Divine Mercy is Good—But What is This?

Donald P. Goodman III

Until this year, I had never really looked into the “Divine Mercy“ devotion promoted by Faustina Kowalska of Poland. To me, it seemed perfectly harmless, at the very worst; it was duplicative, to be sure, primarily of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, but surely contained nothing contrary to the Faith.

This year, I looked into a bit. And I am deeply troubled.

Caveats for This Post

I'm not saying that you, personally, are a heretic if you like this devotion. I'm not saying that Sister Faustina herself was a heretic. I'm not saying that anybody, individually, is a heretic. Nor am I saying that this devotion has only evil fruits, or that there's nothing good about it at all. There are clearly many good things about it.

Nor am I saying that those who promote this devotion—including John Paul II—are bad people.

So let's skip the inevitable straw men and move on to the substance.

The Devotion Was Actually Condemned

First, I learned that the devotion has actually been condemned. Three times; once under Pius XII, and twice under Pope John XXIII, a pope not exactly legendary for his exacting traditional standards. From November 1959 until 1978, this devotion was condemned and could not be spread by Catholics.

So Why Was the Devotion Condemned?

Ostensibly, translation errors. The website The Divine Mercy published an article, “Answering Radical Traditionalist Critiques of the Divine Mercy Message and Devotion”, on 5 October 2021, supposedly to answer the problems that I have only just begun noticing. But the article spends little time actually doing that; it lays into traditionalism for a while, saying nothing about the condemnations of their favorite devotion, then finally just says the following:

The fact is that the only translation the Vatican possessed of the Diary of St. Faustina in the 1950s was a faulty translation of the book into Italian, which included gross distortions of what Sister Faustina had written… Thus, the Vatican placed a ban on the message and devotion largely because it was operating without the original documents, that is, on the basis of misinformation.

It is absolutely delightful to see the hateful word “misinformation” here, of course, since it's a terrible word that should be done away with; but besides that, is this really true? Was the whole thing just a misunderstanding based on a mistranslation?

Are There Heresies in the Diary?

Well, let's take a look. Of course, the assertion is that the “faulty translation” in the 1950s misled the Holy Office into seeing heresies where there were none; so let's make sure we use a modern translation. We have used the one from Marian Press from 2005. The pedigree of this translation is exhaustively described in its own preface; so if we find doctrinally problematic statements in the diary in this translation, they surely must represent what is truly in the text.

(I don't read Polish, I'm afraid, so I do have to rely on translations. If only there were some universal language of the Church, which we could use for such purposes! But until the happy day that such a thing comes about, a translation will be needed. If somehow this thoroughly pedigreed translation turns out to be inadequate and misleading, I am sure that I will be so informed, and I will publish the appropriate corrections.)

Most of the diary, at least in my opinion, is fine; indeed, some of it is quite uplifting, particularly some of the parts regarding the importance of suffering. For this reason, I do not, nor am I aware of anyone who does, assert that Faustina was herself a heretic, at least in any formal way. But it does seem quite clear to me that she was being misled.

It's clear to me because there are, indeed, heresies in the book; two, both of which are quite striking. The first:

The moment I knelt down to cross out my own will, as the Lord had bid me to do, I heard this voice in my soul: From today on, do not fear God's judgment, for you will not be judged.

Any Catholic should be profoundly shocked and disturbed by anyone saying they will not be judged. Note that she does not say that she will be exempt from condemnation, which is the only defense of this line which I have seen ventured; rather, she says that she will not be judged, either as worthy or unworthy. She says that she will be exempt from judgment, not merely from condemnation; indeed, she says that Our Lord Himself told her this. Our Blessed Lady, the Mother of God, herself was judged; is Faustina even greater than Our Blessed Lady?

Well, it appears that she was greater than Our Blessed Lady, at least in her visions:

I suddenly saw the Lord Jesus, who spoke these words to me: Now I know that it is not for the graces or gifts that you love me, but because My will is dearer to you than life. That is why I am united Myself with you so intimately as with no other creature.

Again, any Catholic should be profoundly shocked and disturbed by anyone saying that Christ is closer to him than to any other creature. The creature closest to Christ is, again, Our Blessed Lady, the Mother of God; is this not Faustina asserting that she is closer to Our Lord than His Mother herself?

It is her asserting exactly that; there is no reasonable interpretation otherwise. Even our aforementioned Faustina devotees couldn't come up with a good explanation; the best they could produce was mere raw speculation:

[B]ut Faustina evidently meant “more intimately than any other creature on earth at this time”.

“Evidently”? Is there any actual evidence that this is what she meant? None whatsoever. Rather than inserting entire phrases to make this statement non-problematic, perhaps we should take it for what it obviously is, and deal with the fact that it is problematic?

(Incidentally, even given this generous interpretation, which requires the insertion of an entire phrase to be defensible, the statement is quite problematic. Faustina is genuinely the person most beloved by Christ on the entire planet?)

These are not merely problems; these are straight-up, very simple, very clear heresies, which Faustina's diary puts in the mouth of Our Lord Himself. Namely, that she individually is exempt from the particular and general judgment, and that she is closer to Christ than the Blessed Mother is. However, we know as doctrines of the Faith that all men are subject to the particular and general judgments, and that no one is closer to Christ than the Blessed Mother is.

Such heresies cannot possibly be from God.

Other Problematic Passages

There are other problematic portions of the diary; none rise to the level of obvious heresy, like the two above, but they are still problematic.

While the vast bulk of the diary is very, very good on holy obedience to superiors, Sister Faustina does put into the mouth of Our Lord something that is quite troubling:

[Y]ou are thus exempted from giving a detailed account to your superiors concerning My relationship with you. In all other matters, be as a child with your superiors, but whatever I do in the depths of your soul is to be told, with all frankness, only to the priests.

This is not how religious superiorship works. What Christ is doing in the subordinate's soul is precisely what superiors should be concerned with. Is it impossible that Christ might see that the superiors will not act properly, and thus command someone not to be obedient in this way? No, it's not impossible; but it's difficult to see this as being from God.

Jesus said to me, My daughter, all that exists is yours.

Really? All? Once again, it is difficult to see how this is reconcilable with true religion.

One day Jesus said to me, I am going to leave this house… Because there are things here which displease Me. And the Host came out of the tabernacle and came to rest in my hands and I, with joy, placed it back in the tabernacle. This was repeated a second time, and I did the same thing. Despite this, it happened a third time, but the Host was transformed into the living Lord Jesus, who said to me, I will stay here no longer! At this, a powerful love for Jesus rose up in my soul, I answered, “And I, I will not let You leave this house, Jesus!” And again Jesus disappeared while the Host remained in my hands. Once again I put it back in the chalice and closed it up in the tabernacle. and Jesus stayed with us.

This incident is nothing short of bizarre. This may be a physical incident that occurred to Sister Faustina, in which case she, with unconsecrated hands, was entrusted to hold the Host; this would be troubling even now, in our age of “extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist”, but even more so in the 1930s, when this incident supposedly happened, when anyone touching the Host with unconsecrated hands would be (correctly!) seen as committing a great sacrilege. Alternatively, it might be a spiritual experience, a vision of sorts. Either way, it portrays the seer as directly defying Christ Himself, and Christ being apparently perfectly happy to be defied. Can we make interpretations of this incident which are not problematic? We can; but it's another data point which should make us question the visions in general.

I learned that if a soul is with Jesus, He will not permit it to err.

This is, at the very least, proximate to error, very close to the Protestant notion of “once saved, always saved”. It is quite different from what we hear from other saints; e.g., St. Francis himself once said, when others declared that he was a saint, that he too might one day have sons and daughters, meaning that he might break his vows and could not presume on the mercy of God. Yet what is Sister Faustina doing here, if not presuming on the mercy of God?

On one occasion, I heard these words: … I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners.… The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment.

Um. Confession will, of course, remit the eternal punishment of sins, and can remit some or all of its temporal punishment; Communion can also remit some or all of its temporal punishment. But to guarantee the remission of all eternal and temporal punishment of sins would require (a) extraordinarily good dispositions on the part of the recipient of the Sacraments, or (b) a plenary indulgence decreed by the Church.

And this supposed promise doesn't even require the complete detachment from sin that a plenary indulgence requires; indeed, I have heard many proponents of this devotion touting it for this very reason! As in, “a plenary indulgence is harder to get, because one must be completely detached from sin; to obtain this complete remission of all temporal and eternal punishment on Divine Mercy Sunday, one does not even need to have this complete detachment!”

Would Our Lord Jesus Christ, who told Magdalene to go and sin no more, promise us such enormous bounty without even asking us to be detached from sin?

The grandiosity of this promise is truly remarkable. The Brown Scapular promise, that one dying faithful to the scapular will not suffer eternal fire, has often been portrayed as itself very grandiose; but it is nothing compared to this, which says essentially that the soul following this devotion will not even need to suffer any Purgatory.

Perhaps this is really a prediction of a plenary indulgence being decreed by the Church, and presumes a complete detachment from sin? Perhaps. But proponents of this devotion specifically claim that it does not require any indulgence or detachment from sin; and if we do read it as a prediction of a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions, then goodness gracious, this is certainly playing fast and loose with the rules! When making a passage orthodox requires this kind of gymnastic interpretation, the passage's orthodoxy is necessarily in serious doubt.

The Image of Divine Mercy

The image itself we have all seen many times, and is described in the diary in some detail:

I saw the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment. One hand [was] raised in the gesture of blessing, the other was touching the garment at the breast. From beneath the garment, slightly drawn aside at the breast, there were emanating two large rays, one red, the other pale. In silence I kept my gaze fixed on the Lord; my soul was struck with awe, but also with great joy. After a while, Jesus said to me, Paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You.

A couple of issues with this. First, Sister Faustina did not actually follow this command of the Lord. She tried, but she lacked the skill with a brush to do so; but Christ, in her visions, did repeatedly tell her she was to paint the image. Indeed, when her confessor indicated that Christ meant that she was to keep His image in her soul, Christ told her, “I want this image, which you will paint with a brush.” Why Our Lord would command poor Sister Faustina to do this thing, when she was incapable of so doing, is itself troubling.

Second, though, is the fact that this image, although its clothing was “slightly drawn aside at the breast”, contains no mention of His Sacred Heart. The devotion to the Sacred Heart was already several centuries old at this time, and was the quintessential devotion expressing the mercy of Christ and His deep and abiding love for men. So why would it not be in this image?

Third, the rays, red and pale, are supposed to represent the blood and water which flowed from His Heart. So why not be just blood and water? Why the layer of indirection here?

Is this Devotion Evil?

No, obviously not! Devotion to the mercy of Christ is ancient and central to Christianity; no one can possibly refuse devotion to the Divine Mercy and call himself a Christian. Nobody is saying that Christ isn't merciful, or that we shouldn't love His mercy. Such a statement would be beyond insane.

Nor is anyone saying that the devotion is itself heretical. At least, nobody that I've ever read. The Divine Mercy chaplet is perfectly orthodox; the painting of the Divine Mercy is perfectly orthodox; many people are devoted to them and gain grace and peace from them. None of that is at issue.

What is at issue is the constant insistence that everything be new. The Divine Mercy chaplet, for instance, has become so popular that in some places and contexts it has essentially replaced the Holy Rosary! This is deeply problematic. The Rosary has a pedigree second to no private prayer in the Church; no chaplet could ever replace it. And yet, because it is newer (and, perhaps, because it is shorter), this chaplet has come to be considered its equal, if not its better. No Catholic can credibly believe this. The Rosary is the greatest non-sacramental prayer there is; whatever the virtues of the chaplet, it cannot approach the Rosary, and both history and the Church establish this fact so thoroughly that it can't really be debated, at least credibly.

Similarly, the image of the Divine Mercy so desired by Sister Faustina is not, in itself, problematic at all. We should trust in Jesus; His mercy does come to us; and the showering of His Blood and the Water from His Side is, frankly, an apt image of that mercy. But is it necessary? Did we not already have the Sacred Heart of Jesus for this image? And did not the Sacred Heart of Jesus very aptly express not only His mercy, but also our need to do penance and sacrifice, pray and give alms, if we hope to obtain that mercy?

Not everything has to be new. And yet, in line with everything in the Church since the Second Vatican Council, this devotion, being shiny and new, is given an incredibly overblown importance. Consider the Divine Mercy Apostolate in Dublin, which confidently asserts that “[t]he Diary of St. Faustina is the second most important book in the world, after the Bible.” Genuinely? This nun's diary is more important than, say, The Imitation of Christ; the Summa Theologica; the Didache? Utterly bonkers.

Nor is this obsession with new devotions, like this one, limited to isolated, regional apostolates. Cardinal Franciszek Marcharski said that the devotion “reminds us of the gospel we had forgotten.” What? We had somehow forgotten that Christ extends His mercy to us?

Christ, in the Church, gives us devotions we all must follow: the Sacraments, of course, being first and foremost. Private devotions may, over centuries of use, become more or less “official”, sanctioned by and even commanded by the Church; the Holy Rosary is likely the best example of this. But nobody would claim that The Secret of the Rosary is the second-most important book in history; such a claim would be insane. And that's a devotion that's nearly eight centuries old. For a devotion that arose out of the 1930s, and has only even been permitted for Catholics since 1978, to make such grandiose assertions of its own importance should lead to profound skepticism.

Once again, not everything has to be new. We had plenty of devotion to Divine Mercy, plenty of love for Christ and His mercy. We just didn't need this at all.

Conclusion

All in all, the Holy Office's concerns in the late 1950s appear to have been very well-founded. While the prayers and image promoted by Sister Faustina are not themselves problematic, her writings do contain at least two clearly identifiable heresies, as well as numerous other troubling passages. Furthermore, her devotions are duplicative of others even when considered at their best; as actually practiced, her devotions are less useful than the ones that they are meant to supplement or, all too often, replace. The devotion to the Divine Mercy, as championed by Sister Faustina, is not really a worthy one for Catholics; better, more traditional devotions should be fostered in its place, and it should be permitted to fade into history.

Praise be to Christ the King!