The Virgin Mary, speaking to Lady Bridget, says that in no way is it God's will that
clerics should have wives or be contaminated by carnal vice - prohibiting any pope
from allowing this marriage of clerics to take place or be established in God's
Church.
Rejoice eternally, O blessed Body of God, in perpetual honor and in perennial
victory and in your everlasting omnipotence together with your Father and the Holy
Spirit and also with your blessed and most worthy Mother and with all your
glorious heavenly court. To you be praise indeed, O eternal God, and endless
thanksgiving for the fact that you deigned to become a human being and that for us
in the world you willed to consecrate your venerable Body out of material bread
and lovingly bestowed it on us as food for the salvation of our souls!
It happened that a person who was absorbed in prayer heard then a voice
saying to her: "O you to whom it has been given to hear and see spiritually, hear
now the things that I want to reveal to you: namely, concerning that archbishop
who said that if he were pope, he would give leave for all clerics and priests to
contract marriages in the flesh. He thought and believed that this would be more
acceptable to God than that clerics should live dissolutely, as they now do. For he
believed that through such marriage the greater carnal sins might be avoided; and
even though he did not rightly understand God's will in this matter, nonetheless that
same archbishop was still a friend of God.
But now I shall tell you God's will in this matter; for I gave birth to God
himself. You will make these things known to my bishop and say to him that
circumcision was given to Abraham long before the law was given to Moses and
that, in that time of Abraham, all human beings whatsoever were guided according
to their own intellect and according to the choice of their own will and that,
nevertheless, many of them were then friends of God. But after the law was given
to Moses, it then pleased God more that human beings should live under the law
and according to the law rather than follow their own human understanding and
choice. It was the same with my Son's blessed Body.
For after he instituted in the world this new sacrament of the eucharist and
ascended into heaven, the ancient law was then still kept: namely, that Christian
priests lived in carnal matrimony. And, nonetheless, many of them were still friends
of God because they believed with simple purity that this was pleasing to God:
namely, that Christian priests should have wives and live in wedlock just as, in the
ancient times of the Jews, this had pleased him in the case of Jewish priests. And
so, this was the observance of Christian priests for many years.
But that observance and ancient custom seemed very abominable and hateful
to all the heavenly court and to me, who gave birth to his body: namely, because it
was being thus observed by Christian priests who, with their hands, touch and
handle this new and immaculate Sacrament of the most holy Body of my Son. For
the Jews had, in the ancient law of the Old Testament, a shadow, i.e., a figure, of
this Sacrament; but Christians now have the truth itself - namely, him who is true
God an man - in that blessed and consecrated bread.
After those earlier Christian priests had observed these practices for a time,
God himself, through the infusion of his Holy Spirit, put into the heart of the pope
then guiding the Church another law more acceptable and pleasing to him in this
matter: namely, by pouring this infusion into the heart of the pope so that he
established a statute in the universal Church that Christian priests, who have so
holy and so worthy an office, namely, of consecrating this precious Sacrament,
should by no means live in the easily contaminated, carnal delight of marriage.
And therefore, through God's preordinance and his judgment, it has been
justly ordained that priests who do not live in chastity and continence of the flesh
are cursed and excommunicated before God and deserve to be deprived of their
priestly office. But still, if they truthfully amend their lives with the true purpose of
not sinning further, they will obtain mercy from God.
Know this too: that if some pope concedes to priests a license to contract
carnal marriage, God will condemn him to a sentence as great, in a spiritual way, as
that which the law justly inflicts in a corporeal way on a man who has transgressed
so gravely that he must have his eyes gouged out, his tongue and lips, nose and ears
cut off, his hands and feet amputated, all his body's blood spilled out to grow
completely cold, and finally, his whole bloodless corpse cast out to be devoured by
dogs and other wild beasts. Similar things would truly happen in a spiritual way to
that pope who were to go against the aforementioned preordinance and will of God
and concede to priests such a license to contract marriage.
For that same pope would be totally deprived by God of his spiritual sight and
hearing, and of his spiritual words and deeds. All his spiritual wisdom would grow
completely cold; and finally, after his death, his soul would be cast out to be
tortured eternally in hell so that there it might become the food of demons
everlastingly and without end. Yes, even if Saint Gregory the Pope had made this
statute, in the aforesaid sentence he would never have obtained mercy from God if
he had not humbly revoked his statute before his death."