Expert: Fr. Michael - 1/22/2007

Question
I would appreciate your views on praying the luminous mysteries of the rosary as well as on the divine mercy chaplet. Also,is pleading the blood of Jesus catholic? Thanks.

Answer
1) The so-called "Luminous" Mysteries are some kind of Modernistic corruption of the Most Holy Rosary.  There are 150 Aves, not 200, specifically because the Rosary is meant to reflect, in a simplified way, the Divine Office and its 150 Psalms, which is said daily by the clergy and devout laypeople.

2) A local devotion under this title of Divine Mercy, which is associated with one Sr. Faustina and a chaplet of the Divine Mercy, was approved by the Ordinary of Vilnius, Poland, in 1936 and from there spread rapidly, especially after World War II in the United States.

       It appears that Sr. Faustina could not write, except for a few lines phonetically.  Most of her "diary" was concocted by her sisters after her death.  Because of the incongruities of the dairy (different handwriting,
different use of terms), the devotion was suppressed, and the book of her diary was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum [Index of Forbidden Books].  This decision was upheld by Pope John XXIII in 1958/59.

       In early 1978, a Polish cardinal petitioned the Vatican to remove the suppression of the devotion, which was being practiced without sanction in his diocese, and the Vatican replied in the negative, confirming the
suppression.  By this time the original devotion had been illegally replaced by an oecumenized version framed in New Order terminology -- with substantially changed prayers to promote non-Catholic beliefs and the heresy of universal
salvation.  Later in 1978 a Polish pope was elected, and the now modernized version, twice condemned, was now entered onto the Novus Ordo liturgical calendar on the Octave of Easter.

       The Octave Day of a feast, particularly of the greatest feast, Easter, is a significant day in itself.  The Divine Mercy cult is thus in contravention of the focus of the Catholic liturgy for that day, which is on the Resurrection of Our Lord and faith in His Divinity.  As Dom
Gueranger, the noted Benedictine liturgical scholar, commented in his fifteen-volume Liturgical Year:  "Such is the solemnity of this Sunday that not only is it of greater double rite, but no feast, however great, can ever be kept upon it."  That is the Roman Catholic attitude, which the New Order spurned.

       Not surprisingly, the cult in post-Conciliar times is increasing in its association with another cult, that is, the cult of "Catholic" Charismaticism.  This Charismatic Movement is far from true Catholicism, but is a derivative of the Protestant heresy, based on the erroneous notion that emotional experience always accompanies the conferral of grace, whereas the Catholic doctrine is that the only sensible indication of the conferral of grace is the Sacrament itself.  Perhaps the cult's association with New Age ideas is why it has become lionized in recent years, whereas popes up to JPII have condemned it.

       Is it any wonder that the New Order pushes this corrupted devotion over the traditional devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus?  The devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is a much more ancient devotion, having grown in the early Middle Ages through the efforts of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a Doctor of the Church, and St. Gertrude.   However, it was in the latter half of the seventeenth century that news of three private revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alocoque concerning the Sacred Heart swept the Catholic world and shortly led to the establishment of a feast on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi
(the Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost).

       The Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was extended to the Universal Church by Pope Pius IX in 1856, became a feast of atonement for human ingratitude toward God in spite of the supreme sacrifice of Calvary.  
The theme for the new Mass and the Divine Office was taken from the words of Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary:  "Behold the Heart which has loved men so greatly, but which has been given so little love in return."

       Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus has been richly indulgenced by the Church, and a Litany of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of only five approved for public recitation.  Given the apparent New Order's
corruption of the original devotion to the divine mercy and the pushing of this Charismatic novelty condemned by two popes, traditional Catholics will continue to stand with the more ancient and universally-approved devotion to the
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and reject this New Order novelty.

3) We have not heard of this.