OAXES

CATHOLIC PROPHECY

FALSE CATHOLIC PROPHECIES

 

CATHOLIC PROPHECY

PROPHECIES OF MALACHY AND COLUMBKILLE

FAKES GALORE!

THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL

THE MARIAN MOVEMENT OF PRIESTS

POEM OF THE MAN-GOD

ANNE CATHERINE EMMERICH

 

The Roman Catholic Church boasts about certain holy people and apparitions predicting the future.  The Bible, which the Church says is God’s word, in Deuteronomy 18 has God saying that a prophet who predicts and is always right but who makes one error is a fake for he is not from God or speaking under divine inspiration.  He has to be destroyed by the people.  Yet the Catholic Church has canonised false prophets!  Yet the Catholic Church doesn’t struggle very hard or sometimes it does nothing at all to silence false prophecy. 

 

CATHOLIC PROPHECY

The Catholic publishing company TAN, published an extraordinary book on Catholic forecasts of the future.  Written by Yves Dupont, the book is called Catholic Prophecy, the Coming Chastisement (Illinois, 1973). 

  

Mother Shipton, astrology and Nostradamus are all in favour in this book which makes it so unusual.  It is hard to imagine a true Catholic having this view.

 

The whole book can be refuted in one paragraph if Christ’s scriptural prophecy that he would come back when it was least expected is true.  The prophecies describe the reign of fake popes, the counterfeit Catholic Church, persecution and the near decimation of the true Church and the murder of holy popes.  This tells us we can be sure that Jesus will not come back yet when they have not come to pass yet.

 

Saints who made this blunder were St John of the Cleft Rock, Pope Pius IX, St Thomas Beckett, St Hildegard, St Vincent Ferrer (alleged worker of 40,000 miracles), Blessed Johannes Amadeus de Sylva, St Francis of Paola, St Anthony of the Desert, St Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort and St Margaret Mary.  And the important mystic, Augustinian nun and stigmatist, Blessed Anna-Katharina Emmerick (1744-1824) cannot be omitted.

 

Page 29:  St Vincent Ferrer said that Christians will eventually believe that the sacrament of confirmation is unnecessary and that these will all leave the faith to follow Antichrist’s false religion.  The implication is that the sacrament is necessary for preserving you in the faith.

 

Such a doctrine is an insult to Protestant martyrs who were never confirmed validly in the eyes of Rome.  The doctrine is false – even according to Rome - and so is the prediction.

 

Page 32:  St Margaret Mary who had visions of the Sacred Heart said that the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was the final effort of Jesus to make people love him in the last days. 

 

This at a stroke denies the authenticity of any subsequent apparition including Lourdes which is more likely to be real and genuine than hers.  The Church says that the other apparitions were a help in the effort and so her visions do not exclude further ones.  Wrong.  This one promoted a devotion that was not furthered by our Lady of Lourdes for example.  Many other devotions have been established since.

 

Page 52, Jeanne le Roye, a sister of the Nativity, had revelations which she burned during a fit of doubt.  Her revelations were written down by her spiritual director thirty years later.  This was in 1790 and she died eight years later.  She did not have to burn the prophecies at all.  It is a bizarre thing to do.  This is a classic excuse for making a new book full of prophecies made after the event or prophecies that are good guesses that look better if they were allegedly made years before the indications of where things are going today came about.

 

None of the prophecies listed in the Dupont book have been inexplicably fulfilled.

 

Page 69, Emmerick says that one day the Church will all into total immorality and the true faith will exist only in a few places and be reduced to handful of families.  Obedience is not due to heretical bishops or even heretical popes so schism would be the result.

 

Jesus would not tell her such a thing for it would lead only to schism and indeed has led to the formation of many dissident Catholic Churches today – eg the formation of the True Catholic Church and the Society of St Pius V.  Dupont neglected to inform us that this Lady’s revelations have been altered by her secretary Clemens Brentano (Twenty Questions about Medjugorje, page 18).  Obviously, if she really had received visions from God, God would have been able to preserve them.

 

Chapter 4 is on Nostradamus and it approves of the astrology he used to develop his prophetic quatrains.  Dupont says that a verse saying that America will reign under the sign of Libra and shall have power in the sky and land and shall stand against Asian enemy nations until seven popes have died.  He assumes that the Hesperides in the original means America but there is no basis for this but Greek mythology and America wasn’t even discovered when the Greeks wrote.  And the prophecy has failed for the seven pontificates have passed and America still reigns.

 

He says that the prophecies are extremely hard to make sense of until the events are past (page 99).  So you could make them mean any number of things. 

 

Nostradamus used symbolism a lot which confuses things further.

 

Nostradamus was alleged to have meant by, “at forty-five and others from forty-one, forty-two and thirty-seven” (page 99) the degrees of latitude where the Anglo-Americans went to when they landed at Salerno and Naples.  But in Dupont’s comment he changes the order. Forty-five is put last.  Nostradamus, if he was a prophet, would have put them in chronological order.  Why do well when it only takes a few seconds to do better?  The “and others” proves he was intending to be chronological.  If he had given the latitudes he would have given the longitudes too.  Dupont says he named Sicily but under a symbol.  If he did that what would he give the latitude for?

 

The 41 and 42 cannot stand for latitude when they landed at Naples and Salerno which are between the two lines and not on them.  Nostradamus would have said he did not mean the lines but between them.

 

If there are strange coincidences it does not take a miracle to explain them.

 

Top of the Document 

 

PROPHECIES OF MALACHY AND COLUMBKILLE

The Dupont book discusses the famous prophecies of St Malachy and Columbkille, 

 

Page 19, St Malachy from the twelfth century predicted all the popes by giving mottos for each one that are so short that each one could describe any pope at all.  Crux de Cruce, Cross from a Cross, is Pius XI who had to carry the cross of the Italian Revolution which was helped by the Savoys who had a cross on their coat of arms.  But Pius fought for the declaration of papal infallibility and won so we would expect the motto to be, The One that Errs Not, or something to that effect for that was the main thing he did.  And to say his cross was figurative means that any meaning at all can be forced on the motto.  Pope John Paul II’s cross is to keep the Church conservative.  Malachi must have had a literal cross in mind. 

 

St Pius X was Ignis Ardens, The Burning Fire.  This fire is supposed to be World War I.  If he had been alive when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki you know what the interpretation would have been.  Or if it had been during the great fire of London.  But some say the fire was the symbolic fire of his zeal.  Many popes fit the bill.  If Malachy or whoever invented the prophecies were true prophets they would have done better than that.

 

Pastor et Nauta or Shepherd and Sailor was John XXIII who hailed from Venice, the city of sailors.  But he was never a sailor and not much of a shepherd when he inaugurated Vatican II which wreaked havoc in the Church by means of not being a dogmatic or infallible Council but a “pastoral” one and brought in looseness that has shook the Church to its foundation resulting in large-scale apostasy and many schisms.  Dupont wrote that Vatican II tried to avoid doctrine but it was unavoidable so, “Vatican II got out of the difficulty by compromise and ambiguities” (page 42).  Here it is being accused of fraud and hatred towards the faith.  The motto is unlikely to call a man a sailor just because he was from a sailor town.  Inaccuracy in a prophecy is a vice.

 

Top of the Document 

 

FAKES GALORE!

The stigmatic nun, Elena Alello received a revelation in 1960 about a Third World War which would see Russia taking over Europe and the Virgin told her that all people on earth must be told about this for it is to happen soon (Please come Back to Me and My Son, page 20).  This prophecy has failed and cannot be fulfilled now with the collapse of communism.

 

The manifestations to Sr Agnes Sasagawa in Akita, Japan indicated that communion in the hand was not approved by Heaven (ibid, 20).  But the Church says its laws come first and it allows it.  These apparitions and revelations stress that the Church will become an apostate ecumenical cult.  Bishop Ita authenticated these revelations which does not stand for much for the Church nearest the time of the apostles was giving out communion in the hand. 

 

The Irish visionary and stigmatist, Christina Gallagher of Mayo, has offered no proof or miracle that she really has had the experiences she said she had. 

 

The absurd message of 1988 that has Mary telling Christina that when she cries with pain and because of Satan that Mary cries as well (page 34) is laughable for Mary would be having a nervous breakdown by now if that were true for she would be crying over everybody!  Or does she single out Christina to cry about?  What would that say about all the other apparitions in the world?  Does Mary not care about these other visionaries or are they just fakes?

 

Contrary to what Jesus said about the need for us to judge fairly the Virgin says we must never judge for only God should (page 40).

 

On one occasion, Christina thought that Jesus had abandoned her and Jesus explained that he had to forsake her a bit because he had other little ones to help (page 47).  This denies that God is all-powerful.

 

Gallagher believed that everything she foresaw about worldwide signs and warnings and punishments would happen before the twentieth century would end  (page 53).  The book was checked and approved by her and her heavenly visitors so this is a false prophecy.  And it was simply untrue that 1992 was the year that suffering would peak for Ireland as she and her Jesus foretold (page 52).

 

Who knows – perhaps it is not Christina who makes the false prophecies but the historical Jesus?  There is no way of proving that it isn’t Jesus when most of his appearances have told lies we have to mistrust him.  They refute his infallibility and reliability.

 

 I don’t believe in apparitions that promise that God will prove his existence and the ugliness of sin to the whole world in a miracle (page 53).  He should have done it long ago.  Sin is his fault for he did not try hard enough to convert us.

 

On August 8th 1991, the Virgin told Christina about a sign she did at Medjugorje implying that she was appearing there.  We know for a fact that she is not.  And on February 24, 1988, the Virgin recommends the messages of Medjugorje to Christina and admits that they are the same as the messages she gives to Christina  (page 110).  Mary told Christina she chose her for she knew little about religion (92, 93) and here we are told she had read the messages of Medjugorje.  She could have used Medjugorje for ideas to make her own messages up.  Mary told a nun through Christina that she could not appear to her for she knew too much unlike Christina for those who are bright are easily led astray by the Devil pretending to be the Virgin (92, 93).  The Medjugorje visions are nowhere near as gruesome and spiritual as those of Christina.  The Med Lady has a different outlook and personality because one or both of these Virgins is a hoax.

 

The healing miracles are interesting.  One has a man cured of a possible tumour or abscess through an operation! (page 73).  And why did none of the cured let their names be published? 

 

Fr Rene Laurentin was impressed by her and even quoted her messages in his books with approval.  He did not put her in the section for apparitions without credibility in his book (page 82).  That says a lot about him.  She was approved by the Ukrainian visionary, Josyp Terelya, who heard her name called in a heavenly locution.  Little did he know that he refuted his own visions in doing so.  Christina had visions of Padre Pio who she named as one of her special protectors.  What business has a heavenly power sending Pio as a saint when he was not canonised by the Church?  Visions are inferior to the Church and visions say that for they command obedience to the Vatican.  The Church allows devotion to people to find out if they are saints but says it is up to her to decide if they are.  And for the Church to authenticate them would be automatically to declare Pio to be a saint. 

 

In 1990, Jesus told Christina that the three sins annoying him most at that time as abortion, sacrificing babies to the devil and sexual abuse of children.  Jesus complained that the faith was dying and being corrupted in the Church so that the true Catholics were uncommon.  Why did the corruption of the faith not bother him most?  It is supposed to be a worse sin than abortion for it can lead to abortion and those other things.

 

It is unfair that the Catholic Church censures apparitions that are heretical and forbids them and allows belief in unauthenticated visions.  If a vision is not authenticated and is believed then one may be saying God did something he never did and that is a heresy!  One should not believe but still avail of and heed the messages and check everything and pray in relation to the vision until it is authenticated.  Modern visions imply the Church is right to do these things which proves what they are.

 

There is a book of revelations called The Way of Divine Love.  Sr Josefa Mendenez wrote them as they were dictated by Jesus to her.  The German edition of her account of visions and messages dropped her revelation that Mary made Jesus a robe when he was a child and the robe fitted him even when he grew for it grew itself by the power of God.  Jesus asked the visionary to hate her evil flesh and consider it cursed.  That was struck out too.  This palming off a fraud as somebody who made no doctrinal mistakes was noted by Catholicism’s greatest modern theologian, Karl Rahner (page 40, Objections to Roman Catholicism).  The visionary reported as well that the Devil appeared in the shape of Jesus and Mary and she could not tell the difference.  So what she had to do was ask the apparition to praise God and if it was the Devil it could not do it.  This is illogical for the Devil could insincerely praise.  Does she think the Devil would not have led the Jews of the gospels to praise God for enabling them to get Jesus crucified?  The Devil will give a bad criterion for seeing which apparition is from God or him so that he will be able to fool.  Her apparitions were all of the Devil if they were not hallucinations or lies.

 

The important mystic and stigmatic, St Catherine of Siena, said that the Virgin told her that the Immaculate Conception was untrue (page 38, Objections to Roman Catholicism).  Nowadays, her devotees say she misunderstood Mary.  So Mary did not know that her visionary did not understand?  That’s too much.  Worse, Catherine is supposed to have given physical evidence for her claims in the form of the stigmata.

 

It is known now that the vision of Mary to St Simon Stock to reveal the devotion of the scapular and the Sabbatine Privilege to him is a dubious legend (page 24). 

 

The famous saint, Vincent Ferrer, who has the honour of being the most powerful miracle-worker in the Church having performed a staggering 40,000 miracles supported the Clementine Roman Catholic Church.  This was a breakaway Church led by a line of antipopes and was headquartered in Avignon in France.  He allegedly raised 28 persons to life.  He beat Jesus Christ for miracles.  It is madness to hold that Jesus on earth did so few miracles and this man then does more for it was more important to verify Jesus than Ferrer.  Some would say it was Jesus working through Ferrer so it does not matter.  But it is better for Jesus to do miracles personally instead of through an intermediary and especially when there is no evidence from apostolic revelation that Catholic doctrine is true and that for all we know it could be Buddha doing the miracles.  Ferrer was once favoured by a vision of the evil and fanatical blood-letter, St Dominic (Raised from the Dead, page 165).  Here we have a saint doing miracles that verify the teaching of the Church but a Church with a false head and so a counterfeit of the true Church!  Ferrer’s miracles cannot be evidence for the true faith.  The Church says that a saint is not always right but is always holy and sincere.  But what is the use of God doing miracles to verify sincerity and not the saint’s opinions?  You don’t even need to know who is a saint to get help from the saints.  Why has the Church not got Mormon and Protestant and Jehovah’s Witness saints? 

 

The two mystics, Ferrer and St Catherine of Siena did not agree on who the true pope was (The Emancipation of a Freethinker, page 228) which shows what a farce Catholic miracles sometimes are.  The Church claims them as authenticating her brand of religion while they happen outside her and are interpreted as supporting the wrong Church.

 

Top of the Document 

 

THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL

The appearances of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Rue de Bac, Paris, in 1830 show that the veneer of credibility that the Church casts over her ability to authenticate apparitions is totally artificial.  The information comes from The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary.

 

The visionary was a nun called Catherine Laboure, aged 24 who entered the convent the same year she had the first visions.  She was hardly a few days in the convent until she claimed that she had a vision of the heart of St Vincent de Paul.  All the accounts agree that she was desperate to have a vision of the Blessed Virgin and often prayed to her guardian angel and St Vincent de Paul that this would happen.  Before the first Marian vision, Catherine was convinced that her wish would be granted and went to bed on the night of the 18th July 1830 convinced her prayer would be answered.  An angel woke her up and she followed it to the chapel.  Mary came to her and sat in the director’s chair and gave her several prophecies that never came true.  The Archbishop of Paris was to die by violence and this never took place.  Mary next appeared on November 27th of that year when she showed Catherine how she wanted a medal to look.  She told Catherine to have the medal struck and that it would be a great source of grace.  A prayer was to be pressed on the medal as the Virgin wished, “O Mary Conceived without Sin, Pray for us who have Recourse to Thee”.  The medal became famous for its miraculous powers and got nicknamed the Miraculous Medal.

 

The false prophecies, the fact that the devotion of the Miraculous Medal made it easy for Pius IX to lead the Church further away from the Bible and reason by making it obligatory to believe that Mary was conceived without original sin all prove that the vision was not from Heaven.  Against the rule of St Francis de Sales that visions should not be desired, Catherine was rewarded by her desperate wish to see Mary with a number of apparitions of her.  This sanctions her sinful desire.  Francis declared in the Church approved book, Introduction to the Devout Life, chapter 37, that there is much vanity and deceit in desiring visions and ecstasies for they are so dangerous to the soul.  He did not approve, he said, of people desiring things that they did not need in their calling.  Nobody saw Catherine having her first vision so she could have been lying or deluded herself.  The second was not noticed though she was in chapel praying with the community but they did think she was in ecstasy.  Little attention was paid to her trance and she was not tested for fakery.  She hid her identity for years so that people knew there was an alleged visionary they did not know who she was.  So there was no way of knowing if she was sane at the time she had her visions.  She would need a lot of contact with people to be able to work out if there was any psychosis there.  But she was a recluse from the outside world as nuns are.  Apparitions are more convincing when they are spontaneous.

 

The Miraculous Medal apparitions prove that the Church is lying when it says it only accepts an apparition as true and of divine origin when there is no logical alternative for there are more convincing apparitions.  The conversions worked by the medal only prove that the story behind the medal turned people on not that the story was true.  And the conversions cannot be attributed solely to the medal.  When people prayed for sinners to convert they appealed to a lot of different devotions and saints.  The argument that the apparitions were true because of the alleged fruits is itself a fraud and another indication that the apparitions were satanic for they led to lies and delusion.  When the blood of Jesus is the fountain of grace in Catholicism one would expect Mary to have a medal done for it instead of herself for it is better to stress the foundational things.  Most people only wear about one medal and she is making sure that it is one of her own.  Odd.  These things create so many puzzles that it is wiser to not believe in them at all.

 

Top of the Document  

 

 

THE MARIAN MOVEMENT OF PRIESTS

The Marian Movement of Priests is a cult in modern Roman Catholicism.

 

It is staunchly conservative and is rabid in its devotion to the pope for it follows his directives forbidding contraception regardless of the harm this does.  That’s one example.

 

The Movement is based on the interior locutions of Fr Don Stefano Gobbi. 

 

The messages he “hears” in his heart are mostly from Mary.  Thus his book, which has changed titles, is called Our Lady Speaks to Her Beloved Priests.  The edition I am working with is titled, To the Priests, Our Lady’s Beloved Sons.

 

The messages stress that nothing but the service of Mary and her interests should be of interest to you so you should avoid newspapers and TV (July 8, 1973).  This implies that there should be no small talk but only talk about Mary.  It is just like the Hare Krishnas only being interested in talking about Krishna.  She said that we must be detached from everything so that Jesus is our only love (July 29, 1973).  One must be detached even from those who serve Jesus best (February 15, 1975).  This is a sick doctrine for if you help a sick person you would not be doing it for them but for Jesus.  Compassion would be the last thing on your mind.

 

Worse, she says she wants this all the time (February 11, 1974).  This is what she would have to ask if it is right to be her slave.

 

The Virgin declared that she was the woman wearing the sun, with the moon under her feet, and with twelve stars making a crown on her head who was described in the Book of Revelation (November 30, 1974).  This is wrong for Revelation never says that Mary is the woman or that the baby she has who will rule all nations is a real baby.  The vision seems to stand for Israel for she ran into the desert – they were in the desert for forty years - and had twelve tribes – the twelve stars – and who eventually gave birth to Jesus.  Mary would understand that we can’t.  And especially when we cannot take it to mean her for she was barely mentioned in the Bible so how could it be somebody as unimportant as her?

 

In the same locution, she stated that she was the sole sign from God to the modern Church and the modern world.  This rejects all visions and all miracles that do not directly relate to Mary.  Visions of Jesus are declared inauthentic.  But there are many events that are more acceptable as supernatural than Gobbi’s revelations.  The weak testament cannot destroy the stronger one.

 

The Lady promises that all the needs of priests who try to be as poor as they can be will be met (January 23, 1974).  What is the use in being poor if you are okay?  She says that she will help us with the weaknesses God sends (August 21, 1973) which means that when God put the weaknesses into us it was a foolish sick joke. 

 

Sweetly, she says that Jesus loves us unconditionally and then she says that she loves us as long as we are trying to grow out of our faults, “My Son Jesus does not love you for what you can do, but for yourself:  He loves you just as you are.  It is not your merits but only his love which draws Him strongly to you, I also, your Mother, love you just as you are: even with your defects, as long as you are always striving to correct them” (September 12, 1975).  Jesus loves us without reasons and she rebels again this and only loves those who make the effort to love God.  Some saint!  And she said that everything Jesus does is right!

 

As for bad priests, we are to be kind to them without judging them for any reason or at any time for that is not our place (July 9, 1975).  Obviously, this counteracts the approval of the Bible for legal and fair judging.  Jesus advocated honest judgement in the Sermon on the Mount.

 

The spurious visions of Fatima are fully approved by the Virgin who says she was there in 1917 (October 13, 1981). 

 

In the last decade of the twentieth century, the Lady said that the great tribulation that the Bible speaks about and which she spoke of in her apparitions will take place – then, the world will suffer more than ever before (September 18, 1988).  She said that all the secrets she disclosed in her apparitions will be revealed.  Some of the Third Secret of Fatima is still confidential and Fatima has to be the apparition she is thinking of for none of the other approved ones could be possible candidates.  All of this, needless to say, never happened.  There is not a word about anything in this being conditional on our response to her revelation.  Therefore it is not.  Mary could predict that evil will befall the world unless it converts but she cannot say that supreme suffering will befall it in ten years unless it converts.  That is looking into a future that will not be and is impossible.  Also, the world is less Catholic than ever.  The Lady said that the time had come for the world to lose the true faith as she predicted at Fatima (page 755, 13/03/90).  Now, at Fatima she said only in Portugal would the true faith continue so she is saying it is not conditional.

 

If they are conditional elsewhere they are not here.

 

She said that the great departure from the true faith that was foreseen in Second Thessalonians has taken place (June 11, 1988).  The Lady says the time is at hand for the return of Jesus to the earth.  This could encourage schism from Rome and Jesus said we would be taken by complete surprise when he comes back and what she is saying would defeat his doctrine that we must be always ready for we do not know.

 

The dangerous secret of La Salette was approved by Mary in the same revelation.  It says Rome will become the seat of the Antichrist which is conducive to schism.  Also, it is admitted even by believers in La Salette that the secret may not be the one that Mary told for Melanie was an outrageous eccentric carried away by her imagination when she told it and who gave bizarre prophecies later in life that proved false.  Here is Mary saying it was the real one against the evidence that it was not.

 

There are allegations of Satanism and deliberate evil against masonry and the book says that the black beast and the horns in Bible prophecy refer to masonry (405, 406).  Even locutions from Heaven have no right to make such statements without verification.

 

Gobbi is inventing the messages.

 

In 1994, Gobbi said on Mother Angelica Live that all the secrets of locutions and apparitions would be opened to the world by the end of the century.  Gobbi was asked if the same would be true of Medjugorje and its ten secrets and he claimed that he did not know.  But all secrets would include its as well if Medjugorje is true, and it is according to his Virgin.  A declaration from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith came later and it denied that there was anything of heavenly origin in the revelations Gobbi received.  It ruled that he should even stop attributing his messages to Mary in the title of his book so the title was changed to, To Her Priests.  Gobbi was lying about not knowing about Medjugorje for the Virgin told him in 1987 that she was appearing there and that in that very year the secrets she told there would be revealed.  Evilly, he had this revelation struck out of his book in 1991 (see The Medjugorje Deception, pages 299-300).  That was because there had come official decrees from the Church challenging the supernatural nature of Medjugorje and forbidding anybody to say the apparitions were definitely supernatural.

 

 

Top of the Document 

 

POEM OF THE MAN-GOD

This Lady lived in the twentieth century and wrote a book called Poem of the Man-God based on alleged revelations made to her concerning the life of Jesus Christ. 

 

The Catholic Church put her drivel on the Index.  The book, The Holy Shroud and the Visions of Maria Valtorta defends her.  It says the Church put her on the Index of Forbidden Books as a precaution though the L’Osservatore Romano said it was a terribly fictionalised story about Jesus.  It is difficult to believe that the Catholic Church would treat a book that way when it was not sure.  The books placed on the Index were read and examined thoroughly first.  Some mistakes were made but it was generally accurate about what Catholics ought and ought not to read.  An appeal to the Church court would have rehabilitated it if the Church was wrong.

 

Her book authenticates the dubious Shroud of Turin and claims that the Shroud was left in a pile in the tomb.  But the John Gospel implies that it was probably folded when the head band was. 

 

The Monsignor’s book states that some errors of a historical nature were made in her book.  He argues that they do not disprove the authenticity of the revelation.  She even made a mistake about which hand was on top on the Shroud and corrected this in her typescript after the error was made.  Revelations need to provide evidence and hers should be perfect so that that might be a proof and Jesus had plenty of time to keep her right when he was so talkative with her.  Theology is connected with history.  If you admit small errors in the resurrection story then how do you know that some small detail that throws a different light on it was forgotten or misinterpreted?  For example, the headband in the tomb might have been significant to some people who knew Jesus for perhaps they knew there was a man who should not have known about it and who claimed not to have been at the tomb implying he had been there and doing something suspicious with Jesus’ body.  Revelations have to be totally error-free.  

 

The amount of hugging other men that Jesus does in it makes him look like a gay man and he even kissed James on the mouth and James falls asleep in his arms.  And Jesus even supposedly said that no one can be a sinner if they sin for the love of God.  One anachronism she has put in the book is a reference to screwdrivers being used at the time of Jesus.  She also said she heard Mary call God Jehovah in her vision.  But that name was not invented until centuries later.  God’s name is Yahweh.  (Critique: “Poem of the Man-God” Medugorje’s Gospel by Brother James,

 http://members.lycos.co.uk/jloughnan/critique.htm).

 

Top of the Document 

 

ANNE CATHERINE EMMERICH

Anne Catherine Emmerich was born in 1774 in Germany and she became an Augustinian nun.  She was a stigmatic and she was watched very closely in 1819 to see if there was any evidence of fraud.  None was found.  But magicians could have fooled her observers.  God gave her a cross on her breast shaped like a t and a y forcing dirty doctors to look at it which is a strange thing for God to do. 

 

She wrote a book on her revelations but a layman, Clemens Brentano, rewrote them so we can’t be sure of them anymore (page 18, Twenty Questions about Medjugorje).  If God went to the trouble of giving her long visions and had Brentano taking notes meaning he wanted them to be preserved why didn’t he find some way to preserve the authentic account?  The revelations have to be false when God failed.  The Holy Shroud and Four Visions argues that that Bretano turned the notes he took as she dictated into poetical language resulting in inaccuracies but it says that since her visions of the suffering of Jesus match the Turin Shroud the errors are few (page 16).  But the Turin Shroud does not depict Christ.  If the Shroud is a miracle then Christ was a fraud.  The Shroud cannot be the winding sheet of Jesus and its existence would be evidence that miracles prove nothing at all and can mislead.  Jesus said his miracles proved what he was saying was true and with the Shroud we would have physical evidence against him.  And physical evidence for him is something that we don’t have even with the gospels which only give questionable and too brief testimonies for him.  Why then did Brentano get rid of the original notes?  Catherine got a revelation saying that God wanted Bretano to write her notes so if he lied it is more her fault than his.  She called him the Pilgrim because he had the role of being pilgrim to the sacred place of her side from which revelations from Heaven were to be received.

 

According to her visions, the cross of Jesus was the usual shape but Christ was fastened to two arms going upwards in a Y shape.  But the victims of crucifixion carried one beam to the execution site but this kind of cross would be ready made and the whole thing would have to be carried.  Also it is unnecessarily ornate.  Catherine’s vision of the cross seems to have more to do with the Y shaped cross in her parish chapel than Jesus.  She described a scourging at the pillar that is so horrific (page 27, The Holy Shroud and Four Visions) that it is strange the gospels did not say that and which is inconsistent with the gospel that Pilate was anxious to save Jesus and too bad a scourging could kill.  Yet her revelation says the gospels are infallible in all matters.

 

She reports as fact the fictitious story that was made up centuries after the Church began that Veronica wiped the face of Jesus.  Veronica means true icon so she was made up for there was a picture of Jesus on cloth that some wished to link with the time of Christ. 

 

Emmerich claimed that the leg of Jesus was broken out of its socket to make it stretch on the cross for a hole for the nail was too far away for the leg to reach.  Death rapidly ensued if the legs were unable to support.  But Jesus was on the cross for a few hours.  The Turin Shroud is supposed to back this up which if correct is another reason it is not Jesus’ cloth.  Emmerich saw the arms being stretched unnaturally and it is thought that the Shroud man had arms broken out of the sockets.  This makes it all worse for her claims.  These details are on page 39 to 44 of The Holy Shroud and Four Visions. 

 

Mark recorded Pilate’s surprise that Jesus died so soon.  Mark made no effort to prove the resurrection and he just said it happened.  Don’t you think he would have said if the stretching had killed his Lord prematurely?  The evidence must have been confused and unconvincing when Mark could find so little to say.

 

What was Emmerich doing with stigmata in her palms if she saw Jesus nailed through the wrists?  She never saw this at all.  When God gave her a cross on her breast to match the cross in the vision it follows the stigmata would match the vision too. 

 

In her visions of the Virgin Mary’s house at Ephesus she reports that there was a tabernacle containing an image of this cross.  Why would Mary use a tabernacle for a cross?  Moreover, tabernacles did not come in till much later.  And St John gives the dying Virgin the wafer and no chalice which did not come in for hundreds of years later.  The apostles use altar lamps and altars and chrism and blessed salt – later inventions of the Church.  The work is full of anachronisms.  The Church might speculate that God led the apostles to privately use these emblems of a later Church but the fact remains that they are more likely to be anachronisms.  Strangely, the apostles have nothing with them to drink but tiny flasks on their belts and tiny loaves.  And we are to believe they travelled a long way with just that!  There were even rich vestments that they put on for the final Mass for Mary!  And of course the account climaxes with the Virgin being assumed into Heaven from her tomb - a legend that did not appear till long after the apostles.  She had a vision of the true Church dwindling to just a few families which could lead to schism.  She never hinted this vision was conditional and apostasy is wide-scale today.

 

Even if Brentano invented many of these things it is certain that many of these errors were originally Catherine’s.  Now if stigmata is meant to be a miracle that provides evidence for the faith and it is accompanied by visions then it must bear witness to the visions as well.  If the visions are false then the stigmata was faked even if there is no physical proof.  Her visions and wonders really undermine the Church so if her stigmata and visions and ability to live for years without food are real the Catholic Church is not the true Church of God.

 

Emmerich hid her stigmata and swore those who bandaged them to secrecy but the doctors spilled the beans.  Stigmata would not prove she was a saint so what had she to be ashamed of – exposure? 

 

Top of the Document 

 

BOOKS CONSULTED  

 

 

Ballinspittle, Moving Statues and Faith, Tim Ryan and Jurek Kirakowski, Mercier Press, Dublin, 1985 

Beauraing and Other Apparitions, Fr Herbert Thurston, Burns, Oates & Washbourne, London, 1934 

Believing in God, PJ McGrath, Millington Books in Association with Wolfhound, Dublin, 1995

Bernadette of Lourdes, Rev CC Martindale, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1970

Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1985

Catholic Prophecy, The Coming Chastisement Yves Dupont, TAN, Illinois, 1973

Comparative Miracles, Fr Robert D Smith, B. Herder Book Co, St Louis, Mo, 1965 

Counterfeit Miracles, BB Warfield, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1995

Cults and Fanatics, Colin & Damon Wilson, Siena, London, 1996 

Divine Mercy in My Soul, Sr M Faustina Kowalska, Marian Press, Massachusetts, 1987

Eleven Lourdes Miracles, Dr D J West, Duckworth, London, 1957 

Evidence of Satan in the Modern World, Leon Cristiani, TAN, Illinois, 1974  

From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls, Walter Vandereycken and Ron van Deth, Athlone Press, London, 1996

Fatima in Lucia’s own Words, Sr Lucia, Postulation Centre, Fatima, 1976   

Fatima Revealed…And Discarded, Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity, Augustine, Devon, 1988  

From the Visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, Topic Newspapers, Mullingar, undated  

Garabandal, a Message for the World, Ave Maria Publications, Middleton, Co Armagh   

Introduction to the Devout Life, St Francis de Sales, Burns Oates and Washbourne Limited, London, 1952

Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993 

Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM, London, 1969 

Miracles, Ronald A Knox, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1937 

Mother of Nations, Joan Ashton, Veritas, Dublin, 1988 

New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967 

Objections to Roman Catholicism, Edited by Michael de la Bedoyere, Constable, London, 1964 

Our Lady of Beauraing, Rev J.A. Shields, M.A., D.C.L., M.H. Gill and Son, Ltd., Dublin, 1958 

Padre Pio, Patrick O Donovan, Catholic Truth Society, London 

Please Come Back to Me and My Son  R Vincnet, Ireland’s Eye, Mullingar, 1992 

Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light, John Cornwell, London, 1992  

Rosa Mystica, Franz Speckbacher, Divine Mercy Publications, Dublin, 1986  

San Damiano, S di Maria, The Marian Centre, Hungerford, 1983  

Spiritual Healing, Martin Daulby and Caroline Mathison, Geddes & Grosset, New Lanark, Scotland, 1998  

St Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal, Fr Joseph I Dirvin C.M., Tan, Illinois, 1984

The Apparition at Knock, A Survey of Facts and Evidence, Fr Michael Walsh, St Jarlath’s College, Tuam, Co Galway, 1959

The Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today, Rene Laurentin, Veritas, Dublin 1990  

The Appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Grotto of Lourdes, JB Estrade, Art & Book Company Ltd, Westminster, 1912  

The Autobiography of St Margaret Mary, TAN, Illinois, 1986  

The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline, London, 1996  

The Cult of the Virgin Mary, Michael P Carroll, Princeton University Press, 1986  

The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, Kevin McClure Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, 1985  

The Exaltation of the Virgin Mary, by Rev S.G. Poyntz, M.A., B.D., Association for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Dublin, 1955  

The Holy Shroud and Four Visions, Rev Patrick O Connell and Rev Charles Carty, TAN, Illinois, 1974  

The Holy Shroud and the Visions of Maria Valtorta, Msgr Vincenzo Celli, Kolbe Publications Inc., Sheerbrooke, California, 1994  

The Incorruptibles, Joan Carroll Cruz, Tan, Illinois, 1977  

The Medjugorje Deception, E Michael Jones, Fidelity Press, Indiana, 1998  

The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, Fr Herbert Thurston, Burns, Oates & Washbourne, London, 1952 

The Sceptical Occultist, Terry White, Century, London, 1994  

The Supernatural A-Z, James Randi, Headline Books, London, 1995

The Thunder of Justice, Ted and Maureen Flynn, MAXCOL, Vancouver, 1993  

The Turin Shroud is Genuine, Rodney Hoare, Souvenir Press, London, 1998 Twenty Questions about Medjugorje Kevin Orlin Johnson Ph.D, Pangaeus, Dallas, 1999  

The Two Divine Promises, Fr Roman Hoppe, TAN, Illinois, 1987  

The Virgin of the Poor, Damian Walne and Joan Flory, CTS, London, 1983   

The Way of Divine Love, Sr Josefa Mendenez, TAN, Illinois, 1980  

The Wonder of Guadalupe, Francis Johnson, Augustine, Devon, 1981  

To the Priests, Our Lady’s Beloved Sons, Fr Gobbi, The Marian Movement of Priests, St Paul’s Press, Athlone, 1991

 

Top of the Document