Vassula receives Holy Communion for the first time

I have made no such suggestion, Dolours. What I suggested was that those who found Vassula's account of her first reception of Holy Communion to be 'sacrilegious' possibly had this viewpoint.
As for 'following the advice of the CDF', please study Mark Mallett's excellent contribution on this at: http://motheofgod.com/threads/divine-will-revisited.9137/page-15#post-131465

 

A little off topic, perhaps, since it does not concern Holy Communion, but this is from Vassula's own website, a purported message of September 28,2000.

Note that it is a "mortal sin" to "conceal" this message of private revelation.
Note the threats to "mockers."
Note the high and honored place given to Vassula, and how she is to instruct the Church.

Is this how God speaks in messages that have received the full approval of the Catholic Church?


To Conceal My Voice Is A Mortal Sin - My Servants Are Formed From My Words
September 28, 2000
From Your Temple, my Lord,
hear my voice and let me hear Yours;
let this generation open their ear
to hear Your Words that are sweeter than honey,
even than honey that drips from the comb;
David said: "Your servants are formed from Your Words ..." 1

and so they are, for look! what have you all seen? what have you heard? an elite walking among the elite? a philosopher or a high ranked member of a theological academy? have you seen someone dressed in royal purple, wealth, and acquiring worldly knowledge? no? then you who went out to hear, what did you hear? an authority given by men? oh no, for those who seat themselves and govern you, are not anointed with the oil of prophecy; then what did you hear all these years?

a heart? yes! that is what you came to see and hear; a heart formed from My Words, who defies the evil powers and the dominion of the Evil one, but that raises My Name in praise and glory, consoling the disheartened and the distressed, nourishing the starved with My Words; you came to hear a lenient heart formed by Me and from My Words; yes, My servants are formed from My Words, and to this day, I sit on My Throne commanding that city, inviting all the passers by:

"who has decided to discipline his life in Me? who has made up his mind to be corrected and come and abide in Me? woe to faint hearts, woe to the listless heart, woe to the proud and stubborn heart, their weight of sin shall draw them down to hell! today again I come to you, generation, to form you from My Saving Words, and anoint you to do good; do not remain like a withered tree, come to Me and I will blossom you, and your fruit will be good; come to Me and when I will touch your lips, your lips will drip with kindness and you will be delivered from death;"

Yahweh guides our steps,
otherwise how can you on your own see where you are going?
Yahweh's Throne can only be mounted on kindness,
Scriptures say it;

and so it is .... so do not say, "with whose authority she2 has come to speak to us?" I am her Authority and this Authority has come to tell the mockers, 3 "I will expel you from your seats but I will lift the lowly to send them out and evangelise a dechristianised people;" I drew a long breath, sighing, while I was passing by those mockers; entirely overgrown is their spirit with nettles; as I was gazing on the Vineyard4 My Son Jesus Christ left to them, 5 I drew another long breath; "where is the banquet of fine wines? of food rich and juicy, of fine strained wines? is this the place where a thousand vines used to be?"

ah, generation, how I pity you! poverty is at your elbow and, like a beggar, want; 6 "eat honey, 7 since it is good; honey that drips from the comb is sweet to the taste and will save you!" says I; but nobody truly listens, only a remnant is eager to listen;

a House was built by Wisdom, bought by Precious Blood; suddenly the vengeance of Satan rose to destroy It; "whom shall I send to do this work of destruction? why, I will send the Beast and his followers to tear down and divide, to profane and abolish that which is most Holy ...."

when adversity came, I came to rescue, but no one truly, from the officials of the Church, listened; "it is only a private revelation, you need not lend your ear to it;" they would say;

to conceal My Voice is a mortal sin; to sift Me through and through and scan Me is an abhorrent sin in My Eyes; will your incredulity say one day: "but look, we did not know; we did not know that we offended Your Mercy;" indeed you have offended My Mercy; not only have you offended My Mercy but you have allowed the evil powers to gain ground and despoil the House My Son bought with His Precious Blood, because of your incredulity; and how! how ingeniously you get round My Words in order to justify your incredulity!

do you not realise that you have taken My Seat? do you realise that you are becoming the enemy of the whole human race? since hindering and diminishing the value of My Words through My prophets you are obstructing them from pronouncing My Will to My people and from gathering together and uniting the House of My Son?

have you not heard: "where there is no vision the people get out of hand; blessed are they who keep the Precept;" 8

I am praying for this one who called out to you: "I have come to despair of all the efforts I have expended under the sun ...."

and I tell him: "you have not toiled in vain; I have no pleasure in this division which is a grave sin, but unity is not beyond your reach"; many distorted words will come from many hearts, but am I not calling meanwhile? if you lose heart, turn to Me ....

"My servants are formed from My Words", My Spirit said to David; and you will recognise them in their speech and by what they utter; this generation is pining away, so will I not intervene in such an apostasy? the ravager is ravaging Our Vineyards, plundering the Scriptures and you know it; will I not intervene? look! My Abels are lamenting in the desert; My ambassadors of peace weep bitterly on the hardness of your heart as My Son wept bitterly over the hardness of heart, of Jerusalem, who persecuted every prophet ....

Until when, Lord?

until they learn how to cry out:

"blessings on him who comes
in the name of the Lord!" 9

and as for you, Vassula, I tell you: I find My delight in you when you observe and do not forget My Words that formed you and through you others; keep your eyes open to contemplate My inestimable treasures and My marvels of My Words; I have said, My Vassula, that contemplating the light of My Glory is above all theology; why, is there anything greater in the world than penetrating into your God and enjoying yourselves in His Presence? what is greater in the world than seeing Me, the Godhead? the One who is robed in Majesty and in Power is speaking to you; I transcend and reign in the heights of Glory, so that is where your eyes should be lifted permanently and you will be saved;

this is what you should keep teaching this generation; go and recite My deeds so that this generation opens its heart to Me and that I, in My turn, open the gates of virtue on it; cry out to the shepherds guarding the Church and ask them: "has anybody out there tasted the sweetness and goodness of our Lord? is there anybody in there who excels in knowledge of God?"

if you say 'yes', to the first question and 'no' to My second question, then, why are you persecuting Me? I entreated and you condemned; I visited you, shining My benevolence on you, but arrogance and hostility were your offerings to Me; I knocked at your door, but you did not open to Me and made sure your windows were barred as well; you made no room for your Lord; am I now to praise your discourse and your flow of words given to Me in My Assemblies? since all these words are empty with emptiness; what purpose do you serve? humble yourselves before you fall ill; let My Words be your educator, your counsellor and your delight; and you shall live ....

 

Beautiful message....gives great hope....can also fit into the Divine Will devotion. In other messages, re: certain private revelations, esp. directed at what should have reached the people about Fatima and what was kept from them, it is said that the Church is guilty of grievous sin against the faithful. Thus the Church must come humbled Herself and repent first. That is why we are seeing this purification taking place in the Church first. Because of this failure of the institutional Church God, esp. through His Mother, must now come in His Mercy, directly to His people through His chosen prophets of our time. He can no longer wait for "those in robes" to minister the honey so desired by His children who are starving. They will be guilty of not taking such prophets of today seriously for those are doing what should for so long have been done by the "shepherds". And to accept such missions today with all that is involved in retribution by the so called holy ones is even a great martyrdom which draws down upon the person the love along with the serious expectations of the mighty One.

 

You said that one of the problems here is that people have come to a "view" about Vassula based on many different things and that they cannot see anything past those views. You went on to say that some of the comments show an "Old Testament" view of God. Based on what? Your belief that the CDF are wrong and this woman is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about getting private revelations from Jesus? Your belief that she, as an Orthodox Christian, was inspired by Jesus to defy the instructions of her own Church and receive Communion in a Catholic Church without making any attempt to find out what the Catholic Church teaches regarding reception of the Eucharist? Your belief that Jesus has inspired her to defy Catholic Bishops in various dioceses and go ahead promoting herself and her messages? By her disobedience showing no respect either for the hierarchy of her own Church or the Catholic Church, what is she if not a one-woman magisterium? And you believe that Jesus supports this?

The CDF, having come to a view about this lady, has advised Catholics to avoid her. Unless Mark Mallet has been co-opted to the CDF, his opinion carries no more authority than the posters you accuse of having an Old Testament view of God, so I won't bother reading the link if it is supporting this woman. Rather than pointing me to other people's opinions, why can't you tell me in your own words what makes you defy the CDF by promoting her?

 

You can find an answer specifically about that above message on the Defending Vassula website here.

The following excerpt from the above page is exactly what I see most people doing on this forum : "...too often, people approach the messages in a negative spirit, wanting to prove to themselves or others that the messages are inauthentic. They pick through the messages – or scan them – for bits and pieces that they can use to show that the messages are inauthentic, and as soon as they have extracted what they need to establish (to their own satisfaction) that the messages are inauthentic, they leave the messages aside and don’t touch them again. They never genuinely read the messages through from start to finish with an open heart."

And since we've veered away from the subject of this thread and into the bigger picture of TLIG, be sure to go to the link to the arguments of the 4 possible origins of TLIG:

(1) Vassula Ryden has made the messages up herself and is passing them off as message from God.

(2) Vassula Ryden is insane and the messages are a product of her insane delusions that she is receiving messages from God.

(3)The True Life in God messages come from the Devil, or some equivalent ‘bad spirit’.

(4) The True Life in God messages are exactly what they purport to be – messages from God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit.

 

I feel for David who gets a lot of these rather aggressive questions. Hats off to you David for defending Vassula for so long

Dolours, you can read about the CDF here.

On that above page, you will find in the answers her response about her receiving the Sacraments in the Catholic church too. An excerpt: "As to the way I practice my faith, I am an Orthodox and am committed fully to my church. Whenever there is an Orthodox church nearby I never fail to follow its Sunday Mass, unless of course there is none, like in Dhaka, Bangladesh where I lived. Just before coming to Rome, where I live now, I lived 11 years in Switzerland. Every Sunday I went to our Orthodox Church and the Greek priest of Lausanne, Fr. Alexander Iossifides is my witness as well as the faithful who were in the church and saw me regularly, unless of course I travelled. Abroad, during my travels when a program has been set-up for me to follow and give my witness, sometimes, and I would add, rather rarely, it could happen that the Catholic priests or Bishops of the place who invited me to speak, have programmed a public Holy Mass to follow in the same place where I spoke; I then remain with the people for the Mass as it is in the program and receive Holy Communion there.

Here in Rome I live out from the centre and quite far from my Greek Orthodox Church which is in the centre of Rome. There is a Slavic Orthodox church at the Tre Fontane, which I attended but I do not understand the language. And so I allow myself once in a while, since half of the time I am away, to receive Holy Communion in the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Divino Amore which is 3 km from my place. I believe the Second Vatican Council allows me to do this when, as reiterated in the Catechism of the Catholic church says: "a certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, "given suitable circumstances and the approval of church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged" (CCC 1399)."

 

TLIG is a masterpiece. God's masterpiece. It has converted so many people and brought them back into the church. I was re-reading the Ode to the Holy Trinity lately....and also the Woman Adorned with the Sun - wow! There is no way that a former socialite with virtually no catechism who doesn't master English wrote this masterpiece.

 

You accuse me of asking aggressive questions, and then go on to tell me that the woman attended Church regularly.

I asked David a straight question and he directed me to a third party for an answer - a third party who has no authority within the Catholic Church. I asked some follow on questions of David which I consider perfectly legitimate and now, having dubbed them aggressive, you direct me to another link. What's wrong with asking David, and now you, to answer the questions in your own words?

Calling people "Old Testament" Catholics smacks more of aggression to me than asking straightforward questions.

 

In our disposable missals, there is always a printed message that only Catholics in good standing may receive Holy Communion. The message welcomes worshippers of other faiths to the Mass, but the right to receive Holy Communion is reserved for Catholics. It politely tells people not to receive.
I posted a brief reaction on another thread: she saw "the feet of Jesus" on her left. And Jesus was happy. I honestly feel uneasy about this, and something doesn't compute.

 

I'm sorry if I offended you Dolours. I re-read your post, now perhaps aggressive is the wrong adjective to describe it so I apologize. It's the tone that I've read time and time again here when V.R.'s name comes up.

I didn't mean to answer for David but since you ask me I guess I would have to say that I'm motivated to defend God's work and His instrument, which must be the reason that motivated those who fought to advance the cause of St Faustina and others who got negative "reviews" as it were from Church authorities.

I actually meant to ask earlier what you would have advised to the faithful fighting to advance the cause of St Faustina?

 

All the threats sound like the false, condemned messages of Bayside.
I hope people stay away from Vassula AND Bayside.

 

Andree,

The pages you point me to have this explanation:

"...They argue that God would not condemn those who honestly and sincerely question the authenticity of the True Life in God messages. Perhaps the key to understanding the message of September 28, 2000 is a message of Message of December 23, 1987 where Jesus says, ‘...if they are sincere...they will listen’. Those who approach the messages sincerely, with an open mind and honest desire to listen to God if it is God talking to them, will realise that God is talking to them through the True Life in God messages. After all, as we said at the start of this website, the only rational explanation of the origin of the True Life in God messages is that they come from God."

But both Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Levada came to negative conclusions about Vassula. By the reasoning above, they were not sincere, did not listen, and were not rational in their conclusion. Is that your position?

Also, to discuss (3) The True Life in God messages come from the Devil...
Vassula acknowledges that she receives her messages via automatic writing. I believe automatic writing -- writing in which the body is taken over by an outside force and writes without the cooperation of the individual -- is associated with mediums.

Below is a lengthy excerpt from an article Frangois-Marie Dermine, a Dominican priest of Canadian origin. He is a professor of theology, an expert in New Age cults, and an exorcist. Material from the article is in italics. It is posted online here: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=10013


Vassula Rydén: the Reasons for the Church's Negative Reaction

...(2b) Another reason for which the revelations remain unacceptable is «the suspect nature of the ways in which these alleged revelations have occurred» (Notification). I summarize hereunder what I wrote in my book on the subject.


How does the transmission of the messages take place ?


The beginning of the revelations is described by Mrs Ryden herself in a videotape that reports one of her meetings in Switzerland in 1991 with a group of Canadian pilgrims:


«I was making a list of expenses for a new cocktail party the same evening. At that moment I had this sheet of paper and I was writing what I had to buy for the afternoon. While I placed my hand with the pencil on the paper, all of a sudden I felt throughout my whole body some electricity that was coming into me through my fingers and especially on my right hand. Everything I held seemed like it was glued. The pencil no longer detached itself from my fingers. Even if I wanted to get rid of it, I could not lift it up anymore, I could not open my hand anymore. And the sheet of paper became like a magnet again. As if my hand was glued, I could not lift it anymore, as if my hand weighed 100 kilos, I could no longer lift it. All of a sudden an invisible force pushed my hand. I was not afraid, I do not know why. I relaxed my hand to see what would happen, and some words came, it was no longer my writing, and they said: “I am your angel [...]. My name is Dan (Daniel)”». He was soon replaced by Jesus Christ, by the Father, by the Virgin Mary or by other saints.


This first phase, caracterized by the phenomenon of the hand that writes by itself without the concourse of intelligence – nor even at times, of the will - is later followed by a second phase in which the protagonist hears an interior locution, a voice that pronounces the words that her hand is writing on its own, generally without her controlling it.


A mediumistic or mystical phenomenon ?


These modes of transmitting messages are and remain typical of the forms of mediumship (medium activity) present both in spiritistic circles, often disguised as “prayer groups” that make the claim of communications with the afterlife, and in neo-spiritistic New Age circles where they speak of channeling or communicating with “higher” spirits.


Mrs. Ryden’s supporters talk about her writing as “hieratic”, “inspired”, “guided”, and the same “Jesus” would seem to have bothered himself to reassure his prophetess by telling and showing her «that this is not automatic writing» (cf. R.LAURENTIN, When God Manifests,ed. Dehoniane, Rome, 1993, p. 51).


However the ways in which the messages are transmitted correspond exactly to the definition of automatic writing offered by a New Age representative: writing that takes place «without conscious control, the source of which apparently is not the person who is writing» (J.KLIMO, CHANNELING - Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources, 1987).


Whether the phenomenon occurs with or without interior locution, whether the perceiver gives her assent and remains conscious during the dictation, changes nothing about the fact that, in the initial phase, she was forced to write by a higher power, and that, in any case, her hand moved by itself, with a handwriting totally different from the writer’s normal one.


She admits herself several times: «But I know very well that I cannot control my hand and that I lose all power when God takes it» (From L’Informateur Catholique of April 9, 1992). Elsewhere she says that "Jesus" told her to try again to control her hand: «I had in mind to write my own thing controlling my hand myself. (...) I was struggling to write but couldn’t, then He wrote: “write” and He forced my hand down writing four times “Love” while I was struggling to stop my hand» (September 4, 1987); «to remind you of My Presence, I remove your capacity to control your hand» (December 19, 1989).


To justify and explain the phenomenon, Vassula Ryden and some theologians close to her want to refer to the suspension of faculties typical of an ecstasy where the person actually loses control over its inferior faculties and some of its members. In response to the first question of Fr P. Grech, the protagonist declares: «known mystics such as Teresa of Avila experienced raptures of her body or sometimes part of her body. I believe that this is a mitigated form of rapture of my hand and trust that the Lord has his own purpose in this».

 

Andree:

The rest of that article:

Spontaneous act or violent act?


The combination, certainly seductive, still denotes enormous confusion and superficiality in as much as it ignores the essential distinction between a vital or spontaneous (and therefore a human and free) act and a violent act.


The vital act obviously recalls the idea of life which, in turn, refers to the spontaneous, immanent and proper movement of a being «to which belongs, according to its nature, the faculty to move spontaneously, or at least to resolve to an action» (THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa theologica Ia, q.18, a.2) The more the nature of a being is endowed with knowledge, the more it is able to move by itself; the plant occupies the lowest level of living beings because, lacking any cognitive faculty, it has movements completely preset and largely determined by external conditions. At one level the higher animal, endowed with sense knowledge, is capable of identifying and, therefore, of pursuing certain objects with a greater autonomy of movements.


Human beings, however, have the advantage of a clearly higher conscious life, resulting from their spiritual knowledge, which enables them to choose the goal to be achieved and the appropriate means with an “indifference” or freedom absent in animals, whose instinct obey only stimuli identified through sense knowledge.


However, each of these living beings has a capacity of movement proportionate to its proper nature and which has its principle in the subject itself that moves. In plants movement comes down to preset bio-chemical processes; in animals it is an instinctive response to the stimulus identified through sense knowledge, in human beings it is an expression of a free choice mediated and directed by reason and the will.


The violent or at least mechanical movement instead has its principle outside of the subject that moves and, in the case of human beings, does not stem from reason and the will which are precisely bypassed. And it is exactly what happens to Mrs. Ryden, not only at the beginning of the phenomenon when the violence was evident, but even afterwards, every time that the hand, whether or not accompanied by the interior locution, moves anyway not by virtue of an internal principle, namely an impulse coming from the mind, but rather by virtue of a mechanical movement coming from outside.


But, someone could object, all this is irrelevant and even understandable, granted that our protagonist has become an instrument of God, to whom – after the initial violence – she has freely and spontaneously submitted and surrendered the control of her own hand ...


Now, to prove the inconsistency and the unfounded nature of the objection, it is sufficient to recall that when He uses one of His creatures, the Creator does not ever deny Himself; He always chooses a suitable instrument, He respects its inner nature and - in the case of a human being - the vitality or the capacity of self-determination. As Karol Wojtila rightly says,


«It is never allowed to treat the person as a means. This principle has a totally universal scope. No one has the right to take advantage of a person, to use a person as a means, not even God its Creator. From God this is, on the other hand, absolutely impossible, because by endowing the person with a rational and free nature, He has granted him the power to assign by himself the purpose of his actions, thereby excluding every possibility of reducing him to being nothing more than a blind instrument to be used for the purposes of others» (“Love and responsibility” in Metaphysics of the person-All essays and integrative philosophical works, Bompiani, Milan 2003, p.478).


We must point out that it would be precisely contradictory on the part of God to override the reason of a human being just at the moment when He is communicating with him. In the case that concerns us, the protagonist is not the “secretary of God” as she defines herself, in so far as she is not found transcribing a dictation grasped by her own mind; at most, she is his typewriter or telex activated from the outside.


Regarding the above mentioned reference to the suspension or rapture of the faculties in mystical saints, that has nothing in common with the phenomenon of Vassula Ryden’s writing. It is not a case of a force or a paralysis imposed on the faculties or members from outside, since the suspension of the faculties here comes from an intense absorption of the consciousness or of the mind in things divine. It is the hyper-activation of her spiritual faculties to cause the hypo-activation of her lower faculties. It is a little more like what happens when a distracted person stops spellbound and whose limbs act in a disconnected way because the mind is absorbed elsewhere... Once again, we are faced with vital acts, which have their origin in the intrinsic principle of the spontaneous movement of its members which is the mind. The words of Saint Teresa of Avila leave no room for doubt: «While the soul is searching so much for her God, she feels like fainting from the power of a most sweet enjoyment: she loses her breath, her bodily powers disappear, to such an extent that without a great effort she cannot even move her hands, etc» (Autobiography, c.18, 10).

 

I don't have "a position" other than the notification itself, which I have read and Vassula's "excellent" response, which I have also read since they are printed in their entirety in the True Life in God book, as per Cardinal Ratzinger's request.

What Vassula experiences is not automatic writing, but hieratic writing as described here by Father Curty, who was priest and exorcist.

 

Well said, andree. The critics are in full flow now so I think we could just leave people to make their own minds up as to who are the ones acting aggressively. And I recommend anyone looking for peace to just watch and listen to Vassula in the clip at the beginning of the thread. Vassula has always been the embodiment of gentleness when you encounter her in person and the video clip captures that gentleness very well.

 

I have studied François-Marie Dermine's objections to Vassula in detail and discussed them with my professional colleagues involved in faith-science dialogue (one of whom, a French priest, had met Vassula personally). While they do not necessarily give full credence to Vassula more generally, I and they disagree with Fr Dermine's conclusions in terms of his judgment concerning automatic writing and in particular the analogy that he has tried to draw between True Life in God and the literature associated with Allan Kardec's spiritism. Such a comparison is an historical category mistake. As I may have indicated before on this forum, I believe Fr Dermine's analogy to be seriously misplaced because serious historical studies (such as Guillaume Cuchet's recent Les Voix d'Outre-Tombe. Tables tournantes, spiritisme et société au XIXe siècle (Paris, Editions du Seuil, coll. "L'Univers historique", 2012, 457 p.) make it apparent that Kardec's spiritism
i) has completely different doctrinal tenets from those of True Life in God, with reincarnation occupying a central place and
ii) is founded on an intentional procedure of evoking spirits. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to indicate that this is Vassula's method; reading her autobiography Heaven is Real but So is Hell it is apparent that her experiences of the supernatural began in early childhood, a scenario which I have seen repeated over and over in biographies of those claiming mystical experience across the Christian denominational spectrum. The existence of such individuals who seem more or less to be born with an innate capacity - prior to the development of any conscious framework of religious belief - for what might be termed 'non-sensory perception' is confirmed by Fr Gabriel Amorth in his books, and as an exorcist I would be surprised if Fr Dermine was unaware of this.

While it must be conceded that Fr Dermine is correct on a factual level to state that Vassula altered her manuscript, and even in the 'hieratic writing', this does not necessarily invalidate TLIG as a whole: such a verdict I find methodologically over-extended in the sense that it merely demonstrates that even during what might be termed a 'partial ecstasy' involving the hand, the possibility of making a mistake remains. Which strongly argues against the notion that this is automatic writing in the technical sense.

My own position is that all that Fr Dermine has demonstrated is that Vassula is fallible, which ought to be obvious in any case. He has not in my opinion delivered the 'knock-out blow' against her that he claims, not least because his evaluation employs a fair deal of subjective language that is IMHO incommensurate with objective evaluative criteria. I would be quite willing to engage with him in public debate about all of this, by the way.

 

Yes, Andree, it was the wrong adjective, and I accept your apology. I don't know what you mean by the tone that you have read time and time again here. I never heard of Vassula until I joined this forum. Since people here are promoting her against the advice of the CDF, as far as I'm concerned any questions as to her authenticity are legitmate, and dismissing them as aggressive is simply using the "attack is the best form of defence" approach.

As to St. Faustina, I would have told them the same as I'm telling you, listen to the CDF. It is my understanding that St. Faustina's case was only approved by the Church after there was a correct translation of her writings. Have Vassula's writings been mistranslated? Can you point me to any authoritative notice from the Church reversing the decision of the CDF?

The CDF are defending God's work and until they declare that Vassula is God's instrument, all Catholics are entitled to question her motives, her methods and her authenticity without being tagged as having an Old Testament view of God - a statement which itself is wide open to interpretation. If there is any truth to the lady's claims, God will find a way of getting the message through to the CDF and I'm happy to wait. Approved Church teaching provides all we need for salvation. We don't need to follow every other self-proclaimed seer, locutionist or visionary to find out whether God is saying something different. Incidentally, the last I heard, the God the the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament.

 

But both Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Levada came to negative conclusions about Vassula.

Ah....those "negative" opinions and "cautions".....well, compared to how long it took to bring forth Faustina's writings and understand them, the fact that both of the above have for some time now permitted an awful lot of "positive" conclusions from the Bishops and allowed them, if so desired, to join in the celebrations with Vassula within their dioceses...which dioceses also, btw, are the Church unless you have the faithful believe otherwise....this movement is taking hold in far less time. But then everything comes to pass in God's good time....as when Faustina's wonderful devotion came to promotion when the world in its sad state was ripe for such an "unfathomable" Mercy. Thank God for her. And thank God for Vassula for the purpose of preparing the divided Churches to end the scandal to the Mystical Body. Who else without such a necessary background as hers could have filled such a particular mission...bringing together those various Churches whose many representatives in all parts of the world have begun just that opening by first opening their minds and hearts for this desire, as presented by Vassula, of our Lord Whose great desire was for this unity of His Body. The Holy Spirit is just so, well, logical!

 

For heaven's sake....he apologized already.

Can you point me to any authoritative notice from the Church reversing the decision of the CDF?

Well, I would say that the actions of many Bishops as well as the authorities from the other Churches mentioned have expressed in action the latitude given them by the ongoing dialogue involving this question so such an emphasis on a decision in time....with the extension of the time beyond that and the actions of the authorities taken to our current moment one would, if using good reason, have to extend that decision beyond the static interpretation still given to it by them, into the present moment with other proof of the current stance of the Church for such faithful who choose to become more informed and all the other natural human repercussions that logically follow such better acquaintance with Vassula. It is allowed. It is permitted. And the wise often speak....actions speak louder than words. Some get stuck in time...others joyfully move onward....with the permission granted....by the Bishops and thus by the Church!