Saturday, 18 April 2026

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH POPE PREVOST & THE PRESIDENT?


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Here's what is actually going on, guys 



US President Donald Trump is not the Trump we once knew. Under the spell of lunatic Zionist Paula White, he's been mean to 'Pope Leo XIV' and with mid-term polls looming, Republicans are fretting he'll lose the Catholic vote. American Catholics sitting on the fence need to realise that: 1) the millions of unborn babies who'd be condemned to death by a Democrat win belong to Almighty God; 2) Trump can no longer be counted on to defend them; and 3) Robert Prevost is a self-identified idolater and heretic. 


The Catholic Encyclopedia (1914, Vol. 7, p. 261) states: “The pope himself, if notoriously guilty of heresy, would cease to be pope because he would cease to be a member of the Church.” St Robert Bellarmine, Cardinal and Doctor of the Church, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30: "A pope who is a manifest heretic automatically (per se) ceases to be pope and head, just as he ceases automatically to be a Christian and a member of the Church. Wherefore, he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the teaching of all the ancient Fathers who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction."


Well, God has always preserved His Church from a heretical papacy. Fr Robert Prevost's (and Jorge Bergoglio's) public worship of a pagan god is further proof - if it were needed - that they were invalidly elected. Mean and ridiculous though Trump may be, he's not guilty of abusing the pontificate, or the Catholic Church, but an antipope.


Prevost was photographed with his Augustinian brother priests worshipping the Luciferian goddess Pachamama. That is, publicly breaking the First Commandment. 30-odd years ago. He has never denied it. Pachamama's devotees in South America pay her tribute by getting people passed-out drunk and buried alive as blood offerings to the demon. It's a big thing in Brazil. Pretty much like offering unborn children to the god of self-interest (Moloch) by the million, all around the world. 


Isn't that interesting? Both antipopes - Francis and Leo - publicly worshipped a pagan goddess who demands the sacrifice of live human beings. So one wonders why 'Pope Leo' is engaging in politics instead of saving souls. And why he appears to be veering to the left by inviting David Axelrod, top strategist for Barack Obama - who offered over 4.8 million infants to Moloch during his administration - to the Vatican. 


Not only did Prevost proceed, after the Axelrod meeting, to wade into the American president, but so did the three wokest, furthest-left American cardinals - Blase Cupich, Joseph Tobin and Robert McElroy - funnily enough, echoing Prevost's propaganda: not condemning abortion, but ICE and Iran. Coincidence, anyone?


No real Catholic will be influenced by these three false shepherds, compromised as they are by association with the sexual predator McCarrick. Just as no thinking Catholic would be upset by criticism of a 'pope' publicly exposed as an idolatrous heretic, and therefore disqualified from holding any office whatsoever in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, let alone occupancy of the See of Peter.


When the world willingly - and legally - sacrifices to the demon Moloch he gains more influence. In his hatred for humanity, Satan/Lucifer is at work on Trump through his proxies Paula White (assisted by Bishop Robert Barron), and Israel First Jews, to assuage his thirst for blood by war; and also influencing 'Pope Leo XIV',  avenging himself on Jesus Christ in the Blessed Eucharist. And if you join the dots, launching a fresh assault on His little ones, in the wombs of their mothers.


As Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre observed, “we will never understand the struggle between good and evil throughout history unless we see it as the personal and unyielding battle, for all time, between Satan and Jesus Christ.”

 




 


From the new, South African, uber-conservative, far-right RADICAL FIDELITY: 

 

On Trump Inc., Having Nowhere to Lay Your Head, and The Only Banner to Die Under

 

It is perhaps long past time for Catholics to measure their loyalties against these divine standards.

 

Up to the moment I started writing down my thoughts (Thursday, April 16), you could not click on a Catholic or secular news outlet without being bombarded with something pertaining to the Trump vs. Leo XIV debacle, the Trump “Jesus” Truth Social post, or the consequential fallout.


Liberal Catholic outlets such as Where Peter Is, Religion Digital, and National Catholic Reporter were frothing at the mouth with delight, as this was, after all, a two-birds-with-one-stone moment.

 

Not only could they dump on any Catholic who does not worship Karl Marx, but they could also garner sympathy for Synodal Church leader Leo XIV and his program of ushering in the One World Religion.

 

Even Trad Inc. laid down their toy guns and pre-1955 missals for two seconds and, with great magnanimous nobility, swore allegiance to their “pope” with fresh fervor.

 

After all, you had to choose a side.

 

I started noticing, all over the place, that many of those who have consistently condemned the Trad Inc. camp for their hypocrisy were suddenly making themselves guilty of practising exactly the same vice. Right before our eyes, we saw the birth of a new beast among Traditional Catholics: Trump Inc.

 

 Gosh, I will be the first to admit that, on a very superficial level, I—as someone uber-conservative and on the far-right of the political spectrum—was secretly excited when Trump got re-elected.

 

In the beginning, he was doing exciting things, seemed friendly with Christians in the broad sense, at least initially said he was pro-life, and was all about America as opposed to the Globalist agenda. His rhetoric was that of a nationalist who wanted to put America first and bring some much-needed sanity to international politics. And he was entertaining.


Unfortunately, something happened, and he made what seems like a 180-degree turn on many important issues. Suffice it to say that I cannot speak for Trump hardliners, but if I had voted for him, I would be very disappointed right now.

 

Who you voted for in the United States is ultimately your business. What is not a good look, though, is if you are a Traditional Catholic and are not condemning his quasi-messianic posturing, which has become blatantly blasphemous. What is even worse is if, instead of condemning his wrongdoings, you are defending him.

 

Not only does this seem like hypocrisy in the same league as that of Trad Inc., but more seriously, you are seemingly betraying Christ out of loyalty to a non-believing, arrogant, warmongering, foul-mouthed, money-worshiping puppet of “God’s chosen people.”

 

Those remarks are by no means an endorsement of the usurper Leo XIV and his diabolical crew of Christ-haters who masquerade as “the hierarchy.” You would have to be stupid or in a coma not to know that the Synodal “Pope’s” denunciations of Trump and Netanyahu’s filthy and unjust war have nothing to do with any Catholic convictions he holds, but everything to do with virtue signalling and promoting the goals and designs of the satanic globalist agenda.

 

Just because I am not for Trump and Netanyahu or find Trump’s “Jesus” post disgusting and highly disturbing, does not mean I am pro the Synodal heretic Church, its leaders, or its false, woke, Marxist religion.


Ultimately, as far apart as these two sides may seem, they are part of the same kingdom—that of Satan.

 

What's that about leopards and their spots ... 

 

I am on another side. I am Catholic. Therefore, my loyalty is to Christ the King, to His true Church, and to what His Church teaches and demands of me. For Him and the Catholic Church, I will die. Not for Trump, and not for the Synodal enemies of Christ.

 

Yet I see Catholics sucked into this false dichotomy all the time. Without fail, I have to explain that because I am anti-Zionism does not make me pro-Islam. And because I am against Zionism also does not mean I am pro-Palestine. Ultimately, I believe that the Holy Land belongs to Catholics. Both Judaism and Islam are false religions, and we should pray for these people’s conversion, and war against their advances on what is left of Christendom.

 

Heresy

 


Another example may be found in the political situation of my own country, and in the reason why I refuse to vote. The ruling party consists of a collection of atheistic, Rolex-wearing Marxists who are bleeding the nation dry while upholding a constitution that is praised as one of the most “progressive” in the world, that is to say, one of the most radically opposed to the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

The opposition, for its part, offers no real alternative and is in many ways even more sinister and dangerous. The Democratic Alliance aspires to imitate its liberal counterparts in America and Canada; it is permeated with Masonic influence and sustained by Soros-funded organizations that clandestinely promotes antichrist ideology.

 

Between these two poles lies the remainder of the political “options”: from tepid conservative Calvinists to radical anarchists, each proposing its own vision of order or revolution. Yet nowhere within this entire spectrum is there a party that truly submits itself to the Social Reign of Christ the King and the Catholic Church’s teachings.

 

Nowhere is there a movement that does not, in some measure, enshrine error, compromise with evil, or subordinate divine law to human preference.

 

Why, then, should I as a Catholic be obliged to choose between Judas and Pilate? Between the Sadducees and the Pharisees? Both sides opposed Christ, though in different ways, and both participated, directly or indirectly, in His rejection. Why should it be considered unreasonable, indeed, incomprehensible, that one might reject all of “the options” precisely because one has chosen The Option: fidelity to Christ without compromise, without dilution, and without apology?


This inability to comprehend such a refusal is a hallmark of the spirit of our age. We are told, constantly and insistently, that we must choose a side but always within the limits prescribed for us. The options are presented as exhaustive, as though nothing exists beyond them. Yet this is an illusion carefully manufactured by those who shape public discourse.

 

Through the media, through education, through cultural institutions, a false framework is constructed in which opposition is permitted, but only within controlled boundaries. The result is not true conflict, but a managed dialectic and a perpetual oscillation between alternatives that ultimately serve the same underlying principles.

 

Thus, while men argue, vote, protest, and align themselves with one faction or another, the fundamental orientation of society remains unchanged: it continues to move away from God. The debates may shift, the rhetoric may intensify, the personalities may change, but the trajectory remains constant. In such a system, participation almost always serves only to legitimize what ought to be rejected outright.

 

60% of good white Catholics voted for Trump; will they again?

 

Worse still, even those who recognize certain errors can become ensnared by this framework. Even we who call ourselves Traditional Catholics can become so attached to “our side” that we begin to think and act as partisans first and Catholics second.

 

We excuse what should be condemned, minimize what should be resisted, and defend what is, in truth, indefensible, simply because it is associated with our chosen camp. In doing so, we attempt to enlist Christ Himself in our cause, rather than conforming ourselves entirely to His. In doing so we expect Him to “take one for our team”.

 

As Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre observed, “we will never understand the struggle between good and evil throughout history unless we see it as the personal and unyielding battle, for all time, between Satan and Jesus Christ.”

 

This is the most concrete reality underlying all others. Every political system, every cultural movement, every ideological current ultimately aligns itself with one of these two kingdoms, but more often than not with the former.

 

Herein lies the truth from which modern man has been systematically diverted: there is no third option. One is either fighting on the side of Christ the King and His Army of Light, or one is, by action or by compromise, contributing to the dominion of Lucifer and the kingdom of darkness.

 

Our Lord leaves no room for ambiguity: “He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth.” In Deuteronomy, God sets before His people life and death, blessing and curse, commanding them to choose life.

 

There is no neutral ground, no safe middle, no space in which one may remain indefinitely undecided or conveniently detached. Likewise, Saint John teaches that “if we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.” And Saint James delivers the stark warning: “whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world becometh an enemy of God.”

 

These are not abstract spiritual principles to be admired from a distance but the criteria by which our every allegiance must be judged. It is perhaps long past time for Catholics to measure their loyalties against these divine standards.

 

Does your “side” truly gather with Christ, or does it merely invoke His name while advancing principles contrary to His law? Does it defend life in its fullness, or does it tolerate and justify its destruction in certain cases? Does it uphold truth, or does it accommodate falsehood for the sake of influence, success, or expediency? Does it walk in the light, or does it shake hands with darkness while raping little girls on pedophile islands?

 

And perhaps the most penetrating question of all: is Christ truly King of your allegiance or is He made into a convenient symbol employed in the service of something else?

 

There is no third path. As Bob Dylan expressed in his own way, “you’re gonna have to serve somebody… it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”


Our Lord Himself commanded us to count the cost of following Him, and warned that discipleship entails sacrifice, loss, and even isolation. “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” If this is true of the Master, how much more should it be expected of His servants?

 

Perhaps, then, it is time for Catholics to recognize that, in fidelity to Christ, we too may have nowhere to lay our heads, especially not within the structures of modern political and ideological life. We must resist the temptation to seek comfort, security, or identity in systems that are fundamentally disordered.

 

We must cease playing the game of choosing between two sides which, despite their apparent opposition, ultimately operate within the same framework that excludes the full and uncompromising reign of Christ.


 


 


And from LifeSiteNews:


Catholic author Phil Lawler and blogger Chris Jackson have warned that the Democrat Party may benefit from President Donald Trump’s feud with Pope Leo XIV and liberal Catholic prelates.

 

In a Monday post, Lawler criticized Cardinals Blase Cupich, Joseph Tobin, and Robert McElroy for a recent 60 Minutes interview, in which the three prelates took aim at Trump while celebrating Leo and ignoring issues like abortion.

 

“The three American cardinals who held forth on Sixty Minutes were all promoted by Pope Francis. They do not represent the mainstream thinking of the U.S. bishops’ conference. But they do represent the leftward lurch of the previous pontificate, which Pope Leo has done little to correct,” Lawler wrote.

 

“The concerted political attacks on President Trump represent the priorities of the past pontificate. The sooner Pope Leo can establish his own leadership style, the sooner the world will listen to his own more measured appeals for peace.”

 

Lawler also said that he thinks that the U.S. papal nuncio’s office has been orchestrating attacks on Trump but that Trump may suffer for “picking a fight with the Roman Pontiff.”

 

“The President will alienate many faithful Catholics – members of a key ‘swing’ constituency – while pleasing only those who are already fully behind him,” he wrote.

 

The U.S. president attacked Leo on Truth Social late Sunday after the Pontiff repeatedly condemned the U.S.-backed war on Iran and other Trump policies. 

 

 



 

 

Trump claimed Leo had “weak” positions on crime and foreign policy, saying he doesn’t “want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela” or “who criticizes the President of the United States.”

 

Jackson, who writes the Hiraeth in Exile blog on Substack, posted to X on Monday a computer-generated graphic of Pope Leo with his hand on top of a donkey representing the Democratic Party, with rays emanating from its head, as if the Pope is blessing it. Prominent Democrats like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris look up at the Pope as if in gratitude and adoration. Angels hold a banner spelling out what the scene represents: “Midterms.”

 

Here is what’s actually going on, guys. #midterms #popeleoxiv #DonaldTrump #CatholicChurch pic.twitter.com/isWlnGMf7v

— Chris Jackson (@BigModernism) April 13, 2026

 

 



“Now, no public document proves some formal Vatican-Democratic election task force. That would be too easy. But politics rarely works that way. More often it works through converging incentives, useful idiots, flattering access, and mutually beneficial narratives.

 

So let us state the point carefully: there is no smoking gun proving coordination, but there is more than enough to explain why conservative Catholics would suspect that the Trump-Leo conflict is being leveraged to demoralize the right ahead of the midterms,” wrote Jackson in a Tuesday Substack post.

 

The group went so far as to assert that Trump’s remarks come amid a “well-organized” effort by the left to distance Catholics from the Republican Party. 

 

“The recent amplifications of a discord between Rome and the White House, oftentimes exaggerated, trace back to left-leaning ‘Catholics in name only,’ who are determined to swing the Catholic vote back in the other direction,” the post continued.

 

“This is a highly coordinated operation from key Obama advisors and prominent liberal Catholic clergy intentionally stoking the flames of discord with the intention of separating the Catholic base from the Republican Party,” wrote the Catholic advocacy group. 


Bishop Robert Barron, who is part of the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission, similarly called on Donald Trump to apologize to Pope Leo XIV for criticizing him, though Barron praised Trump for his defense of religious liberty. Other high-ranking prelates, some of them heterodox, like Cardinal Tobin, have issued defenses of the pope as well. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/democrats-could-benefit-from-trump-and-leos-feud-catholic-authors-w




Sir John Everett Millais’ 1865 oil-on-canvas painting, Joan of Arc





 


 


 


 

 



































 



Tuesday, 14 April 2026

'DIVINE MERCY' CULT IS REMINISCENT OF COVID SCAM


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'Divine Mercy' is a cultish, fraudulent devotion, suppressed by the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII and rehabilitated by the Polish John Paul II, posterboy for the conciliar, Novus Ordo, Synodal, counterfeit religion. The original image for 'Divine Mercy' was painted to Sr Faustina Kowalska's specifications by a Freemason, Eugeniusz Kazimirowski, a major mover in the local Vilnius Lodge - a particularly dark, sinister brand of Freemasonry - who later committed suicide.


St Thomas, in the Gospel for the Mass of Low, or Quasimodo Sunday (now disguised as 'Divine Mercy' Sunday), would have had difficulty seeing, let alone touching - as Our Lord directed him - the wounds as shown in the hands of the resurrected Christ: they're almost invisible. 


The image, in contrast to the majestic Sacred Heart now 'disappeared' from Novus Ordo churches, is literally heartless. The rays of light exactly correspond with the Freemasonry compass. The red and white coloration would have appealed to the Polish Messianism fixation evident in the Mariavites, excommunicated en masse in 1906, to whose cult 'Divine Mercy' has many similarities, and would go a long way towards explaining its instant success in Poland.


Faustina's bishop, Archbishop Romuald Jałbrzykowski, who consistently opposed Faustina's supposed revelations, never authorised the display of the painting by Faustina's spiritual director, Fr Michael Sopocki, in the absence of his Ordinary. 


More offensive to Catholic doctrine and sentiment is Faustina's claim that blessings are bestowed by the painting. That's idolatry. Quite the thing, idolatry, apparently, with thousands of Catholics the world over flocking to venerate the image in processions and churches in a counterfeit religion ruled by an antipope. Robert Prevost ('Pope Leo XIV') was exposed recently as having worshipped the demon goddess Pachamama. He is thereby an apostate who can hold no office whatsoever in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.


The image has had feet attached - artistic licence, perhaps?


Faustina is hailed as a 'prophetess'. She said her devotion would bring to the Church "a new splendour", and hundreds of thousands of her followers insist that her 'prophecy' is already fulfilled. How come? In 1958 (while her diary was still on the Index of Prohibited Books), in many traditionally Catholic countries Sunday Mass attendance was 75%; now in those regions it's 17 %. Res ipsa loquitur (the fact speaks for itself).


Fr Sopoćko praised Faustina and promoted her image



Any Carmelite familiar with St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila, Doctors of the Church, would discern a large rat lurking in this new, conciliar devotion which usurps the Sacred Heart. A Carmelite would wonder at Faustina's relationship with her spiritual director, Fr Rev. Michael Sopoćko, who asked her to write her visions and locutions in a diary to save him time hearing her confessions. Faustina is described by one authority as the victim of the most incompetent spiritual director in Christendom. How long would Fr Sopocko or Faustina have lasted in any of St Teresa's houses?


Teresa would also have given very short shrift to Faustina's notion of Mercy über alles - of Mercy trumping Justice. Mind you, that was Jorge Bergoglio's theme and 'Pope Leo', has taken it to heart., making the cult of 'Divine Mercy' the perfect advertisement for the cult of Modernist Rome.


It's surely fair to say that after blaming the suppression of the Diary on 'faulty translations', Faustina's devotees would love to check out the original source material. They can't. Not even scholars. It's under lock and key.

Faustina heard voices in her head. She said she was threatened by Jesus. Pardon me? God does not give threatening locutions. Her archbishop found her revelations repellent. From day one. The Holy Office based its suppression on the opinion of all Poland's bishops. All the 'Divine Mercy' promises were made by Faustina without a plenary indulgence. She asserted that the Sacred Host 'came out of the tabernacle into her (unconsecrated) hands' (thereby making her the world's first ever 'Eucharistic Minister'?). And so on. Ad nauseam.






The attitude of Catholics in regard to 'Divine Mercy' in New Zealand at least and it seems in many other countries, reminds one of their sheepish behaviour during the Covid scam, when false shepherds cancelled Holy Mass and locked churches; when the faithful lined up for a 'vaccine' derived from the cells of aborted babies and those who refused it were treated as pariahs. Just as pearl-wringers now treat people who refuse to believe in 'Divine Mercy'.


When it inspires 'good Catholics' - including bishops - to accept holus-bolus all its errors (including offering the divinity of God to God, a theological impossibility), 'Divine Mercy' must indeed be a dark devotion. It appeals to our lazy, fallen human nature by its implicit suggestion that fronting up to confession and Communion once a year will wipe your slate clean and admit you to heaven, no questions asked, no merits necessarily earned. 


It perfectly reflects the psychology of the easy, new conciliar religion which wishes to attract adherents of any and all false religions as 'pathways to God'. We need to remind ourselves that presumption is one of the six sins against the Holy Ghost.


The outlook for Catholicism is grim. Thank God for that rare hold-out, that bulwark of the Catholic Faith - the Society of St Pius X, which states: 


"Many people have certainly received graces from the devotion to Divine Mercy propagated by Sr. Faustina, and her personal piety was exemplary. This does not necessarily mean that this devotion is from God. It is true that Pope John Paul II promoted this devotion, that it was through his efforts that the prohibition was lifted on April 15, 1978, and that he even introduced a feast of Divine Mercy into the Novus Ordo.

 

" ... ['Divine Mercy] is a Sacred Heart without a heart, without reparation, without the price of our sins being clearly evident. It is this that makes the devotion very incomplete and makes us suspicious of its supernatural origin. This absence of the need for reparation for sins is manifest in the strange promise of freedom from all the temporal punishment due to sin for those who observe the 3:00 pm Low Sunday devotions.

 

How could such a devotion be more powerful and better than a plenary indulgence, applying the extraordinary treasury of the merits of the saints? How could it not require as a condition that we perform a penitential work of our own? 


"I am uniting Myself with you so intimately as with no other creature.” (The Diary, §707, p. 288). This gives every appearance of being a claim of being more united to Jesus than anybody else, even the Blessed Virgin Mary, and certainly more than all the other saints. What pride, to believe such an affirmation, let alone to assert that it came from heaven! “And the Lord Jesus said to me, Don’t cry. You are that saint.” (§1650, p. 583). These are words that most certainly no true saint would affirm.

 

She praises herself on several occasions through words supposedly uttered by Jesus. For example: “Beloved pearl of My Heart, I see your love so pure, purer than that of the angels. Sr Faustina claimed to be exempt from the Particular and General Judgments. On February 4, 1935, she already claimed to hear this voice in her soul: “From today on, do not fear God’s judgment, for you will not be judged” (§374, p. 168).


Add to this the preposterous affirmation that the Host three times over jumped out of the tabernacle and placed itself in her hands (§44, p. 23), so that she had to open up the tabernacle herself and place it back, a presumption on God’s grace which goes beyond all reason, let alone as the action of a person supposedly favored with innumerable and repeated mystical and supernatural graces.  



The “Divine Mercy” devotion is arguably a Novus Ordo devotion, because the lack of need for expiation mirrors the change in the Novus Ordo Mass. But consider this: even if it were harmless enough (and even that may be going too far - if the devotion is not from Heaven, where else might it be from?!), it is still not a true devotion. As such the effect of its spread will always be to undermine the spread of true devotions.


(Every 'Divine Mercy' chaplet prayed - maybe because it's quicker - means one fewer Rosary.) 


... the devil does not need to get us to do actively evil things all the time: he just needs us not to do the good which we should be doing. [E]ven if there isn’t anything actively evil, the mere fact that it is a replacement for something good serves the enemy’s purpose.

 

[I]t ought to be fairly clear that this is not something that Traditional Catholics want to be getting involved in. And it is certainly not something that would ever be promoted by a priestly Society which sees its duty as defending the Catholic faithful from the post-Vatican II wasteland.  [T]roubling evidence is mounting which shows the promotion by the SSPX of this condemned, modernist devotion and of its the ascendency amongst the SSPX laity (redacted). https://thecatacombs.org/archive/index.php?thread-1310.html


 We are indebted to Stephen Kokx of Kokx News, Kirk Hansen from Ascent of Mount Carmel and Nate Vaughan and Sebastian Malik from Real Divine Mercy for many of the insights cited above. View the video Divine Mercy Devotion EXPOSED: Sr. Faustina's Writings Are Not Catholic.



Jesus Christ had reason indeed to ask that inexpressibly sad question, "But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?" (Luke, 18:8)









How Faustina’s postconciliar cult eclipsed the Sacred Heart, renamed Low Sunday, and sold Catholics a mercy discourse that too easily slips from repentance into presumption.

 

The day that used to belong to Easter

 

What used to be Low Sunday, Quasimodo Sunday, Dominica in albis, the close of the Easter Octave, has been rebranded in the postconciliar world as “Divine Mercy Sunday.” John Paul II tied the day to Faustina’s revelations in 2000, and later Vatican texts simply speak of the Second Sunday of Easter “or Divine Mercy Sunday.”

 

The postconciliar Directory on Popular Piety even describes the devotion as something that has developed and spread in “recent years” in connection with the octave of Easter. In other words, this was not the immemorial identity of the day. It was an overlay added later.

 

And that change is important. Because once you rename a day, you reshape how ordinary Catholics experience it. Instead of seeing Easter Week crowned by the Church’s ancient meditation on the newly baptized, on St. Thomas, and on the close of the Paschal octave, countless people now treat the whole week as a countdown to the “big” mercy Sunday, the day of special promises, special images, special devotions, special chaplets, special branding. Easter itself becomes, for many, the runway. Faustina becomes the headliner.


 

 

Even orthodox priests ...


What Low Sunday actually was

 

The older tradition describes this Sunday as Quasimodo from the Introit, Dominica in albis because the neophytes laid aside their white baptismal garments, and Pascha clausum because it closed the Easter Octave. The Catholic Encyclopedia says the same, adding that the Sunday’s very name pointed to the newly baptized and to man’s renewal through the Resurrection. This was a day rooted in baptism, Easter, and the apostolic witness of St. Thomas.

 

That older liturgical focus was also doctrinally crisp. The Gospel of the day turns on the risen Christ standing in the midst of the Apostles, showing them His hands and His side, breathing the Holy Ghost, and conferring the power to forgive sins.


The point is the Resurrection, the wounds, the apostolic mission, the sacrament of Penance, and the confession of faith: “My Lord and my God.” That is a far stronger Catholic architecture than the syrupy devotional atmosphere that now engulfs the day in most parishes.

 

Rome really did suppress the Faustina devotion



 

This is the part the propaganda always tries to blur. The Holy Office did act. The 6 March 1959 notification, published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, stated that the distribution of pictures and writings presenting the devotion to Divine Mercy “in the forms proposed by this Sister Faustina” was to be forbidden, and it left bishops free to remove such images already exposed for worship.

 

Then came the reversal. In 1978, the CDF declared that the prohibitions contained in the 1959 notification were “no longer binding,” after examining “many original documents unknown in 1959,” considering changed circumstances, and taking account of the opinion of Polish ordinaries.

 

Notice what the 1978 text actually says. It does not say the Holy Office had simply botched the case or the earlier judgment was false because of bad translations. It says new documents were considered, circumstances had changed, and the ban was no longer binding. That is a much narrower statement than the apologetic myth usually pushed today.

 

Indeed, the “faulty translation” line is largely the language of later promoters. The Marian Fathers’ Divine Mercy site says the Vatican in the 1950s had only a faulty Italian translation and was operating on misinformation. But that is their explanatory narrative, not the wording of the 1978 Roman notification itself.

 

 



 

So no, Catholics are not obliged to pretend that the preconciliar suppression was some meaningless misunderstanding, as though the Holy Office had simply slipped on a banana peel. The official 1959 act existed, and the official 1978 act lifted its force without erasing the fact that it had existed.

 

Sacred Heart or substitute religion


 


 

The tragedy is that a suspect private-revelation package spread in a Church that already possessed a majestic, magisterially promoted devotion centered on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In Haurietis Aquas, Pius XII described devotion to the Sacred Heart as a priceless gift, a powerful means of repaying the divine Lord through love and reparation, and even asked what devotion could surpass it for the needs of the Church and the world.

 

He tied it explicitly to adoration, thanksgiving, expiation, the Eucharist, the Cross, and the love of Christ crucified.

 

That older devotion had weight, objectivity, and theological depth. It was not a spiritual marketing campaign built around a twentieth-century diary. It did not need to elbow its way into Easter Week with a new name. Traditional Catholic critics have therefore argued for years that the Faustina devotion functions as an imitation or displacement of the Sacred Heart, because it takes themes already present in the Church’s older devotion to Christ’s Heart and repackages them in a thinner, more emotional, and more postconciliar register.

 

Catholic Candle says plainly that Catholics should avoid the false Divine Mercy devotion and cling instead to the Sacred Heart, while Fr. Benedict Hughes for CMRI argued that another devotion centered entirely on mercy would naturally tend to draw attention away from the universally recognized devotion already promoted by the Church.

 

That criticism lands because the contrast is obvious. The Sacred Heart language is reparation, expiation, adoration, and love answering love. The Faustina cult, as commonly promoted, is trust, pardon, ocean of graces, clean slate, complete forgiveness, extraordinary grace, second baptism. One school forms penitents. The other easily forms spiritual consumers.

 

Mercy without enough fear, sorrow, or reparation

 

To be fair, the Vatican’s 2002 indulgence decree for Divine Mercy Sunday does include the usual Catholic conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion, prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff, complete detachment from affection for sin, and even language about supernatural sorrow and a firm resolution not to sin again. So it would be inaccurate to say that every official text attached to the observance excludes repentance. It does not.

 

But that is only half the story. The official Divine Mercy promotional material simultaneously pushes Faustina’s promise that one who goes to confession and Communion on that day receives “complete forgiveness of sins and punishment,” and it says that, for these “extraordinary graces,” the “only condition” is worthy Communion on Divine Mercy Sunday after a good confession and trust in mercy.

 

Another official Faustina site goes even further and calls this grace greater than a plenary indulgence and likens it to a “second baptism.” That is exactly why traditional Catholics recoil.

 

Even when defenders try to explain it carefully, the devotional culture built around these promises trains the average person to think in terms of shortcut, reset, and spiritual wipe-clean language rather than in the harder Catholic teaching of conversion, satisfaction, amendment, and reparation.

 

This is also why the devotion fits the modern church so comfortably. Official SSPX commentary on mercy has warned that a false mercy detached from justice turns Christianity into sentimental humanitarianism and a consolation industry, one that goes soft on sin and hard on doctrinal clarity.

 

Another SSPX liturgical piece says the Church never separates mercy from justice. That is exactly the problem here. The Faustina package, especially in the hands of modern pastors, too easily becomes mercy as permanent amnesty. It slides naturally toward the postconciliar refusal to preach judgment with any edge.

 

The image problem is not trivial

 

Traditional critics are also right to object to the image itself. The Gospel for this Sunday centers on the risen Christ showing Thomas His hands and His side. Yet critics have long noted that the original Kazimirowski image associated with Faustina either omits or so minimizes the wounds that the result is visually jarring.

 





The CMRI article makes that objection directly, and the official Faustina site confirms that the first image was the 1934 Kazimirowski painting done under her supervision. Whatever one thinks of later softened reproductions, the broader criticism is sound: the iconography of this cult does not carry the same doctrinal density as the older imagery of the Sacred Heart, where the lance wound, the Heart itself, and the price of reparation are unmistakable.

 

And that is not an aesthetic quibble. Images teach. The Sacred Heart teaches love through sacrifice, mercy through atonement, tenderness through a wound. The Divine Mercy image, by contrast, is often received as a kind of soft-focus postwar consolation print. It is Christ without enough blood, without enough thorns, without enough judgment, and, in the most criticized versions, without even clearly displayed wounds in the very octave where the Church reads about Thomas touching them.

 

The deeper issue

 

The Divine Mercy devotion is dangerous because it harmonizes almost too perfectly with the conciliar religion’s governing instinct. Severity is embarrassing. Judgment is softened. Reparation fades. The Sacred Heart recedes. Low Sunday is renamed. The old Catholic balance between mercy and justice survives on paper, but in practice the emotional accent shifts hard toward reassurance.

 

That is why the devotion spread so explosively after Vatican II. It baptized the new orientation.

 

So yes, the whole thing is tragic. Low Sunday did not need rescuing by a new cult. Easter did not need a devotional add-on to become attractive. The Church already had the Sacred Heart, already had the octave, already had the Gospel of Thomas, already had confession, already had indulgences, already had the language of sin, contrition, satisfaction, reparation, and grace.

 

What the faithful needed was deeper roots in those realities, not a replacement package that the Holy Office once suppressed and that the postconciliar system later elevated into a global phenomenon.https://bigmodernism.substack.com/p/low-sunday-stolen

 

 


Image shows Sts Valerian and Tibertius with Valerian' spouse, St Cecilia, Martyrs 
https://sensusfidelium.com/the-liturgical-year-dom-prosper-gueranger/april/april-14-sts-tiburtius-valerian-and-maximus-martyrs/



Sts Valerian, Tibertius, Maximus and Cecilia, Martyrs, please pray for the Church