I tried to follow the Divine Mercy devotion, and even read Faustina’s entire diary, but I just can’t do it anymore. I am at the point where I can conclude with a good degree of certainty that the Divine Mercy devotions are just too obviously a Modernist delusion designed to lead people away from traditional Catholicism.
And significantly, this is not just a question of personal preference and optional devotional practices. It is also clear that Divine Mercy devotions tend to mollify any desire faithful Catholics may have had to go into the world to make converts and defend Christ’s kingship in the secular world.
This may sound odd—but hear me out. If you wanted to lure faithful Catholics away from tradition and encourage them to buy into a new paradigm, a new modernist-based religion that conforms to modern cultural values and polite society, how would you do it?
Well, one way to do it is to replace those aspects of traditional Catholicism that the faithful are most devoted to, and rather than suppress those devotions, simply offer what the world would consider a more attractive and suitable replacement compatible with modernist ideas—a substitute that will not raise too many red flags while appealing to the senses and desire for cheap grace.
Enter The Divine Mercy devotions: a new saint from the Pope’s homeland (Poland), a new image to replace the Sacred Heart image (redirect away from Christ’s passion and suffering), a new chaplet to replace the Rosary (redirect away from Mary), and “new” pseudo-baptism (redirect away from penance, indulgences, and judgment).
Sounds like just another day at the Modernist re-education camp, except millions have bought into it, many of whom are solid traditional Catholics, with almost a strange cult-like force that adds nothing more than further suspicion.
The Modernist View of Mercy
Naturally, as someone who never misses an opportunity to teach the world that offending God doesn’t really matter, “Pope” Francis Bergoglio already has said much on mercy. He even instituted a “year of mercy” in 2015-2016. A recent article from the National Catholic Register provides numerous quotations over the years Francis offered about mercy.
Just read the first quotation in the article I linked to above. Bergoglio says:
“It is not easy to entrust oneself to God’s mercy, because it is an abyss beyond our comprehension. But we must! … ‘Oh, I am a great sinner!’ ‘All the better! Go to Jesus: He likes you to tell him these things!’ He forgets. He has a very special capacity for forgetting. He forgets. He kisses you. He embraces you, and he simply says to you: ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more’” (John 8:11).
All the better? Really, it is all the better that I am a sinner and living in a state or mortal sin? He might as well say, “sin, and sin boldly,” as Fr. Martin Luther was famously quoted as saying.
The typical modernist treats the faithful like innocent babes in need of personal comfort, embraces and kisses, and to be told how much we are loved—while pretending all those mean ideas about guilt, repentance and purgatorial fire are nothing more than scary stories in the past made up to scare the good little children.
Modernist Catholics, in this sense, are no different than Protestants with their “faith alone” doctrine who refuse to admit anything we do impacts our salvation whatsoever. How very convenient and pleasing to the mind.
The Traditional View of Mercy
Do not misunderstand me. God’s mercy is most certainly very real, very much infinite, and offered to us, not because we deserve it. But love necessarily thrives on truth, not lies. Like any loving relationship, the desire to reconcile must be honest and willingly sought after with the proper state of mind.
As such, the Church warns us to not to presume of God’s generosity:
But here the faithful are to be admonished to guard against the danger of becoming more prone to sin, or slow to repentance, from a presumption that they can have recourse to this power of forgiving sins which is so complete and, as we saw, unrestricted as to time. For, as such a propensity to sin would manifestly convict them of acting injuriously and contumaciously to this divine power, and would therefore render them unworthy of the divine mercy; so this slowness to repentance gives great reason to fear that, overtaken by death, they may in vain confess their belief in the remission of sins, which by their tardiness and procrastination they deservedly forfeited. Roman Catechism (The Catechism of the Council of Trent), Art. X.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, quoting St. Augustine, also connects repentance to mercy when answering the question of whether mercy is a virtue:
Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei ix, 5) that “this movement of the mind” (viz. mercy) “obeys the reason, when mercy is vouchsafed in such a way that justice is safeguarded, whether we give to the needy or forgive the repentant.” The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas, II-II, Q. 30, Art. 3.
If this is still not clear enough, let’s turn to another doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori. St. Alphonsus peached an entire sermon on this topic.
“If, beloved sinners, you have hitherto offended God, hope and tremble: if you desire to give up sin, and if you detest it, hope; because God promises pardon to all who repent of the evil they have done. But if you intend to continue in your sinful course, tremble lest God should wait no longer for you, but cast you into hell.” The Sermons of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Sermon XLI
This is true even if you presume upon God’s mercy and repent of your sins but have no intention of amending your life. St. Alphonsus, quoting St. Bernard, says,
“St. Bernard says, that the confidence which sinners have in God’s goodness when they commit sin, procures for them, not a blessing, but a malediction from the Lord. … They do not hope for the pardon of the sins of which they repent; but they hope that, though they continue to commit sin, God will have mercy upon them; and thus they make the mercy of God serve as a motive for continuing to offend him (emphasis added).” Ibid.
The idea of receiving God’s forgiveness without proper contrition or desire to amend one’s life is the modernist version (distortion) of mercy and the Church condemned it.
And so, we can say with certitude that God will not forgive our sins unless we are contrite of heart, go to confession, do proper penances and honestly seek to amend our lives. That has always been the teaching of the Church and it is consistent with God’s divine nature as a perfectly just and merciful being.
The “New” Divine Mercy
And now enter the Divine Mercy devotions, including the Divine Mercy chaplet, image and Divine Mercy Sunday, instituted by Pope John Paul II in 2000 A.D.
The Divine Mercy devotions are, in large part, based on the private revelations of Maria Faustina Kowalska, born in 1905, who wrote a diary of about 600 pages recording her private revelations. Faustina was canonized by John Paul II in 2000 and the feast day instituted despite the revelations having been condemned by the Holy Office under both Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII. Faustina’s diary was placed on the index of forbidden books until the index itself was canceled by Pope Paul VI in 1966.
You can find the basics of this devotion here from an obviously pro-Divine Mercy website. And to be fair, many traditional priests, including with the FSSP, have defended this devotion. For a nice summary of the anti-Divine Mercy devotion arguments, check out this website and this excellent video.
I am under no illusion that I will be able to resolve the debate between the pro-Divine Mercy folks and those who refuse to follow it. If you want to know my personal experience, please check out my story HERE.
Instead, I am going to take this conversation in a different direction to talk about the real-world consequences of following these devotions.
“The” Divine Mercy Ignores Modern Realities
A key concern I have with the Divine Mercy devotion is not that is focuses on the mercy of God but that it comes at a time when the problem in our world is not a distrust in God’s forgiveness, but a distrust that we as individuals, or as a society, can do anything wrong.
The cultural problem we face is not a lack of trust in God’s mercy, but it’s lack of faith in the notion of sin—and this has real world consequences. The problem is not disordered focus on sin (scrupulosity), but its opposite—presumption.
Our culture of death thrives on presumption. The Great Reset, Build Back Better, Modernist heresies all thrive on the notion that truth is in the eye of the beholder, and that if you do anything wrong, it doesn’t matter because God will understand—if God exists at all, of course.
Let’s look at just a few examples, most of which have touched almost everyone in the modern culture, in some way at some point:
- We are told that if we civilly divorce and get re-married it doesn’t matter because God still loves us and will forgive us—even if we refuse to correct the situation.
- We are told that using abortion-tainted vaccines and drugs do not really matter because God’s love for health and physical well-being is more important than our cooperation with evil.
- We are told that euthanizing the elderly, or killing the unborn, is the real merciful thing to do because it will alleviate suffering, and so the killing of the innocent turns into a charitable act of mercy.
- We are told that God allows for contraception use, so long as you have a good reason for avoiding adding children to the family or need to reduce diseases.
The list can go on and on. The point is we do not need the Church finding ways to comfort us in our evil deeds and justify our sins. If our society ever needed more fire, brimstone and a correctly ordered fear of God—it is now.
And yet, in almost every novus ordo parish around the world this weekend, we will be told that our actions are simply wiped out and have no meaning because God will not only forgive us but forget our trespasses because He just loves us for who we are—not because He also agreed to die on the Cross in a horrific fashion in satisfaction for those sins. This distinction matters—redemption is an act of justice, not charity, and failure to acknowledge our role in reconciling with God leads one to believe that Christ’s work on the Cross was purchased very cheaply.
And if the cost of our redemption is cheapened, it is simply natural that concern with our own sins will be lessened if not completely white-washed. The Divine Mercy devotions, in other words, teach the wrong idea about the gravity of our sin and our role in accepting God’s forgiveness and mercy.
And when it comes time to make those key choices in life such as being open to having children in marriage, risking our jobs to avoid immoral acts, or publicly denouncing popular politicians who support trendy sex perversions, our properly ordered fear of God can guide us and give us courage to make the right choices.
Sadly, as the evidence shows, the wrong choices are being made despite the Church’s true teachings and the Divine Mercy devotions simply lead the faithful to believe it doesn’t really matter anyway.