kriz@skat.usc.edu (Dennis Kriz) (05/29/90)
This is taken from "A Woman Clothed With the Sun" edited by John J. Delaney [Doubleday, Image Books, 1961], concerning the Catholic teaching on apparitions/miracles. dennis kriz@skat.usc.edu (pg 17-19): "A word about the attitude of the Church regarding apparitions and miracles. As is true of all the Church's pronouncements, her teaching on this matter is logical, and yet at the same time it allows the greatest possible personal freedom to the individual. According to this teaching, a mircale is an unusual event performed by God or through His intervension which cannot be explained by the ordinary laws of nature. The Church demands that her children accept as a matter of faith the principle that miracles occur. "Also as a matter of faith Catholics must specifically believe in the miracles described in the Bible. Since the Bible is divinely inspired the miracles described therein must be accepted, since their validity is attested by the indisputable word of God: and the Bible is replete with incidents which can be described only as miracles and which can be accounted for only by the fact of supernatural intervention. "While on earth Our Lord Himself performed a variety of mircales: the raising of the dead: making the blind see: curing lepers: making the deaf to hear: and of course the greatest of all miracles, His Resurrection from the dead. It would be ridiculous for the Church to teach anything but that these unusual occurances were of supernatural origin -- miracles -- and that Catholics must believe them, since Our Lord performed them. "However, after her stricture that Catholics must believe that miracles can occur and must specifically accpet those described in the Bible, the Church then allows the widest latitude for personal belief or unbelief in apparitions or miracles which have occured since Biblical times. "'Apparition' is the name assigned to certain kinds of supernatural vision, either bodily or visible, and is the term most frequently applied to the various visions of Our Lady. The teaching of the Church regarding apparitions is comparable to her teaching about miracles which frequently stem from these apparitions. Briefly it is this: "Revelation as a source of knowleged and information about faith and morals is a true and infallible guidance for man and is to be found in the Bible. But public revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle. Everything necessary for man's salvation is found in the public deposit of faith which has been confided to teh Church, *and to the Church only.* The Catholic Church was founded by Our Lord purposely to preserve and interpret His teachings in matters of faith and morals. Consequently, only the Church's teaching and authority bind us in these fields. Since the Church alone possesses this infallible *magersterium*, it necessarily follows that private revelations are not a part of Catholic faith and must be interpreted only according to the official teaching of the Church. Adolphe Tanquerey explains this clearly, in his 'Spirityal Life,' when he says: 'The assent to be given them isn not therefore, an act of Catholic faith, but one of human faith, based upon the fact that these revelations are probable and worthy of credence.' "In schort, an individual is free to reject any private revelation of modern times: but he is equally as free to accept any or all such private revelations as he desires -- always, of course, with the knowledge that their interpretation is according to official Church teaching. Consequently, nobody is bound, as a mattter of dogma, to believe that Our Lady appeared at Fatima, or Lourdes, or La Salette, or any of the otehr places where she ahs been reported to have appeared at various times. "Nevertheless, when one considers the intensive ecclesiastical investigations to which these apparitions were subjected, and when one considers the unreserved judgement by proper ecclesiastical authorities that each of these apparitions is valid and worthy of having a cult established in its name, then rach indeed would it be for the individual who would question them." ----------------------------------------------
jhpb@garage.att.com (06/05/90)
There is a whole part of theology that is concerned with the discernment of spirits -- determining where visions etc. come from. Here are a few things that are considered by the authorities when judging apparitions: 1. Effect of the apparitions on the witnesses. It should cause an increase in sanctity. In the case of the Fatima children, this was quite noticeable. Part of this one is that the witnesses must obey their superiors. St. Theresa of Avila was told by our Lord to found convents without endowments. Her superiors ordered her to do otherwise. She obeyed her superiors -- and our Lord approved her behaviour. (She was quite terrified that the visions she had were diabolical in nature.) 2. The purpose of the apparition should deal with affairs related to salvation, not trivial and common things. 3. There must be nothing in them contrary to the theology of the Church, dogmatic, moral, or otherwise. 4. There must be nothing unseemly, unfitting. These are the ones that I can remember at the moment, anyway. Joe Buehler