The Luminous Mysteries brought me to traditional Catholicism.
I had bought a short biography of St. Dominic for my children to read for school. After buying it, the book didn't make it into the school boxes and sat around the house for a few months. One cold day, my wife was bored and picked it up to read.
Very soon afterwards, the announcement was made of the Luminous Mysteries. I was estatic and told my wife that we would have to incorporate these new, and wonderful (they were, after all, wonderful because John Paul the Great had given them to us) mysteries into our (largely non-existent) prayer life. My wife asked one question: "Who gave them to him?"
I re-read the article in the diocesan paper and told her I didn't know and I guessed that he came up with them himself. My wife replied, "Why should we pray new mysteries invented by a man when the Blessed Virgin herself gave the ones we already have to St. Dominic? If what we have is good enough for Mary, why do we need to add more?"
Well, I began to research this question and I was convinced I would find a very good explanation as to the historical issues surrounding the Rosary and why this change would be perfectly acceptable in an historical setting of development. I began the search on a medium that was pretty new to me at the time: the internet.
I read dozens of articles about why the Luminous Mysteries were great and wonderful and how they were a great gift to the Catholic Church, but the only reason any of the articles gave for this was because they were given to us by the great and wonderful Pope John Paul II. I then stumbled upon an article from The Remnant newspaper that went in a whole new direction. The article started off saying that the author hated to be criticle of yet another action by the pope, but went on to be very critical of the Luminous Mysteries from an historical and theological point of view. I suddenly had no answer for my wife and was beginning to doubt my initial enthusiasm.
When I finally did find websites that loved the new mysteries and defended them from an historical point of view, they essentially explained that the reception of the Rosary by St. Dominic was nothing more than a pious myth. They explained how the Rosary had changed over the centuries and how its original creation was based on Muslim prayer beads and its original purpose was to provide a devotion for illiterate peasants who didn't know the bible.
The more I researched, the more I discovered that many of the recommended changes in the Rosary were changes originally proposed by Bugnini, the creator of the New Mass. I also saw how the Luminous Mysteries completely upset the historical flow of the Rosary and, once again, change for the sake of change was being foisted upon the faithful from on high.
The Luminous Mysteries are not evil, per se. They are simply not part of the Rosary. If one wants to pray the Chaplet of John Paul 2, that's fine, but no traditional Catholic should be saying them in place of the Rosary. However, I would no more say the Luminous Mysteries than I would sing Martin Luther's hymns at Mass (which, by the way, is common in the Novus Ordo).