From disaster movies to fundamentalist techno-thrillers, Americans are fascinated with scary end-of-the-world scenarios. So what are Catholics, who in every Mass profess belief in the Second Coming, to make of that?

Along with oceans flooding over Himalayan peaks, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy crashing into the White House, and the statue of Christ the Redeemer crumbling high above Rio de Janeiro, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is one of the show-stopping sights of the just-released blockbuster movie 2012.

The cardinals in the Sistine Chapel barely get to gasp before the toppled dome of St. Peter's starts rolling right over the faithful masses assembled in St. Peter's Square to pray for God's protection-and straight on toward the curious masses assembled in their movie seats to be scared out of their wits. The $200-million epic by "master of disaster" director Roland Emmerich promises nothing less than "a global cataclysm that brings an end of the world."

While the doomsday scenario behind 2012 is supposedly based on a Mayan prophecy, a majority of Americans, according to a 2004 Newsweek poll, believe in a no less fanciful and scary end-time scenario that claims to be based on the Bible. Fifty-five percent of Americans polled by the news magazine said they believe in the so-called Rapture, the trigger event in an elaborate end-of-the-world scheme that is propagated by fundamentalist and evangelical churches.

The Rapture features born-again believers suddenly going airborne and getting snatched up by Jesus, while the rest of the world is "left behind." Those poor souls-including the vast majority of Catholics-will then perish in a bloodbath during a subsequent seven-year period called the Tribulation.

Stitching together snippets of Bible verses from various books of the Old and New Testament, Rapture believers see this whole scheme as preordained by a God who appears as the ultimate Master of Disaster. Unfortunately, this so-called dispensationalist end-of-the-world theology is now accepted by an astonishing number of people to be "what the Bible says" about the end times (see sidebar on page).

In truth, however, what Pope John Paul II once dismissed as "millenarian fantasies" distort not only the biblical message but also the traditional Christian understanding of the Second Coming of Christ and the end times. It is, as Barbara Rossing, the author of The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (Basic Books), aptly puts it, a "racket."

Waiting in joyful hope

Advent is a good time to reflect on what Catholic belief in the Second Coming of Christ is all about. For the expectant waiting that the church celebrates during the Advent season is not just the waiting and preparation for the feast of Jesus' birth at Bethlehem but also the continued waiting and preparation for Christ's future coming in glory.

"Advent . . . distills into a few short weeks the church's perennial longing for Christ's coming in the flesh, in the end-time, and in every present moment of our lives," writes Felician Sister Judith M. Kubicki, a liturgical theologian at Fordham University, in The Living Light.

This year's gospel on the First Sunday of Advent (Luke 21:25-28, 34-36) is one of the scarier end-time scripture passages. It warns that "people will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world" before "they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." Still, the reading's main message is that Christians should live faithful lives and "be vigilant at all times," promising that "your redemption is at hand."

The liturgies for the Sundays of Advent include further references to "the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:4-11) and the coming of "a mighty savior" (Zeph. 3:14-18a), and pick up the theme with prayers such as: "Now we watch for the day, hoping that the salvation promised us will be ours, when Christ our Lord will come again in his glory."

But the Advent season only reinforces what Catholics already repeatedly confess during every celebration of the Mass. "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again," the congregation proclaims, while the Lord's Prayer pleads, "Thy kingdom come," and the Nicene Creed promises that Christ "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead" and has the faithful look forward to the "life of the world to come."

Even if many Mass-goers don't think much about the meaning of these words, the expectant hope for Christ's Second Coming and for the ultimate redemption and transformation of the world-what theologians call eschatology, the "talk about the last things"-is at the core of the Good News Christians proclaim.

According to Irish Jesuit theologian Father Dermot Lane, president of the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin, such Christian talk about the last things "is ultimately about ‘hope seeking understanding.' "

And the object of Christian hope, explains Lane, the author of Keeping Hope Alive: Stirrings in Christian Theology (Wipf & Stock), is "Christ crucified and risen. In the light of the death and Resurrection of Jesus as the Christ, the Christian is one who dares to hope for the triumph of good over evil, of justice over injustice, and love over hatred in this life and eternity."

In striking contrast to the dispensationalist Rapture scenario-which is preoccupied with the question "What must we fear?"-the expectation of the Second Coming is really about the Christian response to the question, "What may we hope?"

Despite the inroads Rapture theology has made among American Catholics, most instinctively understand this hopeful orientation.