I came upon a reference to Fr Michel Rodrigue (not Fr Michael Rodriguez) in one of Fr Mark Goring’s short YouTube videos. Has anyone heard of this Founder and Superior General of The Apostolic Fraternity of Saint Benedict Joseph Labre?
There’s a lot of information on his alleged apparitions here:
I can find nothing about these private revelations having been approved.
Never heard of him. I read those prophecies and they don’t make me upset.
He is very unusual, extraordinary.
We will see what Church will say some day.
What does the church say about modern, post-inspired-scripture prophets? I know we are told in scripture that we will not know the hour or the day that He is coming again, but does that mean we for sure won’t be alerted in some way of, say, the month or the year?
I know, also, we’re told there will be many false prophets. Are we to expect the church will quickly denounce them or will they be left to lead away the quasi-faithful or the very-faithful-yet-unknowledgeable (as I fear to be) Catholics?
That is, how are we to recognize false prophets, or worse false teaching from within the church?
@howmanyds just don’t bother with this and wait Church’s decisions. You are not obliged to trust private revelations.
Keep going in your life as you were until finding this. Obey to Church and don’t be afraid.
I noticed this page to be apocalyptic in her syle of publishing. Someone asked about some person couple days ago and this was source. I would be very careful with reading that.
Thank you for the warning. One of the biggest red flags to me is the statement about him coming to believe in the apparitions of Medjugorie…
Which brings to mind one of the things I have struggled to come to terms with. How and why does Our Lady permit false apparitions? Why are false prophets not stopped in their tracks? Why allow them to disturb the journey of the faithful away from the right path?
This disturbs me greatly because I fear the ways I may be turned from the right path unknowingly, whether it’s listening to the advice of a well-meaning, but too permissive, spiritual advisor, falling into a casualness about some discipline due to my fraternity’s weakness, or putting my faith in raising my kids with the novus ordo that I came into as a convert, when maybe I shouldn’t.
I just want to know the truth!
Well first of all we are not permitted to discuss an unapproved revelations on forum. Second Medugorje isn’t declared false nor true, Church didn’t gave final judgment over it so it is on wait but still not approved, it is approved as pilgrimage.
Thirdly, don’t be afraid, listen your spiritual director/confessor, pray and think, question suspicios things and check! Don’t look what isn’t approved but what is approved and follow it. It is much easier to live like that. I myself mostly follow that rule. Also try to read about faith and catholic spirituality from reliable sources not just to read solid articles, it is not always question what is said but also who said something. Apocalyptic pages almost never bring anything good to people except fear, desperation and panicking. It is not from God. When He warns us it is in love and in call for conversion not in tone that brings desperation. He wants us saved, not destroyed.
You can see how that page confuse you, well that is sign to not to engage into that. You have many other approved revelations, you have saints, Mary in approved apparations. After all private revelations aren’t required for salvation.
I can suggest you to ask Mary’s intercession in Rosary, if you are with Mary you cannot be away from Jesus!
I have heard of him.
As others said, his private revelations aren’t approved, so we cannot discuss them here.
My understanding is that he is a devout person but he seems to have some unusual ideas and activities, then again his upbringing was extremely different from my own, so I am in wait-and-see mode to see what the bishops, etc might say.
I avoid getting too involved with anyone who purports to have had revelations but they aren’t approved, unless the person is deceased and has an active cause for sainthood, then I might support their cause (or I might not). That’s just my choice.
I also add that we cannot discuss the apparitions of Medj here because they are not approved either.
The faithful who pray and stay close to Our Lady and close to the Church won’t be led astray because they won’t go putting a lot of their eggs into the basket of an unapproved apparition.
It’s okay to go to Medj to pray or to go to confession - although I have no idea why it’s called “the confessional of Europe” when all those Europeans going there certainly have churches back home with priests in them willing to hear their confession without them having to travel far away.
But if you’re going to Medj to get in on “the latest apparitions” then that’s probably not the best reason to go.
And if you want to “know the truth”, then read Scripture and the Catechism. You don’t need to follow apparitions to get “the truth” and frankly that is the wrong reason to look to apparitions.
I don’t know who that is
I think this is exactly what I needed to hear.
Thank you for this reminder.
I agree with what has been said so far about all of these alleged mystics and visionaries. I made up my mind a long time ago not to get into this stuff. I am prone to anxiety so I just choose to avoid it. A friend of mine once told me when I came into the Church, if it’s not necessary for holiness, don’t bother with it, especially if it disturbs you. There’s just too much of it. Plus, some of these people start off saying things that line up with Church teaching but then they go off the rails as time goes on.
For instance, a strong Catholic guy I know who lives in another U.S. state knows this woman who is supposed to be a modern day prophet. She has even consulted with a bishop or two. She has many followers. However, he told me that she has recently been saying very weird things about aliens and bigfoot and "other’ spirits who show up in their prayer meetings. (And she is not the only one who has experienced things like this.)
This woman happens to be very involved in the Charismatic movement. I don’t mean to imply that all those involved in the Charismatic movement are weird and going around talking about aliens. It’s just that when you open yourself up to spiritual experiences, a lot of things can happen. We can be easily fooled as the Scripture says. We have to be very careful. So I think it would be wise to take a wait and see approach with this particular priest.
Move away from all the apocalyptic stuff if it’s bothering you and get involved in really learning the Catholic Faith. Think of it this way: Chances are, the end of the world isn’t going to happen in your lifetime. If not, you will have wasted countless hours reading things from supposed prophets that didn’t matter at all.
You asked–How do we recognize false teaching from within the Church? We have to know our faith. Read the Scriptures and the Catechism. If you don’t want to tackle the full Catechism right away you can read the shorter Compendium of the Catechism. It’s in Q & A format. There are also tons of books and articles and videos here at Catholic Answers that can teach you a lot about the Catholic faith. I would stick with materials from CA, EWTN and Ignatius Press. You can trust that with them you will get an orthodox presentation of Catholicism that is based on Scripture and Tradition. Once you learn the Faith, then you’ll recognize error when you hear it and you can discern better.
As far as the Novus Ordo: You can raise good, loving Catholic kids in the Novus Ordo. To me, everything is balance. As long as there are no liturgical abuses going on, you can stick mostly with the NO. The one I go to is very reverent. If you want to go to a Traditional Latin Mass sometimes because you feel it’s more reverent and inspires you more, feel free. But I don’t feel it’s necessary to go all in on any one thing.
Continued…
I know of too many people who are staunchly anti-NO and who would never go anywhere but a TLM but they are not loving and caring people. They drive people away by their attitudes. They know their Faith really well but they hold grudges against people. There is evident pride there. They would be better off putting more focus on love and forgiveness and less on defending the TLM. It seems to become an obsession and they forget about love. Obviously, not all are like that but going all in on anything tends to diminish love.
If you’re going to go all-in on anything let it be love, forgiveness and humility! We need all of our energy to work on love and not becoming focused on a particular path within Catholicism that really, at the end of the day, doesn’t have anything to do with love. Remember, that is all we’re going to be judged on is love, not what type of Mass we went to. Focus on love, love your kids, teach them to love and forgive and teach them what holiness is and why it matters. Teach them to pray. Pray as a family.
God Bless, I hope this helps!
This does help. I love this.
Regarding the NO vs TLM, your words are similar to how Fr Josh Johnson answered the question awhile ago in his podcast, “Ask Fr Josh,” saying that since both are liturgically acceptable, either can be good for you and either can be bad for you depending on whether it’s lifting you up to God in love or leading you to pride.
For my own part, I began doubting my use of the NO with my kids, four of whom are teens and love the teen mass, as do I, when a very large group of our devout friends left the parish two years ago when an Ordinariate parish opened up close nearby. While I’m happy for them that they are enjoying the traditional, yet in English, form of the mass, my family will not be moving there for a number of reasons, first and foremost because our current parish priest has helped my wife and I through a very difficult time in the past few years and we feel we owe him a certain amount of loyalty.
At any rate, while I don’t get the sense from most of our friends who now attend the Ordinariate mass that they think they’re better than us, I have gotten that sense from time to time when I hear of some things the priest has said, such as, allegedly, that “this is the way the mass is supposed to be said.”
Whether or not that statement is accurate in any way, it makes me wonder, what IF the Novus Ordo in all its easing up has lost a certain dignity. What if, even though, as you said, @tommy37, it’s more about how we LOVE, not what type of mass we go to, what if we’re missing out on an abundance of graces that we would be receiving if we were giving God the proper respect that maybe we’d only know how to give if formed in the TLM?
I recognize that switching my teenagers to either the TLM or the Ordinariate cold turkey would certainly not miraculously put us all in a state of being able to give God due honor during a mass, especially if my kids (and wife) were spending the entire mass missing their usual.
But I guess these thoughts are just creating a recognition in me that we are so caught up as an entire people of God with the sins and errors of those around us, and those before us. We truly are paying the price, whether it’s missing out on some graces or otherwise being forced to deal with the consequences, of our parents’ sins three and four generations back.
Like the Israelites who all had to eat the dust of the golden calf, whether they were the instigators of its creation or simply bystanders who said nothing, we will all be chastised and blessed, in some way, due to the evil and the good that we engage in as a unified bride of Christ.
The RC church won’t be jumping to any conclusions about apparitions revealed to Fr Rodrigue any time soon. They tend to keep a neutral stance about these things and probably for our sake we probably should also. If he was chosen to reveal a special message to the world it will be done according to God’s will.
Thanks for the reply! I agree that there is definitely more of a sense of reverence and mystery with the TLM and the altar rails and such. But I guess I just feel that as long as Transubstantiation is still happening in the NO, then the graces are going to flow. If we receive his Real Presence, then there will be grace. I don’t know that there are going to be more graces in the TLM. It may be more emotionally satisfying depending upon our tastes but we still have to do our part by rejecting sin, practicing virtue, engaging our will, etc, regardless of what Mass we go to. I think if we do these things, the graces will flow regardless. That’s the way I see it at least.
Back to the original topic, I received a response from the bishop of Fr. Rodrigue’s diocese, who I emailed a week ago. I received permission to share his response, which pretty tidily answers the question of whether these revelations should be given attention:
Here is the response of Monsignor Gilles Lemay to your request concerning Father Michel Rodrigue:
Peace be with you :
I thank you for your e-mail requesting some information about the teaching and the standing of Father Michel Rodrigue, a priest incardinated in the diocese of Hearst-Moosonee, Ontario, and working in this diocese of Amos, Québec, for a few years. He is the founder of the Fraternité Saint-Benoît-Joseph-Labre , a lay association of the faithful which is not a religious institute.
As you probably did too, I read on the Countdown to the Kingdom website related to Fr Michel and also in the book of Christine Watkins, The Warning. Testimonies and Prophecies the Illumination of Conscience (Note 84, p. 278 and p. 280), that : “ Michel Rodrigue receives the full support of his bishop, and all of his locutions and visions are submitted to his local ordinary for approval. “ This quotation was removed these days from the website after a request I sent to Fr Michel. No mention is made of the reason for the removal, that is to say: because it was untrue. However, the quotation remains in the book mentioned above.
I have to tell you that Fr Michel never submitted to me any of his locutions and visions for discernment or approval. Accordingly, I could not have supported the content of his talks which are not presented in my diocese nor elsewhere in the Province of Québec as far as I now, but mostly in the United States. Moreover, I learnt about his teaching while reading some reports on the website mentioned above. I did not and I do not approve his teaching with regard to his locutions and visions. Consequently, it is untrue that he “receives the full support of his bishop” as it is written in the Countdown to the Kingdom website and in the quoted book.
I thank you for your request. If you wish any further information, I will be pleased to respond as much as possible.
Truly yours in Christ,
+ Gilles Lemay,
Bishop of Amos, Quebec
Raymond Martel, prêtre
Vicaire général au diocèse d’Amos
[450, Rue Principale Nord]
[Amos, Qc]
(Canada) J9T 2M1Tél. [819-732-6515 Poste 206]
[vicairegeneral@diocese-amos.org]
Thank you very much. I will be sharing this with other groups who are posting videos by Fr. Michel.
God bless.
Very interesting! That’s amazing that you contacted the bishop and that he responded to you! Kudos! Things are not always what they seem.