’s lawyers are going to stay real busy for years to come.

Consider the overhead of maintaining buildings and staff around the globe, a staff with full retirement benefits paid by the company. Look around the average city and you’ll find Catholic retirement and care facilities all over. How is the Church going to pay for those commitments when parishioners are either leaving en mass or slowly dying off? The mystique that the Vatican peddled for centuries is road kill, and its churches are mostly huge, beautiful, empty mausoleums.

Consider the loss of prestige and respect. People want to give their money to a religious organization that lives up to its own moral code. Molesting children is the lowest of acts, so much so that even hardened prison convicts know what to do when a convicted molester shuffles through the doors. That image can never be erased from the Church’s reputation. The Boy Scouts are making a run at the title of chief organization for pedophiles, but altar boy jokes will forever rule late-night.

Figures that it will be something so shamefully despicable that’ll bring down the Church. But in the end it’s their own hubris, the intellectual masturbation that justified keeping molesters in the ranks. A culture allowed to fester, even aiding in moving pedophiles through a revolving door of parishes. No less than Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Ratizinger, played a large role in the cover-up, and that spells doom for the whole operation. Prophecy or not.

To find out more about the end days and prophecies of the Second Coming, read the supernatural fiction thriller Something Coming.