IS 'DIVINE MERCY' DIVINE? IS THE SSPX DISOBEDIENT?

 

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So today is 'Divine Mercy Sunday', when millions of Catholics the world over venerate the slightly sinister, literally heartless image instituted by the Polish Pope John-Paul II in commemoration of a Polish nun, Sr Faustina Kowalski, who claimed to enjoy a relationship with Jesus Christ more intimate than anyone else's, ever. Including, that is, His relationship with His Mother and Co-Redemptrix, Mary. 

It is truly astonishing that reportage on this blog of the ban by the Holy Office under Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani (leading defender of Catholic Tradition at Vatican II), of the 'Divine Mercy' devotion, has elicited condemnation of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) as 'schismatic' - from traditional Catholics! What has the SSPX to do with the price of fish, as it were? Talk about out of left field ... The antagonism exhibited suggests that the article was over target. 

And that target was the conciliar, Novus Ordo, Synodal religion for which the charismatic Pope John Paul II, ardent promoter of all things Polish/Catholic - especially Sr Faustina - is chief poster boy. 'Divine Mercy' enthusiasts claim that their devotion does not detract from that of the Sacred Heart - but strange to say, the pre-Vatican II image of the Sacred Heart has been 'disappeared' from conciliar churches and replaced overall by the effeminate 'Divine Mercy'. 

 Providentially, just yesterday Robert Morrison, writing for The Remnant Newspaper,  gave grounds to refute that hoary old canard of 'schism' in regard to the Society and its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Very relevant is Morrison's comment that "those who oppose the archbishop are often complicit in the evils that do far worse harm throughout the Church ... the silence of those who should denounce the evils plaguing the Church is arguably far more culpable than the disobedience of Archbishop Lefebvre."

Certainly traditional, Latin Massgoing Catholics should find enough in these evils to absorb their attention and prayers, rather than fritter their time on accusations of 'schism' levelled at the SSPX, its holy priests and its supporters whose only other option for Mass is the Novus Ordo . +Lefebvre's personal raison d'etre and his sole reason for consecrating bishops in defiance of Modernist Rome was the preservation of the priesthood and the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and the traditional movement arguably owes its very existence now to the archbishop and his Society. 

Would you call this prayer 'schismatic'?

From 'The Remnant Newspaper':  

 

Is the Society of St. Pius X truly disobedient? This analysis explores the troubling SSPX paradox: widespread dissent in the Church is ignored, while fidelity to tradition is condemned. From liturgical abuse to doctrinal confusion, the real crisis of obedience may not be where you’ve been told to look.

To begin with, it is useful to consider the nature of the SSPX’s disobedience. As we can see from Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s response to a 1976 interview question about whether he was heading towards schism, he believed that he was remaining obedient to what the Church had always taught while the innovators were the ones who were truly disobedient or schismatic:

“When someone says to me, ‘You are going to cause a schism,’ I answer that it is not I who am causing a schism; I am remaining in a completely traditional line. So I remain united to the Church of two thousand years, and I am doing nothing other than what has been done for two thousand years, than what I was congratulated for doing, for the same thing, I am condemned! . . .

 

What is schism? It is a break, a break with the Church. But a break with the Church can also be a break with the Church of the past. If someone breaks with the Church of two thousand years, he is in schism.”

 

One does not necessarily need to agree with the substance of Archbishop Lefebvre’s positions to be able to conclude that his disobedience to Rome was sincerely motivated by a desire to remain faithful to the immutable Catholic Faith. He understood that the Faith could develop over time, consistent with the teaching of Vatican I and St. Vincent of Lerins, but he refused to go along with changes that had already been condemned by the Catholic Church through the centuries.

 

An essay from the September 1988 issue of Courier de Rome (the French version of the Italian SiSiNoNo) highlighted some of the tensions he saw between what the Church had always taught and the impermissible innovations that proliferated after Vatican II:

“It seems that since Vatican II, a Catholic is constantly compelled, by necessity, to have to choose between Truth and ‘obedience,’ or in other words, between being a heretic or a schismatic. Thus, to take a few examples, he has to choose between St. Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi, which condemns modernism as ‘a collection of all heresies,’ and the present openly modernist ecclesiastical orientation, which, through the voice of the Holy See, never ceases to laud modernism and modernists and to disparage St. Pius X. . .

 

He has to choose between the Catholic dogma ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’ and the present ecclesiastical orientation, which sees in non-Christian religions ‘channels to God’ and declares that even polytheist religions ‘are also venerable’!”

 

The essay presented several other examples of the ways in which Catholic teaching differs from what we hear from Rome, but the excerpt above allows us to understand the nature of Archbishop Lefebvre’s concerns. He was disobedient only to the extent that he believed was necessary to resist changes that he considered to be anti-Catholic.

Disobedience is tolerated—even celebrated—so long as it does not defend Catholic tradition. Tweet this quote

This, however, does not present the full picture of disobedience in the Catholic Church. Those who judge Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX cannot do so with any semblance of justice or charity if they turn a blind eye to the widespread manifestations of disobedience that are symptoms of the evils against which the archbishop fought.

 

This is the case not only because Archbishop Lefebvre believed his actions were necessitated by the disobedience to Catholic teaching on the part of his persecutors but also because those who oppose the archbishop are often complicit in the evils that do far worse harm throughout the Church.

 

In many cases, the silence of those who should denounce the evils plaguing the Church is arguably far more culpable than the disobedience of Archbishop Lefebvre. As such, we must consider a few of the many manifestations of disobedience throughout the Church today.

 

Liturgical Disobedience. As an initial matter, it must be said that the Novus Ordo Mass itself was promulgated without adhering to some of the most basic requirements of Vatican II’s constitution on sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, such as:

• “Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”
• “[T]here must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.”

 

Any casual observer of both the Traditional Latin Mass and even an exceptionally pious Novus Ordo Mass in the vernacular knows that these two requirements were ignored. Beyond that, it has been the case for sixty years now that Rome does almost nothing to curb the widespread abuses that regularly take place at Novus Ordo Masses. Sacrilege and utter disrespect for the Blessed Sacrament are far more common in most dioceses than the Traditional Latin Mass.

If breaking with the past is not schism, then what is? Tweet this quote

 Moral Disobedience. It did not take long after the Council to manifest one of the most profound and widespread instances of moral disobedience in the history of the Catholic Church: the fact that the majority of Catholics reject Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae. This public, uncorrected disobedience sent the message throughout the Church and to the entire world that Catholics did not actually need to follow the Church’s moral teaching. This normalized the cafeteria Catholicism that we see today.

 

Doctrinal Disobedience. Many opponents of Archbishop Lefebvre relentlessly support Vatican II, often on the grounds that its ambiguous documents do not actually contain errors. Such defense of Vatican II’s documents should in no way overcome the need to condemn the errors that have been spread in the name of Vatican II — indeed, those who insist that we must trust the Council’s documents would seem to have an even greater obligation to condemn those errors.

 

For instance, those who tell us that the decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, did not itself promote false ecumenism should be the most vocal opponents of false ecumenism. Likewise, those who defend the Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, would seem to have a pressing obligation to oppose the Synod on Synodality, which was built on the passages of Lumen Gentium.

 

However, with few exceptions, those who insist that we must believe Vatican II do nothing to oppose those destructive doctrinal errors that have been justified in the name of the Council.

 

Disobedience to the Council. Conversely, there were many orthodox passages in the Council documents that are now effectively rejected by large portions of the hierarchy. For example, this passage from Lumen Gentium is routinely contradicted by bishops:

“They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion.

 

He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a ‘bodily’ manner and not ’in his heart.’ All the Church’s children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word, and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.” (Lumen Gentium, 14)

 

This passage is contradicted not only by false ecumenism but also by documents such as Amoris Laetitia and Fiducia Supplicans.

A ‘different Church’ has emerged—one that welcomes everyone except those who refuse to abandon tradition. Tweet this quote

Here is another passage that thoroughly refutes the false ecumenism promoted by Rome for the past sixty years:

“Baptism therefore establishes a sacramental bond of unity which links all who have been reborn by it. But of itself, Baptism is only a beginning, an inauguration wholly directed toward the fullness of life in Christ. Baptism, therefore, envisages a complete profession of faith, complete incorporation in the system of salvation such as Christ willed it to be, and finally complete ingrafting in eucharistic communion.” (Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, 22)

This passage makes it clear that we must help non-Catholics find and accept the unadulterated Catholic Faith; but Rome has spent the past sixty years assuring Protestants that God loves them as they are, without any real need to convert.

 

The Council documents also included a statement which condemns the doctrinal evolution so prevalent for the past sixty years:

“Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. . . But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. 

 

This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit,

... which explains why the Holy Office banned the 'Divine Mercy' devotion.

 

... it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.” (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, 10)

 

The latter portion of this statement is quite similar to what Archbishop Lefebvre frequently said to defend his adherence to what the Church had always taught. Passages such as this were included in the Council documents at the insistence of the conservative Council Fathers and theologians to counterbalance provisions that favored the opposing (liberal) orientations. After the Council, though, the conservative passages were ignored while the most liberal meanings of the ambiguous passages were advanced.

Only one group of the baptized is chided and asked to remain outside of the Synodal tent inspired by Congar and erected by Francis: Traditional Catholics. Tweet this quote

 Papal Disobedience to Divine Law. Finally, it is necessary to consider papal disobedience to Divine Law, in matters large and small. While we never see efforts from the post-Vatican II popes to actually define something heretical, there has been no shortage of documents and statements from the popes promoting ideas that are opposed to infallible teaching.

 

To take one obvious example, Francis said that “all religions are paths to God” in his September 13, 2024 interreligious meeting with young people. This is an obvious heresy, which has been condemned by the Catholic Church in various ways for centuries.

 

All of this leads to a confusing picture of the state of the Church. It is reasonable for Catholics to want to choose a path that essentially amounts to doing their best to remain faithful to the true Faith while ignoring all of the unholy distractions to the extent possible. And, for those who choose this path, the prospect of being labeled a schismatic is truly frightening, even with the assurances from men like Bishop Schneider that such a label would not truly fit the SSPX.

 

Even so, God has not left us with a situation in which we truly cannot make any sense out of the chaos around us. We do not have to believe in the messages of Fatima to appreciate the implications of the statement that Eugene Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pius XII) made in 1931 based on the Third Secret of Fatima:

“I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy . . .  I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the true Faith of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.

 

A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted.

For example, the statement of Pope Leo that "no one possesses the entire truth".

She will be tempted to believe that man has become God.”

 

If he [+Pacelli] were to have lived through the situation in which he described — which resembles our situation today — he presumably would have resisted all of these horrors and would have been condemned as disobedient and schismatic for doing so.

If order were restored tomorrow, today’s ‘rebels’ might be revealed as the Church’s most faithful sons. Tweet this quote

Years after he died, one of the men whose ideas Pius XII had condemned in his 1950 encyclical, Humani Generis, had this to say about Vatican II:

“By the frankness and openness of its debates, the Council has put an end to what may be described as the inflexibility of the system. We take ‘system’ to mean a coherent set of codified teachings, casuistically specified rules of procedure, a detailed and very hierarchical organization, means of control and surveillance, rubrics regulating worship — all this is the legacy of scholasticism, the Counter-Reformation, and the Catholic Restoration of the nineteenth century, subjected to an effective Roman discipline.

 

It will be recalled that Pius XII is supposed to have said: ‘I will be the last Pope to keep all this going.’” (pp. 51-52)

These are the words of Yves Congar from his book condemning Archbishop Lefebvre, Challenge to the Church: The Case of Archbishop Lefebvre. It is almost as though Congar was celebrating the same horrors that Pius XII had prophetically described in 1931. And, for those who may still need an even clearer picture of the situation, God permitted Francis to open the Synod on Synodality with an address that included this homage to Congar:

“Dear brothers and sisters, may this Synod be a true season of the Spirit!  For we need the Spirit, the ever-new breath of God, who sets us free from every form of self-absorption, revives what is moribund, loosens shackles, and spreads joy.  The Holy Spirit guides us where God wants us to be, not to where our own ideas and personal tastes would lead us.  Father Congar, of blessed memory, once said: ‘There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church’ (True and False Reform in the Church). 

 

That is the challenge.  For a ‘different Church,’ a Church open to the newness that God wants to suggest, let us with greater fervour and frequency invoke the Holy Spirit and humbly listen to him, journeying together as he, the source of communion and mission, desires: with docility and courage.”

 

Francis succeeded in creating the different Church, the Synodal Church, which persists today. All the baptized, including Protestants, form this new Synodal Church and are welcomed and celebrated as they are. Only one group of the baptized is chided and asked to remain outside of the Synodal tent inspired by Congar and erected by Francis: Traditional Catholics.

So if we are going to question the disobedience of Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX he founded, we need to consider this bigger picture of disobedience within the Church. The SSPX stands out both for its willingness to be declared disobedient in defense of tradition as well as its public stance against the diabolical disobedience that pervades the entire Church, from the smallest diocese to the Vatican.

 

If God were to return order to the Church tomorrow, then the SSPX would be deemed obedient while the overwhelming majority of those who condemn the Church would be recognized as disobedient. Knowing this, why would we hesitate to side with the SSPX today rather than stand with those destroying the Church? Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!https://www.remnantnewspaper.com/sspx-paradox-rome-disobedience-tradition/

 

'DIVINE MERCY' IS ACTUALLY CULTISH HUMAN ERROR

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Are all the Divine Mercy Devotion devotees out there suffering from cognitive dissonance? Or do they not know their Catholic faith? Or that 'Divine Mercy' was condemned by two popes? Pius XII put it on the Index of Prohibited Books and even the Modernist John XXIII (twice), speaking through the Holy Office which safeguards the purity of the faith, declared that “There is no evidence of the supernatural origin of these revelations." 

There was no such evidence during their pontificate and there was none under John Paul II, either - unless you count the fol-de-rol about 'faulty translations' which attempts to excuse Sr Faustina's flights of fancy. 

A reader of this blog confesses she still has a framed pic on her wall of John Paul II, who canonised his fellow Pole, Sr Faustina, and instituted Divine Mercy Sunday. So infatuated was she with JPII that she led the Divine Mercy service for her Novus Ordo (N O) parish. The PP stayed away, but lent his tape player and Divine Mercy poster, meaning his approval. She credits her subsequent wake-up call to a conversion to the traditional Latin Mass.   

Our reader fell out of love with John Paul II at Assisi when he kissed the Q'ran. Or maybe it was the way he promoted the principles of the French revolution. Or because he excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, basically for preaching the Gospel Christ preached rather than the one imposed by most of his peers at and after Vatican II. Or because JP II gave permission to bishops to administer Communion in the hand, thereby desecrating the Holy Eucharist. 

As a fruit of the Vatican II N O, 'Divine Mercy' betrays not a few of its fatal flaws. In particular, pride, which places priest and people in the public eye by celebrating Mass versus populum instead of ad orientem (towards the East, or Christ) and admits female 'ministers' to the sanctuary but fails to admit of our need to make reparation for sin. But Divine Mercy betrays its conciliar origins above all in its promotion of mercy at the expense of justice. 

A cultish devotion, born of foolish presumption, Divine Mercy militates against the only solution to the horrors of the 21st century - the restoration of the social reign of Our Sovereign and King, Jesus Christ.

Monsignor Patrick Perez RIP, promoter of Our Lady of Fatima, with Fr Gruner

Transcribed by the website Tradition in Action from a sermon by Monsignor Patrick Perez:

 

The Divine Mercy devotion was re-launched by John Paul II. During his long pontificate he established a feast day in honor of this devotion. During his homily at the canonization of Sr. Faustina on April 30, 2000, he declared that the Second Sunday of Easter would henceforth be called Divine Mercy Sunday.

Consequently, every year on the Sunday following Easter, which is called Low Sunday - in Latin it is called Dominica in Albis, Sunday in White - I am asked this question, “Father, why don't we celebrate the Divine Mercy Sunday?”

Now, the easy answer would be, “We don't do it because it's not in the traditional calendar.” But, then, the feast of Padre Pio also is not in the traditional calendar, but we celebrate it. We do it as prescribed in the Common of the Missal, which allows us to honor recently canonized saints. So, the question returns: Why don’t we celebrate the Divine Mercy Sunday?

I have analyzed the prayers of the Divine Mercy devotion and found nothing wrong with them. But there is something wrong with what surrounds this new devotion.

 

Cultish - and creepy

 

Let me acknowledge that there are persons who have received graces from doing the Divine Mercy devotion. That is not an indication that the devotion itself is necessarily from Heaven.

 

Remember God always answers our prayers. You always receive some grace by your prayers. For example, let’s imagine you made a pilgrimage to visit the burial place of a saint. You made the pilgrimage and thought you were kneeling at the correct grave venerating that saint. In fact, however, he was not buried in that cemetery, but in a church nearby. Nonetheless, God gives you graces because of your effort and your desire to please Him and make reparation for your sins.

You made that pilgrimage; you will not leave it without grace. God does not take a position like, “Well, you're at the wrong grave. Sorry, you travelled 6,000 miles for nothing and now you receive nothing.” No, God will always answer your prayers. So, please, remember when you hear people say, “Well, I have received graces from this devotion.”

 

This in itself is not an indication that the devotion is from Heaven. Certainly the graces are always from Heaven. But the devotion may not be.

Condemnations of this devotion

What is wrong with the Divine Mercy devotion?

 

 

'I demand' is hardly characteristic of Jesus Christ, meek and humble of heart

 

First, when this devotion fell under the attention of Pius XII, he was concerned not with the prayers of the devotion, but with the circumstances of the so-called apparitions to Sr. Faustina and their content. That is, he was concerned with what Our Lord supposedly told Sr. Faustina and what he told her to make public.

 

Pius XII, then, placed this devotion, including the apparitions and the writings of Sr. Faustina on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books). That list no longer exists, since it was formally abolished on June 14, 1966, by Paul VI. On the one hand, it is unfortunate that it no longer exists.

 

But, on the other hand, if that list were to exist today it would be so vast that it would fill this room. Practically everything that is written today has something objectionable to the Catholic Faith.

 

JPII supported the thrice-condemned devotion

 

So, Pius XII put the writings of Sr. Faustina on the Index of Prohibited Books. That meant that he considered that their content would lead Catholics astray or in the wrong direction.

Next, came other prohibitions made by Pope John XXIII. Twice in his pontificate, the Holy Office issued condemnations of the Divine Mercy writings.

Today the Holy Office is called Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. But before it was called the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Its name has changed over several years.

This Office - placed under the direct control of the Pope - is responsible for maintaining the purity of the doctrine and, therefore, it watches over the dissemination of different documents in the Church. If the Pope wants to correct the faithful on a particular topic, he usually does this through the Holy Office. So, the proclamations, declarations and documents issued by the Holy Office may be seen as coming from the Pope himself.

Not once, but twice under Pope John XXIII, this particular devotion was condemned through the Holy Office. The first condemnation was in a plenary meeting held on November 19, 1958. The declaration from the Holy Office issued these three statements about this devotion:

1. There is no evidence of the supernatural origin of these revelations. This means that the members of the Holy Office examined the content and decided that there was nothing there to indicate the apparitions were supernatural. In an authentic apparition - Our Lady of Lourdes or Our Lady of Fatima, for example - you can look at the content and affirm it can not be definitively said they are of divine origin, but there is enough evidence to say that it is possibly so. On the other hand, in the Divine Mercy apparitions, they said definitively that there is no evidence whatsoever that they are supernatural. This translates, “We do not think that these apparitions come from God.”

2. No feast of Divine Mercy should be instituted. Why? Because if it is based on apparitions that are not clearly coming from God, then it would be rash and temerarious to institute a feast in the Church based on something that is a false apparition.

 

3. It is forbidden to disseminate writings propagating this devotion under the form received by Sr. Faustina, as well as the image typical of it. So, it was forbidden to even publish the image of Our Lord as Divine Mercy.

 

Now, you have all seen this image (below), even if in passing, and you would know and recognize it. It shows a strange picture of Jesus that makes me uneasy. I cannot really tell you why. I do not like it. I don't like the face, I don't like the gesture, I don't like the posture, I don't like anything. This was my first impression of this image. I don't want it around because it is, for lack of a better term, creepy to me when I look at it.

The image shows multicolored rays, I think they are red, white and blue, coming from His chest region - no heart, just these rays. You have all seen this. Well, that was the image that was forbidden to be published or spread.

On March 6, 1959, the Holy Office issued a second decree on the order of Pope John XXIII. It forbade, once again, spreading the images of Divine Mercy and the writings of Sr. Faustina propagating this devotion. It also stated that it was up to the bishops to decide how they were going to remove the images that had already been displayed for public honor.

I do not need to say much more about these declarations. Two Popes strongly warned the faithful of a danger in this devotion. Pius XII put it on the Index; John XXIII issued two condemnations through the Holy Office about the spiritual danger this devotion presented to the faithful. Not much more needs to be said on that.

Principal error: It presents an unconditional mercy

 

Let me present you with a parallel thought.

 

 A majestic Jesus with the halo of divinity and a well-defined Sacred Heart gives a clear blessing

 

Consider the true image of Christ Our Savior. Probably the most symbolically rich and accurate representation of Him, besides the Crucifix, is the image of the Sacred Heart, because the image of Our Lord with the Sacred Heart summarizes the whole theology of Redemption.

They pierced His Hands, His Feet and His Sacred Heart; the crown of thorns encircles the Heart, which burns with love for man. This was the price He paid, the sacrifice He made for our redemption. He offered Himself because of His burning love for us despite the fact we are ungrateful creatures who rebelled against our Creator. Think about it. He created us and then we nailed Him to a cross even though He was God and completely innocent of any guilt. So, the Sacred Heart encapsulates all this.

In the images of the Sacred Heart, He points to this symbolic font of love and mercy for us. The devotions to the Sacred Heart always suppose reparation for our sins. We are sinners, we must make reparation. Despite the promises from Our Lord and the fact that He paid an infinite price for our Redemption, we must make reparation. We should always do penance for our sins and make various kinds of reparation.

 

 

Now, consider the image of Our Lord representing the Divine Mercy. It is an imitation of the Sacred Heart without the heart. When you pay attention, you notice that in the image there is no heart. There are simply rays coming out of a point above His waist. This symbolizes the error of the Divine Mercy devotion. It preaches that we can expect an unconditional mercy with no price to be paid whatsoever, with no obligations whatsoever. This is not the message of Christ.

Christ is merciful. Time and time again, His mercy pardons our repeated sins in the Sacrament of Penance, always taking us back no matter how bad our sins are. And what happens in the Sacrament of Penance? The very name of the Sacrament tells us exactly what happens: to be effective the Sacrament supposes penance. Not only are you there at the Sacrament recognizing your full submission to the Church and your dependence on the Sacraments for forgiveness, but you walk out of the confessional with an imposed penance.

You are also often reminded from this pulpit that you must not only fulfill that penance, but you must continually do penance, your own penance. You don't just say a decade of the Rosary and say, “Well, I've done my penance. Now, I can go merrily on my way.” You must always have the spirit of penance for your past sins; you must live with it.

The central error of the Divine Mercy is that it promises lots of spiritual rewards with no requirement of penance, no mention of reparation, no mention of any condition.

 

 

In 1986, with due permission of John Paul II, a Buddha (top photo) was placed above the tabernacle in the church of St Peter in Assisi

 

Unfortunately, this corresponds very much with what Pope John Paul II wrote in the Encyclical Dives in misericordia. I do not recommend reading it to any of you, except the most prepared, because it has many misleading things. It re-echoes this mercy with no price, gifts from heaven with no requirements, God's mercy with no mention of penance or reparation for sin whatsoever.

Anticipating that encyclical Pope John Paul II already in 1978, the very first year of his pontificate, set in motion the canonization of Sr. Faustina and the institution of a Divine Mercy Sunday feast. As I said before, both Sr. Faustina’s writings and the very idea of having a Divine Mercy feast day had been prohibited and condemned by two previous Popes.

Presumption in Sr. Faustina’s writings

The writings of the Polish Sr. Faustina herself, published in English in 2007, pose cause for concern. The work has 640 pages and transcribes frequent supposed apparitions and messages from Our Lord.

 

A new "save-yourself-without-effort" devotion

 

This long thread of statements supposedly from Our Lord to Sr. Faustina has some things that would make a correct-thinking Catholic very uneasy, to say the least. I will exemplify by taking a few quotes from her writings.

On October 2, 1936, she states that the “Lord Jesus” appeared to her and said, “Now, I know that it is not for the graces or gifts that you love Me, but because My Will is dearer to you than life. That is why I am uniting Myself with you so intimately as with no other creature.” (Divine Mercy in My Soul, The Diary of Sr. Faustina, Stockbridge, MA: Marian Press, 1987, p. 288).

How can we believe that Our Lord has united Himself more intimately with Sr. Faustina than with the Blessed Virgin Mary? At first, we might read this and think, “Oh, that's beautiful.“ But later it may hit you, “Wait a minute, Our Lord united Himself more intimately with Sr. Faustina than with any other creature? Our Lady was the Immaculate Conception, but she was also His creature, she was created by Him as the rest of us were, albeit with the greatest exalted position free from original sin from the very beginning.

 

And now are we expected to believe that Our Lord told Sr. Faustina that He is more united to her than anybody else, even the Blessed Virgin Mary, and certainly more than all the other Saints? This affirmation smacks of pride in itself, let alone the assertion that it came from Heaven.

This type of presumption is present in many other cases.

Our Lord supposedly addressed Sr. Faustina on May 23, 1937, with these words: “Beloved pearl of My Heart.” What bothers me about this is that it is pure saccharine. Look how Our Lady speaks to Sr. Lucia or to St. Bernadette. It is not as “beloved pearl of My Heart.” It is impossible to imagine Our Lord stooping to saccharine language. Our Lord is Christ the King, Creator of the universe, and ruler of all that is. He does not say things like “beloved pearl of My Heart.”

 

Let me continue. Then, He said: “I see your love so pure; purer than that of the angels, and all the more so because you keep fighting. For your sake, I bless the world.” (ibid., p. 400) First of all, except for the Blessed Virgin Mary, we are not free from original sin and, therefore, we are not capable of a love purer than the angels.

As for blessing the world, that might be fine. If we had one real saint in the world, then the Lord will give us blessings for that one real saint. This is not my objection.

 

My objection is that this revelation was in 1937; the world was on the verge of World War II, which Sr. Lucy had already been forewarned of by Our Lady at Fatima: if Russia is not consecrated, and man does not convert, then this big disaster will befall mankind for their evil ways and their sins.

 

Nazi soldiers invaded Poland after Sr. Faustina announced a blessed world - above, they are marching on Warsaw

At that moment, we were about to see that disaster descend from Heaven, yet Our Lord tells Sr. Faustina, “For your sake, I am going to bless the world.” Was World War II a blessing on the world? Since her native Poland did not go unscathed by the German invasion, it does not seem likely that He actually blessed the world.

 

Another example: Sr. Faustina claimed that Our Lord told her that she was exempt from judgment, every judgment - particular judgment and the general judgment. 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.” (ibid., p. 168)

Now, nobody but the Blessed Virgin, as far as I know, is free from the general and particular judgment. St. Thomas Aquinas, according to the pious story, had to genuflect in Purgatory before going to Heaven. I don’t know if this is fact, but it is a lesson for us that nobody is exempt from any kind of judgment.

And add to these examples the preposterous affirmation that the Host jumped out of the Tabernacle three times and placed itself in her hands, so that she had to open up the Tabernacle and place it back herself: “And the host came out of the Tabernacle and came to rest in my hands and I, with joy, placed it back in the Tabernacle. This was repeated a second time, and I did the same thing. Despite this, it happened a third time.” (ibid., p. 23)

 

It makes it sound like a hamster that has gotten out of its cage. “Oh, no, here it is again. I have to go put this back now.”

How many times has the Church declared that the hands of a priest are consecrated to handle the Sacred Species, and what kind of lesson would you be giving to the world by this example of the Host leaping into her hands so that she had to place it back in the Tabernacle herself?

Our Lord does not contradict His Church by word or by gesture. And this would be a little bit by both. She related what happened, but the gesture itself would be Our Lord contradicting the Real Presence and everything it represents.

A lack of Catholic spirit

In short, the whole Divine Mercy devotion does not represent a Catholic spirit. The Catholic spirit is one of making constant reparation in penance for our sins, of praying for the graces of God, for the mercy of God in this life.

Let me close by saying that it is the background of this devotion that is questionable. You do not just institute a particular devotion with its own feast day based on something that has been condemned for very good reasons in the recent past.

When you look at the prayers of the Divine Mercy devotions, they are perfectly orthodox. There is nothing heretical or presumptuous in these prayers. But just remember the reason why it has been condemned and why we do not recognize Divine Mercy Sunday is because of its past, not because of the content of the prayers.

It is very important to know this, because it is one of many things that were brought back in modern times that were condemned in the past. And this is not a case of the Church changing her mind. It is a case of a representative of the Church doing something he should not be doing.  

https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/f072_DivMercy.htm

 

 

Our Lady of Fatima, please pray for the Church