A colleague of mine pointed out this quotation from Michael O'Brien:

Do you reject private revelation?

O’Brien: No, I surely do not. However, I maintain that in this field of the spiritual life we must always exercise particularly careful discernment. While I respect private revelation that is tested and approved by legitimate religious authority, I am concerned about the way many deeply devout people have fallen into a kind of neo-gnostic consumption of the locutions of seers and visionaries, indiscriminately, and to the degree that it becomes an insatiable appetite. All too easily this leads to displacing the Gospels and the teachings of the Church with a pseudo-Gospel, an End-Times Gospel. In my novel, both authentic and false private revelations play a role; the authentic consoles and strengthens God’s servants, the false sows confusion among the most devout of the Lord’s followers. Both are indeed present in our times—at the very moment in history when we need to be most united in our resistance to evil.

I'm assuming that O'Brien is referring to people such as Medugorje devotees when he talks about people who "have fallen into a kind of neo-gnostic consumption of the locutions of seers and visionaries."

However, another question enters my mind when I re-read the interview.

Why do you suppose there are so many Catholics who disregard even Church-approved messages?

I could swear I've read an article or two that discusses the value and importance of acknowledging Catholic prophecy.  Unfortunately, nothing comes to mind right now.  Anyone here know of any such articles off hand?

It's my understanding that, yes, we should be slow to accept prophecy...but also slow to reject prophecy--particularly if it is Church-approved.

I've heard neocaths on "Catholic" Radio (SiriusXM) say, essentially, that because Fatima was private revelation, that it's not relevant to us. (I can't bear listening to that station for years and years, but I'm sure they're still dismissive). A vapid, inane encyclical comes out that's manna from Heaven, they spend a week reading it on the air and talking about the profundity.

Our Lady herself appears followed by a miracle of the sun in the sky which is witnessed by thousands (including non-believers) warning of apostasy in the Church, then they're somehow "not sure what any of it means" so it doesn't matter.

Of course, they're not sure what it means when Our Lady's very words that explain what it all means are still being kept behind bars and the Swiss Guards at the Vatican!  

It hasn't been entirely clear what she meant by "the errors of Russia" until we realize that the communist leaders of the Soviet Union were all avid consumers of Darwin's theory of evolution.  While Darwin wasn't Russian, his overnight best seller got into the hands of Lenin and Stalin who both discarded their Christian faith in favor of the atheism of Darwin's followers.  So then it's easy to see how the false hypothesis of biological evolution was the primary cause of all the other errors of Russia.

There are Protestant pundits who sincerely believe the sun careening down through the sky in Fatima was actually a UFO, deceiving the 70,000 eye witnesses.  But they're speaking from ignorance because they don't know anything else about the Fatima message or events, nor do they care.   They don't care if it's Church-approved or not because they don't care what the Church teaches.

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