Bringing your own theologians to Rome to fight your own corner, well its a little too feisty for my ease.
All of this "anti-pope " sentiment is generated from MDM prophecy. What upsets me so much is these people are condemning him before he's done a single thing. Lets judge him on his Theology and actions, not from a questionable prophecy, from a nameless, faceless person. I , with millions of Catholics are praying for him everyday to be a good shepherd. Lets at least give the respect he deserves as our Holy Pontiff !
That's a pretty good distillation of several of the main ideas. The false pope thing comes from a current "prophet" that claims to receive messages from Jesus. She has published some fantastical messages lately, that will be very easy to prove where they fall in real time....
She's already predicting something will happen by "Good Friday". What happens to her prophecy about this pope, if nothing happens ? I guess we wait and see.....
Its very distressing to see some of the comments on FB against this Pope! They are so drawn in to this MDM that they are about to persecute this poor man as the very devil himself! They are about to walk away from the Church on the word of someone who's prophecy has not come true time and again, and yet they wait with itching ears for each new word out of her mouth. This is the very thing that Satan wants, is to draw the Catholics out of her church and away from the Eucharist.
I spent some time re-reading and studying the books of Daniel and Revelations last night, and things still seem pretty unclear as to exactly how they will unfold. These men were great prophets also but yet as of right now I must trust in the very words out of Jesus mouth regarding His Church "And the very gates of hell will not prevail against her!" I will pray for the Church and this Pope, and never say a word against him. If he starts to do some devilry in the Vatican, then by his fruits we will know how to act. There are many, many good Catholics out there praying for the Church, so we can take anyone against it with God's help. We'll circle it and yell Jericho! LOL. But seriously, I have much love for this new Pope already. We really have been blessed in this last hundred years with our Popes. We need them! I also am so grateful to have all you holy friends to talk things over with. I would probably be lost right now without someone understanding to sort this stuff out with.
A correction by way of a PS - I realized after writing that the use of the term 'intellectual dishonesty' may be too strong with respect to www.medjugorjeusa.org 's partial re-utilisation of the Fr. Petar Ljubicic interview. So let me soften that to 'selective reporting' - not being privy to the reasons behind this editing, I acknowledge that there may be more benign motives for it, and I don't wish to be unnecessarily uncharitable about this, even if I am convinced that this kind of unsourced re-quotation (which is unfortunately all too common on the internet) does not represent best practice.
I think what worries me is when reading forums like this or others some people seem to take bits and pieces from all sorts of prophecies out there and unapproved apparitions and even approved ones. They put them in a bag and shake the bag and mix it all together. Then what comes out is a mix of so much stuff. They then speak about these things on forums like this, that they are the gospel truth. Like it's written in the catechism or something. They speak with firm words. This will happen. That will happen. And some of it is based totally on something not even approved by the Church mixed with approved things. Others who are searching or not solid in the Faith, hear these words and think it is truth. I think even people who are strong in their Faith can get confused. It just seems to cause so much distraction from what is revealed truth and I think can seriously draw people away from real truth and real faith. It has become such a convoluted mess. It's kind of scary actually. I am not saying everything not approved by the Church is false but just an observation that I see.
Bottom line is.... prophecy is just that. It is messages that have both symbolic and literal warnings about the future. No two people will have the exact same understanding, interpretation or accuracy to future events. So we all do the best we can to try and piece it all together. Hopefully through prayer, penance, studying and orthodoxy to the faith (and being ready to modify our understanding with greater light as time progresses), we will better prepare. I for one know I am not 100% right on future events and the longer I have been trying to figure things out (nearly 30 years now) the more I am amazed what I do not understand.
I enjoy speculating and guessing. I take a lot of it with a grain of salt. I would suppose anyone whose faith fractured over something like say MDM or St Malachy's prophecies could not have had much of a faith to start with. Some I admit I do take very very,seriously indeed, amongst these Medugorje, Garabandal , Betania, Akita and Kibeho. I have no doubt these are quite genuine, But if the whole heap turned out to be nonsense I'd breeze on regardless. The rock of my faith is Jesus.The Star of my night is Mary.
It's one thing to speculate or guess, it's another thing to speak about such convoluted things like they are the absolute truth.
I can understand the point you're making here, Padraig, but again I think the issue has to be approached with some nuance ... I guess one figure you're referring may be Danish theologian Niels Christian Hvidt, whose doctoral thesis including a chapter on Vassula Ryden was subsequently published as 'Christian Prophecy: the Post-Biblical Tradition' (Oxford: OUP, 2007) when he was a post-doctoral fellow at the U of Notre-Dame, with a foreword by Cardinal Ratzinger which can be read at http://www.christian-prophecy.org/foreword.html . He met Ms Ryden while both were living there, her on account of her husband's diplomatic posting, he while teaching and conducting research at the 'Gregorianum' and 'Angelicum' Pontifical Universities. Firstly, it has to be remembered that Vassula Ryden is not technically under the jurisdiction of Roman Catholicism, so her notions of ecclesiology and what constitutes 'obedience' to the Catholic Magisterium are not necessarily identical to those of Roman Catholics (this was of course a point of tension during her dialogue with the CDF and remains so, but it mirrors the challenges of ecumenical conversation in general). Any observer of Eastern Orthodoxy will be aware that within Vassula R.'s own tradition there are deep-seated unresolved tensions between the various Patriarchates, which makes things still more complex: it is not at all obvious to whom, precisely, she should be obedient! Secondly, as Mrs Ryden's role in relationship to the locutions is essentially 'secretarial', the prime criterion of discernment is not necessarily her personal saintliness or otherwise (in fact, the picture that emerges of the 'secretary' of 'True Life in God' is often extremely unflattering, which a sympathetic reading would say is precisely the point!). That naturally has a bearing on any assessment, but the central question is one of origin: 'where did these messages come from and who is their ultimate author?' Thirdly, the fact that Vassula has required and obtained defence from trained theologians is itself significant, for a number of reasons: a) it should be clear to anyone who has scrutinized any video of her presentations that, having had no formal theological training, she does not speak the language of systematic theology which is the staple diet of the CDF. She is evidently not equipped to defend the contents of her supposed locutions in the context of a rigorous doctrinal inquiry, so having recourse to theo-professionals is understandable. b) It is an indication that certain academic theologians feel that there is something to defend, which is somewhat unusual given systematic theology's general hostility to mysticism (with a few notable exceptions such as Benedict XVI's own theological mentor Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose work stands in a special relationship to the mystical experience of Adrienne von Speyr). Indeed, one of the main reasons why 'True Life in God' has attained a level of credibility with certain professional theologians is precisely the fact that there is a huge disparity between the considerable theological and literary density of the messages (particularly the Trinitarian Odes of the final pages, which on their own constitute mystical theology of the first order on a formal level) and Vassula's own intellectual level/linguistic competency. Although she is clearly an intelligent woman, she has nothing like the literary genius that would be required to produce this kind of writing on her own. This is clearest when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts question of her English. What emerges from a careful study of the sentence structure, punctuation etc. of the messages is an extremely improbable combination as regards both form and content. On one hand there is conceptual brilliance, sophistication of poetic imagery (much of it highly counter-intuitive), powerful Biblical exegesis and complex structure (grammatical inversions not normal in common speech, nested subordinate clauses etc.). On the other there are elementary mistakes of punctuation and spelling. How these two dimensions can co-exist in the same text is a real riddle and one which requires an explanation, unless you hold to events without causes. Prima facie, it is hard to find a logical hypothesis superior to that offered by Vassula and indeed the messages themselves, namely that she has heard - by internal perception not given to most of us - a locution of supernatural origin, but one which she can only notate imperfectly given her own limited linguistic tools. According to this hypothesis, she is the secretary but not the author, with the resulting text being the result of the interaction of the two. There are obvious precedents for this within mysticism, it should be said, such as Mélanie Calvat's inability to spell certain words in the La Salette messages, or Conchita's incapacity to remember the Spanish word beginning with the letter 'A' in her locutions. Those two examples are - at least IMHO - tell-tale signs that the visionary has not just generated something out of her own subjectivity. Obviously there are those in the Church hierarchy and professional theological community who are far more aware of the logical ramifications involved here than I am. There are serious and complex issues at stake here, which is one reason why the dialogue between Vassula Ryden and the CDF was lengthy and conducted at the very top. As I said, opinion is clearly divided, and there are many questions which remain to be asked if the data of this case are to be 'interrogated' in a proper manner (especially concerning the puzzling phenomenon of the 'hieratic' handwriting of the 'True Life in God' manuscript and its difference from Vassula's normal script). But supporters of TLIG such as Cardinal Toppo and René Laurentin, while obviously not infallible, are not fools, and nor is French neurologist Philippe Loron (who carried out the scientific analysis of the case of Myrna Nazzour of Soufanieh). It is naturally possible that they may utimately prove mistaken, which would just go to prove the general difficulty of establishing reliable criteria for assessing private revelation. But given the nature of the evidence before them, they are certainly not being irrational in taking their stand. Apologies for this long reply, but we are dealing with 1500+ pages of text over 18 years here, and some things can't/shouldn't be said in soundbites! Peter B.
Your answer is so interesting Peter. My own approach tends to be a lot less nuanced and spohisticated. I used to study various mystics of differing religions and within the various Christian denominations (including of course Orthodoxy) . I long since gave up the idea of comingto any really firm conclusion regarding those outside the Christian faith . The reason I gave up was I realised a long time ago that I had no criteria of dscernment, apart from what St John said, that any spirit that did not acknowledge Jesus as Lord was false. Its not only I find it impossible to understand if they are true or false with any great certainty but if they are true exactly what they mean.It's like some ghastly white fog. As far as Vissula goes, I think why take the risk? If I went to buy an apple and it looked dodgy why would I rush buying suspect fruit? I wouldn't spend hours debating ifs and maybe, I would just leave it and go on to something else. If our own Catholic criteria don't fit its time to move on. So the same with Vassula. Why take the chance? Why even spend hours or days or weeks or years wondering? I figure if it looks dodgy leave it. ..and if my usual Catholic crtieria don't fit leave it even quicker. Life is too short for nuances and sophistication in this regard. If the apple appears bruised, well then there are plenty of other apples in the barrel.
That's a 100% legitimate response, Padraig. After all, private revelation of any type isn't 'required reading' for anyone! The discernment issues are so tricky that approaching mystical writing out of curiosity is not only a waste of precious time but also positively spiritually dangerous (same goes even for folks who get obsessed with this or that chapter of Zechariah, Daniel, Revelation ... can be a bottomless pit if you're not centered on Christ on a daily basis). And it's certainly true that the world would be a completely different place if we actually just drew the conclusions from Biblical prophecy and the approved mystics of the past ... This having been said, I do believe that trained theologians with the necessary baggage have a duty to assess these things - if they don't, then others less qualified will do so instead. And then, as someone said just today on another thread, AHBL!! Blessings, Peter B.
Peter, Thank you for your posts. I also became aware of that youtube clip of Father Petar attending a TLIG. In all honesty it did concern me! I am still in a process of discernment with all the unapproved Marian apparitions. Looking at the Church approved apparitions at Fatima, Lourdes, La Salette, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady appears to simple and mostly uneducated children. They didn't have the formal training that is available to most people today, yet those apparitions helped with millions of conversions ie. Our Lady of Guadalupe. Thank you for your concern about those of us that are trying to discern certain locutions and apparitions. Father Gobbi and Medjugorje have helped me enormously in my adherence to the Catholic faith. I truly doubt that I would be married with seven children without Pope John Paul II, his World youth days, Medjugorje, and others. I have found a deeper faith than I had without them. Take care.
Peter, it's great to have you on this forum. The two detailed posts i've read from you have been very informative indeed. I hope you'll stick around. Indeed if you haven't yet, please have a look round the thread End Times, Era of Peace, Millenarism.( sp: ) Look forward to post from you there.
[quote This having been said, I do believe that trained theologians with the necessary baggage have a duty to assess these things - if they don't, then others less qualified will do so instead.[/quote] No offense, but theologians of today vary so much that I can't even use them for sound theology or practical advise. Guess there is a reason why the BVM appears to the simple of heart and not the learned. Not that evey theologian is in left field, but few seem to agree on much of anything in today's Church.
When I started this thread, I posted a photo of Vassula with Pope Benedict as an example of how false prophets like to show off their photos with either popes or saints because then they can make up words with the photo. I can post other photos of other false prophets doing the same. But I used Vassula as an example as I thought she would bring in no opposition from anyone. But Peter you seem to like her, and correct me if I am wrong. But maybe you would like to try and convince us she is a true prophet?
Ah, now I understand. They're talking tripe. Thank you all for replying. I will wait to see what our Pope does. I still say that this is true - by their fruits you know them. This Pope could be one of the best Popes ever.
