Appearances can be downright deceptive
A rash of dubious miracles and rival congregations
is trying the Vatican’s patience
RELIGIOUS
fervor swept southern California this winter when a statue of the Virgin Mary
was claimed to be crying blood. A priest at the Church of the Vietnamese Martyrs
in Sacramento tried to wipe away her tears but they reappeared, running down
her face and on to her dress. While pilgrims dashed to the church, Bishop
William Weigand of Sacramento was in no hurry to make a pronouncement. “I’m
letting it sit for now,” he said.
If the
bishop was not as excited as everyone else, it is probably because this is not
an isolated event. Last summer women visiting a church near Naples said that a
plaster statue of the Virgin Mary had turned the “pinky” colour of human flesh
and that it had moved. In May a statue of St Pìo of Pietrelcina wept blood in a
church in Marsicovetere, southern Italy — although in this case the diocese
excluded “supernatural intervention” when tests showed that the blood belonged
to a woman.
Indeed,
such “private revelations” have proliferated. Around the Millennium there was
an explosion in claims of heavenly visions, messages, stigmata and Eucharistic
miracles. But of the 295 such episodes reported since 1905, the Vatican has
affirmed the authenticity of just 11, among them the appearances of the Virgin
Mary to three children at Fátima, Portugal, in 1917, and the visitation of
Jesus to St Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun, in the 1930s.
While
the faithful may accept or reject such revelations, most, according to the
Vatican, involve false seers who are either deluded or on the make, and these
are beginning to cause problems for the Church.
First,
they create tensions between the faithful who believe in them and bishops who
do not. Secondly, unauthorised cults often congregate around charismatic seers
who claim a direct line to God but who teach in opposition to the Church.
In
September, for instance, Dominic Sanchez Falar founded the “Mary is God -
Catholic Movement”, which claims that the third secret of Fátima revealed
Mary’s divinity. This secret was
covered up, he says, by Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now
Pope Benedict XVI. Rantings of this
kind would be risible were they not gaining so much currency, particularly in
the US.
Pope
Benedict, for one, takes them seriously. Three years ago, while Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), he said that private
revelations posed a threat to the unity of the Church and warranted an
“exemplary pastoral response” from the Holy See.
By
that time the future Pope had already ruled against claims that Mary appeared
at Garabandal, Spain; forbade Catholics to go on pilgrimage to Medjugorje,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Virgin Mary is also said to be appearing; warned
the faithful against the apocalyptic murmurings of Vassula Ryden; and ordered
Father Stefano Gobbi to stop using Our Lady Speaks to Her Beloved Priests
as the title for books containing similar eschatological content.
Benedict
is now already moving against private revelations in a way his predecessor did
not. Two cases signal his intent. Barely a month after his election, the CDF
issued two documents. One was a decree removing Father Gino Burresi from
active ministry, and the other was a letter to the Filipino bishops effectively
declaring as false the claims of Ida Peerdeman, a Dutch seer, that the Virgin
Mary had revealed new truths about her status.
Burresi
had founded the Congregation of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
which now numbers 150 priests, including Father Angelo Tognoni, an official in
the Vatican Secretariat of State who was often seen by John Paul’s side during
the weekly General Audiences in Rome.
He
claimed to have received the stigmata and was compared by his followers to St
Pìo, a 20th-century monk renowned for his piety. Burresi exuded the “odour of
sanctity”, it was said, and had the ability to “read souls” and produce works
of art miraculously.
But
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger thought that Burresi was a fraud, was guilty of
“pseudo-mysticism” and “asserted apparitions, visions and messages attributed
to divine origins”.
The
CDF stripped Burresi of the right to hear confessions, preach, give interviews,
publish or broadcast. The process had been initiated when Ratzinger was at the
CDF, and he made the ruling his own as Pope by confirming it forma specifica
and denying Burresi any right of appeal.
Days
later the CDF took the unusual step of overruling the decision of Bishop Joseph
Maria Punt, of Haarlem in the Netherlands, to approve claims that the Virgin
Mary had appeared in Amsterdam under the guise of “Lady of All Nations who once
was Mary”, sounding the death knell for an international movement to redefine
the Virgin as “coredemptrix, mediatrix and advocate”.
Critics
say such a status would have made Mary virtually the fourth person of the Holy
Trinity, jeopardising not only the interior unity of the Catholic Church but
also prospects of closer union with Orthodox and Protestant communions. The
initiative to stamp it out, Vatican sources say, came from the top.
Furthermore, they point out that “old cases of dubious apparitions” are likely
to be reopened and dealt with in a similar way by Benedict and his like-minded
officials in the CDF.
But by
far the biggest challenge to any efforts by the Pope to deal decisively with
the phenomenon of private revelations are the claims of six seers from Medjugorje
who say the Virgin Mary has been visiting them for more than 20 years.
In that
time the Madonna has allegedly dispatched 40,000 bland messages, given 57
secrets (none of which has been revealed), performed countless miracles (none
of which has been confirmed), and has toured the world with the seers,
appearing on demand even in the backs of vans.
Between
four and five million pilgrims have visited Medjugorje, including the Spanish
tenor José Carreras, who performed there, and the American actor Jim Caviezel,
who sought inspiration while filming The Passion of the Christ.
Yet
the only rulings to date on Medjugorje — made by the local bishops, the competent
ecclesiastical authorities — are that the claims are false and that the seers
are lying.
There
is a mounting expectation that Benedict will eventually move against this un-authorized
Marian cult, some of whose supporters, like those of Father Burresi, hold high
office in the Church and were rumored to have persuaded John Paul not to
intervene.
But the
Burresi affair has shown Benedict’s resolve to deal with factions who have
their own agendas.
The
Pope is about to reform the Curia, and so far the signs are not very promising
for those who prefer miracles and wonders to the simple darkness of faith.