Fr. Angel Sotelo on MDM, Part 1

Responding to an anonymous post asking what the good father thinks about Maria Divine Mercy, we repost what Fr. Angle Sotelo said in his blog  DOMINUS PARS HÆREDITATIS MEÆ dated 28 September 2012.

Dear Anonymous,

Maria Divine Mercy is the name of a woman who is allegedly receiving messages from the Virgin Mary. Her complete identity is unknown. From interviews she gives, she seems to speak with an Irish accent, and purports to live in Europe. She claims to have been away from the Church and the sacraments for many years, even veering toward becoming an agnostic, before she was chosen by the Virgin Mary as a messenger. Here is my reaction:

1) I believe firmly that Jesus, Mary, and the Saints can communicate in a special or privileged way with individuals and these communications are called “private revelations.” 

2) Private revelations are given for the simple reason of drawing upon the riches of the Gospel, the Public Revelation, in order to take us to Jesus and proclaim Him as King in our lives, and submit to His kingship within the practice of the one, true Church. 

3) Any private revelation which is critical of the Pope or of his divine authority to make decisions for the Church is to be condemned outright, as are those messages which are critical of the authority of the local bishop and the college of bishops (the Magisterium) who also have been granted the power to “bind and to loose.”

4) Many messengers or seers of these so-called messages from heaven are nothing more than a pseudo-Protestant attack on rightful authority in the Catholic Church, disguising itself as Jesus or Mary to do an end run around the Magisterium’s pronouncements.  

5) It is obvious that “private-revelation laity” attacking the Pope and bishops are simply imitating the so-called Protestant Reformers, so in order to avoid being exposed for the heretics or schismatics they are, some lay people decide to publish messages from Jesus or Mary, in the hopes that Catholics will fall for this fraud and accept the attacks against rightful authority which they otherwise would not accept.

Fr. Angle Sotelo,
Priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of
Fresno in California.

6) Maria Divine Mercy does not publish her total identity, so we cannot see what her life is like in connection to her parish, or her diocese, or her bishop. That is a MAJOR red flag. She has not submitted these messages, therefore, to her local bishop. Second MAJOR red flag. And she is calling herself the greatest prophet of the end times. Third MAJOR red flag, as she is setting herself up as a “prophet of God” who has more authority than the Pope. 

7) For the reasons listed in #6, and not even counting the theological errors which are said to exist in her messages, they should in my opinion be dismissed and not given even the pious or human faith given to an approved private revelation.

God bless and take care! Fr. Angel

Part II