Question on Divine Mercy chaplet
I received a question today regarding the Divine Mercy chaplet. My correspondent says that many years ago, the words on the small beads of the chaplet started,'Through the most sorrowful passion of Jesus etc...More recently, these have been changed to,
'For the sake of His sorrowful passion etc...This might seem a minor thing but I do take the point that it removes the repetition of the Holy Name of Jesus.
I remember that at the 99 names of Allah prayer vigil I led the Divine Mercy chaplet and afterwards there was some light-hearted discussion on an SSPX forum about whether they should have joined in with me. I would be interested to know if this was because of the newer wording or whether there is another issue in debate.
St Faustina's works were placed on the index of forbidden books by Pope John XXIII in 1959 at the request of Cardinal Ottaviani who was Prefect of the Holy Office. One account of this puts it down to a faulty translation of St Faustina's works. Others refer to a theological discussion concerning the attributes of God.
There was also a general suspicion of private revelations in the first half of the 20th century and I am interested to find out a little more about this. I recently read Fr Herbert Thurston's "Surprising Mystics" and was myself surprised at his rather disparaging tone and reliance on "modern psychology" as a better explanation of extraordinary phenomena than divine intervention. We do, of course, have to be cautious about extraordinary phenomena but there did seem to be an overly dismissive attitude in regard to, for example St Gemma Galgani, St Philomena, St Bernadette, and others. The cause of Teresa Higginson was, I think, a victim of the same skepticism.
The photo above is of the official image at Krakow. I visited the chapel in December 2006 with a polish priest friend and was able to say a prayer at the image. (For various posts with pictures of Krakow, search the blog for "Krakow" and scroll down.)
